Upward, Behind the Onstreaming It Mooned
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Upward, behind the onstreaming it mooned SEBASTIAN KOECK Upward, behind the onstreaming it mooned SEBASTIAN KOECK Universität für Angewandte Kunst Wien Studienrichtung: Medienkunst Studienzweig: Transmediale Kunst Sommersemester 2021 Brigitte Kowanz Matrikelnummer 1302029 4 / 5 0 The installation Upward, behind the onstreaming it mooned combines a variety of media, ranging from drawing, installa- tion and objects to audio works. The setting is inspired by the Age of Sail, the era when sailing ships embodied the pinnacle of technological advancements and dominated the world for over three centuries. Besides my juvenile fascination for ma- ritime lore, adventure and discovery, historical implications such as colonialism, technological progress and globalization form the thematic undertone of the exhibition. The objects in the installation induce familiarity, but they’re never explicit. They’re merely the representation of fantastic historicity – shadows of the real world – and they resemble an entrance; surfaces that act as props; the idea of antiques, inscribed age, hollow on the inside; the notion that bullet holes could resem- ble celestial maps; a generated face; words written by dreams. I am creating a place inside the (exhibition-)space, located somewhere between the real, the symbolic, and the imagi- nary realm, where meaning is only ever suggested to create a three-dimensional canvas upon which desires, fears, and experiences might be projected. The title is referencing the short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis 1 Borges, p. 15-34 Tertius 1 by Jorge Luis Borges. It’s the account of Borges himself discovering an encyclopedia entry about a forgotten country, somewhere in Anatolia, called Uqbar. As he fnds out more about this vaguely described civilization, he learns that the literary works of Uqbarians are exclusively addres- sing the fctional world of Tlön, where language is devoid of nouns. “The moon rose over the river” in Tlön, would be “Hlör u fang axaxaxas mlö” which translates to “Upward, behind the onstreaming it mooned”. Furthermore, the inha- bitants of Tlön deny the realness of the world, negating all things, claiming that reality is not a cluster of objects but an infnite sequence of events. Towards the end of the story Bor- ges discovers that Tlön and Uqbar are fabricated by a secret society of conspirative intellectuals, that planned to comple- tely corrode reality, slowly replacing it with Tlön-culture. As a reader, I suspect, that the result of Borges’ „research“ is part of his own fabrication. What he’s telling us is an example of fction pushing into reality. It is a testament to the seduc- tive sorcery of storytelling and the fact that the human mind tends to detect and reveal underlying truths. Maybe that’s why I look for connections compulsively, despite the danger of paranoia that comes with it. The following pages are going to illustrate my artistic cosmo- logy, describing frst and foremost a materialized methodo- logy, rather than the result. A series of fragmented writings, historical excursions and collected images, that constitute the basis for my sculptural practice. They are ultimately subjec- tive, excessively narrative, and inherently incomplete. They provide a cognitive context for my sculptural works. 6 / 7 1 As my body hit the foor I heard a loud thud. Bag removed, dazzling white entered my eyes. Five or six seconds later, my worst nightmare became reality: I was lying on a ship, rubbing my joints, trapped in a doorless prison. Space was buzzing and the things around me appeared to be laughing at my imagined self-importance. As if they knew that they’ll outlast me. It’s clear to me now, that in a thousand years, we’ll still be chasing beasts and precious earths, and our arrival will herald the demise of thousands, always in good intention. As we’re trying to create rules, that might suff- ciently ascribe meaning to the physical world, our space will disappear with us and the resulting void will instantly be occupied by someone else’s. Reality is casting a shadow of fa- brication, lit by our memories and the friction of the existing spaces. My freedom is now the substance of my imagination. 8 / 9 1965 Donald Judd published his renowned essay Specifc Ob- jects, in an effort to tear down the seemingly unimpeacha- ble autonomy of art. He became later associated with the artistic movement dubbed minimalism, which featured a lot of geometrical forms, repetition, and grids. Meanwhile contemporary art critic Michael Fried desperately tried to stop this paradigm shift with his essay titled Art & Objec- thood. As a reaction to the minimalist idea, he made a case for the modernist movement, specifcally Abstract Expres- sionism. Fried argued that art is, by defnition, composed with an internal coherence and therefore autonomous from its surroundings, time, and space. It doesn’t need the outside world to ascribe meaning, as it is inherent to the art piece. itself. Fried implied that art seems to exist outside daily life, specifcally because it is defeating its own objecthood. Mini- malist art, on the other hand, seeks to create objects that are spatially continuous with the outside world, meaning they share the same spatial and temporal reality as everything else. They are part of our environment, engaging with space and subjects that surround them and therefore making the space part of the artwork as much as the materials they con- sist of. While the sacred sovereignty of modern art ignores the viewer, minimalist art includes the viewer like an actor on a stage. Fried saw something theatrical in the minimalist movement, blending the work of art and the experience of viewing it. Fried stated that “art degenerates as it approaches 2 Fried, 1967, p. 21 the condition of theatre.”2 He feared that as soon as the se- parate mediums intermingle, art would be incorporated into daily life, and therefore will be relegated to triviality. History has shown of course, that through this process a variety of wholly new approaches in thinking about art has emerged. It is, what we now generally call contemporary art. This confict on the brink of modernism (although probably only perceived as one through the lens of time) is ultimate- ly concerned with the question what material is. While the modernists thought about material in terms of commodities – pigment, metals, earths; focussing on how to apply or shape it – the minimalist movement introduced the idea of gesture being the material. Of course, Donald Judd used plywood, aluminum and such, but I’d argue his material use was much more about the way he processed it: namely in an industri- al and decidedly non-expressive way, focussing on the way objects behave in relation to the human body and the space they both inhabit. While the questions introduced by the minimalist movement are not explicitly discussed in my practice, they serve as a point of origin. The impulse that made me deal with sculptu- re, keeping me from becoming a falconer. 10 / 11 2 I think river-like, pacing through a vast and diverse valley, picking up everything I touch, constantly expanding my re- ach, following only a single calling: downwards. Where there is no way, I dodge. Aeons of endlessly eroding boulders, relo- cating debris, scraping, and transforming reality’s makeup as I move along. Every now and then, I break my neck, and as you stare at my somber, abandoned reservoir, orphaned and heating up, I remember that I was perpetually moving. Now I’m dead water. 12 / 13 1909 In Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere Jakob Johann Baron von Uexküll frst introduced the terminology for Umwelt. He carefully distinguished the Umgebung, the objective space in which we can observe living things move, from Umwelt, that is shaped by every being’s inherent capabilities to perceive and operate with its environment. He calls these Merkorgan (perceptive organ) and Handlungsorgan (opera- tional organ). For humans, being the ones who describe this concept, the Umgebung and Umwelt of humans are virtu- ally aligned. But Uexküll didn’t fool himself into believing in hierarchical superiority. Instead, he argued against an anthropocentric biology and described every living thing’s respective Umwelt as an extension of their body, a closed unity between the being and its environment. It’s not this over that, but rather different creatures acting on different terms. Uexkülls example of a spider is particularly beautiful and reveals his admiration for the biological realm. Accor- ding to him, the spider doesn’t know anything about the measurements or weight of the fy, “nor can it measure its 3 Agamben, 2004, p. 41 client as a tailor does before sewing his suit.”3 But the way it constructs its web, it’s perfectly aligned with the fy’s weight and size and can resist the impact of a fy in motion. Furt- hermore, the thickness of the thread of the web is perfectly proportioned to render it invisible for the fy’s visual capaci- ty. “The two perceptual worlds of the fy and the spider are absolutely uncommunicating, and yet so perfectly in tune that we might say that the original score of the fy, which we can also call its original image or archetype, acts on that of the spider in such a way that the web the spider weaves can 4 Ibid, 2004, p. 42 be described as fy-like.“4 At the time of its publication, this concept stirred up the anthropocentric worldview and gave birth to the ecological movement. Later on, this paradigm shift, somehow echoes in the concept of object-orientated ontology, which introduced an even more open relation between not only living but also non-living things. The way Uexküll describes the fact that the spider isn’t aware of the fy’s existence, but at the same time is connected to it, implies something deeply empathetic and puzzling.