Oskar-Von-Miller Strasse 16 (2000–2011), an Art Space That Became Renowned As a Gigantic Replication Device
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This is the account of Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16 (2000–2011), an art space that became renowned as a gigantic replication device. With the call of ‘record, label, play back’, a group of young artists reiterated the language of a city’s cultural offerings—often without a full understanding of what they were reciting, but always with an acute aesthetic interest in the faults of transmission and transference. This book itself is a product of such practices. Scores of audio and visual materials, partly in the form of transcripts from two Conferences of Anecdotes, chronicle the group’s eleven years of Trojan activities: a natural force uncontri- ved amidst the staging of innumerable cultural endeavours. Osk r-von-M RZ_OSKAR_UMSCHLAG 266x266_Titel.indd 1 20.02.14 18:05 This is the account of Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16 (2000–2011), an art space that became renowned as a gigantic replication device. With the call of ‘record, label, play back’, a group of young artists reiterated the language of a city’s cultural offerings—often without a full understanding of what they were reciting, but always with an acute aesthetic interest in the faults of transmission and transference. This book itself is a product of such practices. Scores of audio and visual materials, partly in the form of transcripts from two Conferences of Anecdotes, chronicle the group’s eleven years of Trojan activities: a natural force uncontri- ved amidst the staging of innumerable cultural endeavours. This book is the newly translated, revised, and expanded edition of the 2003 version of Oskar, which was originally published in German (Silverbridge Paris, 2003). Additions consist of photo material of some of the activities that took place between 2003 and 2013, as well as the text ‘A Grid of Anecdotes is what it was called’ (2013), which gives a synopsis of these years and completes the previous ‘Grid of Anecdotes’ (2003) text. For reasons of space, a number of texts that were published in the first edition, namely ‘die Oppenheimer’, ‘Blackbox’, ‘Boppard’, ‘eintausendsechshundertachtundvierzig Mark eins’ (one thousand six hundred forty-eight marks and one pfennig), and ‘Telefonbuch’ (Telephone Book) could not be included in this edition. To inquire about the original texts in German, please contact David Zwirner, New York. Oskar Michael Riedel (2014) Published by David Zwirner 525 West 19th Street New York, New York 10011 +1 212 727 2070 24 Grafton Street London W1S 4EZ +44 (0)20 3538 3165 davidzwirner.com Editor: Michael Riedel Text: Michael Riedel, Roberto Ohrt, Daniel Baumann Transcription: Michael Riedel, Hank Schmidt in der Beek Translation: Lisa Voigt English language editing: Erin Troseth Pre press production: Chris Bredl Publication © 2014 Michael Riedel, Dennis Loesch All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photographing, recording or information storage and retrieval, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Available through: ARTBOOK | D.A.P. 155 6th Avenue, 2nd Floor New York, New York 10013 +1 212 627 1999 artbook.com ISBN 978-0-9899809-5-1 Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available from the publisher upon request Osk r-von-M Printed by Vier Türme GmbH in Germany RZ_OSKAR_UMSCHLAG 266x266_Titel.indd 1 20.02.14 18:05 4 5 Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16 Michael Riedel, Dennis Loesch (2000 - 2011) with Alina Grumiller (2000 - 2001) Hank Schmidt in der Beek (2000 - 2002) Niklas Schechinger (2000 - 2002) and Ursula Schöndeling, Marcus Andrew Hurttig, Roberto Ohrt, Achim Lengerer, Denise Mawila, Sonja Umstätter, Tina Schott, Tina Kohlmann, Catalina Niculescu, Isabelle Fein, Daniel Herrmann, Björn Renner, Thomas Seidemann, Marco Lulic, Ursula Meyer, Jason Rhoades, Raymond Pettibon, Georg Otto, Gerd Zink, Hugh Pocock, Fabrice de Feo, Pernilla Renner, Jodie Winkler, Mateata Perseigale, Konrad Hasse, Michael Korbun, Stephan Golowka, Daniel Baumann, Oliver Drescher und Maike Abetz, Lisa Voigt, Gregor Schubert, Virginie Dorso, Sebastian Klöckner, Andreas Diefenbach, Chris Bredl, Anja Stoffel, Beate Bauer, Saskia Randt, Thomas Friemel, Marcus Arndt, Daniel Nikolaou, Peik Simpfendörfer, Marcel Bugiel, Steffen Jobst, Maria Wiklund, Winfried Günther, Günther Zehetner, Moses Mawila, Andreas Edler, Barbara Vatter, Barbara Wolff, Jule Kracht, Marcus Heinicke, Nicole Ernst, Wolgang Beuschel, Karl Walter Sprungalla, Ali M. Abdullah, Christoph Weber, Erik Maisenhelder, Christoph Mohr, Gabriele Senn, David Zwirner, Michael Neff, Daniel Birnbaum, Yilmaz Dziwior, Guido Baudach, Heimo Zobernig, Wilfried Kühn and you. 6 Contents Re-entry – Michael Riedel (2014) …………………………………………………… p. 9 Duplication and Something in Between or Not – Daniel Baumann (2007) …………………………………………………… p. 10 Serial Offenders, Replicants, Animals of Theory – Roberto Ohrt (2001) …………………………………………………… p. 11 Grid of Anecdotes (2003) …………………………………………………… p. 17 A Grid of Anecdotes is what it was called (2013) …………………………………………………… p. 267 Index of persons …………………………………………………… p. 477 Chronology of events …………………………………………………… p. 484 Recordings (written and unwritten texts) …………………………………………………… p. 487 8 9 Illustration: Art genres from 1800 to the present – Michael Riedel (1998) Re-entry Michael Riedel (2014) You can basically imagine it like this: „Entdecke die Möglichkeiten“ (Discover the possibilities) — Ikea „Nichts ist unmöglich“ (Nothing’s impossible) — Toyota We’re talking about a space full of possibilities, though none of the possibilities are as interesting as the space itself, which contains these possibilities. This is what I had in mind in 2000 when I, together with Dennis Loesch, Alina Grumiller, and Ursula Schöndeling, rented a house at Oskar-von-Miller Strasse in Frankfurt am Main and established the art space Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16. Located at ground level and equipped with two giant shop windows, the space allowed an unimpeded street view into its activities, which were copies of the activities which took place in the surrounding urban cultural landscape. Functioning as a blank space that nonetheless remained interesting to observe, it managed to sustain that interest, even while refusing any clear offer of interpretation to those whom it had seduced into observing it. In contrast to the cultural endeavours happening elsewhere, Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16 functioned as a recording device that would merely replay the cultural offerings it had recorded and then marvel at the pops, hisses, crackles, and skips that such playback caused. Whereas the original cast of cultural events could be experienced elsewhere, this is where the B-versions took place, which themselves implied the possibility of C-, D-, E-, F-, G-, and H-versions and beyond—a domain of the non-made, wanting purely to be seen in the context of its dissimilarity from that which was made. The smack of arbitrariness was intentional, and responsibility had to be avoided if a truly organic experience was to be achieved. Record—label—play back corresponded to creativity‘s zero-point of origin. The presentation of near-natural situations and their ongoing reproduction seemed contemporary to me, so a group of friends and I began to: sift through the waste of an art exhibition hall looking to reemploy discarded installation elements of another artist (Jim Isermann); produce an audio recording of increasingly unrestrained chatter (Bar Oppenheimer); not define our own texts as literature but as mere material to overwrite existing literature and change it into something different (Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre); refuse to set the tone (Legendary Orgasm); pay homage to dyslexia (Shroud of Turin); engage in masquerade (Club[b]ed Club); occupy marginal space (Ladies’ Room Party); discover double-blurriness (Filmed Film); analyse systems too complex for a theoretical or formula-based treatment (Speculative exhibition of a future taking place in reality); set alternative time experiences in motion (Double-sided clock with contrary running directions and variable velocity); turn the function of flushing a toilet into the central topic of an exhibition (Watertest); and more generally, pursue our aesthetic interests, create art, and understand reproduction not merely as bound to the notion of a product, but rather to a process in the broadest sense of the word—one which could be halted at will and at any point in order to mark the distance achieved from one‘s point of departure. Appealingly effortless, the very act of labelling carried artistic significance in itself. The minor part that originality played at these events was no coincidence, as it was precisely this fact which helped to create the impression of a vacancy in the cultural landscape and to direct focus onto the form providing the framework: the art space Oskar-von-Miller Strasse 16. Paradoxically, this operationally closed system was the ideal form of re-introducing any copied series of events into the city‘s cultural calendar, thus imagining reality while simultaneously realising imagination. Due to the drastic improvement in technical capacities, recorded material accumulated in the space of only a few years. Based on recorded materials, my texts initially came from sources that were 45 or 90 minutes long, but then capacity jumped to 320 minutes in long-play mode and shortly afterward to 8,000 minutes or longer—provided that a power supply was on hand of course. The conditions for visual material were similar, as they evolved from rolls of film with 36 exposures