In Other Words a Master of Fine Arts Exhibition Of

Home , Nothing Really Matters

in other words

A Master of Fine Arts Exhibition of ideas concerning us via art execution

Presented

to the Faculty of

California State University, Chico

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Fine Arts

Art

Brad Thiele

Fall 2010

in other words

A Master of Fine Arts Exhibition

Brad Thiele

Fall 2010

APPROVED BY THE DEAN OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND VICE PROVOST FOR RESEARCH:

Katie Milo, Ed.D.

APPROVED BY THE GRADUATE ADVISORY COMMITTEE:

Teresa L. Cotner, Ph.D. James A. Kuiper, M.F.A., Chair Graduate Coordinator

Sheri D. Simons, M.F.A.

David G. Hopper, M.F.A.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

List of Proposals & Figures ...... iv

Abstract...... v

PART

I. To the Reader...... 1

II. in other words ...... 3

in other words...... 4 Nothing Really Matters ...... 6 Out of Desperation ...... 7 Time, Temporarily Speaking...... 10 Handwriting’s on the Wall...... 14 Engaging in other words ...... 15 Recognizing an Influential Experience ...... 17 Words as Material...... 19 Order of Word-full Play ...... 21 Reliance on Parameters and Determination ...... 23 Discourse of the Everyday ...... 27 Seeing the Parts Now in a Whole Together ...... 29

Endnotes ...... 31

Bibliography ...... 35

Master of Fine Arts Exhibition ...... 37

iii LIST OF PROPOSALS & FIGURES

MASTER OF FINE ARTS EXHIBITION

1078 GALLERY

FALL 2010

PROPOSAL & FIGURE PAGE PAGE

1. 24 hr mark, proposal and the preliminary word mark written in 2.4 seconds (1/2 the actual size); Fall 2010...... 38

2. color scheme, proposal and an excerpt from color scheme’s text-based plan (lines 1-28 of 96 total lines); Fall 2010...... 39

3. long running joke, proposal and an excerpt from long running joke’s script (lines 1-22 of an undetermined length); Fall 2010...... 40

4. nothing really matters, proposal and the word nothing written with the butt end of a black sharpie marker eighteen times (words actual size); Fall 2010...... 41

5. time machine, proposal and the words three seconds written in 3 seconds (actual size); Fall 2010...... 42

6. under arrest, one complete line from the repetitive phrase on police barrier tape; Fall 2010...... 43

iv ABSTRACT

in other words

Brad Thiele

Master of Fine Arts in Arts

California State University, Chico

Fall 2010

in other words is the culminating exhibition for the Master of Fine Arts degree at California State University, Chico. in other words (the title of this essay) is a consideration of recently perceived influences with those already established, together informing the work in in other words (the title of the exhibition). The exhibition employs purposeful misunderstanding through the dedicated repetition of handwritten and spoken words and phrases. The writing directly on the 1078 Gallery walls and spoken words fulfill the conceptual objectives I term word-full plays. In direct connection with the exhibition, this essay mimics the parameters applied to the work carried out in the exhibition in other words. Like the exhibition itself, this essay employs purposeful misunderstanding and the repetition of identical words for the fulfillment of the conceptual objective of word-full plays.

The exhibition runs from 15 November 2010 through 1 December 2010 with a reception and Artist talk on 1 December 2010 at the 1078 Gallery in Chico, California.

PART I

TO THE READER

In the process of composing this essay, I have realized that my works discussed in its contents— 24 hr mark, time machine, color scheme, long running joke, and under arrest— shall serve only as proposals and will not be fulfilled in the exhibition in other words. Their potential as proposals waiting to be installed in the 1078 Gallery during this writing has instead turned into supportive illustrations of the ideas and influences expressed in this essay, in other words. With this said, in other words remains in its original format concerning multiple influences through these multiple works.

These proposals, however, do not simply remain as supportive informational material. Additionally, these proposals take form as works in and of themselves through the artistic format of both text and preliminary executions, found in the final section

(pages 38, 39, 40, 41, 42 and 43) of this essay, in other words. Altogether, this essay is an insight into my thinking and influences developed throughout my MFA career at both

California State University, Chico and die Akademie für Bildende Künste in Mainz,

Germany, and serves as well as an art exhibition in its own right, exhibited at future venues via the computer screen, spoken word or handheld text.

Concerning my MFA exhibition in other words, the one proposal that I have determined to fully carry out is nothing really matters. This work will take the duration of the exhibition to complete, beginning on Monday, November 15, 2010 and finishing between Tuesday, November 30 and Wednesday, December 1, 2010. Its description in this essay is found on pages 23 and 24, and its proposal and 1078 Gallery image is found on page 41.

PART II in other words

4 in other words

in other words (the title of this essay) is a consideration of recently perceived influences with those already established, together informing the work in in other words

(the title of the exhibition). The exhibition employs purposeful misunderstanding through the dedicated repetition of handwritten and spoken words and phrases. The writing directly on the 1078 Gallery walls and spoken words fulfill the conceptual objectives I term word-full plays. In direct connection with the exhibition, this essay mimics the parameters applied to the work carried out in the exhibition in other words. Like the exhibition itself, this essay employs purposeful misunderstanding and the repetition of identical words for the fulfillment of the conceptual objective of word-full plays.

in other words is derived from its common phrase and is reformatted under word-full play. Its meaning as a variation on a previous statement, often for the purposes of clarification is blurred within the contents of this essay. in other words is never capitalized and is always italicized, functioning as a wordplay standing either for the title of this essay, the exhibition, its normative phrase meaning or potentially all three at once.

The organization of this essay is determined by the letter order of in other words- I, N, O, T, H, E, R, W, O, R, D, S- taking shape as an acronym, ordering the headings of the eleven following sections and this one at present— twelve sections in total. These headings determine the content of their respective sections and their placement within in other words, determined by the phrase as an acronym. Due to this acronymic-ordered structure and corresponding heading content, these topical sections are not concerned with fluid transition from one section to the next. At times, however, such transitional fluidity develops out of the coincidental nature of chance as a result

5 of the acronymic-ordered structure.

The following schematic illustrates the themes of the twelve heading determined sections within this essay, serving as inflowing informants constructing in other words.

nothing inclusivity

Dada time

words variation

in other words

everyday language

handwriting parameters

word-full play Germany

These influences do not necessarily connect to one another equally, or at all for that matter. The determination of this essay’s acronymic-ordered structure serves to illustrate at random its connections in a transition-less linear reading. But throughout this essay, what becomes apparent is that some influences in fact share characteristics similar to one another, even if not in close proximity. And by the few connections that these influences do share, pictorially illustrated at this essay’s closing, these various sections all coalesce into a discourse comprising the workings in both the essay and exhibition in other words.

6 Nothing Really Matters1

7 Out of Desperation

World War One hurled the European Cubist into a Dadaist furor against its political and social world. This war’s advanced technology catapulted former hand-to- hand tactics into the industrial age of tanks, armor, and mechanistic artillery. The war fallen—dismembered and disfigured— were crated back at a far greater number than the most ugly of past conflicts, snapping awake the secure passivity of an “out of sight, out of mind” war directly onto the European front doorstep. Dadaism retaliated against the callus mutilation of the war machine through the language of war itself. This language is articulated in Richard Huelsenbeck’s First German Dada Manifesto of 1918. A member of Zurich and then Berlin Dada, Huelsenbeck proclaims:

. . . the highest art will be that which in its conscious content presents the thousandfold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of the last week, which is forever trying to collect its limbs after yesterday’s crash. The best and most extraordinary artists will be those who every hour snatch the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life, who, with bleeding hand and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time.2

Through conscientious art making in unconventional ways, incorporating unstable materials, found objects, and deconstructing language, Dada rejected existing social and political institutions. Dada’s art, rich in assemblages, literature, performance, and the like wrenched the stomachs of the bourgeoisie and wreaked havoc on the ears and minds of the epoch. Dada was not simply art— Dada was a new life mentality.

Hannover Dadaist Kurt Schwitters seized this mentality in his Merz collages, sound poems and Merzbau (Merz construction). A deconstruction of the

German word Kommerz-und Privatbank (Commerce Bank)3, Schwitters’s Merz served as

“a means to create connections with everything in this world.”4 However, Schwitters’s

8 Dadaist position was never officially accepted during the Dada period, as his

“romanticism of art” over politics led to the mistrust of his political commitments.5 Merz, declares Schwitters, “stands for freedom from all fetters, for the sake of artistic creation.”6

Schwitters’s sound poem Ursonate stands out in Merz as his major life project, second only to his Merzbau. Appropriated from Berlin Dadaist Raoul

Haussmann’s 1918 textual poster poem fmbwtoezaa and subsequent poems (Lanke trr gll and grimm glimm gnimm bimmbimm, from 1923 and Priimiitittii from 1927),7 Ursonate’s made-up words and repetitive sounds compose a twenty-nine page8 vocal tour de force lasting some forty minutes.9 Ursonate simulated the dissonance of the mechanistic war scream punctuated by a silent landscape. Through its nonsensical absurdity in strict, classical sonata form, Ursonate dissected language into “short, machine-gun syllables [,] dotted out in incessant repetition with subtle changes [and] in a flurry [emphasis added] the voice drops, then rises in an arch over a single letter, slowly morphing into the outer shape of a syllable.”10

Dada’s ideal defied the normative conventions of art. Huelsenbeck’s manifesto states that “[l]ife appears as a simultaneous muddle of noises, colors and spiritual rhythms, which is taken unmodified into Dadaist art, with all the sensational screams and fevers of its reckless everyday psyche and with all its brutal reality.”11 The

Dadaists’ “reckless everyday psyche and with all its brutal reality” was the only viable resource for Dada’s art. Dada’s subsequent proponents, including Fluxus, Performance and Conceptual art and literature, continued to force their studio practices outwards.

Socially, they argued against capitalist consumption, railed against the power systems

9 over minorities, and culled out the mundane. Simultaneously, these artists directed their attentions inwards to investigate in depth the body and its language. And in Dadaist fashion, these artists altogether turned temporary experience and common material further against conventional art and political systems.

Dada and its proponents have caused me to consider the political and social world and to what degree I should participate. Our language informs our action; how we perceive informs what we do. From this understanding I have arrived at common words and familiar phrases as a subject to reformat in order to change our language and actions.

Through purposeful misunderstanding of the common-most words and phrases, word-full plays are constructed in order to cause reconsiderations of our ordered language, challenging those preperceptions we develop through language and manifest in our actions. Altering our language changes our actions. I am for a change.

10 Time, Temporarily Speaking

Time, in reference to clock form, is merely a dissection of duration into the repetitive fragmentation of parts, constructing quantifiable measurements. Time in in other words is fragmented and durational, made even more evident because of its on-site installations. Fragmentation is made apparent by the individual parts of the whole— each single word or phrase indicates a specific time length and space. The appearance of duration is the entirety of all the parts together, comprising the whole of each individual composition as well as the greater sixteen-day installation of in other words.

Duration can be viewed as fragmentations of time, which the wall drawing time machine, being— a wall drawing as the time length of its own making, illustrates in in other words. This wall drawing is defined solely by its own time documentation. Its individual parts are the written description of the time it takes to write them, proving the words three seconds to be written in the standardized time of three seconds. The gradual accumulation of these written three-second parts construct an undetermined composition directly on the wall. Throughout the duration of in other words, this drawing has the ability to grow (or remain as the single written component three seconds) right up until in other words’s closing, at which point the work will be painted over.

24 hr mark works conversely to time machine through attempted duration.

This drawing’s proposal— the word “mark” written continually, yet slow enough that it takes the extended time of twenty-four hours for “mark” to be written once— is a challenge of both endurance and will. With its preparatory word written beforehand within 2.4 seconds, the end result of “mark” written in the duration of twenty-four hours has the potential of appearing as a careless scribble on the wall, seemingly drawn in

11 only a matter of seconds.

The process of carrying out the works in other words is determinately barred from the studio and injected almost entirely (the ideas have been developed beforehand) into the 1078 Gallery space. The productive art act no longer hides “behind the scenes,” as is customary, resulting in installations specifically made within the gallery environment. Instead of approaching diligently labored works brought in from the studio, the viewer is pressed to consider the familiarity of on-site installations when in concert with its space. The familiar nature of the installation dissolves the cloistered mysticism of the typical studio art practice by employing a dialogue of reconsideration in regards to the methodology of art production. This art act is less concerned with its own sake than it is in forsaking itself.

Ultimately, the inception of the wall drawings, their performative construction, their viewing life, and their being painted over all support the conceptual nature of time. The process of the work is blatantly temporary. Furthermore, the temporal nature of life itself is suggested by my actual and active presence in the ongoing installation of in other words. The exhibition lasts only as long as it takes for its installation, and is then immediately painted over. The works are executed with sincerity and conviction, but their perceived “demise” is intentionally necessary for the conceptual articulation of time. in other words is not complete until it is painted over. The duration of the exhibition brings to the fore the stages spanning a temporary life.

Serving as a simile for my personal expression, I consider the drawings installed in in other words to be capably aware of their temporal lives. Their installation is within an environment meant to change regularly and drastically. And once

12 recognizing this temporality, the drawings’ decision to reconcile or reject this life is unavoidable. Like a child being pulled away from its newest intrigue, the work has the chance to kick and scream into a tantrum of self-preservation. But instead, the installations in in other words choose to reconcile what they have recognized through their attained awareness of their temporal selves.

An Existential standpoint, Albert Camus’s Absurdism sees life as having no inherent meaning. The result is a Sisyphean12 futility, masked by the “forced optimism” of many people in their “uninformed self-confidence,” preventing them from dealing with the tragic nature of life without inherent meaning. Living in such a way, from this view, in fact prevents them life as they relinquish their will to the heavens or heave their will down the shaft of a knife. However, the absurd hero in Camus’s eyes revolts against this absurdity and discovers his/her meaningful existence.13

Reconciliation, however, does not save these drawings from “demise.”

Instead, reformatted from Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, “assured of [their] temporally limited freedom, of [their] revolt devoid of future, and of [their] mortal consciousness,

[these wall drawings] live out [their] future, and of [their] mortal adventure within the span of [their] lifetime.”14

Composer, artist and writer John Cage, in his recorded performance

Indeterminacy, reads of an ending poem from one of Dr. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki’s texts, where a Japanese monk, coming upon enlightenment proclaims, “[...] now that I’m enlightened, I’m just as miserable as ever.”15 What can be taken equally from Suzuki’s monk and the revolt of Camus’s absurd hero is that the attainment of enlightenment does not remove us from this world, but opens us to its entirety- the finite and infinite not as

13 separate, but whole. Suzuki, attributed with bringing the teachings of Zen to the Western world, specifically the U.S., proposes in Essays in Zen Buddhism, “[...] the finite is the infinite, and vice versa. These are not two separate things, though we are compelled to conceive them so, intellectually. Is not life one as we live it, which we cut to pieces by recklessly applying the murderous knife of intellectual surgery?”16

14 Handwriting’s on the Wall

Handwriting is employed in in other words to establish a connection with the

“every day” of experience. The appeal of handwriting has less to do with my own particular “artist hand” than it has to do with its act as requiring time and space through a familiar human performance. More specifically, the handwritten word in serial order is of particular concern in the time machine and color scheme wall drawings. The systematic repetition of each works’ phrases, “three seconds” and “ninety six colors drawn on the wall ninety six times in ninety six rows and each row consisting of ninety six letters” respectively, delays the uniqueness of each handwritten word by the sheer quantity of its mass production by some thousands of words. This seriality employs a directive of like parts to the whole and the Warholian subject of the mass-market commodity, cultivating in in other words massive word-full plays.

The gestural nature of handwriting does, however, come through by supportively invoking aspects of drawing through its lineal personality. The work vibrates between drawing and writing, blurring the distinction of form and function, mirroring the way a word said aloud over and over also begins to blur the line between its form as the sign, and its function as the signifier. The word becomes an inverted container, emptied of all its ordered meaning. Likewise, the systematic repetitive word functions not to make its form known in abundance, but by our knowing its form as repetitive, we experience it simultaneously as meaningfulness and meaninglessness.

15 Engaging in other words

The varied works in this exhibition are equally physical as they are conceptual, and are all in some way rooted in word-full play- words en mass. And together within in other words, these works coalesce into a collective of Roland Barthes’s text, 17 a comprehensively informed body relying not on the sole nature of proximities amongst one work to the next, but on a “multi-dimensional space in which a variety of

[works], none of them original, blend and clash,”18 I term this mixture of “blend and clash” as our Experiential Rolodex, serving as a representational object, illustrating the physical cataloguing of past collective cultural experiences under a familiar apparatus of convenient reference- the office Rolodex.

Our senses are not employed in a systematically linear fashion, one input stuttering for the other as if vying for the right of way at a five o’clock intersection. They are indiscriminately incoming and outgoing simultaneously, in a holistic response to the world around us, and as such, inscribing and cataloguing each of our Rolodexes differently as well as indefinitely. John Cage’s methodology encourages further a

Schwitters-like thinking of any and all things as viable materials to work from (in the case of music, all sounds including silence) through such an encouragement as nonhierarchical “co-equality”— “If I have two sounds, are they related? If someone is nearer to one of them than he is to the second, is he more related to the first one? What about sounds that are too far away for us to hear them? Sounds are just vibrations, isn't that true?”19

Additionally, in considering Cage and Barthes, through their investigations both the composer and author become obsolete against the experiential landscape of

16 subjective listeners/ readers through the “Death of the Author.20 Readership, that of the active reader employing their interpretations on that which is presented, is embraced through the dissemination of the creative authority into the hands of those receiving the work. However, the willingness of the audience to perform as this active reader proves at times more of idealism than practice. So does Barthes’s post-structuralist “Death of the

Author” then fall short against the comfortably accepted tradition of clearly authorial work? I consider whether the “uninformed American” illustrates this tradition.

A gross generalization, American readership is instead coerced into an

“i’lltakeyourwordforitship,” where the reliance on authoritative truth and accuracy has rendered us almost completely powerless. Mass media’s authority has cultivated in us an overall American passivity as we wait in 6 o’clock suspense for what is an undoubtedly filtered agenda. Our “informed minds” are instead media’s purposeful misinformation, effectively cloaked by its overtly entertaining sensationalism. We find ourselves in an absurd situation when two of the most reputable news sources on primetime television are Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert’s The

Colbert Report. Stewart and Colbert’s political satire, and this genre in general, is our most effective moral/ morale defense against a war that is ultimately not with foreign terrorists or dictators, but against our own nation’s authorial corruption.

17 Recognizing an Influential Experience

The year spent studying art at the Akademie für Bildende Künste at Johannes

Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, Germany serves as the foundational support for much of my concerns in in other words.

Arriving in Germany I had no expectations. What I found most surprising were things not expected from myself. Expressing myself in a foreign language, both in the academic situation and the surrounding culture, proved to be the most difficult. My frustration turned to even greater frustration as I worked to learn a language with which I had only the slightest previous experience. However, during this period and following, sporadic successes began to interrupt what I considered to be serial failure. The string of verbal sound I had first arrived hearing began to separate, spaces differentiating words and slowly words into phrases. I eventually picked up the language and began to respond in a rough kind. And it didn’t take long to realize that my rough adaptation to German had me sounding more like a young child than a mid-twenties adult.

The direction of my work shifted in this period of transition. I followed my interest in the similarities between German and English words. Although first on a very basic level (wort = word), this interest developed into a framework of wordplays made physical through objects I found either in the streets or in convenience stores.

Three of my installations in Germany, waiting to scare 2000 people, 250 balloons blown up in a corner-2 different ways and floor protectors, took shape through the beginnings of purposeful misunderstanding. In these works, I found myself mimicking the manner of misunderstanding I encountered in the process of learning

German amongst its native speakers. 250 balloons blown up in a corner-2 different ways,

18 for example, served as a situation to construct two different variations on the determined proposal. In the first variation, I stood in a corner and blew up two hundred fifty balloons until they popped. Their small pieces accumulated on the floor except where I was standing. Upon leaving, my footprints were left bare amongst the scattered balloon tatters. The second variation presented two hundred fifty balloons blown up and tied off with string, all the strings then tied together at their loose ends and this knot then hung on a hook, the balloon cluster then hanging in the corner. “Proper” understanding became less important as the two balloon images (in two different stages of a balloon’s life) conflicted with their shared definitions of blown up and up in a corner

The mechanisms of simple materials (inexpensive store purchases), accumulation of like parts, and a play with words determined the parameters from which to work from while in Germany. From these mass produced installations I also determined that the waste produced in both the execution and conclusion of these works was altogether unnecessary. Due to the minimal working space, I reduced the amount of materials consumed. Germany’s impact on my thinking is undoubtedly experienced in in other words as my sixteen-day installation of absolutely nothing.

19 Words as Material

“[T]he idea or concept,” as Sol LeWitt proposes, “is the most important aspect of the work[,…] becoming the machine that makes the art.”21 In considering ideas as the machine, not only are the words I choose to reformat its gasoline, they are also the material comprising the machine.

We are dependent on words to form consensus amongst ourselves in order to construct a dialogue. Yet at their most grasped, words have the capacity of slipping through our fingers. This is so not in spite of us, but because of us due to the nature of responsive interpretation. We often neglect words when they call for greater attentiveness. And we “read into” words and phrases when they are meant to be clear, straightforward communication.

I am absorbed by the misdirection that comes with the complex subtlety of wordplay (silly puns to more expansive explorations in altered language structures) and strive to heighten this perception through the dedicated reinterpretation of words. I have determined that words need new life breathed into them, inflating their flat dimensionality above their ordered signs into re-presentational form. These words become complex objects, as tangible as a box of dishwashing scrub pads or a shovel from the hardware store. Their ready-made nature, like the shovel, asks to be physically gripped and pulled. Handling the multi-faceted personality of words energizes our ordered languages into possibilities that permit twists, turns and redirections into alternative image forms— simply through reformatting.

The ready-made language of words and objects is paramount in the practice of

Ceal Floyer, in which her:

20 . . . deceptively minimal conceptual works emerge from her daily experiences rather than from theory. Many of [Floyer’s] trigger points result from peripheral observations of everyday non-events and her work often deals with the structure and syntax of the English language. Her works elegantly reveal her thought process and heighten our awareness to the way our mind perceives and comprehends the moments she creates.22

Throughout Floyer’s works with sound, store bought items (signs, slide projectors, lights and even a restaurant lunch board) and process drawings, she disseminates the conventional order of words into manifestations of their alternative beings, while still occupying their original containers. The interest and enthusiasm in reformatting the contents of these containers (meanings of words/ language) is not to alchemically turn lead into gold, physically changing its chemical compound, but to instead reconsider “lead” into its other forms of “guidance,” “position” or even an

“insulated electrical conductor.”23

21 Order of Word-full Play

Words are multi-faceted beings. Wordplays manipulate the ordered forms of words and language altogether, simplistically as humorous puns or earnestly through subtle complexity of politically altering information.

Rebus puzzles are specific to my induction into “words” as they served to illustrate my interest in the disparate meanings of the same or similar words shared between German and English. The rebus principle, a system of picture writing developed around 3400 B.C.E., “allows a picture of something [such as an “eye”], to express a syllable in a spoken language [such as “I”]. 24 The sign, an eye, signifying an eye, additionally signifies a sound of our language, referent to the first person pronoun. Today we’re familiar with the rebus principle through word puzzles in elementary school, from a forward emailed by our co-worker or friend, or the I O U we have to fulfill as repayment.

Word-full play in in other words is partially an attempt at breaking the image from the word, resituating instead the word as image through the repetition of single words and phrases. A more full wordplay, word-full play is also a wordplay “full of words,” making physical the en mass volume of words required in the fulfillment of the wordplay as operating parameter. We are, as well, offered access through this play, perhaps by reminiscence of our childhood wit or Will Shortz’s puzzler that we finally solved this morning. There is an excitement that comes about from the “ah-ha” moments initiating these word-full plays, an instant gratification of our code deciphering ability.

However, wordplay involves more than just simple amusement. As it stands in

Webster’s New American Thesaurus, play is alternatively listed as:

22 act, bet, caper, challenge, chance, compete, contend, execute, fiddle, fidget, flirt, fool around, frisk, frolic, gamble, gambol, hazard, impersonate, interfere, lilt, participate, perform, personate, portray, punt, represent, revel, risk, rival, romp, speculate, sport, string along, take, take on, take part, take the part of, trifle, vie with, wager.25

From these wide-ranging words associated with play, the potential experience of wordplay spans the entire spectrum of human emotion and activity.

My performance “long running joke” turns the spotlight of word-full play from the stage of humor into the space of in other words. The joke, “two guys walk into a bar...and the third guy ducks,” becomes a joke in and of itself, where purposeful misunderstanding employs the segue line, “Ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one...,” continuing the joke by the simple means of addition. What follows are potentially thousands of guys walking into a bar and ducking, an indefinitely running gag ended only by preset or spontaneous determination by its performer.

Erwin Wurm’s “One Minute Sculptures” lend themselves especially to these types of play as listed above. In these works, which many are displayed as photo documentation, Wurm offers simple proposals for participants to engage in, asking them in some instances to hold objects up against the wall simply by using their bodies. They vary in complexity in the same ways that wordplays function, and are proposed in such a way that participant interpretation becomes an integral part of the one minute sculptures’ manifestations. In an interview by Submarine Channel, Wurm posits about humor:

If you approach things with a sense of humor people immediately assume you’re not to be taken seriously. But I think truths about society and human experience can be approached in different ways. You don’t always have to be deadly serious. Sarcasm and humor can help you see things in a lighter vein. Even when talking about really difficult issues, I don’t think it’s necessary to put on a grave, solemn air. Applying a little cynical humor makes them much easier to deal with.26

23 Reliance on Parameters and Determination

“In Zen they say: If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try if for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it’s not boring [at all,] but very interesting.”27 The works in in other words, both written and spoken, are exhausting to execute due to their mass repetition and long time-length requirements. To make them is easily experienced as boring. These drawings and spoken word performance are tasks of endurance, prevented from completion only by a lack of motivational execution. However, eventually this boredom moves aside at the arrival of

“very interesting.” Beginning at first as an overwhelming task better to avoid than approach, there is a potential point of transfer during the process, from mindless task to mindfulness— which I have only recently accepted as meditative— through the rhythmic act and sounds of the work’s production. The methodical repetition, left visible only as redundant static script, as process assumes the function of a metronome, marking time as the process’s natural cadence leads its production onward.

nothing really matters, the largest wall drawing in in other words, takes root in the transcendent nature of the boring to the very interesting, relying completely on dedicated process instead of a visible end product in order for it to be made. Purposefully misunderstood, this culminating phrase in Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody28 teeters between absolute futility and optimistic inclusivity. Through its word-full play, nothing really matters’s proposal determines that the word “nothing” be written as purposefully and frequently as possible on 1078’s largest white wall (14’x 66’), to the point of mattering the most. But the teetering persists with the substance made by the residual “something” of the written word “nothing” left visibly behind on the wall. I have realized that to push

24 purposeful misunderstanding and word-full play to its limits, and in order for nothing to really matter according to its parameters, the word “nothing” must be written on the wall with an imperceptible (mark-less) tool. This wall installation heightens “nothing” through word-full play and process. The act of seemingly doing nothing will possibly cultivate within the participant viewer feelings of lunacy, amazement, amusement, skepticism, or utter contempt. With its ultimate image non-existent, nothing really matters effectively makes “nothing” the most important focal point of in other words through its most extreme effort and parameter fulfillment.

Parameters in in other words are the conceptual apparatuses for compositional determinations, involving all or part of the inception, execution and conclusive processes.

I depend on parameters to determine how an idea develops into its execution. The use of purposeful misunderstanding is a parameter. The use of wordplay is a parameter. The use of temporary is a parameter. The use of handwriting is a parameter. The use of proposals is a parameter. The use of illogical logicality is a parameter. The use of determination to fulfill these parameters is a parameter. There are perhaps more parameters that are involved, but the importance of this parameter system of working is the wealth of opportunity in which it embodies, opening to interpretation and to the situation as much as closing off from interpretation and from the situation.

Working similarly in devised restrictions to produce logical and/or unexpected outcomes, Sol LeWitt devised a prolific range of strict parameters in the construction of both his Structures and Wall Drawings. The committed fulfillment to the logical ends of his many Wall Drawings is a staple to the conception and strict compliance of the proposal/ parameter form in the conceptual arts.

25 Continuing the approach of purposeful misunderstanding in in other words, 24 hr mark, typically read as marking the moment of twenty-four hours passing, is reformatted so that the word mark requires a nonstop, twenty-four hours to be made.

Within the integrity of the parameter format in in other words, expressed especially in nothing really matters, the purposeful misunderstanding must be followed logically and absolutely, much like Kenneth Goldsmith’s29 Day,30 to its ultimate ends.31 Day, in which

Goldsmith “retyped a day's copy of the New York Times and published it as a 900 page book,”32 is merely the daily newspaper’s transcription in order from upper left to bottom right of every page, all text forms included. He further claims that it is enough to know the concept of his works, such as Day, without having to read them. The idea is no doubt the machine, but in nothing really matters, 24 hr mark, and Goldsmith’s Day, immense conviction to follow through is paramount fuel in makeing its engine run.

I do not believe it is sufficient enough to leave the idea on its own without a form of execution. However, the work should have a conceptual basis. In in other words, the idea and execution are performed hand-in-hand, reinforcing each other. Idea and execution are equally important and interdependent.

in other words moves past surface ideas of wordplay due its exhausting and exhaustive execution. I involve chance in order to figure the formal and compositional properties of the work— dimensions, quantity of material used, and time constraints imposed— when word-full play is unable to make those decisions. Chance operations function to remove the ego from decision-making and execution processes. Chance reduces the personal, subjective self. However, even in first selecting the type of chance to take, the subjective is very much present. But once the quarter is flipped, calculation is

26 performed, or system is determined, chance takes hold of the compositional decision- making.

And not so coincidentally, there is a tremendous deal of chance employed already in the presence of words. We are not always on the consensual page of words or language, hence the fact of misunderstanding, and we take a sort of gamble in supposing that we are a part of consensual discourse. My conviction to word-full play determines to what degree purposeful misunderstanding of words employed evades/ invades the orderliness of their conventional meanings. The closer purposeful misunderstanding is to its root word, the less misunderstood the root words are and the less engaging they become. I find that to make the greatest leaps from the ordered (transparent truth or face value) to the reformatted (wordplay) illustrates the far spanning range at which our minds, and us physically, are capable of traveling when released from the stronghold of our conventional preperceptions. Once these greater leaps are taken, our strength in determination allows us to follow through as much as were capable of to stick the landing.

27 Discourse of the Everyday

It is impossible to discuss the involvement of the everyday and language in art without involving Marcel Duchamp into the conversation. Thrown outs, curbside finds, and thrift store bargains complemented the pristine Warholian mass-market commodity purchased at wanting convenience. And materials such as cardboard, office, and industrial supplies rounded off the equation of utilitarian materials used at a time when contemporary mass production was fresh to seize and criticize.

Similar to Duchamp and Andy Warhol, John Cage was determined to change the language of art and life into a symbiotic unity, though he was to use means other than the repetition of mass production:

One of the most common efforts of [Cage’s] 4'33"- possibly the most important and widespread effect- was to seduce people into considering [,] as art [,] phenomena that were normally not associated w/ art. Perhaps even more, its effect was to drive home the point that the difference between 'art' and 'non-art' is merely one of perception, and that we can control how we organize our perceptions.33

under arrest – a yellow band of police caution tape installed in in other words at the wall/ceiling intersection of the entire perimeter of the gallery— is a ready-made in itself. Installed in the frieze format,34 the plastic band is taken out of its usual context of a law enforcement barricade and hung high above indoors as an architectural motif. And even though the caution tape is stolen from its authoritative context, its text POLICE

LINE DO NOT CROSS remains, repeated over and over, still ordering us through its clichéd law enforcer line, “Freeze, you’re under arrest!”— unbeknownst of its own detainment.

Words are our most common material and are first and foremost ready-made objects. under arrest uses the ready-made object in two ways. First, the police barrier

28 tape, a symbol of authority and trauma, is removed from its usual context and is implanted into the art situation for alternative discourse. Secondly, its mechanical repetition of the text POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS serves as that familiar phrase which, along with common words, I consider ready-mades when under reformatting manipulation of word-full play.

Today’s threatened economy of materials and means serves as more than simply a conceptual parameter of art practice: sustainability is our last resource for survival. Instead of continuing to produce the new, we need to reformat the already existing, working with its awaiting potential instead of discarding it for the next iFad.

Harnessing conceptual artist and writer Douglas Huebler’s, "The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more," Kenneth Goldsmith “retools” the statement into, "The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more."35 For if we do not make the change, we will no doubt turn into Italo Calvino’s city of Leonia (if we haven’t already), where the threat to Leonia surmounts in its exponentially accumulating rubbish piles defining its limits and “the greater its height grows, the more the danger of a landslide looms: a tin can, an old tire, an unraveling wine flask, if it rolls towards Leonia, is enough to bring with it an avalanche [...] submerging the city in its own past, which it had tried in vain to reject.”36

29 Seeing the Parts Now in a Whole Together

in other words (the title of this essay) is a consideration of recently perceived influences with those already established, together informing the work in in other words

30 of the acronymic-ordered structure.

As the following illustration shows, the topical sections have in fact found influential connections with others, and in their connections collectively coalesce into an energetic flow of in other words.

nothing inclusivity

Dada time words variation

in other words

everyday language

handwriting parameters

word-full play Germany

My intention for this essay is not to confuse or convolute the traditional purpose of its thesis format— a text of linear clarification in support of an artistic expression. Instead, in other words (both essay and exhibition) comprises the range of my thinking, beliefs and investigations of art and non-art as a symbiotic one, presented in as close a manner that I can possibly illustrate for you at this time. My hope is that as the reader/viewer participant, you may be able to pull from in other words experiences that in fact challenge who you are, what you believe in and the manner in which you act as an effect of these challenges. I desire this from you because I ask the same from myself by actively reconsidering my preperceptions contrived by the conventions around me and conventions around us. Altering our language changes our actions. We need to change.

ENDNOTES

32 NOTES

1 John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings [Connecticut: Wesleyan Univeristy Press, 1961], 109. “I have nothing to say… and I am saying it…and that is poetry…as I need it.”

2 Richard Huelsenbeck, “First German Dada Manifesto,” in Art in Theory 1900- 1990, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood [Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2003], 257- 258.

3 Leah Dickerman, Dada [New York, NY: National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2005], 159.

4 Ibid., 163.

5 Matthew Galle, Dada and Surrealism [London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1997], 153.

6 Dickerman, Dada, 159.

7 Ibid., p170.

8 Galle, Dada and Surrealism, 153. The first publication of Ursonate was printed in Scwhitters’s Merz Journal in 1932.

9 Ibid. 170.

10 Dickerman, Dada, 171.

11 Huelsenbeck, “First German Dada Manifesto,” in Art in Theory 1900-1990, 257- 258.

12 As punishment by the gods for his many indiscretions against them, Sisyphus is damned to a life of continually rolling a boulder up a hill, only to have the rock repeatedly roll down the foot of the hill before ever reaching the hill’s summit.

13 Kenneth Bruder and Brooke Noel Moore, Philosophy: The Power of Ideas. 5th ed. [n.p.: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2002], 154.

14 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus: and other essays [New York: Vintage, 1991], 61.

15 John Cage and David Tudor, Indeterminacy, disc 2, read by John Cage. music performed by David Tudor, Smithsonian Folkways B000001DMZ, 1959. CD. 1992.

33 16 D.T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism: First Series [New York:Grove Press Inc., 1949], 26.

17 Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text [New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1977], 156.

18 Ibid., 146.

19 John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings, 51.

20 Barthes, Image, Music, Text, 142-154.

21 Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” in Six Years: the dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972..., ed. Lucy Lippard [California: University of Berkeley, 2001], 28.

22 Bonnie Clearwater, ed. Ceal Floyer: Auto Focus [Miami: Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, 2010].

23 The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, New ed., s.v. “lead.”

24 Steven Roger Fischer, A History of Writing [Great Britain: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2001], 31.

25 Webster’s New American Thesaurus, s.v. “play.”

26 Erwin Wurm, interview by Geert van de Wetering, Pretty Cool People Interviews, http://prettycoolpeopleinterviews.submarinechannel.nl/erwin-wurm, [accessed August 12, 2010].

27 John Cage and David Tudor, Indeterminacy.

28 Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody, A Night At the Opera, EMI Group, 45 rpm, 1975.

29 Kenneth Goldsmith, “Being Boring” [paper presented at Poet's Lunch, the Kelly Writer's House, University of Pennsylvania, November 2004]. Conceptual Writer Kenneth Goldsmith would identify himself more as a word processor than an artist, as he diligently transcribes and reformats writing from already conceived texts.

30 Kenneth Goldsmith, Day [Great Barrington, MA: Figures, 2003].

31 Sol LeWitt, “Sentences on Conceptual Art,” in Art in Theory 1900-1990, ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood [Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2003], 849.

32 Goldmsith, “Being Boring.”

34 33 Kyle Gann, No Such Thing As Silence: John Cage's 4'33" [Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2010], 20.

34 The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 199. An ornamental often sculptured band extending around something (as a building or room).

35 Goldmsith, “Being Boring.”

36 Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities [Florida: Harcourt, Inc., 1974], 115- 116.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

36 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1977.

Bruder, Kenneth and Brooke Noel Moore. Philosophy: The Power of Ideas. 5th ed. N.p.: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2002.

Cage, John. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Connecticut: Wesleyan Univeristy Press, 1961.

Cage, John and David Tudor. Indeterminacy. disc 2. read by John Cage. music performed by David Tudor, 1959.. Smithsonian Folkways B000001DMZ. CD. 1992.

Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. Florida: Harcourt, Inc., 1974.

Clearwater, Bonnie. ed. Ceal Floyer: Auto Focus Miami: Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, 2010.

Dickerman, Leah. Dada. New York, NY: National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2005.

Fischer, Steven Roger. A History of Writing. Great Britain: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2001.

Galle, Matthew. Dada and Surrealism. London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1997.

Gann, Kyle. No Such Thing As Silence: John Cage's 4'33." Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2010.

Goldsmith, Kenneth. “Being Boring.” Paper presented at Poet's Lunch, the Kelly Writer's House, University of Pennsylvania, November 2004.

Huelsenbeck, Richard. “First German Dada Manifesto.” In Art in Theory 1900-1990, edited by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, 257- 258. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.

LeWitt, Sol. “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art.” In Six Years: the dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972..., edited by Lucy Lippard, 28. California: University of Berkeley, 2001.

LeWitt, Sol. “Sentences on Conceptual Art.” In Art in Theory 1900-1990, edited by CharlesHarrison and Paul Wood, 849. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.

Queen. Bohemian Rhapsody. A Night At the Opera. EMI Group. 45 rpm. 1975.

Suzuki, D.T. Essays in Zen Buddhism: First Series. New York: Grove Press Inc., 1949.

MASTER OF FINE ARTS EXHIBITION

1078 GALLERY

FALL 2010

38 24 hr mark

Proposal 1. the word mark written continually on the wall, yet slow enough that it takes the extended time of twenty-four hours for mark to be written once. in preparation for 24 hr mark’s installation, the word mark is to be written on a standard sheet of office paper within the time of 2.4 seconds. this sheet is then backed with a same size sheet of carbon paper, with the paper-set then taped to the wall (carbon side against wall) at the installer’s preferred height. the preliminary written word mark is then to be traced over by the installer’s use of a writing implement that does not need sharpening, i.e. a pen, for the duration of twenty-four hours.

Figure 1. the preliminary word mark written in 2.4 seconds (1/2 the actual size)

39 color scheme

Proposal 2. scheme- a plan, design, or program of action to be followed; project. an underhanded plot; intrigue. a visionary or impractical project. a wall drawing conceived as an excuse to use color. a box of ninety six crayons, each drawn on the wall ninety six times, writing the statement “ninety six colors drawn on the wall ninety six times in ninety six rows and each row consisting of ninety six letters” in ninety six variations, including this legible text. the colors of each row are to be selected at random in any determinable format.

Figure 2. an excerpt from color scheme’s text-based plan (lines 1-28 of 96 total lines)

40 long running joke

Proposal 3. the joke, “two guys walk into a bar...and the third guy ducks,” purposefully misunderstood by employing the segue line, “ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one...,” allowing the joke to continue further by the simple means of addition. what follows are potentially thousands of guys walking into a bar and ducking, an indefinitely running gag ended only by preset or spontaneous determination by its performer.

2 guys walk into a bar… and the 3rd guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 3 guys walk into a bar… and the 4th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 4 guys walk into a bar… and the 5th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 5 guys walk into a bar… and the 6th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 6 guys walk into a bar… and the 7th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 7 guys walk into a bar… and the 8th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 8 guys walk into a bar… and the 9th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 9 guys walk into a bar… and the 10th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 10 guys walk into a bar… and the 11th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 11 guys walk into a bar… and the 12th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 12 guys walk into a bar… and the 13th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 13 guys walk into a bar… and the 14th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 14 guys walk into a bar… and the 15th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 15 guys walk into a bar… and the 16th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 16 guys walk into a bar… and the 17th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 17 guys walk into a bar… and the 18th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 18 guys walk into a bar… and the 19th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 19 guys walk into a bar… and the 20th guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 20 guys walk into a bar… and the 21st guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 21 guys walk into a bar… and the 22nd guy ducks. ok, tell me if you’ve heard this one. 22 guys walk into a bar… and the 23rd guy ducks…

Figure 3. an excerpt from long running joke’s script (lines 1-22 of an undetermined length)

41 nothing really matters

Proposal 4. the word nothing written on the entirety of 1078’s usual exhibition walls of the main and ‘the half’ galleries and on their corresponding floor surfaces— with the butt end of a black sharpie marker, in effect leaving nothing behind. the performative act will take the whole of the allotted exhibition time— sixteen days from 6am- 12am/ day— to complete (save for sleeping, eating and bathroom breaks) from mon., nov15- wed., dec. 1.

Figure 4. the word nothing written with the butt end of a black sharpie marker eighteen times (words actual size)

42 time machine

Proposal 5. a wall drawing as the time length of its own making a composition based solely on its own time documentation, time machine’s individual parts are the written description of the time it takes to write them, proving the words three seconds to be written in the standardized time of 3 seconds. the gradual accumulation of the written three seconds parts construct an undetermined composition directly on the wall. this drawing has the able range of growing exponentially or existing simply as a single component of three seconds written or presented on any surface, all determined solely by its installer.

Figure 5. the words three seconds written in 3 seconds (actual size)

43 under arrest

Proposal 6. a yellow band of police barrier tape installed in frieze format at the wall/ceiling intersection of the entire interior perimeter of a given space. even though the caution tape is stolen from its authoritative context, its text POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS remains, repeated over and over, still ordering us through its clichéd law enforcer line, “Freeze, you’re under arrest!”— unbeknownst of its own detainment.

Figure 6. one complete line from the repetitive phrase on police barrier tape