228 MICHALIS PICHLER WRITINGS WRITINGS MICHALIS PICHLER 229 stateMents on appropriation sentenCes on ConCeptual reading m ichalis p ichler m ichalis p ichler 1. if a book paraphrases one explicit historical or contem- On December 11, 2009 six one sentence statements originat- 1. Conceptual readers are mystics rather than rational- 19. The conventions of reading are altered by works of porary predecessor in title, style and/or content, this ed by the “artist/author” for the purpose of this piece were ists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach. reading. technique is what I would call a “greatest hit”. mixed, in a container, with eighteen one sentence quotes taken 2. Rational judgements repeat rational judgements. 20. Successful reading changes our understanding of the 2. Maybe the belief that an appropriation is always a from various other sources; each sentence was printed onto 3. Irrational judgements lead to new experience. conventions by altering our perceptions. conscious strategic decision made by an author is just a separate piece of paper. Eighteen statements were drawn 4. Formal reading is essentially rational. 21. Perception of ideas leads to new ideas. as naive as believing in an “original” author in the first by “blind” selection and, in the exact order of their selection, 5. Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and 22. The reader cannot imagine his/her reading, and can- place. join altogether to form the Statements on appropriation, for the logically. not perceive it until it is complete. 3. It appears to me, that the signature of the author, be presentation at Stichting Perdu, Amsterdam. In the follow- 6. If the reader changes his/her mind midway through 23. The reader may misperceive (understand it differently it an artist, cineast or poet, seems to be the beginning ing bibliography the sources (…) may be found although no the execution of the piece he/she compromises the from the reader) a work of reading but still be set off in of the system of lies, that all poets, all artists try to es- specific statement is keyed to its actual author. result and repeats past results. his/her own chain of thought by that misconstrual. tablish, to defend themselves, I do not know exactly 7. The reader’s will is secondary to the process he/she 24. Perception is subjective. against what. Roland Barthes, “Death of the Author,” in Image-Music-Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978), initiates from idea to completion. His/Her wilfulness 25. The reader may not necessarily understand his/her 4. Custom having once given the name of “the ancients“ 142–148. may only be ego. own reading. His/Her perception is neither better nor to our pre-Christian ancestors, we will not throw it up 8. When words such as decoding and comprehension worse than that of others. against them that, in comparison with us experienced Walter Benjamin, “Unpacking My Library “(1931), in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a 26. A reader may perceive the reading of others better Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1968), 59–67. people, they ought properly to be called children, but consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing than his/her own. will rather continue to honor them as our good old Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936), in limitations on the reader who would be reluctant to 27. The concept of a work of reading may involve the mat- fathers. Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1968), 217–215. make reading that goes beyond the limitations. ter of the piece or the process in which it is made. 5. It is nothing but literature! Marcel Broodthaers, “Interview with Marcel Broodthaers by Freddy de Vree” (1971), in 9. The concept and idea are different. The former implies 28. Once the idea of the piece is established in the read- 6. there is as much unpredictable originality in quoting, Collected Writings, ed. Gloria Moure, trans. Jill Ramsey (Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, a general direction while the latter is the component. er’s mind and the final form is decided, the process is imitating, transposing, and echoing, as there is in in- 2012), 310–312. Ideas implement the concept. carried out blindly. There are many side effects that the venting. Ulises Carrión, “The New Art of Making Books” (1975), in Ulises Carrión – “We have won! 10. Ideas can be works of reading; they are in a chain of reader cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas 7. For the messieurs art-critics i will add, that of course Haven’t we?,” ed. Guy Schraenen (Amsterdam: Idea Books 1992), n.p. development that may eventually find some form. All for new works. it requires a far bigger mastery to cut out an artwork ideas need not be made physical. 29. The process is mechanical and should not be tam- out of the artistically unshaped nature, than to construct Giorgio de Chirico, quote in Allen Ruppersberg, The New Five-Foot Shelf of Books (Ljubljana: 11. Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. pered with. It should run its course. International Centre of Graphic Arts, Bruxelles: Editions Micheline Szwajcer and Michèle one out of arbitrary material after ones own artistic They may set one off in unexpected directions, but an 30. There are many elements involved in a work of read- Didier, 2003), n.p. law. idea must necessarily be completed in the mind before ing. The most important are the most obvious. 8. The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Ken Knabb, online at the next one is formed. 31. If a reader uses the same form in a group of works, transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its sub- http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/8.htm, accessed March 18, 2015, paragraph 206. 12. For each work of reading that becomes physical there and changes the material, one would assume the read- stantive duration to its testimony to the history which it Guy Debord, Gil J Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement,” in Situationist Interna- are many variations that do not. er’s concept involved the material. has experienced. tional Anthology, trans. and ed. Ken Knabb (Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006), online at 13. A work of reading may be understood as a conductor 32. Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution. 9. Intellectual Property is the oil of the 21st century. http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/detourn.htm, accessed March 18, 2015. from the reader’s mind to the writer’s. But it may never 33. It is difficult to bungle a good idea. 10. Certain images, objects, sounds, texts or thoughts Isidore Ducasse (Comte de Lautréamont), Poésies and Complete Miscellanea, trans. reach the writer, or it may never leave the reader’s 34. When a reader learns his/her craft too well he/she would lie within the area of what is appropriation, if Alexis Lykiard (London: Allison & Busby, 1978), 68. mind. makes slick reading. they are somewhat more explicit, sometimes strategic, 14. The words of one reader to another may induce an 35. These sentences comment on reading, but are (not) T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919), in Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot, ed. Frank sometimes indulging in borrowing, stealing, appro- idea chain, if they share the same concept. reading. Kermode (London: Faber, 1984), 37-40, 37. priating, inheriting, assimilating … being influenced, 15. Since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the inspired, dependent, indebted, haunted, possessed, Mark Getty, quote in “Blood and oil,” The Economist, March 2, 2000. reader may use any form, from an expression of words bibliography: quoting, rewriting, reworking, refashioning … a re- (read or heard) to physical reality, equally. Kenneth Goldsmith, “Being Boring,” The Newpaper 2 (2008), 2–3, 2. “Sentences on Conceptual Art,” 0–9 (1) 1969, 3–5, and Art–Language (May) 1969. vision, re-evaluation, variation, version, interpretation, 16. If images are used, and they proceed from ideas Herakleitos, Ephesos (around 500 BC), quote in Plato, Cratylus, fragment 41. Kenneth Goldsmith, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Writing,” Open Letter (7) 2005, imitation, proximation, supplement, increment, impro- about literature, then they are literature and (not) art; 98–101. visation, prequel … pastiche, paraphrase, parody, Julia Kristeva, “Word, Dialogue and Novel” (1969), repr. in The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril numbers are (not) mathematics. forgery, homage, mimicry, travesty, shan-zhai, echo, Moi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 34–61, 37. 17. All ideas are reading if they are concerned with read- allusion, intertextuality and karaoke. Daniel McClean and Karsten Schubert, eds., Dear Images: Art, Copyright, and Culture, ing and fall within the conventions of reading. 11. Plagiarism is necessary, progress implies it. (London: Ridinghouse, 2002), 372. 18. One usually understands the reading of the past by 12. Ultimately, any sign or word is susceptible to being applying the convention of the present, thus misunder- Allen Ruppersberg, “Fifty helpful hints on the Art of the Everyday,” in The Secret of Life and converted into something else, even into its opposite. Death (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 1985), 111–114, 113. standing the reading of the past. 13. Like Bouvard and Pecuchet, those eternal copyists, both sublime and comical and whose profound absurdity Kurt Schwitters, “i (ein Manifest),” in Das literarische Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, vol. 5 precisely designates the truth of writing, the writer can (Cologne: DuMont, 1981), 125. only imitate a gesture forever anterior, never original. Leo Steinberg (1978), quote in Hillel Schwartz, The Culture of the Copy.