..........................highONnothing........................................art depoo gallery 2008. KUMU art museum 2009............................ ..........................highONnothing........................................art depoo gallery 2008. KUMU art museum 2009............................
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NoNoNAUT’S SPACESUIT (textile sculpture, life-size)
the spaceperson is afloat, his suit speckled with names of nonexistent b(r)ands, each of
which constitutes a wormhole to an absent pseudosubcultural space. step into the words
band names are a set of suitable textualization forms that imitate the subcultural code and bring forth a chain of confusing pseudo-recognition. every non-existent band reduced to a single keyword or a combination of two keywords is a potentially possible world
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BLACK SQUARE FADE (digital print, frames, 40 A4 sheets)
if printer notifies you of running short of black ink, start printing out a black square until you
arrive at a white sheet. document the journey by 40 sheets from ca 500 as "black square
fade out". „readable” form left to right, the sequence acts as a formally logical operation
which is similar to a well-known zen-budist allegory „by the footsteps of an ox” where by
following the ox your mind flows into emptiness. but this „emptiness”, this pre- and post-
info state is an empirical fact derived from the inner possibilities of language itself, not a
metaphysical speculation
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OBJECT OF SOUND (readymade, sound)
the installation consists of two (or more) black watering cans. there is white noise coming from the cans. white noise is a type of sound thats frequency spectrum in the frequency band is constant and homogeneous, meaning that for every hertz in the band the power of the sound is a constant quantity. in principle the installation is not focusing on any kind of special acoustic or sound-generative themes: there is no connection between the elements and the meaning of the work, rather the emphasis lies on surrealistic and subconcious associations
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ALPHABET WITHOUT ’A’ (acrylic paint on canvas, 1.5x1.5 metres)
A-class, A-rate, alpha (fe)male, etc. - the alphabet holds a promise for a brave new castration. however, the hymns of equality are overwritten by the irrevocability of hierarchies, the worship of the next-in-order, and by B as the new A
the first letter of the alphabet – ’A’ – holds weird semiotic connotations that have politicized it’s meaning. ’A’ as an absolute perfection, A-class and the Arian race, ’A’ as the illustrative example of the top of the power pyramid and the hierarchical position of the winner
does a formal operation of literally leaving ’A’ „out of the picture“ castrate the alfa-male and break the agreed vertex? what happens next – does revolution eat its children? does the shift taking place while rearranging the forcefields distribute new empty power position equally?
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RED STAR FADE OUT (digital print, frames, 40 a4 sheets)
if printer notifies you of running short of color, start printing out a red star until you arrive at
a white sheet. document the journey by 40 sheets from ca 500 as "red star fade out"
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BODY WITHOUT PARADOX (living/textile sculpture, life-size)
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BRACKETS (acrylic painting on canvas, 1.5x1.5 metres)
brackets refer (emptily) to what is (or, in "brackets", is not) bracketed. in addition,
"brackets" construct a feedback loop for channel noise as the blank author
the facilities of listening and talking as „brackets“ which restrain the flow of speech, in this case not speaking and not listening – a pause
spinoza talks about absolute/substance as the cause of self, as the beginning of causality. spinozas image of the absolute was that god is trapped in himself – that through some mystical determination (cause-effect) he is bound to be and to create. as if emptiness demanded creation. this emptiness/space is so powerful that even god himself has no free will for he has to exist beside nothingness (0). moreover, he has to create, he is programmed to create something. being and creating is almost the same.
if we remove the singer or the speaker from the microphone (and from between the headphones) every spectator can recreate it on his own – from emptiness he or she can materialize just a suitable non-existent band or a sound of zero. this kind of creative act is also automatic and done by rote – it is the psychological inevitability of the audience. as with spinozas absolute the viewer turns into a psychological-mechanical toy and robot who is programmed to be nothing. all associations are subject to psychological randomness
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THROUGH THE WALL (coloured plastic, repetitive object, life-size, ca 0.6m from floor)
a kneeling figure which penetrates the structure involves connotations from humility, succumbness and religious pietism to fetishism and seeing the body as an object of structural (auto)violence. a girls figure is a reference to deleuzes discussion on the principal character of lewis carrols alice in wonderland as a witness of transformations taking place on superficial structures. reality=text=thewall=interpretation
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ASCII REALITY (19 photos laminated on plastic, 42x29)
both micro- and macrospace are challenges to going through, to compressing ranges, lenghts and breadths. every text talks about emptiness and non-existance; going through one text means going through all texts connected to it. from every space between characters appears emptiness and infinity; every structuring area between letters is space and infinity
covering ranges means also cancelling them as we leave behind the long forgotten shining elysian fields. in the background of non-existance and nothingness reality appears as a pattern of random codification forgotten into the empirical reality. going through empirical world is like reading through text, getting into the empty spaces between text
the flow of text constitutes the ASCII reality. ASCII manifests itself as a veil in front of empty pictures of looking at non-existance. it is the union between matter and the source of manifested or illusory spheres. ASCII reality is a book, an ideal text as an exterior manifested form of spiritual reaility which smoothly transforms into meta- and paratext and into their combinations. ASCII is a dream shrift and a galligraphic coding; at the same time ASCII reality is a calling in question of material manifestations and emphasizing phenomenons in general. equalizing the ASCII code with the world as a text is obviosly unequivocally saying that this text has no linearly readable meaning
this work is using as neutral and familiar, even banal images as possible (so that people would not look at the pictures and the world as a surface but as a veil in a metaphysical system; so that people would not see reality as simply text):
ascii arvo pärt
ascii demonstration
ascii i ching
ascii kiss
ascii clouds
ascii error
ascii noise
ascii tiger
ascii 911
ascii kabbalah
ascii liberalism
ascii derrida
ascii ecoradikalism
ascii murder (laura palmer)
ascii shaman
ascii lolita
ascii accident
ascii suicide
ascii sm
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) was one of the main themes in early computer graphics and is still popular in transmitting graphic messages on the internet. forming pictures using letters and graphic characters was used already in ancient egypt. presenting pictures using computers was preceded by so called concrete poetry which took advantage of typewriters and collage. ASCII art was invented by computer art pioneer ken knowlton and the first printers of 1966 also used letters instead of graphical signs
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n400 (acrylic painting on canvas, 2.3x1 metres)
n400 is a frequency at which the human brain is forced to hallucinate. "n400" is an
electroencephalography of a patient entering the corresponding state (at 1, a psychic tells
him to "hallucinate now")
n400 is a graphic form of eeg (electroencephalography) where after every 300 millisecond an equation 0=0 is presented to the brain. the brainwave is even. when presenting equation 0=1, the brain reacts in 400 milliseconds with a negative deflection
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GEOMETRIC ABSTRACT PAINTING
unquestionably the most pointless abstract geometric painting is „readable“ using morse code and translates as „zero“. It is interesting to note that „zero“ as „nothing“ is imparted by „something“ at the lower corner of the painting, namely by five black rectangles. (at any rate it’s not about incorporating zen and i ching into european painting but has to do with a culturally more familiar code)
CODE FOR GEOMETRIC ABSTRACT PAINTING
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GLOSSOLALIA (acrylic painting on canvas, 2x1.5 metres)
the susurrus of an empty channel of an analog tv with subtitles used in films – trying to describe audio-visual content to a deaf person. the type of susurrus used is actually the so called white noise which equally fills the whole frequency band and thus includes all codes, languages and ways of speaking. a stop frame of an empty channel is the cantillation of an „everlasting“ uncomprehendable prayer (glossolalia)
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a4-n0a4
(acrylic painting on canvas, dark room, neon light, 1.5x1.5 metres)
in daily language a4 refers to the most well-known unit of format which is one of the systems most certain and most accepted measure, in a broader sense the most avarage image of „normal“. but the measures by which a4 is recognized even in dark stay constant if arranged in unfamiliar ways
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VERBIGERATION - UNIVERSAL BAND NAME GENERATOR
(acrylic painting on canvas, 1.5x1.5 metres)
in psychopathology pointless repetition of certain words or phrases is called verbigeration. a pathological speech defect can also be seen as a model for most culture in general as culture lives under the star of repetition and mechanical reproduction. or is it rather the economics of using meanings?
history of music knows a band called duran duran as well as a band called duran duran duran. an universal band name generator recycles a band name for everyone using the rule „every duran can be connected to an unlimited number of other durans”
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INTO THE MAELSTROM
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texts by kiwa & erkki luuk