THEATRE OF THE EXHIBITIONS
GERRY SCHUM Identifications, 1970
Giovanni Anselmo (Borgofranco, 1934) b/w. s, 1'10"	A block of cement with a leather flap projecting from it: Anselmo twists the leather around a stick and then puts the stick against a wall so that the leather stays taut. This action is filmed with fixed camera position. When completed, the camera zooms into the twisted leather. "My work is the physicalization of the force of an action, of the energy of a situation, of an experience, a happening, or in the field of a symbol, a sign, or static situation. Thus it is necessary, for instance, that the energy of contortion by the force employed remain visible, that it should not exist merely as a static form" (from a conversation with G.Schum). In 1968 Anselmo carried out various contortion, the work consisting of a block of cement poured with the inclusion of various materials, which are stretched taut by twisting prior to exhibition. In this work extra emphasis is given to the procedure of the action, which causes the tension on the stick.
Joseph Beuys (Kleve, 1921 - ) b/w. s, 11'25"	Beuys is sitting in front of an old-fashioned television cabinet, with a piece of felt covering the screen. The sound of the television is on; a sort of news commentary is heard. Beuys lifts a corner of the felt, showing a blank screen. Then he puts on boxing gloves and repeatedly punches himself in the face. A second shot at closer range shows Beuys cutting a sausage in half and feeling the screen with the two halves as if they were a stethoscope. Then he cuts one piece of the sausage into a point, gets up, goes to the wall and presses the sausage against it. Finally he wheels the television set to the wall and positions it in front of a felt cloth hanging on the wall. This action, which Beuys first performed in 1966, may be seen as the visualization of his ideas about the situation of television communication.
Alighiero e Boetti (Torino, 1940 - Roma, 1994) b/w, s, 2'05"	A left and a right arm come togheter in the centre of the image, and both start writing in italian the date on a wall: oggi è venerdì ventisette marzo millenovecentosettanta (today is Friday the nineteenth of March nineteen seventy). The left is the mirror image of the right.. Italians write from left to right, but in Afghanistan, which is almost a second fatherland to Boetti, people write from right to left. The idea that inside us there are two persons, the idea of the twins, and of the third unity we have, is the base of all the work of Alighiero, For that reason he called himself Alighiero e Boetti. In this work also, Boetti has found a form whereby to mirror customs from different cultures, not as a passive observation, but as an active undertaking; the simultaneity in time is emphasized further by the meaning of what he is writing: the date of the action. Does this make the impossible possible? Or does it make the possible impossible?
Stanley Brouwn (Paramaribo, Suriname, 1935) b/w, s, 1'57"	After a static view of the Dam in Amsterdam for about 30 seconds, the image is disturbed and then becomes static again. The title "One step" indicates what has happened: Brouwn has taken one step on the Dam, holding a camera. "It's not inconceivable and indeed quite likely that I shall be able to sum up all the projects I shall make in my life under a single title, namely: Man walks on the planet Earth"
Daniel Buren (Boulogne sur Seine, 1938) b/w, s,
PierPaolo Calzolari (Bologna, 1943) b/w/,s,2'12"	As a voice intones "hey ya, hey ya" an image of a rattling typewriter, typing letters on a sheet of paper, appears. Slowly the following text becomes legible, the same text that had been exhibited in actual types on the floor of a gallery: 1 e 2 giorno come gli orienti come due 3 the picaro's day fourth day like 4 long months of absence 5 contra naturam 6th day of reality 7 - seventh - with usura - contra naturam A second shot shows a piece of copper wire with one end twisted in the shape of a figure 6 - "the day of reality"; it is heated in a flame, and burnt into a human arm in a subsequent shot. Calzolari works with words and sentences, tries to document the most personal heights of awareness, to define situations. His phrases are bursts of thinking, attempts to change situations, never completed thought-processes.
Gino De Dominicis (Ancona, 1947 - Rome 2000) b/w, s, 1'55"	At the beginning of the work De Dominicis provides the following information, which is the concept of the work: "Perhaps it is because I don't know how to swim that I decided to learn to fly. I have repeated this exercise for three years. It is possible that I will never reach my goal. But if I can persuade my son to continue this exercise, and also the sons of my son, then perhaps one of my descendants will discover that he knows how to fly." He then demonstrates his exercise. He stands on the top of a small hill, stretches his arms, making flying motions by turning his arms round faster and faster and bending his knees slightly, and finally he jumps off the hill. He repeats this five times.
Ger Van Elk (Amsterdam, 1941) b/w, s, 1'25"	The first shot shows a verandah with a balustrade, from which a window-box hangs. The second shot is a close-up of the cactus in the window-box, which is slowly and carefully being shaven of its thorns by an electric razor. Finally the first image is repeated, but this time the cactus in the window-box is clean-shaven. Van Elk's works nearly always contain a commentary, whether his medium is photography, sculpture or film. Comments upon art, upon social behavior, customs and habits...In this case you could say that he is parodying the Dutch mania for cleaning, and the habit of men to shave their cheeks daily.
Hamish Fulton
Gilbert & George (San Marino d'Adda, 1943 & Devon, 1942) b/w, s, 1'25"	Two men are sitting motionless under a tree beside a pond in a park-like landscape. The composition is obviously deliberate, a an old painting. Suddenly the figure on the left breaks this "frozen" image, by simply drawing on his cigarette. Then peace is restored. The entire film consist of a single shot. The film-time is the same as real-time, as a few moments in the life of Gilbert&George. They actually call themselves 'the human sculptors', thereby defining their life as art.
Gary Kuehn (Planfield, New Jersey, 1939) b/w/, s, 1'25"	Gary Kuehn covers the matte glass of a television screen with criss-cross lines, to the accompaniment of a loud ticking sound. The spontaneous movement of drawing the lines is confined by the frame of the image. In this work (the only piece Kuehn made for television) his free movements and their confinement may be compared to the polarity between hard and soft material, of organic and geometric forms which is characteristic of Kuehn's work.
Mario Merz (Milano, 1925) b/w, s, 1'20"	We see a snail on a sheet of glass. On the other side of the glass - behind the snail's shell on the glass, according to the progression of Fibonacci, which he says out loud as he does so. He has applied this progression in several other works, in museums, on stairs, walls, plants, pine-cones... The Fibonacci progression was discovered by the Italian Leonardo da Pisa in 1202, when he was trying to calculate how many rabbits a single couple of rabbits produced in a single year, assuming that each pair produces another pair each months, which in turn produces another pair the following month etc. The outcome of his calculations was the following progression 1-1-2-3-5-8-13 etc. This interest Merz shows in the Fibonacci progression, an arithmetical progression based on a biological phenomenon, may be considered characteristic of his work. Time and again he concerns himself with a contrast-relationship between rationality and nature, both in the choice of hi materials and in his subjects.
Klaus Rinke (Wattenscheidt, 1939) b/w, s, 50"	Klaus Rinke stands in the middle of the screen, next to a vat filled with water. Suddenly he knocks over the vat with his right hand, and stays in the same position bending over the vat while the water streams out of it, spreading over the square and slowly forming a growing stain on the screen. Rinke, who uses water as the material in many of his works, uses it here as a plastic means. Technical adjustments have been made in the film, slow-motion pictures have been used to emphasize the increasingly abstract effect of the water flowing.
Ulrich Ruckriem (Dusseldorf, 1938) b/w/, s, 55"	In the centre of the image stands a sculpture with clearly visible breakage lines, of which Ruckriem has made several variants. In the extreme left stands Ruckriem (only half of him is visible); he takes apart the block that he first cut, split into segments, and then polished, by removing the segments one by one. In this way he modifies the arrangement and the volume of the sculpture. This piece may be described as a visualization of the starting-point of sculpture: giving form in space.
Reiner Ruthenbeck (Velbert, 1937) b/w, s, 3'40"	A big pile of paper is to be seen on the right. Two hands take off one sheet after another, twist them up into a ball, and throw them on the floor, into the middle of the picture. The sound is live, the action is repeated while the camera zooms in slowly so that eventually only the heap of crumpled sheets fills the screen. Crumpling the sheets of paper is carried out as if the action were premeditated, a process that initially refers to sculpture, but eventually also refers to painting (the composition). The camera's zooming makes the image increasingly two-dimensional, so that each crumpled sheet to be added to the heap fills up the picture plane, making it darker.
Richard Serra
Keith Sonnier
Franz Erhard Walther (Falda, 1939) b/w, s, 2'05"	A roll of cloth lies in the centre of the image. Walther walks to the cloth, unrolls it, and lies down on it. The shape of the cloth is a segment of a circle. First he lies down with his legs wide apart, then he turns over and lies, with legs together pointing to the centre, and his arms outstretched. His body follows the shape of the cloth in both cases. Walther's objects, which he calls his object-material, do not possess autonomous values. In this film, a television exhibition, he demonstrates a possible application of object no.29 from the '1st Werksatz'. He shows the situation 'tense-relaxed'.
Lawrence Weiner (New York, 1940) b/w, s, 50"	To the sea On the sea From the sea At the sea Bordering the sea Weiner has chosen language as the material for his art. He considers the film, in which he portrays the five prepositional phrases with the sea, as the visualization of the piece, as one of the ways of using the work. He explains at the beginning of the film: 'concerning the various manners of use 1 the artist may construct the piece 2 the piece may be fabricated 3 the piece need to be built. Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist. The decision as to the condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership'.
Gilberto Zorio (Andorno Micca, 1944) b/w, s, 1'	Zorio demonstrates an object, a lead rod with hand-grip (which was on display). The camera zooms into the rod, making the inscription fluidità (fluidity) impressed in low relief on the lead legible. A second shot reveals that the word radicale is embossed on the handle, so that when the rod is firmly held, the word 'radicale' will be impressed in the hand. Then Zorio points the rod at the camera, as a dangerous weapon. This action reflects the polarity fluidità-radicale