Felix, What Will Remain After All This?

The following blog post is a description on the project I have presented during the class: "Felix, what will remain after all this ?" including some notes, background ideas and initial questions that led to the current shape of the project. "Felix, what will remain after all this ?" is an installation in the tradition of discursive art or relational aesthetics; one might also bring in the term peformativity to describe a specific type of gesture of the work.

The work is a commissioned piece by an art institution in Berlin within their recent exhibition series: "Gruppenbild" (Group picture): "Gruppen bild is a five-part exhibition series with the artists Karolin., Discoteca F. S., Azin., Ming. and Shirirn H. S. in the showroom of the n b k. The participating artists work with performance and spatial installations. Over the course of a year they will be giving form to this experiment in conjuction with curators Kathrin. and Sophie. In every artistic intervention, existing installations will be altered and new elements added to them. The contributions of the individual artists will thus give rise to a collective conceptual model."

Note: Who is Felix?
Felix is my dialog partner
Felix is a collective
Felix represents himself
Felix represents a group of artist and curators
Felix could be Felix Gonzales-Torres
Felix is a fictional character

The exhibition space 'showroom' is a white cube. I am planing to do an intervention in this room through placing a pack of posters in the middle of the galley space/ the room. The posters are there to be taken away by the visitors.

The front side to the poster shows an Image of the ground, an image of the same spot on which the pack is placed. On the image there is also a hand visible. The photos will be taken while the hand is moving. The hand is moving because it is writing on the ground: "Felix, what will remain after all this ?"

The image is a reference to: interaction with time and memory. The space is reflected in it literal manner. Site specificity.

The image is taken by a handy photo camera. The size is A2, it is B/W print.

The image of the text on the ground covers its own root. The image covers the truth, the narrative, the history of its own, of that spot. The spectator can not witness whether the text does exist in real or not. You must go through the process of unveiling; each spectator will help the process of enlighten the truth of that particular spot through taking each one layer, one poster.

Question:
what remains after an action?
what remains after an event?
what remains after an artwork?
what remains after after history?
what creates memory?
what carries history?

On the back of the posters there is a second element printed. It is a letter. A hand written letter, authored by me and addressed towards the character Felix. The content of the letter will reflect the notions of memory, love, the you, the me, the us, the I and revolutions. The style of the letter is basically conversational. It will include Felix's previous letters which he wrote to me, and my responses to those letters.

Note: In fact, this letter is a collage of conversations we had among the curators and artist contributors of "Gruppenbild". During the meetings/workshops we had we mainly discussed each artist contributors work and interest within the project as well the nature and process of "Gruppenbild" itself. Each meeting was recorded on a dat. recorder which will of use specially for within my work.

I am interested in the relation between the two binary phenomena’s that can be found in the exhibition/curatorial concept: ‘the collective’ and ‘the individual’; or the distinction between ‘individuality’ and ‘individuation’. I am interested to look at the collective within the individual. The fact that we/people are influenced by several other people, outsiders, throughout our life, or that we are influenced by history (which marks ‘collective consciousness’ or ‘collective memory’) is for me interesting to observe.

How do we filter this influences?

The juxtaposition of this observations on the field of ‘artistic practice’ as such and the question of artistic ‘position’ or the originality and singularity of artistic ‘approach’ is for me a question that I want to point out within my work.

“… I think more than anything else I’m just an extension of certain practices, minimalism or conceptualism, that I am developing areas I think were not totally dealt with. … I think we are part of a historical process and I think that this attitude that you have to murder your father in order to start something new is bullshit.” From Felix Gonzales-Torres – Etre Un Espion, Interview by Robert Storr.

The installation includes also a second part which does not relate fully to this site, so I will leave it out for now.

General reference:

Photo from June 2009 during the silent march of the Iranian Green Movement in protest against the coup d'état of the Iranian regime. This march and the following other marches in that gathered 3 millions people on the streets of Tehran marks a particular point within the Iranian political history.

During the following demonstrations and riots in Tehran the image of the death of Neda Agha Soltan became the symbol of those historical days. The government forbid for those days every journalist to work and to document the events and actions on the streets of Tehran. It was the citizen journalism that emerged. People with their mobile cameras took pictures and films that was the only material for people to witness that historical moment.

--A