Berlin, January 23, 1996

Berlin, January 23, 1996

I did some dancing yesterday and met Matthias last night to discuss my next video production. All in all it was a simple day. I washed all my clothes and cleaned. One of these typical boring writing and household-days were you do things that you usually push to the last minute... to a point were you think it is unavoidable to be taken care of. The most ridiculous: I tried to die a pair of stockings. I wanted it to be black but instead I died the bathroom. So I had to clean the bathroom and the stockings. It was one of these household seizures that you get from time to time in order to press down your bad conscious about certain deadlines that you keep pushing back. One of these hysterical household crises that make me feel happy again to go work on the computer. One of these days were I realize and decide: I will never be a gifted housewife, it is Sisyphos work, it is only bearable when you have enough to think about, it is good for a change, so your mind can relax and digest former production through some mindless activity. But washing machines are just not meditative, I tried to assort the laundry to do at least something creative. It was one of these Mondays....anyway two more points.

continued from yesterday

f.
"L'Adieu - Pearls Before Gods" g.

The medium as message "L'Adieu - Pearls Before Gods" was an installation in the Broadway- window of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. It was part of "Trade Routes," an exhibition of work by international artists who focus on global relations. In the same area as Chinatown's infamous sweatshops, I sewed pearls onto a white silk gown in the New Museums street window and each day I was paid the average wage of a seamstress in a different country. With my salary I bought flowers and bread everyday in order to experience the power of purchase.

This piece can be interpreted in many ways but I would like to concentrate here on a couple of aspects that are important in relation to the topic at hand.

"L'Adieu - Pearls Before Gods" was inspired by the ancient arts and I was consciously quoting traditional elements of still-life and Dutch interior painting while facing new technology through the inclusion of electronic data.

Here I must admit that the "artist is present" was from the beginning a strategy of refusal. I, as the muse, am the one that inspires through my physical presence, but I have to be absent in a way too. I am present in a way that I am aware of what's going on, totally absorbed in my task , with full control over my hands and body, reaching, grabbing and moving the objects of my focus, which lead into the mental absence that I need in order to ignore and refuse the intruding viewer from the outside. Important for "L'Adieu - Pearls Before Gods" was that I never interacted with the audience, as opposed to in more recent pieces where interaction has often become integral to the piece. The complete meditation and the luxury to be able to take as much time as I want for each pearl was one of my privileges, and useful in both rejecting and attracting the viewer. Another aspect which creates distance between me and the other is the surveillance camera witnessing and recording both me working and the viewer watching at the same time. Visible through the glass and on the monitor, I create a double distance to whomever wants to watch. The two images, me in reality and me on video, compete through their technological processing. I performed for twenty eight days and once my time of real presence was over the edited video still showed me working as if I was still there.

Considering that "the medium is the message," I felt that it was crucial to break the silent rhythm of the working woman with the underlining flow of data on the LED displays and with the monitoring of the scene by electronic surveillance. This pronounces the idea of a figure truly lost in her thoughts and dreams who is creating a thought pattern of pearls on her dress, as her salary descended daily from $17.10 down to 20 cents per hour. Those wages, published by the International Apparel Federation appeared next to the Dow Jones stock market data. Time and money are valued differently depending upon who is spending the time and who is spending the money.

Another link to time and money is the bread and flowers. They represented for me the experience of the power of purchase and at the same time food for both my soul and my body. Eventually the bread and flowers left behind in my space dried out and wilted, fading traces of my life and presence.

This symbolic performance of a task, sewing for 28 days for 28 different wages, leads me to a link into a mythological image: The bead as Sisyphus's boulder, the tear running down the cheek of his mountain and plunging into the river of data.

Fortsetzung folgt...to be continued tomorrow