7 don't go so fast, you'll crash into jacques derrida
In December 1985 I installed an exhibition in the Helsinki Art Hall - a collaborative, Performance Art exhibition, as it was then called. I took a brown raincoat that had been part of an exhibition experiment I had called “7 Famous Raincoats and a Moygashel” and decided to end this experiment which had travelled from Helsinki to Paris; for this I chose to bury the raincoat under a catafalque of salt.
On the thick impressive wooden doors to the art hall built in the 1920s, I applied white christmas-snow 'graffiti' for the title of the exhibition. These were repeated in mirrors in both toilets in the gallery. The director, a man I knew well, came out. This is art, he said, but please let's not take it too far. I have to clean that door.
I know I said, it's christmas decoration spray, it's snow, it's fake, it's bad art. It can be scraped off.
Oh, that's ok then, please continue, he said and left me outside in the real December snow.
In the small space given me in the gallery, amongst the other art installations and performance pieces, I placed a table and two deckchairs. I decided to use the reviews of the original exhibition (which had mostly been favourable). Four of the main reviews were framed and placed as dinner plates, complete with wine glass, cutlery and serviette. One framed image
above the table was suspended like a low chandelier with salt all over it. Upon this chandelier one text had the words 'the wrong raincoat' repeated endlessly. On top of this there was a children's toy, a dinky JCB earth mover. In anyone's world; a child's, an artist's, a professor's or an anaesthetician's, the digger was pouring salt over the edge into the wound.
All words were disappearing.
Inside the gallery, laid out on an exquisitely shaped catafalque of salt, the arm of the brown raincoat was all that was left. The rest of the coat was disappearing. On the wall, white on white, there was a row of framed, photo-copied plates all similar with the word ‘Derrida’ on.
The title of the exhibition was various and interchangeable: ‘Don't go so Fast, you will crash into Jacques Derrida’, was one title. In the toilets, the title changed to ‘Don't go so Fast, You'll Crash into Jean Baudrillard’. In another part of the gallery, it changed again: ‘Don’t go so fast you’ll crash into Roland Barthes’. And so on around the gallery. There was a lot of crashing going on at the time.
I forgot to see the future though. I forgot to consult the world spinning on. I should have also put: ‘Don’t go so fast, you’ll crash into Richard Brautigan’. I didn’t. It was a mistake. My imperfection drags me back. But there on the wall, in the framed texts, Derrida's family name included the most important lesson: dERRida. In his name, the word ERR peeped out.
This was the end of 1985. This was an exciting time, though no one has much good to say about that decade now. Three years back Richard Brautigan would publish his last ‘Brautigan’, So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away. A year or so back from when this raincoat lay under a catafalque of salt, when all the words were washed away, the body of Richard Brautigan would be found on October 25, 1984. This was the day I began the idea of burying the exhibition about raincoats.
It had taken over a year. It takes a long time to destroy words and ideas you distrust. It had taken several weeks before the 49-year-old body of the author was found next to a bottle of alcohol and a .44 caliber gun.
Uncanny isn’t it. But on that brown raincoat there was evidence of a gunshot wound. By the end of Christmas, all blown away, the art was finished, the gallery closed, and the raincoats returned to the people who owned them or to my own collection. The exhibition was published. The tv interview done, the houhaa over. This particular raincoat was worn until it disappeared in the flood at the Hotel Architecture a few years ago.
To 'err' is human and irrepressible. There is little trace of this exhibition now. Am I no longer an instant artist, or a bad artist. Have I been saved? Or am I a diagram of someone' else's life?
On the thick impressive wooden doors to the art hall built in the 1920s, I applied white christmas-snow 'graffiti' for the title of the exhibition. These were repeated in mirrors in both toilets in the gallery. The director, a man I knew well, came out. This is art, he said, but please let's not take it too far. I have to clean that door.
I know I said, it's christmas decoration spray, it's snow, it's fake, it's bad art. It can be scraped off.
Oh, that's ok then, please continue, he said and left me outside in the real December snow.
In the small space given me in the gallery, amongst the other art installations and performance pieces, I placed a table and two deckchairs. I decided to use the reviews of the original exhibition (which had mostly been favourable). Four of the main reviews were framed and placed as dinner plates, complete with wine glass, cutlery and serviette. One framed image
above the table was suspended like a low chandelier with salt all over it. Upon this chandelier one text had the words 'the wrong raincoat' repeated endlessly. On top of this there was a children's toy, a dinky JCB earth mover. In anyone's world; a child's, an artist's, a professor's or an anaesthetician's, the digger was pouring salt over the edge into the wound.
All words were disappearing.
Inside the gallery, laid out on an exquisitely shaped catafalque of salt, the arm of the brown raincoat was all that was left. The rest of the coat was disappearing. On the wall, white on white, there was a row of framed, photo-copied plates all similar with the word ‘Derrida’ on.
The title of the exhibition was various and interchangeable: ‘Don't go so Fast, you will crash into Jacques Derrida’, was one title. In the toilets, the title changed to ‘Don't go so Fast, You'll Crash into Jean Baudrillard’. In another part of the gallery, it changed again: ‘Don’t go so fast you’ll crash into Roland Barthes’. And so on around the gallery. There was a lot of crashing going on at the time.
I forgot to see the future though. I forgot to consult the world spinning on. I should have also put: ‘Don’t go so fast, you’ll crash into Richard Brautigan’. I didn’t. It was a mistake. My imperfection drags me back. But there on the wall, in the framed texts, Derrida's family name included the most important lesson: dERRida. In his name, the word ERR peeped out.
This was the end of 1985. This was an exciting time, though no one has much good to say about that decade now. Three years back Richard Brautigan would publish his last ‘Brautigan’, So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away. A year or so back from when this raincoat lay under a catafalque of salt, when all the words were washed away, the body of Richard Brautigan would be found on October 25, 1984. This was the day I began the idea of burying the exhibition about raincoats.
It had taken over a year. It takes a long time to destroy words and ideas you distrust. It had taken several weeks before the 49-year-old body of the author was found next to a bottle of alcohol and a .44 caliber gun.
Uncanny isn’t it. But on that brown raincoat there was evidence of a gunshot wound. By the end of Christmas, all blown away, the art was finished, the gallery closed, and the raincoats returned to the people who owned them or to my own collection. The exhibition was published. The tv interview done, the houhaa over. This particular raincoat was worn until it disappeared in the flood at the Hotel Architecture a few years ago.
To 'err' is human and irrepressible. There is little trace of this exhibition now. Am I no longer an instant artist, or a bad artist. Have I been saved? Or am I a diagram of someone' else's life?
posted by frank heron at 10:28 AM
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