The following letter - proposal, originally written and sent in slovene language to the Project Public Competition of URBANARIA, was translated into english by Borut Canjko. The author ordered this translation early enough to keep it ready, so in the case of a request, the international jury could have it immediately handed over. However, the jury never demanded a written translation, and was obviously explained the complex case in a spoken resume, which led to very questionable conclusions, made in their statement to the author.
Inštitut Egon March
Marko Košnik Virant, C. 18. divizije 63, Ljubljana 61000, Slovenia
phone-fax: +386-61/12-71-156
Soros Center for Contemporary Art
Ljubljana
Project: URBANARIA
Ljubljana, August 9, 1994
Application for the URBANARIA Project Public Competition
Concept, Conditions, Preconditions
Dear Sirs,
My letter is coming to your address with a few days’ delay which I have no difficulty to justify: it is exactly this delay that has enabled me to write this letter at all. As long as I tried to evade the delay, I exerted my mind in vain to find the right mode which would prevent the project from suffering - in the process of your discussion and possible acceptance for realisation - from such a conceptual damage that would deprive it of it’s elementary artist appeal, of that scarcely perceptible aura which nowadays barely separates whatever art object from any non-art object. But in order that my communication with you, dear members of the jury who have gathered to contemplate the submitted applications, will not exceed right away the thin line between understanding and nonundestanding, so difficult to discern when swift and resolved coping with a large number of applications is required, I shall start with the project proposal itself, and will later return to the problems specified in the introduction - however, the following remark has to be made: the mentioned problems are a composing part of my project. Whatever consideration of the project without its intrinsic problems could be destructive for the project and the author himself, and also for the members of the jury in particular. Let us, therefore, start with the Thing.
Egon March Institute
The First Exercise for The End of the World
Pre-preparation
The exercise for the End of the World is an artistic project, composed of 49 parts, or exercises, and the 50th exercise - The End of the World. The project comprises 49 places on Earth: 45 urban surroundings (cities and metropolises), a location at the North Pole, a location at the South Pole, a location in Tibet, and a “soaring” location above the equator. The 49th exercise, Final Rehearsal before The End of the World, and The End of the World itself, will happen in 2013, while the rest of the 48 exercises will be arranged by the crucial points of time and space between the years 1995 and 2012: in the first four years - one exercise yearly; in the second four years - two exercises yearly; and in the next nine years - four exercises yearly. Since it is the first exercise which is particularly important for the UBANARIA project, let me proceed with the explanation of the event which is to take place in Ljubljana.
The First Exercise for The End of the World
The public phase of the project is a nine-minutes “freezing” of exactly 500 protagonists at the junction of Cankarjeva and Čopova Streets with Slovenska Road, between Post Office and Nama department store. The event have its external phase and its internal phase. The external phase is publicly noticeable; the internal phase is the experience of the protagonists.
The external phase is an unannounced event. At a certain time on the selected day and at the chosen location of the city, 500 persons suddenly stop walking in whatever position they find themselves, and immovably persevere in the postures in which the moment of “freezing” have caught them. For full nine minutes they stand still in complete silence, not responding to any reactions of “non-frosted” passers-by. When the term expires, on a previously agreed sign (the same which had stopped their movement), they instantly carry on their motion and action. As if nothing at all has happened. They continue their routes without manifesting whatever mutual connection of acquaintance. For the accidental public, the exhibitory part of the project ends in the moment when the protagonists stood still, which took other passers-by entirely by surprise.
The internal phase consist of a half-year preparation for the actors, the realisation, and the termination of the project. The supervisors, however, begin to take part in the project already nine months before the external event. The internal phase runs in the following steps:
Five supervisors make contacts with managements of Ljubljana secondary and grammar schools, and arrange visits to upper two classes of students. Each supervisor procures four classes of students, persuading them to participate voluntarily in the project. The preparatory phase before the beginning of training takes three months.
Five supervisors-choreographers trains each for his four classes of students once a week for a period of half year. In this time s/he makes a special miniature scenario for the Day X with every single student: when the student will leave home and on what business; when, how and from which direction s/he will approach the “freezing” zone; and which way s/he will take to leave the place. Once a month during these six months each student independently walks the route according to the prepared scenario to measure and calculate the details of the time and space coordinates, and discusses the results and possible adjustments with the supervisor.
The protagonists are part of the project as soon as they decide to cooperate in it. From that instant, all their moments and their ways lead toward the First Exercise for The End of the World. The project is being prepared in a strict conspiracy of silence by the included participants; the participation in he project is based on the promise that none of them will reveal to the public, or relatives and friends, that s/he prepares or takes part in such project. In this connection, the supervisors must employ special logical approaches in their work with the volunteers: they have to establish a certain level of confidence enabling the candidates to assent to the project before they become fully acquainted with the details of its contents and conditions, but without breaking the codes of their personal honour and voluntary decision making, and also, of course, without giving it away to those who are not willing to vow to remain silent. The preparatory training include stimulating exercises in movement, synchronisation, concentration, and orientative meditation, and lectures about future prospects of time and space synchronisations by means of new media.
During the preparations for the Exercise, the protagonists are asked to write the diary of their thoughts and dreams. The discussions about this topic are being recorded. The supervisors essay to reconsider the comprehension of the End, World, and TIme outside the classic Christian - Apocalyptic context.
At the end of the project, the participants collect and put to paper their thoughts about the external event. The Institute publishes them in an anthology, together with the Theses for The End of the World, and a detailed plan of time and space coordinates for the remaining Exercises for The End of the World, and The End of the World itself. The publication of the anthology marks the formal end of The First Exercise for The End of the World.
Problems with the submission of The End of the World
The main problem in submitting The First Exercise for The End of the World to the public competition is the demand of conspiracy of silence necessary for the execution of the project. Nothing in the URBANARIA project announcement obliges the employees of the Ljubljana Soros Center for Contemporary Arts (SCCA), and the members of the committee, to remain silent about contents of the submitted projects. The problem is even bigger, for the Ljubljana SCCA intends to publish the projects in an anthology even before the ideas are to reach the phase of realisation. Without defending and explaining in detail the conceptual background of the demand that the external part of The First Exercise for The End of the World be carried out as an unannounced event, the members of the committee can believe me, the author, that any preliminary publication of the project would definitely ruin its conceptual substance. Let me only mention an entirely practical problem: If merely two hundred persons would loiter on the location of the external realisation of the project, waiting for the “freezing” of the walkers, this would produce the feeling of expectation of some attraction to happen in a public space; the attention of accidental passers-by would start to grow; the differentiation between the frozen actors and the motionless viewers would became difficult, etc. Every person, beforehand acquainted with the project, would very soon associate the “accidental” event with the memorised information, and this would imply the loss of the quintessence of The End - the instant when the perceptive and interpretative automatism cannot sustain the dynamics of the continuum any longer.
The principles of the URBANARIA project do not permit the committee to place any trust in me as an author on the grounds of my former artistic work, since here we have a competition of projects, not authors. The acceptance of a project without making a public declaration that the project was selected, or without previous publication of its concept, would counter the adopted principles of the competition, or would be intolerable because of the unequal treatment of the project regarding all other projects.
However, instead of ascertaining that your announcement does not suit my project, I have decided to prepare a double project which, perhaps, could result in our cooperation.
It would be intolerable and indecent for the committee to change conditions of the competition to suit my project, and therefore I have devised preconditions for my project. I would like to propose to the committee to consider the preconditions and subconditions of my project, and to decide on this basis whether my project can enter its selection or not.
Of course, these preconditions and subconditions have their immanent logic. If the committee refuses to accept them, the project - in the possible case that it would be selected for realisation - cannot and should not be carried out. Here I revert to the problems mentioned in the beginning of this letter. In continuation I shall state some bigger problems and propose solutions in the form of preconditions.
In he case that the committee would accept my project, I offer another, alternative project for publication. Actually, I am submitting two projects. The acceptance of the first project means the publication of the second one, and the publication of the second project is the precondition for the realization of the first one. But before I start to explain the second project, whose main function is to mimic the first one, I have to ask myself whether or not the committee can publish the second project without accepting it. This problem can turn out to be solvable or unsolvable. If the committee takes the positive answer, there are several possible solutions to it, especially if I, the author, pledge my word that in the case that both my project are accepted in the proposed form, I will not insist to realise both of them. This already implies that if you accept both my project, in place of the first project I could carry out either one or the other. However, this line rules out the easier variant, in which the committee would feel bound merely to accept the first project (The Exercise for The End of the World), while the second one (Pre-preparation) would figure as a blind – provided, of course, that definitely I will not demand its realization. And why this demand is the easier variant? First of all, it is easier for the author, since it is not very credible that the committee would be enraptured by two projects instead of one, as it was prescribed. Besides, the author would not need to show two trumps for the effect of one – we all know how rare and precious are good ideas, and that we have to keep them secret, especially here in the East where the world of ideas has been dominated ever-since by thieves and robbers. It is true, however, that an excessively simple substitutional project could be critical for the committee, since it befits that the committee reaches acclamation primarily through publication of the best among all possible proposals. I see but one solution out of this quandary, and believe me, I did not reach it overnight. The substitutional project must be a solid one as well, although not as excellent as the originally proposed project. The committee has to be relatively proud of this cover project, which, however, need not give the author as great aesthetical-identificational enjoyment as the original project.
Pre-preparation
The cover project for the project which should not be publicised
The Pre-preparation project is based on a turnabout of the value-manipulative scale which reveals itself as an automatic mechanism wherever a system of authorities in organisation and criticism is being set artificially in the field of art. A special attraction of the Pre-preparation project is the redefinition of the selector from the viewer of the artistic action outside the field of art into the exponent within the field of art. The work of art, or its artefactuality, is replaces by the selector as soon as s/he decides to support the art process itself instead of the symbolic object representing it. In this sense, i.e. in taking account of the entire configuration of factors which determine the work of art in progression, the process of the selection and decision making – including the discussion about the work of art, all kinds bureaucratic manipulation of it, and also the work of the committee of selectors – turns into the work of art itself. In the case of Pre-preparation, the work of art proclaims the selectors for performers, and the session at which they discuss the work of art for the performance. The performance starts with the discussion of the committee, and with a little luck it continues to the final event which is publicly displayed. Its scenario defines the following contextual and technological frameworks: On a certain day at a certain hour (possibly in the evening, or night), every single member of the international jury, or committee, who takes part in the selection of proposals for the URBANARIA project, sits on a suitable chair situated in one of the frequented public squares in the town where s/he usually works or is well known. The representatives from Slovenia take their places individually on different well attended and visible public places. The beginning of the performance is synchronous in real time at all dislocated venues. All locations are connected with a two-way circuit loop by means of graphical computer terminals, equipped with CODEC card, and 19200 Baud Modem, video output and input, and the prescribed graphic video software. A video camera is connected to each computer, and it emits the picture of the suitably illuminated space where the critic-selector is seated. Each location has a screen for projection from a powerful video projector in the background.
Each critic-selector holds the URBANARIA anthology which was published – as announced by SCCA – in the preparatory phase of the project. A interviewer and an interpreter stand near the critic-selector at each location. The performance begins at the announced time, when all computers are connected with ISDN links. The first interviewer dips his hand into printing paint, slaps the first critic-selector across the face, and asks him at the same: “Was ist Kunst, ………?*” (He addresses him with his first name.) The critic answers the question; her/his voice is amplified, as is the voice of the interpreter who translates the answer from the native language of the critic-selector to English, while the interpreters at the other location, standing by other critics-selectors, simultaneously translate the answer from English to local national languages. The slaps, questions, answers and translations proceed successively and alternately in the circle corresponding to the connections between the computers by means of ISDN – CODEC links: Ljubljana – Paris – Amsterdam – Moscow, Ljubljana – Paris – Amsterdam – Moscow, Ljubljana – Paris - ………………., ………….., ……., ….., …, .., ., , , ,,,,,,,,,,,,. The interpreters do not translate the question. Technologically, the link is executed in such a way that only the computers at the location where the slap is being performed emits the image, while the following computer receives the image and emits it further, at the same time projecting it on the screen at the location. When the location of asking the question changes, the function of emitting and receiving proceeds for one step forward, so that it is possible to see the transmission of every slap, and to hear the accompanying text by means of a telephonic audio link, on every location. The performance lasts until one of the critics-selectors gives the right answer. The judge who confirms the adequacy of the answer is a confidant chosen by the critics-selectors from their own lines. S/he receives the right answer just before the beginning of the performance in a sealed envelope, which he opens after he has taken his position at an exposed and illuminated place, away from the public and near to the critic-selector. The judge has vowed to remain silent, he must not give away any hints. Only in the moment when the right answer is given, which can be ascertained either on the spot itself (the judge is in Ljubljana, at the main scene), or by means of the transmitted image and sound from whatever active location, he shouts: “KUNST-STOP-KUNST”. This is the ultimate sign for the end of the performance, which, however, has a substantial safety valve: the motto KUNST-STOP-KUNST is valid only if the answer after which judge had uttered the motto, is the same as the answer inscribed on the video display immediately after that. In the case that the judge abuses her/his position, it is for the public to decide that the project should continue, since the critics-selectors are turned away from the screens. But the answer is not inscribed all the time, so that the critic-selectors can be replaced – if he gets seriously injured – by his friend, acquaintance, or a hired person, who, however, has to identify himself publicly as a NON-artist, although he can be a connoisseur, reporter, art critic, or else.
As the author of the both submitted project and the manager of Egon March Institute, I – Marko Košnik Virant – assure you that in the case of the internal acceptance of the first project and the consequential publication of the second one, I shall not insist on the realisation of the second project. For the possible case that the committee would accept the first project and – according to the agreement – cover itself with and publish the second one, but later the organisers would fail to fulfill their own rules of proceeding and the conditions defined by the project in question (specially important in this connection is the question of conspiracy of silence), Egon March Institute has invited a group of artists from different countries to monitor the consistency of implementation of these rules and conditions in the pre-preparatory phase of the project. The members of the group are:
Paula Gordon – radio artist, WFMU, New York
Christian Vanderborgh – media artist, Uni-TV Eureka, Paris
Mike Hentz – the Odysee project, HFBK, Hamburg
Ross Harley – Art Media, Sydney
The logistic support consultant in the project is Damjan Bojadžiev, Ph.D., Language Research Laboratory at the Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana.
In the case of a severe violation of the basic conditions set by the committee, or preconditions and subconditions set by the project, all five members of the monitoring group can decide – in a single voting and without the right to abstain from voting – about possible modifications in the course of action of the author and Egon March Institute.
SPECIAL NOTE:
Egon March Institute forbids whatever explanation of the original project (The First Exercise for The End of the World), or spreading news about it outside the circle of persons who are competent to decide upon the fate of the project in the framework of the URBANARIA public competition – in all times, all places, and all instances, until Egon March Institute (i.e., Marko Košnik Virant, in its name) issues the contrary statement in writing, and until the persons in question do not read this writing individually. The substitutional project is open for usual gossip. The project is always referred to as Pre-preparation; the original title should never be mentioned, not even in the internal discussions.
In the case that the committee declines the project altogether, in whatever combination, it will have to take the risk of facing the artistic side of the project – STOP-KUNST-STOP – in an unpredictable manner; the more so, if it would decide to break and surpass the defined limits of the conspiracy of silence about the project. Because of the importance of the project, the members of the jury will never be able to completely escape from this responsibility. Working in such a committee necessarily brings about a rather minimal, but nevertheless existing risk in the interaction with the artistic and the art.
Marko Košnik Virant
P.S.: The subconditions to be fulfilled for the realization of the above described project:
- Every member of the committee must be acquainted with the integral text, i.e., the whole text must be translated into English. The translator is bound by the conspiracy of silence, stated in the preconditions.
For whatever public information, communication, or publication of the results, this project must be referred to exclusively and only as Pre-preparation – regarding both the title and the content. (E.g., Egon March Institute has entered the public competition with the project Pre-preparation, etc.)
*for the today’s readers who deserve an update on contemporary art from ex-Yugoslavia, “Was ist Kunst, Marinela Koželj?” was the performance and video by Raša Todosijevič, realised 1978.