AW: [syndicate] Signature Event Context banned from Transmediale.08

[claudia westermann]

I would be really interested to know why you chose
Janez Janša as name / person.


--
I would like to state that
the selection for an exhibition is in the same way a gesture of power as the
rejection.

Besides of this, banning someone shortly before an exhibition opening,
when the artists already put time and money into the project, makes me
always wonder how/on which basis the selection process was made in the
beginning - 
there was no time to look/read carefully a project description? How do the
curators do their job?

This indeed could be a subject for a round table


Or did you radically change the project without communicating this change?
(In this case, for example I would not really understand the surprise on
your side)


- claudia


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Sympa Owner [mailto:sympa at eglin.copyleft.no] Im Auftrag von janez janša
Gesendet: Montag, 28. Jänner 2008 10:45
An: syndicate at anart.no
Betreff: [syndicate] Signature Event Context banned from Transmediale.08


Subject: Signature Event Context banned from Transmediale.08

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 28, 2008
Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša
"Signature Event Context"
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe / Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden
Europas
Berlin, Germany


!!! WARNING !!!

The performance "Signature Event Context" by Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez
Janša scheduled for the opening of TRANSMEDIALE.08 the 29th of January 2008
at 8.30 pm at the foyer of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin,
Germany, has been conjunctively CANCELLED by the director of transmediale
Stephen Kovats and the Guest-Curator of the exhibition CONSPIRE. Nataša
Petrešin-Bachelez.

Consequently, Janez Janša, Janez Janša and Janez Janša anticipated the date
of the action performing "Signature Event Context" on January 28, 2008 at
00.01 am


WATCH THE PERFORMANCE
www.aksioma.org/sec


Signature Event Context

In summer 2007, three Slovenian artists officially changed their names to
Janez Janša. Their work focuses on the question of signature, and - more
particularly - on the role of signature in public space. In their various
approaches, they explore Derrida's famous statement on signature and its
paradoxical relationship towards originality and repetition.

"By definition, a written signature implies the actual or empirical
nonpresence of the signer. But, it will be said, it also marks and retains
his having-been present in a past now, which will remain a future now, and
therefore in a now, in general, in the transcendental form of nowness
(maintenance). This general maintenance is somehow inscribed, stapled to the
present punctuality, always evident and always singular, in the form of the
signature. This is the enigmatic originality of every paraph. For the
attachment to the source to occur, the absolute singularity of an event of
the signature and of a form of the signature must be retained: the pure
reproducibility of a pure event." (Jacques Derrida, "Signature Event
Context" in Margins of Philosophy, tr. Alan Bass, pp. 307-330)

 On January 28th, 2008, Janez Janša, Janez Janša, and Janez Janša performed
Signature Event Context at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, a walking
action in the corridors of the Memorial.  Each one of them, equipped with a
GPS device, covered a different path within the Memorial's structure this
way, together assembling a common signature visible only in a virtual space
(the internet). During the performance artists continuously repeated "Jaz
sem Janez Janša, Jaz sem Janez Janša, Jaz sem Janez Janša." ("My name is
Janez Janša").

Signature Event Context at the Holocaust Memorial puts together 3 concepts
(signature, event and context) from Derrida's essay in complex relation;
signature itself is an event which re-contextualizes the site of signature.

In his book At Memory's Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in Contemporary
Art and Architecture (Yale University Press, 2000) the American scholar
James E. Young writes that there is no intrinsic meaning in memorials.
Instead, they derive their meaning from visitors' interactions: each visitor
makes their own experience of memory at a memorial.

The structure of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, which invites a visitor
for an individual experience - as has been stated by its architect Peter
Eisenman -,  points to the intention of the Signature Event Context project.
Eisenman concludes his statement with the following explanation of the
experience in the Memorial:

"In this monument there is no goal, no end, no working one's way in or out.
The duration of an individual's experience of it grants no further
understanding, since understanding is impossible. The time of the monument,
its duration from top surface to ground, is disjoined from the time of
experience.. In this context, there is no nostalgia, no memory of the past,
only the living memory of the individual experience. Here, we can only know
the past through its manifestation in the present." (Eisenman Architects,
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin. Project text by Peter
Eisenman)

In Derrida's words, walking and talking signatures by Janša, Janša and Janša
are the physical manifestations of nowness via individual experience. The
traces of the walking and talking signature are left only in virtual space.
Memory is always already a performance of virtuality.


REASON FOR BANNING S.E.C. FROM TRANSMEDIALE.08

According to the new director of Transmediale Stephen Kovats and to the
Guest Curator of the exhibition CONSPIRE. Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, the
great cause for banning this project from the festival 4 days before its
opening has to be find in "judicial and legislative reasons" (Kovats) and
"personal - curatorial and ethical convictions< (Petrešin-Bachelez).

Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša understand the banning act as an ACT
OF POWER perpetrated by the artistic director of the festival and its
guest-curator to the detriment of the artists and as an ACT OF VIOLENCE
towards freedom of artistic expression.

Artists hereby formally invite the director of Transmediale Stephen Kovats,
the guest-curator of the exhibition CONSPIRE. Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez and
the general public to an open confrontation on issues disclosed by Signature
Event Context to take place in form of a public round table.


"Signature Event Context" - images of the performance
www.aksioma.org/sec/press.html


Credits
Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša
Signature Event Context
Performance, SI, 2008
Production: Aksioma | www.aksioma.org
Co-production: Maska | www.maska.si, Arscenic | www.arscenic.info

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