C O D A

GERRIT GÖLLNER

6 VIGNETTES FROM MARGIN MILIEU

...I must admit, what you are asking me to do, means that I make myself at home... and in such a transitional sort of place; not just an entrance hall, but a crosswalk too. The foyer to this museum, an entrance, sometimes just a meeting ground, or for passing time, a place facilitating a public restroom known to be free of charge, even from one entrance door to the other, a shortcut for going somewhere else... (Margin Milieu)

An Interlude is a site-specific installation of an intersection.

What happens on a border, at the edge of things, keeps coming back. An edge, that point of between, seems far too small to be a place of its own. Or it can be the entire journey between two points. An edge can allow entry or can turn you back, even deport. While on the border, a state can be of transition or a pause in the daily. Maybe it is the very edge of a thing, which gives it its name, calls out an arrival, or detours a route. And then, maybe it isn’t even about the edge itself, but how you pass it.

...An estuary, where salt water from the sea meets fresh water from the land, is an edge of two worlds. An estuary can be a diluted form of each water, an instance of a world of parts. Or, an estuary can be a place where two waters meet, as a junction of two worlds uniting to form a greater singular world. Or, an estuary can be a place where two waters meet and a third water happens, the estuary itself, a world become unto itself... by those who live there...

INTERLUDE:

An Interlude begins with an initial proposition which acts as an intersection, or crossroads, of a place for an event to happen. Each proposed installation is an occurrence within the brackets of a given environment, a set duration of time, its passengers, and any aforementioned conditions. Interludes intervene an already or actual environment. It can be a very subtle intervention or severe, though it would never want to take over, as it is this environment which feeds it... but it will tease boundary.

First, a proposition.

Then the occurrence of intersection. An installation, a sorb/act relay of situation. In the end, in the after, a Coda.An end piece, perhaps the only object with the intention of ever being finished.

An Interlude is only complete by the farthest edge of its proposed duration.

Anything occurring is about nearing, being in the proximity of some finality, always in vibration with a momentary potential or coincidence.

Therefore, the making of this installation is of an adaptive sort, perhaps more of an adjusting than a making, in resonance with what is going on.

The first Interlude happened out of a situation. I was asked if I’d want to do something with a gallery space, which was to be closed for the summer months. In the end, it was decided to split up the time between three artists, and to make an experiment of it. I decided to do something that focused just on the time spent there and of that place; to completely immerse myself and work in the limits of an allotted time and place. This as an interlude was two fold... I was going to interrupt a place, by being there constantly, working only from what the space and its neighbor-hood gave me. And it was going to intervene on studio-bound artmaking.

The underlying impulse was of being an artist ‚outside’, making as a daily transfer, in the com-munity and of the moment; to drop into a situation, with only a hunch of an idea, working outside of routine, and letting this given period be the feed, or means for making something, things I hadn’t done before.

It would be a folding installation project with the components of place and person and letting all elements of a situation be possible determining ‚cues’ for making work. Folding as a means of work which surfaces from the crease of an idea, rather than an idea held constant. I was more interested in the parameters of this situation than the output of work itself, of the idea of coming in with nothing. The installation was an improvisation, only because it couldn’t be anticipated.

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I first understood this piece as being like a game of ping pong, acts of shuttling between taking in information and doing something with it, a making in terms of a dialogue. Then came the idea of asking Jon Shelton to join me. Jon is an artist I did not know very well at the time; it was an impulsive choice to ask him. This literally heightened a situation for making in terms of dialogue.

I am intrigued with the foreign, there where evidence is, but not yet defined. If an encounter undertaken is truly foreign, there being not a single assumption held, respect is most complete. One stands facing the unknown or other, and meets, a person, a group of people, a place, or a creative potential.

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CUE:

Imagine a drive, doesn’t matter where, impressions pass, maybe just in the keeping of a half-sight, coinciding with the remnants of an idea, maybe one even scratched, and then something heard... I am talking about these things which are just barely noticed, or of a notice before any deciphered comprehension... and have it in themselves to linger, either in the hives attatched to a memory or in that they just happen again. Subliminal tokens without reason, for the taking.

In an Interlude, a cue determines what happens. It is anything which leads to the impulse of making something, something else of that thing. It is almost like an idea derived from a thing, but much more impulsive, not fixed, not following as a logical consequence. The run of a cue is not linear, it may lead or be led by a number of threads. A cue can be followed through, interrupted, set off course, retracked later, it can surface for a moment, and then dissapear, and it can mingle with other cues. It is momentarily driven, and results in a sort of spontaneous combustion, which can only be understood afterwards. A cue could be triggered by an object from the setting, a noticed happening, patterns traced, organisms, plants, people, changes in environment, something picked up, read, thought, heard, said, a mood even, my own or some-one else’s... any absorbtion of environment. What makes a cue special, is that it reveals itself after the fact. Afterwards, it can be traced as an agent for the surge-creation for something new, which is at least once beyond its recall. A cue manifests in the simultaneity of reception and deliverance.

How a cue works is similar to having a conversation. We may come together with some context in mind, though the entirety of persons and moment present will influence... so that the run of a conversation can only be speculated, and sometimes the best talks run completely otherwise. A cue then, like the most recent words spoken by one person in a conversation, is the last point for anything to come.

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MARGIN MILIEU

Place: Foyer (Museum Ludwig)Duration: 10 October – 7 December 2008Passengers: Gerrit Göllner, Jon SheltonConditions: This Interlude was to be in conjunction with an artist book exhibition of Jon and myself in the library, and that making books on site be an active part of the installation.

Probably the first book ’made’, was in the margin of an already existent book. Being quite young then, drawing in, or adjusting a book, making it better, of course. Or when a little older, in some school textbook, keeping notation or to while away. These kinds of books, a making or remaking, to some degree an overtaking, even a flirtation with vandalism. One closed circuit of an act of destruction-creation or vice versa, from an early on... in the margin, on the edge of a book, the edge of permission, claiming territory. Milieu is the center of a place, there where a particular envirnoment is understood. Margin Milieu, a middle of edges, which is impossible, unless you think about it as a state always in motion, of middles morphing and edges shifting... and of it only possible to be in terms of proximity.

The foyer of Museum Ludwig is a place of hinge between two edges, being smack in be-tween two independent functioning institutions, the city’s art and museum library and Museum Ludwig. And then the foyer itself, with its constant reorganization because of having multiple streams of function, to make a site of co-situation; a co-situation of a very active, redefining kind of place, as the foyer in its own was, and another which is intimate, granting the ability to concentrate, to make books, to draw. This Interlude became one of adjustment, redetermining or reinventing again and again, the edges of a public and private domain, social and sanctum states. Margin Milieu dealt in a way with making home, homemaking, which in a sense is adap-tation, remaking a known state in the midst of moving states, being bodies in motion. Perhaps it is a dialogue with that which is foreign or other, and that the finding of one’s place, or the determination of place never is a final affair, but one happening over and over again.

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C O D A

CODA

1. Drop Reigns 2. Notals 3. Tenders 4. Impressive

5. Rimspotting 6. Ricochet Testimonials

1. DROP REIGNS

ROTARY IN DROP WORLDSPOCKET DOMAINSSIGHT-SEEING AND WALKING ON WATER

A drop, the shape water takes, or in speaking of bodies of water, the smallest possible. A drop is also, in the sense of dropping, an action nearly instantaneous. The general structure of installation in the foyer was continuously shifting, assimilating itself to situations, having a pliant edge as a necessity. Sometimes it appropriated itself by being submissive and at other times, teasing a takeover. In general it was flexible, bending. This was a housing project by creating walls, defining an inside and outside.

Later in the installation, I began being on an inside, though in full public sight through a window.

Here, still adjusting for privacy, but otherwise from making walls. At one point transparent half globes became miniature worlds within the chaos of an active working place, which in miniature form resembled the structure I found myself in. The project of housing shifted from making a barrier by walls, to the focus of how objects in the vicinity make at home. I got to thinking, how about flexibility once further...not about it as a state of being flexible, bend-ing, elastic, enduring, but of flexibility as a root, an intelligence or system of its own; flexibility as an anti-structure or a drop structure. In so being, a structure or occurrence of taking form which isn’t built, or the effect of an evololutionary development, without a progressive sense of growth, without being adjustable, instead, a perfected structure placed, like the place a drop of water takes, in each occurrence already complete. A drop of water just is, without the partial states of becoming or leaving, or it is just gone, by evaporation, a moment when the smallest drop disappears. Or, it could happen by joining other drops, another water body. It is a form or a world which is either instantaneously complete, or instantaneously absent. In this manner there is no situation of time, no phases of becoming happen, only appearance and disappear-ance in rotation. Acts of popping up and being gone, perhaps never quite here, nor quite away, and the issue of existence unnecessary because when they are it is undeniable... rotations of in situ.

DROP REIGNS

DROP REIGNS

2. NOTALS

A Notal is a fusion of a notice and a drawing/notation;A drawing, an event of a co-incidence.

(The following are book pages from ‘Project Spreads : Margin Milieu’, made there and during Margin Milieu.)

3. TENDERS

SKOR RADWELLINGDELIVERY SYSTEMS

Years ago I spent time in a part of the world where people would travel for days to a holy moun-tain in order to walk around it, some even in prostration. This circumambulation was called skor ra, and the count of each lap meant something for each person, they took care of the count, nothing random about it. On another part of that trip, it was a house with garden, and again the counts of lap, much quicker this time. And then it was the children in the morning at the well outside my sleeping window, brushing teeth and chanting mantra, every morning, same place, I could count on it.... and still can, with the verse being stuck in mind...om-a-ra-pa-tsa-na-di-di-di-di...

Almost every day, for two and a half months, the site of Margin Milieu became my place of stay, so things from home came to the museum. I brought in the tomatoes from the garden that needed to be rippened. Each tomato was wrapped in paper, put in a box - a wooden crate used for shipping explosives. Every day they needed to be checked of their progress, it can easily happen that they rot... became the sculpture ‚Tenders’. There were a few things that needed to be taken care of on a daily basis: ripping off the last calendar day, putting up a piece in the middle of the foyer, every evening taking it down, redrawing chalk lines on the floor. I began thinking about how these daily routines, rotations, almost ritualistic, even if as a habit... in mak-ing the lap, our visitations, marks of day, as an ultimate form of nomadicism. And of dwelling itself, how we keep a day, as a housing.

These rotations then become delivery systems, in that each closed circuit invites a disruption, when things rippen, end, fail, or another option is given.... tea instead of coffee at three, toma-toes become stew, a shovel instead of a broom by the snow. A conversation interrupting the evening take down, a cue for a situation of recourse, a new dwelling.

TENDERS

TENDERS

4. IMPRESSIVE

WINDOWFORCE FOOTINGMEMBRAL TAKES

I’ve had this idea, of putting up half a ping pong table against a window, the window in place of the net, and the other half up on the other side. Then having a game with someone, two balls, two people together, playing by themselves. I’ve heard it said, that being in a city can be one of the lonliest places, it depends. Being in full company, while alone, also depends.

A window, can keep out the cold and let in the day. It gives my daydream many options. I can go over to the other side or not, without even moving, or can toy with the thought of being in two places at once. I choose, looking through the window, nearly a nothing to my sight, to see you as if on another side or as directly facing me. Through a window, I don’t have to confess

my sighting, as I would without the glass being in between. A pane of glass, screening, you on the other side of your entrance in here. Or as a monitor screen, displaying an offer to each on the sides of the glass, the other... it depends. This choice of attending the place where my sight takes me or not, an invitation, of the window as a barrier or a single side, and who is watching being seen?

You impress, I am an impression, you are impressive, I’m impressed. You are an impressive. To press in, upon... a force footing of membership, you have the ability to swallow me up whole; in the same swallow I do of you, too... takes of membrane by soft permissions.

In the first Interlude, there was a telephone booth. Twenty-four hours a day open to view, built in the window towards the street, lit by a single bulb, and with the impression of someone just having vacated it. It was intended to be rudimentary, mixing historical and regional postures, with tight walls, a desk fronted up to the pane of glass, a chair, and telephone. Throughout this Interlude collections of notes piled up, left overs, drawings of partial content, unfinished busi-ness...maps, charts, doodles, words, even things, clothing, a blanket. It became a sprawl of occupation, telephone booth, office, cell, bunker, even someone’s private room.

In Margin Milieu, the structure was temporary, it could extend or coil itself up. The completion of the structure was continuous, in readaptating to what was happening in the foyer. I was in-terested in the idea of being both transitory and dependent, a place which was fleeting but also determined to stay. On the window, transparent tubes were attatched, through which rope was fed. These tubes were fixed, while the rope, the base component to our structure shifted... like a barnacle, attatched to the window, the strcture would sway, reshape itself as needed, respec-tive of its environment. Thinking back, the structure seemed as a sort of homing chamber, being in states of mutation, adaptive, migral, but always coming back. The homing pigeon comes back to the same location of perch, and this here was about coming back to a state of home, where one could find the quiet to concentrate on work.It was an attempt of creating public sanctum states, where the edges of private and publc were always in an approximate state of being; where even the position of oneself being on the ‚inside’ or ‚outside’ was at times unclear. Later on, I made a complete enclosed space, with it’s interiors obvious. In this state, the homing device became the things I filled the chamber with, all partials, works in progress, debris from being there; not by building walls, but by placing things mine.

Through the glass into the interiors of a chamber became a situation of who was watching who... mine in your sight, while your sight impressed that what is mine; a simultaneity of impres-sion granted.

IMPRESSIVE

IMPRESSIVE

5. RIMSPOTTING

MOMENTS OF CONFLUENCELIFTED TRESPASS

Rimspotting is about a participation in a phenomenon rather accidentally. It is about spotting (a not sought after sort of sighting) a happening which runs concurrently to something you have initiated in another circumstance, leaving you in the end as a bystander; all you can do is watch and move with what is happening, and by this a work is completed.

A moment of confluence, there where two streams, or systems, meet to form another body. Also, at a point of confluence, a circuit is completed bridging the path of individual sources, closing a circuit, stating a rim. Lifted Trespass: I had made a book prior to Margin Milieu called 36 Single Green Trespasses,

an homage of sorts, to the instances of single plant or plant bodies 'taking over' or claiming-reclaiming the urban. It was a conceptual piece, 36 ink drawings of targets. Then I came to work in the museum, and there, as if staged, was a very fine single green trespass, about four meters up, growing out of a corner in the outer façade of the museum, while also being within the yard, or grounds, of Margin Milieu. During my time there, it went through the season, it fell... was picked up, the trespass lifted most literally. A lifted trespass, a ban lifted, changing the terms of entry into a territory, when lifted, gone public. It also nudges on the idea of picking up a criminal. I am glad every time, seeing these acts of ‘crime’, by those testing our persistence of claiming ground, or stating territory; a tree out of a rooftop, grass in the subway stairwell…In the end this piece is about a complete cycle... something is made which is taken over by a happening, and the coincidence of this as a means of conclusion.

RIMSPOTTING

RIMSPOTTING

6. RICOCHET TESTIMONIALS

INTRO-DUCTSPASSIVE PASSENGERSPINBALL

A yard is that tract of ground given by the specifics of an activity. In Margin Milieu, the foyer, the library stairwell, and the things, objects already there made up the yard. These objects or de-tails, particulars of a place are as passive passengers at an intersection. Passive passengers can act as ‘intro-ducts’, sightings which invite/introduce the possibility of a rebound; a single take of cue.

A Ricochet Testimonial begins by a single break-away from any given point in a yard. It is a one time rebound of a cue, a single note instead of a lead or instance along the trace of a path,

or an additive to an idea. (A move somewhat like the events in the ‚yard’ of a pinball machine, where the playing ball never seems to spin off the same island consistently, each rebound is a single unpredictable event.) At another time, when a completely different occurrence is noticed corresponding to an earlier break-away, does this earliest break-away become known as a Ricochet Testimonial

Example 1: Very early on, an injury on the wall in the stairwell was a duct for a drawing called, 'crowding'. During the Interlude there were cases of various notals about the movement of groups of people in the foyer, or other participants in swarm. Later ‘crowding’ was noticed again in another context because of what was happening in the foyer… in coincidence, a testimony.

Example 2: A raised, growth of paint on the wall, became the drawing, 'raise'. Later on, a notebook called 'Raised Stoppages' was made, literally of what raised my head, caught my attention, and stopped me from drawing. The entire book is about this disruption, and of disruption as a deciding factor for a drawing. I made the book as a means of being both, a person watching, and one being watched. The book made me look busy in something, to not disturb those around me, while I was actually taking notes of people surrounding me or letting them distract-decide a drawing. The coincidene of raise, raising attention back to the physical incidence on a wall, making this ‘fault’ of a smooth surface a Ricochet Testimonial.

Example 3: The floor tiles in the foyer radiate outward from a center point where a Henry Moore sculpture stands. Around the sculpture itself, tiles take on a pattern like the board markings of the game, 'Mensch ärgere Dich nicht'. In English this translates to “Do not get angry, man”, and is a game similar to Parcheesi. With colored chalk the five pawn points in each of the four corners we drawn, just as on the gameboard.The cleaning personal didn’t know what to do, if they should clean the marks or not... a single item in a series of episodes between museum staff and Margin Milieu on the issue of ‘boundry’, our spreading out of bounds. There were later other instances of floor drawings and objects, and thus, a dialogue of roaming seepage. Visitors took part, renavigated their line of walk, played with what was on the floor, moved, picked up, put things back in what seemed their proper place, or decided an item trash, and threw it away. For some it was a confrontation (even made angry), for others an invitation. What happened on the floor nudged on the edges of a yard... the irony of situation, the coincidence of participation, as if in a game, and back to what literally was the first floor drawing… a testimony.

RICOCHET TESTIMONIALS

GERRIT GÖLLNER 2009