A Subway Guide
Project

Every viewer is after their work of art.

Every work of art finds their audience.

Every work of art accomplishes their audience.

The work of art reflects the viewer’s frame of mind.

‘I have often said, and this is a fairly Christian idea,

 that the artist is the one who holds the mirror:

anybody passing by can see their reflection in it;

but at the same time

the one holding the mirror is no longer existing,

he turns into the others...’

K. Boltansky

the others are dead

 

The subject, objectivised into the social medium through a variety of social practices, the life finally, is to be evaluated as object and treated likewise: an object turned into knowledge, into a set personality, into a safe, mapped out biography, into some event the importance of which we have grasped. The subject is being trapped  in the archives, by a fixed image and through a particular action.

 

The authenticity that has transcended its objectivity, will be next framed, fixed, clotted up and in the long run - forced into death. A dead body now, the subject turns into an object: identified as well as individualized.

 

The action of the subject in the continuity of social space fix it to a set of relations, which on their part, cause the subject’s objectivization and materialization, ....and partial mortification.

 

Our actions come out of what we wish to keep for us, of what we leave behind...after death: we strife for and ardently wish to live up to the publicly acknowledged normes of worth and value.....Think either well of the dead or nothing.

 

 

MY IDEAL VIEWER

 

There is a brutal truth that artists deliberately avoid in order to prevent the disintegration of their own personality. The fact that dead artists seem more worthy of praise and in fact are better praised than living artists, is as obvious as it is depressing. The dead artist is once and for ever identified: placed in his safe, mapped out biography he is a man of defined personality that may provide a source of knowledge or probably be subject to reconstructions. He is by far the honest among artists for the simple reason that he will never be misleading the public again: he is a clearly defined object and any doubt, interpretation, evaluation or opinion, oriented to him, in fact has little to share with his personality. He takes hints and innuendoes easily (or rather he has no choice but to accept the twists of fortune with their biographical, esthetic or social aspects). For once he becomes the compy, the safest the ideal artist.

 

Anytime I crushed into my viewer I understand in one way or another that every viewer hides  dead man, somewhere inside. Most often the losses are moral aesthetic and intellectual, but they can also be emotional, ethic and political. The viewer’s  impartiality seems of no help in this case. The local paralysis and dead limbs infect the withering body, still alive. Deviations in thought and action are rather caused by the living part, than by the dead one. And that is how we’ have come to a conclusion: to have a viewer of precise, loyal and impartial judgement will eman to have him individualized, objectivized and identified and that is to have him dead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Subway Guide
Project

 

1. Install a ‘funeral escort’, consisting of a single vapid sculpture of human shape, at a proper place in a subway.

2.Hand The Subway Guide, with instructions how to move ahead enclosed, to the passers- by.

3. Set the subway to sound.

4. Gather their impressions and record them. (audio/video records, pictures).

5. Organize an exhibition of the materials (TV interviews with passers)

 

Guiding principles:

 

Multiplication, Likeness

Chinese funeral rites, practised in 3 c. B.C.

(the tomb of the emperor Tsin Shi Hwan)

 

Desired effect:

Distorting the daily conscience and routine of passers-by through sound, text, image, forms and space organization. The sculptures with their shapes, number and size push the passers-by out of their usual space and make them lose their way.

 

Objective:

To force the occidental passer-by into his awareness of being a traveller through his own life....a passer-by through existance.......on his way to death.

 

1991                                                                                                            V. Zankov

 

 

Install a ‘funeral escort’

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Subway Guide

 

 We are all buried.
It is a question of time only.
Ventsislav Zankov

The Subway
coming into the ground

- feel the difference between under-the ground and  in-the-ground;
- feel the difference between the temperatures above and under the ground;
- see the dusk and the neon lights (they are artificial, aren’t they);
- touch the invisible soilaround you - it is everywhere;
- listen to the echoing steps of a hurrying man;
- listen to your own steps - you are the same;
- feel the warmth of someone’s breath into your neck;
- breath in the stinking urine smell, coming from behind a corner;
- Feel your body, you are still moving, breathing, still under-and-in-the ground,
  you are still alive?

 

The Subway
a daily funeral in portions

REMEMBER:
1. To have a good reason when comining into-the-ground;
2. To use the ground only in case...( using the ground is not obligatory;
3. Coming into the ground may last long;
4. Coming into the ground for real is once in a lifetime.

 
 A Subway Guide

Appendix I

reality
multiplied reality
simulated reality
super-reality
lack of reality

 shadows
reality as a shadow
death as lack of reality
the way to death as reality
life as the way to death
the way as reality
the way as simulation
one-way
way

likeness
identification
multiplication
run-of-the-mill

 

Dress! Keep the likeness! Grow! Smile!

 

 

A Subway Guide
Appendix II