Blow Job Peter Friedl Proposal, Hamburger Kunsthalle, 2004
Blow Job (working title) is an exhibition project dealing with theatricality and its media possibilities. In the form of a monographically structured project, I treat various themes with which I have dealt in my work for a long time, for example in Dummy (documenta X, 1997), Peter Friedl, (Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1998), La Bohème (Berlin, 1997), Tiger oder Löwe (Hamburger Kunsthalle, 2000), and King Kong (film installation, 2001). Important in this context are also the projects concerning children’s monologues: Kromme Elleboog (Witte de With, Rotterdam, 2000) and Four or Five Roses (South Africa, 2001–2004).
First, Blow Job was the name of an Internet project (2001), whose concept I developed and kept as open as possible. The premise, set in advance, was a brief scenario full of biographical, historical, and fictional references including seven acting characters. According to the plan, at the beginning the acting “persons”—who experienced frequent transformations over the course of the piece—were: Geraldine, a young architect; Peter, a writer; Leo, his 11 year-old son; Michael Key, an older conceptual artist; Hannah, student and activist; Jimmie, a neighbor; and Sahra Wagenknecht, the Communist. Over a longer time frame (and anonymously), running dialogues, stage directions, and digressions could be contributed to the website. Once the contributions were written, they could not be corrected or erased.
After the website (www.peter.to) was dissolved, the stored text, with offshoots in all directions, became the raw material for another stage of processing. Among other things, I am interested in how a (dramatic) “text” arises without the usual intentional authorship; the specific qualities, meanings, and claims of power in the role play between author/artist/editor—comparable in part with the previously mentioned children’s monologues (although those had more to do with practices that are known from the genre of documentary and oral history). The initial question is: what will become of it in the media of an exhibition? How does an “exhibition” arise from a “text”? What will become of the exhibition? Blow Job is not conceived as a hybrid performative transfer story (theater, film, etc., in the museum). Theatricality—a rather loaded variable for contemporary art history—is employed here both thematically as well as medially to expand the concept of “exhibiting.” As a multilayered aesthetic venture, Blow Job aims to explore this question within the possibilities offered by the institutional framework and to intensify it to an aesthetic experience.
A conceivable scenario for the exhibition might be: at the beginning, and as an important part of the exhibition, the final, edited “text” is available. Blow Job as drama, between sensationalism, history, and magic. (The particular weave of the plot—including the persons, during a Berlin summer—is entirely open for change and transformation). Added to that are the necessary elements (props), which arise from the imaginary and real scenography of the drama, forming the Blow Job installation.
Blow Job as installation: an exhibition situation that functions simultaneously as a stage set—where the drama climaxes. During the exhibition, Blow Job should be filmed with actors in an atmosphere that is equally as artificial as it is concrete. Rehearsals and filming could be incorporated as components of the exhibition and remain accessible to visitors. A few of my other works (Dummy, La Bohème, Peter Friedl, Snjókarl, King Kong) can be shown as supplements to Blow Job, depending on the exhibition display.
Blow Job as film: In reality, it is about aesthetic transformation and not documentation. Behind this is also the wish that the Blow Job project be created, or is able to continue in cooperation with other institutions, whereby precise reflection on that which is specific to an institution is helpful (as enriching material in another exhibition institution). Film is associated with classical forms of co-production, thus it also makes sense in a project that aims to also exhibit the exhibition space as a production site. With Blow Job, that could, for example, concretely lead to a dubbed version (or several dubbed versions).
Blow Job Peter Friedl Proposal, Hamburger Kunsthalle, 2004
Blow Job (working title) is an exhibition project dealing with theatricality and its media possibilities. In the form of a monographically structured project, I treat various themes with which I have dealt in my work for a long time, for example in Dummy (documenta X, 1997), Peter Friedl, (Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1998), La Bohème (Berlin, 1997), Tiger oder Löwe (Hamburger Kunsthalle, 2000), and King Kong (film installation, 2001). Important in this context are also the projects concerning children’s monologues: Kromme Elleboog (Witte de With, Rotterdam, 2000) and Four or Five Roses (South Africa, 2001–2004).
First, Blow Job was the name of an Internet project (2001), whose concept I developed and kept as open as possible. The premise, set in advance, was a brief scenario full of biographical, historical, and fictional references including seven acting characters. According to the plan, at the beginning the acting “persons”—who experienced frequent transformations over the course of the piece—were: Geraldine, a young architect; Peter, a writer; Leo, his 11 year-old son; Michael Key, an older conceptual artist; Hannah, student and activist; Jimmie, a neighbor; and Sahra Wagenknecht, the Communist. Over a longer time frame (and anonymously), running dialogues, stage directions, and digressions could be contributed to the website. Once the contributions were written, they could not be corrected or erased.
After the website (www.peter.to) was dissolved, the stored text, with offshoots in all directions, became the raw material for another stage of processing. Among other things, I am interested in how a (dramatic) “text” arises without the usual intentional authorship; the specific qualities, meanings, and claims of power in the role play between author/artist/editor—comparable in part with the previously mentioned children’s monologues (although those had more to do with practices that are known from the genre of documentary and oral history). The initial question is: what will become of it in the media of an exhibition? How does an “exhibition” arise from a “text”? What will become of the exhibition? Blow Job is not conceived as a hybrid performative transfer story (theater, film, etc., in the museum). Theatricality—a rather loaded variable for contemporary art history—is employed here both thematically as well as medially to expand the concept of “exhibiting.” As a multilayered aesthetic venture, Blow Job aims to explore this question within the possibilities offered by the institutional framework and to intensify it to an aesthetic experience.
A conceivable scenario for the exhibition might be: at the beginning, and as an important part of the exhibition, the final, edited “text” is available. Blow Job as drama, between sensationalism, history, and magic. (The particular weave of the plot—including the persons, during a Berlin summer—is entirely open for change and transformation). Added to that are the necessary elements (props), which arise from the imaginary and real scenography of the drama, forming the Blow Job installation.
Blow Job as installation: an exhibition situation that functions simultaneously as a stage set—where the drama climaxes. During the exhibition, Blow Job should be filmed with actors in an atmosphere that is equally as artificial as it is concrete. Rehearsals and filming could be incorporated as components of the exhibition and remain accessible to visitors. A few of my other works (Dummy, La Bohème, Peter Friedl, Snjókarl, King Kong) can be shown as supplements to Blow Job, depending on the exhibition display.
Blow Job as film: In reality, it is about aesthetic transformation and not documentation. Behind this is also the wish that the Blow Job project be created, or is able to continue in cooperation with other institutions, whereby precise reflection on that which is specific to an institution is helpful (as enriching material in another exhibition institution). Film is associated with classical forms of co-production, thus it also makes sense in a project that aims to also exhibit the exhibition space as a production site. With Blow Job, that could, for example, concretely lead to a dubbed version (or several dubbed versions).