A Mourning of All Places

PERFORMANCE

  • An artist walks
  • When she/he (or the place itself) considers it appropriate, the artist stops and mourns
  • The artist mourns the place not for a specific reason, but for whatever place it is. The specific reason for mourning is its existence, its whatever nature
  • The artist mourns for as long as she/he (or the place itself) considers it appropriate, and then keeps walking
  • This will be replicated without distinction
  • The performance is on-going– as much as place, space, time and artist are constantly shifting
  • The performance takes place on a regular basis
  • Not a paradox: a replication of (each) singularity

 

DOCUMENTATION

  • Each act of mourning will be documented through a picture.
  • The picture will show the back of the artist, with the artist facing away from the camera and looking toward the place of mourning
  • The picture will show the artist in place, the artist and the place of/in mourning
  • The pictures will not be labelled, nor archived as a mapping of the world – instead we simply acknowledge the contingency of the event, outside of any ‘narrative’
  • Kaspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer, evokes the natural sublime. A Mourning of all Places brings the encounter ‘down to earth’, here and now, without distinctions. A corner, a tree, a toilet

 

INSTALLATIONS

  • The installation is based on the documentation and the reiteration of the series, following the practice of repetition of each singularity
  • Installations will be devoid of any specific narrative (e.g. groupings in terms of geography, themes, comparisons, contrasts, politics, etc): the installation will replicate the ‘whatever nature’ of the performance
  • Installations could be based exclusively on documentation, or be a blending of images and performances
  • eg. a mountain of artist books, each page with a different image of mourning, scattered on the ground, or piled up, etc. and available to the audience for consultation and re-arrangement. Or: a pile of artist books, and a live mourning of the room of the installation. Or: photos scattered across the room, and a large print of the artist mourning this same room, hanging on a wall. Or: Wallpaper. Etc

 

CONCEPTS

  • ‘The common translation of this term as “whatever” in the sense of “it does not matter which, indifferently” is certainly correct, but in its form the Latin says exactly the opposite: Quodlibet ens is not “being, it does not matter which,” but rather “being such that it always matters.” ‘ – Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community
  • Sites, are not mourned for their value, for their ‘belonging to a category’, for example, a monument, a cemetery, a history, a person…
  • The discourse of mourning is not questioned: adding, cutting, troubling, queering sites, monuments, cemeteries, histories, persons… other ‘belongings’, other discourse/powers in a fight for hegemony
  • Mourning is not ‘given voice’
  • A democratic dialogue between traditions of mourning is not sought
  • Diversity and fluidity are not celebrated
  • The mourning of each place: of every human being that may have been buried under each ground. The dead at sea. The astronauts. Mourning of every possible deed of every human being in a place. Thursday afternoons. And animals. Ants and fish. Plants, trees, weed. Rocks. Pebbles. Geological transformations. Machines. Technologies and grids… whatever
  • Mourning here and now, mourning (at) any time
  • Mourning… such that it always matters

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A Mourning of All Places is an ongoing practice, however dedicated residencies or actions took place in:

Formello, Rome, Italy

Mariah Island, Tasmania, Australia

Tokyo, Japan