do it
with instructions from philosophers:
Friday, August 28, 2009
New Instruction
Instructions from Jordi Ibáñez Fanés
SINCE YOU HAVE TO DO IT
Do it in the conviction that
Nothing is ever as you expect it to be
Do it in the hope that
Eventually something will happen
In this world of ghostly events
Do it because the only way to escape having to do it
Or dying from boredom
Or eating money is
To do it, or
Do it because the only way to have a pleasant dinner
Is to have done it
Do it for the unforgettable words
Somebody once said to you
Or for the girl or lady or boy or gentleman you like
Or for the dog waiting for you on the doorstep
Or for the plant you will have to water
Once you have done it
Do it and then you will have your superego’s permission
For going swimming or doing whatever
You wanted to
Do (without any it)
Do it for the royalists in the name of the republic
Do it for the real thing
In the name of the impossible
Do it for the beautiful things
Of coming life
For the present’s sake
Do it
Yes
Do it and then imagine the world
As it would be if you had not done it
O how sad indeed all seems to be…
Then: Au boulot, mon ami,
That means: Do it, my dear.
And don’t waste your life, your clear
Nights and days, reading philosophy.
Jordi Ibáñez Fanés
SINCE YOU HAVE TO DO IT
Do it in the conviction that
Nothing is ever as you expect it to be
Do it in the hope that
Eventually something will happen
In this world of ghostly events
Do it because the only way to escape having to do it
Or dying from boredom
Or eating money is
To do it, or
Do it because the only way to have a pleasant dinner
Is to have done it
Do it for the unforgettable words
Somebody once said to you
Or for the girl or lady or boy or gentleman you like
Or for the dog waiting for you on the doorstep
Or for the plant you will have to water
Once you have done it
Do it and then you will have your superego’s permission
For going swimming or doing whatever
You wanted to
Do (without any it)
Do it for the royalists in the name of the republic
Do it for the real thing
In the name of the impossible
Do it for the beautiful things
Of coming life
For the present’s sake
Do it
Yes
Do it and then imagine the world
As it would be if you had not done it
O how sad indeed all seems to be…
Then: Au boulot, mon ami,
That means: Do it, my dear.
And don’t waste your life, your clear
Nights and days, reading philosophy.
Jordi Ibáñez Fanés
New Instructions
Instruction from
Marcus Steinweg
(JUST) DO IT!
ASK YOURSELF THESE QUESTIONS. ANSWER THEM WITHOUT HESITATING. DO NOT REGRET
THE RESULT OF YOUR RESEARCH:
1. WHY AM I DOING WHAT I AM DOING?
2. WHAT IS ART?
3. AM I AN ARTIST BECAUSE I AM DOING ART OR AM I DOING ART BECAUSE I WANT TO
BE AN ARTIST?
Marcus Steinweg
(JUST) DO IT!
ASK YOURSELF THESE QUESTIONS. ANSWER THEM WITHOUT HESITATING. DO NOT REGRET
THE RESULT OF YOUR RESEARCH:
1. WHY AM I DOING WHAT I AM DOING?
2. WHAT IS ART?
3. AM I AN ARTIST BECAUSE I AM DOING ART OR AM I DOING ART BECAUSE I WANT TO
BE AN ARTIST?
Friday, August 7, 2009
Instructions for DO IT ‘09 ( list as of 14 August..more instructions to be added as they come in)
Instructions from
Jean-Luc Nancy
Fais-le !
« le » : ce que tu as à faire,
Ce qu’il te revient de faire,
Ce qui t’incombe
« le » : indéterminé, indéterminable,
Qui n’existera que quand tu l’auras fait
Fais le, fais ça,
Cette chose que nul n’attend
Pas même toi
Cette chose improbable
Fais ce qui viendra de ton faire
Et pourtant ne sera pas fait par toi
Ne sera pas produit
Mais viendra de bien avant ton faire
De bien avant toi
Fais ce qui t’échappe
Qui n’est pas à toi
Et que tu dois
Do it!
"it": what you have to do,
What is up to you to do,
What falls to you
"it": undetermined, undeterminable,
Which will only exist when you have done it
Do it, do that,
That thing no-one expects,
Not even you,
That improbable thing
Do what stems from your doing
And yet is not done by you
Nor produced
But stems from well before your doing
From well before you
Do what escapes you
That is not yours
And that you owe
Instructions from
Hélène Frichot
Do It
Instructions for Artists
VCA 2009
Hélène Frichot
hjfrichot@gmail.com
A Work in Ten Parts: Gathering and its Forms
Note: It is not a requirement of the work that all ten parts are undertaken.
0. Wait
Install a silent piece on waiting based around the concept of an any-space-whatever.
1. Take One ladder
Climb a ladder to look over a wall.
Describe what you see on the other side in either text or image.
Decide whether or not you want to kick away the ladder once you are up there.
Send a depiction of this undertaking to a friend that you have lost contact with.
2. Take Two piles of clothes
Take two people who are in a difficult relationship (paternal, maternal, sibling, work, love relationship, etc…).
Each takes all the clothes that they own (excluding accessories such as shoes and belts), except for what they are wearing on their backs (don’t cheat).
Each participant in the difficult relationship constructs very neatly folded piles of their clothes. An iron might be needed. Some unobtrusive scaffolding may also be in order.
The respective height of these piles should be determined by the height of the person to whom they belong.
Between selected pieces of clothing a message should be secreted on a piece of paper, either about the piece of clothing, or how the piece of clothing might reveal some story about the other in this difficult relationship (who is, simultaneously, also constructing their pile of clothes).
Document.
Take these two piles of clothes and construct one pile of clothes. Dimensions and construction method of this third pile to be determined by both participants. Somewhere in the pile co-write a story that relates the details of your difficult relationship.
Document.
3. Take Three jigsaw puzzle carpenters
With two people you feel ambivalent about build a series of jigsaw puzzles that do not work.
The pieces should not fit right, and parts should be missing, and so forth.
The jigsaws should be made out of 0.5 plywood (not cardboard).
The images on the jigsaw puzzle should be composed of strange hybrids of endangered Australian flora and fauna.
Document, then send to my two young boys for testing (puzzles will be returned after testing).
Address: Felix and Florian Hinkel, 8 Rope Walk, Brunswick, 3056, Victoria, Australia
4. Take Four holding hands
Gather four people and undertake a promenade along a major city street while holding hands in a circle.
Make sure to use public transport while on your promenade.
Recite aloud and by heart excerpts from Michel Serres’s essay ‘Theory of the Quasi-Object’ in The Parasite.
Duration: 4 hours.
Document.
5. Take Five readers
Take five readers, they should all have some existing relationship with each other, except for one reader who no one else should know.
Take a curtain, either in a found setting or constructed anew, either free-standing or against a window.
The curtain should be translucent, shadows should be able to be discerned through it, and it should be sufficiently diaphanous that it moves when breathed upon.
Place five readers on low ‘soap boxes’ facing the curtain, and so close to the curtain that when they whisper the curtain moves, even if only imperceptibly.
Each reader-performer is to be given the essay, ‘Immanence: A Life…’, by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. (If anyone speaks French, they can read the French original).
The first performer begins to read aloud, once s/he arrives at the second paragraph, the second performer begins to read aloud, once s/he gets to the second paragraph the third performer begins to read aloud…and so on until all five performers are reading aloud.
Optional: all the readers could be recorded individually and together. This reading could then be disseminated.
Highlighted essay/s to be supplied by me on demand.
email: hjfrichot@gmail.com
6. Take Six Scenes of Contemporary Strife
Compose a colouring-in book that depicts six scenes of contemporary strife.
Make six copies and distribute to public figures or politicians.
Optional: to supplement the colouring-in book, compose a video piece that cuts together, or sequentially montages the turmoil of six battle scenes lifted from the movies.
These battle scenes lifted from movies should be at least quasi-historical.
7. Take Seven Sleepers
This is an homage to Sophie Calle.
Over seven nights take seven sleepers and invite them into your bed.
Rather than the sleepers taking turns, each night another sleeper will be added.
Your bed may become quite crowded, and it is up to you how you decide to facilitate a comfortable night for all.
Every sleeper is requested to bring along a bedtime story that lasts at least seven minutes.
Document.
(And be sure to keep a record of the seven stories).
8. Take Eight Minutes of Super-8
This is an homage to Tacita Dean, only with Super-8 rather than 16 mm film.
Take eight minutes of Super-8 film footage.
Use either found films and re-edit, or else take new footage.
Content: Focus on stillness suffused with life and take long, lingering, framed shots.
Screen with an old Super-8 movie projector into a corner, near the ground.
Invite eight important people to the first screening and ask them to sit on the ground cross-legged to watch your film.
9. Take Nine people colouring in
Seat nine participants around a long table, as though they are about to share a meal.
Each participant needs to bring along one colour pencil and a pencil sharpener.
Along the length of the table a roll of paper will be laid out upon which graph paper squares (10mm x 10mm squares), have been printed in that faded blue we remember from our school days.
The length of this roll is to be determined by you, depending on how long you want all the participants to gather.
Seating arrangement: Eight participants should be seated along the length of the table, four on either side. They are to colour in the squares for 10 minutes.
Rules: In their own chosen colour participants cannot colour in squares that are adjacent or directly diagonal to each other.
One participant sits at the end of the table and is the timekeeper, but as they are keeping time they also tell a story of something that happened to them in their first year of school.
When ten minutes is up, everyone moves around the table one place, and recommences colouring in.
A new timekeeper is determined, and they begin to tell a story from their first year in school.
This continues until all the 10mm x 10mm squares are coloured.
Instructions from
Ashley Woodward
A.
1. Identify places, activities, and things which transform your sense of existence (points which act like gears in the wheels of life, marking transitions from one mood or state of being to another).
2. In a medium of your choosing, make a map of these places, activities, and things that others can follow.
B.
1. Send some information – about anything, to anyone, in any medium (speech, letter, email, photograph, fax, etc.)
2. Isolate the form (medium) of the information.
3. Isolate the matter (raw material) of the information.
4. Separate the matter and form of information from its message. Show that not all means of communication are the same.
5. Document the process. Open up the ideology of transparent communication of information to critique.
C.
Create a work of art which is only ever displayed in a concealed fashion (for example, an intricately detailed sculpture covered by thick layers of cascading smoke).
D.
1. Create a work of art, in any medium.
2. Build into that work of art – conditional to its proper appreciation – instructions for creating another work of art, which references the first.
3. Include in these instructions the directive to include similar instructions in that work of art.
Instructions from
Justin Clemens
Send text-messages to your friends posing the three following questions:
1) Why something not nothing?
2) Matheme or Animal?
3) Should people who deny contingency be tortured until they admit they could also not have been tortured?
Write all responses on a single white A4 sheet of paper with a large white crayon; if you run out of room, write over the existing responses; if there are no responses, write nothing; pin completed sheet alone on a white gallery wall at ankle height.
Instructions from
Ghassan Hage
ghage@unimelb.edu.au
First Contact Ethics
1. Take a walk in the park on a sunny day when there are many people walking around
2. make sure you look people who pass you by in the eyes.
3. Wait to see if people greet you. If they do you greet them back.
4. If they don’t you greet them. Note if they greet you back.
5. Every time you have an encounter make sure you:
1. sketch or have a written description of the person you have encountered
2. classify the person (or couple, or group) in one of the three following groups: A. people who greet you first, B. people who greet back when you greet them first, C. people who neither greet you nor greet back
3. describe your feelings following the encounter
1. prepare three canvases
2. Devote a canvass to each of the groupings A, B, C.
3. Let each canvas incorporate:
1. the number of people located in each grouping
2. the descriptions of the people concerned
3. your feelings from the encounters
Instructions from
Antonio Negri
TO SAY NO
IS NOT A
LIMIT OF
LANGUAGE
Instructions from
Peter Singer
I’d like your work to reflect or represent or at least in some way take notice of the following:
“At one time the benevolent affections embrace merely the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity and finally, its influence is felt in the dealings of man with the animal world…”
from W.E.H. Lecky History of European Morals, published in 1869
Instructions from
Alexander García Düttmann
IMPROVISE ON AN INTUITION IN A WAY THAT ILLUMINATES THE FOLLOWING QUOTATION:
‘HAVING COMMITTED THE CRIME OF AN INTUITION WITHOUT PRESUPPOSITION, WE SERVE OUR SENTENCE IN THE DUNGEON OF LOGIC’.
- ALBERT PARIS GÜTERSLOH
Instructions from
Filip Kovacevic (2009)
LACAN IN VIENNA
1. Surprise Diana while she is bathing in the nude.
2. Escape the dogs that she unleashes on you for having seen her.
3. Bring the Freudian Thing uncompromised to the people.
Instructions from
Louise Birchill
To do:
Neither an inscription in space nor the "writing" of space.
Neither "rhythm" as a configuration of movements organized in time nor "spacing" which is, no less, space subsumed in time. .
But a "milieu", a "medium", that, by giving way to, or room to, engenders movement, engenders time.
Not a passive receptivity ceding to something activated by its own will or force.
But a fluid underswell whose non-resistance is equivalent to a proper movement.
Whatever elements take form therein do so by adapting to this milieu. Were one to "subtract" the elements from the latter, they would not only be immobile but undifferentiated.
Not making "space" but "space"'s making ….
Instructions from
Doctor Cheng Lian
1. Other minds
You have many states of mind, fears, excitements, sufferings and hopes etc. and the ability to observe the activities of your innermost being. You believe that others around you have the same or similar being within them. What is the evidence of this? Because you cannot observe the minds of others, you can only see their behaviours or physiological reactions. Therefore we can become confused and perplexed. Do others have the same spirit or soul? How can we know?
2. The Speed of Time
We often say that time is passing us by. Sometimes it moves extremely slowly, but sometimes it moves very fast like a white horse running through a barrier. But what is the real speed of time? How can we measure it? Is the passing of time merely subjective or is it an illusion of the mind?
Instructions from
Doctor Ye Feng – Doctor of Philosophy (special field of mathematical philosophy)
1. Limited and Unlimited
This instruction deals with mathematical philosophy, which attempts to find the solution for complicated puzzling questions. On one hand we are organisms with a limited life span. In our lifetime we are aware of the fact that as organisms all of humanity is limited. Therefore, we can only acknowledge limited things and we are unaware of the unlimited aspects of the world. We cannot be sure if these unlimited things exist at all.
On the other hand, in mathematics we are almost able to acknowledge the unlimited things. For example, when you think about natural numbers 1, 2, 3…and so on, is there a largest number? No there is not. A hundred million is not the largest number, because a hundred million and one is larger. This is true of one billion too. One billion and one is still larger etc. No matter how large the number is, adding one will always make it larger. If we can never get to the largest number, how many natural numbers exist? It is unlimited. This infers that we are aware of the unlimited. So is it easy to understand the unlimited? And if it is, how can we explain that we are limited? Perhaps, the knowledge of the unlimited is only our imagination. We start to doubt ourselves and become suspicious about whether the unlimited is just an illusion. Mathematical acknowledgement is something in which most people trust in and believe so how can we say that it is only imagination? This is a question that has no solution even in the field of philosophy.
With this instruction, the work should not only be about how the limited and unlimited confront each other, for this is a familiar topic. This is also about the conflict between the human spirit and the divine spirit of God. My hope is that through art this question can be taken one step further. Of course I’m not expecting you to use artwork to answer this question, there is no solution even in the field of philosophy, but I would like artists to make a work that conveys these complex ideas.
2 Spiritual and Objective
There is a contradiction that exists between the spirit of humanity and the spirit of science. In the area of science, the human is the object or material, formed by genes, sustained by nutrients creating growth and controlled by the laws of nature. We are not that different to plants and flora. Humans are atomically and molecularly structured. In this understanding they don’t have spirit and soul, so it is hard to measure the magnitude of their value and their dignity. In science we don’t mention emotions like love or affection. We only describe the human form objectively. In contrast to science, when we talk about the spirit of humanity, we advocate and value qualities of dignity and emotion. This is where the conflict lies.
I have a 10 month old daughter, who I love unconditionally. Of course I will not regard her as just a molecular structure, for I see her as an angel, beyond scientific objectivity. But, I realise that in order to love her, I have to follow the doctors’ instructions in an objective way. For example, she always cries at night. In medical science they explain that this is because she is lacking in calcium. If I look at her that way, I feel that she is lacking spirit. This scientific model emphasises that her developing brain needs to be physically and psychologically nurtured. In this model she becomes entirely material. I have to not only believe, but also, like a slave, follow the physical and psychological laws of causation that govern her wellbeing. But what of the wellbeing of her spirit?
In this instruction, I would hope that you explore some of these issues surrounding the conflict between the spiritual aspects of humanity and the objective scientific model.
Jean-Luc Nancy
Fais-le !
« le » : ce que tu as à faire,
Ce qu’il te revient de faire,
Ce qui t’incombe
« le » : indéterminé, indéterminable,
Qui n’existera que quand tu l’auras fait
Fais le, fais ça,
Cette chose que nul n’attend
Pas même toi
Cette chose improbable
Fais ce qui viendra de ton faire
Et pourtant ne sera pas fait par toi
Ne sera pas produit
Mais viendra de bien avant ton faire
De bien avant toi
Fais ce qui t’échappe
Qui n’est pas à toi
Et que tu dois
Do it!
"it": what you have to do,
What is up to you to do,
What falls to you
"it": undetermined, undeterminable,
Which will only exist when you have done it
Do it, do that,
That thing no-one expects,
Not even you,
That improbable thing
Do what stems from your doing
And yet is not done by you
Nor produced
But stems from well before your doing
From well before you
Do what escapes you
That is not yours
And that you owe
Instructions from
Hélène Frichot
Do It
Instructions for Artists
VCA 2009
Hélène Frichot
hjfrichot@gmail.com
A Work in Ten Parts: Gathering and its Forms
Note: It is not a requirement of the work that all ten parts are undertaken.
0. Wait
Install a silent piece on waiting based around the concept of an any-space-whatever.
1. Take One ladder
Climb a ladder to look over a wall.
Describe what you see on the other side in either text or image.
Decide whether or not you want to kick away the ladder once you are up there.
Send a depiction of this undertaking to a friend that you have lost contact with.
2. Take Two piles of clothes
Take two people who are in a difficult relationship (paternal, maternal, sibling, work, love relationship, etc…).
Each takes all the clothes that they own (excluding accessories such as shoes and belts), except for what they are wearing on their backs (don’t cheat).
Each participant in the difficult relationship constructs very neatly folded piles of their clothes. An iron might be needed. Some unobtrusive scaffolding may also be in order.
The respective height of these piles should be determined by the height of the person to whom they belong.
Between selected pieces of clothing a message should be secreted on a piece of paper, either about the piece of clothing, or how the piece of clothing might reveal some story about the other in this difficult relationship (who is, simultaneously, also constructing their pile of clothes).
Document.
Take these two piles of clothes and construct one pile of clothes. Dimensions and construction method of this third pile to be determined by both participants. Somewhere in the pile co-write a story that relates the details of your difficult relationship.
Document.
3. Take Three jigsaw puzzle carpenters
With two people you feel ambivalent about build a series of jigsaw puzzles that do not work.
The pieces should not fit right, and parts should be missing, and so forth.
The jigsaws should be made out of 0.5 plywood (not cardboard).
The images on the jigsaw puzzle should be composed of strange hybrids of endangered Australian flora and fauna.
Document, then send to my two young boys for testing (puzzles will be returned after testing).
Address: Felix and Florian Hinkel, 8 Rope Walk, Brunswick, 3056, Victoria, Australia
4. Take Four holding hands
Gather four people and undertake a promenade along a major city street while holding hands in a circle.
Make sure to use public transport while on your promenade.
Recite aloud and by heart excerpts from Michel Serres’s essay ‘Theory of the Quasi-Object’ in The Parasite.
Duration: 4 hours.
Document.
5. Take Five readers
Take five readers, they should all have some existing relationship with each other, except for one reader who no one else should know.
Take a curtain, either in a found setting or constructed anew, either free-standing or against a window.
The curtain should be translucent, shadows should be able to be discerned through it, and it should be sufficiently diaphanous that it moves when breathed upon.
Place five readers on low ‘soap boxes’ facing the curtain, and so close to the curtain that when they whisper the curtain moves, even if only imperceptibly.
Each reader-performer is to be given the essay, ‘Immanence: A Life…’, by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. (If anyone speaks French, they can read the French original).
The first performer begins to read aloud, once s/he arrives at the second paragraph, the second performer begins to read aloud, once s/he gets to the second paragraph the third performer begins to read aloud…and so on until all five performers are reading aloud.
Optional: all the readers could be recorded individually and together. This reading could then be disseminated.
Highlighted essay/s to be supplied by me on demand.
email: hjfrichot@gmail.com
6. Take Six Scenes of Contemporary Strife
Compose a colouring-in book that depicts six scenes of contemporary strife.
Make six copies and distribute to public figures or politicians.
Optional: to supplement the colouring-in book, compose a video piece that cuts together, or sequentially montages the turmoil of six battle scenes lifted from the movies.
These battle scenes lifted from movies should be at least quasi-historical.
7. Take Seven Sleepers
This is an homage to Sophie Calle.
Over seven nights take seven sleepers and invite them into your bed.
Rather than the sleepers taking turns, each night another sleeper will be added.
Your bed may become quite crowded, and it is up to you how you decide to facilitate a comfortable night for all.
Every sleeper is requested to bring along a bedtime story that lasts at least seven minutes.
Document.
(And be sure to keep a record of the seven stories).
8. Take Eight Minutes of Super-8
This is an homage to Tacita Dean, only with Super-8 rather than 16 mm film.
Take eight minutes of Super-8 film footage.
Use either found films and re-edit, or else take new footage.
Content: Focus on stillness suffused with life and take long, lingering, framed shots.
Screen with an old Super-8 movie projector into a corner, near the ground.
Invite eight important people to the first screening and ask them to sit on the ground cross-legged to watch your film.
9. Take Nine people colouring in
Seat nine participants around a long table, as though they are about to share a meal.
Each participant needs to bring along one colour pencil and a pencil sharpener.
Along the length of the table a roll of paper will be laid out upon which graph paper squares (10mm x 10mm squares), have been printed in that faded blue we remember from our school days.
The length of this roll is to be determined by you, depending on how long you want all the participants to gather.
Seating arrangement: Eight participants should be seated along the length of the table, four on either side. They are to colour in the squares for 10 minutes.
Rules: In their own chosen colour participants cannot colour in squares that are adjacent or directly diagonal to each other.
One participant sits at the end of the table and is the timekeeper, but as they are keeping time they also tell a story of something that happened to them in their first year of school.
When ten minutes is up, everyone moves around the table one place, and recommences colouring in.
A new timekeeper is determined, and they begin to tell a story from their first year in school.
This continues until all the 10mm x 10mm squares are coloured.
Instructions from
Ashley Woodward
A.
1. Identify places, activities, and things which transform your sense of existence (points which act like gears in the wheels of life, marking transitions from one mood or state of being to another).
2. In a medium of your choosing, make a map of these places, activities, and things that others can follow.
B.
1. Send some information – about anything, to anyone, in any medium (speech, letter, email, photograph, fax, etc.)
2. Isolate the form (medium) of the information.
3. Isolate the matter (raw material) of the information.
4. Separate the matter and form of information from its message. Show that not all means of communication are the same.
5. Document the process. Open up the ideology of transparent communication of information to critique.
C.
Create a work of art which is only ever displayed in a concealed fashion (for example, an intricately detailed sculpture covered by thick layers of cascading smoke).
D.
1. Create a work of art, in any medium.
2. Build into that work of art – conditional to its proper appreciation – instructions for creating another work of art, which references the first.
3. Include in these instructions the directive to include similar instructions in that work of art.
Instructions from
Justin Clemens
Send text-messages to your friends posing the three following questions:
1) Why something not nothing?
2) Matheme or Animal?
3) Should people who deny contingency be tortured until they admit they could also not have been tortured?
Write all responses on a single white A4 sheet of paper with a large white crayon; if you run out of room, write over the existing responses; if there are no responses, write nothing; pin completed sheet alone on a white gallery wall at ankle height.
Instructions from
Ghassan Hage
ghage@unimelb.edu.au
First Contact Ethics
1. Take a walk in the park on a sunny day when there are many people walking around
2. make sure you look people who pass you by in the eyes.
3. Wait to see if people greet you. If they do you greet them back.
4. If they don’t you greet them. Note if they greet you back.
5. Every time you have an encounter make sure you:
1. sketch or have a written description of the person you have encountered
2. classify the person (or couple, or group) in one of the three following groups: A. people who greet you first, B. people who greet back when you greet them first, C. people who neither greet you nor greet back
3. describe your feelings following the encounter
1. prepare three canvases
2. Devote a canvass to each of the groupings A, B, C.
3. Let each canvas incorporate:
1. the number of people located in each grouping
2. the descriptions of the people concerned
3. your feelings from the encounters
Instructions from
Antonio Negri
TO SAY NO
IS NOT A
LIMIT OF
LANGUAGE
Instructions from
Peter Singer
I’d like your work to reflect or represent or at least in some way take notice of the following:
“At one time the benevolent affections embrace merely the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity and finally, its influence is felt in the dealings of man with the animal world…”
from W.E.H. Lecky History of European Morals, published in 1869
Instructions from
Alexander García Düttmann
IMPROVISE ON AN INTUITION IN A WAY THAT ILLUMINATES THE FOLLOWING QUOTATION:
‘HAVING COMMITTED THE CRIME OF AN INTUITION WITHOUT PRESUPPOSITION, WE SERVE OUR SENTENCE IN THE DUNGEON OF LOGIC’.
- ALBERT PARIS GÜTERSLOH
Instructions from
Filip Kovacevic (2009)
LACAN IN VIENNA
1. Surprise Diana while she is bathing in the nude.
2. Escape the dogs that she unleashes on you for having seen her.
3. Bring the Freudian Thing uncompromised to the people.
Instructions from
Louise Birchill
To do:
Neither an inscription in space nor the "writing" of space.
Neither "rhythm" as a configuration of movements organized in time nor "spacing" which is, no less, space subsumed in time. .
But a "milieu", a "medium", that, by giving way to, or room to, engenders movement, engenders time.
Not a passive receptivity ceding to something activated by its own will or force.
But a fluid underswell whose non-resistance is equivalent to a proper movement.
Whatever elements take form therein do so by adapting to this milieu. Were one to "subtract" the elements from the latter, they would not only be immobile but undifferentiated.
Not making "space" but "space"'s making ….
Instructions from
Doctor Cheng Lian
1. Other minds
You have many states of mind, fears, excitements, sufferings and hopes etc. and the ability to observe the activities of your innermost being. You believe that others around you have the same or similar being within them. What is the evidence of this? Because you cannot observe the minds of others, you can only see their behaviours or physiological reactions. Therefore we can become confused and perplexed. Do others have the same spirit or soul? How can we know?
2. The Speed of Time
We often say that time is passing us by. Sometimes it moves extremely slowly, but sometimes it moves very fast like a white horse running through a barrier. But what is the real speed of time? How can we measure it? Is the passing of time merely subjective or is it an illusion of the mind?
Instructions from
Doctor Ye Feng – Doctor of Philosophy (special field of mathematical philosophy)
1. Limited and Unlimited
This instruction deals with mathematical philosophy, which attempts to find the solution for complicated puzzling questions. On one hand we are organisms with a limited life span. In our lifetime we are aware of the fact that as organisms all of humanity is limited. Therefore, we can only acknowledge limited things and we are unaware of the unlimited aspects of the world. We cannot be sure if these unlimited things exist at all.
On the other hand, in mathematics we are almost able to acknowledge the unlimited things. For example, when you think about natural numbers 1, 2, 3…and so on, is there a largest number? No there is not. A hundred million is not the largest number, because a hundred million and one is larger. This is true of one billion too. One billion and one is still larger etc. No matter how large the number is, adding one will always make it larger. If we can never get to the largest number, how many natural numbers exist? It is unlimited. This infers that we are aware of the unlimited. So is it easy to understand the unlimited? And if it is, how can we explain that we are limited? Perhaps, the knowledge of the unlimited is only our imagination. We start to doubt ourselves and become suspicious about whether the unlimited is just an illusion. Mathematical acknowledgement is something in which most people trust in and believe so how can we say that it is only imagination? This is a question that has no solution even in the field of philosophy.
With this instruction, the work should not only be about how the limited and unlimited confront each other, for this is a familiar topic. This is also about the conflict between the human spirit and the divine spirit of God. My hope is that through art this question can be taken one step further. Of course I’m not expecting you to use artwork to answer this question, there is no solution even in the field of philosophy, but I would like artists to make a work that conveys these complex ideas.
2 Spiritual and Objective
There is a contradiction that exists between the spirit of humanity and the spirit of science. In the area of science, the human is the object or material, formed by genes, sustained by nutrients creating growth and controlled by the laws of nature. We are not that different to plants and flora. Humans are atomically and molecularly structured. In this understanding they don’t have spirit and soul, so it is hard to measure the magnitude of their value and their dignity. In science we don’t mention emotions like love or affection. We only describe the human form objectively. In contrast to science, when we talk about the spirit of humanity, we advocate and value qualities of dignity and emotion. This is where the conflict lies.
I have a 10 month old daughter, who I love unconditionally. Of course I will not regard her as just a molecular structure, for I see her as an angel, beyond scientific objectivity. But, I realise that in order to love her, I have to follow the doctors’ instructions in an objective way. For example, she always cries at night. In medical science they explain that this is because she is lacking in calcium. If I look at her that way, I feel that she is lacking spirit. This scientific model emphasises that her developing brain needs to be physically and psychologically nurtured. In this model she becomes entirely material. I have to not only believe, but also, like a slave, follow the physical and psychological laws of causation that govern her wellbeing. But what of the wellbeing of her spirit?
In this instruction, I would hope that you explore some of these issues surrounding the conflict between the spiritual aspects of humanity and the objective scientific model.
