[spectre] Signature Event Context banned from Transmediale.08

[Ana Peraica]

just forwarding
Ana

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Subject: Signature Event Context banned from Transmediale.08

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 28, 2008
Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša
"Signature Event Context"
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe / Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden
Europas
Berlin, Germany


!!! WARNING !!!

The performance "Signature Event Context" by Janez Janša, Janez Janša,
Janez Janša scheduled for the opening of TRANSMEDIALE.08 the 29th of
January 2008 at 8.30 pm at the foyer of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in
Berlin, Germany, has been conjunctively CANCELLED by the director of
transmediale Stephen Kovats and the Guest-Curator of the exhibition
CONSPIRE… Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez.

Consequently, Janez Janša, Janez Janša and Janez Janša anticipated the
date of the action performing "Signature Event Context" on January 28,
2008 at 00.01 am


WATCH THE PERFORMANCE
www.aksioma.org/sec <http://www.aksioma.org/sec>


Signature Event Context

In summer 2007, three Slovenian artists officially changed their names to
Janez Janša. Their work focuses on the question of signature, and – more
particularly – on the role of signature in public space. In their various
approaches, they explore Derrida's famous statement on signature and its
paradoxical relationship towards originality and repetition.

"By definition, a written signature implies the actual or empirical
nonpresence of the signer. But, it will be said, it also marks and retains
his having-been present in a past now, which will remain a future now, and
therefore in a now, in general, in the transcendental form of nowness
(maintenance). This general maintenance is somehow inscribed, stapled to
the present punctuality, always evident and always singular, in the form
of the signature. This is the enigmatic originality of every paraph. For
the attachment to the source to occur, the absolute singularity of an
event of the signature and of a form of the signature must be retained:
the pure reproducibility of a pure event." (Jacques Derrida, "Signature
Event Context" in Margins of Philosophy, tr. Alan Bass, pp. 307-330)

On January 28th, 2008, Janez Janša, Janez Janša, and Janez Janša
performed Signature Event Context at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, a
walking action in the corridors of the Memorial. Each one of them,
equipped with a GPS device, covered a different path within the
Memorial's structure this way, together assembling a common signature
visible only in a virtual space (the internet). During the performance
artists continuously repeated "Jaz sem Janez Janša, Jaz sem Janez Janša,
Jaz sem Janez Janša…" ("My name is Janez Janša").

Signature Event Context at the Holocaust Memorial puts together 3 concepts
(signature, event and context) from Derrida's essay in complex relation;
signature itself is an event which re-contextualizes the site of
signature.

In his book At Memory's Edge: After-images of the Holocaust in
Contemporary Art and Architecture (Yale University Press, 2000) the
American scholar James E. Young writes that there is no intrinsic meaning
in memorials. Instead, they derive their meaning from visitors'
interactions: each visitor makes their own experience of memory at a
memorial.

The structure of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, which invites a visitor
for an individual experience – as has been stated by its architect Peter
Eisenman –, points to the intention of the Signature Event Context
project. Eisenman concludes his statement with the following explanation
of the experience in the Memorial:

"In this monument there is no goal, no end, no working one's way in or
out. The duration of an individual's experience of it grants no further
understanding, since understanding is impossible. The time of the
monument, its duration from top surface to ground, is disjoined from the
time of experience. In this context, there is no nostalgia, no memory of
the past, only the living memory of the individual experience. Here, we
can only know the past through its manifestation in the present."
(Eisenman Architects, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin.
Project text by Peter Eisenman)

In Derrida's words, walking and talking signatures by Janša, Janša and
Janša are the physical manifestations of nowness via individual
experience. The traces of the walking and talking signature are left only
in virtual space. Memory is always already a performance of virtuality.


REASON FOR BANNING S.E.C. FROM TRANSMEDIALE.08

According to the new director of Transmediale Stephen Kovats and to the
Guest Curator of the exhibition CONSPIRE… Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, the
great cause for banning this project from the festival 4 days before its
opening has to be find in "judicial and legislative reasons" (Kovats) and
"personal - curatorial and ethical convictions« (Petrešin-Bachelez).

Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša understand the banning act as an ACT
OF POWER perpetrated by the artistic director of the festival and its
guest-curator to the detriment of the artists and as an ACT OF VIOLENCE
towards freedom of artistic expression.

Artists hereby formally invite the director of Transmediale Stephen
Kovats, the guest-curator of the exhibition CONSPIRE… Nataša
Petrešin-Bachelez and the general public to an open confrontation on
issues disclosed by Signature Event Context to take place in form of a
public round table.


"Signature Event Context" - images of the performance
www.aksioma.org/sec/press.html <http://www.aksioma.org/sec/press.html>


Credits
Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša
Signature Event Context
Performance, SI, 2008
Production: Aksioma | www.aksioma.org <http://www.aksioma.org>
Co-production: Maska | www.maska.si <http://www.maska.si>, Arscenic | 
www.arscenic.info <http://www.arscenic.info>


-- 
Marko Stamenkovic

De Appel / Curatorial Programme
Nieuwe Spiegelstraat 10
1017 DE Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Tel +31 61 8097247
www.deappel.nl <http://www.deappel.nl>