Visitors, by using sewing silks and yarns, were able
to continue and complete an existing rudimentary
network structure. The term "complete" is not quite
correct, though, as the network has to be started a
new again and again. So ev en if the network had been
destroyed, the work would have continued to exist.
Has this notion of "liberating yourself from potentially
damaging acts" become an artistic strategy?
This is not about liberation but about an expansion
of what is perceived as destruction as it also impacts
on ones actions. Destruction for me is tantamount toblocking access to the work. In the early 1990s I was confronted to a greater extent with the issue of my works being destroyed. Since these works were not subjected to allocation, thev were hard to construe. I perceived destruction caused by belittling something as a lot more painful than physical destruction that often ensued. But I had solicited all of that, even
though I did not quite like my role as a victim as it concealed my intentions. I had to inv est more and more time to reproduce changed, destroyed, or stolen "organisms". Here, many different actions motivated by many different things were at play. The v ictim's predictable response - "Oops, the v isitors have destroyed my work" - is uncalled for since the work
is actually predicated on this transformation. With Window Spitting (1990 - 1997) I accommodated this claim to or need for inviolability of content. In an artistic context, Window Spitting was able to stand for a lot of things: performative action, performance, sculpting, drawing, painting,... The setting was malleable to such an extent that it only allowed for
constructive action. No matter what you did with silk paper, no action could cause any destruction.
Another situation that sounded out the limits of the
institutional setup involved the following: In the
exhibition at Kunsthaus Baselland some of the works "overlapped", i.e. their materials merged in several
areas, blurring and dissolving the borders between
works. The polystyrene pellets of Waterpoint got
mixed with loose yarns and were also sometimescombined by the visitors. The sand of Solaris found its way into every nook and cranny, and we also happened to find some keys located quite far away from The Key Spirit. This mingling and blurring of borders between individual works bothered us, which is why
we alway s corrected it by reestablishing limits. This then led to the general question of the "work", its existence, and its borders within a changed format. How do you personally relate
