This blog documents the development of The Well-Tempered Exposition. The project consists in a methodical investigation on the formal components of the performance art practice.  The year-long project will be developed as a series of 48 scores which will be developed and performed in a series of public experimental workshops in various cities. Upon its completion, the final aim of The Well-Tempered Exposition is to exist as a collection of scores addressing the rhetoric, contrapuntal and compositional structure of performance art as we understand it today.

The WTE is structured around the existing forms in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (1722),  a collection of keyboard exercises composed in all 24 major and minor keys, originally intended as a pedagogical textbook “for the profit and use of musical youth desirous of learning, and especially for the pastime of those already skilled in this study.”  Today it is considered one of the foundational works of modern Western music.  The WTE project seeks to retain Bach’s original pedagogical intent while also “translating” the complex compositional formulas of Bach’s work into correlational forms such as verbal counterpoint, contextual harmony, movement,  and other elements.

The project is being developed over the course of a year senior residency at Location One in New York, where it will launch on September 21st, 2011 with a performance with Beatriz Helguera-Snow at the keyboard.

Sections of the project will be presented at Performa 2011, the RISD Museum, and the 9th Havana Biennial, amongst other venues in Brazil, Mexico, Italy, and elsewhere. The project is supported by a fellowship of the Franklin Furnace Archive.

August 24, 2011

Writing about a work-in-progress is a challenging, and somewhat frightening, task. Usually when we undertake a new experiment it is better do to so privately, in order to minimize the unsavory possibility of failing publicly. Yet in the case of this project I am happy to take that risk as this project is by and far a collective experiment  and one that can greatly benefit from collective input.

First, I will try to describe the project as succinctly as possible: The Well-Tempered Exposition is an attempt to “translate” the compositional structure of The Well-Tempered Clavier, one of J.S. Bach’s greatest works, into the realm of the performative visual arts. The questions around this proposal may likely be: why doing this, why now, why with Bach, and why this work?  Isn’t Bach already over-interpreted? Do we need yet one more experiment or analysis of an European composer in the practically infinite literature of his work, which has been analyzed from the standpoints ranging from statistical analysis and language to even alchemy and baseball?

The place alone of Bach and the WTC in the history of Western music may be enough to justify a year of study to it in any capacity. However, my motivation for focusing on Bach and on this work is specifically geared to inserting some melodic static to the current debates around what we understand as visual performance art. I don’t seek as much to illuminate Bach’s work (more than enough capable minds have done so already) but I certainly think that Bach can help us think a bit more seriously, and maybe critically, about performance art.  If Bach has served as an inspiration for cosmologists and philosophers, he may also do us some good.

I will characterize my motivations in three areas: one is related to debates around creativity and invention in composition. The second has to do with to what I will describe as ‘conceptual’ oratory, which is really about the understanding of the conceptual confines and DNA of performance art. And the third has to do with pedagogy.

1.

On the year when Bach died, in 1750, Baroque art had long past its heyday, even in music ( musical baroque came somewhat after the visual arts) yet he continued composing pretty much in the same way he did decades before. By the mid-Eighteenth century new forms of composition, such as the symphony, had emerged. In fact, Bach while revered in his time was not given the recognition that he is given today—it would take nearly 150 years for the musical world to fully appreciate the extent of his achievement.  The type of compositions that Bach produced were tied to a kind of writing that at the time were considered outmoded. “Modern” composers were critical of learned counterpoint and the next generation of composers did not favor the fugue (Mozart and Beethoven wrote a few, but they clearly were not into them). Furthermore, it may also be interesting to know for the non-Bach specialist that Bach himself did not introduce new musical forms. From the standpoint of the visual arts, this may appear a bit puzzling:  could we think of an artist  who would be considered the best of all times and still have not been an innovator of the form?

Bach belongs to a time where ideas of aesthetics were fairly removed from ours, right before a paradigm shift that comes with the Enlightenment under which a new kind of aesthetic is to emerge, in an articulation that primarily culminates with the work of Kant in his third critique (1790). In Kant’s version of aesthetics, the genius in art is about innovation or originality; in Bach’s time, art was about invention.

Today the terms ‘invention’ and ‘innovation’ may sound like synonims to us, but in the 18^th century ‘invention’ meant something different. Inventio is a term that belongs to the classic art of rhetoric. It is considered the first part of a speech — the thing that will be said, or the content of the speech to be developed. In music, it would translate as a musical idea or a melody. Yet this ‘new’ musical idea would still conform to a set compositional structure. Its innovation lies in the development of the form, not in the transformation of the form.

Part of the answer as to why  Bach is considered so relevant despite not being an innovator of forms is that, actually, the development of the form, when taken to its ultimate consequences, can amount to innovation. This is the argument that, in his brilliant analysis of Bach’s compositional techniques, entitled “Bach and the Patterns of Invention” Laurence Dreyfuss makes, by saying that Bach’s ways of pushing within the formal constraints of the Baroque period constituted in itself not just a critical reimagining of the traditional musical ideas of the Baroque but a forced reference for any future musician. Thus Bach has the rare credit of being not just the culmination of an era, but as the beginning of another. In other words, Bach blurred the boundaries of form an content.

Performance art today, in my view, exists in a similar crossroads between form and content — a crossroads between deciding whether it is a formal discipline— ‘a genre’, that is, such as painting— and a conceptual sensibility that permeates every other kind of art. Under this logic, “performance art” is just a set of relatively connected conceptual actions that date roughly from the 60s til the present, while “performativity” encompasses every medium found in lots of modern and contemporary art. I personally am in favor of the interpretation that performance is, and should remain, a meta-genre. But if that is the case, how do we develop a useful criticality toward it? How can we know what it is if it can be anything? What prevents us from the “anything goes”, invertebrate gravitational force that produces so much mediocre performance art? My thought  is that the debate can be illuminated by conducting a reflection on composition that analyses the relationship creativity vs. invention as previously presented in Bach’s case.

2.

The second set of concerns is linked to the relationship that Bach had with the art of rhetoric, which I already introduced. In Bach’s time, there was an ongoing musical tradition that established direct links between the construction of a speech and the composition of a musical piece. This is easiest exemplified by the use of rhetorical terms in musical composition such as Inventio, expositio, elaboratio, executio, etc. In a fuge one inserts “voices” that intertwine between one another, as if one were constructing a conversation.  The ranges of regimentation of this idea varied throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth century,  and were best articulated by Johann Mattheson, a contemporary of Bach who first made reference to his work in print. We will undoubtedly hear more about Mattheson in this project, not least because he was a fascinating figure but because his adamant interest in relating the structure of speech to music will prove useful.  Using rhetorical structures of the time is a common way through which several musicologists can map out and study Bach’s works.

I will argue here that, as much as performance art may be seen as the most open meta-genre as they come, it also has its own rhetorical devices like any other kind of art. Performance art does still function within the parameters and the narrative of conceptual art- that in itself is some kind of score. It is naïve to attempt to do performance works while ignoring the kind of performance practices of the 70s or 80s. So the acknowledgment of that history is already a concession toward the need of conceptual structure. So while we may not be able to speak about a formal rhetorics of performance art, we can certainly speak of some kind of conceptual rhetorics, or ‘conceptual oratory’ —that which is being said within a performative approach. It is important to note here that when I refer to rhetorics or oratory I do not mean to refer exclusively to acts of speech, or to voice-related performance: I refer to performance art as a set of activities (could be through movements, actions, experiences, etc) whose devices and conceptual/compositional mechanisms could theoretically be mapped in a similar way to the kind of music from the late Baroque period.

3.

Last but not least, The Well-Tempered Clavier is, in essence, a textbook.  Bach was no theorist nor was he even very strong as a writer (his extant writings us are almost exclusively business-oriented; his letters very brief and he didn’t leave a single written piece that discussed his aesthetic interests or intentions). However, he was a famous and successful teacher —exemplified most immediately by the fact that many of his own children went to become major composers in their own right (and surviving the shadow of a towering father like Bach must not have been an easy feat). Bach’s pedagogy  thus was not theoretical but almost entirely practical: his students learned by playing the compositions that he devised for them, such as the WTC.

As an educator and an artist, I have always pondered about the questions around how to teach performance art from a practical —not theoretical or art historical perspective, which is pretty much what we do today. Then in art school we all try and experiment with crazy performances (that was my experience as an art student), in varying degrees of mediocrity and occasional discoveries, until we graduated. I was always left, however, with the sense that my learning in those performance art classes was at best random and haphazard, and what I had learned was more out of luck than out of having followed any methodical exploration.   I would like to think that it is possible to teach the performance art practice without that same haphazardness. But knowing that not everyone may agree with me,  I would argue that in any case we would be well-served by at least discussing the existence of a practice-based performance art textbook— which the WTE attempts to do in a humble way.

Perhaps this entire project is prompted by a personal memory from art school. When I was a senior  BFA student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the early 90s,  I took a performance art class. There I met a number of colleagues with whom we developed a somewhat fanatical fascination with performance, and soon we had taken over the performance space of the school at which we would spend all-nighters preparing pieces that we would present the next morning to the class. One of our most admired colleagues was Eduardo Martínez-Almaral, a Cuban artist.  Eddie had come to Chicago via Miami, where he had been involved in theater and was trained as a light technician.  Eddie was obsessed with Bach, and his works always incorporated his music in some way.  (Sometime after art school Eddie shifted his interests and while continued to do some performance, he never went back to perform these pieces or to explore Bach). They usually were extremely long durational pieces —sometimes lasting four, five hours— during much of which the audience would remain inside the space in complete darkness and silence.  After some seemingly interminable time, a beautiful floating red square light would turn on in the middle of the space. Some time later, a partita would play for a few minutes. Then some more time, someone would perhaps walk slowly into the space. The entire event would often consist of combinations of very short movements, light projections, and of course the music of Bach. The pieces generated huge reverence in school.  It always seemed remarkable to me that a man who was an organist and choral teacher in a small town in Germany in the XVIIIth century could feel so contemporary and move so many people in a collective experience; but it all was due to the possibilities to translate this sensibility into a contemporary realm, as Eddie had done. The WTE is thus dedicated to Eddie and the brief magic that he created in that student performance space in Chicago.

Texto palindrómico del performance presentado en el Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, el 18 de junio del 2009.

El performance incluyó la interpretación de obras para piano, tocadas al derecho y a la inversa, de Josef Matthias Hauer (1883-1959), Robert Starer (1924-2001), y Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994), interpretadas por Beatriz Helguera-Snow.

Palindromic Text from the performance “Revolver” performed at the Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, on June 18, 2009. The performance included a selection of pieces, played normally as well as backwards, by Josef Matthias Hauer (1883-1959), Robert Starer (1924-2001), and Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994), played by Beatriz Helguera-Snow.

REVOLVER

Acuda caro: hallé hoyos. Ya hay nata, paré tesoro: mi visión, oh celoso, lo cortó. Eres oro, malcriada para mí, rala es la cosa. Oso, Roma, amé ópera, horror… ora, con él así, solos, yo soy ése loco. Podar tele sé; ese día me asomé. Va Lada, le habla, aséase. Poeta. Ah, cala, tala, rapo, no ceso. Ya, por oval, seno bajó— dale cetro. Ser odioso, idos acá. Sé amar dominó, pero lavadora, le sé arar aro. Haré una mora, dí a canal. ¿Yo leí “crac”? Esa oda rato lo coló. La oda basada crea, con ropa, loseta suave. Átame, mala. ¿Viola parir o morí? De podar no hora es. A papaya de ida, nana, loro ese oído, o lo yerro colado a la rapada y da timada casa. O lama la tipa casaca—red Nevada— y osó matar tío. Oré, ni da elogio, ni te lama. Oir a idea cayó, sé: vamos a avatar: rese cera, pala o Kaiser. El carro para. Hará cara, parece plato. Tocan. Ése adulas, sané. “Pásele.” Papá ata mesa y odas a pasado das, a pasado. La mata: cae la bolsa, sea, era dar o daré: La USA caer, ser ir o morir es. O dará  Tebas o cocaina y eso veo: capo agotado. Oir Aro: helada arte les erro: cartel asa, amo la ruda oda, era rato, sé: no son Sadam: a ese llanero allí toca para allá velo: sor toro da tamales. A esa otra hoy oro dí, vemos ayer. Ara, dan allá. Mirad: Europa colosal a alud a rosa muere, sé a vida, asaré somera, Hoy es ese dia para el arte, les oyó, arte  les (se) hará modernos. Da de desamar, ese sal Obama, ese país nadará a la deriva,  y…

A ir el agotar teratoma, sal, batalla anuda, le temo: Irak ario sé así: mar árabe bese a Cairo. Memoria caése beba, rara misa es o Irak a río mete la duna.  Allá tables a mota retrato, galeria. Ya viré. Dala, arad, ansia pese, ama bolas ese. Rama, sed, edad, son redomará Hesse letra oyó, se, letra lea, rapa a id ese sé yo, haremos eras a diva. Ese reuma sor, adula Alá solo capo rueda, rima llana dará. Rey, asomé  vid oro yo, harto aseas. El a matador otros olé, valla ara, pacotilla o renal le sé amadas, no sones o tarareado. A dura loma asa letra, corre, sé letra, dale horario o da toga, opaco Evo sé. Ya  ni a coco sabe, tarado. Ser ir o morir es, rea casual era dorada, rea es. As, loba, le acata mal. Odas a pasado das, a pasado.Ya se mata a papeles. Apenas saluda ese naco total. Pecera para cara. ¿Hará porra? Cleresía koala parece ser. Rata va, asoma, ¿ves? O ya cae diario, a maletín oígole. A dinero oí, tratamos. O ya da vender a casa, capital a malo. Asa cada mitad. Ya da para la oda, lo corre; yo lo odio. Ése oro, lana nadie da ya, Papá.  Sé aro honrado: pedir o morir a palo. IVA lame, mata. Eva usa té sola por no caer cada sábado a lo loco —lo tarado—a secar cielo y lana caída. Roma, nuera, hora rara es. El aro da valor epónimo, drama es acaso dios oído.  Resorte celado jabón es. Lavo ropa, yo seco, no para la talacha. Ateo pesa. Esa alba helada la vemos a Ema. Id. Ese, ése letrado poco le sé, yo soy solo si sale no caro. Rorro, haré poema amoroso. Aso cal, sea la rima rapada. Ir clamor o seré otro coloso lechón. Oí, sí ví moros, éter a patán ya hay. Soy, oh ella, hora caduca.

THE ENNEATYPE CONFERENCE

The Enneatype Conference was a performance presented on May 9, 2009, at Lisa Ruyter’s studio in  Vienna, Austria, per invitation of Parabol Magazine and  curators Jasper Sharp and Elsy Lahner. The days of May 8th and May 9th I spent the time in Café Sperl, conducting “art personality assessment tests” using a system of my own making although inspired in the Enneagram Personality theory.  Participants would respond to a questionnaire about their personal relationship to art, after which I would provide a diagnosis of their artistic personality type using enneagram categories.

While the enneagram test in fact turned out very accurate assessments of each individual’s attitude towards art, I wanted to stress the  fallibility of any system that claims to provide “answers” about an individual’s personal situation. Thus the system, which at first was presented to all participants as an authentic scientific method developed in Vienna, was later unveiled as a complete fabrication.

PH conducting art personality tests at Cafe Sperl, Vienna, May 8, 2009

Sample of one of the art enneatype tests

The culminating event of the project was the performance, in the form of an academic lecture, that explained the various componens of the Art Personality Enneagram. What follows is the abbreviated text from that presentation.

Characters:

Rupert Steiner

Pablo Helguera

Steiner

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Welcome to the closing event of The Enneatype Conference, a unique occasion to celebrate the launch of The Enneagram of Vienna and celebrate the new issue of Parabol Magazine. My name is Rupert Steiner and I am the director of the Psychological Association of Art Therapists here in Vienna. Our mission is to study the ways in which art can reveal the potentiality of the individual. And, as such, it is an immense honor to me to present to you the work of Pablo Helguera, a Mexican artist and educator whose work has centered for many years on the very subject of the artistic personality. Helguera is the director of the Helguera Center for Artworld Studies, which has as its mission to understand the sociology of art and to propose the emergence of a new field of study, which he has described as artworld studies, using elements from social anthropology, biometrics, personology, economics, culinary theory, and of course psychology.

First we should explain what is an enneagram. The Enneagram is a nine-pointed figure inscribed in a circle. The meaning of the symbol itself, together with the personality types organized around the nine points, shows a system of knowledge about nine distinct but interrelated personality types, or nine ways of seeing and experiencing the world. The Enneagram of Personality is generally presented as a psychospiritual system for mapping and understanding nine possible personality types. Each personality type associated with the Enneagram represents a map of traits that highlights patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

The notion of the artistic personality enneagram emerges from the work of Dr. Ingrid Lipsky. Dr. Lipsky was a student of Theodor Meynert at the psychiatric clinic of the university of Vienna, alongside with Sigmund Freud and other eminent psychiatrists and neuropathologists. She was also involved in hypnotism and spirituality, which led her to research the enneagram.

Dr Lipsky died at age 52 in 1910, in a safari accident in Africa, just before she got to publish her research. It was shortly after that one of her students, Eberhard Klopstock, who inherited her research papers, took her theories and attempted to develop them.

He tragically burned her original works in order to claim them as his own, then publishing a book in 1935 inspired on her ideas, titled “The Enneagram and the Artist’s Mind”.

Unfortunately, the book did not do well, and it was never reprinted. There are no known surviving copies.

It was thanks to Pablo Helguera, who while doing research in the museum of Modern Art in New York, found a letter from Klopstock to the then director, Alfred Barr, mentioning his research on this subject. Helguera has researched this information to update the original ideas of Ingrid Lipsky and thus bring the Enneagram of Vienna back to life.

He is here to tell us about the various categories of the Enneagram and share with us a system that studies and analyses the artistic personality of the contemporary art world. Please help me in welcoming Pablo Helguera.

[PH arrives onstage]

Pablo, we are enormously grateful to have you amongst us tonight.

PH

Thank you, so am I. I am delighted that we can share the knowledge of the enneagram tonight.

Steiner

Can you please tell us how you developed the enneagram?

PH

Well, I had to work from very initial information that was left from the notes of notable enneagramists, including Dr. Lipsky, as well as other psychologists and psychiatrists that have focused on the typology of the artist, not excluding Carl Jung and Hermann Rorscharch, who was very much interested in art as revealing issues of consciousness.

Steiner

So what is the difference between the personality enneagram and the artistic enneagram?

PH

The personality enneagram is something that was developed by many new age psychologists to explain the kinds of personalities in the world. The artistic enneagram focuses on figuring out specifically the kind of artistic sensibility that one has, and it is a very helpful way to understand one’s own relationship with art, your potential, and also to address your shortcomings as an arts professional. I believe that once you go through the process of learning your enneatype you will be able to become a much more successful individual in the art world.

Steiner

And I understand that you will now do a demonstration?

PH

Indeed. I now illustrate the way in which the enneagram works.

First I will conduct an act of group hypnotism which is desired to attain collective attention to a given subject, particularly when one is giving a boring lecture.

You all will look at my hand, moving like a pendulum. You all will fall in a state of deep sleep and peace, of full attention of everything I will say from now on.

Good, we are ready to go now.

I first would like you to consider a question, and choose the  answer that most accurately reflect your way of feeling about art. After you have made your choices, you should remember the letter and we shall find out what each of your art personality types are.

When you see an artwork at a contemporary art gallery, list the impulse that is most likely to come to you first:

a) Thinking about how this artwork makes you feel

b) Asking to yourself what is right or wrong with this artwork

c) Trying to evaluate the artwork as good or bad

d) Wanting to know who the artist is

e) Wanting to know how this artwork was made

f) Wanting to know the back story of that art work

g) Wanting to know what the idea behind the work is

h) Remembering other pieces similar to that one

i) Non thinking, simply experiencing the work.

When you see a contemporary artist or arts professional of your same age and background receive a certain recognition that you could technically be in the same position to receive, your most likely reaction is:

a) Happiness for this person

b) Envy, wondering why you did not receive such recognition yourself

c) Thinking on what kind of friendships and professional contacts you need to make in the future to receive that same recognition yourself

d) Indifference

e) Thinking of what kind of work you need to make to receive such recognition in the future

f) Wanting to know the reasons for such recognition

g) Figuring out an innovative way to attain similar attention

h) Depression

i) Simple admiration for this person

Following you will hear about the different kinds of art personality types. If you chose, for instance, “h”,

you are

TYPE 1: THE NOSTALGIST

Nostalgists are in touch with their feelings, are sensitive, and highly perceptive of their environment. The nostalgist is inquisitive and likes to attain a lot of knowledge about an artwork. They can become very erudite and knowledgeable about a subject.

On average, they tend to emphasize too much the notion of biography, the context in which something was made, they draw lots of historical connections.

When they are unhealthy they can be depressive, self-destructive, obsessed with being up to date with the latest news of the art world, overromanticize everything, they can become delusive.

Examples: Many famous art historians are nostalgists. Janet Cardiff (on the photo), Matthew Buckingham, Mark Dion, Janet Cardiff, Sophie Calle, Christian Boltanski, Yinka Shonibare

if you chose “g” you are,

TYPE 2: THE CONCEPTUALIST

As its name indicates, conceptualists are abstract thinkers, capable of powerful synthesis, focused, and able to quickly grasp and advance the art discourse.

On average, they overemphasize theory, cause and effect, and argumentation in a work. They cannot fully enjoy a work unless they have clarified in their mind the main issues that the work addresses.

Bad conceptualists become out of touch with their feelings and have a difficulty sharing their emotions, are introverted, are desensitized toward art which arises emotions, can become aggressive and pretentious.

Examples: Joseph Kosuth, Allan Kaprow, Jacques Rancière, Daniel Birnbaum, Rosalind Krauss, Luis Camnitzer, Roberta Smith, Richard Serra, John Baldessari, Lawrence Weiner, Martin Creed

TYPE 3: THE TALKER

At their best, Talkers are able to translate the visual into words, becoming eloquent and able to put things in perspective. Gregarious and friendly, talkers have an ability to bring people together and become important spokespersons for large interest groups and gain access to important positions in the art world. Many performers and architects are talkers.

On average, Talkers can come off as superficial, saying a lot but without great substance, emphasizing hyperbole and syntax instead of content, can draw exaggerated relationships, and feel that they always have to say something even if it is unnecessary.

When they are unhealthy, they have a burning desire to protagonize everywhere, taking other ideas as one’s own, gossip too much, exaggerate reality to the point of becoming a storyteller, becoming a bit of a clown.

Examples: Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jerry Saltz, Marina Abramovic, William Kentridge, Robert Hughes, Maurizio Cattelan, Kirk Varnedoe

(e) is

TYPE 4: THE FORMALIST

Formalists are highly visual people, design-oriented, perfection-driven, with a great appreciation for craftsmanship and neatness. Organized, they are punctual, keep their word, and generally maintain a good balance of art and life.

On average, Formalists can be anal retentive, extremely demanding to others and to themselves, to the point of paralysis, it can take them time to make decisions and have anxiety in unresolved situations; they have no tolerance for ambiguity.

When they are unhealthy, they can be manipulative, easily irritated, dismissive of anything which may not be clear-cut, conservative, and materialistic.

Examples: Rachel Whiteread, Sol Lewitt, Donald Judd, Hannah Darboven, Michael Snow, Walead Beshty, John Cage, Gabriel Orozco

TYPE 5: THE BOHEMIAN

Bohemians are those capable to enjoy the art experience to its fullest degree; they are relaxed, open individuals who are highly receptive to other’s art and ideas and are contagious in their pleasure and enthusiasm, sharing their innovative thinking. They are friendly and accessible and can be very inspiring.

On average, They are abstract thinkers who can sometimes get too ambiguous and contradictory in their actions; they may lack personal drive to do things; can take them a long time to do a project, can be noncommittal.

However, if they are unhealthy, they Can be lazy, or falsely modest, boring, inattentive to detail and poor executors of projects.

Examples: Rirkit Tiravanija, Basquiat, Pippilotti Rist, Vito Acconci, Helio Oiticica, and others.

TYPE 6: THE SHAKER

Now, Shakers are very perceptive of social contexts and can influence social structures to their advantage. They are brilliant, highly diplomatic, alert, shrewd, and reliable. They excel in organizing and administration, as well as in making interesting connections and bringing people together. They can orchestrate large projects and usually are good with money. Many museum directors are shakers.

On average, Shakers can be social climbers and careerists; they can put the carriage before their horse and do things entirely out of self-interest. They can be a powerful ally and supporter but can also be a dangerous enemy.

At their worst, they can be Egotistical, with a problem with authority, extremely proud and manipulative, delusional and self-aggrandizing.

Examples: Thomas Krens, Olafur Eliasson, Christo, Jeffrey Deitch, Larry Gagosian, Okwui Enwenzor, Francesco Bonami, Mary Boone

TYPE 7: THE CONTRARIAN

Contrarians are the ones who usually open a debate. They have an innate ability to detect and question the status quo, and activating spaces of discussion and experience for others. They have sharp minds with complex perspectives and inspiring thoughts.

Generally, contrarians can be dogmatic, self-centered, and have a difficulty to relate to others who don’t share their views. Narcissistic, they are well-grounded, independent, and strong, although they resent not being given their due credit and always act as if they have a chip on their shoulder.

When unhealthy, beware: they can be extremely aggressive, dismissive of others, overly negative, insensitive to others, power-hungry, and snob.

Examples: Hans Haacke, Andrea Fraser, Martin Kippenberger, Terence Koh, Jens Hoffmann, The Guerrilla Girls, Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, Donald Kuspit.

TYPE 8: THE SPIRITUALIST

Spiritualists are self-fulfilled people who can extract the best of every art experience and bring it to a higher realm. They are people in peace with themselves, who think with clarity and lucidity, and for whom art is a vehicle to attain illumination.

Spiritualists usually see beyond what the normal viewer seees, thus can be treated as delusional (and may actually be); can be sentimental and new-agey. They can act as shamans or evangelists.

If they are unhealthy, however, they can be naïve, delusional in believing that they are the new Buddha, condescending, passive-aggressive, resentful and insecure.

Examples: Bill Viola, Agnes Martin, Barnett Newman, Dan Flavin, Joseph Beuys, Eva Hesse, James Turrell

TYPE 9: THE ADMIRER

Admirers are centered individuals who can look at art in a balanced way and appreciate its strengths and weaknesses without falling prey to their emotions. At their best they are intelligent, self-effacing, extremely reliable as supporters, collaborators or allies.

Admirers can be calculating, materialistic, acquisitive, constantly amusing themselves with new things and experiences. They have a need to be loved.

When unhealthy, they are Impulsive and infantile in what they want. Can become offensive and abusive. They act on impulses rather than dealing with their own anxieties or depressions, so they can end up spent and despondent.

Examples: Charles Saatchi, Peter Norton, the Rubells

To finalize, I will show a few graphs that exemplify demographic research of the artworld using enneagramatic types.

Here is a sample of an unhealthy enneagramic art community, with an excess of Bohemians and talkers, and yet few admirers (which translates on scant collecting) and too few conceptualists.

In this other sample, one can appreciate the behavioral trends amongst art types who are inclined to switch galleries after being selected into the Venice Biennial. Shakers and Formalists are more likely to switch galleries given their acute sense of opportunity and order, respectively; contrarians will switch only because they like to switch, nostalgists are too attached to the past, and bohemians are not able to switch because they don’t have galleries in the first place.

so as you can see, there is a lot to be learned from this system, which can be mastered with enough study and analysis.

Any questions?

Steiner

Pablo, I  do have a few comments.

PH

Go ahead.

Steiner

I have been listening to your presentation, and I am realizing that none of these statements have any scientific basis. Looks like you made them up.

PH

I think you are confused.

Steiner

I am starting to suspect that you fooled me and that actually Dr. Lipsky never existed. If you look closely at that photo of Dr. Lipsky that you gave me to show for the presentation, that looks like an old photo that you found in a thrift shop. And the guy that you showed in that picture is not Eberhard Klopstock. He looked too familiar to me. He actually is the singer Richard Tauber.

PH

You are wrong, Rupert.

Steiner

I think that your whole theory is bullshit. It is like all that new age philosophy that gives you a false sense of worth, that gives you false hopes, making you believe that there are powerful spiritual forces that will make you succeed. But the truth is that when we try to hard to search for that success we loose the sense of who we are and what we believe in. You have played with our feelings. Shame on you.

PH

I am sorry you feel this way. OK, something has gone wrong here. Maybe it is time to end this demonstration.

You may remember that you all are under hypnotic trance. So when I snap my fingers, you will not remember any of this conversation. The Enneagram of Vienna will completely vanish from your memory, the same way it came, it will vanish from everyone’s memory the same way it was gone before— it will never have existed. We will not think of who we are but only go about our lives, and our art, withholding judgment. We will simply try to survive, and be at times tortured and at times happy, not entirely sure why, and let our identities, and our relationship with art, remain a mystery, where it belongs.

[making another hypnotic gesture]

Nine, Eight, seven, six, four, three… two… one… welcome back. And thank you.

[they exit]

“Paralelamente al arte por el arte nacido del modernismo, la burocracia por la burocracia es la gran contribución humana a la hiper-modernidad. Sin embargo a diferencia del arte, que hoy se encuentra agotado, la burocracia continúa proli-ferando felizmente y expandiéndose en su paso inexorable. La burocracia es expresionista y abstracta a la vez de ser explícitamente social y política, características que difícilmente el arte más sofisticado de hoy es capaz de reunir.”

Hacia una estética de la burocracia es un libro de edición limitada creado para la trienal poligráfica de San Juan, Puerto Rico, y escrito precisamente a raíz de la experiencia burocrática de ese evento. El libro es un breve ensayo que examina las varias vertientes creativas de la burocracia latinoamericana, y la manera en que estas superan en muchos aspectos al arte contemporáneo que se realiza en esas mismas regiones. El libro contiene una serie de diagramas que ilustran la forma en que la burocracia funciona como un medio performativo y creativo  y propone estrategias para maximizar la enajenación producida por los burócratas para así emanciparse en la historia del arte.

Toward an aesthetic theory of Bureaucracy is a limited edition book originally conceived for the San Juan poligraphic Triennial, specifically inspired from the bureucratic experiences  resulting from that event. The book is a small manifesto-like essay which examines the various aspects of bureaucratic procedures as a creative process in latin america, and the ways in which they supersede in many ways, creatively and imaginatively, to the contemporary art produced there. The book has a number of diagrams which show the way in which bureaucracy can function as a performative tool and further proposes ways by which bureaucrats can become emancipated to take over art history. (book currently in Spanish only).

(fragmento del libro a continuación):

INTRODUCCION

Paralelamente al arte por el arte nacido del modernismo, la burocracia por la burocracia es la gran contribución humana a la hipermodernidad. Sin embargo a di-ferencia del arte, que hoy se encuentra ago-tado, la burocracia continúa proliferando felizmente y expandiéndose en su paso inexorable. La burocracia es expresionista y abstracta a la vez de ser explícitamente so-cial y política, características que difícilmente el arte más sofisticado de hoy es capaz de reunir.

Y sin embargo, esta práctica esencial de carácterísticas globales ha sido menos-preciada por los críticos y filósofos, y par-ticularmente por los teóricos postcolo-nialistas. Erróneamente ellos han visto a la burocracia como un defecto corrigible ex-clusivo del tercer mundo, un doblez cultural que no tiene por qué existir y que no vale la pena siquiera analizar, como una enfer-medad de la cual ya conocemos los síntomas y el remedio. Nunca se habla de la burocracia como la gran tradición histórica que es, como la monumental expresión cultural que nos define como pueblos y que nos otorga una sofisticación creativa a nivel colectivo que compite con las construcciones artísticas más complejas de la humanidad. Esta omisión por parte de los teóricos, sin duda premeditada, ha contribuído a que las regiones donde estas expresiones se manifiestan de manera más original y creativa hayan quedado al margen de la historia del arte. Y finalmente sus practicantes —los burócratas— han quedado injustamente olvidados, a pesar de su prolífica labor que en una sola vida puede generar decenas de millones de páginas de archivo.

Los filósofos ultra-contemporáneos cuyas obras están en boga hoy en día en los cursos de curaduría —Agamben y Rancière— utilizan respectivamente la noción de potencialidad y emancipación como princi-pios clave para construír un arte que trans-forme a la sociedad. Si bien ambos filósofos nos dan una perspectiva certera y brillante acerca de la raison d’etre y evolución de estos procesos, aquí trataremos humilde-mente de demostrar que no son los artistas contemporáneos, sino los burócratas, los que son capaces de encabezar esta transfor-mación revolucionaria de nuestra cultura.

Además de tratar de iniciar un discurso para establecer y reivindicar los principios estéticos de la burocracia, este pequeño libro busca también  inspirar al burócrata a revalorar su oficio a través de contemplarlo no ya como una condena a vivir sentado(a) en un escritorio, sino como un ejercicio de creatividad en el que cada día y cada acto burocrático pueda ser ejercido y apreciado como el profundo gesto artístico que en realidad es. Pero antes de conseguir esa meta es preciso borrar algunas pre-concepciones claves acerca de la buro-cracia y también de ayudarle al lector a entrar en contacto con su gen burocrático.

Si bien la burocracia no es desafortu-nadamente la cualidad exclusiva de los países en vias de desarrollo —se podría afirmar que países como Estados Unidos tienen ya sectores enteros que simulan perfectamente al tercer mundo—  es un hecho que los países de la periferia tienen las condiciones idóneas para desarrollar este medio de una forma que los vuelva epicentros de la cultura mundial y que ayude a atraer la atención a ellos de forma que ni siquiera el turismo, la etnografía, las bienales internacionales o el arte folklórico han conseguido hacer.

EN BUSCA DE NUESTRO BUROCRATA INTERNO

Hay quienes al leer esto se digan a sí mismos: “pero yo no soy burócrata”. Esta es una reacción perfectamente natural. Pero la realidad es que todos tenemos un coe-ficiente burocrático en nuestros adentros, si bien más desarrollado en unos que en otros. Todo latinoamericano, por ejemplo, tiene un pro-fundo conocimento y ex-periencia en carne propia de lo que es la burocracia. Se estima, por ejemplo, que cada latinoamericano en promedio, a lo largo de su vida, dedicará el equivalente de 7,401 horas llenando solicitudes, 1,245 horas llenando las formas equi-vocadas, 789 horas firmando recibos y 793 horas firmando contrarrecibos, 1,444 horas frente a la fotocopiadora, dos años y medio en el teléfono haciendo trámites y siete años haciendo cola o sentado en una sala de espera.  Esta clase de experiencia en sí constituye el equivalente, como mínimo, a tener un doctorado en el tema —pero no solo eso:  está bien documentado que mientras más expuesto esté uno a la burocracia, más propenso es uno a practicarla uno mismo, es decir, a ejercerla sobre los otros.

Desafortunadamente el oficio burocrático está tan desprestigiado dentro de nuestra sociedad que la mayoría de nosotros lo practicamos con desgana o simplemente lo ejercemos inconscientemente sin reconocer nuestro verdadero potencial burocrático. El gran filósofo y padre de la hermenéutica Hans-Georg Gadamer dijo una vez: “todos somos los otros y todos somos nosotros mismos”, lo cual se puede parafrasear así: “todos somos la burocracia y todos somos nuestro propio burócrata.”

Con el fin de desarrollar este potencial interno, es fundamental aceptar de nuestra identidad burocrática y demostar las mane-ras en que se puede desarrollar, redirigir y enfocar nuestro talento burocrático de forma creativa y conceptual para lograr una vida espiritualmente rica y trascender la opacidad de una carrera estrictamente oficinesca.  Posteriormente se demostrará que el burocratismo, bien ejercido, funciona como un arma de defensa, con un grado de efectividad similar al Jiujitsu. Sobra decir que un burócrata talentoso que desarrolle sus dotes artísticas logrará generar el máximo nivel de burocracia posible, el cual a su vez generará la necesidad de contratar a más burócratas para sostener el sistema. Y es así,  como se verá, que la burocracia practicada como arte puede ser un acto de activismo social inusitado y transformativo, emancipando al arte del actual yugo de extrema eficencia, raciocinio e individua-lismo que le otorga el mercado.

Fig. II. Ejemplo de un laberinto burocratizado con seis círculos viciosos y ocho sesiones de trámites donde (a) es el individuo burocratizado, (b) es el actor burocratizador, (c) el supervisor del trámite, y (s) la salida. La línea divisoria entre (a) y (b) indica una exitosa división de impersonalidad para complejizar el proceso, y que hay una sano aislamiento de comunicación entre los tres individuos, para garantizar la mayor demora posible en la resolución del trámite.

BREVISIMA HISTORIA DE LA BUROCRACIA EN LATINOAMERICA

¿Cuál es el origen de la burocracia latinoamericana? Sería difícil probar que las sociedades precolombinas eran burocráti-cas. A juzgar a través de las relaciones históricas sobre la sociedad Azteca, por ejemplo, las estructuras legales encabe-zadas por el líder o Tlatoani muestran toda evidencia de haber sido bastante organi-zadas, y si bien sus sistemas de orden social y político eran algo sangrientos, no se puede decir que no fueran eficientes.   La burocracia latinoamericana se puede re-montar  más directamente a la jerarquía administrativa de la colonia, tanto del virreinato como de la iglesia, por el sencillo factor que las verdaderas decisiones no se podían tomar sino hasta del otro lado del océano y podían transcurrir meses o años antes de que una decisión fuera tomada o un permiso aprobado (tradición que gene-ralmente aún predomina en las mejores burocracias).

Cuando latinoamérica entra a la moderni-dad, si se sigue el razonamiento de Max Weber en torno a la ética de trabajo pro-testante, lo que se preservó en cambio fue la ética católica de la contrarreforma, que en vez que mirar al futuro miraba al pasado y a continuar las tradiciones burocráticas a como diera lugar, en particular aquellas que generaban más burocracia (en la filosofía burocrática, la noción de sim-plificación es considerada como un aten-tado a la tradición). En el siglo veinte, en latinoamérica al igual que en el resto del mundo se confrontan las virtudes y defectos de dos modelos socioeconómicos: socialismo y capitalismo. Mientras que en otras re-giones del mundo se buscó implementar una combinación de ambos modelos que funcione de manera más eficiente —por ejemplo, fusionar socia-lización de servicios en algunos sectores con el libre mercado en otros— en latinoamérica se busca en cambio fusionar los aspectos más imprácticos de ambos sistemas, como optar por el entero aparato socialista gubernamental pero establecido de manera antidemocrática, privatizar el mercado pero a través de monopolios, y promover la mayor desi-gualdad social posible— todos estos ingre-dientes fundamentales para generar la perfecta burocracia. Dicho de otra manera, la historia de latinoamérica nunca se ha definido por la democracia ni siquiera por la plutocracia, sino por la burocracia.

Satándranas Obrescas is a series of works first started in 1995. The works on view here are from 2009. These works have no explanation.

The Seven Bridges of Königsberg was presented in October 2008 in downtown Manhattan as the inaugural exhibition of the alternative space Forever & Today. For a month, the gallery was turned into a card-reading parlor into which street visitors would enter and pay for a card reading.

Visitors were given a text that described the process of the reading of the cards and the history of the problem of the Seven Bridges of Königsberg.  (see below)

The Seven Bridges of Königsberg

(An Accompanying Text That Does Not Explain Anything)

NYC

2008

Throughout his eighty years of life, Immanuel Kant never traveled beyond the outskirts of his native Königsberg. His absence of travel experience, which even in his time and for a person of his stature were unusual, and yet for the philosopher this was most decidedly not a reflection of a sedentary spirit. It certainly was never apparent to his students, who usually were impressed by his detailed descriptions of European cities and his erudite knowledge of world affairs.  We are also told by De Quincey and Wasianski that Kant also was a constant stroller, and had such a rigorous and precise walking schedule after dinner that his neighbors would adjust their clocks when the philosopher passed by.

Kant placed great importance to periods of silence and reflection. During his entire adult life, and particularly during a period known as his “silent decade” when he wrote The Critique of Pure Reason, the philosopher would spend his evening strolls reflecting upon what he had read earlier in the day. When Kant would return home, he would sit in his study and spend some time reading, and continue his reflections while looking out the window looking at the old tower of Lobenicht.

Kant’s walking path is not described by his biographers, but in late XVIIIth Century Königsberg it would have been hard not to include its various bridges, which join two islands and each other with the mainland. It would also be hard not to imagine that Herr Kant, while crossing them, would not have thought more than once about the famous problem of The Seven Bridges of Königsberg. The problem was to prove on whether it is possible to follow a path that crosses each bridge exactly once and return to the starting point. The solution to the problem was provided during Kant’s youth by the Swiss scientist Leonhard Euler, the preeminent mathematician of the Eighteenth century. Euler, who introduced much of the terminology of modern Mathematics and Physics, proved in 1736 that it was impossible to cross the seven bridges of Königsberg in a continuous path only once. He reformulated the problem in abstract terms, creating a graph that eliminated all features of the problem except the list of landmasses and the bridges connecting them. Next he observed that during any walk in the graph, the number times one enters a non-terminal vertex (or bridge) equals the number of times one leaves it. Since (in this case) at most two landmasses can serve as the endpoints of a putative walk, the existence of a walk traversing each bridge once leads to a contradiction.

Euler’s solution to The Seven Bridges of Königsberg is generally considered as a foundational theorem that led to the birth of Topology and Graph Theory, which is in turn the guiding principle of modern computation. Euler’s thought, in a larger sense, was influential in Kant as he developed a philosophy that countered skeptical empiricism and used logic to arrive to an absolute moral and spiritual laws.

Königsberg suffered three stages of destruction. The first stage took place in 1944, when the British Royal Air Force raided the city. The second stage was an assault of the Soviet Army in April 1945.  In 1946 the city was ceded to the Soviet Union and its name was changed to Kaliningrad under the Postdam Agreement. The third period of destruction lasted from 1945 until the 1980s. The ideological task of that period, set by the Soviet government, was the construction of a new Russian city. This task presupposed the deliberate extermination of everything reminiscent of the German/Prussian past. Traits of the old Königsberg recognizable in its ruins ought to have been erased. Blocks of buildings as Kneiphof and Altstadt, the northern part of Vorstadt and southern Lobenicht were demolished almost completely.

The present card system functions around the principle of establishing a topology of the present by laying the foundations of the past, in the form of four figurative “landmasses” that become the primary set of four cards: The Present, the Final Outcome, The Past, and The Unresolved Past. Further, and establishing an Eulerian Circuit of sorts, seven cards are set, as bridges onto the primary cards to establish the interconnections between causes and effects.

THE LAYING OF THE CARDS

The cards are to be laid out following the original structure of the city of Konigsberg.

The first four cards are laid out in a cross format. Each corresponds to a landmass, or, in the symbolism of the cards, to yourself in the present situation faced with the past, the final outcome, and the unresolved past.

Each one of the seven cards that will bridge these four components will be laid down.

The first card to be laid is the one bridging Yourself to the Past.  This card helps establish the way in which the past influences your present situation, and the way in which it becomes a positive or detrimental factor in influencing the present situation.

The second card to be laid is the one bridging The Past with The Unresolved Past. This second card helps establish the way in which that which is unresolved came about, and what are the origins of this issue that has not yet been addressed.

The fourth card to be laid bridges The Past with the Third Bridge.  This is the second most significant card, as it connects the lower half of your life and your situation, summarizing the nature of the question, the issues of the past, and its relationship to the present.

The fifth card to be laid is the one bridging The Unresolved Past to Yourself. This card helps clarify the situation or reason by which that which remains unresolved may become or is currently an issue to be considered in the present situation. Often this card helps reveal the presence of a person who is important in this situation.

The third card to be laid is the one bridging The Unresolved Past with the Final Outcome. It is the first bridging card that connects to the future, and the one that may lay the foundation to understand in which sense the way in which previous events may link to what is to come.

The sixth card to be laid is the one bridging Yourself in the Present Situation with The Final Outcome.

The seventh and last card is the one bridging the third bridging card with the Final Outcome, providing the last statement of the system.

CARD NOMENCLATURE

1. The Lighthouse

This card relates to being a spectator or witness of an event. It connects with the ability to see from far away, perhaps see the future with clarity. The private becomes public. It is a card of revelation. Someone or something that is guiding us. Looking for the comfortable home, comfort food.

1. Cat’s Cradle

This is the card of childhood games. Old lessons that we learned in school. This card is often connected to family problems, and also to how we are attracted to those problems as adults. This card represents competitiveness, our place in the ambiguity of being dependent or being independent.

1. Pillory

A problem that we don’t seem to be able to solve by ourselves. An embarrassing situation that is made public in front of others. Issues that apparently are simple to others but not to ourselves. Lack of confidence, a labyrinth without a labyrinth, a complex situation that we are not even able to describe or articulate.

1. Temple

This card represents our inner sanctuary, our personal memory: the places (periods of time or physical spaces) that are important to us. Damage that has been done to us, to someone or to something that in a way has also been comforting or has brought positive things (the good that has been brought by something bad).

1. Consent

This is the connecting card of this deck. It stands for the outer layer of everything. It also stands for veiled vanity: our inability to see makes us very comfortable.

1. The Windmill

This is the card for the construction of imaginary places. It is the card of the idealists, and stands for the construction of dreams.

1. Marienbad

Déjà vu, that which is repeated. This card stands for the presence of something or someone in our lives but we are not certain that it is there. We think we are being observed, and we feel we are in an unfamiliar place, but at the same time the sense of unfamiliarity is oddly familiar.

1. Holiday.

Looking inside to what nourishes us. Those remote places of comfort, those places where we feel very comfortable, places of escape while we know there is war going on elsewhere cow’s milk and all those domestic commodities.  A possible danger that is hovering over ourselves. Oblivion. It is a card of denial.

1. Actor

There is something that we can’t detect. Don’t lose your face in spite your nose. Follow your instincts. There may be a storm coming up soon and you may not realize it at this moment.

1. Station

The light at the end of the tunnel. The end of a sickness. Exchange. Coming out from dark to light. This is a transitional card.

Generally, something very difficult or very bad is ending. But you could also be imagining that things are improving. Slow game.

1. Martir

We never know the mechanisms of history. Enigmas that are hard to decipher. There is a story behind of which we will never know the true details. This is the card for the conspiracy theorists. It is the card of the absurd decisions and the message that there are decisions that you can never back track from.

1. The Tomb of the Algonquians

Exploring an unknown place. This is the time to analyze your own past, to talk to the elders, or to whoever is the person that has the institutional memory, because there it is where you will find the clues. This is the place where some things are incredibly ephemeral and other stay forever, like death. This is the card of the in between place between the cradle and the mausoleum, between complete ignorance and total knowledge, the card that tells you that both are so close to each other that it is easy to miss them.

1. Nursery

A place where things originate. But it is an artificial place, and it is a card for those who feel vulnerable.  Things are growing but could die very easily. It is possible to make things flourish if one knows how to nurture them, but one has to be careful and caring. It means that one has the ability to make things work, but that this ability does not come in a spontaneous manner. It is the card of the good student, but not for the ones who are naturally talented.

1. Extinction.

Something that is quickly going away or has already left. This is the card that, more than the others, establishes the sense of passing of things. But like in sunsets or breaks of dawn, there is something revelatory in that moment, whether it is a good or bad moment. We will learn a lot of things about ourselves by fleeting things.

1. River-bed

This card stands for the denouement of events. Something is going to finish, and that which was not very clear will now be clear in all its mechanisms. It will not finish with a whimper, but with a bang. It is not a positive card, and may describe a situation that has reached a critical point.

1. Music Room

This is a card that stands for all that we were taught. It also stands for sensibility and the transformation of something into art. It connects to the memory that music provides, and how it transports us to another time. That which contains time and memory, could be an object or could be a person. Melodic geography, how a place is constructed individually. This is the card for the talented and for the studious. Something is boring, and there is arduous work behind what you are trying to do.

1. Cicada

A card relating to a scene or a place where something unresolved happened. The underground again, things we cannot see. A ritual, a periodic occurrence that we may or may not be aware about, but that is connected with our own rhythms. The card points to secret rituals and to the fact that nature is always wiser than us. Things continue whether we are here or not in the world. This is the card for those in need for structure in their lives, and for the selfish- things are larger than what you think they are.

1. Turnstile

A card about the notion of rebound and walking in circles. Other people are making you go where you don’t want to go or where you have been already. You are in a vicious cycle. You are in love, or playing a pointless or dangerous game, and in any case you are a little lost, so it is time to reassess your values and your objectives.

1. Battle Horse

A card that relates to the notion of figurative blindness.  This is the card for those who think are experts but have a hard time questioning themselves. You have a particular talent or knowledge that you know how to exploit, but that also makes you weak or limits you because you cannot look for any other areas of value in your life. It does become a shield, a protective cocoon.

1. Beehive

A card that points to being driven by something deceptive or something that may prove to be costly. This is also a card for mirages, for the sense of having been illuminated, but instead having been deceived.

1. Umbrella

This card often points to something has come up that in other circumstances would have been very useful, but not now. This is the card for those with bad timing and who feel to be in a lonely situation. However, it is a card that speaks to those in a challenging situation but that have the abilities and the energy to overcome it. It is a card for those undergoing a dry spell and feeling that there is no real escape for the ordeal they are going through.

1. Chameleon

Depending on the position of this card, it is about someone’s transformation or the transformation of a situation.  It is a card for those who are in flux, and who are highly adaptable to change. It indicates a situation that is highly volatile, where it is equally possible that you may win or lose to a great degree. Normally people cannot appreciate your great adaptability, but that is because you are able to become invisible. It is a card for those who are able to blend in and can respond to their surroundings without being emotionally affected, who stay above the fray but at the same time are able to fit in.

Never seen species.

1. Concorde

Something finally has worked out or will be working out, but also this card is about the deals that lead nowhere. You may have made a business decision that has not or will not work out. Be careful about where you go.

1. Dinosaur

The card signals the end of something. Something hasn’t been explained, and events have taken place quite quickly, but still the main reason is very evident. There is someone behind this, and likely someone you know.

1. Bell

An event or series of events that are coordinated. This is a card for harmony and for announcing positive events, such as a wedding. You may have something positive with you but perhaps you are not announcing it properly to the rest of the world.

1. Swimmer

The swimmer is a character that perfects his abilities, but only to do one single thing.

This is the card for expertise, and for experts. The swimmer knows his objective, but at the same time suffers from lack of perspective and has a hard time looking at the big picture. This is a card for independent people.

1. Pendulum

Something needs to be measured. You are the measurement of the situation. You are the person whom others depend for their help and expertise, but you feel lost, and sometimes you don’t know who to trust. First children and only children correspond to this card.  You are an empiricist, someone who will only try things for oneself.

1. Well

Something is hidden within you or within a place that matters to you, and it is your duty to look for it and take it out in order to solve your problems. This is the card that calls for introspection.

1. Balloon

“Happiness lies high for us- it is the ultimate goal for man according to Aristotle. It lies high but sometimes like a balloon it descends upon us and we can reach it.” This is the card of the eccentrics and the adventurers, who often engage in wild goose chases and are very self absorbed.

1. Home.

This is the card for returns, the card that indicates that it is time to go back to where we came from, for whatever reason. It also indicates the completion of a journey, which usually seems to be the longest section of any trip. At this point we are naked, fragile, and in need of our families and the others.

1. Witch-hunt

This is the card for stupidity and ignorance, for rumors and hearsays, of superstition and isolation. It stands for all the things that you were told were true and for all the defects of your education and the place that educated you.

1. The Man with the Iron Mask

This is the card for outer shells, for the protective layers that we wear in order to escape or deny a certain reality.  The layers give us confidence, but they may also turn us into a monster. It may relate to a condition that we simply can’t control and we have to learn to live with.

1. Explorer

An unexpected situation has brought new insights. We have been forced to see something, he value of something or the bad aspects of something.

1. The Twin Kings

This is an ambivalent card: it may stand for two simultaneous strengths but also for a dilemma that we are having in our life. We have to choose and we don’t know which one is going to prevail.

1. Threshold

This is the card for all those who want to be on the other side or who want to be someone else. There is always something inaccessible to us, and we define ourselves in terms of how much we want to obtain that which is inaccessible to us.

1. The Lover

This is the card for the Platonists, those who think that love and art can coexist, that it is possible to find pure goodness. It is also the card that indicates mortality and points to the end of times, or to the fact that something has or must come to an end.

1. The Electric Storm

This is the card of the external forces, which becomes particularly significant when it appears in the context of a bridge to the past. It signals those events or circumstances beyond our control that greatly influence our decisions and our current situation.

1. Dream Fairy

Depending on the context, this card points to escapism and contradiction on the one hand, or the ability to think large and retain a positive outlook of the situation on the other. It stands for the ideals that we seek to accomplish.

1. Lion in Winter

The end of the game, and the wisdom that comes with it, is often the significance of this card. It is a card that points to our inner strengths gained by experience, and our ability to see the world better thanks to it.

1. Deus Ex Machina

This card, like #37, often represents someone’s community —whether family, friends, nation, etc. — and the way its history is playing a part in the question being asked.

1. Squirrel

This card stands for an action that is currently being made, a project that is being followed-through. It often indicates the need to change the means to an end, and to indicate the importance of foresight.

1. Morning

This is a highly psychological card. It often points to the need of exploring one’s childhood obsessions, or revisiting the early circumstances of the issue at hand. On other contexts, the card is about comfort and leisure.

1. Martir

This card brings forth that which has been sacrificed in order to obtain a particular benefit, some of which may be of a personal nature. It also points to a misleading incentive, or a false purpose for something that is being made. However, this card also establishes fortitude and determination.

1. Keys

This is an important card of the deck. It points to a gravitating force of a particular situation and often reveals the point where the answer to a problem lies. It presents the notion that the answers to a problem lie in the very nature of a particular place or person.  It is a revelatory card of travel and new encounters.

1. Vulture

This is a powerful card of warning and insight. Paired with The Lover and The Lion in Winter, also points to the end of a situation, to infinite insight, but also to our need to seek protection from something that may threaten us— the loss of a job, the loss of a friend, and other circumstances that may not benefit us.

1. Experiment

This is a card that strongly relates us to our dependence to the others and the tension between the way in which we are being seen and the others see us. The questioner in this case should reflect about this tension and the conflicts within it.

1. Venus

This is the card of fulfillment and desire.  Depending on the context, it may be pointing to a need to acknowledge the way in which an unconscious desire we have may be driving our actions, or perhaps how a selfish act influenced a situation. In some instances the card is about an unresolved relationship.

1. Turtle

This card is about gaining perspective of a particularly confusing situation that is taking place at the time. Things may look extremely difficult or confusing at the time, and this card calls for taking the high road pointing that there is always a means to resolve a problem. It is a reassuring card.

1. Last Act

A particular situation has arrived to its ultimate consequences.  This card is often related to conversations, speeches, arguments and debates that may have influenced us in some way as well as the situation we are inquiring about. It warns us about the way in which what actually happened is not how it will be remembered and establishes the distance between an event and the memory of it.

(video, black and white, 15 min., 2008)

Chipilo is a documentary based on the story of a town of the same name, located in the vicinity of the city of Puebla, Mexico. Toward the last quarter of the XIXth century, the government of Porfirio Díaz sought to populate some areas of Mexican land with European immigrants, with the hopes that these groups would enrich the culture and the economy of the region. Amongst these groups were a community of northern italians that spoke Veneto and agreed to settle in these new lands. The unusual geographic, social and political circumstances of this arrangement resulted in the italian settlers to remain in isolation without much other choice. To this day, most of the population of Chipilo speak the original Véneto dialect. Chipilo documents, in the original language, the story of this community that resulted from a utopian social experiment in XIXth Century Mexico.

- P. H. 2008

Installation view, Lower East Side Tenement Museum, 2007

A Dictionary of Foreign Time is a project originally conceived for the windows of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York (www.tenement.org). Aside to the installation, other components include an edition of glass slides with images and texts. The quotes in the façade, written in international phonetic alphabet, belong to LP Hartley (”the past is a foreign country”) and Paul Valèry (”the future is not what it used to be”). An edition of this work was produced in collaboration with the Center of Book Arts in New York.