Monika Schwärzler, Of Pleasure and the Insufficiency of Surfaces

Monika Schwärzler

The searching systems of the “Eternal Archives” mainly avail themselves of pictures and pieces of text from the world of the media, however selectively. When a major finding has been made, the archive gates close inexorably above it. There is a certain gluttony in this mechanism, and an unsparingness too. See the final document: a friend of the archivist anticipates the situation in which his highly personal statement will disappear in the archive.

The missile silo, which occurs twice in the material of the archives in distorted form, could serve as the picture of the archives. It is a huge hole, an aperture, a storage space in the depths, a colossal depot, a hollow that has never been excavated by hand, and a reposito-ry located a thousand meters below the sea. For earthly copulation – see the mounted pic-tures of sexual penetration in this context – this vessel is somewhat too big. This would require technique, “high tech”. Throats and holes – and oral cavities. Plastic clamps, which hold oral cavities open, Through this impact, violently released, there is a terrifying jaw in which periodontosis-stricken teeth lie around like startled animals. Usually, jaws are only partly visible. Never are they visually available in this way. The voyeuristic observers have, so to speak, a plastic foot in the oral cavitiy. They can test their unsentimental gaze, wean themselves away from horror and repulsion and stare into an inner space whose sphincter is paralysed as if in some experimental arrangement.

Oral cavities – and rib cages. Rib cages are alive by virtue of being in a closed state, and, generally, an intimation of the cavity below by far suffices to indicate this. The photograph that the acquirer of the archives has insisted on, however, arches the opened-up rib cage out towards the viewer. You can look inside to your fill and habituate your eyes to the for-bidden darkness of this cave.

In the pictures of the “Eternal Archives”, mouths, eyes, noses and sexual orifices function as places of entry and descent. These are where you set out on your journey underground, these are where you abseil downwards. The master of the archives is driven by the addic-tion to get behind and beneath the surface; advancing to layers which perhaps evade complete symbolization in pictures and words. What does it look like under the skin? What comes to light when eczema and ulcers eat up the surface? Where are limits encounte-red? – The archives regret to inform visitors that the procedure of stripping back the skin has unfortunately secured nothing but further pictures and new surfaces.

In a text which was found by the archivist on a tree in Kärntnerstrasse, the unknown author speaks once more of not having “lived” and of having no strength for “life” and of only managing the basics. How can she extricate herself? The words put in quotation marks aim at falling out of the sentence structure. In order to be able to experience that which is being held by quotation marks as by steel clamps, one would have to get out, to the top, outsde,up and away. On the same page a portrait can be seen of somebody who has put his face directly onto a photocopier so as to receive an authentic imprint of life. After some effort, the fragment of a strongly over-exposed nose becomes deciphered.

Inserts, i.e. small and mostly round picture elements, have been inlaid into many of the photographs. This is a montage technique suggesting depth. Behind the “foreground” level of the picture there is a second level to be found, which might in turn even allow access to a third. The respective photographs appear to have been stricken with artistically arranged skin rashes, a kind of immune system weakness of the surface. In part, the inserts come across as focii which highlight events, make them concise, and are a commentary from off the scenes on the levels behind or in front. So, for instance, microscopic photographs of a uterus have been inserted into the pictures of a breast examination. Like inserted islands, images of people kissing each other spring from an arrangement of Beate Uhse sex toys. Where the inserts are monochrome, such as in the pictures of Bosnian fighters, the thin varnish character of the pictures comes over more than clearly. Images portrayed by the media are a filmy pixel coating on a surface and owe their existence to a vague hint of the will to be represented.

The inserts co-structure large parts of the picture material. With them, something like the insufficient at the surface is raised to the level of a programme. One is reminded of the anger and frustration of Lucio Fontana, who perforated and slit open canvasses of his pictures because he simply was not prepared to accept the twodimensionality of surfaces.

“Pixel storm over Asia” – Brezhnev’s portrait is pulverized in a whirlwind of picture particles, while the allocated text speaks of immortalisation practices. When the pictures deve-lop backwards and renounce their imaginary lines of height, a flatness beyond limits remains – no raised surfaces in the field of the picture, nothing from which monuments could be built. The pictures prepared in the “Eternal Archives” are beautiful, but at the same time their beauty is put aside as a surface phenomenon and a mise en scène. ARTE and the face of Miss Sarajevo could fit together. On the page which is commented upon ironically with the words “form follows function”, weapons secured by the police which have been arranged in an artistic order are shown.

The page with the night exposures of air raids on Baghdad and mounted kitchen knife advertisement is beautiful. Here the aesthetic impact is, so to speak, calculated in a razor-sharp way. With examples like these, there is a consensus in the headquarters of the ar-chives with the superficiality of beautiful appearance, and high artistic skills of image generation are practised.

Virtual reality, longed-for increase in reality, pushing of the wheel of happiness without using fingers will certainly encourage a virtual triviality with an unimagined sense of possibilities. The picture membrane will then close its pores, and stabs in the heart of the things bring to the surface the most beautiful samples of texture in highdefinition colour: further material for the “Eternal Archives”.

02 / 1995

Peter Putz erhielt schon viele Preise für seine Film- und Videoarbeiten. Seit 1991 benutzt er den Computer als Werkzeug künstlerischer Arbeit.

27. 1. 1995

45 / 2002