OSV library #13: The Horizontal Monolith (Wedekind’s Discoveries)

OSV. library

Freuchen / Major / T enningen osloBIENNALEN FIRST EDITION 2019 – 24

# 13: The Horizontal Monolith

(Wedekind’s Discoveries)

OSV. is an art project by Jan Freuchen, Jonas Høgli Major and Sigurd Tenningen, specially conceived in response to an invitation to participate in osloBIENNIAL FIRST EDITION 2019 –2024, curated by Eva González Sancho Bodero and Per Gunnar Eeg-Tverbakk.

OSV. (the Norwegian equivalent to etc.) consists of a series of booklets and an evolving exhibition held in a sculpture pavilion at Økern, Oslo. The booklets provide a complete description of the collection of works of art held in the public sphere in the City of Oslo. www.oslobiennalen.no

OSV. # 13 The Horizontal Monolith (Wedekind’s Discoveries) Translated from the Norwegian

by Paul Russell Garrett 2020 © OSV. ISBN: 978-82-691597-5-2 Design: Andreas Töpfer The book contains modified quotes by Henri Bergson, Italo Calvino, Heinrich von Kleist and Laurent Olivier.

OSV. library 978-82-691597-5-2

# 13: The Horizontal Monolith

The Horizontal Monolith

1.

Between knolls and thickets at the outskirts of the city, intricate patterns are found at ground level, where soil, pebbles, needles, and other detrital materials have gradually been compacted by the winding journeys of humans and animals, such that they now emerge as collective drawings in the field. These drawings can be observed from above (assuming the adjacent trees and shrubs don’t stretch out to obscure the view), in the way the ancient geoglyphs were fashioned (such as the Peruvian Nazca Lines) for an imagined celestial perspective, or the way some UFO enthusiasts tread Hilma-af-Klint-like patterns into corn fields.

However, nothing can compare with experiencing these drawings on the surface of the earth, with the feet in direct contact with the pathway’s meandering (and often outright bewildering) design. The astute rambler journeying along such paths, where on quiet autumn days the air is thick with damp soil, broken mushroom stems and rustling foliage, will appreciate the rhythmic friction between the soles and the ground as an act of co-creation for a work of art with innumerable creators, spread over an incalculable time, in a space that has yet to be given walls.

2.

While the extended reality seems to stretch beyond our understanding indefinitely, it seems that the only thing real in our inner life is that which begins with the present moment; the rest is effectively eliminated. When a memory then pops up in our consciousness, its effect is like the mysterious appearance of a ghost, which can only be accounted for with unusual causes. In reality, the connection between that memory and our present condition corresponds entirely with the connection between unobserved objects and perceived objects, and in both instances, the unconscious plays the same role.

3.

The painted metal sculpture on a plinth in R. park can be discussed in two ways: you can say that it’s blue and that it practically ‘billows’ in the wind, or you can start with the mossy granite clump at the bottom and say that it compensates for the lopsidedness and the audacious absence of balance, which otherwise would have ruined the sculpture and made it appear ludicrous. Both descriptions would be valid, but neither would be exhaustive. If on the other hand, you were to attempt a more comprehensive description, you would have to take into account the way the light falls on the dirty green stone, how the cobblestone grid offers ‘the waves’ the freedom to reach for the wind, how the combination of iron and granite has seldom appeared with such leggerezza, how there is something frivolous about the way the sculpture refuses to conform in its modest surroundings, which of course are actually founded on old rubbish etcetera. But not even that would have sufficed.

4.

In the triangle framed by three roads, B., M. and K., a small bear balances on a ball of dark larvikite. The ball is positioned atop a square column, where four goat heads spit streams of water into the octagonal pool surrounding the column. The ball, the triangle, the square and the octagon represent a geometric order that is crowned by the bear. Thus the bear’s graceful movements represent a notion of paradisical grace and innocence, in stark contrast to the endless grime, noise and circulation surrounding the fountain. Though it would be futile to summarise the philosophical vision of history expressed in the fountain, briefly, it illustrates the myth of the Fall in light of a triadic world order. That order consists of 1) a lost paradisical condition, 2) the earthly alienation from paradise, and 3) the utopia of a new paradise forestalled by the bear’s balance and grace. The divine grace (gratie) appears here in gestural form, as an amalgamation of geometric perfection (the ball) and the bear’s aristocratic elegance — as dexterity, dance and the art of balancing. The aesthetic and idealised gratie is only possible when people exceed the limitations of their habitual thinking and blind self-aggrandisement. The grace is then elevated to the level of the bear, who in his inarticulate way, demonstrates that people are forever condemned to eat from the tree of knowledge, and thus to look for a new way in to paradise. All this on a central reservation on M.

5.

To the left at the junction at the old level crossing on L. lies a roughly hewn block of granite surrounded by cocksfoot and a small raspberry thicket. In the afternoon sun, the gnarled red surface casts small shadows, making them resemble pores. The block of stone breathes lightly and is shaped like a crouching animal.

In the nearby grass, an orange wheelweaving spider has spun its web, determined to catch a passer-by.

A drop of dew has been caught in the net, quivering slightly in the still afternoon air. When the sun catches the drop just right, it glistens faintly like the reflection from a pupil. It is hard to know whether the block of stone was placed there intentionally or whether it was simply left behind after work on the level crossing was completed.

Later that evening W. walks past. It is already getting late, nevertheless he stops and cautiously places his palm on the stone that is still warm. His small fingertips slip perfectly inside the pores and he grabs hold. Just then a slight tremor passes over the surface of the granite and W. can just make out a dark rumbling from the depths of the block. He quickly pulls his hand back and hurries down the path that runs alongside the fence by the railway tracks, away from the stone. In between heartbeats he thinks he hears heavy steps on the path behind him. W. turns around several times but sees only the bluish darkness enveloping the forest path and the tracks.

6.

The problem with the perfect description begins when an object is brought into the world. The series of occurrences that spiral outwards from the object’s epicentre are difficult to frame, let alone capture fully. If you were to give the bike chained to the lamp post on K. J. street a little push, the flight path, which until then found perfect parallel in the fluted architectural order on the far side of the promenade, would quickly break up. The same can be said for any object, and it is only chance that determines to what extent we experience the sum of occurrences as an organised order in a coherent whole. It would still be possible to claim the existence of a higher order, a second-degree organisation of the accumulated substance. Naturally an order like that would have to be stipulated by reason alone, and it would not find resonance in the perceptible world, but could nevertheless connect with it synthetically (namely as representation).

7.

The resin secreted from bare patches between the rough flakes of pine bark smells of the earth’s fertile depths and is extremely sticky (so much so that prehistoric flies sometimes appear encapsulated in fossilised versions of the substance). Fingers can get stuck together to form helpless flippers.

By following a simple precaution and wetting the skin with a thin layer of saliva, resinous material is suddenly more malleable and can then be formed into small spherical clumps and can be chewed without dissolving. This proto-chewing gum is familiar in most parts of the world.

Over the course of the previous century (with a particular boom in the post-war years), chewing gum has become an integral part of mankind’s nonnutritional diet. Chewing gum packs, with their foil inner wrappers and colourful, glossy outer wrappers, are often discovered at the bottom of old trouser pockets and messy leather bags, (often several different packs), under sofa cushions and in dark glove compartments. In line with its proliferation, patterns of chewed chewing gums, thoughtlessly spat out and trodden into the street, have started to form. Like the earthly reflection of the starry sky, the white, pink and sometimes bluish-green chewing gum forms a universe beneath the soles of our feet; a discarded and rejected universe, only afforded suspicious gazes and resigned shakes of the head.

8.

Chewing gum’s cultural heyday coincides with that of the cigarette, most iconically portrayed in the long line of films depicting American wars in Korea, Cambodia and Vietnam. Distinct from the current dominant shape (oval, curved at the edges and with a smooth surface), chewing gum in these films is closer to the long, flat floury variant we know from brands like Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit and Wrigley’s Spearmint. Besides aspirin and rum, chewing gum and cigarettes are conventional warfare’s most common pharmakon on film. Just as much symbols of cultural affiliation, they are also props in a pre-traumatic stress crowd, which in turn get their continuation in another type of film: the returning soldier. While out in the field it’s the high intake of substances that characterise the ampedup heroes, there is usually far more asceticism and guardedness detected in the returning veterans.

Their manic, rabid chewing-gum chewing is behind them and has transformed into strictness, moderation and moral indignation — an indignation that almost without exception turns to diabolical resentment and internal dissolution. The synthesis of these two positions — the pre and post-traumatic soldier — are found in the shiny steel bust resting on a plinth in the schoolyard by G. L. school. The severity and amped-up concentration on the face (the expression is reminiscent of Marlon Brando’s interpretation of Lieutenant Kurtz, the lead character in Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam epic Apocalypse Now) is here contrasted by the blob of yellow Juicy Fruit running out of the chest, threatening to completely engulf the concrete plinth. The steel armour and the chewing gum’s sticky goo are a monument to the moral universe of the classic war film.

9.

Over the summer holidays the metal boar has appeared on a pedestal in the schoolyard of S. This heavy beast half-sits half-lies on a bed of bronze and granite.

The blank swine eyes stare ahead, satiated, while the animal puffs and pants between its tusks. There is something obscene about that broad face, W. thinks as he dabs his forehead with a handkerchief, as though its swine senses are dulled by the summer heat and it now accept every approach from the passers-by. On the inside of its thigh, he eyes a flaccid penis. Its fur is mud-coloured and only the snout shines in the sun, polished by the touches of hundreds of hands. Had it not been for the hooves and the curly tail, you could easily mistake the animal for a large dog.

10.

From the sloping cornice of the house at the corner of P. road, a small stone face peers out of the stucco. The forehead is completely smooth and the gaze is fixated as though in a state of inner rest.

Someone has likely attempted to portray Humility, or someone in the immediate family (Charity, for example). Bearing in mind the laurel wreath wildly encircling it, the figure is simultaneously a symbol of the natural state. In its simple way, this small face tells us that we are unassuming and simple-minded by nature and ought not forget this when we rush past on the way to our ephemeral tasks down at street level. Had the face been able to speak, it would probably have emitted short grunts and monosyllabic words. The wide bridge of its nose and the sunken lips testify to a serious case of absent-mindedness, idiocy, quite simply.

11.

Having passed in ignorance for a lifetime, the sight of the filthy memorial plaque struck W. with a force he had never before felt. A visual consummation in the form of an initial (impartial?) observation, without the treacherous effect of habit and expectation. It was as though the marble plaque shouted to him; looming with such visual force that it immediately set his arms in rhythmic pendulum. At the same time, this visual gluttony was observed by passers-by; some interpreted his grimaces as auspicious verging on comical, while others were simply gripped by fear when faced with such exaltation. W. raised his arms enthusiastically and in that moment stumbled backward in his excitement, but was immediately pulled to his feet by the decisiveness of observant onlookers who came to his rescue.

After coming to his senses, W. strolled home, satisfied and redeemed, while he wondered at the intricate relation between surprise, materiality and form that had just taken hold of him. The entire occurrence had come across as rather memorable, unforgettable even. Later, W. often felt a need to revisit the site, but afraid that repetition would ruin the revelation, he decided against it. Instead he led an inverse exhibitionist existence, where rather than exposing himself to others in surprising ways, he attempted to prepare for new visual surprises on his own.

After a while he got bored of that too, such that in the end he couldn’t help but return to the plaque.

Perhaps through the act of repetition he could entertain hope of rediscovering its uniqueness?

As he approached the small stretch of road with the low stone wall where the plaque was located, he tried to the best of his ability to conjure up the original experience. Much to his surprise, W. discovered how well he remembered it, that amazingly he could reconstruct his encounter with the plaque in his mind, down to the tiniest detail.

Fully and completely absorbed by his power of recollection, W., practically on autopilot, sleepwalked in the direction of the plaque. Only when he stood right in front of it did he discover that to his great horror, he didn’t recognize the plaque at all, and that with its numbers and inscriptions, it seemed as strange to him as if it had been written in gibberish in another time. None of the names made sense to him, nor did the event that the plaque was meant to serve as a memorial for. Had he even been here before, he wondered? Probably not. So W. turned and started to walk along the stone wall, searching for the plaque he had just examined in his memory, but whose location he could no longer recall. For over an hour he wandered back and forth along the stone wall, fully convinced that he still had not found the right plaque.

Was his mind playing tricks on him, or had he in fact seen something unique? He just didn’t know.

12.

Like everything that lives and dies, the existence of individual works of arts is stretched between the fleeting and the recurring. Our lives are temporary, just as our material creations are. Nothing of us, or of the objects we use, or of the buildings we inhabit, will persevere or be preserved, at least not in their current state. Every moment of time transforms what exists irretrievably, without us being able to do a thing about it. Everywhere birth, growth, ageing and disappearance are mixed. In the end there is nothing left of us but used furniture, heaps of old clothes, piles of assorted tableware and yellowed paper. Nothing is left but rags, which time happily tears up, swallows and digests. The world is already so sated with the past that there is barely room for the present; everything here must disappear when the time is ripe, as quickly as possible in order to make room for what is to come. That which existed has disappeared and that which endures will be forgotten — that is the fundamental requirement for the collection of objects and buildings that make up the world to continue to exist beyond the destruction of every individual object.

13.

Atop the hat of the male verdigriscoated figure, his stoic gaze resting on a distant horizon and the folds of his baroque shirt billowing over a bulging stomach, sits a lone mottled pigeon. With sudden, dinosaur-like movements of the head, it registers every movement on the cobbled city space with its red laser eyes, while sporadically unleashing flowing excrements on the man’s hat, gradually staining it whiter and whiter. These overpriced bronze bird stands with bases of granite or similarly hard stone materials, which have gradually been added to urban settlements over the centuries to commemorate particularly important events or people, today function as metaphorical collages, where (at the given moment) the face of the meaningful man represents ego, while the bird captures the animalistic (and presumably more believable) superego. The id of the granite base connects the figure with the unrestrained undercurrents that constantly threaten the surface with its secret life.

The statues’ scrutinising bird masks also anticipate the city of the future with its panoptic camera lenses, strategically placed on towering posts and corners of apartment blocks, or suspended in the air like a drone eye directed at the crowds in the street. Thus the sculptures become welcome distractions for the public to direct their anger at, while the pigeon flutters to a more suitable spot for its all-consuming gaze.

14.

Any society will at some time or another be subjected to the scrutinising gaze of the people of the future, when the accumulated layers of dirt, excrement and dust have enveloped all the furniture, tools and vessels, so that its entire culture appears as a geological fat-like layer, with sporadic sprinklings of crystalline treasures. This process is unavoidable, and every well-informed person knows that applies to the future condition of the current surroundings too. With exquisite vanity, people often try to be considerate of the archaeologists of the future, the way a guilt-ridden homeowner cleans every nook and cranny before the underpaid cleaner arrives. This results in something that can best be described as ‘curated’ archaeological strata, where the future excavator (who you also expect to be aware of the conscious arrangement of the artifacts by the people of the past) has to attach a social-psychological aspect to the artifacts in front of them. What stands out? What has been hidden?

15.

The pressure from the total number of bronze, iron, steel and stone sculptures hovers like a needle mat above the city’s network of streets.

The points of entry on the map can be connected with string, so that from a bird’s-eye-view you can visualise the city’s large circuit and intersecting meridians. A large accumulation of needles will indicate a concentration of pathogenic factors, which the sculptures are in turn set up to remedy.

Gradually a smaller circuit would then emerge, where the hidden energy pathways between the healing points are inundated by new activity. Thus, with a certainty of the distance between the two circuits, you could meticulously work out the most suitable placement for the next sculpture. When that point is then located, the commission can be announced and proposals submitted. The basis for this internal medicinal process is that the city is suffering from countless blockages and disturbances, and that the sculptures, with their penetrating power, can restore health and mobility to a stiffened organism.

16.

The idea of the curative power of art, its ability to bring about catharsis, is difficult to separate from the notion of a suffering viewer. Only someone who experiences fear, pain or despair will voluntarily allow themselves to be inundated with art’s harrowing energies in order to allow themselves to be purged of the painful feelings. The problem with this arises when the cure appears stronger than the symptoms, so that the aesthetic experience itself is the cause of fear and renewed pain. This is particularly relevant in cases where art is created to commemorate a horrible event or catastrophe. The recollection of the event then cuts straight through the work and makes it resonate with the pain and despair of the one remembering. Once this has happened, there is little that can shield the work from the viewer’s resentment and indignation, so that the art is in effect transformed into a fetish (not magically, of course) for the intense experience of hate, senselessness and evil haunting the suffering viewer. The resonance from the physical object on these emotional swings (or the other way around) can then grow so strong that the work of art is attacked, broken down and demolished.

A conventional understanding of this destruction will only perceive incidents of vandalism or legitimate iconoclasm. If instead the work of art and its destruction can be seen as physical utterances, it opens up new arenas for debate in the public space, for an artistic battle with ghosts and demons, for a rip-roaring drama with maximum stakes! Only then will true catharsis reveal itself, a boom in the steady drone of offsetting dissonances!

17.

By the entrance to V. park, a rubbish bin is overflowing. Plastic cups and bottles are spilling out from the lid. On the ground in front of the bin, a couple of magpies bounce about expectantly. All this splendour is something W. is aware of in advance, having seen it in countless parks in countless cities. But what is special about this particular bin, after the magpies have long since fled the scene and only the surplus is left in the light of the low evening sun, is that he is overcome with envy at those who think they too have experienced an evening like this in a park like this, and that in their memory of this evening, they too considered themselves happy beyond all expectations.

In order to shield himself from the swiftly rising jealousy, he hurries off, still fully convinced that something exceptional has taken place, and that in his recollection of this he will be able to delight in the occurence. In the background, the top of the monolith is bathed in a reddish sheen.

OSV. library 978-82-691597-5-2

# 13: The Horizontal Monolith

(Wedekind’s Discoveries)