Style is corruption. Book replicas by TRAUMAWIEN
DIE VERBESSERUNG VON MITTELEUROPA, ROMAN.
(Bootlegs, White Cover)
2013
A concise list of keywords is found in the beginning of Oswald Wieners
legendary book DIE VERBESSERUNG VON MITTELEUROPA, ROMAN. As the list is
composed mathematicaly, we could speak of the first tagcloud. But we will
refrain from doing that. This goes deeper. Written between 1965-1969 in postwar
vienna, the use of language itself seemed fishy, exploited and misused by
totalitarism. What was there - similarly experienced today - left to say? What
could one say about beauty? Nothing.
The result of Wieners infamous examination is an anarchic text-fortress. An
anti-novel, a universal book. Not as the arbitrary replay of world but as
hard science of words put together. Doubting the role of language itself, words
and their constellations here became tools, pills, swords, instruments to
affect reality. This connection between processed language and the physical is
not accidentally up to date in our informational age: Oswald Wiener being an
early pioneer of applied cybernetics, his appendix a in the book named Der
Bioadapter (1965/66) is maybe the first sketch of a world totally governed by
calculatory machines and simulation - suggesting a solution for all world
problems through the means of technology. Does that ring a bell?
A tribute, a theft of a book which contains the words: Beware. Everything that
exists is outdated., can only be made through the means of an exact replica,
an appropriation of the first edition of DIE VERBESSERUNG VON MITTELEUROPA,
ROMAN (engl: The improvement of middle europe, novel) right down to the classic
typeface. Generally speaking, in visual and conceptual arts, there is a long
tradition of appropriation, beginning - just to name the big ones - with
Duchamp, whose entire oeuvre consists of copies and found materials, to
Richard Prince, the re-photographer or Warhol, who, basically appropriated
nothing less than american everyday culture. Brion Gysin infamously argued that
“literature is fifty years behind painting”, and notorious efforts in the
literary arts – efforts which compliment visual arts practices – do not share
an artistic renown.
Following this model we lift a groundbreaking masterpiece of radical viennese
avantgarde. No intervention, no editing. The intention begins and ends with
this lifting. We create literary appropriation, using conversion, one of the
most ubiquitious mechanisms found in cyberspace. Outruling copyright, each copy
now published was transcribed and signed by an individually hired virtual
assistant 1:1 - making each one a piece of art. Fitting the needs of
anti-expression, there is absolutely no creative transformation present except
for the reframing of content.
The Books are commissioned and presented by Friday Exit Gallery 1010 Vienna,
June 14th, 9pm. As we do not own Copyrights on the original Rowohlt edition, we
run a limited edition, signed 1-60.
http://rhizome.org/announce/events/59645/
http://traumawien.at/prints/verbesserung/
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