Gerlach en koop Was machen Sie - um zwei? Ich schlafe 19.09.-28.02.2021 - GAK Bremen
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19.09.–28.02.2021 gerlach en koop Was machen Sie um zwei? Ich schlafe.
Ismaïl Bahri One night, he dreamed he was lying
in the garden on his stomach. At
Kasper Bosmans the same time he knew with perfect
certainty that he was dreaming and
Daniel Gustav Cramer lying on his back in bed. And then
he resolved to wake up slowly and
Mark Geffriaud carefully, to observe how the sensa-
tion of lying on his stomach would
Voebe de Gruyter change into the sensation of lying
on his back. ‘And so I did, slowly
Ian Kiaer and deliberately, and the transition—
which I have since undergone many
Kitty Kraus times—is most wonderful. It is like
slipping from one body into another,
Gabriel Kuri and there is distinctly a double recol-
lection of the two bodies.’
Rita McBride — Frederik van Eeden, ‘A Study of Dreams’,
Guy Mees in: Proceedings of the Society for Psychical
Research, vol. 26, London: Society for
Jacqueline Mesmaeker
Psychical Research, 1913.
Helen Mirra
Laurent Montaron
Melvin Moti
Jean-Luc Moulène
Henrik Olesen
Annaïk Lou Pitteloud
Emilio Prini
Bojan Šarčević
Shimabuku
Steve Van den Bosch
and a contribution by writer
Haytham El-Wardany1 but it is just a tool—whether good
Jean-Luc
or bad, for artists may very well want
war rather than peace—in the prac-
Moulène
tice of the artwork itself. Represent-
ing the common space necessarily
involves tensions, which can be
Objects in a Conversation sharp.
(…) I am convinced that objects have — Jean-Luc Moulène, ‘Objects in a Conversa-
tion’, in: Jean-Luc Moulène, Centre Pompidou,
things to say to each other, which Paris, 2016, p. 134.
led me to think that we could just
as well not open this exhibition to * The Salle du Jeu de Paume is famous for the
the public, so that it wouldn’t be oath that deputies took, during the French
Revolution in 1789, not to adjourn before the
disturbed by superficial glances. I constitution was drafted.
would love to have an exhibition in ** We would like for these objects to be
which we would arrange objects and considered for what they are and what they
say to each other, and not because we chose
then close down. And when opening them. (gerlach en koop)
up again, we would ask them: ‘So,
what conclusions have you reached?
What’s the new Charter of Objects’ 2
Rita McBride
Rights?’ Because, after all, we could
gather objects from our time: we
Falling asleep
would lock them up at the Salle du
Jeu de Paume* in Versailles for eight The sculptures of Rita McBride often
days, and we would ask them to need to be adapted to the space
draw up a document about the rights where they are exhibited, or the
of objects. I would like for my objects space needs to be adapted to the
to be considered for what they are sculptures. They are not site-specific
and what they say to each other, and they are not not site-specific.
and not because I created them.** Think of the Marble Conduit as a
I would like for objects to be able guide, an assistant or a friend to the
to tell visitors that it is possible to do double wall that’s been built for this
that kind of thing, that they are not exhibition. A Murphy wall. On 18
given a key, but that the door is wide June 1912, William Lawrence Murphy
open. The idea of an audience is received a patent for a Disappearing
not attractive to me, it is a concept Bed. Sometime later, he became the
born from marketing. I’m happy if eponym for a fold-down bed. The
there are one or two observers with concept of guidance appears often in
whom the objects resonate, bodily McBride’s work, either as a metaphor
or otherwise, like a carbon or lead or in a very straightforward way.
resonance, but I am not deluded
when it comes to comprehension, The artist Douglas Gordon once
which is achieved, outside the art- distinguished between working walls
work itself. It involves social relation- and walking walls. Working walls are
ships to which shapes must be given. white: they are straight and people
Art can be used for that purpose, can imagine them to be for pictures,or for thoughts about pictures. They have no knowledge, no skills, it is just the Weser flowing into the falls, it gathers them together. Sleep
Walking walls are for people to walk and no “equipment”; they never Weser with no noticeable difference is proclaimed and symbolized by the
along, or past, or both. They are the do anything but engage in foolish in colour. And besides being at odds sign of the fall, the more or less swift
walls you see on the way back from behaviour and childish games; they with the title, calling the border be- descent or sagging, faintness.
looking at pictures or thinking about are “pests” and even sometimes tween two flowing bodies of water To these we can add: how I’m
pictures. We like to think of a third “cheeky” and “lecherous”. As for a horizon would also run counter to fainting from pleasure, or from pain.
type: sleeping walls. their appearance, they are so similar Bosmans’ instructions. Such a border This fall, in its turn, in one or another
that they can only be told apart by would be a vertical, graphically of its versions, mingles with the
There is an exercise that helps on their names (Arthur, Jeremiah); they speaking. others. When I fall into sleep, when
sleepless nights: imagine a room are “as alike as snakes”’.* If you draw a line on a wall from I sink, everything has become indis-
and then slowly strip it of everything left to right, saying ‘This is the hori- tinct, pleasure and pain, pleasure
inside. First remove all colour, then * Giorgio Agamben, Profanations [Profana- zon’ as the start of something—a itself and its own pain, pain itself and
zioni, 2005], translated from Italian by Jeff
every piece of furniture, one by one, Fort, New York: Zone Books, 2007, p. 29.
mural, a story, a performance—then its own pleasure. One passing into
the objects, the windows, the doors, that line would only correspond to the other produces exhaustion, las-
the skirting boards. Then remove the real world for people who are situde, boredom, lethargy, untying,
the corners with their shadows until 3 exactly your height or, more precisely, unmooring. The boat gently leaves
Kasper
a completely white space remains. people whose eyes meet yours its moorings, and drifts.
No details. No dimensions. Cloud- exactly. This horizon would bind
Bosmans
like. Now your thoughts will have dif- all of those people. Everyone else — Jean-Luc Nancy, The Fall of Sleep [Tombe
de sommeil, 2007], translated from French
ficulty finding something, anything— would see it as a representation of by Charlotte Mandell, New York: Fordham
a damp spot, a half-finished drill the horizon. They would follow along, University Press, 2009, p. 1.
hole, a collapsed cobweb—to attach The written instructions Kasper but from a different perspective.
Falling asleep
Falling asleep
to and thus keep you from sleeping. Bosmans gave us to make this mural By drawing the horizon very low
It’s a personal exercise. are very precise in some respects (60 centimetres) or very high (275 5, 6
Ian Kiaer
Some people find a featureless and very imprecise in others. All centimetres) we can be fairly sure
white space highly disturbing. Not deliberate, of course. We had to that it will be a representation for
soothing at all. A friend once told choose the specific hues for the blue everyone who visits the exhibition.
us about a film—a science-fiction and the brown and the height of their We decided to approximate the Cylindrical House Studio, 1929
film where the prison consisted separation. According to Bosmans brown hue in the eyes of somebody
of an endless white space without the border is not just a division; it is specific and the blue hue in the The distinctive shape of Konstantin
any walls. It was a prison where the a horizon. eyes of another person (who is con- Melnikov’s two conjoined cylinders
convicts all stayed in one place, para- A confluence comes to mind here nected), but we will not disclose who. and strange hexagonal windows
lysed by the awareness that even at the GAK, on this island in the mid- speak of a structure beyond everyday
the thought, the illusion of escape dle of the river. Two flowing bodies dwelling. lts geometry, white surface,
had been taken from them. of water that join together to form 4 and remote, singular poise appear
Kitty Kraus
a single channel. Completely at odds designed to provoke rumour of more
Giorgio Agamben wrote a short with the title of this work No Water, complex workings within, as if the
essay on the role of assistants in or perhaps because of it. Often these circular solution and eclipsing diame-
literature: characters without identity waters have different colours; fre- To Fall Asleep ters might conform to some mystical
whose function is to translate situa- quently a clear one that is blue and planetary alignment or map an over-
tions and whose mere presence is a muddy one that is brown. There I’m falling asleep. I’m falling into sleep lapping design of halos for an icon
in itself a message: ‘In Kafka’s novels, are spectacular examples where the and I’m falling there by the power of orthodox saints. There can be
we encounter creatures who are contrast between the two colours of sleep. Just as I fall asleep from few buildings with this many win-
referred to as Gehilfen, “assistants” is particularly strong, but not here exhaustion. Just as I drop from bore- dows, over sixty in all, that remain
or “helpers”. But help seems to be in Bremen. While there is confluence dom. As I fall on hard times. As I fall, so insistently insular. lt may even be
the last thing they are able to give. at this particular point in the river, in general. Sleep sums up all these the quantity that works to deny anynotion of view and emphasises their of the sources of curative sacraments, and Maurizio Meriggi, Milan: Skira editore, 12 hours later. One layer per day,
alternative function as luminaries. and perhaps of miracles.*** 2000, p. 90. one per night. The whole process is
** ln 1929, Melnikov designed a ‘Laboratory
They absorb light from outside but Here sleep becomes a means of of Sleep’ for workers in the ‘Green City’, see: repeated again and again, sometimes
hardly provide an inward glimpse in passing from one world to another, S. Frederick Starr, Melnikov: Solo Architect for weeks on end.
return. There can be no looking in. mysterious and indeterminate, a in a Mass Society, Princeton, NJ: Princeton I step back out onto the street.
University Press, 1978, p. 179.
lt is somehow appropriate that their place for work’s reserve to be re- *** ibid., p. 177.
I am struck by the contrast.
origin can be traced to a fortification stored and nourished. However, such
surrounding Moscow’s ancient spaces have a way of shifting tone, I return to the shop a week later with
Belgorod district, as they affect to from sleep’s place to death’s space. 8 apples sculpted from memory. I need
Voebe de
alienate and repel the world. From the thirties on, sleep’s curative all of my skills and charm to convince
It’s not only the windows’ honey- sacraments turned to restless slum- Zheng Chongyao to do something
Gruyter
comb shape that might prompt the ber as Stalin’s censure became the that goes against everything his
idea of bees, but the way in which architect’s incubus, frustrating any workshop is set up for, and that is
its smooth exterior wall, if sliced possibility for practice. ln such light to take my apples outside to lacquer.
open, would reveal a complex of the warm glow darkens into night, A busy, two-lane road lined with Each apple is a record.
interlocking work and living spaces and those concrete beds come ever trees in Fuzhou. Traffic noise drowns
where the incubation of thought and closer to mortuary slabs. Without everything out. To the left are old Weeks later, I come back to pick
sleep meet. The architect wanted recourse to sleep Melnikov turned wooden houses undergoing demo- up the apples, accompanied by my
to integrate sleeping and working, to dreaming, closing inwards to past lition; to the right is a construction Chinese friend. They are perfect.
dwelling, and thinking throughout his projects and painting pictures. site where new concrete apartment I ask the lacquer master where this
building; hence living-room, studio, The beginning of those concrete blocks are being built. The air is natural lacquer is produced. He says
and bedroom alternate and dissect beds perhaps lay in the commission incredibly dusty and polluted, as it it is made in the old part of town,
Falling asleep
Falling asleep
like a layered Venn diagram. It is said the architect received to design is in most Chinese cities. I not only where there are no street signs or
of the cylindrical motif that he had Lenin’s glass sarcophagus. ln this, smell the particles with every breath house numbers. We ask around for
the Russian hearth in mind*—the his first built structure, he had to I take, I can almost taste them as hours and are about to give up when
hearth as core of the house with provide a plinth of sleep for a cadaver well. Several people are trying to pick finally someone comes to guide us.
the notion of warmth enclosed, its forever preserved, a place of pilgrim- fruit from the trees with long sticks. We enter a square courtyard
most interior part. To conceive this age and peering—a windowed tomb. I do not know what kind of fruit it is; through a high, cast-iron gate sur-
notion of hearth/heart is to turn the There is something determinedly I’ve never had it. They are shaped like rounded by old wooden barracks.
whole building inwards. To think of circular in how this first work, which apples, but hairy. Dirty windows. We peek in. The raw
Melnikov’s building is to think from signals his professional birth, presents A row of shops lines the wide lacquer is mixing in slowly rotating
its inside. itself as a death work. As if some- sidewalk. Large display windows machines.
In the house, work and sleep are how opportunity demanded he earn show all kinds of lacquered objects. A man emerges from one of the
curiously connected. The circular through experience what he had I walk into one of them. The lacquer barracks. He comes walking towards
bedroom is directly below the circular conceived through commission. He master offers me tea. Zheng Chong- us in a white, short-sleeved shirt
studio. The walls are painted warm could not know that his cylindrical yao is his name. I look around. The spotted to perfection. It is Chen
yellow; the beds are stone slabs house studio—designed with such space is really long and subsequent Guohua, owner of the factory. We
that rise up from the floor like altars, optimism as an ideal space for living paper screens mark the space’s go to his office, a tiny space where
rendering sleep an almost sacred and work—would eventually become transition from a shop to a work- the phone rings constantly. We buy
inactivity. For Melnikov, sleep was a place for sleep, a house for a corpse. shop. Several people are at work. pots of raw lacquer from him and
an area of intense study.** He wrote At the very back—about 30 metres my Chinese friend asks where the
about a lifetime of sleep, twenty — lan Kiaer, ‘Cylindrical House Studio, 1929’, from the street—is a room with lacquer trees grow. It seems he pre-
in: Picpus, issue 4, Autumn 2010.
years of lying down without con- water on the floor where no one is fers not to reply, but when I suggest
sciousness, without guidance as one * A. A. Strigalev, ‘The Cylindrical House- allowed to go. I am told that the lac- exchanging his phone and his shirt
journeys into the sphere of mysterious Studio of 1922’, in: Konstantin Melnikov and quered objects dry here, where there for new, clean copies, he agrees.
worlds to touch unexplored depths the Construction ot Moscow, eds. Mario Fosso is no dust, only to be re-lacqueredThe residency ended, so my Chinese The echo effect was achieved by unseen. It is a ‘vehicle word’ for the small, low hallway painted yellow.
friend promised to take the new laying down a recorded sound on theatrical minimalism that is charac- On the right was the bedroom where
items to Fuzhou. Months later he magnetic tape, which was then looped teristically embodied by Mia Farrow. the architect spent his last hours; on
told me that he couldn’t find the and read in succession by a series of Farrow’s make-up in Rosemary’s Baby the left was the afternoon room, or
factory anymore. He had inquired juxtaposed tape heads. As the tape made it appear as if she had no make- ‘the white room’, as he called it. All of
everywhere and found out that it had came back to the start of its loop, up on, as if she were showing her the walls in this house seem to have
disappeared. I got the phone and the the sound was silenced by a final most ‘natural’ face. But Farrow also a mysterious embracing quality, isolat-
shirt back. tape head that erased the recording. visually blended into the background ing every room from the one next to
The shirt is a record. The Roland RE-201 has no output of the set, epitomizing the manipula- it. He countered this by placing large
The telephone is a record. as it is not connected to a loud- tion of the seemingly ‘natural’ like no mirror balls in every room. Harmony
speaker—not that it would make any other silver-screen personality. is not what makes a house liveable.
difference, because there is no input. We immediately noticed that the
9 We don’t hear anything. All we can Stan Laurel’s eyes were blue, very large, golden Mathias Goeritz paint-
Laurent
do is look at it, mesmerised, hypno- blue. When he started in movies, ing wasn’t there, nor was the man
tised, sleeping. the sensitivity of film stock was such with the bird-like hands—no one
Montaron
that blues were really difficult to could remember who had painted it,
* See the poem ‘The Abyss of Mr. Cogito’ capture. Cloud formations against and now that we noticed its absence,
by Zbigniew Herbert.
a blue sky were rendered as an even, we saw that the large, golden paint-
Endlessly undulating magnetic tape white surface on screen. The blue ing above the stairs wasn’t there,
inside a machine from which the of Laurel’s eyes was bleached out either. Its eccentric position tight in
lid has been removed. It’s a Roland 10 almost completely when projected, the corner, under the window and
Melvin Moti
RE-201 or Space Echo, a machine giving him a very unnatural and fright- next to the door, brought to mind
Falling asleep
Falling asleep
that musicians use to add an artifi- ening look. It made it impossible for the often ingenious ways that day-
cial echo to their instruments. It was him to work in comedy. The advent light was guided into rooms and hall-
the first of its kind in the 1970s but A vintage LIFE magazine from 1967 of panchromatic film stock that was ways in the days before electricity.
is still popular today, despite digital with the actress Mia Farrow on able to reproduce all colours equally Jun’ichirō Tanizaki wrote about how
alternatives. Two different kinds the cover. For her role in the movie in black and white film saved his those who lived in the dark houses of
had been invented at the time; one Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Roman on-screen character and the rest of the past were not merely captivated
artificially reproduced the acoustics Polanski asked Farrow to slowly lose his well-known career as a comedian. by the beauty of gold but also knew
of space to create reverberation, weight to coincide with her mental Just in time. of its practical value; gold in these
or ‘reverb’. The other artificially dissolve, which is completely at dim rooms must have served as a
reproduced the acoustics of a can- odds with the weight increase one reflector. Their use of gold leaf and
yon, an abyss, returning the sound would expect from a pregnancy. The 11 gold dust was not mere extrava-
Gabriel Kuri
as an echo. The Roland belongs to viewer sees how Farrow’s character gance; its reflective properties were
this last type, carrying in its interior turns into something gruesome sim- put to use as a source of illumination.
an artificial canyon. The properties ply by becoming paler and skinnier. While silver and other metals quickly
of this canyon can be adjusted with Disturbance is implied not by excess, Entering at number fourteen we took lose their gloss, gold retains its bril-
all kinds of controls, which brought but by reduction. the black stairs in the vestíbulo, past liance indefinitely. That is why it was
to mind the shallow abyss described The magazine is exposed to a lot the abundantly pink telephone corner held in such incredibly high esteem.
by Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert— of sunlight, thus repeating what hap- with the ashtray—ashtrays in every The white room still had its record
the one that follows him everywhere pened in the movie, draining life from room—and the dustbin, where folded player; the floor was still covered
once he steps outside, clingy like a Farrow. And yet the blue of her eyes brown cloths softened the rough in rugs with different textures that
dog, not deep enough to swallow a becomes brighter and brighter. lava stone tiles on the floor. We took invite you to take off your shoes and
head, a body, legs or even feet. The Miamilism can be defined as the a right turn and avoided going up to socks, and the comfortable chair
one that has yet to mature, to grow perfectly ‘natural’ appearance of the famous roof terrace by opening was still there, in all its brown teddy-
up, to become serious.* something that keeps the ‘natural’ a door to the left, one that led to a bearishness with the little foot stoolin front. On the chair was a pile of as the cover for a book with Germano space without a use. ‘It wouldn’t be
neatly folded blankets, arranged Celant (a book that was never made). a junkroom, it wouldn’t be an extra
according to colour. They were new. All versions backed—and evidently bedroom, or a corridor, or a cubby-
Blue, blue, blue grey, blue green, so—by Prini’s presence in the world. hole, or a corner. It would be a func-
green grey. Colours of the sea. You That has changed since 2016. His tionless space. It would serve for
could tell they were blankets because death has put the work in a state nothing, relate to nothing.
several had been pinned to the wall of suspension, it has become a kind For all my efforts, I found it impos-
where the Goeritz once hung. The of testimony. Omaggio a Emilio Prini sible to follow this idea through to
one covered in gold leaf. The painting [Homage to Emilio Prini]. the end. Language itself, seemingly,
that used to be next to it had been proved unsuited to describing this
replaced by one depicting a man with Wait a minute. The window’s rattling. nothing, this void, as if we could
similarly bird-like hands. The blankets only speak of what is full, useful, and
were small and had airline logos on ‘Se è possible, non creo.’ If possible, functional.’* Then, in the last part of
them. Long distance flight blankets; I create nothing. Previous works have this section, he says something diffi-
we recognised them. They were been repeated in Prini’s exhibitions, cult to grasp—something mysterious
hung in a way that evoked the mem- but never in the same way. These that we keep coming back to: ‘I never
ory of one of the two Joseph Albers alterations were motivated by the managed anything that was really
reproductions that the architect new situation with which he found satisfactory. But I don’t think I was
owned, the blue one from the study. himself confronted. Prini introduced altogether wasting my time in trying
What we thought were wash labels a certain limited number of ideas and to go beyond this improbable limit.
are labels all right, but the adhesive works to the world that he constantly The effort itself seemed to produce
ones you find on apples.* revisited, re-developed, re-framed something that might be a statute
Falling asleep
Falling asleep
A house for solitude. or elaborated upon, keeping them of the inhabitable.’
in flux almost as if they were living In the beginning of the 1960s, Perec
* chinese whispers by Gabriel Kuri previously material. At times he just revised found a job as a documentaliste, or
featured in the 2019 exhibition Emissaries for
Things Abandoned by Gods at Casa Barragán
a date, changed a title, or isolated scientific archivist, at a big institution
in Mexico City, where curator Elena Filipovic a detail of an image. He might also for sleep research. He stayed a long
temporarily replaced the revered architect’s photograph a work as a replacement time—until 1978—and although he
personal art collection with contemporary for the real object, or made a copy got the position by chance, sleep
proxies that alluded to the originals.
(and threw away the original). Writ- became a recurring theme in his work.
ing about authorship, originality, and
12 uniqueness in Prini’s work always Thinking about the second Empty
Emilio Prini
requires a lot of question marks. His Room by Daniel Gustav Cramer, it
works resist finalisation. They are occurred to us that Perec might actu-
works whose main dimension is time. ally be describing the impossibility
‘Confirm participation in the exhibi- of meeting his sleeping self.
tion.’ A telegram sent to Kunstmuseum
Luzern in 1970 as the artist’s contri- 13, 14 Feel free to take home a copy of the
Daniel Gustav
bution to the exhibition Visualisierte artist booklet Empty Room.
Denkprozesse [Visualized Thought
Cramer
Processes], probably his first use of * this and subsequent quote appear in:
Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other
a statement that Prini used again and Pieces [Espèces d’espaces, 1974], translated
again, always in slightly different for- from French by John Sturrock, New York:
mulations and iterations. Like the one In a chapter about the apartment in Penguin Books, 1997, p. 33–35.
typed on A4 paper—a standard—using his famous book Species of Spaces,
an Olivetti 22 typewriter, one used Georges Perec tries to imagine a1 Head Box 8 Fruit from Fuzhou, 2012
Jean-Luc Moulène Voebe de Gruyter
Kitakyushu, October 2004 Apple; shirt owned by natural
Plywood 12 mm, Golden Bat lacquer factory director Chen
green paint, 21 × 18.9 × 22.6 cm Guohua; new shirt copied by a
Courtesy: KADIST collection, Paris local tailor from the shirt owned
by Chen Guohua; phone owned
2 Marble Conduits, 1992 by Chen Guohua; new phone
Rita McBride purchased in a local shop to
Carrara marble, 662 cm resemble the phone owned by
Courtesy: Brenda R. Potter Collection Chen Guohua, dimensions variable
3 No Water, 2019 9 Melancholia (replica), 2020
Kasper Bosmans Laurent Montaron
Mural painting; acrylic paint, Modified Roland RE-201 Space
dimensions variable Echo, dimensions variable
Courtesy: Monitor, Rome, and Anne-Sarah
4 Untitled, 2006 Bénichou, Paris
Kitty Kraus
Glass, 50 × 75 and 125 × 39 cm 10 Miamilism, 2010
Courtesy: Galerie Neu, Berlin Melvin Moti
Magazine, 35 × 45 cm (framed)
Falling asleep
5 Melnikov project, lab b (silver), Courtesy: Meyer Riegger, Berlin/Karlsruhe
2011
Ian Kiaer 11 chinese whispers, 2020
Silver foil, plastic, Gabriel Kuri
50 × 140 × 220 cm Thirty-five airline blankets,
Courtesy: Alison Jacques Gallery, London, stickers, dimensions variable
Marcelle Alix, Paris, and Galerie Barbara Courtesy: kurimanzutto, Mexico City/
Wien, Berlin New York
6 Melnikov, silver sleep, 2020 12 Conferma partecipazione
Ian Kiaer esposizione, 1970
Silver sequins; metal foil, Emilio Prini
plastic, dimensions variable Stamp print on cardboard,
Courtesy: Alison Jacques Gallery, London, 21.9 × 47,9 cm
Marcelle Alix, Paris, and Galerie Barbara Courtesy: Archivo Emilio Prini, Turin
Wien, Berlin
14 LXIII, 2020
7 Bedroom, 1975 Daniel Gustav Cramer
Guy Mees Iron sphere, ø 9 cm*
Pastel (blue, purple, black) and * This sphere is considered a work of art
pencil on paper, 123 × 157 cm when it is placed in complete darkness.
Courtesy: Gallery Sofie Van de Velde, Courtesy: Vera Cortes, Lisbon; SpazioA,
Antwerp Pistoia; Sies + Höke, DüsseldorfFalling asleep Waking up
22
8 18
14
13
1 15
11
2 23
7 19 20
9 25
26
12
24
21
16
6 3 8
5
4
10 17
13 Empty Room, 2020
Daniel Gustav Cramer
Was machen Sie um zwei? A room in Japan that remains
Ich schlafe. empty and shut for the duration
In an exhibition at the edge of of the exhibition; artist
sleep gerlach en koop display publication with postcard,
works by other artists edition: 500, mirror, 33 × 27 cm
19.09.–28.02.2021 Courtesy: Vera Cortes, Lisbon; SpazioA,
Pistoia; Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf15 Bit, 2015 20 Passing through the Rubber Band, 15 16
Mark Annaïk Lou
Mark Geffriaud 2000
Brass spindle, engraved, Shimabuku
Geffriaud Pitteloud
0.7 × 0.7 × 8 cm Rubber bands, wood, wall
Courtesy: gb agency, Paris lettering, dimensions variable
Courtesy: Air de Paris, Paris, and Amanda
16 Perfect Europe (They) Wilkinson, London Every time you pass through a door- An Executive Series Ford Lincoln
Annaïk Lou Pitteloud way, your thoughts are somehow Town Car was found in the port
04.06.2010, 20:32 21 In the absence of Peter Friedl reset. Most of what you had in mind of Antwerp. Koffie Natie, a coffee
To be viewed on the smartphone is erased to make room, to adapt to import-export company, found it sub-
of the exhibition attendant; 22 Verloren Ruimte the new space that you are entering. merged in its basin during a shipping
colour, sound, 1:48 min, loop [Lost Space], 1995 Though we usually don’t even notice, manoeuvre, extracted and stored
From the archive of Guy Mees it does happen that a person enters in its car park where it remained for
17 Sidewalk cover Papers, rolled; cardboard box, a room and then suddenly finds many years. The car was probably
(Chicago Version), 1998 dimensions variable themselves unable to remember new when it was sunk in the harbour,
Helen Mirra Courtesy: Gallery Sofie Van de Velde, what they wanted to do there, or as evidenced by its perfectly pre-
Cotton, 152.4 × 1219 cm Antwerp what they went there looking for. served blue leather interior, while
Courtesy: Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin/ Scientists call it the ‘doorway effect’. its bodywork bears the traces of its
Stockholm/Mexico 23 Saisir, 2018– It is a feeling akin to waking up. immersion.
Ismaïl Bahri A door spindle—being the only The car was exhibited under the
18 Slampadato, 2017 HD-video, colour, mute, element connecting both sides of title They on the grounds of the
Bojan Šarčević 31:45 min, loop a door—measures the distance Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten
Waking up
Waking up
Stainless steel, mohair wool, between these two states of mind, in Amsterdam during the open days
245 × 130 × 72 cm 24 I know but when you ask me, making room for a whole new way of 2010. As it was impossible to sell
Courtesy: MANIER A, Brussels I don’t, 2010 of looking at this very simple piece or store this piece, the car was sold
Steve Van den Bosch of metal. to a shady figure after the exhibition
19 As Yet Untitled 1, 2018 Spray glue, dimensions variable Measure it and several striking and may now be driving through the
Henrik Olesen coincidences emerge. The distance streets of Amsterdam.
Glass, glue, metal brackets, 25 Introductions roses, 1995–2020 range between the holes made to The short film Perfect Europe (They)
paper, 45 × 61 × 20.5 cm Jacqueline Mesmaeker allow knobs to fit doors of different was shot when the car was discov-
Courtesy: Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/ Dyed cotton twill, thicknesses are exactly the same as ered, on the evening before it was
Cologne/New York dimensions variable the distance range between the two removed from the port of Antwerp.
Various positions eye pupils of a human adult, which Thus one piece bears witness to
As Yet Untitled 4, 2018 Courtesy: Galerie Nadja Vilenne, Liège is to say between 5.5 and 7 cm. The another, of which nothing remains.
Henrik Olesen holes themselves measure 0.2 cm,
Glass, glue, metal brackets, 26 Wooden Pillow, 1930 which is the maximum contraction
45 × 61 × 18 cm Shaan Xi (China) of a pupil, and the piece of metal itself 17
Helen Mirra
Courtesy: Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/ 11.5 × 19.5 × 6 cm has a thickness of 0.8 cm, which is
Cologne/New York Courtesy: gerlach en koop the maximum dilation of a pupil.
In fact, this object marks a whole
set of coincidences. It is a hyphen— Pathetic coverlet for concrete. Made
a hyphen between different spaces, of rectangles of typical American
different territories, different states sidewalk size, connected with a
of being. slightly darker, fuzzy-mossy stripe.
And remember, kings don’t touch The sculpture can be installed at
doors. full length, or with some part of thelength accordion-folded at one end himself down by convincing him- sions, I would appear as a sea of 21
only. The fabric was dyed green self it wasn’t anything threatening. clouds, a globulous sea of masses
in sections at a laundromat on the He even joked: ‘If an arm is the only of flakes, a huge object that no doubt In the absence of
Peter Friedl
corner of Division and Paulina in thing pressing you to the ground, borders on the stratosphere.
Chicago, where Mirra lived at the then at least you can search for a Cloud though I may be, I am well
time. The rectangles were thus in way out with your eyes wide open!’ aware that this state has its enemies,
slightly different shades of the same that I will soon have to become active Do All Oceans Have Walls? was an
hue, and have since become further — fragment taken from ‘Almost as if he again, definite, reduced in size … exhibition organised by the GAK
had’, a short story by Daniel Kurjakovic, in:
varied by inconstant sun-bleaching. Bojan Šarčević: Une Heureuse Régression,
and that it would be wise to start in the city’s public space. The artist
Kunstverein München, Köln: Snoeck Verlag, moving in that direction (if it isn’t too Peter Friedl was invited. He pre-
2004, p. 332. late for me to wake up, ever). I get sented the curators Eva Schmidt
18 busy immediately. and Horst Griese with five different
Bojan Šarčević
(…) proposals, of which they had to
19 Courage! In this mass a will choose one: Bremer Freiheit [Free-
Henrik Olesen
remains. dom of Bremen]. They chose to have
He had visited this park a few times This headstrongness without a shoes custom-made, one pair for
already. He didn’t make a habit of body is vaguely growing. each of the two curators and the
falling asleep in the middle of the No Mouth (…) artist. There was an announcement
day in an unfamiliar place and so No Tongue Soon I’ll be able to get up. I am at the ticket office but no documen-
he was frightened more than usual No Teeth now just a few minutes away, and tation. You had to bump into the
by this rather insignificant fact of No Belly with no obstacles on the road to curators by chance or make an
having woken up there. On waking No Anus the near future, I am now a man like appointment to see the sculpture
Waking up
Waking up
he paused for some moments; and minutes away, and with no obstacles (or was it a pedestal, as Horst Griese
although the situation itself wasn’t Sleep requires no specific part of the on the road to the near future, I am suggested?).
threatening at all, he still felt a little body. Your feet, legs, hands, or arms now a man like any other. That was twenty-two years ago.
sick. After all, he found himself can be asleep, but that’s just ‘asleep’. It happens, but much more rarely, What happened to the shoes?
pressed—that was his word—against Sleeping without a mouth, tongue, that I awake (from this half-sleep One pair was worn extensively and
the slightly wet grass, possibly in the teeth, belly, or anus is no problem; I’ve been talking about) on four legs. has since been thrown away; one
company of people he knew nothing any one of those parts can be done In that case I need more time to pair is stored in a place that is inac-
about. The only voices he could hear without, and others can be replaced return to biped shape, because—I cessible; and the third is unavailable
were ones he didn’t recognize. Being or bypassed. think—of a certain propensity I have for other reasons. None of the three
frightened in that way was an old for living in that state, which I don’t can be exhibited at the moment.
habit of his. have for my cloud shape. I’d certainly Making a real gap—highlighting
20 be prevented from doing so even if the absence of something—often
Shimabuku
We forcibly pricked up our ears. I wanted to, and I would be too afraid enhances the desire to fill it, to clear
Having been asked and after a few to stay that way. Although, after all … the void, to make something incom-
moments of uncertainty, he told us I’ve come out of it many times in the plete whole again. It is a method
what it was that was holding him Trying to Wake Up course of my life. But all it takes is that is sometimes used successfully.
down. These were his words—he once, when you forget how to deal Following this idea, two shoebox-
was convinced it was the arm belong- The night leaves me cadaverous. with it and you stay that way forever, size cavities were cut inside the
ing to someone else lying beside him The corpse has to be revived. until you die. institution’s walls. They will be ready
resting across his neck, softly touch- However, I don’t have the impres- (…) to receive the two existing pairs of
ing his cheek. He told us the arm sion of being a dead body in the the Bremer Freiheit shoes during the
was especially heavy. Grateful for morning. — Henri Michaux, ‘Trying to Wake Up’ [Arriver exhibition. A pedestal for a pedestal.
à se réveiller, 1950], translated from French
this clarification, though not actually If someone could see me at that by David Ball, in: Darkness Moves, Berkeley:
Placing them can be done anony-
a satisfying one, he had then calmed time in accordance with my impres- University of California Press, 1997, pp. 95–100. mously, without permission or con-sultation, without asking. Or some- to a play, but the text was subse- text I wrote became … another text. that changes shape, colour, texture
where in the world, someone could quently reworked by Willem-Joris It was no longer my reaction to the while you’re looking at it. It changes
start wearing them again. They might Lagrillière, who was at the time a void. And because Guy didn’t write, because you’re looking at it.
pinch. junior copywriter at an advertising the text became a manifesto for his An earlier version of the video
agency. This sort of ghostwriting work. You can call it an anti-mani- is titled Lâchers [Releases]. A hand
and appropriation of language raises festo if you want, but it is a mani- releasing again and again. Leaving
7, 22 the question of the author, the work, festo nonetheless.** it to the wind. But it’s an ongoing
Guy Mees
and intention, all issues that Guy project; whenever the wind is good,
explores throughout his trajectory. The Lost Space is an adjoining space. Bahri returns to add new material.
Can we read it, then, as a sort of The Lost Space is complementary This version is titled Saisir, a French
In 1995, Bart De Baere and Lex ter anti-manifesto? to present-day living space. verb that means ‘to grab’, also in
Braak visited the studio of Guy Mees Wim Meuwissen: Yes, though at The Lost Space does not have a clear- the sense of ‘to grasp’, ‘to under-
studio in the run-up to the exhibition first it was not called Lost Space but cut function. stand’. The best English transla-
Onder Anderen [Amongst Others] Ongerepte Ruimte, which translates The Lost Space is space as utility tion would be: Seize. And yet that
for the Venice Biennale later that as Untouched Space. A space that’s object, in which bombast becomes would be just the opposite: a hand
year. They considered the places intact, virginal, tangential. I would more difficult, and tangibility that tries to hold on to something.
below and above the studio space like to show you a sketch I made for easier. Keeping it from the wind, so that
the most memorable. Downstairs, you that might help us understand The Lost Space is simply the body it doesn’t blow away. Looking at
where he received them, was an where that comes from. This is the defined by shape, colour, taste, it means that you’re trying to hold
empty table with a palm behind it house Guy lived in on Keizerstraat. smell, and sound.*** on, too—to remember what you
and cement tiles with patterns on His children slept here, and maybe just saw.
them. No art. They had a conversa- he did too. The kitchen and all of * François Piron in conversation with ‘Repetition’,* says François Piron,
Waking up
Waking up
Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Antwerp, October
tion. An occasional strong statement that were over here. That’s where 2017, cf. François Piron, ‘Nothing to Add’,
‘is an instrument of insistence’.
was delivered casually. ‘If I was a he lived, but I’ve never been in there. in: Guy Mees: The Weather Is Quiet, Cool and ‘Repetition is a way of getting
painter, I would paint the empty half.’ He lived with incredible simplicity. Soft, ed. Lilou Vidal, Berlin: Sternberg Press, everything out of yourself and out
Afterwards they went up and Mees And this space here was totally 2018, p. 10. of things in order to retain the tiny
** ‘About Guy Mees’, a conversation
showed them the works as he saw empty. It was an attic, entirely between Wim Meuwissen, Dirk Snauwaert amount that resists’, Ismaïl Bahri
them every day: in cardboard banana painted white. There was nothing and Micheline Szwajcer, conducted by Lilou answers. ‘I try to get to the point
boxes. Each box contained a series there, nothing at all. Nothing but the Vidal, in: ibid, pp. 161–162. where it holds together, but in the
*** Guy Mees, ‘The Lost Space’, in: Guy
of rolls of coloured paper from which 1830s architecture. Here you see the Mees: The Lost Space, ed. Lilou Vidal, Paris: hope that, from that point, having
a composition could emerge. Lost hallway leading to this white space, Paraguay Press, 2018, p. 18. persisted, something continues
Spaces, several of them, but in a which was also totally empty, except to escape, a vulnerability that is
rolled up state. At least one photo- for an armchair that he had covered expressed through tremors or vibra-
graph of two of the boxes was taken with white fabric. And here was an 23 tions.’
Ismaïl Bahri
as a record, as a perfect example of Yves Klein table. That was all. Over
a work asleep. here was a skylight that illuminated After many attempts, you finally
The gallerist Micheline Szwajcer the blue table. wake up.
remembers that Mees didn’t take LV: It wasn’t his studio, just an Somebody showing you something.
long to install the Lost Spaces, no unused space on the periphery of the What these things are—not things * this and subsequent quotes appear in:
‘Leaving It to the Wind’, a conversation
more than an hour, and it was done domestic area? but fragments of things—you can’t between Ismaïl Bahri, Guillaume Désanges,
with unpretentious precision.* WM: Right. And people would really discern. The wind makes it and François Piron, in: Instruments, Jeu de
come to see it. A poet, for example, difficult to see more than a fragment Paume, Paris, 2017, p. 158.
Lilou Vidal: Guy Mees approved a and other people I knew. Artists. when the hand opens. You see a
six-line text that defines Lost Space. That’s how Lost Space came into fragment of a fragment. You are
You, Wim, had originally written the being. Guy and Lagrillière agreed on tempted to consider it as one, single
text in the 1960s as an introduction it, maybe, and I accepted it. Also, the thing. Maybe it is. A single thing24 25 fifteen inches high: she tried the little
Steve Van Jacqueline
golden key in the lock, and to her
great delight it fitted!’*****
den Bosch Mesmaeker
The disappearing doors will not
be on display in this exhibition, but
its counterpart will: Introductions
You can’t look for I know, but when Les Portes Roses (1975) consists of Roses the fitting of pieces of pink
you ask me I don’t in the exhibition, thirty-two watercolours all depicting fabric in certain interstices repérés,
but you can find it. Finding it would three pink rectangular shapes, each found gaps or blind spots in the art-
be the equivalent of being slowed one slightly larger and paler than ist’s home that were photographed
down by it, ever so briefly, when the the one that came before. A long and made into a slideshow in 1995.
sole of your shoe sticks to the floor quote is dispersed over the thirty- Mesmaeker made it into a site-
almost unnoticed and then tears two A4 sheets with one word specific intervention (2019) for the
itself loose audibly: kgrr. (sometimes two) over each shape, Brussels exhibition space La Verrière,
It’s the same when you tear your- a quote from the first chapter of and it will now be especially adapted
self from sleep, and that is often not Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in for Was machen Sie um zwei? Ich
quiet either—kgrr, startled by some Wonderland. We reproduce the quote schlafe. The pink fabric will direct
unfamiliar sound that a part of your here as it was printed in the cata- the gaze to the details of the room,
dormant brain, a part that is deeply logue raisonné published ten years expelling the cloud-like whiteness
hidden but still vigilant, registers. ago by (SIC).* We were surprised of sleep and giving way to the bright-
You remember how suddenly the to find a pink paper wristband in ness of the day. The return of detail.
lights come on in a club, after the our copy when we removed it from
Waking up
Waking up
music has stopped and the silence, the shelf. A paper wristband to an Yes, of course, Alice’s white rabbit
almost tangible, is only broken by event we apparently didn’t attend, has pink eyes.
these sounds of shoe soles sticking or maybe just one of us did. Which
to the dance floor: kgrr, kgrr, kgrr. event? Neither of us can remember. * Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonder-
land, in: Jacqueline Mesmaeker. Œuvres
A wake-up call, a disenchantment. ‘There were doors all round the 1975–2011, ed. Olivier Mignon, Bruxelles:
One thing is missing here in the hall, but they were all locked; and (SIC) – Couper ou pas couper, 2011, p. 12.
classic triangle between you—the when Alice had been all the way ** Exhibited in BOZAR in 2020, we could see
visitor—the architectural space, and down one side and up the other, that the door ‘hall’ was already completely
colourless.
the object. Between the mounting trying every door, she walked sadly *** You could see in the (SIC) catalogue
glue and the visitor there is nothing, down the middle, wondering how that the ‘open’ door still contained a trace
until saturation slowly turns it into an she was ever to get out again. of pink.
**** The thirty-two watercolours end here.
image to be seen. Subsequent visitors Suddenly she came upon a little ***** Until It Fitted! became the title of a
will eventually exhaust the work until three-legged table, all made of solid 2007 exhibition at Etablissement d’en face,
it becomes its own documentation. glass; there was nothing on it except perhaps as a way to make up for the remain-
ing part of the quote. Les Portes Roses was
Just an image, a documentary image. a tiny golden key, and Alice’s first documented during this exhibition. If the
No adhesive strength left, no more thought was that it might belong to bleaching process continues at the same
sound to be heard. One would be one of the doors of the hall**; but, pace, we will see the ‘little golden key’ dis-
appear in thirteen years time, the ‘solid glass
tempted to think that the work is alas! either the locks were too large, table’ in twenty-six years …
gone. or the key was too small, but at any
Wide awake. rate it would not open*** any of
them.**** However, on the second
time round, she came upon a low
curtain she had not noticed before,
and behind it was a little door aboutA True Story Ring. Hello. Hello. This is Isabelle. How are you? Asleep. Goodbye. Goodbye. — Ray Johnson, The Paper Snake, Siglio Press New York, reissue 2014.
Haytham
* To recollect is not to remember, or to the more we settle into the things, or night, creating from repetition a law.
cause a forgotten memory to reappear. To they into us, or all of us together into Every evening it returns to us with
recollect is to approach the constitutive crack
El-Wardany of sociality. To recollect is to tarry with the the room. In the fraternity of sleep all its passivity and insignificance and
dead before burying them, and to stay with we do not encounter things along failure, and restates its insistence
the cracks before they seal off. This is the the lines of power, but rather in the on unending futility, reaffirms its affil-
necessary detour needed to reconfigure the
Re social condition.
primordial matter, in the heart of its iation with all the griefs of the past.
becoming. The flood of its first forms Expelled from history, sleep neither
Annotated fragments from runs through us, and in us beats a advances nor retreats, it does not
The Book Of Sleep The Kingdom of Things pulse as old as the universe.* produce and it does not accumulate,
and yet, despite this, it is the line
Who is the Sleeper? The room is full of its things. There is * There is no return before parting. But to beyond which progress’s arrow can-
part is not to leave, it is rather to crack open.
a small desk by the door and a lamp To return to reality is to then go through a
not pass. What can man-in-history
A limb severed from the whole? beside the bed. There is a suitcase crack, or—and this is more important—to possibly do confronted by this daily
A single self? A small group at rest? against the wall and a flowerpot install it if needed. waste? What can he do with all these
At the heart of every group is a on the window frame. In the desk hours of sleep? Do his best to cut
wound which will not heal, its pain drawer there is a passport and a Waste down? Forget them the moment he
renewed every time some part of marriage certificate. In the dresser wakes? Press them down, one on top
it falls away. Yet always the group drawer, a gold earring, a bracelet. History does not wait for the sleepers of the other: a flaky pastry he then
will take the side of what remains A bright shirt has been carelessly to wake. It is written by the waking, eats? Wander through them, like
visible, will privilege the living over tossed over the chair and abandoned and only them. After all, what in autumn leaves? Abandon himself to
the dead and place its hope in the on the floor is a sock pulled inside all the hours of sleep is so worth them? What can he do?*
future: the hope that the wound will out. Leaving all this behind us, we recording that the history books
Contribution
Contribution
heal with time. The group sees in are pulled towards the abyss called should take it into account? Surplus * What sleep repeats is awakening, differently
every time. Sleep is not a repetitive state,
itself a history of renewal and devel- sleep. There, for a moment, time hours, useless and unproductive. and obviously is not what can change history.
opment, averting its gaze from a stops, we imagine that we have gone But these hours do not wither and Sleep is rather a moment in a movement that
parallel history of loss and disconnec- somewhere, somewhere else, but fade as a surplus should. Night on returns to reality without leaving it. It is the
tion. But sleep does not look away; even as we enter it, we are cast back night their numbers swell, become self-othering of reality—that doesn’t happen
in any other terrain except in reality itself.
it turns to face this parallel history into the room itself, and this time not a great host. Yet a host quite unlike This movement of self-othering never stops
head on and, impelled by the cata- as a presiding force, but as one thing any other, because no matter how repeating, trying every time to disturb the
strophe of loss, is drawn to what among its many, the thing which numerous, these hours never acquire course of history.
is visible no longer. The eye of the we’ve become in sleep propelled any mass worth mentioning, nor
sleeper is fixed on the departed; all by irresistible sympathy towards the presence. They are forever hovering A Strange Language
he sees of the community to which other things and seeping now, bit in the background: ineffectual,
he belongs is its absent part, the by bit, onto the pillow, then onto the ignored, a neglected excess that The eye of the sleeper is trained
cracks and breaks which spread and bed, then out into the room. And just everyone knows about and no one permanently on what has happened,
widen day after day. The group to as we are transformed into things speaks of. The years pass and sleep not on what is happening. Sleep
which the sleeper belongs is a lost during sleep, so the things in our endures, a fine dust strewn over the hearkens to the call of the past,
group, marching towards the open rooms transform into beings. They pages of history, perhaps clumping forever laden with catastrophes,
wound. It is not cohesion that holds are not what we know. They lose here in the form of a dream, or as towards which, like one enchanted,
them together, nor looking forward, their passivity and gradually return a vision there, but otherwise kept like Benjamin’s angel, it marches, not
but a weakness, a looking back- to themselves. No longer objects and outside the lines, a soul which haunts in order to set them right or change
ward. Sleep does not want to bring implements, they are now bodies everything which has not been writ- them, but to grant them a second life.
ease to this wound buried in the through which a hidden, inner motion ten. In the face of this neglect, sleep Catastrophe, whether personal or
heart of every group. It wants only flows. They are our things, which offers a response, which is repetition. collective, finds no resolution here;
to approach it.* we resemble and which resemble Like all essentially real things, sleep instead, its occurrence is renewed in
us, and the deeper we fall into sleep knocks the ball back night after another existence. In its attraction tocalamity, in its reclamation of calam- Colophon © gerlach en koop and the authors
ity, sleep derives a new language
from the past. What is language, gerlach en koop With special thanks to
after all, if not the capacity to extract Was machen Sie um zwei? All participating artists, lenders and
what has happened from itself, so Ich schlafe. galleries, as well as Sarah Maria
that it might reoccur outside itself? 19.09.–28.02.2021 Kaiser and Anne Storm; Achim
If not the ability of words to slide and Bertenburg, Christian Haake, Paul
transform and escape themselves, In an exhibition at the edge of sleep Ole Janns, Teresa Linke and Grischa
to generate new meaning with each gerlach en koop display works by Ruhnau; Alex Farrar; Mario Pieroni and
repetition? The language created other artists. Dora Stiefelmeier; Anne Vera Veen
by sleep is a strange language, its
sentences endlessly sliding and slith- Ismaïl Bahri, Kasper Bosmans, Kindly supported by
ering. It is, more exactly, a halfway Daniel Gustav Cramer, Mark Senator of Culture of the Free
language, a babbling: incantations Geffriaud, Voebe de Gruyter, Ian Hanseatic City of Bremen; Waldemar
and charms to invoke a second birth. Kiaer, Kitty Kraus, Gabriel Kuri, Koch Stiftung, Bremen; Mondriaan
Sleep is interested in the breaks Rita McBride, Guy Mees, Jacqueline Fonds; Embassy of the Netherlands;
which take place along life’s path, not Mesmaeker, Helen Mirra, Laurent Stroom The Hague; Flanders, State of
in its continuity, and its interest in the Montaron, Melvin Moti, Jean-Luc the Art
past does not spring from a desire Moulène, Henrik Olesen, Annaïk
to order history or to understand its Lou Pitteloud, Emilio Prini, Bojan
evolution—as happens during wak- Šarčević, Shimabuku, Steve Van den
ing—because to sleep, history is not Bosch, and a contribution by writer
Contribution
evolution: it is a catastrophe, which Haytham El-Wardany
can only be set aside through a new
birth. This new birth is waking: it will Curator
change the past, but it will not repair Regina Barunke
it. Waking is sleep’s hope and its
future, and with every new birth, the Texts
past comes back to life, not as it was, gerlach en koop
but as it might have been. It mixes (unless otherwise stated)
with the present and opens itself to
the future.* Copyediting
Amy Patton
* Language is the site of second birth. To be
reborn in it is to share a language for that
which cannot be expressed. The biggest
Design
victim of a catastrophe is language, and thus Louis Lüthi
it cannot be expressed. The most we can do
is to try to trick it by babbling, so it begins to
slide. Awakening is the full stop that comes
at the end of a long meaningless babble, and
causes it to start making sense.
— Fragments from Haytham El-Wardany,
The Book of Sleep [Kitab Al-Noum, 2017],
translated from Arabic by Robin More,
Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2020.You can also read
