ephemeropteræ 2012/11 – Andreas Neumeister, Tanja Widman, David Jourdan

– der Künstler ist anwesend

der Künstler ist anwesend

der Künstler ist abwesend

(der Künstler ist anwesend
und abwesend zugleich)

#

der Künstler ist anziehend

der Künstler ist abstoßend

(der Künstler ist anziehend
und abstoßend zugleich)

#

der Künstler ist angezogen

der Künstler ist ausgezogen

(der Künstler ist angezogen
und ausgezogen zugleich)


Andreas Neumeister (born 1959) is a German writer, performer, DJ, ethnographer and artist (sound installations, text based murals, spoken word with slide projections), based in Munich. With Marcel Hartges he edited the reader Poetry! Slam! Texte der Pop-Fraktion in 1996. Andreas’s domain lies in the pop-culture of the cyber era. He recently released Infanten published by Spector Books and Könnte Köln seine, a novel published by Suhrkamp. Solo exhibitions include the gift/das Gift curated by tranzit in Prague and Bratislava. His most recent project was a two person show with Martin Wöhrl Weiß man es? last June at Corbusierhaus in Berlin. 
 

– Untitled (2012)

Excerpts

Q: How many artists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Ten. One to change it and nine to reassure him about how good it looks.

Q: How many modern artists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Four. One to throw bulbs against the wall, one to pile hundreds of them in a heap and spray-paint it orange, one to glue light bulbs to a cocker spaniel and one to put a bulb in the socket and fill the room with light while all the critics and buyers are watching the fellow smashing the bulbs against the wall, the fellow with the spray-gun and the cocker spaniel.

Q: How many performance artists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: I don't know. I left before it was over.

Q: How many jerks who ask stupid questions does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Change it to what?

Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but the light bulb must want to change.
A: None; the bulb will change itself when it is ready.
A: How long have you been having this phantasy?
A: How many do *you* think it takes?

Q: How many dull people does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One.

Q: How many George Bushes does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None. There is nothing wrong with the light bulb; its condition is improving every day. Any reports of its lack of incandescence are totally unfounded, and the result of delusional “spin” assaults from the fanatic, elitist, liberal media. That light bulb has served honorably, and anything you say undermines the lighting effect and dims it's ego. Why do you hate freedom?

Q: How many WASPs does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to call the electrician and one to mix the Martinis.

Q: How many economists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None. If the light bulb really needed changing, market forces would have already caused it to happen.
A: None. If the government would just leave it alone, it would screw itself in.

Q: How many bureaucrats does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Two—one to screw it in and one to screw it up.
A: None, we contract out for things like that.

Q: How many Marxists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None, the seeds of revolution and change are within the light bulb itself.

Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: One! And it’s not funny!
A: Two .............. IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH THAT?????!!!!???
A: 100. One to change it, and 99 to wring their hands and agonize about how oppressed the socket is.
A: How old-fashioned. The other 99 are there to lobby Congress to outlaw crimes against sockets—and to say the bulb-changer is not a representative of mainstream feminism.

Q: How many “pro-lifers'” does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 6: 2 to screw in the bulb and 4 to testify that it was lit from the moment they began screwing.

Q: How many apple users does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. You have to replace the whole motherboard.
(...)
In a discursive situation,
the possibility of transformation begins with the display of our linguistic capacity as such,
from the moment communication is taken up as pure means.
(…)
Our self-employment increases
according to the degree
that we make ourselves flexible within the networks of communication
(…)
We are all models and designers.
I’m a model too.

I know you don’t really like me,
But I will sleep with you and
afterwards
you will not be able to walk anymore.
(...)

Sources:
Light Bulb Jokes selected from various internet sources and personal collection.
John Kelsey, Rich Texts: Selected Writings for Art (Sternberg Press, 2012)
Romy Schneider, in Der Prozess by Orson Welles (F/I/D 1962).

Concept, Script: Tanja Widmann
Performers: David Jourdan, Iwan J.


Tanja Widmann’s work emerges from an interest in the potential of language and its role in the performative construction of subjectivity. Drawing on historical concepts of video-based performance, she analyses technologies of reproduction, memory and repetition situating the (camera)apparatus as a recording, affective and interpretational machine. In Widmann’s installations, these video performances are arranged as a speculative constellation creating a network of actions, objects and documents that are relating to and reflecting each other. Widmann’s works have been recently shown at: Badischer Kunstverein (D 2012), Grazer Kunstverein (A 2012), Manifesta8 (E 2010), Augarten Contemporary (A 2009), kunstraum lakeside (A 2008), amongst others. The artists book To make oneself similar in this sense has been published at Westphalie Verlag (2010)

Tanja Widmann is an Austrian artist (born 1966) who deals with performativity extended to moving images (video) and complex installations or environments, „permanently between action and reaction“ (Daniel Pies). Her works revolve around the topics of language and its role in the performative construction of subjectivity. Tanja is based in Vienna. For the new performance within the framework of ephemeropteræ Tanja Widmann invited the artist David Jourdan for a collaboration.

David Jourdan is a French artist who lives and works in Vienna. Selected exhibitions include Centre National de l'Édition et de l'Art Imprimé, Paris (2011), Villa Arson, Nice (Double Bind, 2010), Grazer Kunstverein (Idealismusstudio, 2008) and Secession (Shandyismus, Autorship as Genre, 2007). In 2007, Jourdan established in collaboration with the artist Lisa Holzer, Westphalie Verlag, a publishing imprint to issue artist's books addressing language.