First Congress on Fork-Lift Trucks

CURRENT ART AND ITS OBJECTIVES

Atlantis Gallery, London
Fri 14th, Sat 15th, Sun 16th March 2003

The Congress coincided with the exhibition 100,000 Newspapers by Gustav Metzger, Wolfe Lenkiewicz and Stewart Home. The Congress was aimed at artists and the art world.

The Congress began on Friday 14th March at 2pm.

The Directors of leading London institutions showing modern art were invited to talk about their projects and plans at the opening event. A discussion formed part of this session.


On Saturday 15th of March the Congress began at 10.30am and ended at 5.30pm. The morning session was concerned with architecture and planning. On Sunday afternoon the main artists’ discussion took place and concluded the Congress.

In the course of the weekend, events by the following artists took place:

Eva Weinmayr

Michael Hampton

Lee Holden

Speakers were invited to speak from a fork-lift truck situated in the Gallery – obviously, normal chairs were available should these be preferred. The fork-lift truck stands as a symbol for the real world. It is also a tough multi-purpose instrument. We feel that the British art world could benefit from facing up to its potential.

Panel

Gavin Wade, Curator of Strike, 'A mixture of small strategies for shaping the world'

Marysia Lewandowski, Neil Cummings, Chance Projects


"The museum is evolving as a 'brand', competing to control the flow of value through things, as its objects merge with a wider culture of exhibition; our most unique artefacts become seamlessly integrated into the retail present.”

Norman Rosenthal, Director of the Royal Academy of Art


Wolfe Lenkiewicz, Artist /Director T1+2 Gallery

Stewart Home, Wolfe Lenkiewicz (screenings)

Clare Carolin, Curator, Hayward Gallery

Anthony Auerbach, Austrian Cultural Forum

Simon Morris, Artist, and Dr. Howard Britton, Psychoanalist, will complete the following action:

A TEXT THAT DESTROYS ITSELF IN THE PROCESS OF ITS OWN READING

Howard Britton
Daniel Jackson
Simon Morris

At the Gustav Metzger Conference, Dr Howard Britton (psychoanalyst), Daniel Jackson (artist) and Simon Morris (artist) will complete the following action: a text that destroys itself in the process of its own reading.  This collaboration work will take place at the Atlantis Gallery, Brick Lane, London, on the 15th of March 2003. Beginning with two separate texts on the work of Gustav Metzger, one black on white, one red on white, the authors Dr. Howard Britton and Simon Morris will take it in turns to read a loud pages from their work. Using Extraction, a computer programme created by the artist Daniel Jackson, words will be randomly removed, one by one, from each author’s text. Two versions of Extraction will be running simultaneously. One will present the word from Britton’s text, Gustav Metzger: a manifesto for destruction: between two deaths, black or red. The other will present the words from Morris’s text, Beyond Representation, red on black.  These will be projected onto the wall behind Britton and Morris, side by side like facing pages of a book.  In the manner of a dada poetry recital, as one author reads from their text the other author will simultaneously read aloud the words that have been randomly removed from the Extraction programme. Like a virus, or proc… of contagion, the oral presentation of words from one text will increasingly cover over the oral presentation of the words from the other text, until meaning is completely destroyed/disappears. Extraction will aim to remove all the words in the performers' text in the same time that it will take the performers to read their text. Extraction presents the text, without the structure of their original meaning, and imposes its own order on the author’s words.  As the writer William S. Burroughs said: “Language is a virus from outer space”.

a text that destroys itself in the process of its own reading
Beginning with two autonomous texts, one black on white, one red on white, the authors will begin to read their work. As each text develops, it will progressively attack the other, like a virus or process of contagion until the words from each text are covering each other and meaning is completely destroyed/disappears.
”It is my intention to publish the text as a small booklet to be distributed at the conference and to make a small website that can be screened during our talk. I'm also publishing Tim Brennan's manifesto on curationism for distribution at the talk.” Simon Morris

In the future, curationism will be a dominant cultural formation in which its practitioners, Nu-curators, exist at the nexus of performance and curating. Curationism will involve a combination of pre-capitalist approaches to collecting with more recent developments in fine art. This, as yet ‘undefined curating ’ is a radical rethinking of curatorial tendancies in the expanding global economy.

Forthcoming speakers at T1+2 Artspace events include:

Sultan Barrakat (BSc (Jordan), MA (York), Disaster Management Certificate (Oxford), DPhil (York) MA in Post War Recovery Studies, Director of Post-War Recovery and Development Unit ) will talk about Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of War-Torn Societies, Reintegration of Ex-Combatants, Conflict Prevention, Impact Assessment of Relief and Development Programmes, Peace-Building, Planning and Training.

Hans Ulrich Obrist will do a public discussion / interview with Gustav Metzger.

      
An essay by Wolfe Lenkiewicz on Gustav Metzger's exhibition Avenging Angel? at Cubitt Gallery