For the Script performance, Juergen Staack worked with wireless microphones and bodypack receivers. At the preview on 3 July, four ladies with different mother tongues mingled with the visitors - and they described what they observed at the event to their writing partners via a pocket transmitter with headset microphone. Each of the writers heard these descriptions in English, Russian, Japanese or Greek via a small monitor receiver with earphones and wrote them on the canvas using a paintbrush and a special fluid.
"In Script, the traditional relationship between observer and art is turned on its head: if anything, the canvas seems to perceive the observer," explains Juergen Staack. "The 'describers' are the 'eyes' of the canvases, as it were; the canvases are like mirrors working with abstract words rather than direct reflection."
The transitory and fleeting nature of observation and of the thing observed is highlighted by a special coating on the canvases: after a while, the liquid dries and disappears, so that new discoveries can continuously be recorded before they in turn disappear into the past.
In order to ensure that the performance would remain accessible, Juergen Staack had it filmed the following week and converted it into a video installation together with the canvases, which still show traces of Roman, Greek, Arabic and Japanese text. You can view this installation at the Artothek until 24th August.
(Jim Evans)
