The metal objects presented here are related to a project for the exhibition “Interpol,” held in Stockholm in early 1996. Initially, I intended to organize some kind of internal exhibition there featuring Nikolai Fedorov (Nikolai Fedorov (1828 – 1903) – a Russian thinker, creator of the so-called “philosophy of the common task,” which envisaged the real, bodily resurrection of all people who have ever lived on earth), Marcel Duchamp, and Jeff Koons. But since the first two figures have long been dead, and Koons was so distant from me in every sense that he was hardly different from a dead man, each of these three participants was to acquire a deputy, a “medium,” during the project. Naturally, I assigned the role of Fedorov’s deputy to myself; the candidate for Duchamp’s deputy was planned to be Stockholm professor Olaf Linde, a prominent specialist in Duchamp’s work; and several letters, faxes, and phone calls were sent to Jeff Koons asking him to propose his own deputy.
Naturally, the entire project remained unrealized, since all messages to both Jeff Koons and Professor Linde went unanswered – indeed, like messages to the dead. The only result of the work by the time of the exhibition opening was my letters – project descriptions interspersed with unsuccessful proposals for participation and dialogue. They were exhibited at the exhibition, but not in the form of documents, rather as precise plastic embodiments of texts, made in the spirit of Fedorov’s principles of “accumulating dust” and “gathering electrons.” In the process used, electrolytic copper deposition was controlled by an electrical signal of variable amplitude taken from the sound recordings of the letters (they were read by me – in Russian and English, and by a specially invited actor, with Protestant cemetery intonations – in Swedish). Thus, the growths and deformations of the globular lumps of copper gradually growing in the solution were an exact expression of the acoustic structure of a particular letter, a kind of its subtle physical cast, repeatedly superimposed on itself. A total of ten such lumps were made, which were grown to the same mass (53g).
In November 1998, I made 10 fresh copper lumps using the same technology, but this time they embodied only the repeatedly repeated names of European mountain ranges (Alps, Pyrenees, Apennines, Carpathians, Balkans, Rhodopes, Black Forest, Jura, Ardennes, Tatras). At the same time, the “letter lumps” were coated with varnish, thus stopping their natural oxidation process in the air.[1]
[1] Leiderman Yu. Stockholm Project – names of mountains [Electronic resource] // Moscow Conceptualism – Access mode to the resource: http://www.conceptualism-moscow.org/page?id=971Type of comment: Published comment
Author: Yuriy Leiderman
Bibliography:
Leiderman Yu. Stockholm Project – names of mountains [Electronic resource] // Moscow Conceptualism – Access mode to the resource: http://www.conceptualism-moscow.org/page?id=971
