download catalogue high resolution pdf (22.3 mb) - Jens Haaning

014
LBLG
P.134
The question is what this is a certificate for — what the ‘linguistic contract’ attests.
The work is paranoid in its own way, a visual nonsense poem. In a certain sense,
religiosity is to the believer what paranoia is to the insane. Just like the paranoid is
always right — the conspiracy fits, every detail is indicative — so is God to the believer
in all respects. Perhaps the artist’s signature is just as damaged as the CD, a
biographical ego where the record is scratched? Based on the linguistic logic of the
work, the certificate refers to the CD itself and the to title the artist has given it
— which however does not explain the connection between title and object, or for
that matter the title itself. Does the title have anything to do with the CD as a massproduced
(and here broken and concealed) object; or is it the name of the group,
Massive Attack, now understood as a declaration of war, that creates the connection?
From within its thick frame, it is as if the work says, "Don’t let me out, terrible
things might happen, history itself might be set ablaze in a world conflagration".
The Concept of History... is an event that undermines history understood as
retroactive definitions of the ‘lessons’ of history and the ideological fantasies that
these definitions conceal. The archival nature of the work is deceptive, since it
functions like a mole within the records of history: Although it looks well sealed
behind glass and frame, the work will, when reproduced in catalogues and archives
or is shown at exhibitions, be accompanied by yet another sign carrying the artist’s
name and specifications of materials... and the framing of the statement will yet
again have moved outwards, and the dissolution will have spread like a regress
towards an empty centre. The Concept of History... is a work within a work,
awaiting its reception and its changing context, in order to cancel the ‘historical
misunderstanding’ of this very context. The interpretation made in the work becomes
constitutive of an empty presence, as opposed to the manifesto’s stable reading of
history and its promise of an empire lasting a thousand years. The world becomes
a Chinese box, whose concentric frames again and again open towards that event
which is the continual dissolution pertaining to the work of any meaningful continuity
within history, as an artefact seen from position and time perspective of the viewer.
Haaning’s event, Middelburg Summer 1996 situates itself within a tradition of
modernising sculpture. The work is a displaced balance of power. It is said that it
was a tableau by natives from Tahiti that Gaugin saw at a world exhibition in Paris
and that inspired him to his ornate style of signature. Middelburg Summer 1996
was also an exhibition of strangers, this time in Holland. In this case it was the
Muslim owned textile factory, Maras Confectie, from the neighbouring town of
Vlissingen that was moved with workers, sewing machines, and canteen to an art
venue in Middelburg, where production was continued for the duration of the