OPENING: Tuesday 30th September 2008, 7pm
Introductory remarks: ROLAND SCHÖNY (Curator of art in public space)
DURATION: 1.10. 22.10.2008 / MO SA / 05:00 11:00 PM
MAR[e]FA/R is a word creation. The word MARe designates the sea and comes from Italian, FAR from English signifying a considerable distance in space. Marfa, however, is the name of a town in the North American state of Texas, which will be mentioned several times in the following.
Slides (photos) are the basic material. The pictures show a steppe where one can see, just below the horizon but in the middle of the picture, strange forms reminding of outsized tables or garages.
Those are sculptures by Donald Judd, the minimal art artist, which have been placed in this area bordering on the town (or city?) of MARFA. That is the responsibility of the Chinati Foundation, which administrates the area economically and is therefore responsible for its marketing.
The area, an abandoned empty barracks from the Second World War (?) does not only house those objects but also lodgings of officers and crews where works by some of Judds fellow minimal art artists are displayed in a very impressive way.
The pictures used in the project were for example taken in the different adjacent buildings of the area, where the light installations by Dan Flavin are presented amongst others from the interior to the exterior with the back to Flavin´s works. The window crossbars were added afterwards based on the ones on site.
In the installation, here in Vienna, which can only be perceived from the street, one can see the steppe area in Texas with its sculptures by looking into the window of the project room MAG3.
The only obstacle to the view of the landscape and the works displayed in it are extracts from an article by the philosopher Herbert Marcuse written for the Magazine for Social Research (1937), which have been attached to each of the windows (4) and jointly constitute a whole.
This article overall - that is to say seen from the point of view of cultural history refers to social processes in a world that was becoming globally capitalistic with enormous brutality at the time, broaches the issue of their antagonistic sides and has not lost any of its topicality until today.
The installation is turned on and off by means of a clock timer. The time of activation is at the same time the opening time, the time of deactivation the closing time of the area respectively of the area in Marfa. Opening hours of the Chinati Foundation and the area in MARFA are from 10 am to 4 pm.
The opening time of MARFA is simulated in Vienna with a time shift of seven hours and the installation will be on display from 5pm to 11 pm from Monday to Saturday, for a bit more than three weeks (21 days).
The picture recordings are exemplary for our social conditions, their horizon is succinctly put on record the accompanying text delivers the contrast. While profit is growing somewhere else, insight might be gained in this place!
projektroomMAG3
Schiffamtsgasse 17, A 1020 Vienna/ Austria/ Europe
(Accsessible by U2 Taborstrasse and/ or U4 Schottenring/ Exit U2 Herminengasse)
Phone: +43 676 3409218, Email: mag3@mur.at