MAG3

like Nothing

GUE SCHMIDT

The entire life of those societies where modern production conditions prevail appears as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that used to be directly experienced has escaped into an image. Guy Debord, The Society of Spectacles, p 4 (Th.1) “....., or the shopping cart remained empty” is an imaginative space. The technique of mounting prefabricated scenes from films but also elements from painting, sound and architecture are the material, which, by arranging them in a new way, alienates them from their immediate effect and makes them appear as a commentary that imparts knowledge in contrast to socially conventional processes of perception. Thereby a distance is created which represents a deliberate intermediate step, breaking the rhythmic staccato of an almost endlessly offered representation of the apparent loss of societal history.

“What the spectacle has taken from reality has to be wrested away from it again. The spectacular dispossessors have to be dispossessed themselves. The world has already been turned into a film. Now it is imperative to change it.” Guy Debord, OEuvres cinématographiques complètes, p 74. Once the realm of conscience has been revolutionized, reality does not resist. (Hegel to Niethammer) Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Letters I/ Anniversay Issue “The spectacle is not a whole of images, but the social relationship between people imparted by images.” Guy Debord, The Society of Spectacles, p14 (Th4).

A presentation byr GUE SCHMIDT + FRITZ FRO + RBW21

The project LIKE NOTHING… was created in a more reduced form on the occasion of an exhibition opening in the former club/cafe FLIEGER in Vienna´s 4th district, Schleifmühlgasse, under the title ENTIRELY NONCOMMITAL in the year 1998. A 16 minute super 8 film was projected onto three people draped with three guitars thrumming about (2 guitars and 1 bass). The complete film was composed of five short films (train ride, car ride, nature walk, museum visit and flea market tour) broken down into the smallest possible sequences and put together again randomly. Additional scratching and painting over of the original film was used to enhance the resulting chaotic character. The so to speak “musical” part was treated in a corresponding way. The result was a synchronic harmonious whole. For the current presentation this film has been digitalised, complemented with newer shoots (2010) and updated, so that not only the original two levels can be perceived (film = parallel, painting over/scratching = superimposed) but altogether four (over as well as next to each other). With the temporal distance of about twelve years from the first form of its presentation, the diachronic aspect of the representation becomes perceptible due to its updating with newer material. At the same time the scrolling text projected opposite this picture story, taken from the Manifest of the Communist Party I. Bourgeois and Proletarian by Karl MARX (1848), tells about a not only ideological dimension of historic evolution but also of its completion. What is being described in this text has not significantly lost its topicality. “The manifest is the document of the world historic transition from humankind´s pre-history, where societal conditions created themselves behind people´s back, to history, where people can decide themselves about their fate by realizing the conditions of production and reproduction of their life and their possibilities. While Hegel once said world history was “progress in the consciousness of freedom”, the manifest is now forging the key of the door to actual freedom. Hans Heinz Holz, in trend. online paper for everyday anger, nr 7-8/1988 The sound collage in this presentation consists of fragments from The Ring of the Nibelung/The Valkyrie, 1st and 3rd act, by Richard Wagner, Symphony nr 9 in D-minor, op. 125 by Ludwig van Beethoven and Symphony 1, 5/di tre re, 3/ liturgical by Arthur Honegger and of the complete, unchanged musical sequence from the 1988 performance entirely noncommittal by RBW21. At the bass: Sam Semmler and at the two guitars: Fritz Fro and Gue Schmidt GALERIE LIA

MAG3, SCHIFFAMTSGASSE 17, A 1020 VIENNA/ AUSTRIA/ EUROPE (ERREICHBAR ÜBER U2 TABORSTRASSE ODER U4 SCHOTTENRING/ AUSGANG U2 HERMINENGASSE)