Construction I
Berlin 1989-1997
CONSTRUCTION I ensemble is the result of many years of studies on issues related to unmoved object-bodies. The basic formula underlying CONSTRUCTION I originated from an operation in which I arranged a number of objects standing on a table in front of me in such wise that they physically touched one another; i.e. they assigned a place to each other by virtue of their sheer physicality. I also refrained from the defined intermediate space through which meaning and symbolisation result. By bringing together, or rather pushing together, the objects to ‘collectives’, they resist the function of being protagonists, surfaces of projection or symbols. By standing together as a mass without difference, they become a kind of extended mass, a ‘res extensa’, which makes an explicit individual movement, e.g. taking away one object or making comparisons, appear senseless.
In 1990 I began exploring questions related to the concept of the object in the 20th century: from Duchamps’ industrial product as mass product up to the cultic quality of the commodity fetish and the status of the object as sign and code. However, I was interested in a sort of intervention that would make the space indistinguishable from the object so as to create modes of perception and experience that are not based on the separation of these two aspects.