From A
Grain of Sand
to a Pearl to a
Grain of Sand
ãThe sublime holds within it the principle of unpredictability.ä -- Friedrich Kittler
A great many plants -- in the way that they populate the dusty barrenness of railroad
embankments, grounds of decaying and barely intact factories and less-frequented
ways -- are immigrants, genetic flotsam traveling as blind passengers bearing goods
from throughout the world and, strewn occasionally from out of the wagons of progress,
become indigenous.
They constitute a flora with no audience, without definition and regulation between
admiration and weed. They live in the tristezza of being overlooked, despite all the
noise blaring about them in the stillness of decline.
A wild tangle of metaphors and romanticism grows rampantly around the work and the
person of Just Merrit, or perhaps only around my thoughts about him. Either way, both
of us are equally devoted to such arabesques. We -- at least I -- can not have it any
other way, and whoever will should enter this uncultivated land with a sunken,
microscopic gaze -- that strange, staged world which we both have long regarded from a
seated position.
Just Merrit sought out such a no-manâs-land and settled down there, reservedly,
hesitantly though not uncommodiously: the ruins of the ideals of the Industrial Age,
the Voest 1 or, to be more precise, its digestive tract, the scrap yard. The smoke stacks
of these ruins are still smoking. Not that dilapidation has already disfigured it, but it
is not difficult to see from the vegetation that has begun to infiltrate that this Moloch
of diehard production is in its last throes, already more museum than industrial giant.
What are the reasons that move someone to seek out such a morbid, or at least
nostalgic, ambience? In Just Merritâs hierarchy of importance, the correct, precise
context with the steel works seemingly occupies the uppermost position. But also his
personality needs to be embedded in a romantic environment of soot, rust and dust. He
requires the sense of protection of a no-manâs-land and not that of an exquisitely
cultivated nature preserve thick with hikers, to thus see the sublimity of decline as a
parable and not as a fact in a story for school children.
The smell of proletarian labor raises no suspicions; it is free of the need for
explanation to art and politics. It is too innocent and naive, as if anyone could even
ask ... So is every artist, with no ifs, ands or buts. The honesty of the effort and the
aesthetic of the fabrication determine product like a creator. Hard work and not skill
is the final determinant of quality.
With Contained a workshop grew onto the works, a mimicry of a written off, weeded out
epoch. A foreign body, like a speck of dust or, better yet, a seed, anchors itself in the
system, begins to be detected, overgrown, absorbed. It germinates. The final product
which is the goal of this evolution is a vehicle, a ãseminal airborne apparatusä that
floats forth, perhaps to the ruins of digital ecstasies ...
Steel was the decisive material of the Industrial Revolution. As iron, it formed the
architecture, drove the sign language of progress and finally raised labor to the
central and exclusive definition of being human. No longer did the product stand for
the individual, but rather the production did. The work done by hands became the
works of machines, man the actor was transformed into an observer.
Acceptance and recognition in society becomes synonymous with the function
performed in the process of manufacturing products for society. I becomes we, mine
becomes ours. The religion of fabrication made systematic fragments out of human
beings -- the famous-notorious little cog -- whose responsibility also refers to a
merely fragmentary one.
Being a component of production makes responsibility superfluous, and so begins the
delegation of these concepts to the realm of politics as well as to art. One assigns the
governing; the feeling, thinking, living are done on oneâs behalf. Here are anchored the
roots of failure, although the fascination of indifference, the utter lack of feeling can
not be denied.
Without a doubt, the ãpatricideä contained in this tradition was necessary. At the end
of the 20th century, at the end of the fermata of every tradition of knowledge, it is
legitimate to say this. The frustration over the confinement of form, which, as is well
known (A. Loos), is what makes the holes in the shoes, has given way to frustration
over the complete lack of influence upon the final results. The fondness felt toward the
end results of this epoch can be explained as resulting from the egotistical love for the
unloved.
The success of industrialization is remarkable and nevertheless understandable if one
factors in laziness as the eternally operative mainspring driving human creativity in
fashioning tools. It runs like clockwork. It is quite beneficial to have the work done,
even if machines are soon stealing jobs and, as robots, populating our occupational
nightmares. They are becoming duplicates of ourselves; otherwise, we would have to
hate ourselves as their creators instead of them. Just as the humanmachine with its
productive potential now becomes troublesome -- it had to work -- so very pleasant
seems the productive Land of Cockaigne (instinct domain). Without the responsibility
of acting, the apathetic acceptance of laziness triumphs. Responsibility means time,
work and intimacy -- thus, everything which is unsuited to the arbitrariness of a Land
of Cockaigne.
With guile and culture, we have transformed paradise into the Land of Cockaigne of the
throwaway society, and we have practiced irresponsibility -- which in its true sense
means the renunciation of work -- for so long that the idea of turning back from the
abyss of ecological catastrophe is beyond naive fantasy. We have nothing and
everything at the same time, only to be able to throw ãitä away if it relates to us. Ego is
without aura, without the information of the possession, to be able to consume over and
over again.
The discovery of the self by means of a product must fail if a majority of the
inhabitants of the ãindustrializedä world have no products of their own, to say nothing
of a presentable rŽsumŽ to show. But we still have the terror of the cultural archive
(B. Groys), the terror of the recognition through work. What, and who of us, will
survive. Where is the chance to gain entry into the memory of the ãcultureä? No
solution, ergo, one produces -- unwillingly and brazenly at the same time -- art or
children.
And there is more -- of the horror, of the hazards of laziness and paralysis: When a
human being does not produce products on his own, sooner or later, his own ego
becomes a product, a machine and a medium -- human as autonaut in the universe of
information. Each of us is ego and sufficient unto himself (H. Ibsen). Communication
would only disturb those screwing around with information, oblivious to the world.
Only, what are the objects of ego? If you only live once, what should you play with?
One life, one game, one chance and no dependable traditions, no rebirth, at best, an
authoritarian hereafter (with singing of hosannas).
One slip-up, one false decision, and the product, ego, is spoiled. But no matter, nobody
sees it anyway, except the ego which, forgotten in the machines of leisure, must work
on itself. The memory of the body replaces that of the brain. The traces of time are in
the body (not on the body, A. Assmann) and not in the form of knowledge.
The more or less creative -- for we have now gone beyond innovation as the imperative
of modernity -- intelligentsia flees to the camps of self-discovery or art-as-hobby.
Since, naturally, everyone is an artist when there are only two authoritative
determinants of art: one may become an artist by the self-proclamation of oneâs work
as art; or through the designation of a piece of merchandise as a work of art and its
producer as an artist. The ãgolden calfä of individuality has made comprehensibility to
a viewing public a matter beside the point. There are as many works of art as there are
claims asserted and assumptions introduced. Once an ego has been counterfeited,
productivity is possible and the impossibility of verification is the back door into the
archive of the oligarchies of inheritors and handers-down -- art as the outcome of
commerceâs power of self-assertion.
So, that is the scenario from which Voest offers protection. Without the embarrassing
contortions of the self-defined avant-garde and the fenced-off garden plots and mixed-
medley casseroles of post-modernism, it lives on in the archaic halls of heavy
industry as if in a laboratory of transitoriness -- rather more a part of this
transitoriness, like a parasite that dies or moves on after its host has succumbed.
Just Merrit enlivens the narrow passage between present and past, or the moment of
metamorphosis from culture to history (from now to yesterday). He anticipates history
in his aesthetics and nevertheless flirts with the Žlan of progress in his works. Speed
without acceleration, neither positive nor negative -- simultaneously, a glimpse to the
future in the rearview mirror -- fleeting. The function has come to an end and a new
one has not yet been found and the seeds are sprouting in the ãnot-yet-ruinsä of a
ãnot-yet-past.ä
The feeling of being protected can be found only where the function of the protector is
not present. The bunker does not offer protection in war; it does so only in peace,
through its superfluousness -- the sublime in the absence of fear. And to dispel a
misconception (P. Weibel): FaschistoiditŠt comes about as a result of action and not
observation. Not the products of Fascism but rather their production is reprehensible.
Long ago, dictators safeguarded the idea of ruins as an indicator of their power. They
loved the bomb as an instrument of destruction which only one race would survive.
Their aesthetic is the wrecking and the wreckage. Just Merrit moves through this
transition.
His hodgepodge/museum resembles a replacement parts depot of modernism, a ãgenetic
data bankä of a post-constructivism never consistently carried out. He administers
fragments whose charm lies in their lack of function, in the kitsch of the parable of
the lonely cogwheel as the human being without relationships. Of course we are all
tiny, insignificant gears -- just without a machine.
As much as Just Merrit loves the aesthetic of the collective, the work with his body,
with his senses, means the cancellation of this aesthetic. He himself is the collective,
and the collective that actually exists is a collection of autists. The symbols and signs
of modernism no longer possess in his assemblage an incisive political truth. His
comprehension through imitation succeeds as a result of his understanding of the
falseness of the gestures and rituals of commerce.
Remembrance is just not a product; it is indivisible, it cannot be bought and sold.
Fragments are the catalysts of memory, they apply to everyone, even if no memory
resembles another. Just Merritâs laboratory of the past is, in this sense, a machine
against forgetting (like writing, Plato), his morality is ãrememberingä as opposed to
ãbeing reminded.ä
Contained, though, also signifies autonomy. At first glance, the containers might seem
like mobile homes without wheels, stranded in some corner of the world. Contained is
everything one needs to survive on an island -- and it is precisely this will to survive,
and not that toward culture, which is determinative. If Contained is an adventure in
the style of ãRobinson Crusoe,ä then Robinson is Friday too. One culture is not
explaining itself to another one; rather, a culture is explaining itself to itself.
An aspect of romanticism arises once again: first, that of machines and tools, salvaged
and brought to the island, which promise new designs of culture -- which three things
would you bring with you to a deserted island ...
On the other hand, it is the chance to live a lonely, to be sure, but unobserved life --
autonomy ãin its most beautiful form,ä since you can do whatever you want,
dispatching to the despots of the concerns of culture interchangeable pieces of scenery
decorated with props for the company orangery, larger or smaller ãoddities and
sensationsä which survive only in the greenhouses of commerce. You have done your
duty and can stay where you want, surrounded by genuine beauty -- if possible, naked
and lazy.
And what is that supposed to mean, that the Gypsy wagon has no wheels? You will not
be able to drive anyway, to the next ãhostä or the next epoch, even if they are stupid
enough to build a highway. On the electronic superhighway, there are no side streets;
as always, it is a question of the ãtoll.ä What can you do? For all those who can not
achieve emancipation and autonomy, pull into the truck stop and relax. Once again, the
machismo of a manâs job, of moving on, of the smell of oil and hot rubber. Once again, a
long stopover in a timeless space. And anyway, the commercials always tell us to ãtake
a breakä (but who wants to be dead?). Driving, with or without cargo, takes time, lost
time. The erotic of the provisional, without responsibility, being ego alone -- gliding,
rolling, pausing in a temporary measure of life, in a cheap imitation of a dwelling.
Second-hand gemŸtlichkeit, used by strangers, with traces not of our, but of my. Time
is a cogwheel. We experience time only through the traces that it leaves behind. If they
are not traces upon us, we do not suffer (nostalgia of the flea market).
There lies the beauty, the contentment of time squandered, scot-free; time that
overcomes us, stroke by stroke. There we receive signals from the island toward which
we are, regrettably, not underway. We are still living among the currents of the new,
its concepts having long since come unmoored. We have no raft named Contained.
If Just Merrit makes himself comfortable in his easy chair, that can mean nothing good
for this epoch. However highly one may praise the vitality of the Computer Age and its
endless (because an approach not yet begun) possibilities and perspectives, with its
appearance begins the long decline, and our fascination will become a prayer for the
health of a dying man. Chips crumbling to sand.
In Contained, Just Merrit brings to life a time machine in which time no longer has a
function; its task consists of dissolving time. He himself conducts research into the
essence of contentment and of necessity. He assumes a place in society without any
curiosity, a society which would let him become a part of the audience, with no
possible detour, no possible alternative. Curiosity and boredom as styles of play are
one and the same -- thus he remains a concerned outsider without the possibility of
understanding, a foreign body.
With Contained, he most fundamental character of the modern spectacle is the staging
of its own collapse. If the new is the ultimate determinant of art, then the only art
there can be is the old. What chances does the pearl have, to not end up on the necks of
the bourgeoisie, to not lay before swine, than to become once again a grain of sand.
Johannes Domisch for Just Merrit , June 1996 e.i.a.e.