ISH# 28
Theod
r Barth
– State of the Art: Perceptions of a Resident Clandestine II
25 
27th March 2011
1. After a week in Paris with a bunch of students at the Jeudi's of the Centre Pompidou, I was ready for a new couple of nights at the Institute of Social Hypocrisy: the second in the time the 2- year project has been afoot. From afar, the name of the institute now seems almost neutral to me; but whenever I use the name – or, write it – it still contaminates everything in its immediate sur- roundings, and brings it into a floating state: it questions without itself being questioned.
2. My mission, this time, was to get into the sheets of Damien Airault: for a forthcoming lecture on the Brooding Parasite Feeding Week (ISH#18), I wanted to put myself in his place, by sleeping a couple of nights at the institute. With his usual practical sense of the props needed for proper stooging, the director of the Institute – Victor Boullet – had equipped me not only with the same bedding as Damien Airault, but I think also the same sheets. I made sure to stain them with ink.
3. At bed-time, I realised that the space in 1 Charles-François Dupuis was about to host its 9th project after Damien Airault had been locked in for a week – his own space, the Commissariat, cuckooed – which incidentally was curated by Chris Sharp, who had reviewed ISH#18 in Art Re- view. This situation, including my own, sums up what has happened with the Institute over the two last years: it has become entangled in a very tight weave, which usually is the hallmark of a good text.
4. But then, it would seem that any additional text would be superfluous, at sundown: it was Fri- day night, I had acquired a pair of braided breads and wine for Sabbath down in Rue des rosiers, lit the candles and the peace oozed in from the city of Paris. When empty, the space in 1 Dupuis reverberates with the sounds of the city: when I closed my eyes, the urban sound brought me Pa- risian skyline that surrounded us for a week, while rehearsing and performing at Beaubourg.
5. I slept for a solid 11 hours, with dream contents harking back to the contents of the lecture I gave here 1,5 years back. I shouldn't be surprised at memories like these churning at the site where the event from which they originate, occurred: event-sites frequently summon this kind of fidelity, till they catch up with the current situation. But if dreams serve to locate ourselves situa- tionally – in the present – they surprise us: apparently they are as much linked to the place as to our presence.
6. The space at 1 Dupuis is difficult to categorise: it's shape of a lightening is accentuated by a circuit of neon-tubes that accentuate the shape of the room. Naively, it looks as though it was generated when the rest of the building was designed and planned, as a surplus – or, what was left over – without clarity of function, or intended use. I remember how it struck me when I first came: I didn't wish to be included by the Institute of Social Hypocrisy, but I could belong to this space.
7. But then, the 16th of May 2011, ISH will be literally dismantled: the Institute of Social Hypocrisy is terminated, but the space will prevail: it will sail off as a Mayflower, whether it disappears into the urban mesh of odd spaces, or has en afterlife as an installation. This uncertain destiny brings us to the heart of the question with which the Institute of Social Hypocrisy has been concerned, over the two last years – if life is projected into the camera chiara (cf., ISH#5), to defend unten- able positions, the question is: for what?
8. What goes on in the shadows of such life-projections that makes them endurable? What is the essence of the untenable but nevertheless endurable? Why do people endure untenable posi- tions? Victor Boullet and I have had a certain number of discussions about this: are there other ways through the impasse that would make the hypocrisy stand out? How interesting and enlight- ening can hypocrisy be if it covers everything, and is found at the core of all forms of social life, as soon as they are obviated as aesthetic forms?
9. In a flyer I wrote for Dag Erik Elgin's event The Obituary Phenomenon Ernst Beyeler (ISH#16), I made the statement in quote «the guest is a dweller in the realm of art», in order to account for the ontology of the clandestine in residence. The crossed-out guest is a humiliated guest, yet lib- erated of the obligations of the guest. It brings us to the core of survival under conditions of hu- miliation, and survival after humiliation: the single and completely unpredictable events that link a) time as endured, b) time as lived. 25-27th March 2011
10. Between the détourage linked to provenance (ISH#16) and détournement linked to sequestra- tion (ISH#18), there is the free-play of the clandestine in residence (ISH 5 & 28): in the twilight of clandestinity, s/he will not be included – or, represented – in any crowd. S/he keeps the stan- dards of ethics and the testimonials of memory in store, because s/he knows that the work done in the space – and the traced left in it – will be for nothing. S/he's in the dark and yet plays: a work with no future and – for this reason – with a singular afterlife.
11. This afterlife – or, Nachleben – is quite revealing: the space is one key to the Institute. The principle that has guided the Institute of Social Hypocrisy in its activities, was already there: it is a clandestine space. A piece of modern architecture generated by accident – rather than by design – from the rule of urban planning, a residue of the Hausmannian restructuring, which readily could be characterised as a crime against architecture: the plaster saints of historicism. Against this, I hold the singularity of the ISH-space as an event.
12. Evidently, the apartment building in 1 Rue Charles-François Dupuis brings to mind the urban cataclysm of the baron but faintly, since it was built after the total makeover of new buildings with plaster and stucco – with its haphazard and crazy historical references. But this makes it only more valuable: the destruction artist, as the baron was nick-named, created that strange urban desiring machine that we call Paris: an urban life – generated by repression – by accident rather than by design.
13. This principle, of course, is still at work: and since it no longer bothers about the makeover, it comes out with ever greater clarity. Take the Roissy airport, for example: when the security outfit with all its light walls, plexiglas, gear and equipment were moved from the core building unto the satellites, the departure areas were transformed into human Lagers, and left the modern architec- ture in ruins. The refugees sit unawares with their plastic bags full of chocolate, cigarettes and booze.
14. Our contemporary destruction artists will not stop at this. At the Institute of Social Hypocrisy – while I was delving into the peace of a nearby park – curator Chris Sharp, Jason Hwang and La société réaliste, set up a frenzied exhibition of about 1000 printouts from web-pages of the Artist Pension Trust (APT). In the centre of the space, a pedestal with a pile of documents, with face down, had to be protected against curious hands during the opening: the ATP agreement of non- disclosure was held in awe behind a glazed front.
15. Of course, this arrangement was bound to create a greater focus on the contract than on the A4-printouts covering the walls and windows at ISH: they came out as a dramatic context – the hide- or stake-out of a world conspiracy theorist – for the monumental display of the tabooed documents, in the middle of the room. The key-notes given during the opening – by Tristan Trémeau in French and Chris Sharp in English – explained the gist of this fiendish pension plan for artists (initiated by two Israeli financial moguls).
16. As I was bound for my second night at ISH, I felt hesitant in mixing with the Chez Boullet crowd that had turned up with the event. Were they being annexed by the ATP in 1 Rue Charles- François Dupuis in the same way that security has annexed the satellites at Roissy, and turned the passengers into refugees? In essence, I was – somewhat feverishly – search for the criticality that could make the event at the Institute, veer off in a different direction. For a long time, I couldn't.
17. One reason for not blending in, is a matter of principle (which therefore I cannot eschew): I am with Victor and his project, but not as him. This why we can connect and talk: contact requires critical difference – or, criticality – in order to occur. Therefore I would not be included into the C.B. crowd: it is only as a passer-by that I can share a sense of belonging with the other people present (i.e., when they admit that, actually, they are only passing). Which is what happened with a couple of visitors, with Tristan Trémeau's pitch and C.B.
18. We can either be oblivious of the destruction artist's thoroughfares, or we see nothing else: in both cases we are blinded by them. They either traverse us unawares – because we are infinitely precious subjects of value, and we deserve the chocolates, cigarettes and booze – or, the pas- sages are ubiquitous: who would, indeed, have imagined that the ATP would succeed in creating a thoroughfare through the Institute of Social Hypocrisy?!? How can they to this point succeed at invading our being?
19. During my second night at the Institute, my dream-work was invested in churning the lesser used roads of cities: back-street alleys, back-yards, the territories of creative scavengers – «on se 25-27th March 2011 donne des pistes,» said the off-line stunt poet Jean-Baptiste from the société réaliste. Of course, the destruction artists are interested in these – which was the gist of Tristan Trémeau's interven- tion during the opening – because the artists, with their sense of creative clochardise, have what the destruction artists has made scarce: a tight weave.
20. The shorthand version of my second dream: the APT invites artists from around the world – who promise 'to make it big' – to donate art to the pension trust, according to a carefully worked out schedule over a period of 20 years. The money comes from sales, if/when they occur in prac- tice pending on the web of relations that the artists bring to the trust. It is unclear who gets the lion's share of the sales, but they may also be uninteresting: essentially, the art may be valueless from the point it is parked in the trust, but not the relations.
21. Of course, it may count that the APT presently appears to be the largest privately owned art collection. But it is also conspicuous that the event at the institute managed to generate the crowd-sourcing that interests the APT. After giving some thought to my dream, I decided that the problem emerges when the space is divested of time (and, in that sense, when it ceases to be a place). Which brings me back to the passers-by: while the destruction artists create through-fares in space, the passers-by create thoroughfares in time.
22. It is in the latter sense that the Institute of Social Hypocrisy the legacy of the space is one of those commons fr. terrains communaux – that interest me (and I think also, though more wildly, the Société réaliste). The thoroughfares in time are simply time-montages, harking back to Asger Jorn's détourage, and Guy Debord's détournement, combined: a way of articulating the work and the works, beyond the dialogue in the 1st and 2nd person, realising what might be called a 3rd party readability (connecting at need).
23. In his own way, Victor Boullet – in his own practical way is aware of this: usually, after the ISH events of any number, an off-party has been held in his home at 59 rue des archives: the drink tends to go from beer (the institute) to wine (the archives) accompanied by tasty food, intimacy and lots of love. A realm of insight, weary of foresight and hindsight, for everyone who wanted to come. The visitors leave their work and the need to impress each other, they disappear from the public eye into the mesh of the city.
24. Oddly, or perhaps predictably, this arrangement has been in decline from ISH#18, which Vic tor Boullet – by a slip of the tongue – called the Feeding Parasite Brooding Week, during a con- versation we had over a shandy, at the Café La perle. During that week, he brought twice daily various delicately prepared meals, based on whale meat. The cost of this project, is that the divi- sion of symbolic labour between the Institute and the Archives, collapsed. It may have been an intuitive response to the weave at the Institute growing tighter.
25. After the ISH#27the APT event – there was no off-meal at the Archives. Everyone kept busying, either to the next art event in the Marais, to cram together in a café, or both: but still there was like a silence, a vacuum, a question in the air. No meal. Then a couple of days went and Damien Airault's testimonial about the Institute of Social Hypocrisy – with his own contribution related in anecdote – appeared in Catalogue (Issue 6): an Anglo-French art magazine in which the curator wrote about his early impressions from the Institute.
26. In my mind, the question that must have been foraging in Victor Boullet's system during the days in between ISH#27 and Damien Airault's write-up – is whether/not the Institute of Social Hypocrisy, as it were, had reached a tightness of weave, that would make it self-organise: in es- sence, live on without him. Perhaps the text in Catalogue was an answer to his prayers. As the ISH project goes to a close, the tightness of the mesh developed during 2 years is transmuted in text. What is good for text is good for the institute.