Mona Hatoum | + and -

Mona Hatoum

 + and -

[n.p.]: Self-published, 1994

7.6 x 29.2 x 29.2 cm.

Edition of 14

Since a young Robert Rauschenberg arrived at Willem de Kooning’s door with a bottle of Jack Daniels, begging for a drawing that he could erase in 1953, erasure has become a staple in contemporary art. 

One of my favorite examples is by Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum, who created Self-Erasing Drawing [below] in 1979. The work is a kinetic sculpture with a motorized, toothed metal arm and a circular bed of sand that rotates five times a minute.

The sculpture's hypnotic and perpetual grooving and smoothing of the sand “evokes polarities of building and destroying, existence and disappearance, displacement and migration.”

In 1994 the work was remade in miniature as an edition, with the new name + and –. 

Gábor Altorjay | Object for Short Circuit

Gábor Altorjay 

Object for Short Circuit 

Remscheid, Germany: Vice-Versand, 1969

boxed: 10.3 x 10.3 x 10.3 cm.

Unlimited edition

German publisher Wolfgang Feelisch’s Vice-Versand was founded in 1966, intended to operate as a mail-order catalogue for contemporary art. Typically small in size and with low production costs, the works were presented as open editions and generally priced at DM 8, or approximately US $2. Vice-Versand published works by Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, Robert Filliou, Dieter Roth, Daniel Spoerri, Günther Uecker, Ben Vautier and others. 

Gábor Altorjay’s Object for Short Circuit (or Kurzschlussobjekt) was a simple male electrical outlet attached to a small plastic cube (yellow, red, or blue) which would short circuit and possibly blow a fuse when plugged into an electrical grid. 

Jock Reynolds' Fluxus kit from the same year, Potentially Dangerous Electrical Household Appliance, was a very similar work, involving a short extension cord with two male ends. 

Below is a schematic for the work, and a similar piece by the artist, called Short Circuit Purse. 

Jannis Kounellis | Kounellis

Jannis Kounellis

Kounellis

Monchengladbach, Germany: Städtisches Museum, 1978.

[5] pp., 19.5 x 15 cm., loose leaves, boxed

Edition of 440 numbered copies

Accompanying his exhibition, which ran from May 11th to June 11th in 1978, this boxed catalogue consists of a printed cardboard box containing four cards and a multiple by Kounellis. Three of the cards feature a continuous text of the poem Die Skythen, a poem written in 1918 by Russian lyrical poet Aleksandr Blok. The fourth is the title or colophon page. The multiple is made of compressed board, and features a metal rod embedded in white tissue. The rod is laminated in explosive powder the the work is intended to be ignited. 

When lit, the fuse produces a “bright hissing glow that leaves a black smoke trail on the grey-white plate”. 

This was the final boxed work in the Städtisches Museum series that began with Joseph Beuys in 1967 and also included editions by Carl Andre, Hanne Darboven, George Brecht & Robert Filliou, Piero Manzoni, Stanley Brown, Daniel Buren, Jasper Johns, Marcel Broodthaers, Lawrence Weiner, Gerhard Richter, and James Lee Byars, amongst others. 

The price during the run of the exhibition was DM 6. The work can now be purchased from Printed Matter, here, for $1800.00 US. 

Ben Vautier | Total Art Matchbox

Ben Vautier

Total Art Matchbox

New York City, USA: Fluxus, [circa] 1966

1.2 x 5.2 x 3.8 cm

Edition size unknown

A box of matches the instructions:

“USE THESE MATCHS TO DESTROY ALL ART — MUSEUMS ART LIBRARY’S — READY — MADES POP — ART AND AS I BEN SIGNED EVERYTHING WORK OF ART — BURN — ANYTHING — KEEP LAST  MATCH FOR THIS MATCHBOX”

Vautier described the work to Jon Hendricks in 1984 as "A Non-Art Anti-Art concept and rejoins [Gustav] Metzger etc. in Destruction Art".

The multiple was primarily distributed as part of the Fluxyearbox 2, from 1966.

The box was re-issued as a matchbook by Lightworks Magazine, in 1984. See below, and earlier post, here. 

Karen Azoulay | Down With Liberty

Karen Azoulay

Down With Liberty

Toronto, Canada: The Nothing Else Press, 2013

218 pp., 18 x 18 x 2 cm., clothbound

Edition of 15 signed and numbered copies

Many, many years ago we were enjoying backyard drinks with Karen Azoulay, and she began recounting her fascination and fear of the Statue of Liberty, which was made all the more interesting given that she had moved from Toronto to New York only a few years prior. She added that she was collecting images of the tower being destroyed in pop culture, almost as immersion therapy. 

The ending of the original Planet of the Apes remains the classic example, but pulp science fiction and comic books images predate that scene, and subsequently it has almost become shorthand in disaster films for the city under siege. 

Down With Liberty is a three-thousand word account of the statue and the artist's fraught relationship with it. Following this are 200 images of the monument meeting its demise in film stills, video game screengrabs, scenes from comics, cartoons, and television series. 

The book is available in a limited edition of 15 signed and numbered copies, each with a unique hand-painted cover and collaged postcard.

The work has also been presented as a narrated slide show at Deitch Projects in New York, Concordia University in Montreal and TPW in Toronto. The slide show was available as a USB stick, but has subsequently sold out. 

Christian Marclay | Footsteps

Christian Marclay

Footsteps

Zürich, Switzerland: Rec Rec, 1989

12” vinyl record

Edition of 1000 copies, 100 of which were signed

In December of 1988, Christian Marclay visited a foley booth to record the sound of footsteps. Seven tracks (and a track of tap dancing) were pressed to a single-sided vinyl record. Three and a half thousand copies were pressed up and were taped down on the floor of Zurich’s Shedhalle gallery in 1989. 

Gallery goers walked over the discs and when the installation was complete they were lifted up and boxed, along with a postcard and 90 x 60 cm. poster.

When buyers played the record the recorded sounds of footsteps co-mingled with the actual sounds of the disks being walked over - the scratches and the dirt left behind causing the needle to skip - to create a perfect duet. 

Despite a long, prolific career, I still consider this his true masterpiece. 

Ben Vautier | A Flux Suicide Kit

Ben Vautier

A Flux Suicide Kit

New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1967

9 x 12 x 2.5 cm.

Edition size unknown

A Flux Suicide Kit is a seven-compartment plastic box containing various one might use to self-harm: a shard of glass, matches, BBs, a razor, nails, fish hooks, an electrical plug with frayed cord, etc.

Like all Fluxus editions, it features graphic design by Maciunus, this time what looks to be a medical drawing (an acupuncturist’s chart?) indicating pressure points on the head. 

Vautier told Fluxus curator Jon Hendricks "I used two live electric wires: you tie them to your ears and put your feet in a bucket of water, sleeping pills, rope. They were real systems. I never used nails or fish hooks, those were from [George] Maciunas".

See the original suitcase prototype below, followed by the George Maciunas’ mechanical for the plastic box. 

Ben took his own life on June 5th of this year, hours after his wife Annie died of natural causes. She was 85 and he was 88. They had been married for sixty years. 

“Unwilling and unable to live without her, Ben killed himself a few hours later at their home,” their children Eva and Francois said.