An Artwork Which Is Not An Artwork
Marine Hugonnier
- Date
- 2009
- Medium
- Installation with handmade book-box containing interviews on A4 paper, wooden table, book by Hans Ulrich Obrist on wooden shelf, wooden display cabinet, blue painted wall, white vinyl wall text, framed anonymous photograph of Marcel Duchamp, framed postcard of the Barbican Estate
- Dimension
- 77.5 x 80 x 360 (table) 37.5 x 33 x 2.5 cm (photograph, framed) 31.5 x 36 x 2.5 cm (postcard, framed) Overall dimensions variable
- Credit
Commissioned by TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection- This artwork is part of the donation and long-term loan from TBA21 to the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.
Details
An Artwork Which Is Not An Artwork is a book/box, a work in progress started in 2008. It took as a point of departure an interview between Hans Ulrich Obrist, Francisco Varela, the Chilean neuroscientist who initiated a 'science of consciousness' to bridge Western tradition and Tibetan Buddhism, and Sarat Maharaj, professor of art history and theory. The focus of this work is a moment during that conversation where art is defined in reference to Duchamp as the production of a 'non-knowledge system', a way to access unknown circuits of consciousness. An Artwork Which Is Not An Artwork is an extension of this initial conversation, an opportunity to take forward its notion and to define it in greater depth. With Sarat and Hans Ulrich, a 'chain game' is played in which each person interviewed, in turn, propose another person to have a conversation with. All interviews are displayed in the box one after the other.
In an exhibition, this book/box is displayed on a table and with elements which have played a formative role in the understanding of what An Artwork Which Is Not An Artwork can be, as well as establishing cohesion between different parts of this process that resist being described in words.
