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Dot Dot Dot: DDDE (a collection of items originally shown in the magazine)
Saturday 24 May: DDDE Begriffsklärung [Disambiguation], 12pm-12am
Part of the series 'Some Neighbours' at:
Kunstverein München e.V.
Galeriestraße 4
80539 München
Germany
Tel: +49-(0)89-221 152
info@kunstverein-muenchen.de
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Summarizing Dexter Sinister's periodical journal Dot Dot Dot recently, Wikipedia suggested that:
Given the magazine's exceptional (and exceptionally self-aware) looseness, the focus of each issue is hard to discern. In browsing the magazine a few topics emerge. For example, essays in DDD5 include 'The Beatles/Stones Dialectic' and an essay on Bill Drummond. DDD6 has essays on field guides, Tibor Kalman and the book covers of Fred Troller. DDD7 has material on the typography of the 1968 Olympics, Brian Eno and handwritting found on currency. The eighth DDD includes contents on the Black American Express Card, Wire album art and 'Towards a Representation of the English Breakfast as a Modular System'. DDD9 includes essays on the logos of film studios, the album art of Stereolab, the art of 'Ty i Ja' magazine and the art of Edward Wadsworth. The essays of DDD11 discuss Saul Bass, Samuel Beckett, John Peel, Wyndham Lewis and Mark E. Smith. Essays in DDD12 touch on Benjamin Franklin, the band Black Flag and the word 'Kafkaesque'.
The hang at the Kunstverein München, DDDE is a loose gathering of more or less 50 items whose only objective connection is to each have appeared in the pages of DDD at some point since its conception. It is the fifth in an irregular series of such arrangements which have been staged parallel to the publication—in this case a mirrored version of its predecessor, DDDD, installed with Stefan Kalmár at the 2007 Lyon biennial. The collection is generally drawn from throughout the 20th century and consists entirely of source material—that is, original artefacts rather than reproductions or representations. Contrary to their published role as mere illustrations, often ambivalently reproduced and distinctly secondary to their contextualising texts, here they are stripped of any frame and left to speak for themselves. It is most accurate to consider this closest to forcing a bunch of unintroduced kids together in a playground.
In the name of clarity, however, this situation will be inverted for a day on Saturday May 23 when the editor will attempt a day-long Disambiguation of the show. This will involve the explication of the items' various backgrounds, with embedded music, film, other media and guests including Jan Verwoert, and local high-end alchohol dispersed by distiller Christoph Keller.
All of which might be ideally be read through the lens of Stefan Themerson's profoundly modernist observation that:
The Greek males thought geometry was the thing. Dr Zamenhof thought Esperanto was the thing. Jesus-Christ thought the dialectical loaf of bread was the thing. And geometry produced bazookas. And polyglotism produced more quarrels. And love produced hatred. And none of these great things has proved to be more (what is the right word) efficacious (?) than what I, in my female way would like to call 'good manners'.
See
http://www.kunstverein-muenchen.de
