If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
(Victoria Dejaco, 2014)
The book published in 1973 by Italian author Italo Calvino sends the reader on a scavenger hunt in search for the new novel of Italo Calvino titled ‚If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler’. The purchased copy of the book is faulty. Pages of a different novel by a Polish author seem to be bound within. It turns out the pages are a patchwork of various Cimmerian stories put together in the translation. The planes of reality constantly blur: ‚The novel begins in a railway station, a locomotive huffs, steam from a piston covers the opening of the chapter, a cloud of smoke hides part of the first paragraph.’ In search for the novel production circumstances and socio-historical conditions for the genesis of a book as well as rituals of reading, the relationship of author and reader respectively reader and text or acting and reading entities are thematized and its distinctions obliterated. The reader is addressed with You, the first-person narrator seems to be the voice of the author.
"These remarks form a murmuring of indistinct voices from which a word or phrase might emerge, decisive for what comes afterward. To read properly you must take in both the murmuring effect and the effect of the hidden intention, which you (and I, too) are as yet it no position to perceive.“
Five years after the release of Roland Barthes’ ‚The death of the author’ Calvino in his conceptual novel takes it a step further and questions the author and his status but also his power over text and reader. Both author and reader are lifted to a common plane of reality. It remains indistinguishable whether the plot happens to the figures in the novel, the author or the reader since everybody is part of the plot and everybody is outside of it.
Maureen Kaegi’s work can be assigned the qualities of this book. In the different media she uses, the material, the production circumstances, the work process are the focus of the work without depriving it of a certain mysticism. At first sight the work untitled 4.01, 2013 is a black monochrome with a surface that bears great depth. But similar to the monochromes of Ad Reinhardt one soon realizes there is more to it. With the changed position of the viewer the black changes and oscillates in all colors of the rainbow like motor oil on water. As if metal pigments were mixed into what seems like Indian ink. Even the process of the application of ink on the paper is inconclusive. The texture of the surface makes the use of a brush seem unlikely since it is homogenous but not consistent. The traces hint at an interplay of chance and control. The ink in the small tube of the Bic-ballpens is blown out onto the paper and spread with a plastic card or similar tool. The material itself and its effect are usually new and surprising the viewer. Around 100 ballpens leave their black bile (μαύρο (mélas) ‚black’, and χολή (cholē) ‚bile’ the word melancholy stems from these two Greek words) on the paper. The depth and high saturation suggest many layers of ink but only one is on the paper. The color seemingly black is a mix of the Bic-ballpens red, blue and green. Something tells us: Much in Kaegi’s work is not what it seems like at first sight and we are to discover more layers and semantic levels throughout. Her playful attitude towards materials lets exceptional and surprising qualities emerge. The source of the alteration or influence, the determining coefficient is usually outside the work and evokes a feeling of uncertainty, something undetected.
What creates the pattern on the paper? In untitled 1.01, 2013 it is created by the lines that all spring from the tantalized and grated center of the paper. But some of the geometrical patterns are more elusive as to their underlying principle. The beginning of the lines lies outside the paper. The lines only leave a mark on it some three feet away from their point of departure. The end result leaves no trace of the overall structure of the pattern. The borders of the drawing hint to a beyond outside the drawing. Suitably, Kaegi seldom frames those works on paper. As if a frame, a confinement would be out of place here. The result of this external influence, the lines on the paper, is also an ever re-surfacing reference to repeating work processes. A line is a line is a line. Innumerable lines become a surface and innumerably many lines on a paper can wreck the paper. This is something else that the works on paper show. They show paper as it submits itself to a process and how it cries out under the treatment. The more it forfeits its intactness the more it becomes present in its own materiality. The repetition of a rule goes along with the withdrawal of the acting entity. The step back of the author brings the material, the tools, the movement and the repetition itself to the foreground. This principle is also reflected in the hardly varied titles (untitled). The given facts should stand for themselves without interference.
Repetition is always a form of insistence as well. Insisting and hinting, focusing, calling attention to something. In the video Moving Still, 2010 a half full glass of water rests on a wooden table. The invisible lamp above is swinging. Its reason unexplained. Maybe somebody jumped up from their seat, or an object was thrown through the room and hit the lamp.
The unchanging situation creates expectations (‘something will happen’) and hence a space for potential possibilities. The construction of a narrative is up to the viewer. The pun in the title does not hint at the narrative but only at the facts. We are watching a moving still. But read in reverse the title bears the temporal dimension. However long we watch the cone of light above the glass, it will still be moving. The title read back and forth creates a loop (moving still moving still moving): the semantic structure echoes the technical structure of the video. The sequence of 14:00 minutes is looped into an endless spiral.
Repetition and insistence also bring things to light that might be easily overlooked. O.T., 2011 was conceived site-specifically for the exhibition ‘where the surface is’ at MUSA, Vienna. The graphite strenuously applied on the wall gives it a metallic, reflective and noble quality. But it is also sensitive to the small imperfections of its surface, the mendings and patches, invisible on the white wall. Only Kaegi’s modification makes the texture of the exhibition wall and the traces of its past visible.
Even works that seem like a minimal gesture are the result of a relentless process of repetition. For the work untitled, 2011 Kaegi cut a myriad of triangles in a sheet of paper. Only two sides of the triangle are cut through. The corners are folded upwards and stand like little stylized fir trees on their lower edge hardly an inch high. Their different heights give an illusion of an undulating landscape. A white winter landscape. The focus of repetition meets the poetic power of reduction.
Maureen Kaegi’s works open spaces for catch your breath. They open latitude as opposed to all the congested daily spaces overflowing with information and impressions. Her repetition creates calm, loud enough to be heard, soft enough to make you listen closely.