Chosen texts from A Year from Monday, New Lectures and Writings by John Cage (1967) which were randomly chosen from a prepared list of all sentences in which either the words text, writing or reading occur have been combined with another source: handwritten inventory cards from the archive collection of the Jewish Musem in Berlin. From these cards I selected texts which speak of the condition and readability of unnamed documents in that collection.

These two, seemingly disparate text lists were further fragmented using a version of the cut-up method invented by Brion Gysin and often utilitized by William S. Burroughs: in which texts from unrelated sources meet each other and create new random associations. This process resulted in a final list of 329 text items, ranging from 1 to 15 words. The list was recorded and spoken by the artists Sam Ashley and Ray Kass, who were recent participants in the TONSPUR Project.

A specially written software sends randomly chosen voice recordings from a database to the various loudspeakers according to pre-determined rules but leaving much to chance. We experience a possible conversation, never repeating and creating unexpected meanings.

During the preparation period, Dreyblatt lived in a studio near to this TONSPUR_passage: „I often marvelled at the diversity and density of the soundscape, in which the distant sounds of Sam Ashley\'s installation, Freedom From Happiness, mingled with the sonorites of crowds of people passing under my four windows, and resonating in the plaza and in my living space. Over a weekend, I made numerous recordings of this situation over different times of day, and then created a carpet which lies under the voices, functioning as a kind of memory of this site from a recent, yet now lost time.“

„As my own work has become increasingly text-based both in performance and in installation, I have been re-examining Cage\'s oevre in textual composition. My own interests in the visual and audio perception of fragmentary layers of textual content are mirrored in his extensive experimentation with printed text layout and vocal readings.“

„In 2011, I was invited by the Akademie der Künste in Berlin to create a work for the exhibition A Room for Cage. It was in the preparation for the works which I created for this exhibition (Writing Cage, 2011) that I made use of texts from my copy of the 1967 paperback edition of A Year from Monday, New Lectures and Writings by John Cage

Voices: Sam Ashley, Ray Kass; Recordings: ORF Studios, Vienna; Technical Supervision Peter Szely; Programming: Norbert Math; Production: TONSPUR für einen öffentlichen raum; Artistic director: Georg Weckwerth

Inscriptions is concieved as an interactive textual dialogue with the employees of the Ministirium who will pass through, meet and work in four meeting rooms. Lenticular printing technology was chosen as an perceptually interactive means of display. Each work contains up to five text layers, which are viewable as text fragments from varying viewing positions, and which seem to \"overwite\" each other as in a \"palimpsest\". As the viewer moves about the room, different text content appears and disapears, allowing one to “create” one’s own narrative about the history and workings of the BMELV Ministry. In this way the employee should become participants in a dialogue with the work, which can only be “completed” through movement and reflection.

Text excerpts will be chosen as content for the work from the following themes:
a) the history of the BMELV Ministry;
b) the historical and architectural context of the building;
c) descriptions of activities and goals relating to the work of the BMELV Ministry;
d) historical and contemporary quotations from literature and science on subjects such as agriculture, nutriton, etc.

A theme has been concieved for each of the four meeting rooms:
1. Wilhelmstr. Nr. 54, history of the building housing the Ministry
2. Agriculture: texts from Marcus Porcius Cato (234 v. Chr. – 149 v. Chr.), Albrecht Daniel Thaer, (1752 – 1828), Johann Heinrich von Thünen, (1783 –1850)
3. Agricultural Politics and Policy in Germany
4. Consumer Protection

Historical documents have been selected from the Museum archives from two sources:
a. Letters from burocratic offices to individuals about preparations for deportation and eventual transports to the east.
b. The last correspondance from Ghettos and extermination camps.

One approaches a glass barrier made up of vertical sections which are either transparent or opaque when data messages begin writing on them. One has the feeling that one cannot proceed further, yet one can see through the panels, revealing a hint of what follows. The visitor is intrigued by the dynamic rhythm of the panels appearing and disapearing, and by the pace of the digital writing on the glass.

Along a line in the floor which transverses the space at an angle (and which represents lines which intersect the original architecture), a glass barrier is built in eight sections, each 1 meter wide and 3 meters high. Four data projectors are mounted from the cieling behind the glass barrier and are connected to a computer.

A section of mirrored glass is mounted on the right diagonal wall, opening up the space and reflecting the wall of glass and the dynamic movement of the displays and changing panels.

The barrier is composed of eight “Priva-lite” glass panels, each 2.5 x 1 meters mounted in steel frames. When electricity is applied to the glass, it is transparent; when the current is turned off, the glass is opaque, thereby functioning as a projection surface.

The glass panels and the projectors are synchronized. There is one projector each for two panels, representing one document fragment. When a document pair are “active”, the glass becomes opaque, and the document information (left side) and content information (right side) begin “writing”, letter by letter, simultaneously, at eye level.

The four projection pairs are either in an “active” (projection, opaque) or “inactive” (transparent) state. From one to four active states may be happening at any one time. The patterns of active and inactive panels is changing all the time, creating a sense of dynamic rhythm in the space. At the same time, sections of the wall seem to disapear and reappear at other locations. The selection and display of the texts is random.

Production:
Text Preparation and Project Coordination: Maren Krüger
Media Design: Thomas Buck
Media Realization: White Void, Berlin
Photos: Copyright Jüdisches Museum Berlin; Foto: Jens Ziehe

Installed Permanently at: Jewish Museum, Berlin, 2008

Produced by Carsten Seiffarth
Software: White Void, Berlin
Turntable: Andreas Marcksheffel
Slide Projection: AV Optics / Emmanuel S. Boatey
Historical Blueprints: Landesarchiv Berlin
Archive research and text preparation: Birgit Kirchhöfer
Text correction: Gunnar Voss
Archival Sources: Landesarchiv Berlin, Museumsverbund Pankow Archiv
Digital Recordings: "Siemens Magnetom Symphony Maestro Class" Magnet Resonanz Tomographie (MRT or MRI)
Recorded by: Jörg Hiller
Recording Location: Röntgenpraxis (MRT-Departement), Dr. Anne Sparenberg, Martin-Luther-Krankenhaus, Berlin

Produced with support from Alstercolor Bild + Medienservice GmbH & Co. KG, Hamburg.

Exhibited:
Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art, Berlin (as part of the exhibition; "Translation: Text as Image" within the frame of the Walter Benjamin Festival, Berlin), 2006-2007

Photos: 1-4: Waldemar Kremser, 5: Arnold Dreyblatt

“Innocent Questions” was the winner of a closed competition initiated by the The National Foundation for Art in Public Buildings, Oslo (Utsmykkingsfondet for offentlige bygg) in 2004 for a permanent artistic work in front the Villa Grande, a villa occupied by Vidkun Quisling from 1941-1945. The Villa is currently the site of the "HL Senteret", The Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities.

In developing a concept for an artistic intervention for the Villa Grande I preferred not be limited by the particular historical circumstances associated with this site. I have chosen rather to focus on the use of the “personal questionnaire” in population registration systems as the defining element that thematically connects the Holocaust in Norway with other genocides of the twentieth century and with the administration of foreigners and other minorities in contemporary society.

The winter snow and the dramatic approach up the hill to the site call for a vertical installation as a transformation of the imposing and grotesque historical building facade. In renovating and reconstructing the “Villa Grande,” fire and safety regulations required an external stairwell to be fixed on the facade to the left of the main entrance. I proposed to utilize the structure of the stairwell in order to physically support the installation of “Innocent Questions.”

Attached to the structure of the stairwell is an array of twelve panel-boxes, mounted within a steel frame. These panels are designed to form one unified image (size: 8330 x 4070 cm.), which is perceived in three distinct optical layers:

Non-Reflective Image: Sandblasted onto the hardened surface of the outermost glass layer of each panel is a reconstruction of a historical “punch card” , representing the reduction of the individual to number and category. This image is perceived as non-reflective, creating a heightened contrast to the reflectivity of the underlying mirrored surface.

Reflected Environment: The work functions as a mirrored wall that reflects the natural environment: the trees and sky, and the visiting public. The face of the historical building is thereby opened and partially erased.

Illuminated Texts: Mounted onto the rear of each panel within the punch card image, are words and phrases written in fixed light-emitting diodes (LED’s). This textual content has been derived from historical and contemporary personal questionnaires.

The rear of the work is sealed, and the illuminated red LED texts appear as an ephemeral image, suspended in the reflecting mirror. Only the illuminated LED texts are seen through the mirrored glass, which is otherwise fully reflective of the environment.

The words and phrases appear and disappear within a slow and randomly generated temporal composition perceived within the virtual punch card image. Because the appearance of illuminated words and phrases is continually changing, new combinations of words and phrases arise, igniting unexpected associations from the questionnaire entries as one passes the work.

During the hours of daylight, the mirror glass reflects the trees and sky. The information layers (non-reflective image, reflected environment and illuminated text) are clearly visible. In the hours of darkness, artificial side lighting illuminates the non-reflecting sandblasted surfaces of the outer glass layer, which would otherwise be imperceptible.

In my concept for a permanent installation at the site, a list of “Innocent Questions,” derived from historical and contemporary sources and representing a composite collective questionnaire, is contrasted with the image of a historical “punch card.” Together, this is a representation of the collection, archiving and application of personal data by political systems for administrative and often questionable use.

Exhibited:
Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, 2003
Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, 2003

Exhibited:
Galerie Anselm Dreher, 2000
Art Forum, Berlin, 2000
Gemäldegalerie, 2001
Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, 2003
Kunstverein Hannover, 2003
Jewish Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 2005

Exhibited:
Felix Meritis Foundation, Amsterdam, 1998
Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 1999-2000
Jewish Museum, New York, 2001
Arte in Memoria, Ostia Antica, Rome
Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, 2003

Exhibited:
Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 1999-2000
Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, 2003

Related Web Project: http://www.leuphana.de/tmail

Exhibited:
Galerie Ozwei, Berlin, 1992
Kulturfabrik Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1995
Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel; Marstall, Munich, 1995
Arken Museum for Modern Art, Cultural Capital of Europe, Copenhagen, 1996
Hudobné simulakrá. Jozef Cseres, Bratislava 2001
Jewish Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 2005
Gallery e/static, Torino, 2007

Related Web Project: http://www.leuphana.de/tmail

Exhibited:
Galerie Ozwei, Berlin, 1992
Kulturfabrik Kampnagel, Hamburg, 1995
Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel; Marstall, Munich, 1995
Arken Museum for Modern Art, Cultural Capital of Europe, Copenhagen, 1995
In Medias Res, Istanbul, 1996
Jewish Museum, Vienna, 1997
Veletrzni Palac, National Gallery, Prague, 1997
Jewish Museum, Franfurt am Main, 2005

Performances:
Inventionen \'91, Kino Babylon, 1991
Wiener Fest Wochen, Vienna, 1991
Kulturpalast, Dresden (Production: Philip Morris), 1991
Gasteig, München (Production: Philip Morris), 1991
Berlin Hier und Jetzt Festival (Dnes a Tady), in collaboration with the Goethe Institute, Prague, 1994
Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg, 1995
Petrofi Czarnok, Budapest, in collaboration with the Goethe Institute, Prague, 1995
Theater Spektakel, Zurich, 1997
Festspielhaus Hellerau-Dresden, 1997
Theater im Pfalzbau, Ludwigshafen/Rhein, 1997