Ralph Lichtensteiger | Artist

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ART STREAM | info

Berlin, 30. Dezember 2013

So, yes, I am in the underground, but actually, it feels like home. — Anthony Braxton

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Hüten wir uns, zu denken, dass die Welt ein lebendiges Wesen sei. Wohin sollte sie sich ausdehnen? Wovon sollte sie sich nähren? Wie könnte sie wachsen und sich vermehren? Wir wissen ja ungefähr, was das Organische ist: und wir sollten das unsäglich Abgeleitete, Späte, Seltene, Zufällige, das wir nur auf der Kruste der Erde wahrnehmen, zum Wesentlichen, Allgemeinen, Ewigen umdeuten, wie es Jene thun, die das All einen Organismus nennen? Davor ekelt mir. Hüten wir uns schon davor, zu glauben, dass das All eine Maschine sei; es ist gewiss nicht auf Ein Ziel construirt, wir thun ihm mit dem Wort „Maschine“ eine viel zu hohe Ehre an. [...] — Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. Drittes Buch, Hüten wir uns!

Berlin, 29. Dezember 2013

[es ist, als ob wir eine unaufhaltsam rollende Maschine im Kopfe herumtrügen]

Wir denken zu rasch, und unterwegs, und mitten im Gehen, mitten in Geschäften aller Art, selbst wenn wir an das Ernsthafteste denken; wir brauchen wenig Vorbereitung, selbst wenig Stille: – es ist, als ob wir eine unaufhaltsam rollende Maschine im Kopfe herumtrügen, welche selbst unter den ungünstigsten Umständen noch arbeitet. — Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. Erstes Buch, Verlust an Würde.

Berlin, 27. Dezember 2013

'Wann ist Kunst?' Meine Antwort lautet: ebenso wie ein Objekt zu gewissen Zeiten und unter gewissen Umständen ein Symbol sein kann - zum Beispiel eine Probe -, so kann es sein, dass ein Objekt zu gewissen Zeiten ein Kunstwerk ist und zu anderen nicht. — Nelson Goodman, Weisen der Welterzeugung, Frankfurt am Main, 1990, S. 87

Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which supported them; what is the birth and the extinction of religious and of political systems to life? What are the revolutions of the globe which we inhabit, and the operations of the elements of which it is composed, compared with life? What is the universe of stars, and suns, of which this inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and their destiny, compared with life? Life, the great miracle, we admire not, because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the functions of that which is its object. — Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), On Life. [A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays]

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neue zettel | zettel · piece of paper

Berlin, 17. Dezember 2013

Hören | Berlin [one] [2013] · Sound of the environment montage [extrait limité à 00:04:42] · open the project page

Berlin, 13. Dezember 2013

Das grösste Schwergewicht. – Wie, wenn dir eines Tages oder Nachts, ein Dämon in deine einsamste Einsamkeit nachschliche und dir sagte: 'Dieses Leben, wie du es jetzt lebst und gelebt hast, wirst du noch einmal und noch unzählige Male leben müssen; und es wird nichts Neues daran sein, sondern jeder Schmerz und jede Lust und jeder Gedanke und Seufzer und alles unsäglich Kleine und Grosse deines Lebens muss dir wiederkommen, und Alles in der selben Reihe und Folge – und ebenso diese Spinne und dieses Mondlicht zwischen den Bäumen, und ebenso dieser Augenblick und ich selber. Die ewige Sanduhr des Daseins wird immer wieder umgedreht – und du mit ihr, Stäubchen vom Staube!' – Würdest du dich nicht niederwerfen und mit den Zähnen knirschen und den Dämon verfluchen, der so redete? Oder hast du einmal einen ungeheuren Augenblick erlebt, wo du ihm antworten würdest: 'du bist ein Gott und nie hörte ich Göttlicheres!' Wenn jener Gedanke über dich Gewalt bekäme, er würde dich, wie du bist, verwandeln und vielleicht zermalmen; die Frage bei Allem und jedem 'willst du diess noch einmal und noch unzählige Male?' würde als das grösste Schwergewicht auf deinem Handeln liegen! Oder wie müsstest du dir selber und dem Leben gut werden, um nach Nichts mehr zu verlangen, als nach dieser letzten ewigen Bestätigung und Besiegelung? — Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. Viertes Buch. Sanctus Januarius.

Berlin, 11. Dezember 2013

silence | silence · [2nd version] for 2 female voices · download [120 KB]

Berlin, 10. Dezember 2013

To avoid making art is art.

— Making art is not art · download [16 KB]

Berlin, 9. Dezember 2013

Look again at the art world and the dark matter it occludes. Few would deny that the lines separating 'dark' and 'light' creativity, amateur and professional, high from low have become arbitrary today, even from the standpoint of qualities such as talent, vision, and other similarly mystifying attributes typically assigned to high culture. What can be said of creative dark matter in general, therefore, is that either by choice or circumstance it displays a degree of autonomy from the critical and economic structures of the art world by moving instead in-between its meshes. It is an antagonistic force simultaneously inside and outside, like a void within an archive that is itself a kind of void. — Gregory Sholette, Dark Matter. Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture, p. 21

Berlin, 8. Dezember 2013

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No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. — T. S. Eliot, Tradition and the individual talent (1920)

Berlin, 6. Dezember 2013

Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again. — Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela died on Thursday, at the age of ninety-five.

Berlin, 2. Dezember 2013

Im Schöpferischen wird das Nicht-Darlegbare frei. — Gabriel Marcel, Metaphysisches Tagebuch (1915-1943), Band II, S. 242

The fetishism of NEW — everything that is new has value because it is new.

Berlin, 30. November 2013

Es gibt so eine starke Außenseiter-Tradition in der amerikanischen Musik. Sie steckt in Ives, Ruggles, Cage, Partch, Moondog, all diese schrägen Typen. Das ist meine Tradition. — Philip Glass

Berlin, 28. November 2013

Write a poem, draw a picture, and avoid working for other people. — John Cage

Berlin, 25. November 2013

Painting — impossible to describe or explain
Drawing — impossible to describe or explain
Black — impossible to describe or explain
Sound — impossible to describe or explain
Light — impossible to describe or explain

— RLi · [Reader/voice A] impossible · download [52 KB]

Berlin, 19. November 2013

Where the Old Masters created an illusion of space into which one could imagine walking, the illusion created by a Modernist is one into which one can look, can travel through, only with the eye. — Clement Greenberg

Berlin, 18. November 2013

Der grosse Künstler muss danach streben, die Welt umzugestalten. (...) Der grosse Künstler will keine politische oder Pamphletkunst machen, aber er ist bemüht, uns die authentische Natur der Dinge zu einthüllen, den authentischen Zusammenhang der Wirklichkeit, in den ja auch der gesellschaftliche Bereich eingeschlossen ist. — Antoni Tàpies, Kunst contra Ästhetik, XIX Drei Interviews (III), 1983

Berlin, 29. Oktober 2013

An artist who makes a living from his art should be registered as a 'lumpen artist,' issued an identity card, and dismissed with a suspended sentence. — Ad Reinhardt

Berlin, 28. Oktober 2013

I paint to rest from the phenomena of the external world – to pronounce it – and to make notations of its essences with which to verify the inner eye. — Morris Graves

Berlin, 24. Oktober 2013

Sir Anthony Caro, British sculptor, dies aged 89

Berlin, 18. Oktober 2013

Jeder, der versucht aus der großen Herde, die da heißt ›Gesellschaft‹, auszubrechen, ruft das Mißfallen der Herde hervor. — Francesco Petrarca (1304 - 1374)

Berlin, 16. Oktober 2013

There is never a question of what to paint, but only how to paint. — Robert Ryman

Berlin, 14. Oktober 2013

Berlin, 5. Oktober 2013

Painting is a play of opacities and transparencies. — Pierre Soulages

The artist’s process is much different from the artisan’s: Artisans approach an object already knowing what he or she wants to make of it and using techniques he or she is already familiar with. Artists on the other hand, use familiar techniques and knowledge to enter into the world of the unknown. — Pierre Soulages

Berlin, 4. Oktober 2013

Composition is the rule of painting by which the parts are brought together to for a pictorial work. The greatest work of painting is not a colossus, but historia. For the praise of ingengo is greater in historia, than in colossus. The parts of historia are bodies, parts of the bodies are a members, a part of a member is surface. Thus, the prime parts of the works are surfaces, because from them come members, from members come bodies, and from those come the historia, indeed the ultimate and absolute work of painting. — Leon Battista Alberti

Berlin, 2. Oktober 2013

Re #2 | Thanks to all visitors and friends, our #2 Berlin show was a great success. — RLi

On the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition... The time of year when the devil comes and spews art over London. — John Constable

Berlin, 5. September 2013

Invitation | Ralph Lichtensteiger · Small and Large Paintings | Marjan Zahed-Kindersley · Peintures/Photos Trouvees

Samstag 21. September 16 - 21 Uhr und Sonntag 22. September 11 - 17 Uhr · OPENING Samstag 21. September 16 Uhr

Berlin, 3. September 2013

The subject of a painting is the painting itself. — Mark Rothko

Berlin, 12. August 2013

Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see. — Philip Guston

Berlin, 9. August 2013

Berlin, 2. August 2013

Nur zögerndes Wissen zählt. Das ist es, was Computern am meisten abgeht: Zögern. — Elias Canetti, Aufzeichnungen 1992-93, S. 31

Berlin, 30. Juli 2013

The best art is opposed to the main kinds of power. — Donald Judd, 'La Sfida del Sistema' Metro 14 (Juen 1968)

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Previous to the 19th century, most people saw at most one image a week at church or once a year on a pilgrimage. Now images flow past us and through us by the multiple millions, daily. What does that mean and what has it done to us: none of us is quite sure, even now. — Brion Gysin in 'Painting To Palaver To Polaroid' (Here To Go, 1982)

Berlin, 29. Juli 2013

An anarchist does not believe, as some have wrongly put it, in social chaos. He believes in a state of society wherein there is no frozen power structure, where all persons may make significant initiatory choices in regard to matters affecting their own lives. In such a society coercion is at a minimum and lethal violence, non-existent. — Jackson Mac Low, Biographical Note, A Controversy of Poets: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, ed. Paris Leary and Robert Kelly (New York: Anchor Books, 1965)

I believe that the poet is necessarily an anarchist, and that he must oppose all organized conception of the State, not only those which we inherit from the past, but equally those which are imposed on people in the name of the future. — Herbert Read, Poetry and Anarchism (London: Freedom Press, 1939)

Berlin, 18. Juli 2013

I don't believe in history, that's his story. I believe in mystery, that's my story. — Sun Ra

The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist. The image of the artist as a patronized idiot, as an innocent, as a company man, as a collector's item, a successful schnook, is ugly. — Ad Reinhardt

Berlin, 17. Juli 2013

Everything is alive and significant. Everything can and does become something else. — RL

Berlin, 15. Juli 2013

Only art can break your heart / Only kitsch can make you rich. — Johan van Geluwe (M.O.M., the Museum of Museums)

Berlin, 8. Juli 2013

Die Ausstellung in Berlin war ein schöner Erfolg. Wir danken allen Besuchern und Unterstützern dieses Projekts. Die zweite Ausstellung in dieser Reihe ist in Vorbereitung und wird auch hier über artstream angekündigt. Bis bald. RL & MZK

Berlin, 3. Juli 2013

Becoming a young artist takes a whole lifetime. — Jan Fabre

Berlin, 19. Juni 2013

Ausstellung · you are about to see your entire life as an exhibition

Ralph Lichtensteiger · Berlin · Zeichnungen und Collage
Marjan Zahed-Kindersley · London · Fotografie

Samstag 29. Juni 16-21 Uhr
Sonntag 30. Juni 11-17 Uhr
VERNISSAGE Samstag 29. Juni 16 Uhr

Berlin, 20. Mai 2013

Berlin, 18. Mai 2013

Berlin, 17. Mai 2013

Berlin, 15. Mai 2013

apollo in a parking lot | Berlin/London | Apollo | Greek Mythology a god, son of Zeus and Leto and brother of Artemis. He is associated with music, poetic inspiration, archery, prophecy, medicine, pastoral life, and in later poetry with the sun; the sanctuary at Delphi was dedicated to him.

Berlin, 14. Mai 2013

Berlin, 3. Mai 2013

pure painting | Artist Statement [III] · download [60 KB]

no meaning
no philosophy
no reference
no provocation
no gag
no significance
no iconography
no story
no color
no irony

no deepness
no myth
no pleasing
no system
no method
no deconstruction
no soul
no talking
no sensation
no illusion

Berlin, 26. April 2013

...good or bad,
All men are mad;
All they say or do is theatre.

— Baba, ‘Epilogue’, The Rake’s Progress (W. H. Auden, Igor Stravinsky)

Berlin, 25. April 2013

The art world ignores more good art than it will ever appreciate. — Mira Schor, Artist and writer

Berlin, 24. April 2013

'It may be time to forget the art world—or at least to recognize that a certain historical notion of the art world is in eclipse.' — Forgetting The Art World | By Pamela M. Lee | MIT Press, 2012

Berlin, 17. April 2013

Berlin, 16. April 2013

Art has often been described as a form of escape from action. It has been pointed out that the artist, finding the practical affairs of the world too unpleasant, withdraws from the world of the imagination in order to exempt himself from this unpleasantness.

In fact, the man who spends his entire life turning the wheels of industry so that he has neither time nor energy to occupy himself with any other needs of his human organism is by far a greater escapist than the one who developed his art. For the man who develops his art does make adjustments to his physical needs. He understands that man must have bread to live, while the other cannot understand that you cannot live by bread alone.

— Mark Rothko | Art as a Form of Action | The Artist’s Reality · Philosophies of Art, edited by Christopher Rothko; 2004, Yale University Press, New Haven and London

Real books worth reading | A-Z list

Berlin, 12. April 2013

Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see. — Philip Guston

Berlin, 11. April 2013

It was always disappointing to see that what I could really master in terms of form boiled down to so little. — Giacometti

Berlin, 7. April 2013

Marjan Zahed-Kindersley | For Ralph Lichtensteiger | Can’t paint to save my life, but hey, I’ll go a bit abstract.

Berlin, 3. April 2013

Berlin, 2. April 2013

Paint ten thousand paintings and walk ten thousand miles or in art it is difficult to say something which is just as good as saying nothing at all. — RLi

Creativity is about the most worn-out, abused concept that used to mean something remarkable, something that differentiated someone, something that made them special. It’s a term that’s been usurped by the creative class, by people like Richard Florida, and reduced to a base concept that has come to stand for the opposite of creativity: mediocre, middle-of-the-road, acceptable, unadventurous, and so forth—so that creativity is no longer creative. What was once creative is now uncreative. — You Take Your Love Where You Get It: An Interview with Kenneth Goldsmith

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Twenty captions for twenty drawings:

(01) a stereophonic journey through india
(02) the vast majority of artists are struggling, underpaid, underemployed, and under-recognized
(03) the world is filled with invisible realities
(04) people rarely see the beauty and the greatness around them
(05) in leaving some things unsaid, a work of art reaches toward the essence
(06) it is the total absorption of the artist in the work that enables true luminosity to appear
(07) meaninglessness as ultimate meaning
(08) I am not interested in making a picture
(09) research in the form of a spectacle
(10) the last drawing one can make
(11) consider the world as one gigantic drawing
(12) business sure screwed up the art world universally
(13) making art is not art
(14) art as art
(15) monologue intérieur
(16) does art need to be aesthetic?
(17) learning how to operate your mind
(18) metronome/metropolis
(19) images (including, but not limited to visual art) have become commodities
(20) art is not what you see

Berlin, 1. April 2013

All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate. — Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

Berlin, 28. März 2013

Berlin, 27. März 2013

Outsider (noun) | after six years, I still feel like an outsider in this town stranger, visitor, nonmember; foreigner, alien, immigrant, emigrant, émigré; newcomer, parvenu.

1) a person who does not belong to a particular group. | a person who is not accepted by or who is isolated from society. society often regards the artist as an outsider.

2) a competitor, applicant, etc., thought to have little chance of success : he started as a rank outsider for the title.

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Berlin, 26. März 2013

If my personal history were to be frozen in space, it would appear as a finely detailed mosaic made up of an incredible number of dirty dishes, nameless faces in WPA jobs and almost nameless faces in hobo jungles. — Harry Partch

It is always difficult to be an artist, devoted to seeing and making, in a commercial society devoted to showing and spending. — Adam Gopnik

Berlin, 24. März 2013

I was always interested in black, even as a child, I used black paint and when someone asked what I was painting I said 'snow'. I think with hindsight that I used black to make the paper look more white. — Pierre Soulages

Berlin, 22. März 2013

zettel | Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), recommendations for Walt Kuhn for the Armory Show, 1912

I don't believe in history, that's his story. I believe in mystery, that's my story. — Sun Ra

Berlin, 21. März 2013

What happens when it becomes impossible to function without interfacing with wireless payment, social networks, and augmented reality?

Berlin, 19. März 2013

— Theme de Yoyo [Noreen Beasley], Art Ensemble of Chicago | vergrössern

Berlin, 18. März 2013

Looking is not as simple as it looks. — Ad Reinhardt

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Your head is like a yoyo,
your neck is like the string,
Your body's like a camembert
oozing from its skin.

Your fanny's like two sperm whales
floating down the Seine
Your voice is like a long fart
that's music to your brain.

Your eyes are two blind eagles
that kill what they can't see
Your hands are like two shovels
digging in me.

And your love is like an oil-well
Dig, dig, dig, dig it,
On the Champs-Elysees.

— Theme de Yoyo [Noreen Beasley], Art Ensemble of Chicago

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I was sittin' in a breakfast room in Allentown, Pennsylvania,
six o'clock in the morning, got up too early, it was a terrible mistake...
sittin' there face-to-face with a 75 cent glass of orange juice
about as big as my finger and a bowl of horribly foreshortened cornflakes,
and I said to myself: 'This is the life!' . . . — Frank Zappa, 200 Years Old, Bongo Fury (1975)

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak. — Ethics (1677) by Baruch Spinoza

Berlin, 17. März 2013

Berlin, 15. März 2013

art stream is anarchic | lacking order or control

What is Rhythm? Everybody thinks they know what this word means. In fact, everybody senses it in a manner that falls a long way short of knowledge: rhythm enters into the lived; though that does not mean it enters into the known.There is a long way to go from an observation to a definition, and even further from the grasping of some rhythm (of an air in music, or of respiration, or of the beatings of the heart) to the conception that grasps the simultaneity and intertwinement of several rhythms, their unity in diversity. And yet each one of us is this unity of diverse relations whose aspects are subordinated to action towards the external world, oriented towards the outside, towards the Other and to the World, to such a degree that they escape us. We are only conscious of most of our rhythms when we begin to suffer from some irregularity. (...) — Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time, and Everyday Life

George Kubler points out that man-made things, and especially works of art, are not created in a vacuum. Their form is influenced by earlier things which are part of the maker’s experience. Things are thus linked by influence in chains or sequences. Furthermore, each thing or work of art represents a solution to an artistic problem. (...)

The system today is all-embracing and merciless...
if the artist starts to fit, he is no longer an artist...
99% of the so called artists today are in fact just yes-man...
the essence of art is resistance and countermovement...
the be an artist is exhausting and it transforms you into an outsider...

Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry. — Jack Kerouac

Berlin, 14. März 2013

I think that one wants from a painting a sense of life. The final suggestion, the final statement, has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement. It has to be what you can't avoid saying. — Jasper Johns

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Berlin, 13. März 2013

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— Robert Rauschenberg | vergrössern

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I think the idea of an artist standing outside society is still alive. I think it’s an important role. It’s always been an underappreciated role, we become victims, we become targets, because our lifestyle has to be different in order to get the job done. And we make a lot of sacrifices to do what we do. — John Zorn | Interview by Michael Goldberg | BOMB 80/Summer 2002

Berlin, 12. März 2013

When you are working everybody is in your studio, the past, your friends, the art world, and above all your own ideas - are all there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave. — John Cage to Philip Guston

Berlin, 8. März 2013

Kämpfe um Anerkennung treten an die Stelle von Revolutionen, und sie drehen sich nicht um die Gestaltung der Zukunft, sondern darum, den bestmöglichen Platz in der Gegenwart zu ergattern. — Zygmunt Bauman

Berlin, 6. März 2013

The most interesting painting is one that expresses more of what one thinks than of what one sees. — Mark Rothko

Berlin, 5. März 2013

Words have users, but as well, users have words. And it is the users that establish the world's realities. — LeRoi Jones

Berlin, 4. März 2013

I don't think of myself as making art. I do what I do because I want to, because painting is the best way I've found to get along with myself. — Robert Rauschenberg

Berlin, 2. März 2013

Art’s purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens. — John Cage

Berlin, 27. Februar 2013

I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. — Don DeLillo, Mao II

Berlin, 25. Februar 2013

Berlin, 23. Februar 2013

It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. — Ansel Adams

Berlin, 22. Februar 2013

JP (James Panero): What do you make of the contemporary art world?
DA (Dore Ashton): First of all, there’s no such thing as the “art world.” There’s the commercial world, but would you put artists in the art world? Do they have any power? If they’re in the top three, then yes —
JP: Okay, what about this commercial world?
DA: Well, it’s unfortunate, but I think we’re heading toward a big depression.
JP: Meaning the “art bubble” will burst?
DA: Yes, I think so. Though it seems that in the Depression — the other depression — those dealers kept going. (...)

— Renowned Art Historian Dore Ashton Talks Art Criticism, the Art Bubble, and the Dedalus Foundation

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Man is in a state of perpetual mutation. He must grow either better or worse, either correct his habits or confirm them. The government under which we are placed must either increase our passions and prejudices by fanning the flame, or, by gradually discouraging, tend to extirpate them. In reality, it is impossible to conceive a government that shall have the latter tendency. By its very nature positive institution has a tendency to suspend the elasticity and progress of mind. Every scheme for embodying imperfection must be injurious. That which is today a considerable melioration will at some future period, if preserved unaltered, appear a defect and disease in the body politic. It is earnestly to be desired that each man should be wise enough to govern himself, without the intervention of any compulsory restraint; and, since government, even in its best state, is an evil, the object principally to be aimed at is that we should have as little of it as the general peace of human society will permit.

— Enquiry concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness, Book III, Principles of Government | By William Godwin

[The text is taken from the fourth edition, 1842. This version of Political Justice, originally published in 1793, is based on the corrected third edition, published in 1798.]

Berlin, 20. Februar 2013

The true intention of art | disappear · download [56 KB]

Berlin, 16. Februar 2013

New text piece for 4 voices | simultaneous but not synchronous | Feel free to perform and record my text piece, you can send your performance/version to email, thanks. Text pieces collection | see Writings | © Ralph Lichtensteiger · All Rights Reserved.

Quartet (Text piece for 4 voices) · download [132 KB]

Berlin, 15. Februar 2013

Berlin, 12. Februar 2013

Berlin, 11. Februar 2013

Berlin, 8. Februar 2013

New text pieces for 2 and 4 voices | simultaneous but not synchronous | Feel free to perform and record one of the my text pieces, you can send your performance/version to email, thanks.

word mechanism sculpture (Text piece for 2 voices) · download [140 KB]
words differently arranged (Text piece for 2 voices) · download [104 KB]

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something. — Frank Zappa

Berlin, 7. Februar 2013

Berlin, 6. Februar 2013

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musique trouvé catalog (digital ALBUMS via mailorder) · download [176 KB] | see Writings

That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. — Henry David Thoreau, Essay on Civil Disobedience (1849) | Originally published as Resistance to Civil Government

Berlin, 4. Februar 2013

Berlin, 3. Februar 2013

Berlin, 1. Februar 2013

Berlin, 31. Januar 2013

Berlin, 29. Januar 2013

Berlin, 27. Januar 2013

Art is not about itself but the attention we bring to it. — MD

As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good—I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it. We never understand each other. — MD

Berlin, 25. Januar 2013

'hohe akzeptabilität' | Mira, voice | [01:24] [from Eine Woche mit Hegel] | link to mp3

Berlin, 24. Januar 2013

Le Corbusier on painting | Today we saturated with images (...) we are swamped with images through the cinema as well as through the magazine or the daily newspaper. Is not, then, a great part of the work formerly reserved for painting accomplished? — Architecture and the arts, in: Stamo Papadaki (Hrsg.), Le Corbusier. Architect, painter, writer, New York 1948

La mystère de la nature, nous l’attaquons scientifiquement et loin de s’épuiser il se creusera toujours plus profond alors que nous avancerons. Voilà ce que de devient norte folklore. Le symbole ésotérique, nous l’avons, pour le initiés d’aujourd’hui, dans les courbes qui représent les forces, dans les formules qui resolvent les phénomènes naturels. — Le Corbusier, L’Art Décoratif d’Aujourd’hui, Paris 1925 (1980)

Le Corbusier on music and sound | (...) The corporation of painters also lives outside the stream of current events. The schools perpetuate specialists in dead things. Painting and music; architecture also. Music! The modem world vibrates with new sounds. Our ears have become much more sensitive than those of our ancestors. Does the sound of the world have no useful effect on works of art? I shall answer thus: it is a function of our existence; hence it is the very tissue of music. Already Satie and Stravinsky have revealed new harmonies and rhythms. Curious and patient men who record the music of men and who have filled our record albums, there is still a job to do. Record the sounds of the world. Engrave mechanically on the record what fashions our ears: the sounds of the street, a symphony. — Le Corbusier, When the Cathedrals Were White, McGraw-Hili Book Company, New York 1964, p. 164

Le Corbusier on drawing | Part of every day of my life has been devoted to drawing. I have never stopped drawing and painting, looking wherever I could for the secrets of form. — Le Corbusier

I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies. — Le Corbusier

Berlin, 23. Januar 2013

(...) The media of the technological age have very different characteristics. Their content is the Insignificant, the 'news.' Tomorrow it will no longer have the least interest. There is even good reason to believe that there is no interest at the time of the event. The medium is the televised image, instead of the permanent to which one must return in order to grow on one’s own. It continually falls into a nothingness from which it will never be able to leave. The media world thus does not offer a self-realization of life; it offers escape. For all those whose laziness represses their energy and thus always leaves them discontent with themselves, it offers the opportunity to forget about their discontent. This forgetting recurs at each moment with each new rise of Force and Desire. (...) — Michel Henry, Barbarism; translated by Scott Davidson (Continuum impacts, 2012)

Berlin, 22. Januar 2013

Conceptual Art | Does art need to be aesthetic? | a) 'What is the function of art, or the nature of art?' — Joseph Kosuth, Art After Philosophy, 1969 | b) 'A work of art is a kind of proposition presented within the context of art as comments on art… A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation of the artist’s intention… that a particular work of art is art, which means, is a definition of art. Thus, that it is art is true a priori.' — Art After Philosophy p 845-6

Berlin, 16. Januar 2013

Colors [Tape III] [06:58] | Yasmine, voice | link to mp3

Berlin, 14. Januar 2013

A Dictionary of Rehearsals | Collection [2013]

ycnet · [you can not escape this]

language trapped
you can not escape this

the secret meadow
you can not escape this

underwater shots
you can not escape this

umbrella economy
you can not escape this

nerve drip acts
you can not escape this

signs at home
you can not escape this

code as law
you can not escape this

connectedness and isolation
you can not escape this

surface desease
you can not escape this

Listen | ycnet | Marjan Zahed-Kindersley, voice | link to mp3

A Dictionary of Rehearsals | Collection [2013]

beginning · [Elevator Geography]

I
beginning a painting
beginning a text
beginning a sculpture
beginning a poem
beginning a war
beginning a love story
beginning a year
beginning a life
beginning a day
beginning a concert
beginning a meal
beginning a movie
beginning a book
beginning a moment
beginning a conversation
beginning a fight
beginning a search
beginning a death
beginning a word
beginning a moment

II
beginning a movie
beginning a concert
beginning a day
beginning a meal
beginning a sculpture
beginning a poem
beginning a text
beginning a painting
beginning a love story
beginning a war
beginning a life
beginning a year
beginning a conversation
beginning a book
beginning a fight
beginning a moment
beginning a death
beginning a word
beginning a search
beginning a beginning

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La pensée créative | flux de pensée | No. 7 I seem to speak · download [PDF, 20 KB]

Berlin, 13. Januar 2013

Every person is poison [Version II, 2010] · [08:41] | open the project page

Berlin, 11. Januar 2013

silence | war
art | silence
silence | cave
inhuman | silence

silence | dreaming
avenue | silence
silence | tape
mirror | silence ... continue

silence | silence · open the project page

'The time is out of joint.' — HAMLET, Act 1, Scene 5

John Cage: I think we have to embarrass the government out of existence . . . by not voting. By not accepting their offer of letting us vote. By refusing any connection with the government. Thoreau said: ‘Government is a tree, its fruit are people. As people ripen, they drop from the tree.’

Berlin, 9. Januar 2013

There is nothing which is not an intermediate state between being and nothing. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Science of Logic (1812)

Berlin, 8. Januar 2013

Sudden Shower [11:29] for electronics, flutes, percussion and tape recorder · open the project page

Lihgthouse project | the visuals | lichtensteiger.net/lighthouse.html

Berlin, 7. Januar 2013

Noch die Verweigerung der Kommunikation ist eine Weise der Kommunikation. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung, Berlin 1974, S. 413

Berlin, 4. Januar 2013

Listening I and II [for Jesse Glass] · open the project page

Berlin, 1. Januar 2013

Happy New Year | Foto

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Photography | Prints

All photographs are available as Giclée prints/high-quality inkjet prints, signed by the artist and presented un-matted. Please send a note to receive detailed information about other available printing techniques. | lichtconlon [ at ] googlemail [ dot ] com

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