Quite some time ago, I was stumbled across this project by music critic Christopher Weingarten (-> Link) by a fellow Independent Collectors member:

Christopher Weingarten had made the speach below at the “140 Characters Conference”, introducing his project of writing 1.000 album reviews on Twitter over the course of 2009.

Let’s just say he succeeded. He then went on to preserve his project for eternity, with the help of a service called Kickstarter, where ordinary people like you and me can help fund projects. This is the link I followed upon recommendation of the IC member, and I ended up here (-> Link).

Now, the prospect of getting my hands on a wodden crate, containing 1.000 hand-typed index cards with an album review each, that’s more than enough to make the mouth of any music enthusiast water. And, as for official validation of the “Tweetbox” as a piece of contemporary art, Paddy Johnson’s opinion over at ArtFagCity (->Link) is way enough for me. Not that I needed any to begin with.

For me, the “Tweetbox” is a bold statement about society in general today, not just limited to the music scene or even the blogger/twitter/whatever scene. Media is shying away from “the because” as a whole.

Plus the box is a work even Sisyphus would have a hard time completing. Writing next to three album reviews means he has to listen to three albums a day. He has to stick with it and then someone had to type all those tweets. As far as I know, 24 boxes have been made. That’s 24.000 cards. A lot of index cards.

Enough babble, here come the pictures:

Now get this: I live in a smallish German town between Stuttgart and Munich. How big are the chances that two of the 24 boxes would end up in my area? Small.

How big are the chances of me actually meeting the other guy who owns one at customs while picking the thing up, although he had received his two weeks earlier and just happened to be there picking up something else? Nil. Yet, it did happen.

Anyhow, I’m very glad to have this unique record of one man’s struggle to keep alive the idea of “reason & professionalism” in my home. Even if the gold paint is coming off … nothing a pair of gloves couldn’t fix. Back to listen to some music now.

PS: Weingarten on twitter (->Link)

While at Art Amsterdam, I met Melle Hendrikse (again), who is running a gallery in Bejing (→ link), as well as a space in the Netherlands.

Visiting him at his booth, I saw this work:

Insignificance, Carine Weve (→ link), 2010
It consists of 1547 index cards in seven index card cases on a table and a DVD.


I liked the look of it and I also liked the simple statement printed on each card:

useless piece of paper
got it for free, unasked
worthless to me
so tried to sell it, give it away
nobody wants it

Now what really got me was the story behind it. I will use Carine’s own words:

‘Insignificance’ is based on the true ’story’ behind the sheets of photopaper I used for it. Buying value packs HP Printer ink, I always get 150 sheets of this paper for free. USELESS to me. UNASKED. And it’s true… I TRIED TO SELL IT (internet), GIVE IT AWAY (family, friends, colleagues) , and NOBODY WANTS IT.

Finally I decided to use these insignificant sheets of paper, their insignificant history to develope a new work. Seen from this context the text had to be similar for each sheet of paper, but by stamping it character by character they all become unique. So I gave them their own unique number starting with 0001 until 1547 today.

That’s right: Each letter on each of the 1547 cards is hand stamped by the artist (hence the DVD where you can see the process). Here is a coincidence turned idea turned reality with the help of Sisyphos. And I dig that sort of stuff.


Did I buy it? Nope. But …

Now, I stood there looking at the DVD for some minutes, which shows the table from the top. You can see the table (part of the work), covered with a piece of paper to protect it from the ink. You see the ink pad. You see, on the paper, the stamps for the individual letters. You the artists hands reaching for an index card, placing it in always the same spot. Then, taking one stamp after each other, stamping the same sentence on each card.


I immediately wondered: What happened to that piece of paper?

In the video you can see Weve stamping number 0601 – 0610 of the cards. And I noticed how the stamps leave little traces of ink on the paper, I saw how Carine used the paper to clean the stamps, how a space remained cleaner, because that’s where she placed the cards. I had the sense that she placed the stamps in a peculiar way …

As I found out later, she organized “… the stamps, to work as economic as possible. That’s how the working paper arose with it’s own logic related to my body and the text with her own economy. For example: the stamps with character ‘K’ and ‘M’ are completely left in the paper because they both occur only once in the text.”

I had the feeling that this piece of paper with its own alphabetical logic contained so much more of the artists work on the piece “Insignificance” than the finished piece itself. It is marked by the hours of tedious work and concentration (lamost like one of Karin Sander’s “Patina Paintings”).


So I thought, hell, let’s be a bit naive and blunt and ask the gallery owner a simple question: “What happened to that piece of paper?”


He looked at me, smiled and said: “I don’t know but I can find out.”



He called the artist there and then who said that she had indeed kept the paper, thinking about making it a seperate piece, because she, too, liked what happened to it. Sadly, I had to leave that day, but Carine took a picture of the finished paper (after stamping 1547 cards) and sent it to Melle who sent it to me:

It’s 32 x 48 cm large and titled “Insignificance; working paper”.



I think it’s absolutely beautiful! Luckily, my wife agrees.

Carine Weve wrote to me after we agreed on the deal, telling me the complete background of the work in her own words. Here is another quote: “At the bottom are little signs of my wrist or hand resting from time to time on the paper. For that matter you couldn’t have bought a more private work. The whole process, the total amount of characters I stamped, the time it took, my concentration (a certain level of concentration was needed), is hidden in this paper. I don’t know what you saw watching the DVD, but you’ve recognized ‘it’.”

Now that’s what a collector likes to hear, right?

So, gut feeling and a simple question led to this extremely awesome addition to my young collection. What do we learn from this?
Trust your gut and ask questions.




PS: What does HP learn from this? Nobody wants your paper. So you should really thank the artist for finally putting it to use.

After moving house, I started hanging the art as it came out of the boxes, strolling through the apartment to find a nice spot. A lot of the small pieces are in the office, where I can see them, others are in the living room or in a dark spot in the hallway.

I made sure none of them is exposed to direct sunlight and the delicate items have been placed in the darkest rooms with either no windows or windows facing north.

Find more pictures at flickr.

Rudolf Reiber had told me about this work even before it existed, way back in late 2008 or early 2009.

We were in his studio, talking about some of his works that include the process of “erasure”, such as “Dark Matter” (all the stars removed from a Thomas Ruff work), “ohne Titel” (the face of a 1 Euro coin sanded down to a smooth surface) and some of his video works.

Then he mentioned his latest project, involving another form of erasure: camouflage. He had researched the exact colours used by the British Air Force in WW2 to camouflage their bombers in different kinds of weather. “Sky”, “Sky Blue” and “Sky Grey” … the series is called “German Skies”. He wanted to have huge metal sheets painted in the reproduced, matte colours. And, if I remember correctly, he was already talking about exhibiting them in Ulm, in the atriums of the new Weishaupt Museum, high up in the air so you could actually compare the camouflage effect of the painted metal against the sky.

He did that exhibition and luckily, he also did an edition of smaller versions (17“), each colour is available three times, sold separately.

There are many reasons why I love this work. For one, because it is such a reduced, featureless and simple shape, yet it builds on something horrific and violent. I grew up in Ulm, which was heavily bombed, and the Museum Weishaupt now fills a gap left by the bombing. Reibers work was appropriately placed. My family (from my mother’s side) were refugees from what is now Poland, having first hand experience of the camouflaged planes. Plus the sky above Ulm very often has the colour of “Sky Grey”, a foggy, greenish, featureless haze.

As if that wasn’t enough, the small versions, hand painted and sanded down by the artist, come with an inbuilt surprise. The surface which is matte and almost completely featureless and not reflecting any light becomes a highly reflective surface when viewed from the appropriate angle.

“German Skies: Sky Grey”, painted metal, 33 x 28 x 1 cm

It’s a mirror in which you will never be able to see yourself. This may not be intended by Rudolf, but for me it exemplifies one purpose art has in my life. It’s a means to see the world from a different perspective, rather than a reflection of myself. At the same time, it’s so closely related to my life that it does that, too.

My wife bought this for me for Christmas. My wishlist included “Sky Grey” by Rudolf Reiber or a telescope. I can understand why Rudolf’s work was picked. It’s smaller, easier to store and it’s considerably less expensive than a good telescope.

Early in 2009 I discovered the work of iri5 (aka Erika Iris Simmons -> link). I love the concept of her “Ghost in the Machine” series, where she takes cassette tapes (remember those, anyone?) by a certain artist to create a portrait of ouf that tape.

Here is an example of John Lennon, selected because of its landscape format, not because it’s my favourite, to be honest:

Have a look at her flickr set to see more examples (-> link). Ian Curtis from Joy Division is an awesome piece!

I contacted iri5 to ask her if she would be up for a collaboration.

We agreed that:

1. Since she doesn’t know me and has never seen a photo of me, she wouldn’t research me online.

2. I would write a few pieces and record them on cassette and then send her that tape (it turned out to be 17 minutes).

3. She would listen to that tape and, if she decided to go ahead with the project, to create a piece based only on my voice and the content of the pieces I had recorded.

Here is the result:

It arrived in a large box, filled with vintage book pages that corresponded to the pieces I had written, some where folded into small petals. And there was an amulet with a small scroll of paper with a writing of her own + a very beautiful, handwritten letter.

The portrait is created from the “data rich” tape, as iri5 put it, the unrecorded tape being left in the case (actually, it’s on the right).

Yes, the portrait doesn’t look very much like me, but that’s not the point. The point is that she only had my voice and language to go by. So it’s a portrait based on emotion & imagination, rather than on physiognomy. I believe that the memory of how people look gets transformed over time by what one feels for them or thinks of them.

I simply love this piece.

Very early in my collection days (so that’s like what, about a year ago?) I got the work “48.085″ by Rudolf Reiber, consisting of 49 drawings, showing the stellar constellations above the artist’s roof window, as recorded in black ink on white paper in 49 nights.

A highly inaccurate method, reminiscent of the good old days when guys like Keppler were having a go at that sort of thing. Also reminiscent of the desire of man to “count the stars in the sky”. Also very appropriate to accompany my collection of Science Fiction literature …

It was now on loan for a show at the Hospitalhof in Stuttgart in Germany – and I missed it. Maybe the effect wears off after your third loan or so, but I’m really sad I couldn’t make it. Anyway, here is a picture, provided by Rudolf just a few minutes ago, and I had to share it:

And I love the way the 49 drawings (hung in 7 x 7) are streched across that corner! This just might be a way how I can fit them in my appartment in Ulm after I have moved! I will measure those walls on the weekend …

I love it when I see a work of art that grabs my attention, as it happened with the following works by Oliver Scharfbier (seen at the Zone B booth at Contemporary Istanbul, as mentioned before):

Visually attractive, maybe a trifle decorative at first sight. So what. I then bought a surprise art bag from them, which includes one of his works. And out comes nothing like I have seen before, but a work that deals with words and language and that is self-referential in a way I can appreciate.

This piece is #2 of a multiple of 15 pieces by Oliver, especially made for this “kunst-tüte” edition. Each has been made individually and each is slightly different (I guess, not having seen the others).

The text says: “Auch immer das gleiche ist nie das selbe.” (Even more of the same is never exactly the same.)

Maybe not very deep or world changing, but I can put that sentence into a very nice relation to other works of art I own and even things I do myself, so I’m expecting this piece to last for quite a while. (Actually, I should maybe create an exhibition at Independent Collectors titled “True Zen Sayings” … )

OK. Off to a dinner now … ;)