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Dorothea von Hantelmann

How to Do Things with Art

Dorothea von Hantelmann How to Do Things with Art

JIlI'IIlING1Ek & L1,S PRESSES DU REEL

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Dorothea von Hantelmann

How to Do Things with Art What Performativity Meam in Art

Table of C6ntents I

J

I'll EI'ACE

\Vily SU';l[:Jgems by Hans Ulrich Obrist

4

r''TItODUCTIOt\

The Socict::ll Efficacy ofAn

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TilE TE.\tf'OII.AI.I1OY 01' ,\Irr

I II \I'T!::II I

1'rt."SCncc, Experience :md lIistoricity in the Works ofJamt:S Colcm:m

CIIAPTEIlIl

24

TilE KF.ALlTY OF ART

Come.n :md AgcnC)' in (he Works of Daniel !luren

70

'rilE ,\I,\TERIALITY OF ART

Ohjcct and Situation in the Works arTino Schb'al

t:llAI'TER IV

Concluding with Jeff Koons

128

(;I(ITIQJ.m ,\1'."1) COI\STKUCnON

176

Wily Stratagems Hans Ulrich Gbrist

~ow

to Do Jiny with Art is a call to

the production of reality and the political and societal significance of art. In an essay on Jeff Koons, Dorothea von Hantelmann recently pointed out her interest in individuals who place themselves "outside of the 'cultural limit' of criticism," those who are "off limits, outside ofwhat dominates a contemporary discourse and its predominant order of thought, perception, speech and understanding." This necessity informs How to Do Things with Art; an exploration of the work of four artists, James Coleman, Daniel Buren, Tino Sehgal and Jeff Koons, who operate precisely at the historicallimits of what might be called the "paradigm of criticality" and at the threshold of something else, something other. Von-Hantelmann is attentive to artists who-to quote one of the passages from Merleau-Ponty that so inspired Zaugg's Die List der Unschuld-"act ... as if we still had

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everything to learn."Like Remy Zaugg's attempt to return to a pre-objective mode of cognition and experience in his meditation on a sculpture by Donald Judd, she examines Daniel Buren's early pivotal contributions to the tradition of institutional critique, countering accusations of his more recent work as being tOO decorative, and instead finding in this work ways to move beyond the conventionalized conception of the exhibition: Rights of innovation and invention. Innovation is about new practices and new ways of doing things, embodied by Oulipo-a group that functions like a permanent research laboratOry for literary innovation. Drawing on what Harry Matthews, one of the protagonists ofOulipo, calls "absolutely unimaginable incidents of fiction" the writers ofOulipo, inspired by French poet and novelist Raymond Rousscl's playful language games in How I W!vle Certain ofMy Books, continuously invent new rules to write using arithmetical ideas. Fral1l;:ois Le Lionnais, another Oulipo protagonist, emphasizes the importance of the term potentiality, which he prefers to e.'l'pen'mental, because it implies the attempt to find something which may not yet have been done but which nevertheless could be. A key to understanding von Hantelmann's unique approach to contempornry art is the fact that at the end of the '990S she worked closely with the groundbreaking choreogrnphers Jerome Bel and Xavier Lc Roy. Their focus on what actually takes place has shaped her belief that att has a power and a responsibility, which is manifest throughout How 10 Do Things w,th Art as she describes how James Coleman, Daniel Buren, Tina Sehgal and Jeff Koons are concerned with what art does and less with what it says. As the title of the book implies-a play on J. L. Austin's lecture series How 10 Do Things wilh Worlir, in which Austin redefined the performative, or reality-producing, capacity of languagethese artists attempt to reach the limits of artistic practice and to suggest alterations, novclties, changes, introductions, departures and variations from the canonical 19th-century exhibition format. As Richard Hamilton once told me, "we only remember exhibitions which invent a ncw display feature." To change the rules of the game today is to change the exhibition format. And von I-Iantelmann demonstrates that each of these artists, in their own way, invent what Roussel might

h.we called "wily stratagems"-performative gambits to turn the production of exhibitions into the production of reality.

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ISTKOI)UC'r!ON

, ro.iosi. Brain O[fM Etzl1h'l Body: An, ),fUlnlI1lS, 4"d fM 1'hJ"fiUlI/l o[,IfWmlif)', UnjH~rsil)' of Minncsot:l I'ress, \Iinnc:lpolis :lnll Lonllon, 2(0), p. 19. This lIoc:s nm neccss:nil)' mc::J.n th~t in principle I bppcnin[;S of J.luxus ncniS wcre nm repc:uoo, but in strucrunllcnns IhC:SC:ln forms ~re ch:lneterized in contnsr with thc object-like pc:nn:lnencc of,·isU:l1 ~n.s. I)~n Gnh:lm in coO\-ers:uion \lith Lullger Gerdc:s, \Ia:lnller Alberm. T__ lray Afirror P-. SNnd Ilmil,U 11)' D.J" GIllN", II" HIJ AI1, ,'oUT Pnss, Dmbridgc/Mass. llllll Lonoon 1999, p. 62. Dicttr .\lersch, ~Erdgnis und AUr:J; K.IU/fr1r-. InNnlll/wNll, Ruppiehtcrmh, I.P (2000). p. 102[ On ".1.11'$ rcbtion to the hislOl') of p:linting, !iCC ThicrY) de IJu\'e, "The MJ.instrc:Jm :lnd £heCrookcd PJ.lh,-Thkn')' de !Ju'-e, I\ricllc: Ptkne, Boris Grors,l1fTaU, Ph;lioon, Lundon 1