Topography of ordinary materialism. Kalligramm III

Berlin, 2012.
Caligram.

Mixing both literature and geometry, this work delineates a labyrinth of gifting and wishing: an aparently regular mathematical tissue built with the singularities of personal choices.
No matter horizontal axe or vertical axe, each line is a whish list of real person, from differents ages, nationalities, backgrounds, cirscunstaces… Some of them were mundane, some others were idealist. Extended in the possiblity of endless whishing on a boundless geometry, this Kaligram is then an example of 12×12 coordonées of a suggested topography of contemporanean materialism.

This third version of the Caligrama, in German, works the same way as the first two versions (in Spanish, 2000, and French, 2001). The difference is that this time the Kalligramm has a specific theme and explores the answers of an specific question: “Schenken als Problem” (“The Gift as a Problem”)… The Kalligramm delineates a labyrinth of gifting and wishing, an aparently regular tissue of materialistic “quitodien” with the singularities of personal choices.

No matter horizontal axe or vertical axe, each line is a whish list of real person, from differents ages, nationalities, backgrounds, cirscunstaces…
9 years old child,
her mother, a 40 years old woman who just discovered that she is carriying a rare and terrible illness,
30 years twins
young high educated emigrants, precarious budies of the new European crisis
emigrants from other countries and cirscunstances
retired
politicians
poets
other artist
curators…

I asked friends, contacts… I posted in some social networks asking for colaboration. They all were asked to write a list of 12 whishes, for themself or for others. Some of them were mundane, some others were idealist. Of course, they could be whishing forever. The text and the structure would always work. Extended in the possiblity of whishing forever, this Kaligram is then an example of 12×12 coordonées of a suggested topography of contemporanean materialism.

The reader can just read a list and keep in the line, or turn the corner in the nexus, experiencing the different choices. It can be for fun or curiosity, for ethics, poetical or simply fonetic reasons… but whatever the criteria ist, from this time the reader has to carry with the responsability of it, the responsability of choosing in a tissue of other’s wishes.

Between the whishes, I used the conjunction “oder”, as usual. It isolate each tesera: each time, the reader has to choose again, this or the rest. It makes the experience lighter -only one thing to carry with- and harder -choosing only one thing against the rest-.

This work -literature and maths- is a 12×12 piece of the unlimited posibilities of literal wishing and its endles laberintical consequences, as well as the mosaic in the Alhambra were talking about the infinit, God, or Allah, in the times when any graphic representation of god was forbidden.

I developped this work in 2013 for the exhibition “Schenken als Problem” (“The Gift as a Problem”), that I was curating, as member of the Group Global 3000, Arts and Other Sustainabilities. The exhibition “Schenken als Problem” (29th November 2013 – 24th Januar 2014) took place in the GG3 Gallerie with the work of another 14 artists.