Hold Your Breath, 2007

by Draeger Christoph

Hold Your Breath (2007) 16x 20 cm, graphite on paper, a contribution to:   Manual CC
Instructions for beginners and advanced players 26.04 – 18.05  Curated by:
Sebastian Cichocki, Marianna Dobkowska, Magdalena Lipska      MANUAL CC at CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw Manual CC is a set of game manual-scenarios, that have been submitted by artists on special cards, all of which are of the A5 format. During the exhibition, the cards are placed in special display cases with holders for copies of the original instructions, which can be picked up and collected by visitors. Following the manual instructions, the visitors can, inside or outside the gallery, recreate the artists’ projects, which are single player or group games. As a part of the exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Art, besides the cards submitted by artists, a video programme and an archive of sound materials that include works concerning the game, instruction and participation are also presented.

The idea/concept of Manual CC is the participation of the viewer in the process of creating and experiencing artistic phenomena, through the scale of the project, its hand-made approach as well as its "use" – its functioning within the social space. The project is composed of “instructions for beginners and advanced users” with over ninety artists involved so far. The number of participants, both artists and “users”, is constantly growing. During the exhibition visitors choose manuals they want to realize. The assumption is that the works can be assembled with minimal or no financial resources. It doesn’t matter where or when the user decides to realize the artist’s project. The realization stage is made even simpler by the fact that most artworks can be assembled without any extra items – manual instructions should be enough.  Game manuals displayed at the exhibition were designed by artists, and their playability (as traditionally understood) might sometimes be questioned. They are mostly conceptual projects, focused on the mere act of initializing a game – against oneself, against other visitors, passers-by etc., mostly with an open ending and uncertain results. In most cases it is even hard to declare the winner.   Manual CC proposes an alternative approach to the economy of the art market. All of the cards submitted by artists and the concept of the project are made available under the license Creative Commons (Attribution – Share Alike 2.5) – which makes it possible to replicate the project in chosen configuration.

 Manual CC came into being out of a fascination with radically conceptual art as well as mail-art. Communication between artists by means of post-cards was common between the 60. and 70. Within this context it is worthwhile to recall of the exhibition organized by Pierre Restany in 1970, "Art Concept from Europe". It consisted solely of work that had either been sent by mail or reconstructed according to instructions. The relations between Manual CC and conceptual art go much deeper: striving for a dematerialization of the work of art, a vague authorship, the primacy of the idea over its completion, and also a particular humor emanating from many of the works, etc. 
An important reference for Manual CC within the history of polish modern art is Oskar Hansen's concept of Open Form, also elaborated by his students, such as Zofia Kulik and Przemysław Kwiek. The methodology used by them in the 70. was based upon the will of overthrowing the traditionally functioning artistic paradigm of dominance of the artist over the viewer. Within this understanding, the artist forms only a certain "frame", a "context of the work" into which the viewer is invited to participate in its creation. Art thus becomes a language through which free communication is made possible.   The concept of Manual CC is an effect of the curatorial seminar at the Museum Curatorial Studies of Jagielloński University in Cracow, in which 12 young curators from Poland took part. Words, people and phenomena essential to the project are: Fluxus, John Baldessari, experimental music from the 60’s, the phenomenon of postal service, NET created by Jarosław Kozłowski and Andrzej Kostołowski, Robert Barry, draughts, some cooking recipes, Dot Dot Dot, the great Marcel Duchamp, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Oblique Strategies by Brian Eno, Simon Starling, Andrea Fraser, poor-design, Ryszard Winiarski, Martin Creed, Liam Gillick, Michael Asher, the Dogma movement, John Cage, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Mark Lombardi, spam about winning a fortune, Cabinet Magazine, the disappearance of Jan Bas Ader and many, many other people and events.

Artists participating so far: 4!, Mark Aerial Waller, Paweł Althamer, Vasil Artamonov & Alexey Klyukov, Anatka Barczewska, Zbyněk Baladrán, Bas van Beek, Anca Benera, Sanford Biggers, Tomek Bierkowski, Rahim Blak, Agnieszka Brzeżańska & Marek Raczkowski, Karin Bühler, Yane Calovski, Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkáčová, Martin Conrads, Holly Crawford, Agnieszka Chojnacka, Hubert Czerepok, Jiří David, Oskar Dawicki, Marjan Denkov, Christoph Draeger, Stanisław Dróżdż, Drumlander/ Louis Blackburn & Angelo Vermeulen, Elshopo, Pola Dwurnik, Marcius Galan, Rainer Ganahl, Haimo Ganz, Ingo Gerken, Simon Goldin & Jakob Senneby, Leszek Golec & Tatiana Czekalska, Ryszard Górecki, Henry Grahn, Marek Glinkowski, Grupa Whitney Houston: Paulina Ołowska & Bartek Przybył & Aleksander Wawrzyniak, Björn Hegardt, Daniel Heer, Małgorzata Jabłońska & Piotr Szewczyk, Jesper Jargil, Łukasz Jastrubczak, Olivier Kosta –Thefaine, Jiří Kovanda,Elżbieta Krajewska, Anna Krenz, Igor Krenz, Paweł Kruk, Wojtek Kucharczyk, kuda.org, Agnieszka Kurant, Robert Kuśmirowski, Dominik Lang, Maciej Landsberg, Jan Löchte, Sara MacKillop, Anna Mandoki, Katharina Marszewski, Christian Mayer & Yves Mettler, Asier Mendizabal, Nuria Montiel, Bartek Mucha, Jacek Niegoda, Anna Niesterowicz, Nick Oberthaler & Julien Diehn, Parfyme, Dan Perjovschi, Ben Petersen, Robert Rumas, Wilhelm Sasnal, Jadwiga Sawicka, Jochen Schmith, Maciej Sieńczyk, Janek Simon, Jiří Skála, Kateřína Šedá, Škart, Bruno Steiner, Rudolf Steiner, Kamen Stoyanov & Vasilena Gankovska, Paweł Susid, Superflex, Tomáš Svoboda, Grzegorz Sztwiertnia, Tomáš Vaněk, Joanna Warsza, Olav Westphalen, Franziska Wicke, Adam Witkowski, Julita Wójcik, Honza Zamojski, Florian Zeyfang

 

http://www.parasite-net.eu/project/hold_your_breath_2007

 

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