“Harold, that girl in that office is nude!”
Another addition to Art_Work is ‘In witness time begins’ (plus footnoting pamphlets called Per 1.1-1.4) from A Thing at a Time at Witte de With April 2013. They emerged from an obsessive focus on a phrase coined by an Italian theorist (and/or his translator); “immobile anaphoric gesture”. But these texts are different from those I wrote a few years earlier using a Slovenian theorist’s phrase; “imbecilic contingent intrusion” in which I could materialise or exemplify what an ici would be (see Essential Things in Art_Work, for example, which exhibited Cerith Wyn Evans’ neon Lacanian loop between the ‘pages’ of my ici2, about Willie Lloyd Turner and his ‘smile’).
One witness whose trauma I was paying witness to myself was Hannah Arendt (you can read the texts here). Her reference to the dying words of Pope John XXIII or Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli reminded me of John Cage’s buddhist-inspired version of the same sentiment; Every Day is a Good Day. As part of the toxic onslaught she received for resisting the pantomime around the Eichmann trial and associated mob logic (yes, I do know the real significance of that trial in forcing Europe to finally take seriously its role/s in the Shoah -not move on so easily from it. Do read the texts…) I have long enjoyed this idiocy from Mr Steinberg, especially with some more information about him; as below.
What of the reliable Mr Steinberg? “Harold, that girl in that office is nude!” is taken from an article in New York magazine, published 2 March 1970. The image represents all that needs to be ‘said’, especially with regard to his failed attempt at condescension (i.e., to look down upon) towards Hannah Arendt…
Wannabe slayer of Hannah Arendt: “Harold, that girl in that office is nude!”
NOTES FROM A FRUITSTORE 