(...) POINTS OF OMISSION (...) ET CETERA; SERIALITY IN THE WORK OF AXEL STRASCHNOY
CONSTANTINOS TALIOTIS
It often goes without saying. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the
nothing new (Samuel Beckett, Murphy)
The first time it rises, its the alpha; the second is a sequel, the third is a serial.
The final raise, is still an assumption. One, in fact, assumes that there will be no terminal raise. You always arrive at Straschnoys work after the diegesis and are left to trace behind it. The prolegomenon is of prominent importance in the unfolding of his
narratives, but the viewer is always left with its aftertaste. It is precisely here, when I
come to terms with the fact that I am not presented with a totality but with an extract
from a narrative pre-existing in another universe that entreats me to get into Jacques
Clouseaus shoes. The opening credits are implicit, but yet they are inferred in a dark
corner of Camera or the dustbins of the Tower. What is contemplated in the plots
fabricated by the artist, are the notions of the pretext, always over once the duration of the artwork has started its countdown, and the promise infinitely anticipated. Arriving on the very moment of the exhibitions commencement, then, is being always already late for the ribbon cutting ceremony. The exhibition is before ones feet, but the diegesis is two steps ahead, gone passed the alpha, the sequel and well into the serial. It is always a late arrival.
It is as though, for once my meal has jammed in endless aperitifs and the stereo is
looping preludes. There is the anticipation for the main course and the succession of
music to the peak, which is only implied but never made explicit. I get a leg pulled in
Straschnoys work, but no steps made. Time has frozen not in repeating, but in reenacting the same intact activity time and time again. Whenever now comes, he is gathering rubbish (Tower), he is erecting a skyscraper in the expense of his studio (The builder), he is a camera behaving like an antenna (Camera). But he is an artist, imitating an artist that now is what an artist is when he is imitating an artist (to the nth power). And tomorrow he will be the same counterfeit. And the same goes for the day after. But will he be an artist imitating an artist when night comes? Or will he be having a glass of whisky with Bill Murray waiting for the make up artist? He is the sun and the sun only rises (it never sets, we only rise to reach it, and then it rises again). Frozen time, though is not motionless, it is just non-progressive but circular. That is how seriality behaves in the work of Straschnoy, and simultaneously this is where seriality misbehaves. Where (and not when) one comes to realize the ruptures of the sequence, not the rupture within the sequence, but that which has always, already been omitted prior and posterior to it. The work happens not only where the artist is imitating an artist, systematically performing an event this is the story of an artist who wanted so much to shine and be visible to quote Tower - but in fact in the lurking ellipsis looming round the corner, where this is no longer the story, but what could be the hint of diversified stories. It is no longer temporal but spatial since what is at stake at the present of the narrative has been extracted from a different time and interrogated under the light of the art-esque. Every prelude refers to a prolegomenon; every aperitif defers to a promise. Frozen time is not only circular, but also slippery.
But was he actually drinking whisky over night? (Those dark corners of Camera,
and the dustbins of Tower are fuming alcohol). The referred and the deferred; the
prolegomenon and the promise come into play. What is omitted () is emitted. Having
passed the present of the exhibition acted out once, twice, thrice the sniffing begins.
When the artwork is flirting with the process, what is implied is not that it is in a process it is after all in a serial, which as I have emphasized earlier is non-progressive but circular but that the viewer is in the process of detecting what has happened in the absent episodes. (These are not episodes that have had their turn in the viewers absence, but episodes that themselves have been always absent). Straschnoys practice is inviting the exploration of pre-his-storic, extra-diegetic information that is only insinuated in the diegesis, but is welcomed to splice in. The references are always adjacent to the narrative, knocking the works frame but only interpolated in the possibility of forthcoming interpretations. Likewise one can find in The builder a comment on the rapidly growing architecture of Buenos Aires, but the fiction is still sustained when such an invention is missed. The openness of the work enables a different prologue to be attached to it and consequently a differently matching promise. Under this light the work of Straschnoy offers the structural foundation and the fragments for a novel in production to unravel. That is why it resembles an extract perhaps a quote -, it provides the minimum references in a longer stream of thoughts. Similar to B.S Johnsons novel The Unfortunates, Straschnoy provides the loose pages of a narrative. Some of those are blank, awaiting articulation. Often that is the place of the prologue and the promise; and the place of the viewer.
(...)
There was the sound of the pattering rain, but I could not see it. The next I remember is that the sun shone again. But it does not always shine the same way.
