Adding World to it: Nine Letters

By Bob Bicknell-Knight, Theresa Roth, Anna Ovtšinnikova, Mats Johan Soosaar, Giulio Cusinato, Kristina Kuzemko, Kroplya, Fausta Noreikaitė, Aidan Timmer and Laura De Jaeger (introduction)

A few years ago, Bart Verschaffel published the collection of essays on What Artistry Can Do. The writer introduced the notion of sustained attention: to read something, one does not need to apply theory on it. ‘After all, an artwork does not come with a meaning: it acquires meaning when someone chooses to focus and dwell on it and add world to it.’ Verschaffel means that it is an engagement, a dialogue, a relationship through an encounter, that activates it.

After visiting Zody Burke’s exhibition ‘House of Asterion’ at the Hobusepea Gallery in Tallinn, a group of contemporary artists did just that. Inspired by the artist-led project ‘Love Letter to an Artwork’, they each addressed a work in the show. Every piece called upon each person’s attention, to share something with it, ask a question, whether through admiration, doubt or curiosity.

A Love Letter

I’m not sure about your name, but I remember that we had a connection, you and me. We saw each other once or twice last week in the bowels of a building in the old town. A dimly lit location, filled with sound and silt. You were elevated, on a sort of stage, and had a number of different component parts. It felt like you used to be something special, something someone thought would be worth preserving, collecting, hoarding. Your set felt slightly manufactured and artificial. When your creator told me how they had some experience working in film production, things started to make sense.

I remember your hand very well: a delicately crafted appendage made to look like stone or ceramic. An attempt to disguise your inner, weightless polystyrene interior. I wouldn’t say that this was a failure, but I always find it difficult to separate what once was and what is. In this case, I can see the cracks through the craftsmanship, although perhaps I’m just too sceptical. The organ, like several of your other body parts, was partially submerged in a pile of what I assume was sand, mimicking an archaeological site. The pile was atop the stage. This raised position gave weight to the items above.

It’s hard to admit, but I did peek under your stage. I tend to do so on a first encounter. I like to get close in times like this, inspecting and cataloguing. Asking and attempting to answer questions about production and conceptual considerations. In this instance, it felt odd to see you this way. It felt like a spell being broken, although this one was created to break and fall apart. Underneath your stage was an empty space, devoid of any real importance. You knew this would happen. You allowed me, no, you wanted me, to shatter this illusion. You are a fabrication, a reproduction, a copy. I have seen things like you before, and have even made some things of my own in the past that appear almost identical in shape and scale.

Perhaps we will meet again one day, you and me. We will both have grown and changed with time, degrading and evolving in different ways. Perhaps your segregated entities will be separated and scattered to different parts of the Earth, mimicking the journeys that your great ancestors took after being uncovered and assaulted, split up and sold. Perhaps there is an even worse fate in our joint futures.

Yours,
Bob Bicknell-Knight

Dear Minotauros,

I’m writing to you because you confuse me.

Last week, I found you. I walked down to the basement, following your rhythmic sounds. I saw your veins. I saw your muscles. Childhood memories resurfaced as I watched your unbound movement.

You are so big.

As a child, I had illustrated books; well, books about Disney movies. Not official ones; cheap, unauthorised versions. Not the kind with beautiful film stills. Just a few pages, skipping major parts of the plot. The drawings were made specifically for those books. You could easily spot the inaccuracies: faces only loosely resembling the originals, slightly deformed. And yet sometimes the characters appeared more beautiful, more detailed than in the movies, especially the sidekicks, who only got a couple of seconds on screen.

So I had this book of Lady and the Tramp. Early in the story Lady, the female lead if you will, escapes from her home and gets lost in the city. She’s hunted by two evil dogs, only to be rescued by Tramp, the hero (I don’t know if you’ve heard the story anyway). The scene unfolds on a double page: the frightened Lady on the left, the two antagonists in the bottom right-hand corner.

I remember it so vividly. Their shiny brown fur stretched over tense muscles, laced with pulsating veins. They were shown in profile, baring their teeth, gums bulging grotesquely. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. It was my favourite page.

Twenty-five years later I see you, and feel the same arousal I did as a child with that book. I want to touch your veins, your muscles. Feel them. Rub my body against you and satisfy myself.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this.

So I sit in front of you and watch.

Your massive shadow dances across the ceiling. I never get bored of watching you. With every turn, I discover a new detail. I catch your eyes and want you to know: what are you thinking about? What do you see?

You shake left and right, as if you are dreaming. I wonder if I appear in your dream.

Do you dream of me?

They cut off your feet to keep you from escaping the labyrinth. I want to tell you that I hate them for doing that to you, but I also want you to stay here.

And yet I dream. I imagine our life together outside. I know that you didn’t do this to those boys and girls. You didn’t want this to happen.

Am I the only woman writing you letters?

Please don’t answer with a letter. My girlfriend can’t know.

T.

Dear Asterion and The Purpose of a System is What it Does,

It’s true. I was staring at you. Looking at you moving in circles created a place of comfort in my existence while listening to electronic white noise. I simply enjoyed the empty feeling that your majestic body provided me. I didn’t even care to think about what you do to me. I was doing that exact same thing everybody else was doing, looking at you for no reason. Like people in the club, looking at the DJ to escape reality by focusing on one figure. Thanks to you I found myself in that state of trance. I liked it because it made me feel at ease. Why would I want that, though? It isn’t even your fault that your purpose to simply mesmerise and hop around makes everybody like you. You are the big star for no reason. A mechanical bull that cannot even be ridden. You look big, strong and oily, but your insides are plastic. Why would anyone awe you? Does your coolness and purposelessness make you a work of art? Have you ever talked to the mat?

It’s rather ironic to find you here on the floor where no one would notice you. I wonder, have you ever felt left behind? Have you ever felt out of place? I assume you’ve been trying to fit in with your popular Disney and Comic Sans font. Unfortunately, telling the truth tends to make people confused and anxious. That’s where everybody starts stepping over you. Are they ignoring the truth? It’s like that situation where everybody likes the cool kid but nobody thinks of the reason why. That kind of stuff makes you question yourself: what is your purpose? But maybe you are in the right place after all. It’s not your fault that people would rather watch the lost bull ride itself and feel nothing than actually think about what they are doing and what they are consuming. It’s nobody’s purpose to pinpoint every little detail for everybody to actually understand us. It should come from their own will. Your purpose is just to be there. You said your words.

It’s a pity that you were both misplaced, and for that reason you were both misunderstood. It’s a pity that people are attracted by the easy and not by the reasonable. Judging myself here! I was part of the grey mass that consumed that oily ‘bullshit’ piece of plastic. I enjoyed my brain being turned off. You guys are just here to reflect us.

Better luck next time,
Anna

To the couch

I started off thinking I would write a review, but I don’t think that would be fair. You are much more than a tourist attraction on Google Maps. Writing a review would kind of downplay your status as a piece of art, and it feels like an unreasonably violent thing to do. So take this as a letter of appreciation instead. I am always happy when there is a place to sit down at an exhibition. Even if it isn’t a large exhibition where one would spend an entire day, it is still nice to have a moment to rest. You are beautiful and comfortable. I would love to have a couch as nice at home. If I had to, I would give you a rating of 5/5 stars, and would recommend you to a friend.

Mats

Dear Hermes  &  the Bull Jumpers,

I write this letter to you after the reveries I felt at the sight of you. Memories came from afar, from a part of me buried inside. Sleepy memories of a life before.

I have the feeling that I was there, or perhaps I am sure of it: I was there. The bullfight is in me and I am the bullfight. Is this the essence of dance: to dance with the animal element, primordial, unpredictable? This way of dancing is perhaps the only self-conscious form that exists. I believe that man began to move unconsciously only a few hundred years ago. Before that time, there was movement in relation to … and this previously smoky and confused feeling is now rooting violently in me. I was there, at those feasts, dancing with the bull. I grabbed its horns and pushed myself into a somersault. These memories emerge from the resin and project me forward. A leap. I feel that you have come from the distant past into the future, but even if you exist in time, you may not survive it. You belong to different eras, and it has always been difficult to place you. Despite this complicated character of yours, I’m still happy to have met you. You are like the comic strip ‘Fritz the Cat’ found on an archaeological site.

I wish you all the best, and hope to see you again. Maybe tomorrow, maybe yesterday.

Yours,
Giulio

You appeared as though you had just emerged —
from a dream, a forgotten myth,
or perhaps from the back of Zody’s mind.

Your stitches seemed undone and redone,
as if someone had struggled to repair you —
or gently set you free.
There was no pretence of perfection.
You stood there,
holding your form
like you were a thread in some larger story.

There was a tilt in the way you leaned,
worn but still curious,
like a figure who had wandered the labyrinth
and began to question the walls around them.

You didn’t demand attention,
but I couldn’t help tracing every line.
While you called back to something ancient,
I recognised a world I had never stepped into before.

Thank you for being strange
in a soft, searching way,
a quiet kind of magic,
offering a different map through the maze.

Love,
Kristina

Subject: We are drowning in drought
From: ariadne.or.the.hanged.nymph@zody.burke
To: excavation.site@zody.burke

Dear Excavated site,

I hope this letter finds you well, and that my wish to tell you to fuck off brings you clarity, not trauma. Come to terms with your status as ‘not the one’, and before you send me anything, run a quick check for boundary crossing. I have them. I’m a person too. And I don’t want to keep flinching at your messages, wondering ‘Is this going to be something profound about art, or another body-crushing piece of soulmate bullshit? Should I brace myself, let the emotional blister fester and bleed, or face it now before the pain sets in?’ As you might’ve guessed, I don’t believe in soulmates any more. And I’m done riding your carousel. All of my belief stayed behind in that cinematic evening where you said ‘I’m not.’ NO ONE FORCED YOU TO SAY THAT. THAT WAS YOUR ‘NO.’ NOW LIVE WITH ITS CONSEQUENCES. Please, take them into account. You’re neither a lighthouse nor an anchor: no one’s looking to you for direction, holding on to you, or dragging you out of anything. Your desire to cast me as Ariadne isn’t going to fly. That’s not the myth we're living. Wash your eyes and finally see: it wasn’t my choice, it was your desire. In our shared reality, I’m closer to Medusa: violated, denied justice, and transformed by life into a terrifyingly beautiful woman. So if we’re following the chain of vengeance, it’s you who should turn to stone now and finally release my soul, not keep building imaginary labyrinths and trying to follow some fishing line back ‘home’.

I don’t want to destroy what we had; but whatever this is now, whether nostalgia or some desperate urge to prolong something that no longer exists in its original form, it carries the weight of a swamp I refuse to sink into. We’ve been dry for a long, long time. So dry it feels like sand scraping my throat. You lost your last real chance to find out ‘what if’ about three years ago.

I’m living my life now. I have new people in it, people I can talk to about what I want and what I’m afraid of, instead of spinning on the echo ride of your fractured inner world. Talking to you could’ve been an interesting experience, but let’s be honest, we were never really friends.

With still kind regards,
no more Ariadne

Dear Asterion,

I keep thinking about how to approach you, whilst already knowing that all attempts are doomed to fail. Your nature is designed to devour those of my kind; thus, any effort to establish contact would be a self-destructive act. My poetic approaches could not reach you, as we’re divided by centuries, ancient constructions, and mythological symbols. I ought to use some undefined form of visual expression, as no verbatims of mine are able to get to you. But then I notice your eyes, covered with artificial blood, already dried out, knowing that there’s no life inside you left. Seeking contact through sound is equally hopeless, as the sound of your structure occupies an entire room, making every other sound in the space secondary (including my voice). So we’re destined to be distant and inaccessible to each other, inflicting pain upon one another as a result: you, determined to demolish my existence, as the love that was exceeded to you wasn’t bigger than the hate; and I, hunted by your image of suffering, confronted with my own aching.

The works that resonate with the observer on a personal chord always say more about the observer than about the object of their observation.

I know the story of your origin, Asterion.

Your myth of perpetual suffering echoes through the darkest corners of my being.

Your punishment for the acts of savagery, when cruelty itself was inflicted on you before you even gained a physical life form, speaks of existential questions raised centuries after your genesis. Both your mythological posture and the representation of it in this gallery space are an offspring of violent and loving acts combined: dismantled, constructed and glued together, from materials that seemingly don’t belong together. Yet they form a singular composition, an outcome of external decisions. Any life form, and any work, essentially, is that: repercussion or consequence, agentless until it learns self-sufficiency and self-governance.

So when I look at you (rotating around your own axis in the basement of the gallery), I pity you, Minotaur, for not having the agency to choose your nature and for being rejected for your essence. Which is nothing but the outcome of decisions made for you and before you. Even if you are a symbol, a representation, and a compass for morally ill behaviour, it is you (the actor with no agency) who lives the punishment. Those who are supposedly ‘learning’ from your story get to stare at you from a safe distance, hearing the echo of your suffering through the walls of the labyrinth to which you are chained. Your predecessors, possibly, carry some guilt on their shoulders. But what is guilt if not a small grain compared to timeless suffering?

You don’t need my pity, as I don’t need yours. Perhaps pity is nothing more than one’s need to exhibit compassion, a self-soothing opportunity to display one’s empathy? Thus, this letter, too, is nothing more than yet another exhibit of my capacity to feel.

I could have chosen any other artwork in the exhibition, I could have chosen any other feeling to speak about; but instead I chose to focus on the Minotaur’s pain, which by proxy, essentially, is a talk about myself and my pain.

I’ve read Greek and Roman myths multiple times, yet only those that speak of perpetual agony are the ones I truly remember and keep coming back to: Sisyphus, Prometheus, Tantalus, just to name a few. For years, I praised Rodden as the ultimate genius, just because of one sculpture, The Danaid, being swallowed by her own suffering.

I connect profoundly with others through shared trauma and healing, seeing it as a form of bondage. If you can hold space for the pain of the other, you can hold space for their joy too, but not the other way round. Unaddressed pain always finds ways to escape through the cracks; and to me, in this space, Asterion, you are that crack.

Sincerely yours,
Fausta

Dear M,

Although I feel a strong aversion, writing about you, regarding your very strong presence in the space, I can’t seem to get around it. I would rather write about the other relics surrounding you. You are the obvious choice. You swallow the focus that was meant for the others. Unfortunately, writing about another work in the room would be like treason against my own emotions and the sentiment I feel concerning you.

Throughout my childhood, I sustained a long obnoxious fear regarding the non-existing. For some reason the mythical and unreal have always plagued me. I was never afraid of the dark or other childhood clichés. It was ‘Cerberus’, the three-headed dog that guarded the gates of Hades, that made me refuse to close my eyes. I am aware of the fact that this may sound kitschy, but unfortunately it is the truth.

My first fictional encounter with the Minotaur was in the Toyota Prius of my grandfather. I was approximately five years old, and my two aunts had a dreadful habit of trying to frighten me. (I almost lied about them being twins, just for the gothic aspect of this letter.

I figured it would resonate better with the overall ambiance of how I remember the moment.) When they told me about you I was petrified; you were all I could think about for the next couple of days while sleeping in the guest room at my grandfather’s house. My aunts would imitate your footsteps outside the door and make growling sounds from the hallway. I was terrified, and never slept at that house again.

While being in the cellar seeing you again, those memories resurfaced. While trying to pay close attention to everything that was around me, you viciously stole my focus once again. How am I supposed to investigate, listen and feel, when you are in the same space as me? Your vigorous and lumbering shape swallows everything that is present, living or dead, body or object. You are both the key player and the executioner of this exhibition.

Once again, I am back in my grandfather’s guest room, which I have fiercely tried to forget …

Until we meet again,
A.

Photo reportage from the exhibition ‘The House of Asterion’ by Zody Burke at Hobusepea gallery ^[1]