Orange-space | Pseudo-works | images
Attila Csörgõ: Pseudo-works
Photographs
The attention of the wo/man walking on the street is diffused, passing alongside the multitude of phenomena. S/he perceives, notices certain things, but the process of perception occurs on various levels of consciousness. This concealed condition, a melange of consciousness, semi-consciousness and the unobserved, is the true medium of the encounter with pseudo-works.
Pseudo-works are things found in public space. Proceeding from the structure of the public space, obviously different sensory mechanisms are at work than in the case of exhibition spaces serving the presentation of real artworks, where they are present in concentrated form, and the visitors arrive especially to view them, bringing with them their archetypes and judgments that coordinate their reception. The clean, white sterility of the walls of the exhibition space are the application of the evolved ideal for undisturbed viewing, employed as a means of separation and accentuation.
In contrast to this, pseudo-works are embedded in the heterogeneous medium of the streetscape.
Visual noise. Elements that, through the clarity of their various function(s) in public space, easily slip through the agglomeration of interpretable things. If there is a common denominator underlying these pseudo-works of diverse “style”, technique and scale, then it might be precisely this “noise” that disturbs its function.
It is a well-known fact that the public space, for instance in the form of a streetscape, is one of the old inspirers of art – a theme designed for the painter’s brush. At the same time, there are discoveries, emphasised motifs, that allow for such accomplishments that also profit in the context of the exhibition space (e.g., Pop-Art). In the art of the (20th) century, nevertheless, from time to time, the demand for a more elementary relation is formulated, according to which the public space should be transformed into the stage for artistic activity itself, into the place to accomplish social freedom: the arts must retreat from the museums, from the “warehouses and granaries of spirit”, as the first decree of the Russian Futurists on the democratisation of art formulates.
Until the last word “art-like”, in connection with the pseudo-work and genuine work that can even be associated with an artist by name, the question of priority is raised. Which came first? And here, the hypothesis of a complicated, feedback system can be proposed, which might be more or less the following: Pseudo-works originally (before they were referred to as pseudo-works) were phenomena that could be found in public spaces, which were employed as models for genuine works. The method and transposition of employment can differ; in the given case, the phenomenon can even build its own material (plaster, concrete, etc.) into the artwork. Re-confronted with the things employed as model, these already – in art historical reflection – obtain a modified meaning and are transformed into pseudo-works.
With respect to the intention to realise pseudo-works, we are compelled to leave it to conjecture, since the authors of pseudo-works are anonymous.
I made the attached photographs in various cities of The Netherlands, England and Italy in 1993.
Attila Csörgõ, 1994
translated by: Adèle Eisentstein
