This is not a press release
Egle Obcarskaite
This is not a press release
- January 18th to 23rd 2010
This is not a press release
or maybe it is...
what is a press release after all? Something our existence in the society is unimaginable without. Can we imagine an art gallery functioning, i.e. existing in the capitalist art market system without a press release?
I go to see an exhibition and I look for a paper sheet with text on it. It isn't enough for me to see anymore, I want to know. I want to have this medium, these glasses. When it's there - it's boring to read. But when a gallerist refuses giving it to me -- I get furious of not getting it.
A declared absence of a press release, however, is a press release in itself. It is a statement.
A press release on art -- how possibly could it be a statement? It could inform about an artist or about art objects. But it has to use the same conventional structure, the same type of information, the same praising words and ways of sentence construction. OK, it might give facts about previous exhibitions, awards, collaborations. About presence in some museum collections. It never mentions, however, what collectors or museums were not interested in acquiring the presented works of art.
And yet I find it fascinating. It pretends to generate the knowledge I lack. Maybe knowledge I just fooling myself that I need. It pretends being generated as the ultimate truth, the key into an art work. But who generates this knowledge, and what creates this impression of its ultimacy? What is the power it operates with?
It tries to create desire. For what? For being present in the art work happening, for embracing it, for memorizing this art work, for noticing it. And for experiencing it over and over again. It wants to get into peoples minds.
In what means, however? In totally right and faceless language, it's constructions. Through elegant, objective and declared worshiping. The meaning of greatness there is ultimate. It wants to be repeated again, but not re-created.
What if to create a press release which would agree to re-invent itself? A gallery is a space where not only art is presented or happens. It is a space where next to art parallel experience happens. It is a good place to start. And shape a press release, a statement, in the wrong way.
And the first day to talk about knowledge.
And the second day to talk about desire
And the third day to talk about medium, about communication.
To make a press release in three chapters.