RODEO Istanbul

April 17 – May 31, 2008

A Principle Of Assumptions

Daniel Gustav Cramer, Haris Epaminonda, Krist Gruijthuijsen, Tamar Guimarães, Adam Leech, Christodoulos Panayiotou

Summary of facts and memories of personal stories reveal, and at the same time blur, the structuring and politics of its historical relevance. A Principle Of Assumptions derives from this notion by juxtaposing works that each fulfills a structural element for a (political) story while performing the consumption and summary of information and imagery. The notion of authorship and knowledge is questioned in Haris Epaminonda and Daniel Gustav Cramer’s proposal for an infinite library (2008) in which they have exemplified their proposal by reassembling two different books in such manner that each second page of one book is combined with each second page of the other. The created juxtapositions provoke the purpose of its origin by reintroducing the authority of the book itself. This archival research is more illustrated in Tamar Guimaraes study on the slavery of Jan Leton, a black man who was given as a gift in the early 19th century to the Bailiff of Skagen, Denmark. An audio track, accompanied by an 16mm projector only projecting its light, displays Listed Entries (2006): an index, or a dictionary with missing letters, listing Jan Leton’s presence in Skagen. The sources, such as archival newspaper clippings, the town’s deaths register but also personal conversations, span the period from 1827, the year of Leton’s death, to 2006 when Guimaraes compiled the information. Adam Leech’s Money, Lots of Money (2008) is an absurd dialogue between the interviewer and the interviewee. Questions and answers are intermixing and complementing each other losing all sense of its purpose. In this way, the information becomes a performative act in itself. The shape of a script for a story and its history is investigated in Christodoulos Panayiotou’s Act 1: The Departure. The work unfolds several possibilities for a synopsis by displaying an old found theatre backdrop, folded to exclude its image, accompanied by its archival photo indicating what might be displayed. Act 1 reveals the beginning of a colonial journey, a work on progress that will be followed by Act 2 and completed by the final, third act.

Haris Epaminonda & Daniel Gustav Kramer, The infinite library, books, 2008

Haris Epaminonda & Daniel Gustav Kramer, The infinite library, books, 2008

Christodoulos Panayiotou, Untitled: Act 1: The Departure, found theatre backdrop, 2008

Christodoulos Panayiotou, Untitled: Act 1: The Departure, found theatre backdrop, 2008

Adam Leech, Money, Lots of Money, video, 2008

Adam Leech, Money, Lots of Money, video, 2008

Tamar Guimaraes, The Index, 2006

Tamar Guimaraes, The Index, 2006