Page 53 - The Venice Biennale 2001 issue of World of Art Magazine

BOSnia HerzeGOvina

arTiST TaLK by cLara BLeiBTreU

Listeners promised to draw the by the image of a square, split off from that image. The square left
squares, which they described during its geometrical shape. The emotions of the show and the descriptions
the show, and I promised to make of the square were so strong and honest, and yet, we talked only of
an exhibition of their work. Three the square.
months later, after I had received
an unbelievably large number of What occurred was what barthes calls “the excess of the real”
squares, I made the exhibition. I when he speaks about the transformation of meaning in its portrayal.
chose the lettrist style, thinking that To paraphrase barthes, it could be said that what mattered in the
would be the most appropriate for description of the square was not the sign of the square, or its
that moment. form. Rather, what was being signified was a real emotion, its reality
constituted through description, so that the shape was eliminated and
it become, in that program, only narrative structure. The excess of the
Many of the calls we received real was followed by meaninglessness.
revealed something unexpected. All
connections between the word And this meaninglessness, in which words like WAR, torch,
SQUARE that we spoke over the steel, egg, squashed, food, pollution, etc interweave with powerful
air and the image, which I had emotions, reflects reality and its meaning, artificially embedded in the
in my mind, were broken. Square square. Thus, squares become narrative.
became metaphor. The description of
a square, thought to be defined only Let’s see what they say.

WORLD of ART 51