Following the book presentation of Valentina Stieger at 3 pm, Reto Pulfer will present his Zustandskatalog: Catalog of States and Conditions on Saturday, April 22, 2017 at 4 pm. Not only will he read from the book, but also perform the piece Rezfus Refzus Gong, 2017.
“The monograph is inspired by the style of a catalogue raisonné where each works is presented with an accompanying text. The 475 color photographs of documentation are juxtaposed to excerpts from my novels. There are technical drawings, projects done for one-evening shows, next to room-filling installations made after months of preparation. When, in the installations, borderlines between works were not sharp, in the book we decided to methodologically create a typology of my works from about the last fifteen years. The book features obvious categories such as Living Ceramics, Food Advice, Ghostology and more intuitive ones like Synesthesia and Transformation.
The gong is an ancient instrument. It is strange to say that since drums, flutes and strings are also ancient. But the gong is different as it is not me playing it—instead it is an instrument that seemingly plays itself. In the performance Rezfus Refzus Gong, 2017, I will additionally read texts from the catalog, a book that is an extension of my work. In the same way as an installation is extended with a performance that is then described in my novels and may become a drawing. The different media are linked in a non-hierarchical structure like a metonymy where each part refers to another.”
Reto Pulfer