Curator: Franz Thalmair
Artists: John Baldessari, Fiona Banner, Valie Export, Kenneth Goldsmith, Wade Guyton, Daniel Hafner, Marianne Holm Hansen, Bethan Huws, Joséphine Kaeppelin, Michael Kargl, Ulrich Kehrer, Agnes Miesenberger., Falke Pisano, Stefan Riebel, Karin Sander, Ignacio Uriarte, Anita Witek
Performance: Stefan Riebel, Jörg Piringer
This Page Intentionally Left Blank is the first in a series of exhibitions based on a wide-reaching research about writing. The original typewritten manuscript of Vilém Flusser’s essay The Gesture of Writing provides its thematic and formal-aesthetic foundation. “To write,” says the philosopher about the basic requirements that should lead to a complete piece of writing, we need “a blank surface, for instance a white leaf of paper; an instrument which contains a matter that contrasts with the whiteness of the paper; the letters of the alphabet; the convention which gives a meaning to the letters; ‘orthography’ = correct writing; the rules which order that language, what is called ‘grammar’; an idea to be expressed in a language; and a motive to express that idea”. Understanding the act of writing as a broad culturally embedded gesture, the exhibition covers artistic, literary, as well as curatorial and editorial fields of action and combines them.