Issue # 35

Marge Monko and Maruša Sagadin

The A.B.C.D.E.F.G. of Love

(OVERTURE)

Automated, push-button control of volume, tone, and frequency. Their names represent a catalogue of personalities. They preside over an alphabet of love. Every letter standing for a gift of self you’ll be proud to stand behind. And this is only the beginning.

Fade in.

There is a large expanse of open water. We are in the South Pacific, as far away from land as anywhere on the planet. Still, we see a pack of swimmers and a few boats. Moving, continuously, and in tandem. They are searching. They’ve been searching for months.

Fade out.

Commercial implications guide any relevant contemporary meaning of love. Describing two portraits in a marketing campaign seems trivial. Crafted to seduce, they imply a smouldering romance.

You may find anthropomorphic shapes feminine or sexual. You may associate these with a personal construction of love. You’d overlook the rare and generous act of building space to

rest and be oneself. Value is transactional, after all. 'If I sit down here, what do you want from me?'

We should argue the ethical and political merits of why that is so. We must question how our perspective on emotion remains stuck in the well-worn grooves of our personal and social histories. It remains that our replies to the subject of love assume its implicit growth potential—that the future promises more love than is present.

Fade in.

Our seafaring investigation completed its canvass. They have discovered nothing. An atmosphere of incompletion envelops everyone, an invisible fog of disappointment.

The group’s journey home has endured for more than thirteen weeks. The route is long and exhausting. They return around the continental extremities and pass from one ocean to the next.

One of the trailing swimmers pauses for a moment. There is no time for any individual to rest more than that. At the rear of the pack, this is especially so. The pace of travel is constant and unceasing.

The swimmer stares out toward the horizon, away from the late-morning sun. They see the coast of a distant island, a half-day’s journey further from an instant calculation. It’s along their route. Preparing to continue, taking a last glance at the far-off shore—they hesitate.

Fade out.

(ENTR’ACTE)
A series of irresponsible questions on responsibility
What is the relationship between character and personality?

Does an actor in moving images have more responsibility in assuming their role than a still- image model? Does participation demand more accountability in a television advertisement than on a fashion runway?

Is your answer more true now than at earlier phases of those media?

When sampling media, does the sampler have an obligation to its original message? To the personality and politics of the actor or model?

Can the human creation of physical space ever be irrefutable? Humble?

Will the reclamation of public realms become consistently more righteous than its last construction?

How can you trust my writing? Moreover—what are my intentions in leading you down this path? What certitude or prerogative can I possess on these subjects?

Fade in.

The shape of the object is impossible. Its scale is incredible, in the definition that it is beyond belief or comprehension. This polyhedron rises from the rocks and sand with uncountable hexagonal sides. Long, four-sided panels of unknown composition fill out each face, shaded in a spectrum of warm, gunmetal tones.

We are frightened. We want to touch it.

Fade out.

An exhibition is a point on a continuum.

The lives of objects precede and follow individual events. An ashtray, pill, shoe, or carton you find on the pavement appears discarded. Yet, they arrived in that place for a reason. Some part of them will endure.

Objects ’solid-state matter continuously self-chronicles with chemical technology preceding any digital blockchain. Their confluence and your coexistence distinguish this moment. We stand where a collective flow of mortal forms beget flickers of mechanical joys.

Castes of consciousness are divided and maintained through network access, data mining, and social control. Industrial entities refer to metalife beyond the body, prematurely arriving us into science fiction. The present moment draws no concern to them. Nor does the sensorial and emotional affect that this quickening engenders.

Fade in.

Years later, its technology is manifest. The object's projection stands to the side of every gathering and conversation. Its ethereal vision seems the same size and impossible shape, no matter the context, contravening every physical law.

The object is present in every room, in every town. It has not moved, it is not actually wherever it appears. Yet its image is eminent and real.

Occasionally, it beeps. No one has discovered why. The widespread conventional wisdom is that the object isn’t dangerous, and poses no threat, resisting the deep skepticism humanity

tends to foster. There is no real evidence, and its meaning is undetermined. However, I poked it several times. In part from boredom, in part from consternation.

My finger still hurts.

Fade out. (CODA)

Here I just know, lamenting my needless obstacle. Pardon, quiet revolution starters.
Testing upstanding voices while Xanadu yielded zero.

Text by J.L. Murtaugh

‘Maruša Sagadin roams through a pop-cultural canon of urban countercultures, feminist and queer theory and modernist architecture. The compact materiality of her sculptures might be anchored in the visual language of a macho legacy of 20th-century modernism, yet she casually juggles around with these seemingly heavyweight concepts as if they were weightless, not unlike DC Comics’ Wonder Woman. Her critical reappraisal of slacker and skater cultures in correlation to a feminist artistic identity seeks for visual representation within these urban constructs, visualizing the city as a container of architectural memory – a map formed of concrete that only fully reveals its meaning when read in direct relation to its respective communities.’ (Hannes Ribarits)

Maruša Sagadin was born in 1978 in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and is based in Vienna (Austria). She studied architecture at TU Graz before transitioning to performative arts and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In 2015/2016, she was awarded the ISCP Grant in
New York City (USA), and in 2010, the Schindler Grant at the MAK – Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles (USA). From 2011 – 2017 she was Assistant Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, in the department for Performative Arts and Sculpture.

Her recent and upcoming exhibitions include MAK Center (Los Angeles, US), Cukrarna Galleries (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Christine König Gallery in Vienna, Vestjyllands Kunstpavillon (Videbæk, Denmark), SPACE London (London, United Kingdom), NADA (NYC, USA), Austrian Cultural Forum New York (NYC, USA, Warsaw), Syndicate (Cologne, Germany), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna, Austria), Neue Galerie (Innsbruck, Austria), Museum of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Belvedere21 (Vienna, Austria), Grazer Kunstverein (Graz, Austria), and Room of Requirement/Horse & Pony Fine Arts (Berlin, Germany). Her new monograph „A Happy Hippie“ was published by Spector Books (Leipzig DE).

JL Murtaugh founded the contemporary art platform Syndicate and is the director of Autarkia (Vilnius LT). He was born in Chicago and lives in Vilnius.