Sabine Scholl
(deutsch)
MANUFACTURE NAMES
"Thus the proper name of a person is not just an overcoat
that hangs around him and at which you can perhaps tug
and tear, but a tight-fit suit if not the skin itself quick-tied
over and over, which you dare not serape nor grind but for
an injury to himself"
J.W.Goethe
To make oneself a name is absolutely paramount. Without
names we are nil, we simply do not count in the discourse
surrounding art. We are mere machines, no trace, no shape,
or like animals, nothing remains nor survives. Without
names we can forget all that we do.
Is there anything worse than to disappear from public
memory and official consciousness? At present our names
take care of us, they signify all that is intimate, are landmarks
and labels. They are of our works, if we are well-known.
If our names are pronounced, we are bound to outrun all
others and it is vain to stop us.
But there are many before us inscribed in the memory of
books. Their letters pass on what they have once accomplished.
And yet their names hold good up to now. Witnesses of
bygone works of art, philosophy, literature, completed.
They are ours, these famous names of dead men.
The anagram separates the name from the person to join
with a new concept however vague or unconvincing. We
replace part of the old name with particles of our own
names. The new shape disguises the original.
Education is, indeed, helpful. It carries the past forth into our
present. We rewrite others as we write ourselves into history.
The name of god is paraphrased as "the highest," or the
"almighty." But behind these words there is no one. God is gone.
Art relates merely to his name.
We occupy this vacancy. Our names are not yet comprehensible.
The letters contained in THOMASJOCHERSABINESCHOLL
taken together provide the material for the change.
The deformation begins.
We directly reinterpret those before us and in so doing swindle
our way through the history of art, philosophy and literature by
perforating it and by frazzling its tissue. We remain however
unknown, almost unpretentious, as our names are deformed in
order to fit in to those of the famous. More or less imperfect we
are present in this caricature of the familiar.
In JABLO MICASSO only a small portion of
THOMASJOCHERSABINESCHOLL is being maintained. We
are: MAS JOC and SABIOL, or as HARSOBE STEIN we are
THOS ER and SABINE. One can look at it the other way
round: Our names disappear in the names of others. Thereby
we stir up the dead, their surface, that which remains of their
bodies.
Those glorified names, engraved in marble, last forever.
Monuments serve memory. A temple is where we
remember the beloved, those fallen, honored big shots. Yet the
wallpaper in the temple is unsteady, changeable. It passes.
What was engraved in stone is superseded, replaced by a
facsimile, by paper, simple black and white, without shadow,
without hollow.
We pass by.
The contemplators attempt to understand. Letters have the
effect of designs. Parting from files of names, they record
transiency.
The wallpaper, once detached, goes into the trash.
What remains?
A rest, the white wall.
No names.
(Translated from the original german by H. Jocher)