imomus | Negation of the negation

On Sunday I was cycling up Ohlauerstrasse -- the part of Kreuzberg that begins just over the canal from our part of Neukolln -- when I spotted a rather witty poster. "~~I WOULD HAVE PREFERRED A BLANK WALL RATHER THAN THIS GREAT PIECE OF SHIT~~," it said, in crossed-out Verdana letters.

What I liked about this poster at first was the thought that it was complaining about -- and therefore effacing -- itself. It was a paradox, a speech act that condemns speech acts. There's an infinite regress built into this (and emphasised by the crossing-out): the condemnation is also condemned, the effacement effaced, and so on. Later, it occurred to me that the poster was a good example of what Pat Kane, citing the Italian thinker Paolo Virno in his review of my books the other day, called "the negation of the negation".

I put the image up on my Flickr page last night and within hours two people had linked to similar posters they'd seen in Paris and London. Someone called acb (oh, it's Andrew Bulhak!) had seen these two posters on a mural on Chance Street in Shoreditch, London:

~~IN AN IMAGES SOCIETY, PRODUCE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN POSSESS~~, says one (crossed out), and ~~SORRY ABOUT IT, BUT IT'S NOT AN ACCIDENT~~, says the other. Meanwhile, Flickr user Fufurasu (oh, it's my Greek friend Orestes!) showed a poster in Paris:

~~JE N'AIME PAS BEAUCOUP LES GENS QUI POURISSENT NOS MURS AVEC DES AFFICHES~~, it says; "I don't much like people who foul up our walls with posters". Misreading the small print at the bottom of the poster, Fufurasu links to a clip-art site called Retroart.com. In fact, the posters are signed Reroart.com.

Réro, we learn from the site, is based in Paris (which explains the slightly tilted English) and makes graphic design and street art. He (assuming it's a he) has a show coming up in September at Antje Oklesund's "audiovisual laboratory" on Rigaerstrasse, Berlin. There's a big page of photos of the posters in Réro's Next Customer (le client suivant) series on his website, with an artist's statement about his intentions.

After looking at the images on this page we can add a few new "negation of the negation" slogans to our collection:

ART IS GREAT TO WASTE TIME BEFORE DYING
THIS IMAGE IS FREE COPYRIGHT
I'VE JUST WON AT THE LOTTERY AND YOU CAN FUCK OFF
RESERVATION FOR TWO PEOPLE
THIS POSTER IS INDIRECTLY SUBSIDISED BY THE TAXPAYER WHO FINANCES ITS CLEANING AND THEREFORE PERMITS IT TO DISAPPEAR

Réro also explains the "next customer" idea (I've translated from the original French) in a text:

"On the theme of the image illustrated by a text, "I am the next customer" is the person who, even before having paid for his goods, is proud to mark the limits of his property at the supermarket check-out, even before the products actually belong to him. This little psychological barrier might seem harmless, but it's also a very good index of our time.

"With irony, these posters -- which represent exactly the opposite of what they seem to be saying -- raise a smile. Then, the fact that the text is crossed out leads to a new reflection on whether it's a simple mistake the artist thought it best to preserve, or another negation by image... This project has, as its objective, to make the passerby think about the notion of the physical and intellectual ownership of a work."

After reading Réro's artist statement, I almost feel I know too much about his intentions and ideas. ~~PERHAPS HE SHOULD HAVE CROSSED THESE TEXTS OUT TOO~~.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

walloftime.livejournal.com

I distinctly remember the torn feelings I had over editing this text (http://walloftime.blogspot.com/2008/07/temporre-autonome-zonen-ii.html), where I imagined a somewhat odd person who decided to take a pen and to strike-though all printed text in his household. Should I or should I not present all the html on the website also in strike-through? It finally became the 6th of the my ongoing “160 characters of art” suggestions:
“WITH A PEN, NEATLY STRIKE-THROUGH ALL PRINTED COPY
IN YOUR HOUSEHOLD, NO SINGLE PRINTED WORD SHALL
REMAIN NON-NEGATED. SAY NO TO UNNEGATED TYPE.

(144 characters)”

From:

imomus.livejournal.com

~~Ich strich alles durch.~~

From: (Anonymous)

This is just the "art" equivalent of that urban myth about a sign that says "It is forbidden to throw stones at this sign"

From: (Anonymous)

You're hardly one to be criticising anyone for overexplaining their work.

From:

imomus.livejournal.com

I'm glad you brought hypocrisy in, Anon, because it's very relevant. Hypicrisy seems, like these posters, to be self-cancelling. "Well, we can disregard what this person is saying here because he does something which contradicts his statement."

But these posters only cancel themselves semantically. Their struck-out statements remain to tease us. To cross out a text is not the same as to restore the wall to its former blank state. The statement was made and cancelled, and remains in a dialectical "flicker state" before our eyes.

I've argued against the neat and tidy concept of hypocrisy in Click Opera before, because in real life deeds and statements do not cancel themselves out so conveniently. For instance, a person might condemn something they do themselves because they know from first hand experience how harmful it is. There's also the problem that if vaunting the things you don't do makes you a hypocrite, vaunting the things you do makes you a smug narcissist.

From:

imomus.livejournal.com

Against "hypocrisy" (http://imomus.livejournal.com/362894.html)

From:

imomus.livejournal.com

It goes without saying that a person who puts up a poster saying he doesn't like people who put up posters is deliberately being "a hypocrite". The interesting bit comes when we ask... Why?

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