[rohrpost] Georg Paul Thomann // A Short History Of A Collaborative Conspiracy

[das ende der nahrungskette]

//GEORG PAUL THOMANN//
Or:
//A Short History Of A Collaborative Conspiracy//

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By Johannes Grenzfurthner, monochrom, Vienna, Austria
http://www.monochrom.at/english

Translation: Evelyn Fuerlinger, monochrom

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First published in AC:Collaborative, New York/NY, January 2006
http://www.artcircles.org/id69.html

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In winter 2000 the government coalition of the Social Democratic Party of
Austria (SPOe) along with the conservative People's Party (OeVP) dissolved
because the conservatives decided to form a new coalition with the right or
even far right wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPOe). This led to a giant
leap to the right and to a forced neo-liberal formation in Austria. For
months people were protesting against the government and a sudden
re-politicization of the civil society took place. 

In summer 2001 Zdenka Badovinac, director of the Gallery of Modern Art in
Ljubljana (Slovenia), visited us in our monochrom office in Vienna. Half a
year later she contacted us again. This time she revealed that she was
actually the curator responsible for the Austrian participation at the Sao
Paulo Biennial 2002 and that she wished to work together with monochrom.
She invited us to represent the Republic of Austria at the Sao Paulo
Biennial 2002. 

The Sao Paulo Biennial is one of the three biggest art presentations on our
small overrated planet, right after the Venice Biennial and the documenta
in Cologne, and it is the biggest and most important art exhibition of the
southern hemisphere. The Sao Paulo Biennial is the anti-pole of a
geographic concentration of art in the westernized world. 

Its presumed critical stance against this kind of hegemony was one of the
reasons why monochrom was glad to participate-even as the national
representative of a racist European mini state. 

After a short discussion we agreed that we did not want to represent
Austria directly but send someone else to the Biennial. Our choice was the
then 57 years old avant-garde artist Georg Paul Thomann. 

Thomann was born in Vorarlberg, Austria in 1945. He studied art in Vienna
from 1963 onwards. Many art projects in Vienna followed. From 1964 through
1980 he lived and worked in Berlin, Paris, Munich, Palo Alto/California,
New York, and London. He returned to Vienna in 1980. Thomann worked in
various art contexts like concept and performance art, painting,
photography, video art, and music. He received several scholarships, awards
and distinctions. He taught contemporary art at various universities. As an
author, he dealt with art and sociopolitical topics. Thomann was a major
but somewhat clandestine player within the Austrian art scene. All this can
be explained by the fact that Georg Paul Thomann does not exist, at least
not as a physical entity. He is an art avatar and impure fiction.

Zdenka Badovinac informed the Department of Art in the Office of the
Federal Chancellor about our decision and provided an adequate contract.
The Chancellory was neither allowed to submit any press statements about
the project that had not been approved by us nor to make any official
statements, or else we would withdraw from the national representation
project.

We began to create Thomann's biography in detail and dealt with the
proliferations of Thomann's life for more than six months. To us Thomann
was a probe to explore the art, pop, and social history of the last 40
years. He was a docile assistant in analyzing and reviewing the various
processes in this broad field, be it a replica on Martin Kippenberger's
sexist raptures during the 1980s, on the national-fantastic contents of
Austropop, the foreign policy of the US, or cyberpunk-science fiction
theories. Thomann became a fat, bloated context-canard, crammed with
references and sub-fakes and thoroughly roasted by us.

The intention of Thomann-as monochrom member Frank Apunkt Schneider puts
it- is not to parody the more recent history of art and expose its gaping
incongruities (it takes care of that well enough itself), but rather to
paint its portrait, as it is the tradition in classical portrait painting,
in such a way as to make it look a little better than it was in reality."
In this case the aesthetic retouching has become a theoretical one in order
to provide the more recent history of art with a sense and a function that
is just a nuance too glamorous. Thomann became some sort of fountain pen
filled with magic ink. Magic ink that renders the occluded and obliterated
contours of a "leftist" history of art visible. 

In this sense, Thomann's real oeuvre is this fake biography. Little of it
can be remembered, stored, historicized, or actually put into a museum,
lots of it will be left in the gutter of the street. The pictures, the
music, the interventions in public spaces and other proofs of existence of
the 'enfant terrassé' of the Austrian art scene (Thomann on Thomann) should
be consumed rather quickly, because they - similar to secret messages in
spy movies-once gotten into contact with the socio-physical conditions of
an outside world will soon dissolve in it.

//// "I'm not doing the rhizom'n'blues-nigger for that neo-conservative
Austrian fuck! They won't get no connectivity! They can stick their laptop
right into their Lederhosen! All they get is mountains, puffed-upness and
old dog-shit. You are what you eat!" (Georg P. Thomann: Paragraph 3 of the
manifesto Quotable Stuff, Vienna 2001.) ////

Thomann is a direct detour-across the towers and into the news racks of
this little snow globe called 'Austria.'

But which project should be presented in the Austrian white cube of the
Biennial building?

We agreed that Thomann did not want to go to the Biennial on his own. His
installation project  <Yes, Sir, I can network it out, Sir!> <Smells like
team-spirit, Sir!> <We are the World, we are the Children, Sir!> is an
oversized mixed-media self-portrait in the shape of Austria's highest
mountain, and Thomann invited four young Austrian art groups to present
their work to the world. Thomann not only is the Uebervater of all Austrian
avant-gardes, no: he virtually becomes the commissioner of tourism for the
location factor 'young art'. The four art groups are - of course - fake, too.

//// "Merely by age I'm the 'massif' in this installation project. Actually
I could be and yes I should be their father. That's why I see myself as the
rational authority within this project, but also as the 'lone peak'
overlooking everything in a mellow mood. In turn, they are young.
Fresh'n'rosy as they stand before my soiled highness with their ideas,
concepts and bodies. All that still immense lifespan. That total blankness
and the frankness of biographies! William Somerset Maugham wrote on that.
All that mystical and limitless sexuality! Here I am brown with envy like
some autumn forest, here I may be. But for that I'm big. Fucking big.
12,460,629 feet tall." (Georg P. Thomann: Paragraph 2 of the manifesto
Quotable Stuff, Vienna 2001.) ////

The Austrian press was divided and it took the papers some time to realize
what was going on. For the time being, some papers and magazines were
caught in our trap of representation (which means that they didn't
investigate the matter and believed that the fake is real), just to get
caught in the next trap, the trap of de-representation (which means that at
some point they had to pretend having been aware of the irony all along but
deliberately didn't reveal it). Our budget for the project was not
increased due to a Thomann-interview in the daily paper "Standard" in which
he attacked Franz Morak, the conservative Austrian State Secretary of Art.
Towards the end of the 1970s, Morak was an actor at the famous Viennese
Burg Theater and he also made Austro-Pop music with a slight touch of Nina
Hagenianism. Back then Thomann refused to do a cover design for his first
LP, which Thomann referred to as 'pseudo-critical.' Morak (the real one)
was totally mad about this remark. Off the record this meant a loss of
approximately 35,000 Euros.

In March 2002 Thomann's biography-about 500 pages thick-was published just
in time and the Biennial started. The monochrom staff was going to Sao
Paolo as the setup crew. On site we were confronted with the usual
disappointing picture of the common mechanism of exclusion. The strict
hierarchy of mega-art-structures was instantly intelligible: Biennial
Board, top curator, top artist, curator, artist, technical setup crew,
exhibition guide, etc.

We turned the tables: When members of the administration, journalists, or
curators asked about the whereabouts of Thomann, our irritated answer was
that he hadn't cared to show up so far, and that he hadn't helped with
anything, because he was supposedly watching porn in his hotel room all
day, while the members of the technical crew and the guides were instantly
informed about the basic idea of the project. They were also given detailed
information about Thomann's non-existence but we did not give them any
hierarchic directives about what to do with their knowledge but left it up
to them if they wanted to reveal the fake or keep spinning the story. Most
people enjoyed doing the latter and they also kept telling different
versions of the heard information until finally a bubbling geyser kept
erupting in various ways and constantly led to new outbreaks of tittle-tattle.

Thomann's omni-presence at the Biennial most certainly should be read as an
artistic political and collaborative conspiracy.

A little anecdote from the rich pool of occurrences: we did not get our
exhibition catalogues because they could only be handed over to Georg Paul
Thomann himself. 

The basic principles of how the exhibition worked was frightening and well
known at the same time: lots of little white boxes in which art was set up.
There was hardly any contact between the artists who came from more than 80
different countries. Everyone was busy building his or her own little
world. Then, during the final setup phase we found out about an incident,
which took place in our neighborhood through a copied note. 

One year ago, Chien-Chi Chang had been invited to be the official
representative of Taiwan at the Biennial. But then, three days before the
opening, his caption - adhesive letters - had been removed from his cube
virtually over night. 'Taiwan' was replaced with 'Museum of Fine Arts
Taipeh.' But to Chien-Chi Chang the status as an official representative of
Taiwan was very important, because his photography artwork dealt directly
with the inhumane psychiatric system in Taiwan. 

Chien-Chi was trying to get in contact with the Biennial administration and
the chief curator (the German Alfons Hug), but didn't succeed.
Communication was refused.

After that he decided to write an open letter, but the creative inhabitants
of all the little white art-combs didn't seem too interested in the
artist's chagrin as well, who now wanted to leave the Biennial out of protest.

We were interested in the situation and did some research. We found out
that the Chinese delegation had threatened to withdraw their contribution
and to cause massive diplomatic problems. To them, Taiwan was clearly not
an independent country ('One China Policy') and they put pressure on the
Biennial management to get that message out.

The management did not make this international scandal public and it was
quite obvious what determined their demeanor: to keep the super powers at
it. Period.

monochrom decided to show solidarity with Chien-Chi. We wanted to set an
example that artists do not necessarily have to internalize the
fragmentation and isolation that is being imposed upon them by the
structure of the art market, the exhibition business, as well as the
economy containing them. For us, though, this is not about taking a stand
for either the westernized-economical imperialism represented by Taiwan or
for China's old-school Stalinist imperialism. This is about integrity and
solidarity, values that we chose to express through a collaborative act.

Together with other artists from various countries we launched a solidarity
campaign: we took off some adhesive letters of each collaborating country's
signature and donated them to Chien-Chi Chang. monochrom sponsored  the 't'
of Austria, while the Canadians donated one of their three as. The other
participating artists were from Croatia, Singapore, Puerto Rico and Panama.
A lot of artists and curators from other countries refused to support the
campaign for fear of - as they would call it-"negative consequences." But
at least some of the artists were pulled out of their self-referential and
insular national representation cubes that so rigorously emblematized the
artists' work and his or her persona as commodities. 

After some time we managed to attach a sloping, yet legible 'Taiwan' to the
outside wall of Chien-Chi Chan's cube. Numerous journalists took notice of
the campaign and Chien-Chi opened his exhibition in front of a cheering
audience. A few hours later, the security guards had removed the letters
again. We put them back on only to see them taken down anew. We changed our
strategy. The following day we publicly announced a solidarity dance
performance ('We meet here at 4 o'clock to have a radical dance
performance, we dance the word "Taiwan"'); several security officials
prevented it. For the rest of the two months of the mega-exhibition
security officials were constantly on guard in front of Chien-Chi's cube to
avert interventions. 

Some days later, we found out that Chinese and Taiwanese newspapers
massively covered the campaign. One Taiwanese paper used the headline
"Austrian artist Georg Paul Thomann saves 'Taiwan'." In other words, a
non-existing artist saved a country pressed into non-visibility. Who said
that postmodernism can't be radical.

We don't know how many people out there - whether members of the press, the
administrational board of the Biennial or the Chinese or Taiwanese
government - are still enmeshed in our Thomann construction. And we never
got any official feedback from Austria's Department of Art in the Office of
the Federal Chancellor. 

Epilogue: Georg Paul Thomann died on July 21, 2005 when he got involved in
an accident and tried to help a person on the Inntal Highway near the small
Austrian city of Hall in the province of Tirol. He was buried in that same
village on July 26th, by chance not far from a psychiatric hospital. His
marble gravestone is the first worldwide with an engraved URL.

Finally he could cease to not exist, a fine opportunity to kill an
Uebervater who in a sense was our son-but hey, this is Freud's country of
origin, after all.

In November 2005 somebody from Hall called to tell us that Thomann's
gravestone had to be removed from the park because patients of the nearby
psychiatric hospital had started to put down wreaths and flowers on
Thomann's grave and frequently large numbers of patients were kneeling in
front of his gravestone in order to pray for him. To that end, the director
of the hospital initially had the grave covered with drapery, later on the
gravestone was removed and the plastic urn exhumed. We believe that his
grave is under discussion to be rebuilt somewhere else in Hall.

I WANT TO BELIEVE
Georg Paul Thomann
13.3.1945-21.7.2005
www.monochrom.at/thomann

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////monochrom info:

monochrom is an international art-technology-philosophy group (founded in
1993). Its offices are located at Museumsquartier/Vienna.

The group's members are: Johannes Grenzfurthner, Evelyn Fürlinger, Harald
List, Anika Kronberger, Franz Ablinger, Frank Apunkt Schneider, Daniel
Fabry, Günther Friesinger. In November 2005 Roland Gratzer joined as PR
content manager.

The group works with different media and art formats and publishes the
German book and magazine series monochrom.

The group's website functions as a digital art community.
monochrom is highly interested in collaboration and 'forms alliances with
other entities on a regular basis.'

monochrom is an peculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop
attitude, subcultural science and political activism. monochrom's mission,
its passion and quasi-ontological vocation, is primarily the collection,
grouping, registration and querying (liberation?) of the scar tissues
represented by everyday cultural artifacts. This mission is conducted
everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the
seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment.

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