Yesterday I went for another walk to the Textile Fashion Center, with the special purpose to pick up some Misinformation.
For the duration of this summer’s Sculpture Biennial, in the entrance hall of the Fashion Center, just opposite the genuine information desk, you will also find a Falskkiosk (Fake Kiosk).
During the opening week, inside the Falskkiosk, you would (most of the time) find the artist Momus, also known as Nicholas Currie.
When not talking to people, he was writing a series of ‘newsletters’ to be left in the kiosk for future visitors to read. They are all entitled “Official misinformation service of the Borås International Sculpture Biennial 2014.”
Going back this week, I found he had left a series of 45 different letters behind. I think I’ve now managed to collect them all – but I have not yet read them all. Some of them seem to be quite a clever mix of facts, fiction and philosophy, though.
For example, in one of them he writes:
I don’t mean to imply that the things I’m saying in these newsletters are insincere. They’re mostly lies, but lies don’t have to be insincere; one writes what one would sincerely like to be the case, rather than what one knows to be the case. In this sense, lies are a bit like progressive politics; both are based on what ought to be rather than what is.
I once wrote a book full of lies about Scotland. On the cover was the motto: EVERY LIE CREATES THE PARALLELL WORLD IN WHICH IT IS TRUE.
9 comments:
What a great and unique idea. I like the design of the fake articles.
I love this philosophy. I'll have to see if I can replicate the style.
He is really an avant garde artist. Did you meet him? This is so interesting that here is what I would like. Open your other blog for awhile and use it exclusively for his quotes...post a few a week. I want to know what he has to say. Or, post his quotes once or twice a week here on this blog.
If you click on my link to his website you can download all 45 newsletters from there, Ginny.
Adrian, if you're successful, camp site owners might start paying you to come and park your van at their site and hand out fake information to the tourists.
I was a bit sceptic when I first heard about it, Mersad - but after reading one or two of the first newsletters, I went back for more :)
I think that quote needs a great deal more thought and analysis than I'm prepared to give time to at the moment. I'm not sure how convinced I am by his statement. That probably means that his work, if art, is pretty consistent with many other works of art I've seen.
I'm not "convinced" either, Graham. Just amused enough by the first few I randomly picked up, to go back later to collect the whole series - to read at my own pace. (Mainly because they also contain a stranger's observations of my own town and country and other works of art that I'll be looking at myself.)
I like the idea but I think the idea of a philosophical newsletter would put me off!
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