In parallel - as the project is ultimately revealed as an art installation - it initiates a discussion of questions of authorship and ownership, of public perception and curated intention, such as "What defines a contemporary oeuvre?" "What does it mean to be a product of your times?" "What personal history remains in a body of work?" "What products of work are considered as art and for what reasons?" and "In what sense could it be said Joseph Wagenbach exists, or does not exist".

I'm glad you posted this. Haussler has gotten good reviews on this piece, but I was a little disturbed that some people condemned the work outright because they were intentionally misled about its origins. I'm hoping it's a small, temporary and human response to being enthusiastic about something presented under deceptive conditions, because that side-effect of being misled raised some interesting assumptions we make about art work.

Many who viewed it earlier described Joseph Wagenbach as an "outsider" artist, because he was presented as such. To me that meaning was reversed when it was discovered that the public, including various artists and curators were actually the outsiders. I almost want to answer your question "is it wrong to lie for fiction?" with "depends who you lie to" - but that's a bit unfair. Fiction is fiction, we just expect to encounter it in a novel or a theatre production etc, a form with clearly defined structures so that we are voluntarily suspending disbelief.

I think Iris Haussler's initial gesture, even though it involved a deception, (and I'd be a fine one to criticise that!) was extremely generous. I'm thrilled to encounter an art piece from some mysterious source, I hate being inoculated against art works with little printed explanations, and even worse, the longer variety. Her work is good enough that this small unmasking doesn't even begin to explain away the piece.

- L.M. 9-25-2006 3:01 am

I agree with your last statement completely. The content of the work is by no means dependent on it's truth value. This isn't some arch po-mo "gotcha" deal, there's tons of investment in the content. The "outsider" thing is just fascinating as a polemic art problem, and part of what I like about this work is that it sets market criteria aside and exposes all the in/out boundaries as the murky mess they really are.
- sally mckay 9-25-2006 6:08 am

I would agree with Sally that the obvious sincerity of the artist here overrides the superficial lack of "sincerity" of the premise of the artwork. It is a fascinating work because it is not "some arch po-mo 'gotcha' deal" but, at the same time, it isn't a return to essentialist romanticism either. As the artist said at the talk the other night - she'd never make work like Joseph Wagenbach!

The other thing I found disturbing was the viewing of the process of the consumption of Joseph's work by the archives that we encounter. The rationalizing of the irrational is being played out before our eyes and can be considered whether we see the installation as fiction or not. It is this component - the framing of our encounter within the logic of the archive that really clinches the work for me. Just imagine coming across this material in the archives in 25, 50 years. What would be left?
- V.I. (guest) 9-25-2006 7:27 am

The archival photographs online are a clinical juxtaposition to the gritty experience of bumping up against the big creepy sculptures in that little tiny house. I like what you say about the rationalizing of the irrational, however I did find the archival interest in Wagenbach to be the weakest part of the story. If I didn't know that it was fiction already, the line that the archives were there to "assess the cultural value" of the work might have tipped me off. But more likely I would have been overwhelmed by the experience and just gone along with it.
- sally mckay 9-25-2006 7:56 am

Interestingly, even though I do give it more weight than you, Sally, I have to admit that it was the archival component of the project that "blew the cover" of the ruse for me. The archives component didn't quite have the same sense of authenticity - nothing can really compete with the psychic density of the interior of the house - but I felt that it's importance was that it functioned as a kind of surrogate for the hidden art insitituion. The Wagenbach work may not have been situated for us via the gallery - at least not directly and/or immediately - but the archive "assessment", with its tagging and labelling of Wagenbach's work, is just another form of rationalist framing. Both institutions have the effect of mediating their subjects and giving us a "safe" distance from which to view things.
- V.I. (guest) 9-26-2006 5:05 am

V.I. you have more experience dealing with archivists than most of the other viewers.

I agree that it is an integral component, not just a device in the service of a ruse. In an earlier conversation we had, you mentioned that your own take on archives is that "they're institutions made for hiding things as much as sites of revelation". That observation made the piece resonate more for me since it amplifies all the dark mystery implied in Joseph Wagenbach's biography and artefacts.

- L.M. 9-26-2006 6:40 am

Yes, that's right. I was thinking of how symbolically appropriate it was to have the Wagenbach work subsumed by the archive. This is because the archive, while being seen as a benign institution in the service of the public, masks its own "dark mysteries". These mysteries are a result of the categorization process that reduces things to "key words" for referencing purposes. In this it seems easy for a thing to sink to the bottom of the archive as reference codes inevitably become inadequate to the complexity of their object. This interplay between the hidden and the revealed seems essential to the Wagenbach project as a whole.
- V.I. (guest) 9-27-2006 6:25 am

I know there are a lot of people out there who do not like this work. It would be great to hear from some of them as well. As I mentioned, I loved the piece, but I'm very interested in the negative critiques. In other discussion I have heard the argument (third hand) that "the absences and ambivalence in the exhibit basically were abdications of socio-historical responsibility in favour of formalism," meaning, I think, that the holocaust was not addressed directly, and was relegated to a merely fictive background element. This is an interesting critique, and puts the dynamic of those who felt emotionally manipulated into a much more serious context. I did not get to the aritsts talk (dang), but according to this same person, the subject of the holocaust was not brought up until the question period, and then the artist was apparently quite offhand when asked, "How do you think a holocaust survivor and/or a descendant would respond to this exhibit?"

For me, the holocaust content was central to the exhibit, and part of what made it interesting. The artist is German and I understood the fictional artworks to be positioned within the context of German 20th century art. But I am not Jewish, and I am not German, and I already knew it was a story. If I had any kind of personal pain to relate to that content I can imagine I might have found the project offensive, or cathartic, but it would have undoubtedly been quite intensely emotional.
- sally mckay 9-27-2006 5:54 pm

"The character of this old man was very vivid, working out his personal history, including the holocaust, by making big dark sculptural projects that are reminiscent of Anselm Keiffer and directly influenced by Brancusi."

It suddenly occured to me that your statement including the holocaust can be misleading. The holocaust is central because this fictional character is somehow implicated in its perpetration, I never read him as a victim. To me the work would be more about the impossibility of any abdication of responsibility, and that is served very well by the formality of the archival device, and its side effect of hiding as V.I. pointed out. This is also a theme that is possibly of more importance to an artist from Vienna, Austria, a country who did not 'de-nazify' post war and a country that still has not fully acknowledge it's collusion with nazi Germany.
- L.M. 9-27-2006 9:41 pm

your statement including the holocaust can be misleading

Yes I think so. I was confused, actually. I like your analysis.
- sally mckay 9-27-2006 9:51 pm

I should add that I believe a broader context for the work is that of historical and personal isolation & deception, something similar to the issues that the writer W.G. Sebald deals with. I'm wondering if he was ever asked similar questions about the effects his writing may have on a holocaust survivor (especially in reference to A Natural History of destruction , I'm not being rhetorical here, it's suddenly something I want to research.)

- L.M. 9-27-2006 10:01 pm

The holocaust reference - a dot on a map near Bergen-Belsen that is pointed out in the "archivist's tour" - wasn't satisfactorily discussed at the panel partly because there didn't seem to be any follow-up after the artist spoke. Yes, I agree that the artist didn't confront the question head-on but it seemed to me that it was partly because she may, understandably, not be intending to make the possible holocaust reference dominate the work which has many other resonances. It seems to me that Wagenbach's age is intentionally given as being in his early 70s so that, were he to be an actual person, he would not have been a combatant during the war but a boy barely into his teens. He would or would not have been drafted into the Hitler Youth - we don't know and the information is not given. I think his age would have given him a quite different perspective and relationship to issues of culpability than his parents or any older siblings if they existed. In that sense I would disagree with L.M. that there is an implication of responsibility here other than a more broad cultural one. Maybe you could elaborate a bit on how you see him implicated?
- V.I. 9-28-2006 2:46 am

Implication of responsibility is probably too strong a way to put it. A witness to historical events, and perhaps a willing or unwilling participant in the subsequent silence in reference to culpability is probably more accurate. So you are probably correct in asserting a broader cultural responsibility.

Now it can be argued that I am starting to read things in there that may not be her intent, but so much of the best work goes beyond the stated intent of any artist. I find that dot on the map to be a strong focal point in the piece, and I do not expect the artist to necessarily emphasise this in a more literal way. Sometimes shining the light, so to speak, in the direction of the elements surrounding a focal point is very effective.

The more I read these comments the more the breadth of this work unfolds and impresses me.
- L.M. 9-28-2006 3:18 am

The more I read these comments the more...

I agree, and I don't want to suggest this is an end point, but I must thank you both, V.I. and L.M., for taking this up and furthering my initial post of mere enthusiasm into a discussion with some genuine depth.
- sally mckay 9-28-2006 3:28 am

L.M., you're right - I completely agree that the artist's intent can't define the work and with the Wagenbach project meaning has definitely proliferated! Regarding the holocaust question, I was trying to understand Haussler's reluctance to engage the question more fully at the panel as she doesn't seem like the type to shirk responsibility for her production. I felt that there was something else at play.

Sally, I'm sure L.M would agree - it's a pleasure.
- V.I. (guest) 9-28-2006 4:27 am

Joseph Wagenbach, that is me. I would have been too embarrassed to admit as much before Iris Haessler told me on the point of my deparure after the showing that it was all her invention. She seemed to take pity on me when she told me so. I'm happy and relieved. Now I'm not ashamed to have been caught in identifying with a poor old sot like that. It's rather liberating. I'm getting another chance. On my way home, after the visit, I blabbered to every dog and every old guy on the road - not agrssively - just a fellow creature saying hellow.
- hermann janzen 10-02-2006 8:14 pm

I identified with him too.
- sally mckay 10-02-2006 11:07 pm

I'm a little puzzled by the indignant responses of those viewers who felt that they'd become victims of a hoax when they found out that Joseph Wagenbach was a fictional character. I only felt relief, freed of any burden of responsibility for this poor chap. And that light feeling still continues. And I'm asking myself if that isn't the essential aim of any work of art: to allow us to feel all the complexities of our relationship to the world without that quality of guilt that often creeps into our sensiblities when we look at the dreadful actualities of life. And with that in mind I question the holocaust discussion above. My sense is that a more explicit reference to the holocaust might have exploded the frame of this work. As to the lightness that I felt after my viewing and the breaking down of the bariers of shyness that normally keep us from talking to strangers on the street; that, too, it seems to me, is what art is really all about.
hermann janzen (extending my comments above)
- hermann janzen 10-03-2006 6:26 am

I really respect the point that you're making, hermann janzen, and I totally agree when you say "a more explicit reference to the holocaust might have exploded the frame of this work". I was making an argument against the suggestion that the absence of a stronger reference in the work was somehow wrong. Much of the conversation above is more about a historical nerdishness some of us share. Personally, I really responded to that aspect of the work, but at the same time I really like what you write about in both your comments, because the work is strong enough to evoke a powerful response without a more detailed historical context than Haussler provides.

It just gets better and better to me.
- L.M. 10-03-2006 6:50 am