trace #2 (conceptual art redux: sans-object/performance/concept)

FAUX-SIMULACRUM (HEADLESS PRAYING MANTIS PLAYING POSSUM) PIECE

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Instructions:

1.
Make a series of online documentations (complete with photographs,
videos, artist statements, dates, locations) of staged offline
gallery performances and installations that never actually occur.
These fake performances should (not) occur in places like
Waynesville, North Carolina, or Big Arm, Montana, – places that
aren't likely to be visited by anyone with a mind to verify anything.
Incrementally post announcements of these exhibits with links to
their online documentation at rhizome.org.

2.
Next, declare the whole series of fake art projects part of an
overarching real art project and exhibit that project in some real
art gallery somewhere likely to be visited by someone with a mind to
verify something. Put a bunch of computers in the real gallery, each
displaying one of the online documentations of the fake shows.

3.
Next, document that real show and upload its documentation alongside
the documentation of the fake shows.

4.
Next, write a Borges-esque critique of the entire project, replete
with cryptic details, hallucinatory in their vague specificity.
Explain how, to fluxus artists, "the textual… recording of a work's
production… [is] as much part of the finished 'art work' as the
object or event itself." Reference Baudrillard. Post the critique
to rhizome.org.

5.
Wait a few days, and then post an announcement to rhizome.org that
the previous critique of the project was really all there was to the
project. There was no overarching real show of various fake shows.
There weren't even any real fake shows.

6.
On second thought, don't even write the fake critique. Instead, post
an anouncement to rhizome.org stating that there is no critique
(real, fake, or otherwise). Instead, the very email announcing that
there is no critique constitutes the project itself.

7.
This email is that announcement. This email constitutes the project itself.

8a.
Briefly consider not even posting this email and letting the
non-event of its non-posting constitute the project itself.

8b.
Change your mind, but still include the fact that you considered not
posting this email, thus inscribing a trace of your hesitation into
the project itself (namely, the posting of this email), and
suggesting to those reading this email the possibility of an
alternative non-event wherein you didn't really post this email.

9.
Really post this email.

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