Central London converging on Milch-space, January/March 1996
An array of text-based work appeared in central London from the end of january 1996 till the middle of march 1996. Various statements were placed in different ways, converging on works within a warehouse space in central London.
Format:
The beginnings were word fragments in public places – fly posters stickers and a billboard. These continued appearing around central London for the duration of the showing.
After about two weeks, some five hundred people each received an anonymous letter by post. The addressees included many working in art, politics and the media. A few days later the same people received an invitation written on a T-shirt to see the Milch-space work . At the same time, a personal contact advertisement appeared in various periodicals.
The indoor works were further writings presented in a number of ways. The central work was about Nothing. Presentation continued for four weeks with zenz invigilating as possibly/ambiguously/logically not excludedly implied in the contact adverts.
The external parts:
fly posters, stickers, billboard
A2 posters of statements from the NONONZENZ catalogue were fly-posted around central London. These formed the preliminary flurry of seemedly unlinked maxims that were to start focussing on the subsequent work in the Milch-space. No attribution was made on any of the postings. They simply asserted themselves, albeit in the same helvetica-non-style of zenz' T-shirts already produced.
10 000 stickers of a satirically contentious nature were printed and applied all over central London. Their nature means that, with no enshrined right of free speech in Britain, they cannot be described here in more detail. Obviously, they too were unattributed.
A 5 m by 3 m billboard statement was hung next to some existent, commercial advertising boards overlooking the junction of Tottenham Court and Charing Cross roads. The statement was changed every ten days.
lonely heart’s ad’
A lengthy wish list of personal traits was given. Each trait increased recursively the selectivity. The cumulative effect sought perhaps some form of unattainable eco-Übermensch. Instead of direct contact with an individual, the message yielded notification of the Milch-space works.The advertisement appeared in the London/british periodicals Time Out, Loot, Private Eye, The Big Issue, The Guardian and The Observer.
Five hundred copies of a single page of anonymous text were sent by post. The letter offered no clues as to the origin of the mailer. The sheet was what some deemed hate mail. Its essence was an anti-bourgeois rant directed at the reader, a microcosm of the whole project.
invitation
Each recipient of the mailing was then sent an invitation to the Milch-space opening. This was a simple, perfunctory note announcing the dates of the show. It was printed on a white T-shirt in the same style as all zenz’s NONONZENZ statements, with the show title across the chest. No link was made to the text mail received days earlier.
[Milch-space was at 144 Charing Cross Road, London WC1 – now demolished for Crossrail. The showing area was about twelve metres long , ten wide and three high. It was plainly painted in white for this show.]
Within Milch-space were:
upon entry
In the corridor leading to the Milch space was a tape loop replaying a monotone voice (zenz') reciting the text mail piece. The sound source was not apparent. Further in were copies of the lonely-hearts ad’s from the various periodicals and large photographs of the various texts posted around London.
wailing wall
Ten 2.5m high columns of text were hung along the twelve metre wall. All the columns constituted a single-sentence, ranting list inspired by Rabelais. Its form emulated the lists on many engraved stone walls which list the dead.
object
The silk screen and its wooden frame which is used to produce the NONONZENZ T-shirt ‘OBJECT’ was hung on a large wall by itself, lit by a single spot light. Underneath was a gallery-style information label saying 51cmx61cmx3.5cm; silk screen on softwood frame; UNTITLED.
rip off
A trio of pads next to each other formed an idiocy triptych. Each A1-sized perforated pad had part of a list of idiocies printed on it and was mounted on an easel. Above the three pads were the words rip off. These words were as much an instruction as a title, thus the pages could be torn off to form a set of three: a large but incomplete list describing materialist suburbia. The pads were replaced as they were used up (with further pads re-exhibited in de Appel, Amsterdam in April 1997).
empty room
At the centre of the space was a three metre cube of a room. This room was dimly lit by a very large, underpowered, almost cartoon-style, bare light bulb. The illumination level was neither pleasant nor irritating. The walls were a monotone mid-grey. Upon adjusting to the lighting level, one could discern that nothing plays on my mind was written on each of the four walls in a grey only slightly different in tone from the walls. This un-ambient room could be freely entered and left despite the rest of the Milch space not being perceptible from within.
upon leaving
An invigilator (usually zenz, as advertised) sat and made available the use of a Chambers dictionary. Copies of the text mail were encouraged to be taken and copied and (e)mailed/faxed to all as freeware. It also proved necessary to assure many of the tentative that the ambiguity of the words rip off was deliberate. Permission was neither being given nor withheld.
invisible costs
The substantial production costs of the works were borne almost completely by zenz through incurring personal debt. Sponsorship was eschewed as a principle and part of the work. As a critique of materialism, there would have been too much contradiction in appending a corporate logo and, as a critique of authority, too much contradiction in citing the assistance of a funding body.
© anand zenz