decreet 031 juni 2010104
SrV.
A few months ago I came across an article in a German art Journal. [1] What became of the art stars of the eighties?, the
author asked himself. There was a picture of Jiri Georg Dokoupil, his mouth firmly shut, a three months old beard
covering up his chin. He looked into the camera with an expression on his face and in his eyes as if to say: I have
nothing to say! I became curious, for I have known Dokoupil for a very long time as a light hearted, most humane
talkative person. Not only on traditional art subjects like the essence of beauty, the history of aesthetics or the nature
of religion, but also on topics of more mundane reasoning as the reality of sexual intercourse in Spain, the best
Thai food and books on the Russian invasion of Berlin, changes of regulations on table tennis in the Czech republic
or minor but significant modifications in social life on the beach at Rio de Janeiro. [2] In the article Dokoupil was given
a tragic artistic fate as representative of the Neuen Wilden, a long forgotten epitaph from the early eighties wave in
expressionist painting, more eloquently dubbed as Miihlheimer Freiheit, that is freedom in Mühlheim, referring to a
factory in the wastelands on the outskirts of Cologne, Germany. Mühl in German means Mill, but is phonetically
equivalent with Müll, meaning waste, garbage to be disposed of. Tragic but true, Dokoupil art was to be disposed of,
suggested the article by a certain Hans-Joachim Miiller. Who the fuck is Hans-Joachim MMer? MMer? MMer? Wait
a minute...Right. MMer the garbage man, the waste paper journalist, the critical miller that grinds the grains of the art
world, the critic that grinds the brains of the artists. Miller, the critical critic of the other Miller's freedom, that wants to
dispose of this freedom. How low canyou get! Doesn't that sound as a clear case of jalousie de métier? Time to get down
to business, time to kill your darlings, time to criticize the critic and dispose of the false alarm, time to get in touch
with Dokoupil and separate the goats from the sheep. So I gave Dokoupil a call. "Never mind the bMocks," was his reply,
when I confronted him with the sleazy article of nobody mister Miller. "There is new article coming out in Monopol
by Sebastian Frenzel in April. Im am called a free radical, an experimental avant garde painter, and that's exactly right.
Why don't you get your ass over here, as soon as possible. I bought this newphantastic studio. You should see it. Why
don't you write this book about me, we Ve been talking about so long. I '11 buy you this digital voice recorder I just saw
at a shop around the corner. We can talk for 500 hours." [3] Thatta boy! "But Georg," I said, "You know how long it takes
to work out 500 hours of conversation? It will take me a 5 years. It will be a manuscript of 10.000 pages. No way, josé.
Sorry' But Dokoupil did n't see a problem. "You don't have to do it all by yourself. Just talk to me.
At the end of the nineteen eighties,
the pop art ideology had really
rocked the art world into the star
and superstar system of the common
entertainment industry. Twenty
years ago sergeant Pepper really told
the band to play. The fall of the Berlin
wall, probably a far cry from the
battle of Jericho, marked the begin
ning of a new area in the interna
tional cultural industry on both sides
of the former iron curtain. Timing,
marketing and conceptual strategy
as tools of advertising and promotion
of the agents and agitators of the new
generation of artists all served one
goal: branding. Above all, the artist,
facing the huge task to surpass all
other artists in the survival race of the fittest, should limit his productive capacity to what the market demanded: one
brand, one recognizable popular article, that could be merchandized as commodity on display at the booming circuit
of galleries, art fairs, museums for the rapidly growing cultural classes of the nouveau riche in the new middle east,
the new far west, or the new deep south. The new art of the nineteen nineties was sold in Dubai, millennium artists
proliferated in Los Angeles, and hotspot contemporary artists go to Shanghai, Melbourne or Rio de Janeiro. Art has
become a system of worldwide distribution and circulation, a fashionable article of the current season, that is replaced
every three months. If Andy Warhol, another ideological popMst that passed away before the cultural watershed of the
late eighties, was famous for predicting that "everybody" would be famous in the future for fifteen minutes, claiming
the right to be famous that long in the mass media nowadays you must bring a million dollar to finance your own
advertisement. If you have something interesting to say at all, five seconds free publicity is all you get. Sorry folks in
Paris, London, New York and other former art capitals of the world. It's not happening anymore. The party is over.
Headlines turned grey, art elites died of aids or cancer, hypes passed by like a quick shower to get rid of a day's dust.
I have my people to work it out and
make it into a book." It sounded like
a good idea. So I bought a ticket and
took off.
Berlin, December 20,2009.17.00 p.m.
Potzdammer Platz. A nasty cold wind
fM of white snow blows over the
new center of a united Germany,
symbolized by the facades of
DaimlerChiysler Sony and the
Carlton Ritz, built on the former
waste lands between East and West
Berlin. I am to meet Dokoupil in his
new studio at Gleis Dreieck, the
U-bahn Station in Schöneberg,
close to the Landwehrkanal between
Kreuzberg and Charlottenburg.
To the northeast, high in the sky, you see the green cube on top of the air tunnel of Anhalter Bahnhof; to the northwest
you catch a glimpse the golden eagle's wings on top of the staff of Nike, the goddess of victory standing on top of the
Siegessaule, in the middle of Tiergarten. Walking towards Lückenwalder strasse, the neighborhood becomes a factory
landscape. Dark. Black. Dirty and Desolate. Then, out of nowhere, there is this rectangular building, lit from within a
mMitude of large windows covered by white cotton curtains. I recognize the style. This must be it. Dokoupil's new
studio. There is no doorbell. I sit down on the windowsill, facing a concrete parking lot and wait. He will show up.
I haven't seen Dokoupil for seven years, since his show at the Museum of Milton Keynes, England, September 2002.
There had been shows in Las Palmas/Gran Canaria, Regenburg, Prague, Hamburg, Zurich. Other show were coming
in Prague, and Bielefeld, where I had studied criminology and gotten my masters. I was curious how my old sparring
partner in jogging, swimming and workout in Cologne, Madrid and Tenerife was doing. All we had done over the
past seven years was call each other in the middle of the night just to say good bye, keep in touch and ask what's up?
We had been good friends, critical, but never nasty.
Serious, but also funny. Direct, but never sticky. We had inspired each other's work, you could say, but also knew when
it was time to move on. I was just wondering as to his latest discoveries on the planet of painting. It was time for some
real action.
Then, the shrieking of car wheels around the corner. Next moment, a blue Volvo station car 1999 bumps up the parking lot,
draws a circle at 20 miles an hour, spreading the smell of burning rubber. I am not surprised. It's always the same
gimmick. The party boss emerging from his busy life elsewhere in town. The slam of the door. But then I gasp. It's
Dokoupil for sure! But he seems to have grown in length as well as width. Two meters high, one meter wide. As usual
he is dressed in black. He wears a gigantic teeshirt with a golden cross symmetrical cross on his chest, reading: My
heaven is your hell. As Jean Paul Sartre observed: L' enfèr, c'est l'autre. Hell is always the other person. But then Arthur
Rimbaud said: Je suis l'autre. I am the other person. What happened? Dokoupil: "I waited for you. I gained twenty kilo's.
My weight is 100 kilo's by now. Finally you came." I should have known. Jiri's strive for perfection included the tactics
to always blame the other guy first. Shoot first and talk later! "Right", I said, "It's all my fault. I shouldn't have
neglected you for such a long time. Now where is the digital voice recorder, you promised me? From the first second
I want to record every little piece of talk between ourselves, just to make sure the truth and nothing but the truth comes
out." Meanwhile the the driver of the car had emerged to and handed me a tiny metal device. "Here you go," said the
chauffeur, "The VN-7800PC digital voice recorder, its already running on channel 6. Just press this button, when you
want to pause." Dokoupil looked me in the eyes. "Remember the good time we had in New York, twenty years ago, with
Robert Green, Juanna Aizpuro from Madrid, the girl from Tenerife, when your were doing your act with the lyre? Or that
same month in Barcelona, where we took a swim on the roof of the hotel in the middle of the night and worked on the
manifesto after nature? Well I want that same good atmosphere back, right now, right here in Berlin. I am fat. True. But
I would like to start to play table tennis with you immediately, and lose half a kilo a day. Twenty days of heavy sweating
and I am back to a reasonable size. I ordered my Russian trainer to come by within the hour. He was second to be the
world champion in table tennis. He only had to win one more point against the Russian world champion. You know, it
takes eleven points to become a world champion. The first ten points are easy. But the last point. That's it. The striving
for perfection. Anyway, today you will see my sweating like a pig". Says Jiri. I told him I had gained some weight also
decreet 03 juni 20101051
