Research Catalogue

Periphrasis (for a ditto, ditto device) is an experimentally designed scenario in the draft stage, a think-tank and rehearsal for a future exhibition—but Periphrasis (for a ditto, ditto device) is also an exhibition in itself. Starting from the idea of the copy as a nowadays omnipresent yet more and more invisible artistic practice and form, seven Austrian and international participants discuss different strategies of appropriation. At the center of this public reflection on methodologies is the potential of the act of copying, its generative force and mimetic productivity. The purpose of this test setting is to collect current copying methods and to analyze their modes. By subjecting the copy to the act of copying again, new copying techniques will derive from this process, creating a research loop that is self-reflective and auto-generative at the same time.

The materials used in a work of art are not necessarily determined from the start. The contemporary artistic work process involves a great deal of experimenting in order to arrive at the most suitable material to realize an idea. In this test phase one also risks altering the complete work, its parameters, characteristics, and not least its final appearance. This process of material-based transformation has a two-fold effect: first, on the artwork itself (its haptic conditions), and then on its perception, which in turn influences the specific form of aesthetic recognition actuated by the artwork.

This exhibition discusses the question of what the term material means in relation to artistic work. Starting from a classical understanding that describes the materials of art only retrospectively, the exhibition explores the impossibility of understanding material as something separated from the artist and the working process, and thus as something that can be definitively named. Rather, it is proposed to understand material as something that is subject to constant change and exists as such only at the moment of its comprehension as material. The concept of material thus changes from a fixed fact to a concept of a relational process.