Peter Buggenhout. It's a strange, strange world Sally by Studio Luc Derycke

Peter Buggenhout ‘It’s a strange, strange world, Sally’

‘It’s a strange, strange world, Sally’ *

Recent sculptures and installations by Peter Buggenhout

*. Published by Lannoo

Peter Buggenhout *

‘It’s a strange, strange world, Sally’ *

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∞ †

*. ‘It’s a strange world isn’t it, Sandy? Yeah…’ was the leitmotif of Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986). When creating this book – and giving it a title – this phrase kept floating through my mind: ‘It’s a strange world isn’t it, Sally.’ And there isn’t even a Sally in the film. Memory plays strange tricks. I decided to retain the ‘tainted’ version. [PB] † ∞ **. Michaël Amy – Tell me, what is your work about? Peter Buggenhout – My goal is to achieve analogies for how I feel our world functions. Imagine yourself on the train, entering Brussels, passing behind all those old houses that have been completely transformed over time. New parts have been added to them, old parts have been torn down, a gabled roof has made way for a flat roof, windows with wood frames have been replaced by windows with plastic frames, and the design of the glass panes has changed. Some window and door embrasures have been sealed shut. New owners have modified these buildings in ways which were unforeseeable. The same is true of the room we are standing in, which †. Dialogue in Blue Velvet between Sandy and Jeffrey: ‘I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert.’ – ‘That’s for me to know and for you to find out.’ [TWR] ∞. Users manual: The footnotes accompanying the text (and its footnotes [and its footnotes’ footnotes]) are written or consist of quotations chosen by different authors, indicated by their initials: Sofie Van Loo [SVL], Peter Buggenhout [PB], Hans Theys [HT] and Thomas W. Rieger [TWR].

has become my studio: It has gone through a great many changes since it was built over one century ago. It first served as the gym of this Neo-Gothic former boy’s school. Then, it was transformed into a puppet theater. Next, it became a neighborhood movie theater, and then, twenty years ago, it became my studio. This space bears the marks of all these changes. No one knows what transformation this space will undergo next. Or take the sea: It washes over the shore, leaves something behind, rolls over the shore over and over again, gradually building up a beach. Or take this conversation. We jump from one point to another. A conversation is unpredictable – it’s chaotic, one has no overview of it. I am likewise inspired by this working class neighborhood I live in, where everything is in a state of flux. The flux of reality is one of the principal subjects of my work. I did not start out with this view of my work. Instead, I discovered the subject of my work once I had produced quite a bit of sculpture. I studied mathematics. Math uses the language of symbols. Images of

iv things – which are, therefore, symbols of things – fail to seize the totality. That’s why I use analogy. Analogy stands so much closer to reality. My work does not include the least bit of symbolism. It is completely abstract. When we look at an image, we instinctively aim to recognize something in it. My sculptures do not escape this entirely natural impulse on the part of the beholder. However, my works are built up in such a way that each impression one has of what one sculpture could refer to is dismantled as one walks around the work. Once you have finished walking around one of my sculptures, you cannot but conclude that it resembles nothing other than itself. The materials I use are all abject: dust, stomachs, innards, blood, hair. These materials lose their form and meaning once they are removed from their original context. Once this is achieved, these things become repellent. The act of reading symbols, which is ingrained in all of us, makes us overlook the actual appearance of the object. By dismantling this tendency of ours to work with symbols, I

bring the viewer back to the object itself, and all its inherent qualities which symbolism bypasses. That is why I work with abject materials. Bataille said the abject was invented in order to declassify things. One declassifies by ignoring symbolism. MA – I see connections between some of your sculp ture and 1950’s art informel. PB – Yes, and no. Some critics have described my works as the archeological finds of the future – which is only one among many possible interpretations of my work. I never speak of a correct or incorrect interpretation, as these categories disappear. My sculpture defies categorization. Each interpretation of my work needs to be toppled. I aim to return to sculpture as object, as thing. I do not aim for an exploration of sculpture as a system of forms. Witness the different venues where my work has been shown. My sculpture can function as an ethnographic object, an archeological find, a work of art, or a thing produced by nature. MA – How do you produce the sculptures whose surfaces are covered with the stomach of a cow?

v PB – The stomachs are handled while moist. They are wet when they come back from the tanners. I stretch a stomach over a core. This core may have any form whatsoever – I sometimes even use the remains of my wife’s work, such as fiberglass molds, to produce the skeletons for my sculpture. Or, I may use polyurethane foam or polystyrene as the basic shape, which I then cover up with blood, dust or a cow’s stomach I do not aim for a particular form. The objects I use as the core for my sculpture are likewise abject, as they are removed from their original context. They thereby lose their meaning and are looked upon with aversion. All of these found objects are things I happen upon, independent of aesthetic considerations. Instead, I am interested in these objects’ architectonic suitability. As I often say, if I need to plant a nail in a wall and do not have a hammer, then a number of objects appear before me as suitable alternatives. The objects that constitute the core of my sculptures are suitable in this way. MA – How did you arrive at the idea of using blood, stomachs and innards?

PB – My father-in-law is a butcher. I am interested in how things grow from inside outwards – like a child, or like a seed that turns into a tree. I am interested in unpredictability – that’s what my work is in large measure about, the trajectory of forms, thoughts, ideas, feelings. Then again, there are forms, thoughts, ideas, feelings that are shaped from the outside. This led me to the dust-works. Dust falls upon things. It changes the form and meaning of things. Dust covers the original form like a blanket which – as Picasso noted – is the gentlest possible protection for an object. Picasso let dust lie all over the place. Did you know that in the 19th century, dust was left to swirl in the corners of houses? Dust was considered an intermediary between a known and an unknown world. MA – How do you obtain these materials? PB – The dust is gathered from the vacuum cleaners of cleaning companies. The hair comes from the tails of horses. I began making the bloodworks, and the hair sculptures, two years ago. The blood is obtained from slaughterhouses and

vi treated with preservatives. My studio becomes a terrible mess when I work on the blood sculptures. Many of these sculptures need to be discarded because they fail to communicate. Those are the most difficult sculptures to produce, as they are subject to so much change over time. How do you handle what is unpredictable? – You cannot control it. Each truth is variable. I am interested in how we handle what is unpredictable. I am interested in actions that cannot be controlled. In my work, I unleash chaos. My blood-sculptures, in particular, are very intuitive and visceral – a sort of manipulation of what is unpredictable. My sculptures do not require preparatory drawings or models. I work on a bunch of sculptures simultaneously. My sculptures are acts of improvisation. They have their point of origin in my confidence in my worldview. MA – Your works are titled. PB – The dust-works all receive the same title: The blind leading the blind, followed by a number. Louise Bourgeois gave that title to one of her works. The title goes back to Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s painting

of that parable at the Capodimonte in Naples. The blind do not know where they come from, or where they are going. The blood-works are all titled Gorgo, which refers back to Medusa. Perseus used his shield as a mirror to see Medusa and slay her. A mirror of reality: That is the beginning of the art of painting. The recent sculptures with innards are all titled Mont Ventoux, after Petrarch. Petrarch wanted to catalogue the world he saw in front of him, but overlooked the very mountain he stood upon. You need distance in order to classify things. The titles are not tied to the appearance of the sculptures. Instead, they reflect my way of seeing the world. MA – When do you know when a sculpture is fin ished? How can we tell whether or not a sculpture is successful? PB – The sculpture must be completely abstract. It must be devoid of all symbolic content. It is only finished once it has a personality that is very much its own. Like people, each sculpture must develop a different character.

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When is the work finished, you ask? It probably never is. I just stop working on it at a given moment. I compare this process to meeting someone on a street: You begin the conversation by exchanging pleasantries, and depending on the situation you find yourself in, you feel after five, ten, fifteen or twenty minutes that it is time to call it a day. The same is true of these sculptures. Things are not systematically planned. MA – A somber mood pervades your work. Your sculpture brings up themes of breakdown and aban donment. PB – I am not sure you are right. The opposite may be true. I let the viewer decide. Destruction leads ultimately to reconstruction, in the same way that dead leaves nurture trees. We are confronted to a constant back and forth. The situation is in flux. A wide range of connections can be made. MA – You began as a painter. PB – I painted until 1990 and then stopped altogether because painting is always symbolic. Painting is not a concrete object. I needed five years to learn how to make sculpture. I began working with

the stomachs and innards in 1995. MA – Tell me again: Why do you feel this need to reject all symbolism from your work? PB – It’s an obsession of mine. I want to make something that is a part of reality – like a person. I want to arrive at something that allows for greater interaction. I aim for the sense of wonder. I want to confront reality – not representations of things. From the moment the work refers to something else, it becomes symbolic. MA – What art do you feel drawn to? PB – I am interested in West African art. I am deeply interested in the works produced by the Dogon and the Bambara people. Nboli statues fascinate me. I am also mesmerized by Buddhist scholar stones. Those stones are removed from nature and dated to the year when they receive their bases. I have closer links to these kinds of expression than to any other art. Art fails to inspire me, as ninety-nine percent of it is symbolic. MA – But African sculpture is not without symbolic content.a

viii PB – The symbolism of Nboli statues disappears as the offers accrue. Although the statues are initially fraught with signs and symbols, a transformation takes place as a result of ritual performances. Both the original statue and its meaning are encapsulated in the materials of ritual. Only those who are initiated recognize the symbolism of the statue. But this is true of all art that is symbolic – you have to know the meaning of those symbols. Those who are not initiated, on the other hand, find themselves confronted to a fascinating mystery. Some Dogon statues become formless and unrecognizable as they are covered with the many offers that are made to them. MA – Which books inspire you? PB – Perec’s La vie mode d’emploi (Life: A User’s Manual, 1978), Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn (Die Ringe des Saturn, 1995). The rings are composed of fragments of a moon that came too close to Saturn and exploded. The particles of the destroyed moon may yet come back together again to form a new moon. Coming too close to the truth is dangerous. It

may lead to destruction, which leads to rebuilding. Perec’s book is unreadable, although you cannot let go of it. You can jump into it anywhere you want. For Perec, life amounts to a long enumeration. The book describes an apartment building, with all of its inhabitants and all of their belongings. It’s a completely amorphous situation. That book comes so very close to reality. It isn’t nihilistic. It isn’t negative or condescending. Instead, it speaks of great feeling for life. Sebald also has great love for people. These writers know how people react, and how they function. My dust-sculptures seize life itself. They are filled with particles of people – mainly cells and hair – and are chockfull of traces of the environments these people live in. ‘Seizing the chaos of life: a conversation with Peter Buggenhout’ by Michaël Amy, Sculpture Magazine, vol. 28, No. 5, June 2009, p. 25–29.

Contents

Sofie Van Loo The Language(s) of Silent â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Borderlinkingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and Analogue Abstraction beyond the Narrative in the work of Peter Buggenhout

Plates

Index of illustrations in text General index

197 201

Colophon

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The Language(s) of Silent ‘Borderlink ing’ and Analogue Abstraction beyond the Narrative in the work of Peter Buggenhout — Sofie Van Loo 1

28 November 2008: Snippets From An Imaginary-Real Conversation In The World Of Narratives b

On the evening of 28 November 2008, a Friday, when Lady Sabbath had just entered, tongues, lungs and testicles with salad and bread were served outdoors in Tel Aviv.b You are an experimental eater. And he is an excellent cook. Where did you meet your 1 1. For the concept of ‘borderlinking’ and ‘analogy’ see Bracha L. Ettinger, The Matrixial Border space, 2006; Sofie Van Loo, ‘Analogies’, in [exhibition catalogue] Sincerely, a Friend: Peter Buggenhout, with text by Douglas Park, Peter De Graeve and Sofie Van Loo, ‘De res derelictae’, De Garage, Cultural Centre Mechelen, 2006; Sofie Van Loo, ‘Keelkantelingen/ Throat Turnings’, in [exhibition catalogue] Beklem ming en verademing in kunst/Oppression and Re lief in Art, with introduction by Paul Vandenbroeck and essays by Bracha L. Ettinger and Sofie Van Loo (curator), Antwerp Royal Museum for Fine Arts, with Gynaika, MER. Paper Kunsthalle, 2006 –2007.

2. This text was written February, 2009

incredible assistant? He used to be a student, is also an artist who started a gallery in Ghent where I once exhibited. […] It’s warm for the time of year. In Moscow it’s minus 15°C. [Story about heater that stopped working at minus 20°]. No one can outdo that. I couldn’t survive it, just leave me in Tel Aviv. […] The art world in Moscow, Tel Aviv, ‘Belgium’ and Mumbai with the recent attacks there lies shattered on the table. […] What do you mean a control freak? […] There we were, in India, with our concepts of the ‘abject’ and the ‘uncanny’. […] Let’s drink to the health of Georges Perec! ‘My problem with ordering things is that it doesn’t sink in. As soon as I finish putting things in order, the order is obsolete.’ 3 Excellent wine, this Golan Heights red, […] Café Leopold is around the corner from the gallery. In hindsight, it’s all so unreal. […] Post-colonialism, localism and globalism are new guises of old-school colonialism. Let’s keep it simple! We’ve only just started. […] Perhaps one can only escape infantilism in playfulness.c It seems that journalists can no longer get into Gaza. Nobody can get into Gaza… Even worse, nobody can get out of Gaza anymore […]. Let’s concentrate on 2 3. « Mon problème, avec les classements, c’est qu’ils ne durent pas… » Georges Perec, Espè ces d’espaces, 1974, p. 19.ii

ii. « j ’aime : les parcs, les jardins, le papier quadrillé, les stylos, les pâtes fraîches, Chardin, le jazz, les trains, être en avance, le basilic, marcher dans Paris, l’Angleterre, l’Ecosse, les lacs, les îles, les chats, la salade de tomate épépinée et pelée, les puzzles, le cinéma américain, Klee, Verne, les machines à écrire, la forme octagonale, […] la plupart des symphonies de Haydn, Sei Shonagon, les melons et les pastèques. je n ’aime pas : les légumes, les montres-bracelets, Bergman, Karajan, le nylon, le « kitsch », Slavik, les lunettes de soleil, le sport, les stations de ski, les voitures, la pipe, la moustache, les Champs-Elysées,

la radio, les journaux, le music-hall, le cirque, […] les pointes Bic, Marin Karmitz, les banquets, l’abus des italiques, Bruckner, le disco, la haute-fidélité […]. » Georges Perec, J’aime/Je n’aime pas, L’Arc, n° 76, 1979, p. 38–39.* [PB]

*. Ah, the summary, the fragment! In the 1980s I collected summaries and published texts that were summaries of summaries. And it is true, men with pipes can’t be trusted. VDB! Van Gogh! Duchamp! Gombrovicz! (The only exception: Captain Haddock) I prefer Sei Shonagon: ‘The camphor tree usually stands alone and avoids rubbing shoulders with other trees. Its jumble of branches has something threatening and alienating; yet the fact that the stem divides into a thousand branches has called up an association with people in love. (For that matter, I wonder who the first one was to discover that it has that many branches).’ I quote

one summary from my endless collection because it could summon an image of Buggenhout’s work: ‘She set up her demonic laboratory with her normal paraphernalia, filled it with an assortment of incense, tablets with illegible letters, the wreckage of long-sunk ships, many limbs of mourned and buried bodies, noses and fingers, nails of those crucified with bits of flesh still attached, the catchment of blood from cloven cadavers crushed craniums snatched from the jaws of mutilated animals.’ [HT]

art, much more simple […]. The point is to see.4 We’re still looking, I’m afraid. […] Will it ever be enough? One critic interpreted your sculpture as a crashed plane, while I was longing for some non-classifying abstraction.5 You might as well see a complex love relationship in it; or the materialised excretion of a few days hard thinking. But thinking by many people at once. Or it could be contiguous bodies and brains, feelings, effects, defects and thoughts. But this still isn’t abstraction. What is abstraction,6 if it isn’t logical order? And what exactly is chaos, if it’s not emotional chaos? […] Abstraction is silent. Have you read the news today? No, we are ‘in’ the news or at least near the ‘news’. Information is a construction like any other 7 but one swimming in embroidered credibility. This is also a kind of accumulation. I have a problem with group exhibitions with a national audience and global theme […] You said it was an installation?d It’s a site-specific work, or perhaps an installation with separate sculptures. The works can function on their own. It looked more like an installation 3 4. In following and reflecting upon Georges Didi-Huberman (Was wir sehen blickt uns an. Zur Metapsychologie des Bildes, 1999) Juliane Rebentisch coins the felicitous term ‘Sehen in der Schwebe’ (seeing in abeyance or seeing in limbo). Beyond Frank Stella’s tautological verdict ‘What you see is what you see’ or James Elkins’ ‘What you see is what you know.’ Rebentischwguage. Interestingly enough, this argument came up within the context of the ‘psycho-active’ dimension of Minimalist art objects like those of Tony Smith, Robert Morris and Donald Judd. I would like to refer to Juliane Rebentisch, ‘Mourning for Disco. Minimalismus, Theatralität, eine Theorie des Sehens und eine Installation’, in Christian Kravagna (ed.), Agenda. Perspektiven kritischer Kunst, 2000, p. 93–105. On the seeing of disgusting objects (in which I, of course, would include garbage or debris) see my text ‘Katze ohne Grinsen. James Elkins Volkshochschule des Sehens’, in Texte zur Kunst 58, 2005, 121–123. [TWR] 5. ‘It is as if an organ intended for transplantation was left behind on a metal operating table rather

than being inserted into a new body. His installations are his sculptures’ salver.’ Jeroen Laureyns, ‘Een omgekeerde vorm van archeologie. Het werk van Peter Buggenhout’ [Archeology in reverse. The work of Peter Buggenhout] (http://www.kunstonline.info/ levelone). [PB] 6. ‘Once a sound sculpture has entered the categories of thirds and/or has been reduced to ohms, this free space, too, is lost. It would be better to reject immediately the calamitous consequences of denuding.’ Peter Buggenhout, Daily reports and comments, 28.10.2007. 7. « Il y a beaucoup de choses place SaintSulpice […]. Un grand nombre, sinon la plupart, de ces choses ont été décrite, inventoriées, photographiées, racontées ou récensées. Mon propos dans les pages qui suivent a plutôt été de décrire le reste : ce que l’on ne note généralement pas. » Georges Perec, Tentative d’épuisement d’un lieu pa risien, 1975/1983. [PB]

on the scale model.e Yes, but we couldn’t build a wall. Do you need a wall to make an installation? It should be possible, this is the Middle-East after all? You stay a painter, in one way or another. There’s nothing hanging on the wall; there’s nothing even leaning against it. Everything stands or hangs unaided. Nothing stands on its own, that is the myth of the autonomous artwork. […] Sculpture isn’t really the right word. Object is even worse. These are images that trigger the imagination. You can project onto it whatever you want.8 There will be less reflecting this time. We didn’t bring any glass. Projecting will also be a problem, there are no screens. Yet formlessness does have its own shape. I risk becoming repetitive. As Bataille already said. Formlessness can indeed be surprising. […] The work will probably be given a political interpretation. Do you think so? In what way? I can think of a lot of interpretations, but a political one is the least expected that I’ve heard so far. The work is an analogy for the uncontrollable and the unpredictable, it is complex, simple, abstract, realistic; in the best case it triggers the viewers imagination and I’ve just been told that that is sublime. Of course, politics can also be uncontrol4 8. ‘… what is the connection between – I point to the objects: air, the pimple on your nose, the blue in her sweater (pointing to the pretty redhaired girl with freckles, who looked at me with irritation), the sun’s infra-red radiation at this moment, the acorns in the tree outside, …? Answer: none. Art (by art I mean the art of Art History) has the quality/potential to link all these things in a meaningful whole. This explains its consoling character within a fragmented world.’ Peter Buggenhout, Daily reports and comments, 04.11.2008.

lable and unpredictable. But what does politics mean here and now? Are you referring to the dust? Seen from the side the other sculpture looks like an excavator,9 but when you view it from the front it’s just something shapeless that could be anything. There’s nothing apocalyptic10 about it, even if tragedy tip-toes through the work. Is it possible for something to resemble formlessness? Entrenched abstraction perhaps. Viewers can make of it what they will. […] It would be fascinating to show your work in such a magnificent, international-style house. After all, we’re in the quintessentially Bauhaus city, a UNESCO world heritage site since 2003. And despite all that, there are signs of decayed glory here and there. Although when your work is added: no nostalgia for utopias, no utopia-like nostalgia. Someone argues: Zionism is passé! […] When does a surprise turn into a mistake? Keep it simple. When does an error turn into a surprise? Keep it bland. Do you know how to catch and cook frogs? No, not again, not that horrible story with the frogs that came back to life.f That is one possible definition of the abject. No, of the ‘uncanny’. I can’t stand frogs legs. So concentrate on your tongue, your lungs and your testicles. 5 9. Moreover, within this context I’d like to introduce Peter Blegvad’s (following C.G. Jung’s?) term ‘numinous object’ which kind of transcends the interaction between beholder and (art)object somewhere beyond the sublime. ‘A numinous object is charged like a condenser. It distorts induction and resonates ambiguously. In Surrealist parlance, it is ‘convulsive’, with the power to abrogate definition from its surroundings and become the solitary and radiant focus, the ‘omphalos’ or navel, of an entire world. An object with sufficient numinous charge can stop time.’ Peter Blegvad, ‘On numinous objects and their manufacture’, www.ibiblio.org/mal/blegvad/numinous. [TWR]

10. ‘[I]f Bosch’s vision of hell is prophetic, the prophecy is not so much in the details – haunting and grotesque as they are – but in the whole. Or, to put it another way, in what constitutes the space of hell. There is no horizon there. There is no continuity between actions, there are no pauses, no paths, no pattern, no past and no future g. There is only the clamor of the disparate, fragmentary present. Everywhere there are surprises and sensations, yet nowhere is there any outcome. Nothing flows through: everything interrupts. There is a kind of spatial delirium. […] Compare this space to what one sees in a typical CNN news bulletin, or a mass media

Please pass the salad. Is there nothing else I can order? I just remembered I was a vegetarian. Perhaps, if you’re quick, we can take in a movie. Tel Aviv has such an intense atmosphere. Maybe it’s the cappuccinos here or could it be something completely different? It’s in the air, a daft statement. What’s underground is even crazier. What’ll happen with the two dust sculptures of ‘The Blind Leading the Blind’ after the exhibition? Shipping back shouldn’t be a problem. They’ll crawl out of the museum on their own. But it did happen: Just then, frogs suddenly start to rain from the sky. Didn’t you see Magnolia? h (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999). A fascinating scene or just an exaggeration in overdrive. On 28 November 2008: The Al-Quassam Brigades launched five homemade projectiles at Israeli targets and the Al-Mujahidin Brigades shot two missiles. This was in response to the death of a Palestinian, which resulted from aerial bombardment north of Khan Younis on Friday afternoon. One man died and several others were wounded after Israeli planes fired on the An-Nasser Brigades in the city of Al-Qurara. Three men were taken to Nasser Hospital near Khan Younis. Three loud explosions 6 commentary. There is a comparable incoherence, a comparable wilderness of separate excitements, a similar frenzy. […] What the painting by Bosch does is to remind us – if prophecies can be called reminders – that the first step towards building an alternative world has to be a refusal of the worldpicture implanted in our minds and all the false promises used everywhere to justify and idealize the delinquent and insatiable need to sell. Another space is vitally necessary. […] The act of resistance means not only refusing to accept the absurdity of the world-picture offered us, but denouncing it. And when hell is denounced from within, it ceases to be

hell. Bosch’ prophesy refers to the world picture that the media present us with today under the pressure of globalization […]’ John Berger, ‘Against the Great Defeat in the World’, in The shape of a pocket, 2003. [PB]

are reported in the neighbourhood; ambulances had difficulty reaching the affected area. Israeli soldiers fired tear gas, rubber coated steel bullets and sound bombs at a group – consisting of Palestinian inhabitants, peace activists from Bil’in and Israeli and international peace activists – that walked from Bethlehem to the separation wall in protestation against the occupation. A nine-year-old boy was wounded.11 On 28 November 2008: we’ll witness the first national e-mail-free day [this message was distributed a week earlier by e-mail. Today, a reminder arrived]. On 28 November 1908: Claude-Lévi Strauss was born.12 There are times that the consequence of consequences can take on insane proportions, probably because they are analysed from the perspective of origins and causes. Luckily it doesn’t keep raining frogs. Guts apparently, and with all that dust. During the ‘Eskimo Blues’ exhibit in Diepenheim (Netherlands, 1999) I served viewers steaming innards: stomach, intestines, kidneys, liver. At the time Michel Dewilde wrote, ‘Here he put the innards back in the subject.’ Your stomach almost turns at the very idea and this with a mouth full of testicle. Someone left a piece of lung on the serv7 11. ‘Wenn man den Nicht-Ort des Krieges transparent macht, wird er in der Phantasie vorstellbar, in der ‘Echtzeit’ der Information dagegen entzieht er sich.’ Jean Baudrillard, ‘Die Illusion des Krieges’, in Die Illusion des Endes, 1994. [TWR] 12. The man who dared to think of divergence in such a way that he noted that every new insight (e.g. in another culture) did away with the difference. His practical evocation of India, seen from a plane: like the underside of a knotted carpet. His beautiful observation that what we call primitive cultures are often the waning traces of high cultures, shapeless ends, not shapeless be-

ginningsi. Marc van Roosmalen, in Blootvoets door de Amazone [Barefoot through the Amazon] (2008), said of a tribe that its culture had, alas, died out. The only thing that they have retained is their custom of occasionally barbecuing and eating people. [HT]

ing dish and lit a cigarette. Someone else ordered chocolate cake, truffles, and a pomegranate desert. So it came from the blues after all, at least those of the Eskimos? j The melancholy has gone from your work. It may all still seem to be getting abject, neither the intestine works nor the Gorgos can simply or merely be called abject. It goes beyond working with abject material, putting the abject on display, with defining or recognising it. Tomorrow we’ll get something Italian. Eat some (re-)presentation in order to give some abstraction? Or, eat the formless to give abstract formlessness. Yes, the blind leading the blind:k where do we come from, where are we going? The art is in knowing when to stop. Question of feeling. And of transforming a lot of junk.13 That’s just the point, it’s not junk. Now, I wouldn’t call that a point. Ultimately, it comes close to being a vanishing point. Let us regard the silence that the accumulation emits. Imagination is a desire for abstraction that triggers imagination. Another accumulation. [Beirut’s Sunday Smile (2007) is playing in the background: One more time…] 8 13. Michael Thompson wonderfully describes rubbish as a phenomenon that ‘continues to exist in a timeless and valueless limbo.’ (Michael Thompson, Rubbish theory: the creation and destruction of value, 1979, p. 56) The connection between time, order and garbage has also been stated by John Scanlan, in On Garbage, 2005: ‘Notions of ambiguity and confusion inform a symbolism of garbage because they actually signal a split in understanding, or a disconnection that leaves us unsure about what things are, or what they belong.’ [TWR]

‘Mont Ventoux’: The slow birth of consciousness 14 Monika Szewczyk wrote, ‘what if conversation is understood not as the space of seeing, but of coming to terms with certain forms of blindness?’15 What if art is an imaginary space of or for seeing various types of (turning-over) blindness from which a different attunement of perspective to insight, a different language, different awareness and abstraction can be dislodged? How would these differ (if they differ) from earlier and other attunements, especially the rational enlightened views or romantic fantasies of fusion and confusion? Peter Buggenhout’s sculptures and installations also cause a language shift,16 albeit with an imagined slowing and a slowing gaze. His intestine sculptures are not confusing or apocalyptic linguistic blindsiding as you might think at first (cf. the title of the dust sculptures The Blind Leading the Blind)17 but intuitive sidelong glances or post-linguistic and pre-linguistic language decelerators of binary logic and dialectical clash. They digest the rubble that (de)constructions and formal structures leave disgorged along the wayl as useless material. They start 9 14. » Und so wollen wir denn gleich im Anfang den Grundgedanken aller physiologischen Untersuchung sowohl über den Gesichtssinn als über alle anderen Sinne aussprechen, den wir im Verfolg der Untersuchung uns nicht oft genug wiederholen können, und ohne den durchaus kleine Einsicht in die Physiologie der Sinne möglich ist… Dass die Energien des Lichten, des Dunkeln, des Farbigen, nicht den äußeren Dingen, den Ursachen der Erregung, sondern der Sehsinnsubstanz selbst immanent sind… dass das Lichte, das Schattige, und die Farben nicht dem Sinn als etwas fertiges Außerliches existieren,… Die Wesen der äußeren Dinge und dessen was wir äußeres Licht nennen, kennen wir nicht, wir kennen nur die Wesenheiten unserer Sinne; und von den äußeren Dingen wissen wir nur, in wiefern sie auf uns in unseren Energien wirken « J. Müller, Zur vergleichenden Physiologie des Gesichtssinnes des Menschen und der Thiere, 1826, p. 44–45. [PB] 15. Monika Szewczyk, Art of Conversation, Part I, Journal e-flux, p. 1 of 7. [SVL]

16. Already in the 1960s artists like Arman (‘Le Plein’ in Iris Clert’s ‘Micro Salon’, 1960, or his ‘Poubelle organique’ the same year at Centre Pompidou) or even Gordon Matta-Clark (his temporary installation ‘Garbage Wall’ 1970 in New York) developed an eye for the aesthetics of garbage. One could speak of a paradigm shift not only in visual arts during these years, which turned aesthetic tradition upside down: ephemera and garbage instead of ‘eternal’ works, seriality and repetition instead of uniqueness, imitation and copy instead of originality. A shift also to be followed in literature of the 1970s, for example in Michel Tournier’s Les Météores (1975) or in Italo Calvino’s La poubelle agrée (1977), to name only some few. See also Monika Wagner and Dietmar Rübel, Material in Kunst und Alltag, 2002. [TWR] 17. For a few years now, Peter Buggenhout’s works have been listed under the following three titles, followed by a number: ‘The blind leading the blind #1, 2, …’, ‘Gorgo #1, 2, …’ and ‘Mont Ventoux #1, 2, …’. Each title stands for a particular type of

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where binary and dialectical logic stops. What cognitive, non-affective logic has left fragile and impaired, what the binary word has excised from view and left undigested and what can be considered abandoned material is shifted in sidelong expectation toward imagination, awareness, analogue and language. In this mode of affective pre-linguistic and post-linguistic language or as a rotated affective, non-cognitive gaze or of Bracha L. Ettinger’s matrixial ‘borderlinking’ time-space,18 his sculptures operate not only before and parallel to logic’s ordering or dialectical strategies, but also after this ordering has taken place. They are a transformation of the waste products that proceed from rational, non-affective logic’s ordering and that are felt to be chaotic or confusing, something between object(ive) and subject(ive), between the organic and the technological/medium. Peter Buggenhout’s art prompts us to imagine another logic, one intrinsically linked to an analogical abstraction, one that can be felt emotionally and mentally and that fascinates for its apparent formlessness.19 In this sense, the image sets the stage to a nearly impossible extent to allow space and time to breath, to allow the indigestible can be digested while, in this 10 sculpture; in their tri-unity they each explain Peter Buggenhout’s universe. 18. ‘Art evokes further instances of transsubjectivity that embrace and produce new partial subjects. It makes almost-impossible new borderlinking available out of elements and links that are already available partially and piecemeal. These elements will be transformed in ways that cannot be conceived of prior to the artwork itself, as they shift with-in-the-screen of vision inside the painting. In art today, it is trauma more than fantasy that determines the trajectory of what is, outside art, a forever no-time and no-place. Art links the iii. ‘It’s an obsession of mine. I want to make something that is a part of reality – like a person. I want to arrive at something that allows for greater interaction. I aim for the sense of wonder. I want to confront reality – not representations of things. From the moment the work refers to something else, it becomes symbolic.’ [PB] in ‘Seizing the Chaos of Life: A Conversation with Peter Buggenhout’, by Michaël Amy, Sculpture, vol. 28 (5), June 2009, p. 25.

too-early to the too-late, and plants them in the world’s time as matrixial time. To metamorphose a traumatic Thing-encounteriii and Thing-event is to extract the too early and too late from indifference toward with-in-visibility with-in-difference. New affects awaken archaic affects and conjointly offer a wit(h)ness-Thing its first apparition. The contemporary beauty effect approaches the effect of the sublime when it points us not only to the place of relationship to our own trauma but also to the relation of the “I” of the trauma of unknown others and to the unknown in the known other. The artwork processes a matrixial time where a memory of

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tilted position, still speaking to the imagination in silence. This speaking should not be approached expressively; a possible keeping and being silent that is not regarded as an absence. The only possibility, from the logical or narrative perspective, seems to be to purge away blind spots or dominate and control them with the binary logic of classification, representation, autobiographical narrative or to replace them with illustrations to a familiar conceptual and thematic narrative, especially that of the dialectic clash/dialogue in which death that falls to earth could lead to purportedly true conversations; but this often means merely ignoring, turning away from something, a nearly nothing that does not accept replacement by chaos, i.e. blind spots. Thanks to its use of its analogue functioning20 its existence alongside logical-binary excised work, Peter Buggenhout’s art more easily triggers the viewer’s analogical imagination.21 It hurls the viewer backward upon his/her power of imagination and confronts him/her with his/her responsibility for affective and intuitive expression when cognitive/non-affective and binary logic, a simplifying conspectus, suddenly gives up. Buggenhout’s sculptures and installations are abstract, but they are not abstractions 11 oblivion that cannot otherwise be processed finds its place.’ Bracha L. Ettinger, ‘Wit(h)nessing Trauma and the Matrixial Gaze’, in Bracha L. Ettinger, The Matrixial Borderspace, 2006, p. 149–150. [SVL] 19. ‘[…] tremendum et fascinosum’. [PB]iv 20. On ‘analogy’ see Sofie Van Loo, ‘Analogies’, in [exhibition catalogue] Sincerely, a Friend: Peter Buggenhout, with text by Douglas Park, Peter De Graeve and Sofie Van Loo, for the exhibition ‘De res derelictae’ held at De Garage cultural centre in Mechelen from 11 March to 23 April 2006 [no pagination], and Sofie Van Loo, ‘Keelkantelingen/Throat Turnings’, in [exhibition catalogue] Beklemming en

verademing in kunst/Oppression and Relief in Art, Bracha L. Ettinger and Sofie Van Loo, Antwerp Royal Museum for Fine Arts, with Gynaika, Mer Paper Kunsthalle, 2006–2007, p. 50–57; Barbara Maria Stafford, Visual Analogy. Consciousness as the Art of Connecting, 1999. [SVL] 21. ‘For some these rocks represented a focus for religious or philosophic meditation and served for contemplation prior to writing poems or painting. In the essay Taihu Rocks,v Bai Juyi wrote: “The famous mountains, the hundred caves and valleys are all presented by these rocks. Sit there and you can see at a glance a hundred hills spread over a

iv. ‘Mijn fascinatie voor zijn werk is vermengd met een duidelijke afkeer voor het visceralem : “Dégout d’une nourriture d’une saleté, d’un déchet, d’une ordure. Spasmes et vomissements qui me protègent.” Dit extract is afkomstig uit het bekende boek van Julia Kristeva Pouvoirs de l’horreur (1980) waarin zij haar theorie over het abjecte uiteen zet. Dit boek bleek verhelderend in verband met mijn eigen initiële reacties en de angst voor het lichamelijke.’ Michel Dewilde, Peter Buggenhout – Op het ogenblik geen oplossing, cat. verschenen n.a.v. de gelijknamige tentoonstelling in De Bond, Brugge. [PB]

v. ‘Onen of the oldest and most treasured Gongshi are the Taihu rocks from the vast drainage areas of Lake Tai, west of Suzhou in Jiangsu province. These outcrops of karst limestone are hard but brittle. Those formed under water are more precious because of their fresh, soft colour and their multiple, linked perforations. These rocks are drilled and then placed in the lake for wind and water to work their magic on them for generations. Then with a map from their ancestors, current generations “farm” these magnificent pieces of art from the lake floor. These rocks are usually large and they are best known for garden rocks. We are told

†

of the figurative-representative or the rational-conceptual. They are generatively and transformingly abstract, mentally and emotionally abstract. Logic is a created illusion, something imaginary as in analogical thinking, in the sense that logic is changeable, unstable and ill-functioning without analogy, at least in the long term. Analogue and logical cannot simply be seen as one another’s opposites, despite their different characters. When logic is not imposed from above, it is analogical. Rather than being resolved, similarities, differences and (the chance of) overturning become attuned to one another in analogy via nearly impossible feats of balance. Peter Buggenhout shows the back room of art creation 22 and its implications. In a literal sense, the work shows immediately what has taken place in the studio. Peter Buggenhout considers the amassing aspect of history, reality and imagination and the transformation of the residue that is buried under the bulk and pushed from the image as inseparable dimensions of every physical/biological, psychological, social, artistic, cultural, (art)historical and cosmic process. His art signifies an analogy to the transformation processes of history, reality and imagination; every work of art is an analogue, an entity 12 thousand lines in a rock the size of a fist.” ’ Bai Juyi in his essay ‘Taihu Rocks’, cited on www.art-by-nature. nl. [PB] 22. ‘The stomachs are handled while moist. They are wet when they come back from the tanners. I stretch a stomach over a core. This core may have any form whatsoever – I sometimes even use the remains of my wife’s sculpture, such as fiberglass molds, to produce the skeletons for my sculpture. Or, I may use polyurethane foam or polystyrene as the basic shape, which I then cover up with blood, dust or a cow’s stomach I do not aim for a particular form. The objects I use as the core for my sculpture are

likewise abject, as they are removed from their original context. They thereby lose their meaning and are looked upon with aversion. All of these found objects are things I happen upon, independent of aesthetic considerations. Instead, I am interested in these objects’ architectonic suitability. As I often say, if I need to plant a nail in a wall and do not have a hammer, then a number of objects appear before me as suitable alternatives. The objects that constitute the core of my sculptures are suitable in this way.’o [PB] in ‘Seizing the Chaos of Life. A Conversation with Peter Buggenhout’, by Michaël Amy, Sculpture, June 2009, 28 (5), p. 25–29.

there are actually no more Taihu Stones from Taihu, unless they are recycled. However, similar Scholar Stones come from Anhui, in southern Shandong, and northern Guangdong Provinces. Some of the darker stone comes from the Nanling Mountains of Northern Guangdong, and are related to the Ink Jade stone.’ Quotation from yellow-mountain.net/ newsletter/041804/index.htm. [PB]†

†. ‘Yesterday, October 30th 2008, George Nuku saw some dried, tattooed heads of his ancestors exhibited in a museum in Brussels. How did he feel about this? “A lot of people think the heads should return to our country. I don’t. Originally, they were made to be moved. We live in a pretty rough country. Moving the body of a killed friend is almost impossible. So we cut off the heads of our friends and family members to bring them home. They were easily recognisable because of the moko, of course. Actually, the moko looks better when you’re dead and when your head is dried. But I think the heads should be exhibited in a more respectful manner.

Now they are looked down upon. They are exhibited too low. I would like to make cabinets for them, so they can be hidden most of the time and be looked at in a more respectful way.” Hans Theys, All about George Nuku, 2008.

alongside the binary-logical word or alongside the illustration to all that already exists, which triggers an evolving imagination. That is why he wants their concentrated coalescence and operation to enter his work rooted in reality, without ignoring any of the errors, misunderstandings and failures or deconstructing any of the decay from this motley whole that might give birth to language, consciousness at any moment, however impossible that may appear – however uncertain this may be – at first sight. The artist’s intention is to grow accustomed to an amassing, abstract image that can fascinate in the hope that via analogical imagination, the encounter with complex, motley wholes will be experienced as less burdensome on logic. The accumulation has a transformational and imagining 23 nature. Peter Buggenhout’s realistic art also creates room for potential construction but expands construction with an affective imagination, an analogical power. Buggenhout’s work shows that binary logic as ordering and structuring system intended to control chaos/confusion can, in a real but phantasmatic sense, come about in a fairly chaotic and unstructured manner, but that our minds rebel against this and can sometimes not even conceive of it. They 13 23. ‘On a crisp October p morning in 1989 the sun ascended above the Atlantic Ocean and turned its gaze on a team of young researchers as they swarmed over what may be the largest archeological site in the world. The mound they occupied covers three thousand acres and in places rises more than 155 feet above a low-lying island. It’s mass, estimated at 100 million tons, and its volume, estimated at 2,9 billion cube feet, make it one of the largest man made structures in North America. And it’s known to be a treasure trove – a Pompeii, a Tikal, a Valley of the Kings – of artifacts from the most advanced civilization the planet has ever seen. The site

was Fresh Kills landfill, on Staten Island, next to New York city, a repository of garbage that, when shut down sometime in the near future, will have reached a height of 505 feet above sea level, making it the highest geographic feature along a fifteen-hundredmile stretch of the Atlantic seaboard running north from Florida all the way to Maine.’ William Rathje, ‘Yes wonderful things (the archeology of garbage)’ in Tales of the tip, Art on Garbage, 1999, p. 80–81.vi [PB]

vi. See also the Land Use Datebase of the Center for Land Use Interpretation re: Fresh Kills Dump: http://ludb.clui.org. See also Mira Engler, De signing America’s Waste Landscapes, 2004. In Mark Dion’s fantastic projects ‘History Trash Dig’ (1995), ‘Raiding Neptun’s Vault’ (1997/98) and ‘Tate Thames Dig’ (1999) the artist inks the practice of amateur beachcombing and archeological digs in waste areas to scientific classifying, collecting and museum display. See Robert Williams, ‘Disjecta Reliquiae. The Tate Thames Dig’, in Mark Dion. Archeology, 1999, p. 72–101. [TWR] o.

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seem doomed to using as guide a comprehensive structure that quickly becomes a monolithic perspective from which things are seen and judged/condemned.24 Our senses cannot always become attuned with ease to complex matters.25 The more people desperately grasp this monolithic block of binary logic, the more potential imagination and knowledge is lost, the more death joins the journey.26 The analogical images – the installation with dust sculptures in the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art – can be considered an analogy for the way in which binary and dialectic logic comes about and for the loss of imagination and knowledge that it produces; but it is also an analogy for the affective, intuitive way of encountering things in certain situations, whether these be emotional or mental object particles or a combination of the two. Nearly everything is a tilting, a possible fall and balancing; success with its potential failure and pure failure give spur to a new start, even though the solution is not endless and without limit. Buggenhout’s art calls to mind the present’s past and opens it to a future;27 but it does not allow this future to suffocate in predictions, even though that meant that viewers were confronted with something 14 24. ‘De jacht op de betekenis lijkt volgens de Seigneur zelfs “… veel op wat de honden van Aesopus overkwam die iets in de zee zagen drijven dat op een lijk leek en omdat ze niet dichterbij konden komen het water begonnen te drinken om een weg erheen droog te leggen, tot ze erin stikten.”’ Erwin Mortier, ‘Kort pleidooi voor enig gezond misverstand en de vitaliteit van het vergeten’, in Het vergeten van het geheugen, Studium generale 2007–2008. [PB] 25. ‘The horror! The horror!’, Kurtz in Joseph Conrad, Heart Of Darkness, 1902. [PB]vii 26. ‘Culture is the enormous rolling machine that gives order and structure to our world by pushvii. ‘… on the strategies of fear or how nature demands its rights; the laws of lawlessness, the absence of laws…’ Peter Buggenhout, Daily reports and comments, 28.01.2005. viii. ‘Once upon a time in a near future’ could be an accurate description of my work. [PB] q

ing lots of things to the borders. The rolling machine leaves lots of masses of rubbish, debris and dust behind, pushes it to the left and the right. It’s up to the artist to regenerate and transform debris in order it can be handled more easily and maybe bring hope bringing matter.’ Peter Buggenhout, Daily reports and comments, 28.05.2002. 27. ‘When the artist designs installations round his own sculptures, they seem to want to underline the sculptures’ homeless character. A second ‘outside’ arises there where an “inside” could have been created. Peter Buggenhout exercises a reverse archaeology.viii Whereas archaeology’s objective is to

that so far no single memory can memoriser in all its dimensions and aspects. Yet this did not mean that it freed itself from also memory: becoming accustomed to the image is finding an opening to imagination. Ostensible chaos has its own organisational and ordering principles that can seem invisible to common sense, but when triggered by attunement to certain situations, these can seek solutions at a given time in a given place in a specific situation. In this sense, Buggenhout’s art does not resist logic or attack language or concepts or descend into a totally uncognitive, languageless space where frozen will power and impulse reign. It analogically expands the concept logic, with which it could associate and want to associate, by expecting it. Reality contains no ‘as-suchness’. In other words: the divide between affective analogue and cognitive logic is purely arbitrary; it has led in one direction to idealism/romanticism and in another to conceptualism/realism. The intestine sculptures with intestines and stomachs from cows and horses serve as decomposing look-outs, the analogues that trigger a potentially other language in which cognition/logic are challenged to become attuned to the affective/intuitive without having to become separated from 15 peel back the layers of time patiently and to expose history, the artist imposes layer upon layer to create compacted timeix where originally there was nothing. Archaeology’s scalpel is reversed in Buggenhout’s work.’ Jeroen Laureyns, op. cit. [PB]

IX. My works are like relics of the past that radiate strangely in this world, battered and homeless once and for all. The essential power of these objects is liberated in proportion to the viewer’s goodwill, the slow pace at which he/she reads: the willingness to study them is a conditio sine qua non for seeing them as relic of what they perhaps once may have been. [PB]

28 s

them, without having to negate, translate, recuperate them or turn them into clichés. They digest the negligence of overviews; they bring slow images, potential words, consciousness to the surface. They withdraw from binary consciousness. Thus far, Peter Buggenhout’s art has inspired various texts linked by their efforts to express a pre-linguistic universe. Since over the years a similar linguistic revolution has taken place in his own art, the question becomes how this post-linguistic, pre-linguistic s 28 and analogical universe may, may possibly or may not, be attuned to a presumptive linguistic area. Peter Buggenhout’s analogical thinking does not exclude a logic with other words, but slows and shifts it forward and drags it behind. It uses the wiring in the work to do this. It invites us to look in between, look in, look out, look sideways, and thus to put overall impressions and comprehension into perspective. The intention does not appear to be a long-term slow-down, but a more speedy insight into the niceties, the subtleties and a humorous and adventurous treatment of (un)pleasant surprises. This attunement’s use of a sensing exterior should aid understanding of the motley whole. This may be the reason why it might be best to abandon the 16 28. ‘[…] in zijn boek Le Jugement de Paris begint Hubert Damisch met een onderzoek naar wat de psychoanalyse te zeggen heeft over schoonheid. Daarbij gebruikt hij onder andere een citaat van Freud: “Beauty (and charm) are originally attributes of sexual object. It is worth remarking that the genitals themselves, the side of which is always exciting, are nevertheless hardly ever judged to be beautiful: the quality of beauty seems, instead, to attack to certain secondary characters.”’ Edith Doove, ‘Dat waarvan je houdt is altijd mooi’, in Wolken zijn geen bollen, 2002, p. 9, cat. n.a.v. ‘Gebroed’ in De Brakke Grond,

Peter Buggenhout en Berlinde De Bruyckere, Amsterdam 2002. [PB] t

division between pre-linguistic, post-linguistic and logical-linguistic. Time and time again the deferred question arises of how an ‘other wordly’ logic can be thought, one not severed from analogical thinking, which was often the case in a historical sense, and that permits the analogue also to undergo greater refinement. Is there a logic that is not severed from affection yet that offers an abstraction? Can one conceive of an analogue that is not personal, autobiographically narrative or confusing? One possible answer lies in the illusions that accompany a work. Possible illusions do not abrogate the works and the works do abrogate the possible illusions. The viewer is confronted with his/her imagination, his/her compulsion to develop foundations for his/her illusions. S/he is also confronted with the risk of accepting these foundations as ‘real’, and so of hindering all other possible illusions. When Peter Buggenhout left painting u behind in 1989, he moved on to producing larger installations that included tipping and balance in an unaccentuated form. These works also included abstract drawings that aroused two types of image that have since come to be known as ‘Mont Ventoux’ v intestine sculptures – which had 17

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starting point for the outer/unobstructed image. Yet there is likewise no merger of the two definitions of analogy that would trigger to a disanalogy or at least a Hegelian super-reconstructed variation.93 The Neo-Platonists began mixing things in the hope of achieving their highest goal: the ultimate unity comingled with infinity and negativity. The Neo-Aristotelians are mainly responsible for imposing proportional mathematics on things, e.g. on affects, in the hope of being able to control them. Since these could not carry on working in the images participation, they were easily reduced to d/effects. In other words: both started to suffer from a similar problem: the desire to impose something on the image and the world that would provide the answer that they wanted to hear.94 In a borderlinking analogue, the particles can no longer be imagined using bipolar poles nor can they be brought closer together using contradiction (cf. Anaximander, Heraclitus), which increases the desire for a stable (but insight-crushing) balance and a dialectic contradiction. A borderlinking analogue uses analogy and the motley complex of illusions and insights sprout from this to create possible borderlinks from which openings to the logical can 48 93. ‘I propose that at certain key moments in the past, and irrevocably with the Jena romantics at the turn of the nineteenth century, analogy as a reciprocating method and mentality was overturned by “disanalogy”. I call this massive cultural implosion into insurmountable and unrepresentable contradiction – separated by uncommunicative emptiness or clogged with conflicting distinctions – allegory, to indicate its literary origins within negative hermeneutics. […] Umberto Eco recently ridiculed it as “Hermetic semiosis”, the cabalistic obsession and paranoid credulity that uncritically leaps to link everything in the cosmos to everyxxv. ‘Better a comfortable lie than an uncomfortable truth (at least that’s what most of us think).’ Peter Buggenhout, Daily reports and comments, 29.10.1997. ††

††. At the same time, Nietzsche spoke in Be yond Good and Evil about ‘the most fundamental will not to know’. And that is not wrong either. Rather than bringing rest to the unknown by thinking, one will always try first to ignore the unknown or unexplained. When that doesn’t work one will try to destroy it quickly. Few dare to embrace the difference or respect ambiguity. [HT]

thing else.’ Barbara Maria Stafford, 1999, op. cit., p. 7–8. [SVL] 94. ‘The unknown is fraught with danger, unease, worry. Instinct’s first prompt is to put an end to this situation. […] Rule one: better any explanation than none at all.’ Friedrich Nietzsche xxv [PB]

ba.

arise. If an analogy slows binary logic when it gets homogenising tendencies and shifts these in affectively, intuitively and with imagination, it is a borderlinking analogue that transforms a possible philosophy of analogy into something that can be a starting/entry point into an affective-cognitive logic. It could be argued that this operates analogously to the way in which matrixial gaze and phallic gaze operate in the Ettingerian universe and that they could become further attuned to one another. Bracha L. Ettinger does not exclude the phallic, binary gaze – that would make the matrixial gaze phallic – her painting with its colour-lines and theory of matrixial borderspace inspires the question how both can become further attuned. One could think that Peter Buggenhout’s sculptures and installations are grafted onto the world’s flux and complexity as a motley whole and that it also offers a way of dealing with it. Peter Buggenhout’s art incorporates no aloof gaze toward the flux and complexity of this motley whole, but shows how it can be dealt with and how errors and deterioration cannot be excluded a priori or a posteriori;ba it repeatedly prompts viewers to think up creative solutions to specific situations that also arise 49

during the artistic process. A solo exhibition of Peter Buggenhout’s work in Lokaal 01 in Breda bore the title ‘The Future Tradition’. It can be said in 2009 that Peter Buggenhout displays and compares intensely concentrated ‘nows’ that, tilting and balancing, start to open themselves to imagination and consciousness.95

50 95. » Das Zen ist in dieser Hinsicht der reinen Versenkungsmystik verwandt. Wer mystischer Erfahrungen nicht teilhaftig ist, bleibt, wie immer er sich auch drehe und wende, außerhalb stehen. Dieses Gesetz, dem alle echte Mystik gehorcht, lässt keine Ausnahme zu. Dem widerspricht nicht, dass es eine verschwenderische Fülle heilig gehaltener Zen-Texte gibt. Sie haben indessen die Eigenschaft, nur dem ihren lebensspendenden Sinn zu offenbaren, der aller entscheidenden Erfahrungen gewürdigt worden ist und somit aus diesen Texten die Bestätigung dessen herauszulesen vermag, was er unabhängig von ihnen schon hat und ist. « Eugen

Herrigel, Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschießens. Der Zen-Weg, 2004, p. 16. [PB]

previous page and right : ‘Mont Ventoux #2’, 2006 Polyester, iron, papier maché, prepared cow stomachs, (h) 83 × 58 × 63 cm

‘Eskimo Blues #2’, 1999 Plastic, wood, polyester, prepared cow stomach, (h) 100 × 145 × 75 cm Saatchi Collection, London, GB

‘Gorgo #14’, 2007 Polyester, epoxy, polyurethane, aluminium, iron, horsehair, blood over a core of debris, (h) 126 × 162 × 88 cm Saatchi Collection, London, GB

‘Gorgo #14’ (detail), 2007 Polyester, epoxy, polyurethane, aluminium, iron, horsehair, blood over a core of debris, (h) 126 × 162 × 88 cm Saatchi Collection, London, GB

‘Gorgo #14’, 2007 Polyester, epoxy, polyurethane, aluminium, iron, horsehair, blood over a core of debris, (h) 126 × 162 × 88 cm Saatchi Collection, London, GB

ÂŠ Photo: Nele De Roo

‘The blind leading the blind #23’, 2008 Polyester, epoxy, polyurethane, aluminium, iron, household dust over a core of debris, (h) 72 × 91 × 148 cm, Glass box: (h) 95 × 152 × 117 cm Rubell Family Collection, Miami, US

‘The blind leading the blind #13’, 2007 Textile, wood, iron, horsehair, household dust over a core of debris, (h) 104 × 97 × 77 cm

Studio view ‘The blind leading the blind #11’, 2007 Polyester, epoxy, polyurethane, polystyrene, iron, wood, papier maché, household dust over a core of debris, (h) 124 × 198 × 103 cm Collection Hauser and Wirth, Zurich, CH (see also p. 164–165)

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‘Gorgo #13’, 2007 Mixed media, polyurethane, wood, horsehair, textile, plastic, blood over a core of debris, (h) 301 × 97 × 68 cm

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‘Gorgo #13’ (detail), 2007 Mixed media, polyurethane, wood, horsehair, textile, plastic, blood over a core of debris, (h) 301 × 97 × 68 cm

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Exhibition View ‘VIT<A>ARTI’, Verbeke Foundation, Kemzeke, BE, 2007

‘Eskimo Blues #1’, 1999 Prepared cow stomach over a core of debris, (h) 112 × 206 × 125 cm, Glass box: 125 × 206 × 112 cm Collection Verbeke Foundation, Kemzeke, BE

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Exhibition View ‘VIT<A>ARTI’, Verbeke Foundation, Kemzeke, BE, 2007 ‘Eskimo Blues #1’, 1999 Prepared cow stomach over a core of debris, (h) 112 × 206 × 125 cm, Glass box: 125 × 206 × 112 cm Collection Verbeke Foundation, Kemzeke, BE

186

187

188

‘The blind leading the blind #21’, 2007 Polyester, wood, hair, aluminium, iron, polystyrene, household dust over a core of debris, (h) 117 × 105 × 184 cm Saatchi Collection, London, GB

189

190

‘The blind leading the blind #21’, 2007 Polyester, wood, hair, aluminium, iron, polystyrene, household dust over a core of debris, (h) 117 × 105 × 184 cm Saatchi Collection, London, GB

191

192

‘The blind leading the blind #21’, 2007 Polyester, wood, hair, aluminium, iron, polystyrene, household dust over a core of debris, (h) 117 × 105 × 184 cm Saatchi Collection, London, GB

193

194

‘The blind leading the blind #21’, 2007 Polyester, wood, hair, aluminium, iron, polystyrene, household dust over a core of debris, (h) 117 × 105 × 184 cm Saatchi Collection, London, GB

195

Index of illustrations in text

a. Nboli (altar figure), Bamana (bambara), wood, encrustation, human bones

c. Still from ‘Le cirque’, Alexander Calder, 1961

b. Uterus and intestines of a mare

197

d. Construction of the exposition in the Herzliya Museum of Modern Art, Israel, 2009

e. Model of the exhibition in the Herzliya Museum of Modern Art, Israel, 2009

h. Still from ‘Magnolia’, Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999

e. Model of the exhibition in the Herzliya Museum of Modern Art, Israel, 2009

i. Still from ‘Les maîtres fous / The mad masters’, Jean Rouche, 36 min, 1955

f. Slaughtered frogs, Oyé, France, 2008

j. Detail from ‘Eskimo Blues #2’, 1999 (see also p. 56–63)

g. Detail ‘Gorgo #17’, 2009 (see also p. 88–93)

m. Detail ‘Gorgo #14’, 2007 (see also p. 64–69) l. Construction of ‘The blind leading the blind’ (Herzliya piece) in the studio, Ghent (see also p. 149–159)

k. ‘The blind leading the blind’ by Louise Bourgeois, 1941–1948

n. Chinese Scholar’s Rock, 19th Century. Collection Axel Vervoordt

q. ‘The blind leading the blind #18’, 2008. Polystyrene, wood, iron and household dust

o. Construction of ‘The blind leading the blind’ (Herzliya piece) in the studio, Ghent (see also p. 149–159)

r. Studio view with ‘The blind leading the blind #25’ (see also p. 116–117)

v. ‘Mont Ventoux #1’, 2007 (see also p. 178–183)

p. Still from ‘Estamira’, Marcos Prado, 2004

p. Studio view, 2006

s. ‘Gorgo #9’, 2007 (see also p. 104–105)

t. Exhibition view ‘Wolken zijn geen bollen / Clouds are no spheres’, Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, 2002 (see also p. 100–103)

w. ‘The blind leading the blind #21’, 2007 (see also p. 188–195)

x. Studio of Fredrick Kiesler, working on ‘Endless house’ in the 1960s

u. ‘Untitled’, 1990. Pigment on plastic, 3,5 × 2,25 m, private collection

y. Exhibition view ‘Res Derelictae / Dingen zonder eigenaar / Objects owned by nobody’, Mechelen, Belgium, 2007 (see also p. 76–85)

aa. ‘The blind leading the blind #20’, 2007 (see also p. 136–139)

z. Exhibition view at Konrad Fisher Gallery, Dusseldorf, ‘Mont Ventoux #3’, 2009 (see also p. 124–125)

ab. ‘Bergen zijn geen kegels/Mountains are no cones’, 1998. Polyester and prepared cow stomach, (h) 95 × 46 × 67 cm. Exhibition view ‘Eskimo Blues’, Kunstvereniging Diepenheim, Diepenheim, Holland

ac. Detail of ‘The blind leading the blind #14’, 2007 (see also p. 144–147)

ag. Pieter Brueghel the Elder, ‘The Parable of the Blind Men’, 1568. Oil on canvas, Museo di Capodimonte, Napels, Italy

ae. Forest with an infinitude of broccoli ad. ‘21th Century brain’, 1997. Plastic, leather and prepared horse intestine, (h) 22 × 17 × 11 cm

af. Installation view ‘Wigwam Blues’, 2005. Approx. dim. (h) 3,5 × 8 × 2 m. ‘Nous le passage’, Poëziezomer, Watou, Belgium (see also p. 160–163)

199

ag. ‘The blind leading the blind #9’, 2005. Exhibition view S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium, 2007 (see also p. 176–177)

aj. Exhibition view ‘Res Derelictae / Dingen zonder eigenaar / Objects owned by nobody’, Mechelen, Belgium, 2007 (see also p. 76–85) ah. ‘Eskimo Blues #2’, 1999 (see also p. 184–187)

ai. ‘The blind leading the blind #13’, 2007 (see also p. 75)

ak. ‘Gorgo #18’, 2009 (see also p. 106–107)

al. ‘Medusa’s head’, 2000. Plaster wax, glass wool, prepared horse intestine, (h) 40 × 26 × 35 cm, collection Delacourt-Buggenhout, Belgium

am. ‘Gorgo’, 2002. Polyester and iron, approx. (h) 11,5 × 17 × 8 m (work destroyed)

an. Still from ‘Les maîtres fous / The mad masters’, Jean Rouche, 36 min, 1955

aq. Undefined altar near Elora, India

ar. Detail ‘Gorgo #13’, 2007 (see also p. 168–171)

ao. ‘Gorgo #19’, 2009 ap. ‘Gorgo #2’, 2005. Plastic, wood, blood, horse hair, (h) 54 × 60 × 45 cm

as. Bracha L. Ettinger, Eurydice 23, 1994–98. Oil and photocopic dust on paper remounted on canvas, 28,7 × 51,3 cm. Collection Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel

at. ‘Gorgo #1’, 2005. Plaster, plastic, horse hair and blood, (h) 72 × 58 × 52 cm

av. Still Atsuko Tanaka at work from ‘Round on Sand’, 1968. 16 mm color film, 9’50”, directed and edited by Hiroshi Fukuzawa, private collection Osaka. Photograph Takehiro Nabekura au. ‘Gorgo #12’, 2006. Plastic, polyester, papier maché, wood, iron, horse hair and blood, (h) 112,5 × 56 × 82 cm

aw. Reuben Nakian, ‘Voyage to Crete’, 1960–62. Bronze cast, 1963, length 297 cm. New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, New York

ax. ‘The blind leading the blind #16’, 2007. Iron armature, papier maché, expoxy, polystyrene and household dust, (h) 109 × 154 × 66 cm

ba. ‘The blind leading the blind #4_3’, 2004 (see also p. 86–87) az. ‘The blind leading the blind #33’, 2009. Plastic, synthetic leather, iron, wood, household dust. Collection Gallard, Belgium

ay. ‘The blind leading the blind #20’, 2007 (see also p. 136–139)

ay. ‘Gorgo #9’, 2007 (see also p. 104–105)

General index A friend 11 A knotted carpet 7 Aarsgat 18 Abandonment iv Abject ii, 2, 8, 11, 12, 20 ABR 28 Absolute 30 Abstract i, iv, 4, 11–13, 33, 35, 41 Abstract expressionism 30, 42 Abstraction 3, 5, 8, 17, 21, 42 Absurdity 6 Academic 19, 21 Accumulation 3, 8, 19, 39, 41, 42 Achtlosen Dahingehens 22 Aesopus 14 Aesthetic iii, 12 Affective 11, 14, 24 Affective/intuitive 15 Agenda 3 Airplane 21 Al-Mujahidin Brigades 6 Al-Quassam Brigades 6 Al-Qurara 6 Allegory 18, 48 Alternatives iii Aluminium 42 Amazonienne 25 Ambiguity 5, 8, 48 Amnesia 36 Amorphous v, vi Amy, Michaël i– v, 10, 12 An-Nasser Brigades 6 Analogical imagination 11 Analogy i, 4, 10–17, 19, 20, 27, 33, 42–44, 47–49 Analysed 7 Analysis 43 Anaximander 48 Ancestors 11 Anderson, Paul Thomas 6 Angst 11 Anhui 12 Anti-essentialism 30 Apertures 18 Apocalypse 27 Apocalyptic 5, 9 Archaic 10 Archeology ii, 3, 13–15, 20, 43 Architecture iii, 19, 28, 29 Aristotelian 47 Arm-driekantsteek 41 Arman 9 Art of Conversation 9 As-suchness 15 Ascent 21 Atomism 45 Augustine’s Confessions 22 Autonomous artwork 4, 43 Avant-garde 41 Aversion iii, 12 Azetta 35 Aztec 37 Back room 12 Baert, Barbara 20 Balal 27 Bambara v Barbecue 7 Barrenness 21 Bataille, Georges ii, 4, 19 Baudrillard, Jean 7 Beauty 16, 28, 29, 41 Begriffe 28 Beirut (Sunday Smile) 8 Belgium 2, 23 Berber textiles 35

Berger, John 6 Berland, Alain 43 Bernard, Emile 21 Bethlehem 7 Beyond good and evil (Nietzsche) 48 Binary logic 9–12, 14, 39, 41, 49 Binnen 20 Blake, William 36 Blegvad, Peter 5, 36 Blind poet 30 Blind spots 11 Blind(ness) iv, 8, 9, 24, 26, 28, 29, 39, 41, 44 Blood ii–iv, 12, 24, 39, 42 Blue Velvet i Blues 8 Bodily 28 Bois, Yves-Alain 19 Borderlinking 10, 24, 26, 29, 34, 39, 45 Borderthinking 40 Borges, Jorge Luis 30 Bosch, Hieronymus 5, 6 Bourgeois, Louise iv, 28 BOZAR 35 Breakdown iv Breda 50 Bronze 42 Broodthaers, Marcel 21 Brueghel the Elder, Pieter iv, 26–28 Brussels i, 12 Buci-Glucksmann 35 Buddhism v, 27 Buiten 20 Burckhardt, Jacob 23 Burke, Peter 23 C.O.Y.O.T.E. 28 Cabalistic 48 Call it a day iv Calvino, Italo 9 Camphor tree 2 Captain Haddock 2 Cardboard 26, 29, 42 Cartesiaans 41 Catalogue iv Categories ii, 3 Centre Pompidou 9 Cézanne, Paul 21, 38 Chaos i, iii, 3, 10, 11, 13, 15, 43, 44 Chaos theory 43 Chocolate cake 8 Choll, Isabelle 21 Classer 43 Classify iv, 41 Clouds are not spheres/ Clouds are more than spheres, mountains are more than cones 18, 20 CNN 5 Coatlicue (Aztek god) 37 Cocle, Jan 36 Coen, Ethan and Joel 22 Cognition/logic 10, 15, 19, 25 Cognitive/non-affective 11 Coherent 44 Collection 33 Color 30, 37, 39, 40 Communication 18 Compacted time 15 Complexity 4, 14, 27, 43–45 Concepts 15 Concrete object iv Condenser 5 Condescending v Cônes 21 Confusion 13 Conrad, Joseph 14, 27, 44

Consciousness 16, 34, 50 Consciousness as the art of connecting 11 Consolation 4 Construction 3, 13, 43 Construction rubble 42 Construction rubble insulation materials 26 Contemplation 11 Context (original) ii Continuity 43 Contradiction 48 Control iii Control freak 2 Convulsive 5 Coquille 21 Core ii Correct 27 Crabs 36 Crane, Ed 22 Crashed plane 3 Credibility 3 Cross-section 23 Cubes 21 Cubisme 21 Da Costa, Valerie 43 Damisch, Hubert 16 Danger 48 Darmen 20 de Balzac, Honnoré 20 De Bond, Brugge 11 De Bruyckere, Berlinde 16, 41 De Garage 11, 34 De Graeve, Peter 11, 18, 37–40, 45 De Martelaere, Patricia 27 de Saussure, Ferdinand 24 Dead-end corridors 29 Debris 14 Decapitated 37 Déchet 11 Declassify/déclasser ii, 19 (De)construction 9 Deconstruction 13 Defects 3 Define 46 Degeneration 24, 28 Dégout 11 Deleuze, Gilles 18, 19 Denuding 3 Descartes 44 Desmond, Michael 28 Désordre 25 Destroy 48 Destruction iv, v, 32 Details 22 Detroit Institute of the Arts 28 Dewilde, Michel 7, 11 Dialectic logic 9, 10, 14, 41 Dictionnaire 19 Didi-Huberman, Georges 3, 20 Diepenheim, Netherlands 7 Difference 7 Direction 27 Disanalogy 48 Discard iii, 34 Disco 3 Disegno 39, 40 Disintegration 25 Dismantle ii Display 8 Distance iv Distinguishability 30, 31 Divergence 7 Diversity 25 Dode 42 Dogon v Doove, Edith 16 Douglas 11

Drawing iii Duchamp, Marcel 2, 30, 42 Dunklen 9 Dunwich 22 Dust passim Dust Sculptures 34, 41 Dustbreeding 30 Dynamic system 43, 44 Earthiness 38 Eating people 7 Echtzeit 7 Eco, Umberto 48 Effects 3 Efficiency 44 Elkins, James 3 Emotional 14 Empathic 24 Emptiness 32, 48 Energie 9 Entropie 28 Enumeration v Enveloppe 21 Ephemera 9 Epochè 33 Equality 44 201 Erosie 20 Erotic 24, 25 Error 5 Eskimo Blues 7 Eskimos 8 Eternal 9 Ethnographic ii Ettinger, Bracha L. 10, 11, 24–26, 29, 35, 39, 40, 45, 46, 49 Evil eye 37 Ex voto 36 Excavator 5 Excretion 3 External 29 Fantasy 9 Farbigen 9 Fascinosum 11 Fear 14 Feyerabend, Paul 47 Fiberglass ii Figurative-representative 11 Figurative-symbolic 35 Flagpoles 20 Flaubert, Gustave 41 Florida 13 Flower Power 20 Flüchtigkeit 39 Flux i, iv, Formless v, 4, 5, 8, 10, 19, 33, 39, 47 Found objects 26, 30 Fragment 2, 4, 5 Franz, Erich 31 Fresh Kills landfill 13 Frogs 5–7 Fuchs, Ann 23 Funereal gifts 36 Future ii, 5, 14, 24 Future Tradition 50 Futuristic 32 Garbage 8, 9, 13, 34 Garden rocks 11 Gaza 2 Gebroed 41 Genitals 16 Gesichtssinn 9 Gimbutas, Marija 36 Glass 30 Glass box 28 Glass cabinets 34 Globalization 6 God 18, 22 Gombrovicz 2

Gongshi 11 Gorge(l) 35 Gorgo iv, 8, 24, 25, 36–37, 40, 41 Gorgo #… 9 Guangdong Provinces 12 Gynaika 11 Hair ii, iii, 42 Healing 37 Heart Of Darkness 14, 27, 44 Hegelian 48 Hell 5, 6 Heraclitus 48 Herrigel, Eugen 50 Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art 14, 31, 32 Hessen, Eva 25 High cultures 7 Hirschhorn Museum and Sculptural Garden, Washington 28 History 12 Hollow body 18 Holvormen 20 Homeless 14 Homerus 30 Horizon 5 Horizontal and vertical 31 Horror 22 Horse iii, Huhn, Rosi 35 Humanist 23 Idealism 15, 47 Iliad 30 Illusion 12, 17, 34, 44 Imaginary 9 Imagination 4, 8, 11, 13–15, 17, 30, 33, 35, 45, 50 Imprisonment 22 Improvisation iii Incense 2 Incluses dans les âmes 19 Incoherence 6 India(n) 7, 21, 37 Induction 5 Inertie 20 Infantilism 2 Infinite 25 Inflexions 19 Informal art ii Informal logic 42 Information 3 Informe 19 Inhuman 27 Ink Jade stone 12 Innards ii–v, 7 Inside out 19, 40 Insight 9 Installation 3, 14, 19, 25, 38, 45 Installation (outdoor) 35 Instinctively i Insurmountable 48 Interaction v Intermediary iii Intern(al) 20, 29 Interpretations ii Intestines 7, 9, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21–25, 31, 35, 41, 42 Intuitive iii, 11, 14, 24 Inward gaze 23 Iron 29, 42 Iron slag 26 Israeli soldiers 7 Jiangsu Province 11 Johnson, R.H. 43 Judd, Donald 3 Jungle 33 Junk 8 Juyi, Bai 11, 12

Kali 37 Kandinsky, Wasili 21 Kapoor, Anish 30 Katze ohne Grinsen 3 Keelkantelingen/Throat Turnings 11 Kegel 23 Khan, Younis 6 Kirali, Alain 28 Kirin 28 Klein, Yves 30, 38, 40, 42 Knowledge 14 Kompliziertheit 24 Krauss, Rosalind E. 19 Kravagna, Christian 3 Kristeva, Julia 11 KunstHart 44 Kurtz 14 Kuspit, Donald 28 L’inclusion 18 L’informe 19 La vie : mode d’emploi (Perec) v, 29, 37 Labyrinth 22, 23, 29, 30 Lake Tai 11 Landscape 22, 25 Languishing 29 Latex 42 Laura 22 Laureyns, Jeroen 3, 15, 25 Lawlessness 14 Layer 15 Le Corbusier 21 Leegte 20 Legacy 34 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 18, 19 Let’s hope it still grows 18 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 7, 21, 24, 25 Lichamelijkheid 11 Lichten 9 Light 38, 40 Lightness 35 Limbo 3, 8 Line 38–40 Line drawings 29 Line grid 38 Lippard, Lucy R. 28 Lippen 20 Lloyd, Michael 28 Logic 0, 9, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 25, 42, 44, 47 Lokaal 01 50 Long, Jonathan James 23 Love 2 Lune 43 Lynch, David i Maag 20 Mad Max 32 Maes, Frank 21 Magic 11 Magritte 21 Maine 13 Malevich 38 Man Ray 30 Magnolia 6 Mannerism 38 Map 11 Massumi, Brian 35 Mathematics i, 48 Matrixial 10, 24, 46 Matrixial borderlinking 10 Matrixial borderspace 11, 25 Matrixial colorito 39 Matrixial gaze 11, 49 Matta-Clark, Gordon 9 Maze 22 Meandering 41 Meaningful whole 4

Mechelen 11, 34 Meditation 11 Medusa iv, 35–37 Melancholy 8 Memories 18 Memorise 15 Memory 15 Mental 14 Mental art 42 Mer Paper Kunsthalle 11 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 21 Mess iii Metamorphosis 10 Metaphysical 40 Michael, Thompson 8 Michaux, Henri 42 Middel-East 4 Minimalism 3, 28 Mirror iv Mirror-like shield 36 Mishima, Yukio 42 Model iii Modern man 23 Moist ii, 12 Moko 12 Monad 18 Mond 18, 22 Monochrome 30, 31, 38, 39 Monoloog 20 Mont Ventoux iv, 21 Mont Ventoux #… 9, 17 Moon v Morocco 35 Morris, Robert 3 Mortier, Erwin 14 Moscow 2 Mountains not Cones 18 Mouvement (art magazine) 43 Müller, J. 9 Mumbai 2 Murray, Peter 23 Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte iv, 26 Mutations 25 Mystery v Mystik 50 Naked 21 Nanling Mountains 12 Napels iv Napoleontic Wars 23 Narcist 20 Nasser Hospital 6 National Gallery of Australia 28 Nature ii Navel 5 Nboli v Negative v, vi Neo-Aristotelians 48 Neo-Platonists 48 Neurotisch 20 New realism 30, 42 New York 9, 13 Nicht-Ort 7 Nietzsche, Friedrich 36, 43, 45, 48 Nineteenth century iii No Solution at the Moment/ Op het Ogenblik geen Oplossing 11, 18 Nomenclature 30 Non-anthropomorphic 36 Non-classifying abstraction 3 North America 13 Northern Guangdong 12 Nostalgia 5, 18, 47 Nothing 27 Nuku, George 12 Numinous object 5

Obsession v, 48 Obsolete 2 Octopuses 36 Oddity 28 Ohms 3 Omphalos 5 On numinous objects and their manufacture 5 Ontglippen 44 Order/ordering 2, 8, 41, 43, 44 Organic 10 Orientation 22 Origins and causes 7 Oubliette 18 Outside iii Overall view 23 Overview i Pain 29 Painter iv, 4 Painting iv, 10, 11, 17–20, 39 Panoramic view 23 Paper 42 Paradigm 21 Paraphernalia 2 Parasites 20 Parturition 36 Pas, Johan 41 Passé 19 Past 5 Path 27 Peace 22 Peau 20 Peinture 21 Perec, Georges v, 2, 3, 29, 37 Perforations 11 Perseus iv, 36 Perspective 7, 14, 16, 20, 23, 38 Pervert i Petrarch, Francesco v, 21, 23 Phallic colorito 40 Phallic disegno 39 Phallic gaze 37, 49 Phantasie 7 Philosophic 11 Philosophie 19 Phlogiston 47 Physically 28 Physiologie der Sinne 9 Physiologischen 9 Picasso iii Pictorial 38 Pipe 21, 47 Plaster 26, 29, 42 Plastic 26, 29, 32, 42 Platonic 47 Playfulness 2 Pli (le) 18 Poems 11 Political interpretation 4 Pollock, Griselda 35 Polyester 42 Polystrene ii, 42 Polyurethane foam ii, 12, 42 Pomegranate 8 Post-apocalyptic 32 Post-colonialism 2 Post-linguistic 10, 16, 17 Postmodern 42 Pre-linguistic 9, 10, 16, 17 Prehistoric 32 Présent 19 Present 33 Present’s past 14 Preservation iii Primitive cultures 7 Prophecies/prophetic 6 Protection iii Psychic strings 24 Psycho-active 3

Random list 201 Rathje, William 13 Rational 9, 10, 25 Raymond, Mary 42 Ready-made 42 Realism 4, 13, 43, 47 Reality i, iv, v, 10, 15, 23, 45 Rebentisch, Juliane 3 Rebuilding v Reconstruction iv, 20 Redemption 27 (Re)generation 24 Regenerat 14 Reinhardt 30 Relics 15 Religious 11, 33 Renaissance 38 Repetition 4, 9 Representation v, 10, 45 Representations of nature 23 Resonance 24 Res derelictae / Dingen zonder eigenaar / Objects owned by nobody 11, 34 Retinal art 42 Reverdy, Pierre 21 Rilke 38 Ritual v, 36 Robbins, Corinne 28 Robinson, James Harvey 21 Rodin 40 Rolling machine 14 Romantic 9 Romanticism 15 Roosmalen, Marc 7 Rothko, Mark 30, 38–40 Royal Museum for Fine Arts Antwerp 11 Rubber bands 28 Rubbish 8 Rubble 9, 24, 34 Rubbsh 14 Rübel, Dietmar 9 Rupslogica/Caterpillar logic 18 Sacrificed 37 Saint Sulpice (place) 3 Sally i Salvation 27 Sameness 43 Sandy i Sartre 41 Scale 30 Scale model 4 Scanlan, John 8 Scenographic 19 Sceptic 33 Scholar stones (Buddhist) v, 12 Schoonheid 16 Sculpture 10 Sculpture Magazine v Sebald, W.G. v, vi, 22–24, 39 42 Sei Shonagon 2 Seigneur 14 Seizing the Chaos of Life : A Conversation with Peter Buggenhout (Michaël Amy) i–vi, 10, 12 Sellink, Manfred 26 Sensations 5 Sense-making 3 Seriality 9 Sextus Empiricus 33 Sexual 41 Sexual object 16 Shandong 12 Shapeless 5, 7, 24, 29, 39, 44

Shapeless object 32 Shell (spooned-out) 18 Sign v Silence 25 Silent 3 Similarity 44 Sincerely 11 Sincerely a friend 20 Sinne 9 Sint-Lucas 40 Site-specific work 3 Situation v Skeleton ii Skin 18 Slow-down 16 Smith, Tony 3 Snakes 36 Soft Parts 18 Solitaire 43 Spatial delirium 5 Sphères 21 Spiders 36 Spiegel 28 Spin-kaak 41 Stafford, Barbara Maria 11, 18, 43, 48 Staten Island 13 Steen-oog 41 Stella, Frank 3 Stifter 22 Stoffelijkheid 42 Stomach ii, iii, v, 7, 12, 15, 18, 20, 42 Stone 36 Straub, René 28 Structuralism 24 Structure 14 Studio (Peter Buggenhout) i Styrofoam 26, 29, 34 Sub-symbolic 35 Subjectivity 22 Sublime 4, 5, 10, 34 Summary 2 Surface 16, 19, 20, 38, 40 Surprise 5 Surreal 5, 32 Surveyable 23 Suspension 33, 39 Suzhou 11 Swennen, Walter 18 Symbols/symbolism i, ii, iv, v, 10, 43 Symmetry 29 Synthetic resin 42 Synthetics 29 Systematically iv Szewczyk, Monika 9 Taboemateriaal 41 Taihu 12 Taihu Rocks 11, 12 Tanaka, Atsuko 28, 41 Tanner ii Taoism 27 Tàpies, Antoni 42 Tattooed heads 12 Technological 10 Teen-kruk 41 Tel Aviv 2, 6, 31 Telepathic 24 Tentacles 35 Textile 42 Texture 19, 31 The blind leading the blind (Lucy Lippard) 28 The blind leading the blind #1, 2… 9, 18 ‘The horror’ 14 The man who wasn’t there 22 The shapeless 19 Theatralität 3 Theorie des Sehens 3

Theys, Hans 12, 18, 20, 44 Thing ii Thing-encounter 10 Thing-event 10 Thinker (Rodin) 40 Time 25, 33 Tolerant 27 Too-early 10, 46 Too-late 10, 46 Total art 41 Totenberg 23 Tournier, Michel 9 Tower of Babel (Brueghel) 27 Traces v, vi Tragedy 5, 28 Trans-subjectivity 45 Transformation i, v, 8, 12, 13, 30 Transject 40 Transplantation 3 Trash art 30 Trauma 28 Tremendum 11 Tri-unity 10 Tristes Tropiques 25 Truffles 8 Truth iii, 43, 44 Tunisia 35 Turell, James 30 Überblick 23 Unaccentuated 17 Uncanny 2, 5 Uncommunicative 48 Uncontrollable 4 Understand 28, 34, 41 UNESCO 5 Unexplained 48 Unfathomable 32 Unforeseeable i Ungraspable 32 Uniqueness 9 Unknown iii, 48 Unordnung 29 Unpredictability i, iii, i, 4, 5, 43 Unreal 2 Unrecognizable v Unrepresentable 48 Unverifiability 43 Urine bags 34 Uterus 5, 36 Utopia 5, 47 Vacuum cleaner iii Valéry, Paul 36 Van Gogh, Vincent 2 Van Loo, Sofie 1, 11, 20, 35, 39, 43, 45 Vanbinnenuit 44 Vandenbroeck, Paul 35–37, 44 Vanishing point 8 Verhelst, Peter 20 Vertical 38 Viewpoint 41 Village Voice 28 Visceral iii, 11 Vodun 36 Volkshochschule des Sehens 3 Wagner, Monika 9 Wagnerian 41 Walter, Harry 28 Waterloo Panorama 23 Webs 29, 30, 45 Wendell, Charles Beane 37 West-Africa v Wet ii, 12 Wilderness 6 Wiring 45

Wit(h)nessing Trauma 11 Wolken zijn geen bollen 16, 41 Womb 36 Wonder v Wood 26, 28, 32, 42 Wundersamen Papiervermehrung 41

Camera Obscura Photographs – p. ix : ‘Hopen dat het nog wat groeit / Let’s hope it still grows #2’, 1997 Prepared cow stomach over a core of debris, (h) 49 × 56 × 58 cm (see also p. 128–129) – p. x, p. xii : ‘Walsen is baltsen’, 1998 Prepared horse intestine, bronze, (h) 33 × 33 × 58 cm – p. 51 : ‘Op het ogenblik geen oplossing / No solution at the moment’, 1997 Damaged plaster sculpture partly covered with clay and prepared horse intestine, (h) 20 × 21 × 38 cm Collection DelacourtBuggenhout

Zen 5, 27

203

Peter Buggenhout was born in 1963 in Dendermonde, Belgium. He lives and works in Ghent, Belgium. (S) solo exhibition (G) group exhibition (publ) with publication

Exhibitions (selection) 2010 – Konrad Fischer Gallery, Berlin, Germany (S) – Maison Rouge, Paris, France (S) – Kunstraum Dornbirn, Austria (S/publ) – ‘Shape of things to come : New Sculpture’, Saatchi Gallery, London (G/publ) – ‘Signs of life’, Kunstmuseum Luzern, curated by Peter Fischer (G/publ) 2009 – Konrad Fischer Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany (S) – Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Jerusalem, Israël, curated by Sophie Van Loo (S) – Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium (S) – ‘In-finitum’, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, curated by Axel Vervoordt (G/publ) – ‘Aerials Of Sublime Transscapes’, Lokaal 01, Breda, Holland, curated by Sofie Van Loo (G) – ‘Die Hände der Kunst’, Marta Herford, Herford, Germany, curated by Ronny Van de Velde (G/ publ) – ‘The Hands of Art’, S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium, curated by Ronny Van de Velde (G/ publ) 2008 – Gallery Maskara, Mumbai (Bombay), India, curated by Sophie Van Loo (S) – ‘Tracking Traces’, Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland (G) 2007 – S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium. Individual presentation on the occasion of the acquisition of ‘The blind leading the blind # 9’, 2005 and ‘Dust-scape, 2003’ (G) – ‘TRANS-SCAPES of Langsschappen’, Lokaal 01, Breda, Holland, curated by Sofie Van Loo (G) – ‘Nieuwe Collectie / New collection’, Stedelijk Museum Wuyts-Van Campen & Baroly, Lier, Belgium, curated by Peter Morrens (G) – ‘PAULO POST FUTURUM 25 jaar Lokaal 01’, Breda, Holland (G)

– ‘VIT<A>RTI’, De Kunstkas, Kemzeke, Belgium, curated by Martin uit den Bogaert (G) – Artempo, Pallazo Fortuny, Venetië, Italy, curated by Jean-Hubert Martin, Tijs Visser, Axel Vervoordt (G/ publ) – ‘De Schoonheid en de Waanzin’, Bruges Museum, Onthaalkerk OnzeLieve-Vrouw, Brugge, België, curated by Paul Vandenbroeck (G) – ‘Mutatis Mutandis (Extraits de la collection d’Antoine De Galbert)’, La Maison Rouge, Paris, France (G) 2006 – ‘Res Derelictae / Dingen zonder eigenaar / Objects owned by nobody’, De Garage, Mechelen, Belgium (S/publ) – ‘Gorge(l), oppression and relief in art’, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, Belgium, curated by Sofie Van Loo (G/publ) – ‘La belleza y la locura, Felipe I el Hermoso, rey de Castilla, duque de Borgoña’, Burgos, Spain, curated by Paul Vandenbroeck (G) 2005 – Gallery Richard Foncke, Ghent, Belgium (S) – ‘Soul’, Groot Seminarie, Bruges, Belgium, curated by Willy Van den Bussche (G/publ) – ‘Over de Grens / Nous le passage’ Poëziezomer, Watou, Belgium, curated by Michel Dewilde (G) – ‘The Blind Leading the Blind’, Lokaal 01, Antwerpen, Belgium/Breda, Holland, curated by Peter Buggenhout (G) – ‘Visionair België’, Centre of Fine Arts, Brussels, Belgium, curated by Harald Szeeman (G/publ) 2003 – ‘Art/Life’, Galerie Cartwright, Ghent, Belgium (G) – ‘Grand Tour’, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, Belgium (G) 2002 – ‘Station2Station’, Petrol stations in Flanders & Brussels, Belgium, curated by Michel Dewilde (G/publ) – ‘Inside Drawing’, Galerie Nouvelles Images, Den Haag, Holland (G) – ‘Metamorphosis. Peter Buggenhout, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Peter De Cupere, Johan Tahon’, Lieu d’Art Contemporain (LAC), Sigean, France (G/publ) – ‘De Lege Ruimte / Blinde

Vlek’, Gallery De Lege Ruimte, Ghent, Belgium (G) – ‘Wolken zijn geen bollen / Clouds are no cones’, De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, Holland (S/publ) 2001 – ‘Metamorphosis. Peter Buggenhout, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Peter De Cupere, Johan Tahon’, Academia Belgica, Roma, Italy (G/publ) 2000 – ‘Weke delen / Soft parts’, Galerie CD, Tielt, Belgium (S) – ‘Metamorphosis. Peter Buggenhout, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Peter De Cupere, Johan Tahon’, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporaneo, San Gimignano, Italy (G/publ) – ‘Everything needs time…’, Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton, Exeter Great Brittain (G/publ) 1999 – ‘Eskimo Blues’, Kunstvereniging Diepenheim, Diepenheim, Holland (S) – ‘Op het ogenblik geen oplossing / No solution at the moment’, De Bond, Bruges, Belgium, curated by Michel Dewilde (S/publ) – ‘Jan Fabre, Peter Buggenhout, D.D. Trans’, Gallery CD, Tielt, Belgium (G) 1998 – ‘Loplop/re/presents : Back to Basics. (Waar het allemaal om draait/what it’s all about)’, Centrum voor Kunst & Cultuur Sint-Pietersabdij, Ghent, Belgium, curated by Edwin Carels (G/publ) – ‘The Future Tradition’, Lokaal 01, Breda, Holland (S) – ‘Tussenin / In-between’, Museum DhondtDhaenens, Deurle, Belgium, curated by Edith Doove (G/publ) 1997 – ‘Loplop/re/presents : The im/pulse to see’, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Holland, curated by Edwin Carels (G/publ)

Colofon Photo credits – Peter Buggenhout: 3 (d), 4 (c), 5 (f), 9 (l), 13 (o), 37 (aq) – Marie Cloquet: ix, x, xii, 51 – Nele De Roo: 5 (g), 8 (j), 11 (m), 15 (q), 16 (s), 17 (v), 18 (w), 20 (z), 21 (aa), 29 (ai), 34 (ak), 36 (ao), 37 (ap), 38 (ar), 40 (at), 40 (au), 42 (ax), 44 (ay), 45 (az) 53–75, 89–97, 104–109, 124–129, 132–143, 132–143, 169–170, 178–195 – Mirjam De Vriendt: cover, 13 (p/right), 15 (r), 16 (t), 19 (y), 21 (ab), 22 (ac), 29 (ah), 34 (aj), 35 (am), 37 (ap), 49 (ba), 76–87, 88– 103, 110–123, 131, 144–147, 160–161, 167, 172–175 – Yigal Pardo: 148–159 – Dirk Pauwels: 27 (af), 27 (ag/right), 163, 176 – Jan Pauwels: 17 (u), 24 (ad), 27 (af) – Hans Theys: 24 (ae)

Thank you Berlinde De Bruyckere, Nele De Roo, Marie Cloquet, Sofie Van Loo, Hans Theys, Thomas Rieger, Michaël Amy, Reinhard Pohl, Gautier Platteau, Luc Demeester, Wannes Gyselinck, Mirjam De Vriendt, Jan Pauwels, Dirk Pauwels, Stijn Cole, Hélène Borgers, Luc Derycke, Jeroen Wille, Geert Verbeke, Jona Vercruysen, Marc De Blieck, Tom De Visscher

Texts: Sofie Van Loo, Peter Buggenhout, Hans Theys, Thomas W. Rieger, Michaël Amy Copy-editing: Wannes Gyselinck Concept: Peter Buggenhout, Luc Derycke Graphic design: Jeroen Wille, Studio Luc Derycke Printing: Deckers-Snoeck, Zwijndrecht

© Uitgeverij Lannoo, Tielt, 2010 ISBN 978 90 209 8476 7 D/2010/45/110 NUR 642 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or information storage, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

‘There is nothing in things, but there are no things without content’ (song of the Jo-cult, recorded by Salia Malé, National Museum of Mali) / ‘Alle dingen zijn leeg, maar er zijn geen dingen zonder inhoud’ (lied van de Jo-cultuur, opgetekend door Salia Malé, National Museum of Mali) / ‘Il n’y a rien dans les choses, mais toutes les choses ne sont pas sans contenu’ (chant du culte Jo, enregistré par Salia Malé, Musée national du Mali) / ‘Alle Dinge sind leer, aber es gibt keine Dinge ohne Inhalt’ (Lied von der Jo-Kult, aufgezeichnet von Salia Malé, National Museum of Mali)