Clumsy Utterings and Gestures

“Clumsy Utterings and Gestures” is a performance and a journey at the same time. Our art is always in the making. This project originated with the commission to present a public lecture on art and science at the “Pint of Science Vienna” festival in May 2021. To be honest, it is really neither art nor science—most certainly not an attempt at reconciliation or unification. Rather, it has to be understood as wissenskunst, a playful exploration of the space between the two. Our first public appearance, it constitutes a true origination event, yet no singularity. Due to the pandemic, the performance had to be moved online. On top of that, we had to rerecord because of a glitch with the software. The result is a bit patched up, like Frankenstein’s monster, which seems rather fitting to our purpose. The lecture itself only provides the shortest of glimpses into our process (a single patch of the patchwork). While it shows the generation of Rorschach blots and electronic drawings, the origin of the text itself remains hidden. In fact, it is obscure even to us, as it arose by mere coincidence from our investigations of mysterious scholarly figure Alexís O. van Tlön. But that is beside the point. What is important here is: the genealogy of texts that accompanies the video of the performance is at best a retroactive attempt at revisionism, an annotative resolution of confusion that suggests linear clarity where there was none. Origins are messy, inchoate; and at the end, the text is again completely erased, written out of existence. Annotations and art is what remains. And so story is layered on top of story, generating a stratigraphy of fossilized context.


PART 1: Lecture

the lecture starts at 05:29 and is followed at 22:55 with responses, questions and answers

PART 2: Script


PART 3: Script and Annotation


PART 4: Annotation


PART 5: Illustrated Annotation