On Thu, 7 Aug 1997, Bracha Lichtenberg - Ettinger wrote:
> rules. It will be helpful if you will explain what do you mean by
> "emerAgency as a consulting firm" - is it a university research project? is
> it a company that offers consultation in reality? Is it a virtual art
> project, is it an educational approach?
You pose two questions and I will start on an answer to the latter
first.
Perhaps the best way to explain the status of the emerAgency as a
consulting (in)firm is to report its origins in a visit to the home of
Joseph Beuys in Dusseldorf, March of 1980. Having been contacted by oneof Beuys' transmitters (in my case it was embodied in a black and white
illustration of "the Pack," some 2 inches by 3 inches, as part of a book
of postwar European art), I had been exhausting the resources of paper
communication to reply. Finally I met Ronald Feldman who offered me a
kipper eaten by Beuys (skeleton with head and tail) and later reported
that a visit to Dusseldorf would be welcomed but there was no possibility
of determining when the artist would be at home.
Confident that the Pack
would not have transmitted for nothing, I chose a time most convenient for
my schedule, Spring break, 1980, and went to Dusseldorf, sought out the
Beuys residence, knocked on the door, which was answered by a man wearing
a felt hat and flack jacket. Perversely I asked, is this the Bueys
residence? pretending not to recognize him. We entered the studio at the
center of which was a table not much bigger than an American card table.
On the table was a pile of mail several feet high, all in a heap, with
other heaps on the floor (evidence of mailslides). on one side of the
mountain a small clearing had been made, occupied by a notepad and pen.
"I am doing my correspondence," said Herr Beuys.
"I believe you have several things from me in there somewhere," I
replied.
He signed all my banknotes.
During the conversation Beuys gave me a book, white binding, entitled
REPORT TO THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY ON THE FEASIBILITY OF FOUNDING A
"FREE INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY FOR CREATIVITY AND INTERDISCIPLINARY
RESEARCH" IN DUBLIN.
This book is the origin of the emerAgency.
more later
Greg Ulmer