Continuous Migration

Ribbons and twine, a coffee can printed with red roses, a canister with rubber bands, strips of fabric - the works of Eran Schaerf are composed of many diverse materials and objects. They are ordinary, simple things that seem to come straight from the flea market or an old-fashioned tailor. They don't amount to much at first sight, but when brought together in Schaerf's installations, these unremarkable objects form an intriguing spectacle in which a world of secret affinities takes shape.

Schaerf, born in Tel Aviv and now living in Brussels and Berlin, works with words, images and recollections. Some of his pieces have the look of a rebus, but whereas the riddle of the rebus can be solved with the aid of a formula, Schaerf's work remains open to interpretation. The meaning of all these different objects is not easy to pin down because they seem continually to change identities. If there is a single leitmotif to be found in this complex oeuvre, it is that of the fleeting instant when one thing suddenly converts into another: the moment when words turn into images, lines into letters, threads into fabrics. In one installation, for instance, a single type of ribbed plastic cord is used in several different ways. It sits on the floor, rolled into a hollow cylinder; uncoiled, it runs above the viewer's head, where it is first used as a curtain rail, holding up plastic sheets; then it snakes against the white ceiling, like handwriting on paper.

It is this inconstancy of function that gives Schaerf's work its mercurial character. He shows us not so much what is being said, as how it is being said. He demonstrates how meanings are conveyed - sometimes through language, at other times through objects - where they converge and where they disintegrate. Ultimately, Schaerf's images are not illustrations of particular thoughts or ideas, but show how concepts are generated. Following the example of René Magritte and Paul Valéry, Schaerf relates one thing to another. The beauty of the connection is less important than the third, unexpected reality he brings to light: a space in which words and objects move independently of one another and their common parts must be determined all over again.

Much of Schaerf's work examines how identity arises. For him, the identity of a person or object is not simply a pre-existent, static phenomenon. It is an active process which, as the biologist Wynne Margulis put it, 'addresses all the different directions and dimensions in which it moves.' At individual places and moments, it will continue to take on a variety of forms, shaping itself as it becomes publicly manifest. This idea is central to Schaerf's work. Though an artist can become publicly manifest by showing the things he has produced, this is not what Schaerf means by 'making public.' According to what laws, Schaerf asks himself, has the materialisation of the artwork been achieved? And to what extent do these laws concur with those of being in public? As a means of explanation, the artist has frequently cited the following example:

When Karl Jaspers wished to present Hannah Ahrendt with a dress of chiffon-velours, she responded to him by letter: 'I'm afraid that [the material] simply doesn't exist at the moment and that we will have to wait until it comes into fashion again. I suspect that this cloth, which was very light, lasted too long. I have discussed this question with an old friend of mine, who is rich and aged between 75 and 80. She has had such a dress for more than 30 years. Indestructible. She couldn't help me either.'

Fabrics that are in fashion and in which one is pleased to be seen in public are abundantly available. Most of the fabrics that have gone out of fashion are no longer produced. Of some, only the names now exist. Miel foncé, peau de peche, the words that Eran Schaerf printed on the posters for Madame chose à l'air tout chose (1992), relate to qualities of specific outdated fabrics and as such, may only be recognised by a wealthy woman 'aged between 75 and 80'. Schaerf's installation, at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, alluded to the fact that the use of certain words is associated with specific eras. This is true of all types language, but especially colloquial language. Some words are outdated and their application in public life is limited. As time passes, the group of people who understand these words becomes steadily smaller - until they come back into fashion again. But will the term Laufmarschendienst, which was printed on a display window to let the public know that the shop repaired runs in women's stockings, ever become widely used again?

What remains? What will vanish? What is usable and what is defunct? Just as Walter Benjamin described the window dressings of the old Parisian shopping arcades as a phantasmagoria of the modern age reflecting its most recent past, Eran Schaerf followed the traces of time's passing in Schneider und Sohn, Langen, Kürzen, Rosen (1991). The installation in Galerie Zwinger looked like an abandoned seamstress' workshop from the 50s. Fabrics were shown in different ways: neatly folded and stacked, pleated, draped, cut up into irregular pieces, suspended from curtain rods or clothing racks. Several of the fabrics looked as though they had been clipped out for an article of clothing, such as a pretty white summer dress with a pattern of black and grey roses. Some sky blue material, neatly pressed, folded and stacked on an ironing board, awaited processing. In a Lipton tea canister (the kind of useful thing one never throws away), he uses the same material, but in the form of small strips, which here looked like remnants. Shortening and lengthening: in the tailoring trade everything is a matter of too much or too little, of reserves and remainders.

Red coat-hangers bearing the word 'LIFE' hung from a metal umbrella stand, which was placed on a stool. A few old photographs lay next to it. One of these showed Audrey Hepburn wearing a bowler, a type of hat rarely seen nowadays. A rose on the hat hid her right eye from view, just as the wraparound sunglasses of the child in another photograph prevented us from making eye contact. A string of empty frames was scattered across the ironing board. Hanging on the wall was a piece of grey felt that evidently once served as a display board: the sun had faded the material's colour leaving patches where framed photographs must have hung for a long time.

In the quiet workshop of Schneider u. Sohn... the past unfolds - without nostalgia, without sentiment, without melancholy. Here in this family business which is no longer in business, we find the traces of a history that is over, yet in one sense still alive. All of the things that are shown here have a more or less defined form, with a more or less established meaning, and they are more or less suitable for use. If the son had actually followed in his father's footsteps, would he have made such a dress with roses? Would he be able to manage with these provisions, these productive means? Dignified in its simplicity, Schneider u. Sohn... makes one wonder where we come from and what we are meant to do.

In this work, the theme of use and reuse comes up not only in a metaphorical sense. For Schneider u. Sohn... Schaerf brought together parts of his earlier works, such as the coat-hangers from Hope You Got Organized (1987) and the black hat from Covered, Behind (1989). The images are linked together like words in sentences. Some sound like melodious, poetic stanzas, rich with associations and visual rhyme, while others are fragmentary and almost incomprehensible, like snatches of conversations. And why shouldn't the artist compose these stanzas with works that already exist? New words are not invented every day; most of them are used time and again, in different sentences. Just as René Daniels allows the same motifs to appear in ever-changing forms, Schaerf continually employs objects in new manifestations.

For the poster in his exhibition Ciel, (1992) Schaerf even made use of other artists' work. The montage of images shows the top hat that Man Ray drew for the cover of the surrealist magazine Littérature. Out of the hat emerges Roy Lichtenstein's Ball of Twine (1963). One end is in the hat, and the other meanders into several curls which turn into the word 'ciel', recalling Magritte's Le Masque Vide (1928). What at first appeared to be a thread in space became a penstroke on paper. Because the line keeps on changing in appearance, it is able to represent different things simultaneously: an object and a word.

This two-way traffic between two and three dimensions is typical of Schaerf's work. In photographs of his installations, the distinctions between front and back, top and bottom, disappear. Many of Schaerf's installations are situated in places that could be referred to as transitional zones, places that both divide and connect two different spaces. The Periodic More or Less, from the 1992 Documenta was located inside as well as outside two pavilions and sometimes literally pierced the walls of the exhibition space. Translation Zone (1993), Schaerf's contribution to Sonsbeek 93 in Arnhem's theatre, was situated in front of, between and behind the swinging glass doors that separate the new lobby from the corridor around the auditorium.

Translation Zone is one of Schaerf's most complete and complex works. It is site-specific yet applicable to other spaces. The spheres, curves and cylinders that dominate the installation's repertoire of forms are derived from the architecture of the venue. The materials from which it is made are also adaptations of the theatre fittings: the brass railings, the rubber bumper strips edging the swinging doors, the glass doors and the globe lights. But Schaerf's spatial interventions do not stay inside the lines of the building. Bumper strips become independent of doors and snake into the foyer. Handrails curve into free space and link up with door handles. A glass lamp at the top of the stairwell is replaced by the chandelier of the original lobby. Another glass globe has left its place in the new foyer and turns up again in a hammock on the ceiling. It is as though all of the work's components have been unleashed from their architectonic context and are displaced, uprooted, in constant transit. It is unclear where the work begins and ends: it can more aptly be described as a spatial expansion than as a delineated installation.

Translation Zone opens up a new space, which could be called a migratory space, since its theme is discontinuity. The fragmentation of space and time is the fundamental experience of the migrant. The migrant knows that he has left his homeland, and even when he has found a second country, a new haven, the feeling of uprootedness, slight as it may be, will never entirely leave him. He finds himself in what Homi Bhabha refers to as an 'interstice', the no man's land between the here and the there, the lost moment between present and past.

In De papegaai, de stier en de kIimmende bougainvillea (The Parrot, the Bull and the climbing Bougainvillæa) Anil Ramdas wrote: 'Just as Derrida says that the meanings are produced by the signs, you could say that our present identity is produced by memories of the past. If these memories fade, if we begin to forget the details, due to migration, due to being uprooted, due to displacement in space and time, we end up with a difficult problem of continuity, which is another term for a problem of identity. That is the true problem of the migrant. The problem of integration, that is to say the integration of one's experiences from the past with those of the present. The problem of adaptation, that is to say the adaptation of one's previous self to one's present self.' Translation Zone is not entirely anchored to the place in which it is situated: the work will assume a new shape in the near future, at a different location. Its migration, its metamorphosis goes with the spirit of Schaerf's work. In essence, it represents an autonomous refuge, whose form adapts to its environment without ever becoming dependent on it.

Translated by Beth O'Brien