“There is no story for that which I live. I need other instruments to tell my life.” 1 René Pollesch

There is a bouquet of lilies on the table; alongside it a portfolio and business cards. On the business cards: Ulrike Bernard in a little parrot-print dress. The back: no contact details, but a photo of me. With our hands, we show the letters C.V., the acronym for curriculum vitae, to the camera. Instead of art works in the portfolio, there are texts put together about the living conditions of visual artists.2 On the invitation to Ulrike Bernard’s exhibition “Fame” in the Galerie Foto-Forum Bozen, there are orchid flowers in foam flower holders next to each other. They have been changed digitally into trashy figures in the style of emoticons. They are reminiscent of the proud orchid arrangements on window sills common in so many (parental) houses in the South Tyrol and they are a comment on present (artistic) existence: shared loneliness, precari-ous self-sufficiency, masked emotions, dreams of beauty, glamour and assumed distinctiveness are all cut off from the basic maintenance of one’s own existence. Fame means hunger in Italian.

Ulrike Bernard somewhat contradicts this common artistic existence with her artistic practice – Kisskissbyebye artist as genius; see you im-ages as a window to the world; was great to have you rectangular art on the wall, muah! She goes further and uses media and techniques to create a new sense of form: conventions of the system of cultural pro-duction are quoted, the roles and expectations towards visual artists remain unclear, the grasp on photography and the relationship between image and text is critical and her approaches to performance and par-ticipation are rooted in their locations. She collaborates with friends, reciprocal services are paid for, every participant is mentioned by name, collaboration as a principle, communality as a contrast. The conditions of production are an artistic and purposeful part of the work.

In “From Work to Text”, Roland Barthes describes the change of per-spective from observing the contents of an artwork to viewing the re-lated text, which is plural, unrestricted, and multi-dimensional.3 The meaning of the image is changed by the processes of linking, association, overlapping, variation, and the simultaneous creation of several layers of meaning. With this notion of intertextuality, Ulrike Bernard’s work-ing methods - which encompass all media - become understandable,

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Markues Daucus bernardi —

Ulla, fame, and the carrotsof the art market

in particular her application of photography, as well as her approaches to participatory art.

“Nails Now” (2012) is a performance piece which Ulrike Bernard has already shown at the final evening of a studio house in Berlin Mitte, in the Bar O Tannenbaum, the Kunstwerke Berlin institute and in the project space Venus & Apoll in Düsseldorf. For free, she offers you her services as a nail artist and paints a fingernail for every visitor. The nail salon is specially set up each time according to the specific loca-tion. Friends design and lend out the props which range from flyers to tabletop fountains, printed hand towels and nail dryers. A photo-graphic reproduction of the catalogue, from which visitors can pick out the design they want, serves as poster and printed edition. The art nails designed by Ulrike Bernard are named underneath in typewriter font and the titles reference the design, the art works and books which they borrow from.4 Buzz words like lifelong learning, Job Centre or individual consultation also appear - but Ulrike Bernard is neither teacher nor therapist. To let oneself be beautified in this studio, each person has to become a living extra within the work and at the same time become an active part in the much broader creation and distri-bution of the ‘text’ of the work. Former visitors might tap impatiently with their finger nail design “I’m not your therapist” while searching for a psychotherapist on the computer or flick through pages of travel prospectuses with “Nowhere is better than this place” or think of their next job interview or date as they look at the melon painted on the

“lack of charisma can be fatal” nail.In the exhibition in Bozen four photographs which refer to “Nails Now”

shoot out on metal trays from a column in the room. Common to them is that they each allude to a design in the nail catalogue, combine text and image, and refer to other artists.5 With Ulrike Bernard’s work, it is often the case that through questioning the absent, the decisions which led to the formation of the work become clear. Where the photographs are concerned, the absence of the classical genres and the common (gender) stereotypes is notable. And thus - without tipping into an oppositional position of another, ‘better’ art of representation - she points implicitly to the processes which preceded the creation of the work. Photography here isn’t about a portrait of something, reproducing, documenting or capturing it (or at least not people, landscapes or houses). It is a surface of indexical representation which shifts between the photographic, the ready made, as well as image and text, and in its interlinking functions in a similar way to the nail studio.6 As such the references don’t just stay within a work, but continue in further artworks and in Ulrike Bernard’s working and presentation methods.

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Spread about the room on plastic stools are five photographs of the installation “Dark Matter” (2012). Also belonging to this is a framework of a trolley on which a stereo system is placed instead of shopping bags. Music plays quietly out of this object and on listening to the lyrics it be-comes clear that it deals with a repeating theme of Ulrike Bernard’s art: work.7 A photo found from the internet leans against the trolley; it is of a person studiously reading a newspaper in the dead sea. It was photo-copied massively zoomed in and, using ‘copy and paste’, Ulrike Bernard has placed Gregory Sholette’s book in the hand of the figure. In his book, Gregory Sholette confers the concept ‘Dark Matter’ metaphorically upon the working conditions in the art world. With that he is describing the often invisible masses of allegedly unsuccessful cultural producers, working away in the background, who through their very presence en-able the existence of the universe of ‘high culture’ and even hold it to-gether.8 In her artistic work Ulrike Bernard turns this relationship on its head: all participants are visible and are paid. Work is recognised as work and with that the basis for change is created.9

In the visual arts, the end products are often top segment luxury products. But the precarious is as a given precarious - there is no meta level and nothing to shake out there. Although this is seemingly every-where in the art world and often complained about, it is rarely coura-geously represented. In Ulrike Bernard’s photos and installations the form of the work and its saleability give way to a state of temporariness. The uncertain, cheap and trashy is left whole in all its dissonence and vacuity instead of being polished and thereby taken to the next level of upper class taste. The value-generating categories like saleability, a long-lasting artwork, clearly defined authorship and the formal train-ing of an artistic style dissolve. Ulrike Bernard is certainly visible to the art market and yet economically elusive, in a condition of self-imposed invisibility - a void which the art market turns its back on because it could collapse within it. There, fragile, temporary communities of art-ists are to be found, living apart from the art market and denouncing its basic conditions. They say to the art market: not at any price. And it an-swers back: not at this price. Ulrike Bernard is part of both systems. She doesn’t place herself in a comfortable position of the non-participatory, observing artist: opposition is hardly something to be appropriated, and collaboration and solidarity are, at the moment, the viable routes.

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1René Pollesch „Lob des alten li-tauischen Regieassistenten im grauen Kittel“, in Kreation und Depression – Freiheit im gegenwärtigen Kapitalismus ISBN 9783865991263

2This portfolio contains the texts men-tioned in this essay.

3And that’s the difference between Work and ‘Text’: “the work is a fragment of substance, […] the Text is a methodo-logical field. […] while the work is held in the hand, the text is held in language: it exists only as discourse. The Text is not the decomposition of the work; rather it is the work that is the Text’s imaginary tail. In other words, the Text is experienced only in an activity, a production.” Roland Barthes “From Work to Text” in Textual Strategies: Per-spectives in Poststructuralist Criticism ISBN 0416737404

4Let’s get into details – quoted are: Fe-lix Gonzalez-Torres „Untitled“ (1990), Markus Miessen „The Nightmare of Participation“ (2010), Sigmar Polke

„Höhere Wesen befahlen: rechte obere Ecke schwarz malen“ (1969), Gregory Sholette „Dark Matter“ (2006), Jenny Holzer „Truisms“ (1977-79), Jobcenter (2003) de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobcenter

5Let’s get into details again – combined and quoted are : a) Anton Peitersen

„The Imbedded Carrots Theory That They Can’t Explain With Money“ (2012), his hand with the design „Individual Consultation“; b) Paul Thek „Afflict the Comfortable, Comfort the Afflicted“ (1985), a puzzle of the universe and a hand with the design „lifelong learn-ing“; c) A book with the title „Gossip Lies Fantasies“, a still from Rainer Wer-ner Fassbinder’s „Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant“ (1972) and a hand with the design „lack of charisma can be fatal“; d) A ribbon with the follow-ing written on it: „never say never*sleep late*indulge your curiosity*waste a little time“, digital drawing „how are you?“ by Omri Livne and a hand with the design

„the nightmare of participation“6

Rosalind Krauss defines the index thus: „As distinct from symbols, indexes es-tablish their meaning along the axis of a physical relationship to their referents. They are the marks or traces of a partic-ular cause, and that cause is the thing to which they refer, the object they signify.“

Photos and ready-mades work in a similar way. „The readymade’s paral-lel with the photograph is established by its process of production. It is about the physical transportation of an object from the continuum of reality into the fixed condition of an art-image by a mo-ment of isolation, or selection. And in this process, it also recalls the function of the shifter. It (the shifter – note from Markues) is a sign which is inherently

“empty”, its signification a function of only this one instance, guaranteed by the existential presence of just this ob-ject. It is the meaningless meaning that is instituted through the term of the in-dex.“ Rosalind Krauss „Notes On The Index: Seventies Art In America“ in Oc-tober Vol. 3, 1977

7Playlist: Wiz Khalifa „Work Hard Play Hard“, Nina Simone „Work Song“, Jimmy Cliff „You Can Get It If You Really Want“, Lou Reed „Don’t Talk to Me About Work“, Steely Dan „Dirty Work“, Tennessie Er-nie Ford „Sixteen Tons“, Donna Summer

„She Works Hard for the Money“, Modest Mouse „Custom Concerns“, Devo „Work-ing in a Coal Mine“, Brooks & Dunn

„Hard Working Man“, Frieder Butzmann „Arbeitslied“, Andy Giorbino „Facharbe-iter“, Floh de Cologne „Arbeit macht frei“, Konstantin „Sing mir ein kleines Arbeiterkampflied“, Peter Licht „Wir sind jung und wir machen uns Sorgen über unsere Chancen auf dem Arbeits-markt“ tbc.

8„Without this obscure mass of “failed” artists the small cadre of successful art-ists would find it difficult, if not impos-sible, to sustain the global art world as it appears today. Without this invisible mass [...] there would be no one left to fabricate the work of art stars or to manage their studios and careers.“ He has already observed a change. „[...] artists have learned to embrace their own structural redundancy, they have chosen to be “dark matter”. By grasp-ing the politics of their own invisibil-ity and marginalization they inevitably challenge the formation of normative artistic values. Here “politics” must be understood as the imaginative explora-tion of ideas, the pleasure of communi-cation, the exchange of education, and the construction of fantasy, all within a radically defined social-artist prac-tice.“ Gregory Sholette „Introduc-tion: The Missing Mass“ in Dark Matter ISBN 9780745327525

9The recognition of work as work is a ba-sis for change in capitalism. In „Revolu-tion at Point Zero – Housework, Repro-duction and Feminist Struggle“ Silvia Federici describes it so: „To have a wage means to be part of a social contract, and there is no doubt concerning its mean-ing: you work, not because you like it, or because it comes naturally to you, but because it is the only condition under which you are allowed to live.“ With this, her theory remains open for fights against sexism and racism. The recogni-tion that work as work ist the step to po-litical change is in my opinion transfer-able to the industry of cultural produc-tion: „Wagelessness and underdevelop-ment are essential elements of capitalist planning, nationally and internationally. They are powerful means to make work-ers compete on the national and interna-tional labor market, and make us believe that our interests are different and con-tradictory. Here are the roots of sexism, racism and welfarism (contempt for the workers who have suceeded in getting some money from the state), which are the expressions of different labor mar-kets and thus different ways of regulat-ing and deviding the working class.“ ISBN 9781604863338

ill. 6Installation view of

Dark Matter at Universität der Künste Berlin, 2012

ill. 7U.B. with Trolleys (Jerusalem), 2010Photo: Markues

ill. 2Invitation card for the

exhibition FameGallery Foto-Forum

2013

ill. 5Nails Now poster

2012

ill. 3Installation view from the per-formance Nails Now at studio

spaces Berlin Mitte, 2012 Photo: Fil Ieropoulos

ill. 1 (CV)

ill. 4Installation view from the

performance Nails Now at KW Berlin, 2012

Photo: Katrin Gruber

List of Ilustrations