Draft of an Idea;
An Art Project for the
Sydney Olympic Games
Working Title:
"27th SYDNEY 2000”
(noted autumn 1996)
INTRODUCTION
Never having been the sporting type, uninterested in competitions and contests, and until now without particular regard for past Olympic Games, I happened to turn on the television set one summer day in 1996. The closing ceremonies of the Atlanta Olympic Games were just then being broadcast. I saw people dancing, forming arrangements of earth-hued blossoms, and their moving depiction of the elements Water, Air, Earth and Fire. The inner beauty of the presentation compelled me to stay and continue watching this channel. At the end of the ceremonies the moments of victory of the games now concluded could be seen in numerous dissolves and intercuts. The commentator spoke about the Olympic Games to come, the twenty-seventh, which would be held in Sydney.
A thought flashed through me like a lightning stroke. I visualized the faces of the Olympic champions at the moment of victorythe pain, the utter physical exhaustion, and the simultaneous joyful realization of being a victor, the best in the world. The 27th, the number, my number, which since 1989 had defined and accompanied me on my artistic path (starting that year, whenever the 27th fell on a Friday I had placed a "Transformer”completed an actiongiven gold back to the Earth). I saw uncountable multitudes of people striding into a stadium over a golden walkway, and as they went their footsteps abraded the leaf-gold layer and revealed beneath it pictures of the faces of victors at the moment of victory. I sprang up, paced excitedly about my domain, went into the kitchen and contemplated the soft-drink can of a well-known Olympics sponsor - ”Go for the Gold” ... "Walk on Gold” ...
the idea of a "T. A. Sydney 2000” was born.
IDEA
Australian inhabitants, Aboriginals, and athletes from every corner of the earth enter the stadium together over a gilded footpath. As they walk, their steps abrade the gold leaf lamina. Pictures contained beneath the gold, not visible at first, are partially revealed. After having been well-trodden, the golden walkway is dismantled. Finally, peoples tracks upon the gilded picture-carriers are preserved, and the art objects thus derived are hung as wall sculptures. In the light the Beauty of Truth will appear, and be scattered over the entire globe.
DEVELOPMENT
The crossing of frontiers, mutuality of common interests, the idea of peace, the origin of the Olympic idea itself, the source of the concept: Olympus (Duden, the German book of foreign words and phrases, defines that concept as "an intellectual position where one believes himself to be far above all others”), the Olympiade (as a "four-year timespan between celebrations of the Olympic Games as they once took place in Ancient Greece”), Olympian (as "godlike, majestic, magnificent”), all of these a golden entryway to the initial idea of T. A.
Man, Truth, the evolution of Art in Societythe expanded concept of Gold as a global and transglobal symbol of humankind. Beauty which embodies the innate Truth of the creative process, transformed and preserved in thousands of wall objects pointing the way into the future.
TRANSFORMATION
1 Picture-bearers:
50 by 50-centimeter square panels of safety glass would be used as picture- carriers. The glass shows itself as something immaterial, it indicates light.
2 Picture Content:.
The picture content will be found, discovered.
In the course of the years-long work procedures thousands of pictures will come to light, be collected and sorted. The picture content will document my "walkabout”, my artistic pathway.
The pictures will be applied to the picture-bearers or -carriers using the silk screen process. The beauty of the Australian continent could be a theme, for exampleits cultural symbols, Aboriginal symbols, and also pictures from enterprise and industry.
Photographs and drawings from the 26 previous Olympic venues as well as others which emerge in the course of the work-process, pictures pointing to past, present and future, and embracing the concepts of Gold, Humankind, Time and Place.,
3 Gold Leaf:
The imprinted picture-bearers will be gilded with 23-carat gold leafdouble Ducat gold. The pictures beneath the gold leaf layer will disappear. What now remains are instruments, toolsthings, if you willwaiting for their transformation to happen.
Human sorrow over millenia is smelted into every particle of this gold leaf. Within it is manifested the ambivalence of Value, and the gold-driven history of the development of Man. Returning gold to the earth is to be perceived as restitution, as cleansing, as sacrifice.
4 Creative Process:
As the golden surface is trod upon, erosion of the gold lamina will occur, and the pictures hidden beneath the gold will become partially visible. In every trace, in each finest scratch, visibly as well as invisibly on the molecular level, the return of gold to the earth is made manifest. Humanitys course is shown here as a sculptured record, an inspirational pathway.
The tracks of all those who have taken part will blend together and intermix equivalentlyeach person an artist.
5 Preservation Process:
After being trod upon, the glass objects will be removed, carefully packed in containers and on the same day flown back to Austria. In the glass works each individual glass panel will be fused to a second sheet of safety glass. The result is a laminated glass object about 10 millimeters thick, a golden core between the laminae, preserving within it the footsteps of all those persons who had taken part by entering the Olympic stadium, together with the appliquéd picture content. The tracks are now protected. The polarity of the instant of creation and its need to be preserved are made tangible through the instrumentality of laminated safety glass.
6 High-quality Steel Frames:
The laminated safety glass panels are quite resistant with respect to damage or destruction by mechanical agency; the glass edges are weak points. In order to preserve the internal golden layer by the best means possible, it is necessary to protect these edges. Framing with a fine-quality steel frame concludes the creative process. Not only is protection of the golden layer achieved with these frames, but the mutation from flooring object to wall sculpture also takes place, its new adaptation simultaneously defined.
7. Installation:
After the lamination process and framingpreservation and mutationall the wall sculptures are again loaded into containers and flown back to Sydney. Punctually at the close of the Olympic Games the symbols associated with its beginning will arrive at the place they were created, an artwork of Today pointing toward Tomorrow.
Erected as wall sculptures, each piece, in accordance with the light source and its angle of incidence, will at different times offer an entirely different appearance to the observer. Should the light fall on the sculpture at an acute angle from above, it will be backlit, and a gray-green graphic surface effect will meet the eye. In this light status the familiar gold remains in the background as a decorative element. As graphic features the human foottracks dominate; the finest scratches will be visible and will meld into the picturization. If the light source is in front of the wall sculpture, the gold irradiates both the fine traces and the picture content. In accord with the change of light angle and source, an ever-varying golden surface will appear, always showing the vivid core and the process by which it was created.
Erection of the wall sculptures is comparable to an evolutionary, and likewise deeply-afflicted, installation.
Thousands of wall pieces, distributed worldwide and erected in the light, will convey the Beauty and Truth of the creative process far into the future.
AMPLIFICATION
From an art philosophers point of view, the golden panel lying underfoot is merely a "tool” before it is first trod upon. Only walking upon it will mutate it into a "creation,” thus conferring on it its essential and authentic Valuethe Value of Truth.
Austria and Australia. At the beginning of the name of both the small European nation and the name of the great continent stands the concept which binds them together, the pair of letters AU, the globally-recognized symbol for the element Aurum, Gold.
Through the air transport of the walked-upon objects from Sydney to Austria at the start of the Olympic games, and the subsequent return flight of the completed wall sculptures from Austria to Sydney at the end, the tracks of the people who took part by simply entering will have orbited the globe.
Australian Aborigines and athletes from all parts of the earth will open the 27th Games. They will begin with a grand entrance, a parade into the stadium. The Olympic competitors, their hearts filled with hope, the golden goal before them, the thorn-strewn path of the strictest training and self-discipline behind them. The Aboriginesalso another continenta golden, pain-burdened path of sorrow, but discrimination now left behind, hope before their eyes.
A certain percentage of the sales profits must be apportioned for charitable and social projects. Thus Art will mitigate the misery caused by gold and the suffering of those human beings who live at the fringes of Society.
Johannes Angerbauer, Aufzugswart
1996/97
Translation: David Koblik