Scope and Contents

The horse appears to be the theme of this installation. Mirror writing is often present in Gerz's work. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

Abridged catalog written by Gunter Metken. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

The word "ego." is spelled out one letter by one letter on each of three corners and a period punctuation mark on the fourth corner of a small square which is scored and stained. The reverse side carries the two phrases, "One word. Two words." This work is designated No.491 in Gerz's Catalogue Raisonee Volume III. Note that ego is designated separately as No.500. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents There are several objects in this box which is like a one person "Assembling." One is an empty plastic bag with a three pages of documentation stapled to it. Gerz relates that he sent such empty plastic bags to friends, strangers from the Paris phone book and exhibition visitors at international art galleries. They were instructed to place personal old relics in the bags. Three hundred filled plastic bags were returned and sealed by Gerz who then deposited them in the construction foundation of the new Montparnasse Tower in Paris which was then covered by concrete. Since the bags were inaccessible, and no material trace of them remained, Gerz wrote that "from the idea and diverse initiatives which their realization made necessary as well as the impressions which I received during this time, I retain a memory more and more contradictory. The consequences which arise from this each day seem by now more important than the idea itself." There are duplicate, printed plastic envelopes...

Scope and Contents

Rinder writes in an introductory essay that Jochen Gerz, aka The Berkeley Oracle, "in homage to the questioning spirit of Berkeley in the 1960's, invited questions to be posted on a web-site, hosted simultaneously by the Berkeley Art Museum and the Center for Art and Media...Gerz' piece alludes to the Oracle at Delphi..In the spring of 1998, Gerz selected approximately forty questions from the Berkeley Oracle, printed them out, and placed them in various locales around the Berkeley Art Museum. Some were installed in the galleries, along side works of art, while others were tucked away in unexpected places." The questions are reproduced, one to a single sided transluscent page in this book. The printed red lettered sentences on translucent paper are philosophical questions that might be answered by an oracle. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.