DOCUMENTO
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THE OBJET AFTER STALIN
akasegawa genPei
Teargas bombs, stones, batons, Ramune bottles, manacles, bamboo
spears . . . we could regard any of those as an “objet” (obuje). Inside
a courthouse, por otro lado, they would all be called “evidence”
(butsu). What is called “evidence” in the courthouse are things that
have been used to perpetrate criminal acts or things someone planned
to use in perpetrating criminal acts—but taken into the courtroom,
where their “weaponness” has been coercively put to rest.
Además, what we call “objet”—because of its autonomy—is
similar to the condition called “evidence.” However, we “civilians” do
not possess our own courtroom that could forcibly impose the tranquil-
ity of “evidence.” Hence, while we keep a foothold in daily life, we cre-
ate a fi ctional courtroom-like space that intersects with daily life, dónde
we carry out the naming of [something as] an objet. This is why, incluso
if we have called it an objet, that thing can still be thrown against us
at any moment and show itself as something that has the function of
teargas, thus inevitably causing us to shed tears. Todavía, en este caso, nuestro
fear of teargas will be accompanied by another kind of anxiety—the
anxiety provoked by the teargas bomb in the courtroom, a bomb whose
function has been suspended. This anxiety arises from the fact that,
although the mission of the teargas bomb is to be fl ung at one’s oppo-
nents, por otro lado, a teargas bomb inside the courtroom-like
© akasegawa Genpei. courtesy scaI tHe batHHoUse, tokyo.
doi:10.1162/artM_a_00126
115
space is just like “us” (including the opponents at whom teargas is
flung) and is pleading for the same rights “we” do. En otras palabras, el
anxiety “we” (de nuevo, including those against whom teargas bombs are
thrown) experience might well be that of being deprived of our position
as teargas users.
The first time the name objet was attached to an ordinary thing
around us was not in a courtroom, but in what could be called the
courtroom-like space of the museum. The criminal (geshunin) OMS, en
1917, took a urinal into a museum in New York City was—needless to
say—Marcel Duchamp. He liberated the urinal from the bathroom and
chose for it the museum as a liberated space. We usually think of a uri-
nal as something whose only mission is to receive our urine and con-
duct it out through the sewage pipes. Por eso, Duchamp stripped us of
our intrinsic power as managers and rulers of the urinal, thus setting
it free, and consequently filling his own skull with freedom. El título
objet was born under this condition of reciprocal liberation.
Something perfectly symmetrical happened in the same year, 1917,
in Russia. With the same intention of attaining “freedom,” in October
those people in Petrograd took over the power of ruling their own lives.
To some extent, it could be said that they won and carried off the uri-
nal. Por ejemplo, we heard a lot from our ancestors who served in
the Japanese imperial army about episodes like the one in which the
Eighth Route Army, stationed in an east even more distant than Russia,
encountering flush toilets for the first time in the cities they took over,
inadvertently used them to wash rice. While doing so, sin embargo, ellos
also seized the power to rule the Chinese continent and gained control
over its toilets.
Between these two cases—one concerning the urinal in New York
and the other concerning the toilets in northern China—there is a
point of intersection, an instant in which the two cases dwell at the
exact same spot. Por un lado, for the sake of freedom, power is
abandoned; por otro lado, for the sake of freedom, power is cap-
tured. This thing called “freedom,” which guides both cases, can only
be achieved in the “over there” of their intention. Even if they can be
said to intersect at some point, they do not stop at this intersection. En
the moment in which their intended freedom is temporarily material-
ized, they depart once again from this intersection. O, tal vez, ellos
have no more than a project of intersecting at the “over there” intended
by both of them.
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The power that is over there, and which we planned to capture in
the name of freedom, is connected to the power that was taken over
and conquered; sin embargo, each of those powers faces a different direc-
ción. But at the moment we try to liberate ourselves from external rule,
apart from turning ourselves to the power hanging over us, on the cusp
of the act of trying to capture power, don’t we also secretly renounce
another kind of power, although not permanently—that is, el poder
to rule our interior self ? By becoming an objet, the Ramune bottle can
turn into a Ramune bomb; by becoming an objet, a flagstaff can turn
into a bamboo spear (takeyari). Sin embargo, the power inside us, cual
might have been renounced for a moment, comes to rule our percep-
tion once again as a Ramune bomb or a bamboo spear. It is perhaps at
the precise moment in which someone renounces the power inside
oneself, before the renunciation is threatened in this way, that the
perception of an objet is born.
When we completely renounce everything, everything in us starts
to revolt (houki suru). It might seem somehow insolent to put it this
way. Pero aun así, I don’t think we renounce in order to revolt or that
we revolt in order to renounce. These two extremes, if they are to be
approachable by us, should present an element of unity. It seems a little
exaggerated, but this is not merely a foolish attempt to unite both of
a ellos. Por último, the point is the birth of bureaucracy—and of bureau-
cratic art.
At any rate, the task of the objet after Stalin is probably latent in
a nosotros, and the model 1,000-yen note (mokei sen en satsu) is one of those
objets. This is also the struggle after Duchamp. This 1,000-yen note
was abducted by the power of the state and placed within the court-
room as “evidence.”
By the way, have you ever seen the model 1,000-yen note? De
curso, it is very different from a fake 1,000-yen note (nise sen en satsu).
A fake 1,000-yen note—independently of it being discovered as such
in retrospect—is something meant to be used with the same exchange
value as the 1,000-yen note. In a way, a model is a substitute originally
meant for observation—a decoration or ornament. Instead of painstak-
ingly repeating here once again what I have written elsewhere about
questions such as the dichotomy of fake versus original or the idea of
a painted model (kaiga no mokei), I want to think about the different
kinds of power which appear—and disappear—around this model.
And speaking of something whose memory is awakened by the idea
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of a model: just like the Emperor’s picture hanging over the Shinto
altars of our families’ homes during the sacred war, what’s the danger
in hanging high on the wall a model of the original 1,000-yen note,
whose reality is so difficult to preserve?
dicho eso, what the state power fears is not only a force (seiryoku)
that tries to capture power; it also fears this model that attempted to
renounce its own internal power of having continuous control over the
1,000-yen note as a 1,000-yen note. Además, it seems that it is not
only the courtroom that fears such an objet, but also its local agent, el
civil subcontractors of the public prosecutor’s office inside our daily
lives. People like the “art critic” who published a waffle article titled
“Concerning the 1,000-Yen Note Incident” in the October 1967 issue
of a journal called SD are good examples of that. In an article published
in the November 1967 issue of the same journal, I carefully demon-
strated this point, but it might be necessary to reaffirm the fact that it is
not only the courtroom that has the right to judge and punish. But we,
también, are originally entitled to judge and punish the courtroom itself.
A trial is also an incident in itself, but the courtroom is a place for
the retrospection of an incident. Por supuesto, retrospection is also impor-
tante, but we need as well a second and a third model. No, certainly not
just a model, but something newly born.
For the time being, instead of a model, I plan to issue an original
paper bill, and its face value is that of a “0-yen note.” I am taking orders
from those willing to own it.
october, 1967
tr anslated by pedro erber
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