How does a writer, a researcher, an artist, or a musician know when a piece of work is finished? And what happens if one cannot finish? One may be stuck out of boredom or dissatisfaction with what one has produced so far. Or it may be the case that one struggles with fear, with procrastination before deadlines, or simply with a lack of ideas. While some works always remain unfinished despite the unending desire to complete them, others are abandoned unwillingly or explicitly declared unfinished (what in art is called the non finito). To what extent is the notion of unfinishedness inscribed in works that are conceived as open form? And is the constantly revised and manipulated multitude the format of the future? We might also ask: What are the satisfying and unsatisfying effects of such a disposition? And how does our imagination deal with empty spaces, fragments, and unfinished parts? The ICI Library Event explored the creative and menacing potential of the notion of unfinishedness within the ICI focus on Constituting Wholes.Programme
Welcome: Corinna Haas and Christoph Holzhey
Introduction to the exhibition: Claudia Peppel
Part 1
Done with: Words Taken at Their Word
‘I may hang on my own eyelashes, ripening and swelling, acting out all the parts in the play until I run. The plot’s the only thing we know today’.
Part 2
Undone: States of Incompleteness
Inspired by Pascal Mercier’s Perlmann’s Silence and Susan Sontag’s Early Diaries, this performance explores the different kinds of inabilities that haunt creative work and academic life.
2013
ICI Library Event 