Liam Gillick doesn’t make things easy for the viewer. Deciphering his script itself is difficult, despite the size of the cut-aluminum letters that hang from the ceiling. Interlocking with each other, they form a snarl that seems impossible to disentangle. It takes extra effort to form them into sentences. And even once they have been deciphered, they remain enigmatic. The slogan-like alliterative statements, constructed in mellifluous English, read like this: “Redundancy that arises from the beckoning of unlimited flexibility, three possible endings, reoccupation regaining reconstructing, reconfiguration of the recent past, the day before the closing of an experimental factory.”

The sentences were used as working hypotheses at a 2007 seminar Gillick taught within the framework of Berlin’s unitednationsplaza. There, the point was to explore art’s current abilities to affect consequences. For five successive days, half-hour sessions took one sentence each as their starting point for possible texts to treat processes relevant to society or to group dynamics. Taking place on Platz der Vereinten Nationen, the project was set in motion by the cancellation of the Manifesta 6 and has meanwhile developed into a platform for collaboration among more than 60 artists, as well as theoreticians. This work fits in the artist’s oeuvre, which investigates the conditions of contemporary art production – through all roles and media made available in the art business.

Liam Gillick was born in Aylesbury, England in 1964. He teaches at New York’s Columbia University. He studied at Goldsmiths College, London, one of the key institutions of British Concept Art ideas. Gillick does not limit himself to the role of the artist. He also promotes his analyses as a critic, curator, designer and author. He will be responsible for the German pavilion at the Venice Biennial in 2009.