"The American deserts denote the emptiness, the radical nudity that is the backgrounds to every human institution. At the same time, they designate human institutions as a metaphor of that emptiness and the work of man as the continuity of the desert, culture as a mirage and as the perpetuity of the simulacrum."
Jean Baudrillard, America, 1986
Three Dialogues is made available through cell phone-based interactive voice response (IVR) technology: using a cell phone or even Skype, anyone in the world can call a specific number (1-212-617-4040) and listen to one of the three audio recordings.
The fact that the piece can be accessed from anywhere in the world is ironical since the exhibit was originally aimed at the 3000 employees of Bloomberg: ...considering how difficult it is to enter the building because of security, I'd rather do a work that can be accessed from outside.
Eric Van Hove
Referring to Three Dialogues, a text originally published in Transition 49 magazine in 1949 which represents a short transcription of a conversation between Samuel Beckett and Georges Duthuit about the nature of contemporary art, the piece partly ponders on Bloomberg's statement as found in the catalogue of the exhibit "We believe that communication is our most powerful tool". While Beckett's Three Dialogues were refereeing to the work of Pierre Tal-Coat, André Masson and Bram van Velde, this specific intervention refers to the work of Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, Samuel Beckett and Eric Van Hove; it simultaneously examines the Conference room as a metaphor of the uninhabited.
"(...) The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express." -- Samuel Beckett, Proust and Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit, Calder and Boyars Press, 1965.
Communication as a named and unified discipline has a history of contestation that goes back to the Socratic dialogues, in many ways making it the first and most contestatory of all early sciences and philosophies. Upon entering Bloomberg's New York offices, a mix of Georges Orwell's 1984 and Star Trek's Enterprise, I quickly saw these proleptical glass meeting rooms as the poignant architectural expression of both the impossibility and the willingness for exchange. I therefore decided to hosts meetings where a number of people would come together for the purpose of discussing a (loosely) predetermined topic. While in the corporate world the aim of a meeting seems definite and the conversation focused on a precise point, in Three Dialogues I let my guests wander about until that point emerge, and vanish.
The titles of each of the three dialogues are:
1 - Dialogue expressing what is to be expressed and with what (dial extension #2)
2 - Dialogue expressing the power to express and from where (dial extension #3)
3 - Dialogue expressing no desire to express along with the obligation to do so (dial extension #4)
Three Dialogues is made available through cell phone-based interactive voice response (IVR) technology: using a cell phone or even Skype, anyone in the world can call a specific number (1-212-617-4040) and listen to one of the three audio recordings. The fact that the piece can be accessed from anywhere in the world is ironical since the exhibit was originally aimed at the 3000 employees of Bloomberg: while western mass communication tends to monitor the whole world from that office in order to help barometer the Western economy and raise capital for the richs, any other person outside could eavesdrop back on recordings made inside the secrecy of the building's meeting rooms. Furthermore it seemed to me that, considering how difficult it is to enter the building because of security, I'd rather do a work that can be accessed from outside.
Guest participants for Three Dialogues includes: Lex Fenwick (Bloomberg CEO), Koan Jeff Baysa, Ahmad Nadalian, Michel Assenmaker, Jan Van Woensel, Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, Jean-Christophe Lanquetin, Sue Williamson, David Gensler, Joy Episalla and Adam Nankervis.
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