katyaev
(ekaterina vasilyeva)

Katya and Hanna propose to Giorgio Agamben to fry an egg:

performative journey with elements of a quest, philosophical dialogs, chess game and mise-en-scene. with elements of a quest, philosophical dialogs, chess game and mise-en-scene;

score, photographs, ​conceptual framework.

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Performers: 3

Duration: 3 days

Location: Grado, Italy

Direct viewers: 0

Action: Katya and Hanna propose to Giorgio Agamben to fry an egg

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Upon a carte blanche invitation to the 6th Moscow Biennale’s Special Project, Ev et Zubkova  came up with an idea to meet Giorgio Agamben to propose to him to fry an egg as a gesture— performative and/ or performed. 

a gag-like situation of frying an egg with a philosopher.

ddressed to a thinker whose critical writings have deeply shaped contemporary art, leftist thought, and reflections on gesture, language, and community.

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 to a philosopher who’s critical writings largely influenced the sphere of contemporary art, 

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Instead of contacting him formally,  they approached this "challenge" as a

a quest et un pari: 

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they search online for a public event where he would be present. They find information about an open workshop taking place in Grado, Italy, and travel there from Tromsø, Norway, where they are in residence at the time. They bring with them a large white chess pawn in their luggage.

 

On the evening of their arrival, they spot Agamben having dinner in the restaurant of the hotel where the event is hosted. After he steps outside for a cigarette, they approach him and begin a conversation. They explain that they have come from Norway without notice to make an artistic proposal: to fry an egg together.

 

Agamben responds with curiosity and invites them to continue the conversation. Over the next three days, he initiates several meetings with them: walks through the city, shared meals, conversations on the beach and in cafés. Throughout these encounters, the artists introduce the chess pawn and describe their project, which they frame as a commissioned piece for the Moscow Biennale.

 

They explain that the proposal does not aim for a specific format — whether an object, a photo, or a recording — but rather the act itself, which they hope to bring back to the exhibition space in Moscow.

 

The three-day journey ends without the egg being fried. Agamben suggests continuing the conversation at a later date in Venice. The gesture remains unresolved, but the sentence “Agamben fries an egg” exists as an utterance, as a potential.

 

A fried egg (sunny side up or oeuf au miroir) is simultaneously one of the most common examples of a breakfast and also a reminiscence of a day-to-day breakfast of Wittgenstein. The philosopher’s ascetic, austere and chaste manner of everyday life was a projection of his mode of thought. His late idea of «form of life» is developed by Agamben from the point where Wittgenstein stopped due to the end of physical life.

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By focusing on a mundane act and by an attempt to translate it to a domaine of absent purpose, we are addressing to questions as that of action and gesture, anonymity of names (paradox of White Knight), suspended image and image-movement, being and language and being; and others, in a form of a gag-like situation as that of frying an egg with a philosopher.

 

A proposition to fry an egg exists in a form of an address to a philosopher who’s critical writings largely influenced the sphere of contemporary art, engaging him to empirical transfiguration of theoretical concepts as the third author and performer.

 

This proposition also exists as such - a sentence with subject and predicate. As an utterance, which means being in language, the phrase «Agamben fries an egg» incorporates all potential scenarios of how this phrase could be actualized - but also it simultaneously and radically denies them all. Therefore being in language comprises all possible and impossible scenarios at the same time, making room for hope and for whatever.

 

Hanna and Ekaterina are proposing a method by which this being in language could be translated into being, while at the same time continuing to preserve the whatever-singularity-being. Therefore, an utterance- in language becomes a reference point of living backwards and triggers a formula of transformations, where logic is infinitely converging to the limits of language, and paradox infinitely expands them, so that the formula itself becomes a parable, a gesture becomes a language, and language becomes a recipe. The literal actualization of the proposition is happening occasionally during the whole lifetime of the philosopher.