Reinhard Braun Translocation. An Exhibition as Method An exhibition on the interventions in the Graz urban area by Luc Deleu, Formalhaut, Christian Hasucha, and Yuji Takeoka The term "translocation" does not function as an exhibition title, nor does it refer solely to this exhibition. Rather, it formulates and describes a project that has been pursued and developed since 1991 and, in addition to a research project and a resulting publication outlining the theoretical framework, also includes an exhibition. "Translocation" denotes a fundamentally altered perspective on the constitution and structure of place. This changed perspective focuses less on definitions and fixations of places, spaces, space-creating objects, and ensembles (architecture), but primarily on the diverse practices and strategies that aim at their transformation and (temporary) suspension. The prefix "trans" describes this transformation of the constitution and boundaries of a place not as one of movement, transport, or a (media-based) traversal of places and spaces, but rather as a transformation of the location itself. This metamorphosis of place, these interventions that engage with the place or a concept of place and thereby alter its state, do not appear so much as classical interventions that insert a "place within a place" or introduce a foreign body (art) into it, but rather as interventions that introduce a specific perspective on the place, from which modifications can be conceived that lead to interferences within the place—interferences in which the precise contours of the place (occupation, meaning, use) begin to dissolve. The works establish a viewpoint on the place from which another place is constituted on the spot, a different place that is, so to speak, uncovered from the tectonics of the first place. The works presented or documented in the exhibition represent, design, or exemplify interventions in the configuration of a place, or they are models of various strategies that not only indicate but also exemplify a transformation of the concept of place. This is not (only) about a literal presence in or of space, but about conceptual conditions and consequences, about, if you will, an "aesthetics of transference." Some works (such as those by Mischa Kuball, Martha Laugs, or Osvaldo Romberg) already presuppose formal and metaphorical, i.e., significant, transformations of topography as prerequisites for their projects—topography being precisely that configuration which "represents" the constitution of a place. Others (such as those by Christian Hasucha, Hannes Forster, or Norbert Radermacher) initiate such transformations on-site. The term "translocation" thus describes a model for analyzing such configurations and topographies, for subjecting them to strategic interventions, i.e., a cultural-technical method has been developed that aims at a redefinition of place. The invited artists and groups explicitly pursue such strategies of translocation, displacement, shift, condensation, and transfer in their works and projects; the concrete place, the specific spatial context, is transformed from a location into a hub, a stopping point and switching point between fleeting, flagrant, and permanent, "local" occupations and meanings. Both the book and the exhibition pose the question of how and by what means art carries out such operations on site, and attempt to formulate an incomplete, but in parts concisely formulated and presented, archaeology of translocation. "Art between Architecture" opens up a field of tension between diverse and different artistic and theoretical starting points for operations on site, whereby the concept of place itself is presupposed as inherently different in each case. Thus, from the outset, no places are identical with themselves; rather, there are as many projections onto them as there are discourses about them. Therefore, the method of translocation only establishes itself within the field of an already existing spectrum of (artistic and theoretical) perspectives on the place. The exhibition thus only partially assembles objects that present themselves as "works," or rather, objects that only partially present themselves as "works." Instead, it encompasses objects that stand in varying relationships to the system and space of the exhibition itself, and from this perspective design, refer to, evoke, and project their respective other spaces into the exhibition's present. The dynamics of the different locations therefore also occur through/on/in various levels, references, and representations. Sculpture, photography, or installation appear here as a medium in the literal sense, as they essentially bring together spaces that are absent and different from the one "on site." While they are indeed designed for the artificial space of the exhibition (like those of Georges Rousse or Susanne Mahlmeister), they implant into it the syntagma and structures of those other spaces that they address and that are their actual occasion and subject matter (the staircase, the Pantheon in Paris). They thus construct breaks and discontinuities in the spatial syntagma of the exhibition by introducing those places, spaces, and bodies - places, spaces, and bodies that cannot fundamentally be present in this exhibition space, but which can be inscribed within it. This form of transfer and projection, of inscription, characterizes a moment of the method, which here is termed "translocation." However, a distinction must be drawn once again from the concept of "art in public space." The works included in the exhibition are not sculptures made publicly available; they do not involve a transfer of artistic aspects into public contexts. Therefore, a transfer of meaning is not the primary focus. The aim is not to conquer a space in public space for art or to carve out cells from it as art cells, but rather to intend a comprehensive transformation, to interpret the place as the "periphery" of this intervention from the perspective of the (artistic) brand, and to radically dislocate it. This means that something else takes hold in this space, something that is not distinguished from this other thing as a difference (art). Art itself appears as public material, as material of the public sphere, which disappears in this intervention and in the anamorphosis of the place. The concept of art itself is perhaps only secondary; the main point is not to understand the works as a shift in the content configuration of a place, but as a formal strategy, that is, as an arrangement of strategic interventions, as a configuration of formal aspects that qualitatively shifts the place in and against itself. The focus is not on modifying meanings through other meanings, but on arrangements that create a rift in the sense and significance of the place. Art itself appears as public material, as material of the public, which disappears in this intervention and in the anamorphosis of the place. A prime example of this is Christian Hasucha's work "NOW." For three weeks, a man sits on a chair anchored to a building facade every evening. At random intervals, he flips a switch, causing the word "NOW" to light up in neon. This laconic statement has no connection to the location or the events unfolding there. It is nothing more than a self-referential commentary on an event: the act of activating a contact now. This arbitrary measure of time literally overlays the temporal order of the place without corresponding to or following it. Ironically, this neon sign also alludes to the constant glare from advertising of all kinds and its absurdity, or rather, its lack of meaning. Crucially, however, it demonstrates indifference to the (temporal) structure of the place, to the processes that permeate and define it. "NOW" introduces an indifferent moment towards the place; it is not an art-oriented content-related or aesthetic analysis, but rather the simple reflection of the arbitrariness of the meanings of cultural structures and patterns, by projecting onto the busy activity along these necessities and/or desires the laconic fact that now is "NOW". But this fact makes the place what it is now, in the absence of "NOW." It is no longer the place, the existing context, that defines the intervention; it is no longer the place's previous state, which the term "art in public space" still indicates, but rather it is now the place that is only defined by a marking as "NOW," that is, as a place. Beyond this (accidental) illumination of the place, it does not exist. In this respect, Christian Hasucha's work is exemplary of the often-mentioned mechanism of superimposition, an intervention that does not necessarily change anything, but fundamentally "illuminates" the place differently: translocation thus appears as that other perspective on the place that sees it differently and represents it within the work. The place is to be read from the perspective of an intervention that presents itself as a transfer: during an intervention that can also be presented as artistic, but in which case the strategic component is more essential. During such an intervention, the location is different; its configuration is superimposed and substituted by another. "NOW" literally produces a "different space" here: translocation. Reinhard Braun, art historian, works for Camera Austria and as a freelance writer; lives in Graz. Cf. Project documentation No. 11: NOW