Monthly Archives: January 2008

Reading Paddy Johnson’s interview with Dan Levenson in ArtCal Zine a few days ago I was reminded of the essay by Umberto Eco: On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1. Levenson’s Little Switzerland project – the topic of discussion in the interview – is a similar semiotic and cartographic exercise to Eco’s in that it attempts a perfect representation of that which it replicates. So, using Eco’s map, here is an attempt to find Little Switzerland.

Listed below are Eco’s preliminary rules for creating a map on a scale of 1 to 1 and description of how Little Switzerland adheres to these rules –

1. That the map be one to one and coextensive with the territory of the empire.

• Little Switzerland exists as an object and a performance in and of itself. It maintains a fully developed pretence of being a gallery, with all angles of being a gallery and the business of being a gallery being covered. For Levenson “the desire is not just to engage some kind of institutional critique but to create a universe” and the attempt is always to “create some kind of world that I can manoeuvre through that is infinitely expandable, modular and that I can change.

2. That it be a map and not a copy.

• The artist’s relationship to Little Switzerland is tangential. He remains little more than a contractor. As an artist, Levenson is attempting to co-opt the gallery business and make it part of his artwork and not have Little Switzerland exist in its own right. It always operates within the sole context of the gallery being an artwork. It adopts the style of an art gallery: it has the logo, the letterhead, the printed advertisements, without ever being a gallery. It serves only to chart the territory of the gallery business and the business of being a gallery and never to act as a template for one. It maps the progress and evolution of the gallery logo. Little Switzerland, with its rose isignia as Levenson explains, is an emerging gallery and so is “a little too loud and a little bit too promotional, the way that emerging galleries tend to be”. It over promotes, indicates its youth and brashness by selling a range of branded apparel including but never limited to: printed T-shirts, thongs, coffee mugs, beer steins and stickers. Little Switzerland “sort of force[s] their artists in[to] the compromising position of having to model the clothing”.

3. That the map must exist in the empire which it represents.

• The press releases for all Little Switzerland shows are sent out to all the usual places via all the usual channels by the fictional Swiss critic Hans-Reudi Girshweiler, because it is, after all, an entirely “Swiss/German sort of world”. Also, Urs Bereuter, one of the artists represented by Little Switzerland has had opportunity to widen his presence amongst the New York art scene. Bereuter was included in a group show in Chelsea alongside the very real and the very luminary Sol le Wit, Yayoi Kusama and Rob Pruitt. Little Switzerland is also not alone within its context in the Empire, resulting in it not being anomalous to the map and its means of representation of the Empire. Other artists like the contemporary example of Filip Noterdaeme’s Homeless Museum share a sensibility of similarly fictional concept. At some point there will also be a sister gallery; “the dematerialised gallery” that will show conceptual art.

4. That the map depict not only the natural reliefs but also the artifacts of the empire.

• There are catalogues of each artist’s work as well as other endeavours by Levenson that also cross reference Little Switzerland while not necessarily being part of the same project. Endeavours such as the book of Swiss artists that catalogues thousands of computer generated Swiss names. There are also photographic evidences of the artists represented by Little Switzerland to be found online and in print. All of the artists are styled to infer their own individual personality. Pia Stahel for example, has a look described as “grungy and glam” by Levenson, but otherwise all of the artists wear glasses and smoke. And these artists were the sole exhibitors in New Swiss Art, an exhibition at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts where the gallery itself also took up residence in November 2006.

5. That the map be a map and not an atlas with partial pages.

• Little Switzerland comes complete with a full and unabridged history. Beginning life in Zurich in 1996 where it represented a group of artists all from the same art school, it moved to Berlin in 1997 where it ran for three seasons before closing in 1999.

6. That the map be a semiotic tool.

• Little Switzerland is a work of art and not actually a real gallery, it is a performance of a real gallery and therefore always and only a semiotic tool.