<nettime> A web of flies

[Franco Mattes <francomattes@gmail.com>]

This summer White Flag Projects in Saint Louis held an interesting  
exhibition called Another Kind of Vapor. Taking inspiration from  
Dieter Roth's work the show presented artists who use non-traditional  
and decaying materials, such as Paul McCarthy, Ed Ruscha and Dieter  
Roth himself.

Roth's piece in the show was a glass jar containing flies collected by  
the artist from his legendary work Staple Cheese (A Race), 1970. This  
work has disappeared long ago, thrown away in the desert by the  
gallery owner, nothing else remains beside this 40-year-old jar full  
of dead flies.

Unfortunately Dieter Roth never made this work, it's a fake. We  
invented it one evening in a bar with our friend Corazon Del Sol, and  
put it together the next day. We bought all the stuff on the internet:  
an old glass jar, a vintage cork and lots of flies (yes, you can buy  
flies online), and sent the work to the unaware curators.

The piece has been shown for over a month, and nobody questioned its  
authenticity or worthiness. The image of the jar with flies started  
circulating on the Internet and it's also mentioned in Roth's  
biography in Wikipedia.

Maybe one day the jar would have been included in other Dieter Roth  
shows, and, who knows, even sold for a lot of money.

Sometimes we tend to prefer facts we wish to be true, rather than  
facts we know to be true. Maybe the little jar fulfilled our desire  
that the Dieter Roth legendary work wasn't completely lost. Believing  
is seeing.


More info
http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/rot

and the exhibition
http://white-flag-projects.org/wfp10/exhibition_details.cfm?eID=53


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