Neo-Fluxus: Project of Slow-Down?

888 Manifolds - Symbols of Slow Down

Neo-Fluxus & Entschleunigung

Talberg’s 888 manifolds look natural and their naturalness has made him known across many borders.

Talberg’s style is obsessive as he must work with his hands - though it has nothing to do with handicraft at all. It is rather his way of life, his way of expression. So it would be a no-brainer to ask Talberg about his handicraft, simply because he masters it completely. Instead we could ask, how he - over many years - appropriates in-exterior worlds by his hands - transforming them into his manifolds?

Talberg’s manifolds function like poles of natural tranquillity. They don’t try to sell anything, they don’t want anything. They simply remain powerfully present, unpretentious, any pathos alien to them.

Talberg’s manifolds represent par excellence the grand project of slowdown (‘Entschleunigung’), a symbol against the big cold gestures and arrogant icons of modern consumerism.

Talberg’s 888 manifolds, fallen out of time, disturbing in their biomorphic naturalness. An attack by the artist Talberg on the consumer-friendly police-state mentality?

Talberg is a sculptor who cannot be labeled as modern or post-modern. This has the great advantage that his art can do without devaluation. The modernist has to teach morally? - the post-modernist must cynically disillusion. All this is usually associated with devaluation.?

The great thing about Talberg’s manifolds is that they naturally exist in the presence. That is, today it is much more difficult to directly realize an objet d’art without securing yourself with nets and false bottoms of discursive allusions, disillusionment, cynicism or moral superiority.

All this Talberg intentionally averts and that’s why his manifolds come across so directly and convincingly.

One of the main purposes of art is to deal with perception, especially to make the art viewer aware of his own perceptions. The fascinating thing about Talberg’s manifolds is their power to slowing down time itself and to stimulate processes of reflection along the way.

Talberg’s manifolds seem to stimulate the viewer to reflect about his/her basic human conditions - aside from his other psychological, sociological, mental states etc.

The stimulation seems to be even stronger since Talberg’s manifolds never show specific individual portraits but rather objects of great presence, mirror images, archetypes - triggering the viewer to calm down, rest, reflect. As Henry David Thoreau put it: ‘It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.’

Furthermore, one can observe the museum’s visitors circling the manifolds, as they start to feel their strong presence, emanations of energy flowing forth and back, sometimes slowing down the ‘looks’ to 10-15-30min - as though all of a sudden the visitors becoming aware of themselves, engaging connections on a deeper level.

Let’s close with Wittgenstein. In a wonderful philosophical lesson that is structured like a joke, Wittgenstein admonished philosophers about rushing their thinking:?

Question: 'How does one philosopher address another?'

Answer: 'Take your time.'

M. G.