COLLECTIONS OF TEXTES

DIE GABE the gift, donation, offering, talent, endowment, potlach, present, 

For several years ASA-European has been conceiving ideas and formulating thoughts on the theme of Die Gabe. ASA-European endeavors to shape these ideas into project ready forms. This is undertaken in collabration with the "nodes" of the network; various artists and other people working interactively. Some of the basic elements are shown in the "Gastgeber-/Gastprinzip" (the Host/Guest Principle). ASA-European will arrange a Jour Fixe for the first Saturday of the month, beginning in March 1994. Each event will be organised in collaboration with a guest.

The dissolution of all social phenomena into "free floating processes" through quasi-alchemistic structures a) of money b) other models of communication

Why people form ideologies is so as not to be influenced. The appropriate form of participation is to make use of the world and value it in the most active form. What are the most active forms?

Create spaces for influence, exist in intensities.

Die Gabe is the causal sense of society, the intervention between the current and the potential.

Art was once existence without reality in that it formed a world that allowed no conclusions. The conclusions that are now being drawn in art and becoming reality have lost their bond to Die Gabe.

Die Gabe is the transformational at the beginning of each culture.

Die Gabe as a corpse is an undeniable necrophilic fact. Die Gabe doesn't exist. Once we start, then we are confronted with this every day: that Die Gabe doesn't exist. (Peter Farkas)

Thought: Refer to no aesthetic, no datable ethic. Develop a gestalt, a sign.

If there was a beginning and if that beginning was the beginning of community, then that was Die Gabe. And, if there was a first understanding of value and if this understanding took the form of the honor of providing a stranger a friendly welcome, then Die Gabe was also expressed.

In old Greece when someone left the community, a plate or another earthenware vessel was broken and a shard was given to the person leaving. It was the duty of the host or the leader of the community to break the shards. If this person came back, then his right of hospitality was renewed upon producing the fitting piece.

Think of the history of ethics as the history of Die Gabe, as the history of values. Die Gabe and the national economy. In that a person's wealth, along with his performance, also defines an ability, then the wealth is not his property; it is obliged to be passed on. The party and the Service are among the techniques for doing this. A cultural obligation manifests itself in the fact that people receive (among other things) their wealth through other people and that they express themselves with and through values as fellow humans.

The world is everything, as is the case (Wittgenstein)
(From the abundance of cases, one of them led me to Die Gabe.)

Die Gabe, the Service Space and the Transfer of Values for every situation and the special service performance, for every specific request... Thus, even the first expression of the request and the expression of the desire, develop and shape the form and the performance of the service.

That which binds is the intention to be at and in something at the same time. Although the place and time of the performance need not be simultaneous. Crystallisation of the existing network

Wistful moment in the construction of the network

Make the network recognizable in its materiality and its values.

The mental network : Inter-Ment

The self-defining placement of material and action into an idea is the common bond between: the media, the artists, the protagonists of finance and science; and interdisciplinarily thinking and interactively acting people. Idea and action enter into self-transformations which we hereby name, Die Gabe. Displacement allows that no more objectivity be demanded than each is entitled to and every observer decides this for himself each time.

Anonimity of the Motive, Lack of Relationship, The Present

A gift becomes Gabe when it is given as a sign of sovereignty.

Information - Gabe, antagonists

The Gabe done is "the" social contract.

View the Gabe as the given, as the causal religious. Everything is given and independent from everything else. But, is everything also given without expectation?

Outline the field of associations with Gabe as a concept, as an action, as the influential, etc.

Research Gabe as a concept in space, in time and in gravity. Determination of place. Gabe and publicity, Gabe and action.

In a state of excess, a Gabe that once aided survival is no longer appreciated.

Create frameworks, situations, which act as an INTERFACE showing the perpetual implosion of values and the wealth of form therein.

At the foot of every Gabe lies barbarity.

Gabe as an instrument in the critisism of every value system.

Gabe: Transitive Procedures, The Network. Merleau Ponty: In order to connect yourself, the untouchable is required.

In the sign of Gabe, work is transformed. The value of a completed work is measured in its legibility through time. The Gabe is the expression of composure. It transforms work into communication. The implosion of capital.

Gabe: the self-sufficient form, principle of sufficient reason, the one-sided place of osmosis.

As the realization is wealth, the ability is a gift. The traumatic productive force of people.

Gabe is a free floating many-sided morphological event that seperates energies from form and binds the otherwise unsuspected.