Fortunately, things could be worse

2000

Fortunately, things could be worse

Installation, Galerie B2, Leipzig
2000

Walk- in dice

Cargo art gallery

Installation, Galerie B2, Leipzig
2000

Cargo art gallery, Frankfurt, presents Peter Bux with the works Fortunately, things things could be worse and Wheel of misfortune

Cargo-Galerie

Galerie B2, Leipzig
2000

Flyer for the upcoming event and save-the-date card

The sides of a rolling dice are possibilities which, like every pending decision, make the heart beat faster between fear and hope.

The walk-in interior of a large-scale dice is strutted with beams. Water drips into a bucket from a point of value on the ceiling.

Background

I
All elements of a given form must be accepted as reference points if the events and incidents they catalyse are to be considered complete. Only contingencies can be complete – incidents that happen unintentionally.
‘What is called “complete” is that outside which it is not possible to find any, even one, of its parts.’ (Aristotle, Metaphysics, book V, part 16)
Completeness = perfection = 100% chaos in the sampling area.
Completeness means uncertainty. Uncertainty is difficult to bear but tempting insofar as the wealth of experience offered by uncertainty might be greater than imagined. Although it is easy to grasp completeness conceptually, it becomes overbearing and inconceivable when we try to put it into practice. Imagine an infinitely folded object which, after every stage of it being unfolded, reveals an ever-new reality. Completeness either affirms or rejects orientation according to different contexts. The willingness to accept the negative, which can emerge when the positive evolves, was and still is a world apart.
→ Only what goes wrong can turn out well.
If events and incidents are to be complete, they need to contain all possibilities. For example, the sides of a rolling dice are possibilities which, like every pending decision, make the heart beat faster between fear and hope. It’s up to luck, right to the very last second.
→ Save the danger!

II
Questions concerning completeness and the acceptance of its consequences constitute the very essence of the need for security, unleashing enormously controversial responses. Since a series of events arising from discontinuity cannot be determined favourable or unfavourable a priori, defensive mechanisms are instantly directed towards uncertainty (possibly through definition of the scattering range); but they prevent as many moments of happiness as conditions imposed. Luck is therefore pre-empted by allowing a very specific nuance of the predictable.
Caution is too limited as a single mother of wisdom.
It is an integral aspect of culture to pass down protection strategies against all-pervading possibilities and to enforce their compliance. Indeed, the definitions of risks, the amount of regulations and forms of restrictions are what constitute cultural differences, internalising illusions of control.
Attained “completeness” is inevitably incomplete, an outcome that no one likes to admit except if the idea of fulfilment is tied to attaining completeness. A threat nowadays arises from the fact that – due to the increased need for protection – we follow numerous central guidelines, in which incompleteness sells itself as complete, using any negative as a smokescreen.
→ Yet where there’s salvation, peril also grows.

III
Luck and danger can stem from a wealth of opportunities such as promoting one’s own goals and intentions. Captain Cook was exceptionally lucky when he discovered a large group of islands for England on 20 January 1778, which he called the Sandwich Islands after the First Lord of the Admiralty. The latter had promoted his third expedition, providing ‘political and personal support’ upon request, as Lord Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, reported on 1 July 2012. Ironically, on his second visit on 14 February 1779, James Cook was murdered there. One can only fully seize an opportunity if one is prepared to endure its side effects. The fulfilment of even the greatest wishes contains risks.
→ He who affords ‘optio’ (free will) must bear the options.