What is skill? What is good, what is bad? Fluxus artist Robert Filliou provided a simple and yet complicated answer to this in 1969, an answer that reduced the possibilities of criticism to absurdity: Well done = badly done = not done. He made three objects out of a red sock and a yellow box, one good, one bad, and one he didn’t make at all. Together, all three created a new, well-done object – which, in turn, he juxtaposed with another badly done and not-done object, which, for him, created yet another new, well-done object, and so on. Eventually, lack of space prevented him from producing any more, increasingly large well-done art.

The French performers, musicians and visual artists Gaëtan Bulourde and Olivier Toulemonde transfer this principle to objects that consist of a hammer, three nails and a board, but above all they place the emphasis on the creation of the works that – as a performance – becomes a work itself. And the sound created while making art becomes concrete music.

Because the exhibition becomes a performance and the per¬formance becomes an exhibition, every single step, be it done well, badly or not at all, can equally be assessed well, badly or not at all. In Filliou’s words: An artist should be good-for-nothing in order to be good at everything.

Konzept / Idee: Gaetan Bulourde
Konzept / Idee: Olivier Toulemonde

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