Decoder

In the linguistic approach of performativity, language is not just a tool for describing the world that is either used correctly or incorrectly. It inevitably creates reality; it is always communication that forms the subject of a society.

Decoder is a work that deals with the decoding and categorisation of a description-independent outside world, but in the other direction also with the linguistic programming of an inside world - which for its part produces an outside. How absolutely can these two external worlds be distinguished from each other?

The object of cognition in this arrangement is a piece of driftwood cast in concrete, a hybrid body reminiscent of both a faded tree trunk and a fragment of a demolished building. So what defines this object, its tree-like, once living surface or its artificial, concreted interior?

Like this tree made of reinforced concrete, we stand outside of "nature" without ever really being able to leave it. With the help of communication, we create our society out of ourselves, our being and our doing form an inseparable unit (autopoiesis). We are part of this world from which we have sprung.