"The B-Thing" -- My Original Thread

[Charles Drago]

All,

Apologies for the disappearance of my original Gelatin, "The B-Thing," and 9-11 thread. I'll give it one more try by beginning with my initial post:

First, the basics:

The B-Thing, by Gelatin

Based on the book's closing credits, the creators of the WTC project who comprise Gelatin are Leo Koenig, Josh Harris, Moukhtar Kocache, Land Niederosterreich, and Land Salzburg.-

Walter König, Cologne, 2001
ISBN: 3-8837-507-9
32 pages, colour throughout, embossed hard covers
Text: Tex Rubinowitz
Photos: Maria Ziegelböck, Thomas Sandbichler, Susanne Wimmer, gelatin
Layout: Johannes Heuer
Reproductions: Byberlab, Vienna
Print: Groebner Druck, boerwart
Binding: Papyrus, Vienna
Translation: Jonathan Quinn
Courtesy: Leo Koenig Inc., New York; Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna

The front endpiece of this rather elaborate little cloth-bound book is comprised of German text by Tex Rubinowitz. It is lengthy and should be read in its entirety and for subtext. I reproduce the opening lines now:

"The loneliness of Raffia. The group Gelatin is comprised of four young men. When one of them speaks or smiles you can see a gap in his teeth and one of them has broken the tip of one his incisors. I once saw one of them in a light blue towelling romper suit, and I don't know the fourth at all. They all have something unaired about them and so-called early morning hairdo. I assume this goes for the fourth one too. I know that the one with the chipped tooth once dropped a vast coffee cup and it broke into a thousand pieces. He painstakingly glued this monstrosity (it was easily big enough to hold two oranges) back together piece for piece like a jigsaw puzzle."

"The Loneliness of Raffia" is, as Tex later reminds us, a short story by Franz Kafka.

From an abebooks.com blurb:

(http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Sear...-thing&x=0&y=0 )

which incorporates text from Gelatin's web site (http://www.wtc.window.to ):

The Austrian collective, Gelatin, has gained an international reputation for ambitious projects that thrive on surprise and hyper-real bodily sensation. Each project pushes physical boundaries and audience expectations. The B-Thing uncovers the truth behind the rumours of Gelatin's construction of an improvised balcony on the 91st floor of the World Trade Centre in New York in 2000. Through preparatory notes written by the boys, diagrams and colour photographs, we are finally able to glimpse the pink sunrise over New York from Gelatin's eyes and to see how their home-made balcony emerged like a 'pimple on the building's eel slippery face.' The rumours continued however and Moukhtar Kocache, Director of Visual Art and Media at the WTC, felt the need to deny that the action ever took place, claiming that any documentation 'simply demonstrates [Gelatin's] art of deception.' Although he praised their success 'in addressing the mythological and iconic dimensions of America, New York and the Twin Towers,' and continued, '[they] use the system of the art world, a system they love to critique as a vehicle . And because they are boys and like to play .'

Those crazy kids!

More on this later today. But know that, no matter how you cut it, The B-Thing is an important book.

[Charles Drago]

On my original thread that disappeared after my initial offering, Mark Stapleton posted the following:

To me some of the details of this story seems very hazy and imprecise[.]

"The covert installation...of a balcony on the 91st floor of the World Trade Centre" is meaningless until the writer specifies which tower he refers to. Why the haziness? Is it contrived? Apparently Charles has the book, and this is his thread, but when I asked the question--a pretty simple and straightforward question, imo--there was no response from Charles.

Also, the 18 month time lag between the appearance of the B thing and the 9/11 event seems like quite a lengthy gap to me.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if this affair was related to 9/11 as I believe strongly that Mossad were involved in 9/11 (as well as many other events blamed on terrorists or lone nut assassins).

For now it just smells like bullshit, imo.

Mark, I did not quickly respond because of the circumstances surrounding the aforementioned disappearance. Let me do so now.

The B-Thing is copyright 2001, Verlag Der Buchhandlung, Walther Konig, Koln.

In a nutshell, the book purports to document a March 6, 2000 attempt by art students occupying "studiospace provided by the lower manhatten cultural council" (all quoted passages are reproduced as they originally appear in the book, replete with poetically licensed grammar, punctuation, spelling, and line breaks) on the "91. floor of world trade center 1."

"gelatin is on a floor with other artists who are part of this studio program.
gelatins space (the window, where the action will happen), is walled in with a
system of cardboard boxes.

"other artists sharing 91. floor do not know what we are planing and doing.
the construction of the balcony and all other preparations are not visible
for them."

The narrative continues:

"the balcony is a prefabriacted construction, made by gelatin.
one person at a time will be able to stand on it.
the balcony will be camouflaged.
it will be built to be as less visible as possible for any passerby on the street.
it will be taken apart the moment after beeing pulled back in."

Further:

"one window will be taken out.
the removing of the window is done in a professional and secured action.
no constructive parts of the building will be removed or damaged.
there will not be any visible traces, after the window will have been put
back in."

"nobody but gelatin is officially involved into the project.
there will be an attorney telling gelatin how to behave.
there will be an attorney responsible to handle the case for gelatin."

A brief section of glossy color photographs "documents" the project. Individuals, apparently of college age, are depicted; all males are turned away from the camera. Two Asian females appear in full-face shots. The majority of pages depict drawings and calculations.

Photos of the balcony -- a narrow, cramped space protruding between exterior support columns -- appear to have been taken from ground level, and these images are grainy and, well, unconvincing. Also, there are photos that appear to have been shot from the balcony itself, with a portion of the building in frame for scale and verification purposes.

One more note: The group commonly offers two spellings of its name: "Gelitin" and "Gelatin."

[Mark Stapleton]

Thanks Charles.