| Katya Sander | e@katyasander.net |
| If I give you a name, will you give me one? 2003 text on wall in exhibition space, text on bathroom walls in exhibition space and public bathrooms Ortsbegehung 11, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, 2005 (catalogue) Circa Berlin, Nikolaj Centre for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, 2005 Svenska Hjärtan, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2005. Breaking the Law, Sparwasser, Offensive für Zeitgenössische Kunst und Kommunikation, Berlin, 2003 ‘If I give you a name…’ is a list of the many different kinds of names found on the walls of public bathrooms. The names are listed on the wall(s) of the gallery, not tagged and on top of each other as they often appear in bathrooms, but written in order, one after another, as if they witnessed a certain organizational logic.  In the actual bathroom of the gallery as well as around town in bathrooms where I had found tags, another list -- but this time a list of questions instead of names -- has been roughly written on the walls:  The list of questions comes from Judith Butler's Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, (New York: Routledge, 1997, p. 30). In the text she discusses the act of naming as well as being named by others. The set of questions interested me in relation to the names that are given without the addressee being present, when the person who is named is probably unaware of the naming. The names on public bathroom walls are uttered from someone we don’t know, about somebody (to us) unknown, but addressing our anonymous eyes -- involving us as wittnessing the naming?
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