Detail

Modest as the title on the wooden plinth may sound, it in fact holds the enormous promise of history. In search for a more vivid form of art beyond established forms of expression, Dieter Roth began in the early 1960s to create assemblages from foodstuffs, using materials that show processes of decay and that can be left to realize their inherent potential. This work consists of a block of neatly stacked slices of Pumpernickel, with a short story by Dieter Roth that has been cut into stripes hanging out between the layers. The various fragments are readable, the story’s coherence however is lost. This is reminiscent of Roth’s “literature sausages,” in which he shreds books and fills the scraps together with fat and spices into an artificial sausage skin. All of these works abolish the dichotomy between material and the intellect, which are otherwise kept separated. Roth’s title has a double meaning as story and history. History can be seen directly, since the traces of decay of the organic material imply a temporal process. The uncontrollable decay is not merely accepted, but a constitutive component of the work. Bread and text cut into slices and scraps contrast the notion of history as a linear continuum with discontinuity and simultaneity.