Together they are a thousand years, a few hundred more, a few hundred less (274). It depends. To be young, to be new —nearly naive— not yet old, but someday soon; making it impossible not to reference, to refer, to use quotation marks. In consequence, we need a ‘pathos’, ‘a tradition of the new’, ‘an origin to the beginning’, memory, or a starting point. Not yet, but Also not an author. ^₁

41       6             Steve Bishop                                     1983                        2018

40       1-21       Sara Deraedt                                     1984                        2022-2023

44       01           Nicola Di Menna                             1980                        2024

47        1-13       Michael E. Smith                             1977                        2023 and 2011

33       2             Gianna Surangkanjanajai          1991                         2022

68       191         William Pope.L                                1955-2023            2005

2005 2011 2018 2022 2022-2023 2023 2024

When we value surprise, we can do so for the breach with what we know as much as for its

breadth, the knots and ties that hold on to it. Muses, myth, monuments.

‘But do we really know, between improbable coincidence and implacable consistency, which

one signals and betrays fiction?’ _{Anne F. Garréta, Pas un jour. Bernard Grasset, Paris 2002, p. 146. ²}

Only when you are alone, can you afford not to look what time is.

—

“No cookies, No cake” at UA26 (11 September – 20 October 2024) features works by Steve Bishop, Sara

Deraedt, Nicola Di Menna, Michael E. Smith, William Pope.L and Gianna Surangkanjanajai. Their

combined age, if Pope.L had still been alive, would have been 274. The year the exhibited works were

made ranges from 2005 to 2024, with a median of 2022. This exhibition is, in a sense, a continuation and

twin of “Not Expecting Much” that ran from 16 September to 24 October 2022, with Trisha Donnelly,

Sean Edwards, Gaylen Gerber, Simon Lässig and Michael E. Smith. The last sentence of this text by Robin

Waart almost quotes Perec’s A Man Asleep.

_{1 “I don’t think any author or artist sees themselves as the inventor, the creator of the work, anything else would almost be a}

_{deception or delusional.” Jean-Luc Nancy, in Jean-Luc Nancy & Mathilde Girard, Proprement dit. Entretien sur le mythe. Éditions}

_{Lignes, Paris 2005 – translated into German by Boris Kränzel as Mit eigenen Worten. Gespräch über den Mythos. Passagen Verlag,}

_{Wien 2022, p. 22. Translation from German R.W.}

_{2 ‘Mais sait-on vraiment, de l’invraisemblable coïncidence ou de l’implacable consistance, ce qui signe ou la fiction ou le récit.’ From}

_{the translation by Emma Ramadan, Not one Day. Deep Vellum Publishing, Dallas, Texas 2017, dedicated A nulle / To none.}