GERALD MINKOFF (Switzerland)
CHINESE CHESS + INSTANT HEXAGRAM - EVENT,
“What can happen between artists at a meeting like this?” an “instant event” waiting for an answer
Young Artists’ Club, Budapest, 30 October 1981

The structure of the action:

The above question is also the title of this action. The question is formulated in a way that as the action progresses, as it is being “developed”, the answer to it is provided by the six instant photographs, which form a hexagram. Each photograph contains three levels, three layers that originate in different times and spaces. The event itself provides the reality shown by the photographs and it emerges during the event itself.
These layers are as follows:
1. A sign: yin (--) or yang (-) chosen randomly, in the dark, and then “rayographed”.
2. A picture for the same photograph, which I took when I stayed with my Canadian friend living in Vienna, Bob Adrian X, right before I came to Budapest. These pictures show him at work in his home.
3. The last layer is constituted by the pictures that I will take during this action, about the people present.
Right after this, the instant photograph ejects from the camera.
It takes about three minutes for the visible image containing three different layers to emerge from the latent picture. Obviously, the layers originating from different times and spaces will interfere with each other, as the light and shade zones are different. The final result is a picture with the sign (yin or yang) being its integral part, its explanation and its authentication.

The hexagram is completed with the sixth photograph: it is at this point that the meaning of the hexagram can be fully understood and the original question (What can happen between artists at a meeting like this?) with the help of the “Yi Chin”. The more than 2,000 year-old “Yi Chin” or “The Book of Change” is a work of classical Taoism, which reflects a harmonious worldview built on a binary system (yin - yang)and composed of complementary entities (day – night, good – evil, etc.). Sixty-four different hexagrams can be made with the combination of these two signs, and all of the 64 can provide the answer to the question at hand: What can happen between artists at a meeting like this?