The publication Contradicting Statements documents John Miller's early video work of the same name from 1977. The video shows language as something unstable, whose meaning cannot be fixed. This early exploration of linguistic and communicative structures points to central themes in Miller's later work, in which everyday situations and cultural systems are examined for their implicit rules and power relations.

Miller writes about this work: "The imperative to contradict creates an absurd void at its center. As though a function of a miniature neural network, the cast behaves as quasi-automatons. Control is modulated, not absolute. The performers laugh at their instrumentalization, mocking the rules they inevitably obey. […] Perhaps, as we enter a new era of overarching artificial intelligence, Contradicting Statements might offer a glimpse into a fragile past, still alive with paths not taken.”

After a screening of the video, there will be a discussion with John Miller, Melanie Ohnemus, Benedikt Reichenbach, and Anna Lena Seiser.

Participants

John Miller (b. 1954 in Cleveland / USA) is an artist and writer based in New York and Berlin. He has had retrospective exhibitions at Kunsthaus Glarus (2024); Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2020); ICA Miami (2016); Kunsthalle Zurich (2009); Kunstverein in Hamburg and La Magasin, Grenoble (1999). His publications include Mike Kelley: Educational Complex (Brussels: JRP/Ringier, 2009), The Price Club: Selected Writings (Geneva: JRP/Ringier, 2000), and The Ruin of Exchange: Selected Writings (Zurich, New York: JRP/Ringier, 2012). Miller is a professor of Professional Practice in the Art History Department at Barnard College, New York City.

Melanie Ohnemus is an art historian, curator, editor, and writer working at the intersection of contemporary art, critical theory, and institutional practice. Her work spans curatorial projects, publications, and discursive formats developed in both institutional and independent contexts. She has held senior curatorial and directorial positions at institutions such as Kunsthaus Glarus, Portikus Frankfurt/Main, and Secession Vienna, and has worked with artists across generations on exhibitions, with a strong focus on commissions and new productions. Alongside her curatorial practice, she has published widely as an author and editor, with texts appearing in international art magazines and institutional publications. She develops and edits publication projects in close collaboration with artists and designers, with a focus on conceptual formats. Her writing is characterized by a sustained interest in questions of abstraction, mediation, and conceptual alignment, as well as in the relationship between artistic practice and contextual shifts. She also develops and edits long-term interview and conversation formats with international artists.

Benedikt Reichenbach has worked as a graphic designer and editor since 2008, following studies in history and philosophy. From 2015–2016, he was a grantee of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and a participant in the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. In 2014, he published Harun Farocki Diagrams. Images from Ten Films (Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König); in 2017, Pasolini’s Bodies and Places (Zurich: Edition Patrick Frey). In 2020, his research project on the French graphic designer Jacques Daniel (1920–2011), who began his career producing false papers for the French Resistance, received funding from the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP).