This limited group of things becomes our constant companion, forming something like a common body that we observe with interest. The mysterious ontology of things as our common body becomes the content of all our works. We turn things into art objects and then return them to everyday use. Their artistic life is instantaneous and solemn; they do not become products. They return to their source bearing an imprint — a flickering trace of Nonknowledge.
Common Body is itself an artwork. The list is not a curatorial label, not an inventory used to produce another work, and not merely documentation of the Dresden room. It functions as a cast / imprint of the dwelling: the room is rendered again as a list of names. The list itself is the Work. Its function is representational and ontological rather than instrumental.
This function must not be generalized to other lists in Absent Institution. Similar list form does not imply identical artistic status or operation. In particular, the 2020 Meganom list also functioned as an operative production instrument / protocol sent to Finland and activated there, while the 2026 Hamburg inventory also functioned within the apartment exhibition as a curatorial card / exhibition label and as display / articulation. Under the authorial correction of 11 September 2026, both `200630_Meganom` and `260620_Hamburg` remain autonomous Works; these additional functions do not cancel their Work identities.
Authorial clarification — function of the list (2026-09-07)
It turns out that our most precise and delicate statements about what we observe appear as the most insignificant pieces of evidence. The events of that night still set the scale of our work. We are still stretched between an extended object and an event in the space of the dance floor, absorbed in the game while someone carries away our things behind our backs. This luggage, the burden with which we tend to identify ourselves, serves only to stretch and tighten our personality, producing a particular sound like a string. Having once taken the world apart down to simple presence, we keep trying to find it and assemble it again as a whole, without losing the feeling of suspension in a whistling draught.
