why do I keep reading the same books

repetition, tendency or a need to go over things, is a psychological and a philosophical category, which creates a certain kind of reassurance ― one knows something that is recognizable will not threaten him or her. for samuel butler the beginnings are always based on repetition. (life and habit, 1878). "repetition is the happiness" said henry miller. søren kierkegaard writes about a character who voluntarily gives up his relationship with a loved one, because only their memory allows him to retain their ideal image. jacques lacan makes an anology with the relationship between dante and beatrice.

kierkegaard’s character prefers remembering to living in reality and by repeating selected moments from his memory he tries to achieve perfection. god is perfection. for kierkegaard, his fear and awe of god is immense, because they represent one’s conscience, which is marked by sin and loneliness.(lutherans do not recognize confession). for kierkegaard, recalling memories by repeating is also a desire and an attempt to slow down the passage of time. recollecting versus repetition, or at least an endeavor to reprise things that have occurred, together negate the fluent passage of time.

whether it is the desire for perfection, which is a consequence of and also an ambition of the reiteration of certain actions in relation to work and production, or in the case of remembering and reminiscing (i.e. stopping time) ― repetition can be understood as a manifestation of a fundamental human drive, which is the longing for eternal life.

pf

david raymond conroy’s work comes out of the artist’s want to replicate a panel from a jeff wall work called stereo. as conroy recounts his knowledge of the piece, some years after making it and selling it, wall decided that he did not think the panel that says stereo worked in the diptych (“it was just too bright”) so he asked the owners to “remove” it from the work.
conroy explains, “i always liked the work exactly because of that panel and so wondered if i could make a replica of that panel and show it as mine. to use something that had been the victim of a change of heart. but then i was thinking that if i remade it, it wouldn't be half of a diptych, it would be alone, so instead of saying stereo it should say mono. then thinking about how to write 'mono' i thought it should just look like a mono record, and then thought it should just be a mono record. so i thought i would deface some mono records so that they were just plain white with mono in the corner. as i was making them, some i wasn't happy with, so i discarded them, (as wall discarded the stereo panel) but i want to include things that had been unwanted, or that people had changed opinion about, things that are no longer seen as they were once, they have become almost almost nothing. (this seemed to be the opposite move from making work with found material). this reclaiming was part of reason to start the whole work, so i should include them even though they haven't become that i had hoped; they aren't the mono(chromes) i wanted or had imagined so they aren't really mono's they are just no's. so i changed the mono to no. i thought i should show them on the ground like the records at a market which have themselves been the victim of a change of heart. i thought i would show three as it is one more no, than bruce nauman's double no, but that's a whole other story.”

dorota kenderová’s work don‘t protect me from what i want is a response to jenny holzer’s work from 1981 entitled protect me from what i want, displayed in times square in new york. the artist’s reaction to holzer’s text lead her to respond by negating the phrase. nonetheless kenderová’s text is not a disagreement with the original, the artist is simply reflecting on her thoughts in a different time and space ― a different context.  

sharon kivand exhibits a continuing series, subject to mood and whim. an eighteenth-century engraving (by whom? ― it is a type, one might say, and could be by boucher ), and in it a man and a woman embrace. the artist copied the encounter in various pencils (in the hope that sensuality of the original (now rather clichéd) remains in the clumsy yet heartfelt renditions). these are collected for their colours: rose madder, yellow ochre, mars violet, smoke blue, lemon cadmium, crag green, manganese violet, and are used once only.. she tried her best, without being too careful or exact ― the drawings are made almost in passing and usually one after the other. in the exhibited set there are sixteen drawings, made in a single day.
kivland also exhibits her work mes bonne année, where she practices her limited skills in watercolour, copying carte de voeux, each of which shows the similar scene of snow, a river or stream, a forest, a village. she looks at the banal image for a long time, committing it to memory, then turns it over to look at it no longer, rendering then what she imagines was pictured overleaf. the watercolours are framed with their original, reversed to show the message, a wish for health, for a lovely year. 

jirka thyn is presenting two photographs (from a series of four) which are almost identical; there is only a slight nuance, a movement of the figures, which makes them different. they are exhibited in two separate rooms in the gallery space and to see the difference, one should look at and remember the first image, then see the second one. the series of four that was already shown in the same gallery space was presented in a way, where all the photographs were next to one another, therefore one could see the alteration right away. the intent is to somehow echo a memory of the past that the space might still have by repeating the setting of the works, though modifying it to some extent.

jaroslav varga shows the project where he works with books from the czech national library (narodní knihovna) in prague. he borrowed hundreds of books related to the theme of "the end" (endism, in postmodern terms). he photocopied spines of the chosen books and created a fictional series. the result is a wallpaper made of photocopies. it represents a physically non-existent library, or rather a map of books or theories and movements announcing "the end" ― a new beginning ― a formatting of the “cultural hard drive”. it is a simulacrum, a representation of a library, which does not actually exist. the representation becomes reality and “nothing [is] left behind.” (baudrillard)

anabela žigová presents a series of five photographs framed in a martha stewart collection picture frame, collapsed on top of each other like a house of cards. the frames are ones, which some families use to display pictures of their loved ones. in the photos there is a collage from the artist’s diary – a sketchbook from the year 2005/2006, where she flips through a self-help book. she obsessively went back to one passage in the book, till a point where she concluded that this is a place where nothing happens. (and after some time, the artist re-titled the piece in french: le lieu où rien ne se passe.)
this passage deals specifically with coming to terms with the realization of having a mother who doesn’t unconditionally love her own child. since the piece is autobiographical, the artist twists a slovak saying ― a basic school sentence that each child learns to write in elementary school: “ema má mamu” (ema has a mother) into a succinct: "ema nemá." (ema doesn’t have.), leaving the word “mother” out.