The first arrivals to the festival, French artists of INSTITUT DES RECHERCHES MENANT A RIEN were taken on a field trip around the port areas of Malmö on early Sunday. They are looking for metal, used electronic equipments and other garbage for their investigation of “Real Action”. As mentioned in their description they will explore the relation between “nothing”, defined by John cage in the 1950s, and “Reality”. Their name INSTITUT DES RECHERCHES MENANT A RIEN (The institute for the research of Nothing) is extracted from Cages’ “Lecture on Nothing” where Cage tells the listener that the lecture has no point and will go nowhere. “I am here and there is nothing to say. If among you are those who wish to get somewhere, let them leave at any moment”(Cage Silence 109).
At first it was difficult to come across what they were searching for. “Malmö is too clean” one of them declared. “In Marseilles there is a lot of trash lying around for anyone to take”. I told them about how Swedish law forbids you to take what other people have decided to throw away, this is why all places are gated. Once you’ve tossed something it should be lost forever. We throw things that no longer is useful or have meaning for us. If someone else wants that piece of trash it will suddenly be filled with new meaning and value and subsequently you might want it back, because you don’t want to throw away valuable things. The law in that case, basically forbids you to bring value into meaningless things. This is partly one of the points of Cages lecture: that Western thought has forced us to see value only in things that seemingly have a deep meaning or have eventual goals and aims. Therefore he imply that if you possess nothing, “Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not possess it) and thus need not fear its loss” (Cage, Silence 110)Is this what IRMAR intend to do? Bringing meaning back into meaningless things? Is it not contradictory to Cages theory? Or do they simply take meaningless stuff out of one context into another to make a meaningless point? We will for sure find out during the festival!
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MIT DEMO IN ACTION 
Try Malmö harbour, last time I went there I found an old piano, an old electric organ, a dumped car, a burned out trailer, two sofas etc. etc. etc. Happy hunting!