Vinyl player, surface transducer, speaker from a forged vinyl replica, 2023

“On November 17th 2022, towards the closure of the Gharīb Pavilion in Venice Biennale, I received a call from the exhibition carers: apparently the record player for the Seven Common Ways of Disappearing installation has stopped working. The vinyl kept on spinning, but the sound disappeared. I happened to be in Venice the following day to meet Jace Clayton visiting the Pavilion, so the next morning I could go there before the opening hours and do the inspection myself. Everything seemed to be in order, all the technical parts of the installation intact. I took a closer look to the vinyl itself only to realise that it has been replaced with a forged record. Somebody came to the Pavilion the previous day, took the artwork vinyl and replaced it with a perfectly new, blank and empty vinyl.” (Andrius Arutiunian, from a letter to a friend)