In March 1969, the American artist Robert Barry (born 1936) released five different noble gases—krypton, xenon, argon, neon, and helium—in remote locations around Los Angeles. This imperceptible event was documented through photographs and was accompanied by a blank poster that advertised a non-existent exhibition. Although somewhat incidental to the event itself, the documentary photographs and accompanying poster supplant it. Simultaneously, the project aspires toward a materiality of transience, just as Paik’s Zen for Film shows the slow chance-based deterioration of the film leaders. Although no traces of the action remain, noble gases are chemically stable and thus persist in their original atomic states, albeit dispersed. Barry explained the work as an attempt to create “a kind of large environmental sculpture” (Weh, 1994) through undetectable but pervasive materials. In this project, Barry emphasizes the fraught role of documentary leftovers in relation to an event. —CA

Image: Paul Maenz Collection, Berlin, (Inv.-Nr. RB 69.02).