Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt’s Ambiguous Authorship

From 1970s East Berlin, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt established an international network of correspondents through mail art exchanges. Her typewritten compositions bridged concrete poetry with conceptual art as well as with constructivism. Wolf-Rehfeldt’s “Typewritings” are virtuoso explorations of the technical and aesthetic possibilities of the typewriter, a technology that was convenient because of its autonomous printing capabilities that did not require any third party involvement. The reproduction of these works allowed the artist to enter into contact with artists in almost every continent, giving an impression of connectivity and convivial communion. However, Wolf-Rehfeldt steadfastly produced her work at a distance from these interlocutors, with almost as much anonymity as the secretarial ‘typewriters’ of her day. She furthermore created works that emphasized degrees of removal and anonymity. This paper will argue that Wolf-Rehfeldt’s works were ambivalent expressions of the impossibility of connectivity: the typewriter replaces and regulates the gesture of handwriting and drawing, concealing the identity of its author. The mail box keeps the author at a remove. The sign conceals lived experience. This talk will consider Wolf-Rehfeldt’s work in the context of the GDR as it oscillates between concealment and revelation, hidden meanings and linguistic constructions, self expression and self effacement, and inner life and outer appearances.