I have found Rosse Yael Sirb to be a most elusive figure. I have been collaborating with him since the dawning of the new millenium when in due course he became the Curator of Ordure. Although I haven't worked with him before I have known of him since my early twenties. I initially invited him to participate in the manifestation of 'Louise Bourgeois` Legs' at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in February 2000.
My first contact with him was by hearsay. I was a conscript in the British Army of the Rhine at the time. It was early in the year of an exceptionally cold winter ten years after the second world war in 1945. I had been trained as a wireless operator, but on being promoted against my better judgement to Corporal, was put in charge of stores in a small camp of sixty or so soldiers in Royal Corps of Signals, the Intelligence and Education Corps, in a tiny hamlet of three houses on the East German border near the autobahn to Berlin. A few months after my arrival it was announced that the Captain in command would be leaving the army. Before he left and before the new Commanding Officer took charge all properties were required to be accounted for as part of the handing over audit. It fell to me to account for all those mundane items of camp living, the brooms, buckets bullets rifles, mars bars, bootlaces, toothpaste etc.
At the time the ground was covered in thick impacted deeply frozen snow. With the constant toing and froing it was dirty grey and frozen hard. We looked out beyond the huts and four trucks containing Radio transmission equipment to a broad swathe of virgin snow within the perimeter fencing. Under there somewhere were duckboards which I had often walked over often enough but hadn't counted, not having taken account that I was responsible for them. My sense of duty was commensurate with the view that conscription was akin to a form of attenuated punishment in the service of the crown, and I acted accordingly. The snow was frozen too hard to dig out the duckboards, and there were too many of them. It would have taken weeks to do it. I could only guess how many there were, and decided on a hundred and fifty for the sake of argument. That seemed about right. Numbers of everyday items couldn't be accounted for either. What was more surprising was the loss of a thousand rounds of rifle ammunition which the retiring Officer swore he had ordered to be buried on the camp site, although he wasn't sure where, waving his hand in the direction of the perimeter fence to the west. It was not for conscripts or any other ranks to question the wisdom of this decision. I did have two cases of ammunition in the store room which I kept under my bed. He asserted that I had been a party to the burial and demanded that I account for them at the audit. I denied all knowledge of it but he was not convinced. As I hadn't buried them or known about their burial until told to produce them I was at a aloss to know what to do, but when the day of reckoning came I saw that the Colonel conducting the audit seemed to be more interested in the consumption of alcohol. My anxieties about the bulets the missing brooms and buckets and mars bars etc evaporated, as I could see that it was unlikely that I should be required to explain away the inexplicable which would have had dire consequences. As far as I know the bullets were never recovered. Amonst the larger items which had gone missing were two portable latrines.
The weather was so cold that deer began to emerge from the forest in desperation looking for food. Many died of starvation. We did take one into the camp where is quickly became tame and was forever on the lookout for food. I hadn't expected it to become a scavenger, which confused me. It's elegant shape and graceful movements suggested to my naive view that it would also behave gracefully. It had some unfortunate habits, not surprising since it was a wild animal. I looked after it and it spent a lot of time in the store room. Later on towards the spring it began to suffer from convulsions and I was concerned that it might have rabies. The chief civilian cook Matuschewski conferred with the Commanding Officer and myself in the storage room. It was decided to put it down. Right there and then Matuschewski dispatched it with a few blow from a heavy mallet. I was utterly shocked as I watched it writhing in it's death agonies on the floor by my bed. It was quite irrational but I couldn't relate to mMatuschewski in the same way again. It was the seemingly casual brutality which I hadn't been prepared for. He was highly competent and had done the deed with the necessary efficiency, but I was startled by the lack of any kind of ritual or obvious preparation, which left me unready. He was my first contact with the local population.
The camp was guarded by an organisation attached to the Army known as The Mixed Services Organisation and seemed to be made up of refguees and displaced persons. They were distinguished from the rest of us by wearing navy blue army battle dress. Matuschewski introduced me to an aging Corporal who was in charge of one of the guard shifts. He had been a Professor of English Literature at Zagreb University before the war. I enjoyed his company and often spent time with him when he was at the camp. They were billeted in the nearest large town which held a large garrison of troops, and were transported back and forth by Army lorry. I mentioned to him about the coming audit and my anxieties about the missing items. I shouldn't have confided in him ofcourse. He told me that the two missing portable latrines were actually in the forest having been taken by the guards. He mentioned a young man, who has taken the initiative to acquire the latrines. I remembered the name because the Professor was intrigues by it and wondered what it's derivation was. He said that Sirb like many displaced persons, was reluctant to talk about himself, his family history and where he had come from. He suggested that Sirb was quite sharp and cunning, and not exactly likeable. We could only surmise as to how he had becomne a member of the Mixed Services Organisation. The Professior said that certainly all of the members of the M.S.O were there because of the tragic circumstances of war which had diverted the paths of their lives. The Professor himself was a case in point. I never did get to know his name. The conscripts were there for similar reasons although grinding out service under the crown, was mearly tedious.
I found the latrines in the forest after much searching. They were full to overflowing. It would have been an unpleasant task to empty them and get them back to the camp. I reported what had happened to them, and the MSO were required to return them fit for use.
Being in charge of Stores had its compensations. I didn't have to do shift work, and regularly travelled to the Military Stores Depot to pick up food rations and whatever else was needed in town. My contacts expanded accordingly eventually to my financial advantage, and I was able to take weekend leave in town and was billeted in what had been a Luftwaffe underground bunker. Through my contacts with the MSO I met some gypsies and spent nights drinking with them in the bar they favoured. Early one Sunday morning I heard the name Rosse called out by one of my friends and he left. I asked him who he was and said it was Rosse Sirb from the MSO. I didn't think anything of it at the time.
Recently I met him for the first time in the company of a photographer famous for his photographs of the painter Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud at the opening of an exhibition of photographs by Stephen Berkoff in the wine bar at the Golden Hart on Commercial Street in London in the autumn of 99. I didn't recognise him, on hearding his name it came into my mind that he was the latrine thief as I recalled the Professor and his fascination with the name all those years ago. He did admit that he had been in the MSO at the camp but that was all. After one or two meetings we found we had many shared interests, I invited him to work on the manifestation of 'Louise Bourgeois' Legs', which was due to begin on the seventh of February 2000 under the title of 'Legs' at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. He introduced the collection of shit to me, of which he is the Curator, and I agreed that it could be associated with the project. He adopted the title of 'the Curator of Ordure' which covers a wide remit and is currently reconsidering the terms of curatorship. My curiosity about him has increased since I met him, but he is remarkably obdurate and resists any exchange of personal information which is usually a part of the development of any relationship.
The following is an account of his curatorship at the Whitechapel Art Gallery 8th to the 23rd of February 2000, taken from the text 'Legs' by Stuart Brisley.
"Quite often visitors would take the initiative and inquire about whatever intrigued them. "Yes it is shit" the Curator would say and then elaborate on the collection which now comprises more than four hundred pieces collected from around the world. He used four rather unremarkable items as examples: A relatively large turd from Hasan Keyf in the Turkish section of Kurdistan (The artists does not wish to favour any piece of information by presenting it in such a way that may be prejudicial.) A small piece which on the face of it could be either a human turd or possibly that of a dog was found on the beach at Hokatikkaa on the west coast of the south island of New Zealand in 1994. The collector while accepting that he has been unable to establish it's human origin without doubt, nevertheless tends to this view. It's potential value in the market would therefore not be as great as if it could be definately established that it was a human tured. An earlier piece found in a small town of Monticello in North Florida, and an example from the Chinese section of Bangkok.
The Curator wanted to fulfill his agreement with the artist while continually lapsing into reveries and elaborations of the collection of excretia. He was proud to be the Curator. He knew he wasn't entirely in command of the arguments to justify its existence, having been reduced to acting as apologist, the enthusiast, unable to enter into it's problematisation to any critical extent. His knowledge of the history of shit in societies was not extensive for instance, leading him to express his ignorance by suddenly lapsing into silence when extemporising upon the collection. His own rigorous education and curatorial conscience impelled him to silence when the discourse moved too easily beyond the limits of his knowledge. His engagement was not grounded in reason, and he was prone to rely on what emerged from his internal resources. The collection was a work of art to him. The project was to raise the value of the collection from a devotion to the representation of base human material production to one where it's value as art superceded other considerations. The artist had reservations as to whether he was capable of realising his ambition, not just in terms of resolving the unresolvable, not that, but his capacity as a Curator was in question. For example, just in passing he invoked the mediaeval world of alchemy where the attempt to turn base metal into gold was according to him one of the great issues of the time. But he didn't elaborate, and left it in the air.