The Rachel Gugelberger Experience: A Collaboration of Sorts
28 cents well spent
Cabinet and Rachel Gugelberger
Some time in the fall of 2003, a member of the Cabinet editorial team burdened with an unwieldy last name (less than half of it ever appears in print) was introduced to a kindred spirit, one Rachel Gugelberger, a respected New York curator. The conversation immediately turned to how her spectacular last name might become the subject matter for an insightful exploration of the relationship between identity, taxonomy, and the signifier. When it became clear that such a project was well beyond our intellectual means, we retreated to something more modest—a prank.
Perhaps not coincidentally, it turned out that Ms. Gugelberger is also blessed with a sense of humor and was willing to subject herself and her bank tellers to a focused experiment: At the end of September, Cabinet mailed Rachel Gugelberger one-cent checks made out to thirty variations on her name. These ranged from slight deviations to wholesale hallucinations, from the understandable to the insensitive.
All these checks were cashed successfully at Fleet Bank except for two: one because of a Gugelbergian error (she lost check # 1979), and the other because of a mistake on Cabinet’s part. Although the bank perceptively noticed that we had failed to properly fill out the amount on check # 1975 and therefore rejected it, the parade of outrageous names raised no alarms.
1948: Rachel Googleberger
1951: Rachel Googolberger
1952: Rachel Gögol-Burner
1953: Rachel Guggenurger
1954: Rachel Gutenberger
1955: Rachel Gugleburger
1956: Rachel G. Ügelberger
1957: Rachel Goodleberder
1958: Ray Chulgoogleberger
1959: R. Goober
1960: “Raitch” the Wraith
1961: Rachel Lycos-Frankfurter
1962: Rachel Hotbot-Whopper
1963: Rachel Patty Yahoo
1964: Mrs. Web Utility Meat Sandwich
1965: Raggie Googieboo
1966: Rigel Googenber
1967: Rachel “The Pistol” Glockman
1968: Ra’l Go’r
1969: Emperor Ra’l Go’r
1970: May’Shel Kukenperker
1971: rachel@betweenthebuns.com
1972: Raiszl Gentenbengentle
1973: Rickel Gastenbienhür
1974: Richelieu LéGuggenbert
1975: Gary Rachelbergen
1976: Barry Rachelgerber
1977: Gary R. Gerbil
1978: Mr. Rachel
1979: Mr. Rachel 2
Rachel Raphaela Gugelberger is an independent curator and associate director of the Visual Arts Gallery at the School of Visual Arts, New York. Recent curatorial projects include “Rubbish” at Cuchifritos Art Space, New York, and “Freehand” at Marvelli Lab in Williamsburg, a collaborative drawing exhibition that included 22 artists. Gugelberger is currently co-curating an exhibition of alumni of the School of Visual Arts with Jerry Saltz for the fall of 2004.