If I were to tell you now that I have come here to speak to you in the name of the Chicken Man, would you believe me? I doubt it. Having read the top of the page, I trust you to have guessed my name. It's not Chicken. But hey, pleased to meet you, anyway!

I don't think we have been introduced. Still, it feels like I've seen your face before. You too might have seen me around. You're the reader. I'm the writer. You must know that part of what I do is bang a gong. Metaphorically speaking, that is: I am here to make a bold claim on your attention. I want someone to listen to what I have to say. So I am making a noise, I am sending out signals, in print, in the vague and not little vain hope to summon someone who might care to read this - GONG! - Attention, please! Focus!

I sincerely ask you to trust me. I will not waste your time. Yes, you're right, I have not done much so far to earn your trust. Until now I have failed to give you any information that would justify my claiming your attention. Neither have I disclosed who the Chicken Man is, in whose name I invoke you here, nor have I given you any clue as to what subject I intend to address. I concede: this is highly unprofessional. As a reader you have the perfect right to be informed about such things right from the outset. Seriously. I apologise.

Let me quickly give you some valuable information then, to assure you that you will get something out of reading this. Did you know that the Chicken Man discovered the new world? You didn't? Then it's time someone told you the truth: Marco Polo was born on the island Korcula. It is part of Croatia. So by birth his name was most likely not Polo but Pilic. The Italians must have changed it later because their word for the Croatian Pilic is Polo, meaning chicken. So, in fact, it was the Chicken Man, Marko Pilic, Mark Poultry, who discovered America. Isn't that quite a good piece of information? And you didn't want to believe that I had anything to say? You better trust me now. For I have more things to reveal.

By way of explanation for my key of address, I have a confession to make: there is a sculpture by Enrico David called Chicken Man Gong (2005), and I like it a lot. I like to write and talk about it. I think it should be written and talked about because it is a really good piece of work. I speak to you as an art critic here. As such I cannot help but make value judgements. This is because, by virtue of my profession, I am summoned for this particular purpose, to pass judgement publicly and announce my position, that is, to strife a gong in the name, in appraisal, in favour - or rejection - of particular works of art. So, please allow me to ring this gong for Enrico David and his Chicken Man Gong.

Perhaps I should add - but somehow I trust you to know this intuitively as this will not be the first piece of criticism you read - that the act of publicly passing judgement is a matter of rhetoric. Ringing gongs is what rhetoric is about. The rhetor is the one who is to ring it right. Cicero (what a Man!) said this in his treatise De Oratore (55 BCE). He argues that good rhetors, when their services are requested, should be able to talk about anything in public, and to this end develop their skills of using language to arouse emotions, draw attention to and put emphasis on whatever it is that must be presented - in short, to ring the gong right.

But it is imperative to do it right: when it comes to gongs, timing is of the essence. Alas, I will never forget the punishing looks of the priest behind the altar, host held up in the air, glaring down at me, the altar boy, kneeling at his feet, when during the transubstantiation ceremony I had accidentally struck that golden gong a wee bit too early, before he had quite gotten to the point in the procedure onto which emphasis was to be put! Sorry. Yet, the same holds true for criticism; not only do you have to get the timing and the emphasis right but also the tone. The tone should fit the work and in itself already reveal something about it, its stance, attitude and humour. I hope I am hitting the right key here.

The appropriate thing to do now would probably be to put you in the picture: the Chicken Man GongMeet The Beatles! (1964). Reflecting and deflecting the gaze of the beholder, that look says: 'This is us. Who are you? Who are you to look at us like you do?'

is a temprorary installation. Its centrepiece is a free-standing sculpture, large, not huge, but big enough to make an impression. It consists of a flat ring-shaped frame inside of which a round metal plate is suspended on hooks: it's the gong. The frame is painted deep black, the gong plate itself is light black with a golden circle at its centre, where, as it suggests, the gong is to be struck. There are three extra parts sticking out from the frame, all as flat as the frame itself: to its upper left there is a head at the end of a long neck, turned so as to face anyone facing the gong, frontally. Face and hair look as if they originated in a pencil drawing, all features being defined through single (out)lines in a simple, almost but not quite cartoonish way. The hair is dark, longish, fair and parted to the side. The nose is straight, almost Roman. The eyes are open, unblinking, dark-rimmed. The mouth is broad but closed, a bit tight-lipped maybe, yet indeterminable in its overall expression, showing neither smile nor frown. The Beatles are known to be the first band to put on just this face with that peculiar indeterminable look on the album cover of

On the opposite upper right-hand side four slender elongated pegs with a curved end jut out from the frame, designed to look like perky tail feathers in multiple colours: red, white, blue and yellow. The frame stands on a support resembling legs in fishnet stockings. When it was first installed in the small park on the grounds just outside Tate Britain in 2005, the base of the sculpture was a low but large block, its concrete surface covered in gravel. Next to it a vitrine was placed, which, from a distance, looked like another, smaller block rising up to waist height with the same fine yet rough surface texture on its sides. Coming closer you realised that the block was actually more of a box containing a vitrine. Through the safety-glass cover on its top you could gaze into its white interior and find what looked like a miniature gallery with small pictures (clippings from magazines, books or other sources) displayed like a collection, some stuck on the side walls of the vitrine like paintings hung on the wall, some spread out on the floor, some standing upright as if they were some kind of pictorial sculpture. Inspecting these pictures you would, if you were inclined to read such references, probably come to the conclusion that this was a carefully assembled collection dedicated to the history, sensitivity and codes of what you could, if this term appealed to you and you didn't object to such categorisations, call queer culture.

Frankly, I'd rather not categorise. For how can we be sure that a word like 'queer' would mean anything here? After all, the subject we are invoking is the Chicken Man. The gender and preferences of this subject might not be that readily identifiable. We cannot know, first of all, if Man here means 'male' or 'mankind'. Yes, this could be a gong dedicated to a particular manifestation of masculinity, to the pride, dignity and ludicrous beauty of all men who are (a little bit like) chicken, a tribute thus to Chickeninity. But it might just as well be a more basic existential condition that striking the gong would invoke: similar to 'mankind' or 'humanity', this may be the global notion of Chickenhood, as a way of being. The gong would then be rung for all creatures on earth who, irrespective of their gender or even their species, share an inclination to be (a little bit like) chicken.

This is only logical. For if you take into account what the gong looks like, in fact, you will have to admit that the identity of the Chicken Man cannot be defined that easily in terms of gender or species, subject- or objecthood. The legs in fishnet stockings seem feminine but the Chicken may be in drag. The facial features might seem masculine but maybe you just perceive it this way because the title makes you expect to see a man. The jaw line, for instance, is quite soft. Not that this would be a sure indicator of anything. So, really, this face might as well be that of an androgynous man as that of a tomboyish woman. What's more, this creature has tail feathers, a strangely proportioned round body and, before we forget this, a gong for a torso. So the question is not just: is this a man or woman? - but rather: is this a bird, is this a gong or is it … what?

Let me emphasise though that the indeterminacy or indeterminability of the identity of this creature (or thing) appears to be neither accidental nor vague. This is because, visibly, all details of the sculpture are designed with great care to give contradictory cues as to whom or what we are looking at. The indeterminacy of the identity of the Chicken Man is therefore purposefully produced. The production of indeterminacy, however, should not be confused with a lack of commitment to taking a position. David quite forcefully asserts his position, firstly by claiming the space outside a public gallery through the installation of his sculpture, and secondly by dedicating this installation to a particular sensitivity and history by means of the picture collection displayed in the vitrine. No aspect of the form of the work lacks determination. Still, the subject of its address purposefully remains indeterminable.

What we are then confronted with here is a rhetorical mode of addressing the public (us or anyone else who may feel addressed) in a very particular key: a manner of speaking that is dedicated and forceful; forcefully dedicated to the spirit, joy and honour of Chickeninity or Chickenhood, if you will, without seeming forced, as it refrains from forcing a clear-cut concept of identity onto its addressee, that is, in order to enforce a particular ideology. The Chicken Man Gong, with full determination, invokes an indeterminable subject, the Chicken Man, of which we can presently not be sure who or what this may be. Summoned in the name and in honour of this indeterminable being or thing, we, addressed as fellow chickens, hence can be certain neither of who we are when we are thus addressed nor of what other creatures we will meet when, convoked by the sound of this gong, we convene as a community.

In terms of politics, this makes a big difference. A key example of modern political theory, the philosophy of Louis Althusser, is in fact built on the understanding of how crucial the moment of invocation is for the enforcement of ideology. In lieu of invocation Althusser simply uses the term 'interpellation' to describe the very situation that we have so far discussed: the instance of being forcefully addressed and summoned as a subject by the representative of a particular order in the name of that order. The iconic example Althusser gives to describe the scene of interpellation is a situation in which a police officer stops a man on the street, shouting: 'Hey, you there!' Through being thus addressed by the representative of state power and enforcer of the law, Althusser argues, the individual becomes a subject - the subject of social determination. The voice of power forcefully incites a response that positions the individual in the social field governed by the system of power that the voice articulates and enforces. The voice of interpellation, however, does not necessarily have to be embodied by a person. It could as well be the voice of the media, of propaganda or advertising, any force that stops you in your tracks and positions you socio-politically by addressing you in a certain way. It is the voice of ideology that tells you exactly who you are and what, according to its laws and categories, you should be.

Tellingly, the root of interpellation, the Latin verb pellere, means to push or strike. A gong, in this sense, literally is an instrument of pellation. If we understand the prefix inter- to denote a relationship - as in 'intersubjective' or 'interpersonal' - the act of interpellation is the act in which people are pushed into a relationship (like someone would get 'whipped' into shape) through being struck by the force of a voice. What better way would there be to exemplify the act of interpellation than to picture it as a scene in which a gong is struck to summon a community and people, struck by the force of its sound, convened, com-pelled by the sound! The scenario projected by David's installation hence epitomises what Althusser describes as the originary moment, the Urszene of the social: the instant of interpellation. Yet, in a decisive way being interpellated by the Chicken Man Gong feels different. Structurally this is because, as we have seen, the mode of address that David chooses, while being strongly interpellative, purposefully renders the subject of interpellation indeterminable: we feel addressed as Chicken Men in the name and honour of Chickeninity or Chickenhood, but since we cannot presently say exactly what this is or means, no ideology is enforced by this act of interpellation. Ideology is evacuated from the heart of a moment that is the scene of politics and therefore becomes the scene of a different politics.

Spiritually, I believe, it makes quite a big difference to be summoned by this Chicken Man rather than being stopped by an officer or screamed at by an ad on TV. Need I explain the difference? Don't you know the feeling? To feel a little chickenine or chickenish? When your body starts to feel somehow funny, disproportionate or rounded as it develops bulges or protrusions in unwanted places or unexpected moments? Or when you hear nothing but cackling emanate from your mouth as you listen to yourself talk in public? The horror! The horror! But also the unsanctioned, yet undeniable joy of Chickeninity and Chickenhood: the joy of cackling at the top of your voice and flaunting that impossibly round body of yours in public, that body of thoughts and desires, the joy of striking the Chicken Man Gong, the joy of authorship and artisthood. The joy! The joy! And, hell yes, the pride of profession, too!

In the name and honour of Chickeninity or Chickenhood, I herewith summon all who know the feelings of shame and exuberance I am invoking here, upon hearing this signal, compelled to assemble by its sound, to unite and take over: GONG!

But I am getting carried away. I have begun to spout ideology. I have instrumentalised the Chicken Man Gong to propagate the cult of the artist and author, when quite clearly it summons not just artists and authors, but all people who are a little bit chickenine or chickenish, not just creatively, but spiritually, personally, sexually, politically. I apologise. I would insist though that this work is about the unsanctioned act of addressing yourself to someone, anyone, anonymously in public - in the hope that they may share your sense of shame and joy. It concerns the most basic question of art and writing. Yes, it does so, because it touches on something even more existential: an ethics of address.

How do we want to be addressed, interpellated, called forth as subjects? This is the question of politics and art, of politics in art. This is because, most existentially, it is the ethical question of human relations, of conviviality if you will, and especially of friendship and love. For here the urgency of the concern over how we wish to be addressed is felt most strongly, since we would love to be addressed in the right way, in a manner, I assume, that would feel committed but not forced. How do you strike the gong to summon a lover?

It is not just a matter of experience or expertise to know how to hit the right key and touch the right spot, but rather of dedication. Yet, dedication to whom? For, if to dedicate is to interpellate, to identify the subject of address as someone or something particular means to stop them in their tracks, position them in your field, root them to the spot - and thus violently force your ideology of who they are upon them. This cannot be love. For it to become love, the mode of address, the style and spirit of interpellation, must be different. It should allow you, the other, to come as you are, when you want.

The mode of address exemplified by the Chicken Man Gong, I feel, may point in the right direction. Not that I believe that an artwork could be - or should be - one thing that is the answer to everything, but a proposition maybe as to how one might want to do it. What is so good about the Chicken Man Gong is that its mode of address is at once, and purposefully so, intimate and indeterminate. The dedication implied in this address is a full commitment to something or someone particular, a spirit, a body, a sensitivity, a history. Call it queer if you want to. But it does not suffocate its addressees by imposing an ideology, a meaning, onto them, that is, us.

This experience is a little similar to being addressed, in an intimate moment, with just one word: You! A you that is intimate in its form and concrete in its dedication, yet indeterminate as to content. This kind of you could be the spirit in which the Chicken Man Gong may want to be struck or may strike you as sounding. I am saying this, selfishly, quite simply because this is just the key in which I would love to be addressed. Perhaps you too?

But I don't want to instigate anything here, or impose any inferences on you. Let me just make it very clear that I love talking to you. I think you understand me. You strike me as being a bit chickenine or chickenish yourself, although I have no clue who you are. But, in honour of the spirit of Chickeninity and Chickenhood, I suggest that we keep it that way so that in not knowing, not fully knowing, not living in to the compulsion to fully know and categorise one another, we may find a way to indeterminately enjoy the time we spend together in indeterminate intimacy. In appraisal of this state of shared Chickeninity and Chickenhood, I herewith then take the liberty to strike that gong one more time, in the hope that I might be doing it in your honour: GONG!

- Jan Verwoert