Vidriera (for Josiah McElheny) is a performance work that reinterprets the 1613 short story El Licenciado Vidriera by Miguel de Cervantes. The piece was developed for the Wexner Center for the Arts in conjunction of Josiah McElheny’s exhibition “Toward a Night Club”. The event, organized by Richard Fletcher and with the participation of McElheny and others, was entitled  ”The Cave of Light: A Dark Symposium” and was presented on April 1, 2013.

Performance of “Vidriera” at the Wexner Center, April 1, 2013

There are many stories about personal tragedy, many stories about the lessons of anti-heroism. There are countless tales about those who affect the world almost by accident.

There is an infinity of biographies, both true and fictional, of minds who, by breaking with the conventional patterns of thinking, brought new light onto the world, and many of those doing so at a high cost to their own lives.

Yet of all those stories, few are as tumultuous and opaque as the story of a  transparent man,  as written by an author who had a similarly tumultuous and opaque life: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, also known as el manco de Lepanto — the one-armed man of Lepanto (as he lost one limb in a Battle of that name). After completing the first part of Don Quixote,  Cervantes wrote a number of short stories, known as novelas ejemplares, from which there is this one story.

We are in Seventeenth century Spain. Our protagonist is Tomás Rodaja, an orphan with no property or money to his name, and a past of which he himself  either is ignorant about or has willingly forgotten.

He is nonetheless talented, loyal, and hard working, and these skills are noticed by a couple of noblemen who take him unto their mentorship. It is in this way that Tomás manages to go to law school in Salamanca, the most illustrious university of the time, and a bright future awaits him.  However, the hopeful Rodaja has no idea of the extent of unwelcome luminosity of that future that eventually, and unexpectedly, comes to him.

It so happens that a young woman falls in love with Rodaja. He shows no interest, his mind set onto other things at the time.  In desperation, this woman attempts to cast a love spell on him by inducing him to drink a certain love potion.

The potion fails to work, but while Tomás does not fall in love,  he does become deadly ill as a result.  His head feels as if it is on fire; he experiences convulsions; some believe he won’t survive. He remains in bed for six months. In the end, he miraculously recovers and re-emerges physically sound; however, by effect of the potion he is now a completely different person: he is profoundly delusional.

Mainly he firmly believes that he is entirely made out of glass, from head to toe. He thinks of himself as fragile as a delicate figurine.  No one can get close to him; he only eats very soft and bland foods, and drinks with a long straw; during the summer he sleeps in the open field, afraid that if any object were to accidentally fall on him it would shatter him completely;  during the winter he sleeps inside a stable amidst a mound of hay.

He needs to wear large, unfashionable felt outfits and often needs to be carried around on a cart full of straw, surrounded with glass objects to alert others of the fragility of his condition.  By observing this eccentric behavior those around his town conclude that Tomás Rodaja has lost his mind, and he eventually receives the nickname Licenciado Vidriera, the Glassman bachelor.

But had Vidriera’s interactions only been limited to expressing this eccentric delusion, he would probably not have been remembered to this day. It so happens that Vidriera also starts making observations around people and the world about him, some of which are so poignant and so on the mark that non withstanding his glass obsession, he proves to be more lucid than anyone around him.

To any subject that Vidriera is approached he has something witty and true to say.  Of poetry Vidriera states that it is such a high and difficult art that no known good practitioners exist. Those who call themselves poets are so bad that they don’t even count. Those so-called Poets, Vidriera says, are so self-centered that if someone doesn’t understand their poems they always conclude that the fault is in the public. So-called Poets, for Vidriera, are like shoemakers: they had never made a bad shoe- the defect was always in the foot.

He ridicules specialists as vulgar people who can only talk to each other in their internal language, useless outside of their own world. Of those who are professionally unsuccessful he says that they are poor out of their own decision because there are always rich women or men who they can seduce and marry.

Of painters he is no more generous: for Vidriera those who are supposedly good only imitate nature which is always superior, and the bad ones, instead of imitating nature, throw it up as in vomit.

Of muleteers, or businessmen, he says: they have divorced with their bedsheets and married their saddle; they are so much in a hurry that in order not to lose the day they will lose their soul.  This is Vidriera’s seventeenth century diagnosis of Wall Street.

Of the  hypothecary, or pharmacist, he says they are the enemies of candles, because a candle is a simple solution to light a house. Instead, pharmacists replace the simple and cheap remedy to expensive and harmful ones, sometimes even having the opposite effects of the simple medicine. This would be Vidriera’s diagnosis of today’s pharmaceutical companies.

Not so much different with doctors: no one is more harmful to the republic, Vidriera says, than they. While judges twist justice to their benefit, Doctors benefit from our decay and sickness, and the sicker we become, the better. This is, as you may have already gathered, Vidriera’s view on today’s health insurance industry.

But Vidriera made observations also on the human character as well. When he is asked: what do we do to get rid of envy? His response was: go to sleep, as that is the only way in which you will reach similarity with that who you envy.  While awake you will always be lesser since you focus on envying others instead of in being yourself.

While referring to a lazy tailor, He sarcastically praises those who do nothing, saying they are on their way to salvation. Since few people do their job without lying or cheating, they always end up as sinners. So to do nothing is to be rewarded with heaven.

He similarly comments on the rich of course. When Vidriera met a rich and ostentatious woman with a very ugly daughter carrying a lot of jewels, he says: its good that you have layered her with stones as she now has become a well cobbled stone street over which horse carriages can cross.

Privilege, to him, is perhaps the worst attribute one can have as an artist. Of comedians and actors, he says, there is nothing worse than to be well-bred, as you will have absolutely nothing to say.

Who in the world, then, Vidriera is asked, is a lucky being in his mind? He says: “nobody”, as nobody knows God, nobody lives without a crime, nobody is happy with his fate.” Furthermore, the more virtues one expects of someone the more sins they will make.

People then ask Vidriera: “You find faults in everyone. Who in the world, then is a lucky being in your mind?” He replies: “nobody”, because of the simple reason that  nobody knows God,  nobody lives without a crime, nobody is happy with his fate.”

Despite the fact that Vidriera screams at the slightest touch, and despite of his irrational fears and his extravagant eating, drinking and sleeping habits, he quickly becomes a glass oracle, and eventually is brought to royal court as such to display his wit.

Finally a friar from the order of San Jerónimo takes pity of Vidriera and takes upon himself to cure our hero.  After a few weeks of treatments, he finally succeeds in this task. The cured Vidriera,  dressed again as a distinguished gentleman comes back to court.  He changes his name to Tomás Rueda, to sound more distinguished.

Soon he is surrounded by his many admirers, who quickly start asking him a myriad of questions as before. What does he think of doctors? Of the rich? Of liars? Of the vain?  But he has no witty answers to them. He announces that he is no longer the same; that he is now a sane man, with nothing special to say.

The crowds, in disbelief, continue to follow and pester him regardless, to the doorsteps of his house, overwhelming him with stubborn questions.  They don’t want him to be normal; they want the eccentric character that in his madness unveils the truth. They need answers. He disappoints them; and they would not let him exist as a conventional human being.

Vidriera then sees that he can no longer live in peace, nor quietly pursue his once-hoped life in law. He then leaves the court and, not knowing where else to go, joins the army and the battlefield, where he dies a hero’s death in an obscure battle in Flanders. And thus our story abruptly concludes.

Which leaves us with a series of opaque problems and unresolved questions. Why does Vidriera so quickly give up his attempt to be a “normal” being? And why in contrast he is so keen to survive while inhabiting such an intolerable body, and yet is so keen to stop living when, in health, he confronts the expectations of others. Finally,  Cervantes doesn’t tell us why Vidriera thought of himself as made out of Glass, as opposed of any other material.

But in a way, no pun intended, it is crystal clear: the transparency of glass allows us to see; magnifying glass allows us to perceive the details when others see the whole and using it as a telescope it allows us to see the totality when others only see the immediate surroundings.

Vidriera saw it all through his multiple lenses of social penetration; he was deemed insane and through that insanity he was oddly liberated to say what he wished without the censure that comes when we speak our mind and we haven’t observed the rules we have been imposed.

But he paid a price to this.  As much as he thought he had suffered, when he was “cured” he realized his restored health, his restored consciousness, only made him witness to his inability to see or utter truths anymore, and, more damning, he was presented with a plethora of admirers who still sought him regardless of what he had to say. This intolerable form of life makes him engage in the riskiest of jobs, which is to join the army, as if he saw no other solution to the purpose of his life than to end it.

Poor Vidriera!  Perhaps his fate was a revenge of the painful truths he inflicted, as the Spanish saying goes: “he who has a glass roof, should not throw stones onto the roofs of others.” And yet he didn’t choose this fate, but was made victim of it by someone who he didn’t love.

By becoming the fascination of the crowd, he was miserable.  When we seek notoriety and influence, we don’t understand how isolating and lonely that place is;  we also lose our humanity. We become a circus oracle, a strange bird to be observed with the purpose of entertaining others.

Perhaps we all aspire to be of glass, to attain the alchemical transparency of this material; but we can’t handle the consequences that such transparency entails. It is a treacherous material, as a liquid that yet looks solid.

One of the most memorable lines by the greatest Spanish poet, Francisco de Quevedo is: “las columnas de cristal al temple de amor sustentan”, the columns of glass sustain love; Luis de Gongora, his rival, wrote, “al sonoro cristal, al cristal mudo” (the sonorous glass, the silent glass), and Quevedo again, “era de vidrio y quebrose/para conmigo acabóse” (out of glass it was made, with me it broke forever.”

Perception is a glass column, like water, the sonorous glass, it flows, like beauty, the silent glass, it shines, but it is always precarious and there is no way in which we can arrive to such pure vision without having to pay for it.

What we should fear the most, perhaps, is to lose our fear of fragility,  because it paradoxically will be then when we will be more fragile than ever, and our desires will lie shattered, only left with a human body of which all can be done is to dispose of in a random battle; a battle that we don’t believe in.

The following speech was read at the Renata Bianconi gallery in Milano on February 28, 2013, to launch the project Vita Vel Regula. 30 participants at the gallery volunteered to play the game for the rest of their lives, as well as 20 preselected participants.

Ladies and gentlemen of 2097,

After having spoken at so many events throughout my life, I have never spoken at an event where the audience doesn’t exist yet.

This is because tonight event is not only for us in this gallery. It is also for a hypothetical audience, most of which have not yet been born. They will be closer to the generation of our grandchildren, or of our great-grandchildren, if we are lucky to have descendants.  It is almost certain that not a single one of us present tonight will be alive on the evening of November 23, 2097, exactly  84 years after today. My own daughter, who is three years old today, if still alive, will be 88 years old then. We are a lifetime away from that point. It is difficult to imagine what the world will be like, if it will be a happy place, if it may have become irreparably destroyed by our wasteful society. But in the same way that we can’t know what the future holds, and what we could learn from those hypothetical audiences of the future that will watch the video of this event we are making now for them, it is also interesting that we are often equally ignorant about those who lived in the past. I often think of it when I look at a XIXth century portrait of a great-great grandmother that my family has, la abuela Luisa, of which I know practically nothing other than she was the grandmother of my grandfather and lived in the city of Zacatecas, Mexico. She left no letters or objects and there are no photographs of her other than that painting.  Historical records and witness accounts often help us to piece together the past, but it never provides a full insight; so those who lived say in the 1920s are equally distant to us now than we are from those people who will exist in 2097. So this recorded message from us is to them. There may not be a magic insight we can convey to you (and now I speak to those of you, on the other side). What you may find most paradoxical is that our time may be most readable to you than to us, who are living it now. But in any case, how great it would have been to us if the voices of the past had consciously attempted to speak to us directly, if my abuela Luisa would have written me a letter for instance. And tried to make specific efforts to reach out to us and let us know what mattered to them the most. This is what at least we can do for you, the future audiences. We can write to you, we can speak to you now hoping that you may listen later.  We can attempt to salvage the natural boundaries of human lifetimes by employing a bit of artifice, in the form of a conceptual artwork, something that we invented and that may not even exist by the end of this century. But it is important, also to say that we are also writing and speaking to another hypothetical, and not-yet existing audience, which is ourselves, in ten, twenty, thirty years.  We may find that we were very different people now from what we became later, that we may have forgotten who we once were. It is thus not only the potential of a conversation with you but with those who we may become along the way.  This is why I have created this game to be played once, consisting in 15 envelopes which will be opening over the years by the living and willing participants. Each envelope is dated and scheduled to be open in twice the amount of time than the previous one. The gap will thus first be a few days, then will be months, then years, and finally decades. One envelope is scheduled to be opened at my own passing, hopefully several decades from now if I am lucky.  After I am gone, and hopefully you outlive me, I will continue to speak to you from what is contained in those envelopes,  should you chose to continue your promise to keep them and open them at the indicated time.

I will ask the visitors at tonights event to write a private note to the audiences of 2097, who will go in a time capsule that will be opened on that date, hopefully, by this hypothetical audience  that may humor us in doing so.  I also hope that the second to the last opening of the envelope in 2053, roughly 40 years from now, we may come together one last time to open that envelope, the last time that I may be able to join you. Wre I not able to come or be alive then, I would ask you those of you who can to do so. I wish I could say I will be there in spirit, but I don’t believe in that which is not tangible. I do believe in art, I believe in its perseverance and in the perseverance of ideas, and I believe in the constancy of people and the bonds they create, which Is what compels me to propose the current collective experience. So let’s celebrate that bond that we have now

Created. Lets take a photograph that you, the audiences of 2097, will be able to see, knowing that we took it for you, so that you know how we looked, how strangely we dressed and spoke, how innocent perhaps we looked, but that we were here for you, and for our descendants, to open that last envelope with the things that we wrote tonight, and as you open that last envelope, you will bring, finally, to completion an experience that lasted 84 years ago this evening, at a small art gallery in the city of Milan.

On February 28 of 2013, at the Renata Bianconi gallery in Milano, Italy, I will present a work entitled Vita Vel Regula (Rules of Life). The work is a game for 50 participants, to be played only once. It consists in each participant receiving 16 sealed envelopes labeled with specific opening dates and instructions. The game starts on March 1^st, 2013, and ends on November 23, 2097, or with the passing of the last participant. I am not likely to live to see the end of this project.

I have invited 25 participants,  all of them younger than me and who are likely to outlive me, and with whom I currently share a strong family, personal or professional relationship,  to participate in this project. The 25 remaining participants will include those who attend the opening of the gallery that night.

The first envelope, containing a set of instructions, is due to be opened the day after the opening, March 1, 2013. The second envelope will be opened twice the amount of time after the first envelope, the third envelope twice the amount of time than the second, and so forth.  As the days space between each other between envelope and envelope, the waiting times become months, years and then decades. the 12th envelope is due to be opened on May 27th, 2019,  the 13th on August 13 of 2030, the 14th on January 16 of 2053, and finally the 15th on November 23, 2097. My daughter Estela, the youngest participant who is now 3, if alive then, will be 88 years old. The 16th envelope is due to be opened at the time of my own passing.

Because of its design and its posthumous conclusion, Vita Vel Regula will be my last art work.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

[17]

Audiences are endangered species.

[18]

They are slowly vanishing in this world showered with limelight,where 15 minutes of famehas now a cacophony of 24/7 programming.

[19]

We all speak at the same time, and no one listens. When everyone is an artist, no one can be in the audience.We only sit offstage because we are waiting for our turn in the lectern.

[20]

What we call audiences today, like the one here tonight, is nothing more than a collection of highly individualized minds.You all are authors, we all produce things: you take pictures, you write blogs, you all own creative real-state. You all here tonight are so different. How can me, or anyone, talk to you in a comprehensive manner so that you all can feel engaged?

[21]

Unfortunately, most people who lecture have failed to recognize this simple fact. They still speak to audiences as if they existed as one whole, as if this hypothetical and amorphousmass was a homogenous group of listeners, nor a heterogenous entity of speakers. They talk to this hypothetical audience as if they thought and felt exactly like them.

[22]

Let’s take, for instance, Slavoj Zizek.

[23]

Slavoj Zizek talks to everyone as if we all were Slavoj Zizek. A scholar assumes we all are scholars interested in long bibliographies and in the reference to that 1974 book where the footnote of the footnote clarifies what the footnote of the footnote of the 1973 version didn’t clarify.

[24]

Artists, when they are invited to speak, usually think that their audience wants the artist to act as if they didn’t care about them, but of course artists care, and their audiences- well, their audiences as usually are other artists who are respectful enough but what they really want is not to be an audience but to be the artist who is speaking.

[25]

So it is very painful for me to say this, but the truth is that in this post-post-modern world we all are confused about when to speak and when to listen. As a result of this, we are both unprofessional speakers and unprofessional audiences.

This spells slight doom, the temporary boredom we all have to live through every time we attend a lecture. We don’t even know why we do it.But it shouldn’t be that way.

[26]

Lectures could be like sex. They could be like the seduction of love, like the erotic dance or the magic act or the psychic séance or the hypnotic session. All it takes is for the speaker to find a way to talk to each one of the persons in the room as if it were a one-to-one conversation, an audience whisperer.

[27]

So by all means then let’s then do variations on an audience, or rather, on this non-audience. I will talk not to all of you, but to each of you. For this exercise I will assume that, amongst the group here there is at least one person of the following sort:

[28]

1.Theorists.That is public intellectuals, post-structuralist scholars, downtown east village, readers of October magazine.

[29]

2.Chelseaspeakers. Uber-professional art speakers, curators, consultants, critics.

[30]

3.Grant-writers and administrators working for non-profit organizations and the U.S. government and the Department of Education or School Board.

[31]

4.‘Show-me-the-money’ speakers, no-nonsense, uncomplicated,like when we talk about art late at an afterparty after a fewdrinks.

[32]

Now that we have established the four audiences that I will be addressing,I will now repeat my introduction in audience 1 style:

[33]

The construct ofthe spectator as redefined today by

[34]

post-technological networks reunites a number of given implications that, upon close examination,

[35]

revealsociety

[36]

– and its involutionary transformation-

[37]

as a product of a demystified late capitalist model without centers and reformulated contents.

[38]

The involution of cultural communication into a system of seemingly

[39]

original producers of knowledge as opposed to receivers creates a different

[40]

activity universe that contrasts with the deflection of speech, a seemingly anti-political task of horizontal results.

[41]

Where one searches for the hidden receiver finds itself the manifested materialization of parallel mimetic producers. It is the fabrication of the plot of the content,

[42]

the substance of normative principles of inclusion of concepts, that varies

[43]

only in stylistic practices of scientific postmodernity,

[43]

usually not self-identified as such but actively embracing a regiment of exclusionary concept definitions

[44]

within a well-founded domain of references

[45]

visible only to a reduced agents of the operation.

[46=47]

Audience 2 form:

The notion of audience has been redefined today by post-technological networks.

[47]

Cultural producers today produce works that critique western notions of collective spectatorship and propose new critical models.

Notions of performance are incorporated in this new critique, resulting in innovative explorations that operate in the realm of conceptual art in various formats.

[48]

The viewer becomes an active participant in the work, which explores notions of viewers becoming active participants.

The work becomes an active participant in the viewer, which is an exploration of notions of viewers.

[49]

These works are conceptual narratives that question a variety of concepts, including the way in which spectators receive information in a post-modern world. These practices thus become explorations of conceptual information of notions of participants that participate in notions of information of conceptual explorations.

[50]

In other words, in audience 3 form:

Audiences in our global world today face the challenges and the opportunities that come along with the emerging forms of expression.

[48]

In this multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary society there are multiple voices which reflect our diverse culture and that are important to support. In some cases, these voices will challenge the viewer to reflect on important issues we all face, but they all reflect the feelings and thoughts of others and are representative of the diversity of original community voices that we all should strive to support. We only face as a society the challenge to expand our long-term partnerships and advisory support to those who have an important message to convey to their constituents, building enduring foundations for community partnerships with real solutions. By acting together, we can overcome the obstacles that for too long have prevented real change on the critical issues that audiences face in art and life, fulfilling the long objective of change , creativity and achievement for the generations to come.

Audience 4 form

I mean its like sometimes because you are online so much and you get to like get to do all this like blogs and photoshop and movies and stuff its like today everything is so easy to do so why do we need anyone else doing it but us, like today things maybe have become decadent or somethingwhen you really think about it its really amazing like everything can mean anything because anyone can do whatever. I mean like today the world and like,culture has become a place where we all talk about ourselves and then it like makes everything look the same because no one seems to be listening or something. I mean that’s cool, but it’s like if I am talking and you are talking and he is talking and then if we just talk in different ways that doesn’t mean we are saying different things if you know what I am saying. Its like that is how its done today when we just say what we have to say and we know whywe say it and we know what you or are going to say so what’s the point of even saying it, but the point that there is no point is maybe the point.

And now, to merge these styles, we will arrive to patch together the choir of art world voices.You can call it an audience fugue.

The construct ofthe spectator as redefined today by post-technological networks reunites a number of given implications that, upon close examination, I mean its like sometimes because you are online so much and you get to like get to do all this like, audiences in our global world today face the challenges and the opportunities that come along with the emerging forms of expression. The notion of audience has been redefined today by post-technological networks – and its involutionary transformation- as a product of a demystified late capitalist model without centers and reformulated contents. The involution of cultural communication into a system of seemingly original producers of knowledge its like today everything is so easy to do so why do we need anyone else doing it but us, In this multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary society Cultural producers today produce works that critique western notions of collective spectatorship as opposed to receivers creates a different activity universe that contrasts with the deflection of speech, blogs and photoshop and movies and stuff, like

there are multiple voices which reflect our diverse culture and that are important to support, today things maybe have become decadent or somethingwhen you really think about it its really amazing like a seemingly anti-political task of horizontal results. In some cases, these voices will challenge the viewer to reflect on important issues we all face, where one searches for the hidden receiver finds itself the manifested materialization of parallel mimetic producers but they all reflect the feelings and thoughts of others and are representative of the diversity of original community voices that we all should strive to support, I mean everything can mean anything because anyone can do whatever. It is the fabrication of the plot of the content, I mean like today the world and like, the substance of normative principles of inclusion of concepts, that we only face as a society the challenge to expand our long-term partnerships and advisory support to those who have an important message to convey to their constituents, These works are conceptual narratives that question a variety of concepts, where we all talk about ourselves and then it like makes everything look the same because no one seems to be listening or something. By acting together, we can overcome the obstacles that for too long have prevented real change on the critical issues that audiences face in art and life, only in stylistic practices of scientific postmodernity, I mean that’s cool, but it’s like if I am talking and you are talking and he is talking and then if we just talk in different ways that doesn’t mean we are saying different things, like These practices thus become explorations of conceptual information of notions of participants, building enduring foundations for community partnerships with real solutions, usually not self-identified as such but actively embracing a regiment of exclusionary definitions that participate in notions of information of conceptual explorations, if you know what I am saying,including the way in which spectators receive information in a post-modern world, and we know whywe say it and we know what you or are going to say so what’s the point of even saying it, within a well-founded domain of references visible only to a reduced agents of the operation, fulfilling the long objective of change , creativity and achievement for the generations to come, an exploration of notions of viewers, Its like that is how its done today when we just say what we have to say but the point that there is no point is maybe the point.

Alternative Time and Instant Audience

(The Public Program as an Alternative Space)[1]

1

Spaces hold objects; they also facilitate experiences. However, physical location is only one of the factors that play a role in the production of an experience. Experience—whether art-related or not—emerges in the conjunction of a location, an event—a temporal space—and a social context, or social space. The perhaps intuitive, and appropriate, rationale for the creation of the alternative space model in the sixties and seventies was that it was necessary to have a physical location from which to present and support emerging and alternative art practices, and the same may be true today. Nonetheless, as art and the art world have evolved and as alternative art spaces have struggled to redefine their identities, too much emphasis has been given to location and too little to other key components of their character. I believe that the clue to that redefinition lies not in the reinvention of their physical space, but in paying attention to those other two factors: temporal and social context, or, in other words, events and audiences. In its updated configuration, it is increasingly clear that if any component of the alternative space could be disposed of, it is precisely its physical location—but not the social or temporal context in which it roots itself. (The same is true, in fact, of more traditional spaces: a vernissage is so central to an exhibition because spaces have become event centered, points of encounter where a particular community interacts.)

There is an inherent contradiction in the original concept of an alternative space: while it promotes an experimental, ever-evolving type of art-making, its grounding in physical location is about permanence, more about continuity or longevity than change. Furthermore, as much as a physical space can be an asset, it can also be a liability. For most alternative spaces, the struggle for financial survival is a constant threat to their programming independence; real estate, maintenance, and overhead costs can be deciding factors in their existence and can limit their flexibility. This apparent contradiction exists, perhaps, because over the years we have become too used to thinking of an alternative space as an alternative location, instead of a location in which to show and think about art—which, I believe, was the original impulse.

As mentioned earlier, in the late sixties, seventies, early eighties, groups of artists in New York created alternative spaces to support experimental practices that at the time did not have a home. This was long before artists, curators, and dealers had to worry too much about real estate, but also before a number of events transformed the art world, including the global explosion of art fairs and biennials, the increasing youth of artists exhibiting at major museums, the emergence of an art market thirsty for innovation, and the aggressive and experimental nature of commercial but status-seeking galleries. Today, partially as a result of the impact of those events, a regular viewer would be hard-pressed to see the difference between an exhibition or the artists showing at an alternative space and one at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York or at a for-profit cutting-edge exhibition space in the city. Ironically, galleries, kunsthalles, and contemporary art museums find themselves in a race to become more alternative, constantly finding ways to emulate the sound and smells of alternativity; they usually have better funding and attract talented individuals who can help facilitate the institutionalization of alternativity. Alternative art spaces are generally not for profit and lack vast resources, and, if anything, in a city like New York, they struggle to compete, with fewer resources, at games for which others are better equipped.

So are alternative spaces today truly “alternative”? Contrary to what the name may imply, alternative spaces rarely offer a real alternative to art shown elsewhere. Instead, they are inextricably connected to the critical and economic fabric of the art world. By retaining their original name, alternative spaces create the semblance of mini-subcultures, but they actually function more like clearinghouses of emerging artistic talent, providing artists room to experiment in the early stages of their careers rather than representing countercultural or underground movements. The phenomenon is not limited to New York: alternative spaces all over the world generally function in that in-between place of experimenting at the fringes while remaining in dialogue with the art world at large. While this is a valid function, we should ask if it is enough to legitimize their claim of a role as a true conceptual and practical counterpoint in the art system. I believe it is not.

When we ask about the revision of the alternative space in order to reclaim its original purpose of free experimentation and infusion of new blood into the art system, we need to look at the potential of temporality and social space. When Marcel Broodthaers invented his itinerant Musée d’Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles, he was creating an alternative space, one that was both nomadic and temporal and which existed only in the time and place that the appropriate conditions allowed. The project would not have made sense if it had been created to last forever—that would have automatically erased its original critique of the institution.

Temporality is always part of the equation of alternativity. It is not just in a space but also at the conjunction of a particular place at a particular time that meaningful moments occur in art-making. This concept is today understood by many artists and curators, and we see more and more alternative spaces that set a temporal limit with an official date of death, which provides closure and, curiously, makes these spaces look more like large art projects. In New York, Orchard (2005-08) was an example, a temporary gallery in the Lower East Side, as was the X Initiative (2009-10), a year-long temporary space. Similarly, many spaces nowadays operate in terms of public programming and less in the terms of two-month exhibitions. Curators like Hans Ulrich Obrist have for some time explored the notion of duration-based exhibitions, such as Il Tempo del Postino, which Obrist presented with Philippe Parreno at Art Basel in 2009. Temporal limits provide artists, curators, and entrepreneurs with additional benefits, which include the possibility of conceiving the art space as a self-contained art project; of exploring the potential of aggressive and dynamic programming that could not be sustained in a permanent way; and of capturing the imagination and expectation of an audience who could witness the birth, climax, and death of the project. Finally, temporal limits artificially, but effectively, predetermine a historical arch for a project: alternative spaces, like every other organization, movement, or social group, experience periods of gestation, growth, climax, and decay, until their final dissolution or until they evolve into a different type of organization.

While the public program cannot replace a physical space, the fact that time is the modifier of the space and not the other way around demands a rethinking of how we produce an art experience for an audience. In cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, event-based spaces are the natural response to the awareness that, as our world moves faster and faster, alternativity is about instant communities, about the spontaneous encounter between people. Today, time is our real estate, and learning how to use it productively is as important, and perhaps even more important, than how we use the four walls of a gallery.

2

Public programming may be the realm in which alternativity can grow, but to simply offer public programs does not necessarily reflect, in itself, an experimental approach. The question to answer is, what sort of experimental qualities should these public programs have in order to make them most interesting or open new doors of discussion and experience? This is similar to asking what kind of experimental art will become successful, which is ultimately impossible to answer in an intelligent way. Nonetheless, based on my observations during many years of programming as educator and artist, I believe there are commonalities in experimental programming.

Content-based public programs generally fall within two distinctive genres: art-centered events, such as performances, and education-centered events, such as discussions, lectures, courses, and workshops. In my experience, the most recent innovative approaches to programming have emerged from an informed conjunction of the two, along with non-content components—such as food, drinks, and a party atmosphere—that emphasize a sense of communion.[2] This has to do with the balance between program function and audience expectations. A public education program has the implicit function of providing a constructive experience by means of a discussion, an instructional dynamic such as the one of a workshop, or simple exposition (a straightforward lecture), and this is more or less the expectation of those who attend (“entertainment” is usually not the primary expectation among people attending a lecture, but “personal advancement” and “learning” are more likely to be). An art-based public program, in contrast, rarely offers such a structured delivery of information, growth, or learning, but it provides a direct experience that can result in all these but that is generally expected to be unmediated and direct.

An audience at an education lecture delivered by a poor speaker or a symposium in which the speakers veer off on a tangent that has nothing to do with the announced topic leave frustrated because their expectations of having a particular topic addressed in a new or informative or thoughtful way were not met.

Experimental public programs function somewhere between delivering and upsetting expectations—that is, between challenging and rewarding the viewer or the participant. Borrowing a page from performance art, these programs engage participants in entering situations with a greater degree of ambiguity, which may include things like role-playing, enacting certain social rituals (like singing in a church, wearing a costume, etc.), and sharing personal aspects of themselves (this has been often identified with the  Bakhtin term,  “carnivalesque”). At the same time, through pedagogical structures such as the universally understood constructs of “workshop” or “group retreat,” participants are given the possibility of framing their experiences within a constructive model that allows for reflection and discussion in the future.

These experimental public programs cannot, and should not, aspire to be art or education; rather, those are their mediums. More than a balance between informal and formal education, this type of experimental programming is closer to informal conceptual art and informal education with a formal social agenda.

How to achieve that balance is a site-specific question, one that directly relates to how the organizers understand their own audiences.

3

For some, to ask who the audience will be for a new and radical art or idea appears to be a contradiction: if the art or idea is radically new, isn’t it true that the audience for it doesn’t exist yet? Under this logic, new ideas—or new types of art—create their own audiences. I would argue that the truth however, is different. These ideas, and those new types of art, are built for an implicit audience.

In the 1989 movie Field of Dreams, an Iowa farmer (played by Kevin Costner) walking through a cornfield suddenly hears the voice of God saying, “If you build it, he will come.”  He envisions a baseball field, and is strongly compelled to build it.

The phrase (in the variation, “If you build it, they will come”) has entered the English language as if it were an old adage of ancient wisdom and not from the pen of a Hollywood screenwriter. The implied message is: Building comes first, audiences second. Yet the opposite is true. We build because audiences exist. We build because we seek to reach out to others, and others will come initially because they recognize themselves in what we have built. After that initial interaction, spaces start a process of self-identification, ownership, and evolution based on group interests and ideas. They are not static spaces at which static viewers arrive, but rather ever-evolving, growing, or decaying communities that self-build, develop, and eventually dismantle.

Various sociologists have argued—David Berreby, most notably—that in most of our actions as humans we are predisposed express a tribal mindset of “us and them,” and each statement we make reaches out with or against a set of pre-existing social codes that include or exclude sectors of people. Contemporary art practice, of all human endeavors, is most distinctively about exclusion, not about inclusion, because the structure of social interactions within its confines are based on a repertory of cultural codes, or “passwords,” that determine a certain status and role within a given conversation. And in a radical, countercultural, or alternative practice, preserving these exclusionary passwords is key in maintaining a distance from the mainstream.

Theoretically, alternative spaces are open to all kinds of people, but they tend to serve very specific types of audiences. Smaller and more informal spaces have the flexibility to be more direct about their constituency, and they generally operate within two registers: their immediate circle of participants and supporters, and the critical art world at large, toward which they usually look for validation. Larger alternative art spaces, because they usually are nonprofit organizations, are officially open to all, but in practice they serve a niche market within the art world: up-and-coming art professionals, individuals who are somewhat informed and interested in contemporary art, and, with lesser emphasis, more established artists and curators. Random visitors can walk into the space, but their presence or visitation is not crucial to the survival of the organization—it merely counts as foot traffic. What is key is the sustained supporter who may become a member or help raise the reputation of the space in the social fabric of the art world. Some spaces, such as Art in General in New York, have sought to diversify their audiences more aggressively, by creating neighborhood-oriented events and focusing on the ethnic groups that live near the space. In some cases, even successfully, visual artists are commissioned for residency projects working with these audiences. While these initiatives are valid and often result in interesting art projects, they run the risk of limiting the support they can provide to an artist by prescribing set parameters of audience and space and trying to fulfill quotas set by grant-making bureaucracies.[3] Spaces in this situation often find themselves between a rock and a hard place, trying to sell a very hermetic product—very self-referential, cutting-edge art—to people in a working-class neighborhood with very different interests and concerns.

All this is to say that alternativity, when it comes to audiences, is an unhelpful adjective. Audiences are never “others”—they are always very concrete selves. In other words, it is impossible to create an alternative experience and take steps to make it public without also making an assumption about what kinds of people will eventually partake in it. Do they read Artforum? Do they watch CNN? Are they English speakers? Do they live in Idaho? Did they vote for Obama? When we organize and promote an exhibition or create a public program, we are already making decisions regarding its hypothetical audience or audiences, even if just intuitively. Sociolinguist Allan Bell coined the term “audience design” in 1984, referring to the ways in which the media address different types of audiences through “style shifts” in speech.[4] Since that time, the discipline of sociolinguistics has defined structures by which we can recognize the patterns by which speakers engage with audiences in multiple social and linguistic environments through register and social dialect variations. This is to say that if an arts organization is to be thought of as a “speaker,” it is possible to conceive it operating—through its programs and activities—in multiple social registers that may or may not include an art “intelligentsia,” a more immediate contemporary art audience with its own codes and references, and the larger public.

When I articulate this view, most curators and artists express weariness at the notion of a preconceived audience. To them, it sounds too restrictive and prone to mistakes. It is true that to pre-establish a demographic and a social group is to oversimplify its individuality and idiosyncrasies. At the same time, I usually turn the question the other way around—is it possible to not conceive of an audience, to create an experience that is intended to be public without the slightest bias toward a particular kind of interlocutor, be it a rice farmer in Laos or a professor of philosophy at Columbia University? The debate may boil down to art practice itself, and to the commonplace statement of many artists that they don’t have a viewer in mind while making their work—in other words, that they only produce for “themselves.” What is usually not questioned, however, is how that very notion of “ourselves” has come about. Our self is the construct of a vast collectivity of people who have influenced our thoughts and our values, and to speak “to our self” is more than a solipsistic exercise; it is a silent way of speaking to the portion of civilization that is summarized in our brain. It is true that no audience construct is absolute—they all are, in fact, fictional groupings that we make based on biased assumptions. Nonetheless, they are what we have to go by, and experience in a variety of fields has proven that, as inexact as audience constructs may be, it is more productive to work with them than blindly or obstinately act on ultimately subjective presuppositions.

The problem lies not with whether to reach for either larger or more selective audiences, but rather in understanding for ourselves our own definitions of those groups we wish to speak to, and in making conscious steps to reach out to them in a constructive and methodical way. In this regard, an alternative space that attempts to find alternative audiences doesn’t benefit by trying experimental methods—it could be better served by traditional marketing. And this would not be possible unless organizers are clear with themselves in articulating the audience to whom they wish to speak.

4

The conjunction of temporality, community, and space, and its creative combinations, are, of course, not enough. The larger question that lies within the foundation of most alternative spaces today is the why of their making, their raison d’être. Ultimately, what makes an organization, a group, or even a single artist become consequential and contribute to the greater cultural dialogue is not its structural effectiveness but the resonance of its artistic or philosophical message.

If the primary motivation for an experimental practice is status seeking, the transparency of such a search becomes quite evident. What makes these spaces alive is the vibrancy of the ideas, the idealism of their founders, and the underlying political, cultural, or social cause for which they fight through concrete actions—be it exhibitions, happenings, programs, or marketing or political campaigns. This underlying motivation is what fuels the innovation of formats. And it, again, brings us back to the notion of temporality, or rather, timeliness. The public program and the instant community as alternatives to the alternative space offer the advantage that within their brief lives they can embrace their raison d’être more emphatically; like performance art, they are not rooted in permanence. Spaces, on the other hand, have to evolve; many of them can’t, and some devolve and suffer painful deaths. A public program lives a short and happy life, affirming the integrity and individuality of art and ideas, without the need to multiply or be given an artificial, extended, afterlife.

Prologo de Roberto Tejada

Jorge Pinto Books, 2012

Onda Corta is a short novel written in stream-of consciousness form in 50 short sections.

Onda Corta es una novela escrita a través de escritura automática, consistente en 50 secciones cortas.

1.

Dormitorio

La secadora de pelo ese martes no estaba de humor como para recoger

todas las sombras. Podríamos haber organizado una fabricación de un

bolován a las tres de la mañana mientras la maestra de física cantaba

canciones rumanas en 1978, pero no se sentía tan palaciega la

situación y los sostenes estaban demasiado apretados. Yo sólo me

quedaba flotando en la alberca observando esos ladrillos que

cambiaban de color y sugerían que Thomas Jefferson alguna vez pensó

en el color blanco y todo aquello que esto implica. No es posible ya el

ignorar la relación entre el shampoo chino contra la calvicie, de olor

ultravioleta, y ese tejado de juguete en el aeropuerto. Si tan solo no

fuéramos una serie de teclas tragadas por un gato, si tan solo

pudiéramos encontrar aquella flor satelital que contiene las siglas de

todos los personajes mágicos; nunca habría sido necesario mandar

nuestros sombreros de bodas a la sierra maestra, ni empotrarnos un

fonógrafo turco en la nuca para siempre; ni tampoco habría sido

posible ni siquiera imaginar la posibilidad de pensar en la remota

posibilidad de pensar en que la posibilidad de imaginar la remota

posibilidad de imaginar lo posiblemente posible. No quiero entrar en

ese salón donde aún quedan las rimas del gis, ni quiero volar de nuevo

con estas alas de piedra que el mecánico burocático nunca me ayudó a

pintar de color necesario para ocasionar el éxtasis. Solo a veces podría

ser una ficha bibliográfica encerrada en un mueble de caoba junto con

las tabletas cuneiformes y los perfumes de los arúspices, especialmente

reunidos para escuchar a las fuentes cómodas y seguras. Mi mano sin

que yo lo supiera se había transformado en una carriola, y el teclado de

mis dientes desarrolló pensamientos que inevitablemente me obligan a

tratar de arrullar a mi computadora a la hora del té. No lo digo por

falta de necedad, sino por deseo de ser pensado como un árbol donde

orinan todos los escritores famosos. No me dejen entrar; no me

imaginen, no me busquen en la luna, no me manden continentes a mi

casa. Solo quiero esa ventana enferma porque no es una marquesina.

Solo quiero acariciar este llavero de carey rosa que era antes todo lo

necesario para construir un palacio verde sin matices pero con tardes

de carrara. No sé donde está desde que se derrumbó la posibilidad de

comer tortas de columpio roto en la esquina, desde que la prisión está

en movimiento y se convierte en jirafa y en ensalada de plumas cuando

me distraigo. Algún día seré aquel que no enoja a las gardenias, que

plancha sus sombreros de forma colosal, que camina hacia atrás en

forma de fabulosos diptongos. Pero ahora que la cocina ya no es

australiana y no puedo encontrar ese documental de Bavaria por

ninguna parte, ni la peluca de piel de zorro, ni los boletos para la

tienda de zapatos, ni flores de plástico para aquel postre final que

comeremos lentísimamente con los ojos cerrados.

6. Camerino

Desperté en medio de una mañana medieval con olor a césped mojado.

El tocadiscos se había quedando tocando por trece años y como

resultado mis mascotas acuáticas habían perecido. La mañana estaba

más bien disfrazada de tarde y de perfume de Halloween con máscara

de goma de Drácula, como la que me puse una vez para impresionar a

las sirenas de mi infancia. Lentamente caminé por toda la carretera que

conducía al baño con todos los violines. Yo sabía que detrás de esta

puerta estaban las cumbres borrascosas, pero en aquellos tiempos era

un secreto. Estaba determinado en que este día no fuera un diapasón de

aquellos que se quedan enterrados para siempre. Oh, dijo la ardilla,

que ahora siempre duerme junto a mí. Recordé de inmediato que los

niños héroes triunfaron debido a que todos compraron una licuadora a

la hora indicada, antes de las rebajas. Pero yo no. ¿Cómo iba a poder

yo establecer vínculos circenses con el planeta marte a estas horas? Ni

siquiera la palomita de maíz me explicó que así no se hacen las

películas de Luis Buñuel. Pensé, por supuesto, de nuevo en Zarathustra

quien casi no existía en aquel entonces, o por lo menos esa es la

historia oficial. ¿En qué época vivo ahora? Ese, creo, es el problema

principal de este juego de billar que se autorrepite tantas veces en el

bar de mis cocos en Brooklyn y sin embargo nunca deja de generar

espuma morada en este bar en la esquina de una serie televisiva. De

cualquier manera en ese momento traté de hacer progreso, abriendo un

refrigerador que utilizaría como cápsula de tiempo, insertando algunos

manifiestos, manos de sirena, chicharrones y un mosco indostánico,

con el fin de que a la hora del congreso de la unión se sepa que las

coronas navideñas que portaba la cigarra siempre en la falda eran

absolutamente necesarias.

Pero era hora de regresar al Bazar, que esta mañana había amanecido

en el centro de Tegucigalpa, donde todo era de juguete — no de

juguete caro, por supuesto sino de juguete chino envenenado.

Recuerdo que yo llevaba puesto un automóvil blindado de poliéster.

Cuando encontré una pianola en el balcón central por supuesto pensé

en el energúmeno junto con todo lo que habría dicho- aunque en

realidad nunca lo conocí y no tengo la menor idea de lo que habría

dicho. Aún así organicé los vinos como siempre, en medio de un túnel

de azufre. A ratos salía mi tía, como suele salir una nuez sorpresiva

dentro de la colación. Un micrófono y un podio se erguían en medio de

la nada, y un pantano esperaba la llegada del hotel donde esperaban los

ejércitos de compradores. Siempre había hecho esta tarea, tan bien

memorizada desde el día en que las telenovelas se presentaban en la

ropería. Lo hago ya como un ser somnámbulo, como si no

existiéramos ya ni yo ni el universo. Sucede que no quedan ya

conductores de tren dentro de estos cazares, o más bien, nunca han

existido más que estampados en un gran jarrón. Por eso desde que

aparecí dentro de una cáscara de nuez los dioses me asignaron el papel

de maquillista. Como todo ser levemente extranjero en una ciudad

llena de artefactos y cédulas agropecuarias, me dí pronto cuenta que

era prisionero en un campo infinito del epacio, y que la única manera

de recobrar aquella libertad era renunciando a ella para así encontrar u

mundo mucho más pequeño que tuviera senido, hasta desaparecer. Por

cierto, ¿alguien me podría explicar en donde estoy?

panel rehearsal the night before “A General Theory of Last Night”, Hilton Hotel, February 14, 2013.

“A general Theory of Last Night: A Constructed Panel Discussion”  was a scripted panel discussion written collaboratively in the context of the College Art Association Conference in New York on Februrary 15, 2013. A group of 10 participants gathered the evening before the panel to collectively script a discussion that tried to address some of the issues currently being discussed at the conference, identify topics of debate and articulate those positions in a clear and concise manner. The objective of this workshop was to provide a vehicle for immediate reflection and the chance to respond in an Op-Ed approach to current concerns. Participants were  joined by professional actors who delivered the scripted content the following morning.

Collaborating writers included: Michelle Levy, Adeola Enigbokan, Barbara Adams, Caroline Woolard, Hope Ginsburg, Tatiana Flores, Olga Kopenkina, Michael Mandiberg, Martha Rosler, and Pablo Helguera. The introduction and final edited version of the text were made by Pablo Helguera.

The panel was performed by actors Kevin Scullin, Melissa Chambers and Richard Saudek.

KEVIN SCULLIN

Good morning, and welcome to a General Theory of Last Night. My name is Kevin Scullin.

RICHARD SAUDEK

I am Richard Saudek,

MELISSA CHAMBERS

And I am Melissa Chambers,

KEVIN

and we all are actors.

MELISSA

We are being asked by the script I am reading to say that we are professional and renowned actors, which we are.

KEVIN

The authors of today’s panel discussion want to thank the College Art Association, including Daniel Lemakis and Lauren Stark, for their generosity in allowing this sort of intervention under the academic auspices of this conference.

RICHARD

Similarly, we want to thank Mark Tribe, who invited Pablo Helguera to propose a new format of refection during this conference, and who in turn has invited a number of collaborators to write this panel, which has led to what you are about to see and hear today.

KEVIN

The collaborators who wrote this text last night were  Michelle Levy, Adeola Enigbokan, Barbara Adams, Caroline Woolard, Hope Ginsburg, Tatiana Flores, Olga Kopenkina, Martha Rosler, Michael Mandiberg and Pablo Helguera.

MELISSA

Now, to clarify a few things first:

KEVIN

It is not our intention, nor our interest, to impersonate scholars, to parody scholarship, nor to reiterate what half a century of institutional critique has so effectively done;

MELISSA

not that we did not enjoy our little task at hand,

RICHARD

Or that we didn’t operate under full awareness that it may be impossible for us to convince you that we tried to avoid irony.

KEVIN

Our aim is perhaps more difficult, more ambitious, more idealistic, and less connected to any particular conference.

MELISSA

This is not a simulation. It is not meant to “pretend to be” anything. Instead it is what it intends to be: a clinical trial, a small intervention on the discursive dynamics of art history, particularly as they operate in an environment like this;

KEVIN

Environments where, either by whether desire or need, we subject ourselves to many viewpoints but mainly many expositions, mostly microscopic in scale, a wide range of expertise that covers the entirety of art history from prehistory to, in this case, last night.

RICHARD

In this second decade of the XXIst century, when single-angled narratives have given place to multiple perspectives and where our brains have been rewired to divide our attention to multiple channels of information,  some of the most pressing problems that art history needs to address today is how to balance the natural demands of the profession toward specialized knowledge with the enormous need to gain a general understanding of what is happening in the recent and immediate past;

MELISSA

how to synthesize effectively and in a way that actually bears some relevance to the world we live in today.

KEVIN

If we agree that the most consequential art that is made at any given time is so because of how it grasps and defines the time in which it was made, then it should naturally follow that the art historical profession should operate in the same way.

RICHARD

As we know, the art historical or art criticism discourse focused so much on the minute, and too little on the long view,

KEVIN

That is, on the long view of the immediate.

MELISSA

In other words, in places like this conference, we find ourselves with great thirst for synthesis,

KEVIN

Hopes to distill what are the most important questions of the moment,

RICHARD

And yet we usually are left with excessively detailed information, with little time or energy or help to make sense for all of it.

MELISSA

The second lingering question tends to be: when does art history start?

RICHARD

Indeed: when does the immediate past turn into the past, which turns into the landscape that is distant enough from us to start giving us meaning?

KEVIN

When do we start historicizing, and when and under what conditions can we overhistoricize?

RICHARD

And isn’t it the case that in the age of the 24 hour news cycle this relationship has changed?

KEVIN

Indeed, isn’t it true that the day after, say, a major biennial opens its already history?

RICHARD

And isn’t it also the case that we always appear to be utterly unprepared to understand that fact?

KEVIN

Could we join the depth of art history with the efficacy of journalism?

MELISSA

For that reason, we believe we need to reimagine the process by which we understand and relate to the immediate.

KEVIN

Not with the objective to quickly discard it, but on the contrary: to think of it intelligently and sensibly, and prevent this seemingly inevitable tendency of immediate detachment to take hold.

MELISSA

This is the premise of creating a general theory of last night.

RICHARD

It is less an attempt to fix the transient in a permanent vitrine, and more an impulse to make the sense of that which has immediately transpired with our own logic and our own articulation, before others come and do it for us in the future.

KEVIN

And to contest, at the very least, that need for synthesis that we need on a daily basis to move forward.

MELISSA

Welcome.

KEVIN

And now, precisely because we are talking about the idea of immediate historization, and because this is in essence an art history conference, the writers of this script have proposed that one of the subjects we put to a debate today is  on whether there are definitive views of art history. In museums, for instance, we often see examples where a particular history is told in what may appear “definitive” ways, where a period is given a final, “definitive” reading. For many of you this is an old and perhaps annoying problem, known as the center-periphery problem.

RICHARD

We first need to say that this obsession with the definitive history is not particular exclusively to Art history. The Royal Geographical Society, for instance, has the same tendency to want to write definitive histories, histories that consistently leave out the periphery.

MELISSA

I want to start by saying, in broad strokes, that the ubiquity for the last thirty years of the conundrum center-periphery has become more of a career opportunity for academic papers than a real debate. The reality is that the producers of canonical narratives have already recognized for many years that alternative histories, that is, for instance, alternative modernisms, need to be recognized, but they just can’t be incorporated cleanly into a single narrative.

RICHARD

Ok, let’s see,… going back to the Royal Geographical Society example: thre are centers of knowledge prodution that historically have created their own narratives; in their case as an imperial center outside of London where people went to explore the world and bring artifacts to tell those stories, without seriously questioning on whether they were part or not of the other, or if they were advocates of the other…

MELISSA

I don’t think there is such lack of awareness, nor is the comparison very useful right now, really, come on.

RICHARD

The issue, and you are proving my point,  is that the most important thing is that the center never has to respond to the questions of those outside of the canon.

KEVIN

What kind of questions?

MELISSA

I don’t even know what we are debating.

KEVIN

But I said…

RICHARD

Ok, let’s bring up the most recently reviled case in point; Ken Jonson’s review of the Now Dig This! exhibition at PS1, where he theorizes that black artists are just imitating the art of previous white artists.

MELISSA

first of all, Ken Johnson is not even worth dignifying with a discussion. he is the most extreme and substandard intellectual example you could come up with.

RICHARD

Ok, let me try something else. As Australian don’t you think you are in the periphery?

MELISSA

That’s a complicated question

KEVIN

Why?

MELISSA

Do I feel culturaly periphreral? No, because Australians are the most well traveled people in the world .

RICHARD

But do you like it when people are indifferent about what may be  happening, for instance, in the art scene in Melbourne?

MELISSA

it is a great art scene there.

RICHARD

But nobody knows it. I mean, no one outside Melbourne I guess.  So why should I care about the art scene in Melbournes if I don’t have to travel outside of New York to see great art?

MELISSA

The point you are trying to make, If I understand correctly, is moot if you are talking about contemporary art.  Today great art is hard to hide; it is on the web, it can become viral in second; curators travel all over the world to put art in hundreds of biennials, the strangest and more exotic the better.

The problem with canonical modernist narratives and the attempt to incorporate alternative modernisms to it is that, if you are trying to tell the history of abstraction and you go to, say, India, you will have to go to the 1950s to find paintings made in the spirit of early modern abstraction. And in that case, is that an accurate call to make, to exhibit that painting next to paintings from 1910, or do you exhibit it next to Ab Ex paintings from the 50s? Doesn’t that do a disservice to that Indian art work?

RICHARD

The real issue is on whether there should be a canon at all.  That there simply needs to be multiple stories.

MELISSA

but I don’t think anyone is questioning that.

KEVIN

What does it mean to be left out of the canonical history?

But actually, let’s go back to the question: Can we have the hubris of definitively state the history of a particular artistic movement?

MELISSA

i wouldn’t define it as hubris but there is something to be said about the importance of the clear narrative.

RICHARD

It is the clear narrative versus the messy truth.

KEVIN

What is a clear narrative and what is a messy truth?

RICHARD

Well the MoMA canonical story down the street, the story told by Alfred Barr, is a clear narrative, beautifully designed. It was a visual argument that led him to choose Cezanne and post-impressionism in a defining line with a whole an neatly packaged genealogy of artists.

MELISSA

I guess I agree that the canonical narrative may be too neat and that the world is too messy, but where do you find accuracy, I mean, truthful stories, in that mess?

RICHARD

You know what? the more i think about clean narratives  I realize  that  I am not attached to truth anymore…

KEVIN

So you are into fictional narratives?

RICHARD

No! Gosh. It is not about telling lies instead but that there is a fundamental fallacy in “telling a true narrative”.

Because you are constantly mistaking your model making —that is, your whole methodology— constantly tweaking it but mistaking it to the world itself.

MELISSA

That is only if you are a bad curator.

RICHARD

I don’t think that what I am doing when a curator is curating he or she is “producing truth”. He or she is producing models to which people can reflect.  So if the model you are presenting has lost resonance, if it doesn’t feel exciting, if it feels boring, its because it has ceased to function as a model.

MELISSA

But — I am sorry— the canonical modernist model has not ceased to function. Why do so many thousands of people go every day to see Picassos and Cezannes and all that?

RICHARD

Well, those have become familiar narratives, stories we recognize and believe we understand and maybe even embellish and we feel rewarded when we can tell them to others.

KEVIN

Ok, you talk about canonical narratives as how they are dominant, but

but here is a question: if I am not part of them, if they don’t concern me, if i live in another part of the world, why should I worry why they are important?

RICHARD

Because they have the most exposure and what gets the most exposure dominates what gets discussed and thought about.

KEVIN

OK, help me here. I am a bit lost on how the dots connect. Excuse me if I digress.

One thing that I found fascinating last time I went to MoMA was that I was looking at Kandinskys and then entered a giant room with a giant fan hanging from the ceiling, and you would just sit there and stare at this huge fan on a rope…

MELISSA

But that is a very mainstream artist…

KEVIN

But I went from Kandinsky to a fan on a rope!  How the hell is that a narrative in any way?

MELISSA

Because  it is a really cerebral work…

KEVIN

Its like, its like that man who collected pollen…

RICHARD

Wolfgang Laib?

KEVIN

He’s got 19 years of pollen on the floor….

And there’s that installation, the clock, is the clock still there?

RICHARD

Its gone.

KEVIN

I missed it , dammit!  but anyway, ok, the point is: how does

The pollen and the fan and the clock interrelate how,

Does it all fit into one neat narrative?

MELISSA

Kevin, that’s contemporary art. We were really talking about modern narratives. It really is like apples and oranges.

KEVIN

I’m sorry.

RICHARD

No, its ok. Point taken that narratives can be arbitrary, and an institution that commands attention has a responsibility to represent… they need to recognize their power and whatever they represent it is taken as good and represent what exists in a more comprehensive manner.

MELISSA

But what if people ONLY want to see Water Lilies and van Gogh? What if the demand is for the more conventional art? And I am not talking only about the center here.

RICHARD

Well, institutions could admit their own reality, which is that that’s what they are doing, that they are supporting  that they have to command some power, to open their process, to detract from this idea, because that is what power does.

MELISSA

You seem to be saying that now it matters what institutions do. Before you were saying that why does it matter to me what a big institutions do if it doesn’t concern me.

KEVIN

No, I was the one who said that why should, say,  people in Latin America care about what the big museums in New York or London do. My point is that they are always asking about themselves and sometimes it is not about you.

RICHARD

They try to spread the word but that is another act of hegemony, you don’t get enough from the center so you can have more of it, like McDonalds… while there are other artists that are completely ignored, it is the same canon, these figures are exceptional it is an universalizing narratives.

MELISSA

But where are these mystery artists? Where are they hiding?

RICHARD

In the local art scenes. Ilya Kabakov was not the only artist in the 80s in Russia.  It takes a scholar with a lot of patience to go and dig out that stuff.

What I was talking about is the process of knowledge production, of the canon-categorizing narratives. That is knowledge production. But however this circulation works, it works in how these artists position themselves in relation to centers of power, either an artist gets plucked out of his own context

KEVIN

Like Gabriel Orozco?

RICHARD

Or however power gets exported to other sites, but that artist work has to be packaged into something that can work in relationship to the existing discourse of processing of new and different information.

MELISSA

sorry, i didn’t understand a word of what you said.

RICHARD

I mean that the artist’s work has to be entered somehow into the center as a representative example of the outside, while the centers  look for art that offers a distinction but also in harmony with the established canon.

KEVIN

But they are connected, they keep growing, they are never affected.

RICHARD

I thought it was important what you said that there is a distinction between how well something can be packaged and how relevant it is

MELISSA

You confuse hype and quality. Something that gets hyped is neither a messy truth nor a neat narrative, its a messy lie.

RICHARD

Art history is a messy business, I guess.

KEVIN

Very well. And now, I would like that we make a brief switch and turn into another old-time, related subject. In the same way that we were discussing issues of center and periphery, a similar ongoing debate in this and many other conferences concerns the relationship between autonomy and institutionalization.  The aftermath of institutional critique, it appears, landed on the recognition by many artists that every practice becomes institutionalized sooner or later, and that the attempt of practicing independence is in fact an attempt to learn how to make a successful transition into the stability of whatever set of practices we do,  which become an institution in a way, an institution built in our own terms but an institution nonetheless. So the question becomes:

What does autonomy mean today in art making? How can or should institutional frameworks support autonomy, and when do they compromise it?

RICHARD

To me the most important question is: Does institutional affiliation compromise a radical agenda?

MELISSA

What does affiliation mean?

RICHARD

Funding, a title, a job….

MELISSA

What about artist affiliations? The world doesn’t care if you don’t have a job as an artist.

RICHARD

In the case of artists it may be a commercial gallery.

MELISSA

I believe, like in the tired discussion we had on periphery, that this is dichotomy is not helpful to understand the real problem, which is on whether it is possible to create new models of autonomy. It is a problem that I would term a problem of “housing”.  If you are trying to invent a new model, it needs to be housed in some shape or form within a certain institutional framework.

RICHARD

I don’t agree with that Melissa. For example artist-organized institutions…

MELISSA

Let me elaborate.   Housing…

KEVIN

If you are trying to invent a new model of what?  What stands to be gained or lost by ‘housing’?

MELISSA

In Vancouver, for example,  affiliation meant artists collective groups… all are funded by the state; none of them question that. All are very well funded.  On the surface, you may consider that autonomy, but these are not independent nor self-sustainable groups. They are dependent of the state.  Do you think you can be outside of a system? What is autonomy?

RICHARD

I feel independent when I feel I have free reign to do whatever I want 2/3rds of my time.

MELISSA

But the fact that you feel independent doesn’t mean that you are— you are still tied to a system.

RICHARD

I feel independent because I am, because within the system where I live, whatever I do in the form of art or other things is valued by people. They may buy  it, etc.

KEVIN

You seem to be articulating a position of free market and non-profit autonomy, or what some writer may call   “living in the free market autonomy.”

RICHARD

I don’t know how I would call it. You may want to frame it as independent practice.

I wouldn’t regard, for instance, participating in the academy as an independent practice. The academy curtails your momentum, it makes you lose  your autonomy.

MELISSA

Wait a minute.

KEVIN

Melissa?

MELISSA

I am sorry but that is a disingenuous statement. The academy can give you equal or more freedom to create than the art market. How could you say that you feel free because people buy your art but you can’t be free because you have a teaching job?

KEVIN

I didn’t say that.

MELISSA

I don’t mean you, but Richard.

RICHARD

I didn’t say that either.

KEVIN

Yes Richard you did say it.

RICHARD

No I didn’t.

MELISSA

yes, you did!

RICHARD

No I didn’t!

KEVIN

Look, its here, clearly written, in the script.

RICHARD.

Oh. Did I? Oh well then. But I did not mean that I am free because I just sell art work. It is not about money. Let me put it this way. How does one get what one needs to get one’s goals done? You have an objective, how does it get realized? I am for creating my own ship. I don’t believe in working inside or parasitically inside an institution.

MELISSA

You are just taking a very reductive interpretation of what an institution is.  An institution is not just a university or a school. An institution is the art market,  the art world…. Take for example the Occupy movement in the Berlin Biennial.

KEVIN

That Biennial was really panned, right?

MELISSA

This biennial was highly criticized by practically every participant, inside and outside. There was the disingenuous idea that the so-called “occupation” of the Biennial would give some credibility to the institution. In the end it was a situation where both the Occupy people and the biennial lost credibility due to the toxic relationship they created for each other. It is a perfect example of how there is no “outside” possible.

KEVIN

Which brings us back to the question we started with: What is autonomy? What compromises your mission as an individual, what compromises one’s ethics?

RICHARD

I don’t think that example of the Berlin show is a fair representation of the problem. There are many artists and collectives that maintain independence and credibility. For example, if you do projects where you create your own space, you create culture, you create a temporal reality. You don’t need to exist within the context of a biennial or museum to do that.

If you are willing to accept work without pay, you can create a culture where people find out about it slowly, refine that meaning as a group.

MELISSA

But how long can that last? How long until you need actual money, when you need to pay the bills, when you are tired of simply surviving and you get older and you need more security? You know what I mean?

KEVIN

Good point.

RICHARD

I’ve never been anti-money. There’s always a question of what one has to do to get level of funds needed to pay oneself.

MELISSA:

And how do you find funds?

RICHARD

If you work within a collective,  generate power within the collective, redistribute your privilege within the group. It takes a lot of trust, commitment to group, internally share skills, opportunities, so it doesn’t just exacerbate privilege internally to power.

MELISSA

But the reality is that the idea of being fully autonomous or outside market is ridiculous. Mutual aid, trust will always exist in regards to market, and THAT is an institutional framework.

KEVIN

Maybe then, if entire autonomy is impossible…Take Bell Hooks: isn’t Bel Hooks both an academic and an independent radical? Where do you place her?

MELISSA

Perhaps I have been misunderstood. I don’t mean to say that because a project is “housed” in an institutional framework it is meaningless or can’t be radical.

There are benefits to being a parasite of the academy.

KEVIN

That is an ugly word. Doesn’t sound so beneficial.

MELISSA

Call it however you want it. Many successful art projects are attached to the academy. Does that disqualify them? No. Is there a marginalizing effect? Not necessarily.  Are artistic projects connected to a university  seen as being instrumentalized by university? Does academic affiliation imply a kind of loss of agency of artist producer because of dependence?  No. I am just saying that we should not pretend that those affiliations don’t exist and that they are things one can ever escape from, but by the same token one can’t just simply dismiss aything that comes from the institution simply because it came or is attached to some kind of institutional framework.

RICHARD

I suppose that if you are happy working within those frameworks, that’s great. If you think you can make a run of the gallery market, then try. If you lack the Chuztpah or have different politics, or make work that’s not going to sell, then its important you find a way to pay your rent whereby they have the time to continue making your work. Theres a lot of different ways to do that.

MELISSA

But no matter how you go about it,  you will have to work mercenary jobs to subsidize your practice.

KEVIN

I think that we seem to agree, in any case that there is a place for radicality in every framework, even if we don’t agree if it is possible to escape institutional frameworks. That it is possible to have the power to become invisible and not name our practice outright… but simply accept the framework you are given  and subverting it slowly, subtly.

MELISSA

I  would agree with that.

RICHARD

I don’t question that, for instance, some teachers have made a whole career about talking about race and class in classroom, acknowledging other forms know not valued traditionally, teaching work songs, etcetera. But my point is that instead we can just reject spaces where they’re normally upheld.

KEVIN

Can you give an example?

MELISSA

An artist I know who did this is Ron Clark, who decided that the Whitney program was his life work. He did this as a committed radical, but who thinks of Ron Clark as an artist? One of the things about artists is that they have the tendency to want to produce things that have a public…

KEVIN

I don’t know how many artists would say ‘my practice is my teaching.’  Don’t you  find this complicated?

RICHARD

You guys… you guys change the subject all the time.  This is the thing: you will always find an institutional framework if your mind is institutionalized. It is like colonialist thinking: the only thing that is worse than a colonialist mind is a mind that is colonialized. So naturally you can’t see outside of the institution. It is a scary place. It is difficult as well to see and practice outside of the art market, out of object production.

KEVIN

I am glad that you brought us back to the beginning. Perhaps this is where the various subjects we discussed somehow merge. We started talking about the need for immediacy of history, that prompted this scripted panel, we spoke about messy truths versus clean narratives in art history and about the “housing” bubble of institutionalization and artistic autononomy.

RICHARD

I actually object to this format of the scripted panel.

MELISSA

And why is that?

RICHARD

its too constraining, and you can’t come up with meaningful stuff the night before, and it symbolizes all that is wrong with what we talked about in terms of narratives and autonomy.

KEVIN

Now that’s interesting.

MELISSA

Ok, let’s be serious now. I do think that there is something important to be said in regards to the relationship between art history, autonomy, and our need for clear narratives.

KEVIN

go ahead.

MELiSSA

we are always told “the truth shall set you free”.  But what happens when there is no final truth?

KEVIN

there is no freedom?

RICHARD

Not that. There may be freedom, but it may consist in the recognition that there are no final truths.

MELISSA

that is too relativistic.  I believe we can aspire to specific truths, but they won’t be clean, they may be messy.

RICHARD

art history is messy.

KEVIN

freedom is a messy business too.

MELISSA

we aren’t always free to say what we want.

KEVIN

today was a case in point.

RICHARD

but there is certain freedom in following a narrative that someone laid out for us.

KEVIN

that is true too.

Could we say that messiness will set you free?

MELISSA

I am not in favor of chaos.

RICHARD

I think you can create beautiful untidyiness, a state of things where all gets contaminated.

KEVIN

inside or outside?

RICHARD

anywhere.

MELISSA

let us be contaminated then.

RICHARD

Let us.

KEVIN

And since there is no final truth, there is no final end to a conversation.

The conclusion then is: see you next year. We will not quit talking about this.

RICHARD

We won’t

MELISSA

No.

KEVIN

Thank you for your time.

______

[wait for applause]

KEVIN

Thank you so much for your time. And now, we will proceed to the Q+A portion of this panel.  Because we are actors, we have no idea how to answer any of your certainly inspired and pointed questions, so we have been provided with a list of answers from which we will simply pick whichever we think may be the best possible response to whatever answer you wanted to make. We will take three questions at most.

(answers to the questions form the public were chosen from the following artist quotes):

1. VITO ACCONCI

On his break with poetry: “I wanted words to be what maybe they couldn’t be. I wanted words to be matter. I wanted words to be material.”

On his early performance work: “I thought to myself, ‘am I developing a personality cult or am I making art?’”

On ‘performance’ and ‘installation’ art: “a lot of art words don’t come from the people who are doing it, they come from curators and critics.”

On architecture: “We want to build what only can be now.”

“Let’s not think in terms of windows and doors – let’s think in terms of openings.”

“The future of architecture is movement.”

2. ANTONIO VEGA

“system as a measurement of time”

3. MIERLE LADERMAN UKELES

“I’m not here to study you, to watch you, i’m here to work with you, to thank you.”

4. LATOYA RUBY FRAZIER

“Between my background and my foreground i’m not sure where I stand”

5. “words, words, words.”

“Long Time Ago /Orations to be Spoken Alone During a Holiday (with an Experiential Soundtrack)” is a special limited edition of  musical recordings sung by Pablo Helguera made on a variety of new and old technologies. Each song is accompanied by an oration, or text, to be read while listening under specially described conditions. The full project can be accessed on ubuweb.com

TEXTS

Just as we remain alone despite all our efforts,
we remain free despite all ties.

Guy de Maupassant

First Oration
Soundtrack One

En Fermant les Yeux (1884)
Manon- Jules Massenet (1842-1912)
Piano: Beatriz-Helguera Snow
[recorded in 1920s technology)

(old perfume bottle, wedding sachet, music box, a handful of rice.

Between 8 and 9pm. Cold weather. Entrance of a church, and if that is not possible, a garden where a party has recently taken place.
A light that may be illuminating the area. Shadows produced by the light. Purple sky. Chimney smoke)

HELP ME OPEN
UNREPEATED
A HUMBLE PORTRAIT
CLEAR
MADE BY CLOSING EYES
WERE IMAGINARY REPETITION LACKS
COME, UNREPEATED
CLOSE MY CLARITY
CLOSE MY CLARITY
OPEN
PARADISE
OPEN
THE CLARITY
OF THE HUMBLE IMAGINATION

Second Oration
Soundtrack Two

Una Furtiva Lagrima (1838)
L’Elisir D’Amore, Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848)
[recorded on phonograph record, 1900 technology]
Shawn Borri, technician

(Oil. Vinegar. Tablecloth. Photo Album. Red Wine. Cigarrettes. Grapes.

Between 1 and 2 am. Inside. Or balcony. Open fresh air.

Faraway barking dogs.)

ONE SINGLE INSTANT
OF CONFOUNDED SIGHS
OF RECOGNITION
IN THAT FEAST OF ENVY

NOTHING MORE
OF WHAT I AM LOOKING FOR
ONE SINGLE LOOK
OF RECOGNITION

IF I CAN DIE
KNOWING I CAN SEE
NOTHING MORE
THAN A FEAST
OF SIGHS

NOTHING MORE
THAN A FEAST
OF SIGHS

Third Oration
Soundtrack Three

Vecchia Zimarra (1896)
La Boheme, Giacomo Puccini

( Blue Carpet. Broken projector. Cognac. A pile of books in a foreign language. Three pounds of Jordan almonds.

6pm, after work.

Perhaps a friend’s house, or a pawn shop. Empty street. )

I WANT YOU TO
RECEIVE MY THANKS
FROM THIS OLD CORNER
FROM THIS OLD POCKET
OF PHILOSOPHY
FOR THE RICH AND FOR THE POOR

I WANT TO THANK YOU
FOR COMING
AND NEVER TRY TO BE A POET
AND NEVER TREAT ME LIKE A POET
OR TAKE AWAY THE DAYS
OFF MY BACK
NOW THAT THEY ALL ARE GONE
NOW THAT THEY ALL ARE GONE

I HOPE YOU CAN HEAR ME
AS I THANK YOU
FROM THIS CORNER OF DAYS
TO COME

Fourth Oration
Soundtrack Four

Maria, Mari (c. 1899)
Vincenzo Russo (1876-1904) – Mario di Capua (1865-1917)

( Fresh laundry. Perhaps a parrot. Azaleas —lots of them.

Salt smell of the sea. Sunday, 2pm.

Ancient ruins. Archaeology museum. Abandoned, of course).

OH THAT I LOSE SLEEP
AS I TRY TO SEE

UNLESS YOU CAN SHOW ME
HOW TO SEE

I DON’T WANT TO SLEEP
UNTIL I CAN SEE
AND WAIT TO SPEAK
ABOUT IT

OH THAT I COULD
AS I TRY
AND WAIT
TO SLEEP
AND SPEAK

I EMBRACE ANY DAYS
I CAN FIND
AS I WAIT

Fifth Oration
Soundtrack Five

La Cruz Azul
Pedro J. González (1915-1978)

( Scapular. Manure. Leather. Sweet bread. Old radio.

Break of Dawn. Blue turns into Orange.

Room with daguerreotypes of fifteen-year old women).

JUST IN CASE
ONLY IN CASE
IN THE REMOTE CASE
THAT I PASS AWAY
AND YOU FORGET
THAT I PASSED AWAY
WITH FLOWERS BELOW

I DON’T WANT
SYMBOLIC FORGETFULNESS

NOT BLACK , NOT WHITE
DO I WANT IT
LIKE THE SKY
WITH FLOWERS BELOW

SHOULD I PASS
REMOTE CASE
NOT FLOWERS
NOT BLACK NOR WHITE
NOR ABOVE NOR BELOW
I DON’T WANT THEM
NO SKY BELOW
NOT BLACK
NOR WHITE
SHOULD I PASS

Sixth Oration
Soundtrack Six

Rockaway (2012) 
Adapted from “Galway Bay” by
Francis Fahy (1834-1935)*

*Rockaway is a song with adapted lyrics from an original Irish song known as “Galway Bay” by Francis Fahy (1854-1935). On the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, this adapted song is dedicated to this area of Queens that historically was known as the “Irish Riviera”, first performed at the Queens Museum on November 18th, 2012.

( White noise.

After awakening. )

AHHH
CLAY
+
GHOSTS
+

CLAY GHOSTS
+

DUST

+
+
ASHES
+
SOIL+
+
CLAYSOILASH
ASHSOILCLAY
+
DUST

Seventh Oration
Soundtrack Seven

In a Garden so Green
Anonymous Scottish Song
Pub. Forbes, Cantus, Songs and Fancies, 1662

( Freshly cut grass. Yellow windows. Velvet. A large globe.

The day after.)

GRAY WITH DUST
SHALL YOU TOUCH
IT
IT WILL BE GONE

SO STRANGE IS DESIRE
SO
WILL IT BE GONE

VANISH AS IT PLEASES
AS
IT SHALL TOUCH YOU

SAYING MY BIRTH
AS
I AM NOT YOURS

WHERE THE LANGUOR
AS
VANISHES FROM YOUR

AS IT LOSES INTENT
SO
IT SHALL PLEASE

SHALL YOU PLEASE
AS
IT SHALL VANISH
IN GRAY DUST

Eight Oration
Soundtrack Eight

Long Time Ago (1950)
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Piano: Beatriz-Helguera Snow
[recorded in 1950s technology]

( Rocking chair. Old doll.

Night after a carnival.
Riverside. Porch)

EVEN LONG MURMURING
DWELT HIGH AND LOW
WHERE
THE BRIGHTER
BELOVED
PERISHED

EVEN TENDERLY BUT
BELOVED
LONG TIME AGO

WHERE

EVEN
HIGH AUTUM
PERISHED
GLISTENED

EVEN
A BELOVED
ROCK
PERISHES
IN
TIME

My threshold is $25,000.
This year the fair is better… the gallerinas are hotter this time.
Tom Krens said that I was his son.
In Dollars, Euros, or Pounds?
The AC in Scope broke down.
How is it possible that they don’t have black tea?
I tried to sit by the pool at the Delano, but you have to buy a $400 bottle.
Too bad that you came with your girlfriend.
The painting with the circles in White Cube was $200,000, but there are six hundred more in the series, my dear.
I can’t get rid of this Korean dealer.
I have socialized enough in my life to have to sweat in a corner with a watered-down drink and having my eardrums shattered.
Twenty-two fairs? Really?
This work of yours is identical to this other artist’s work I saw at Pulse, but I don’t mean it in a bad way.
They gave the keys of the city to Sam Keller.
I don’t feel like hanging out with the Boston crowd.
She arrived totally drunk demanding her painting.
The party of the Russians at the Raleigh is awesome.
I can’t talk now because this collector is going to walk away.
So the elevator door opens and everyone sees my bra sticking out.
So, did you decide if you are getting the metal junk piece?
That artist is young but bad.
You know that you don’t need an invitation.
I prefer that you invite me.
I am standing here in front of an installation with pinkish balls, and you?
Please don’t introduce him to me.
I would have sworn that it was a real baby!
They haven’t even let me go to the bathroom in three days.
I don’t care- he is so good-looking that I want to do an exhibition with him.
Knight Landisman knows everybody.
One would think with so many millionaires here the food would be half-decent.
I don’t have any business cards left.
I bought it because I think that every work that takes Joseph Beuys as a subject is important.
I don’t price works by the square foot.
I haven’t been able to move from this corner in two hours.
The U.S. government can’t do anything about the housing bubble.
I love those colors: white and black.
Hi, have you met Hans Ulrich Obrist?
You get all this sand into your shoes.
When I told her that I was an artist she turned away.
I loved it but I didn’t understand anything.
According to her, they sold everything.
You can do this fair in five minutes.
If the director of the Brooklyn museum says so, it must be true.
How is it possible that his works haven’t gone up?
Supposedly I am working.
Now that I saw the work again I didn’t like it so much.
There’s Joan Jonas. I missed her talk.
I had a blast spending their money.
I drove them around all over Miami for hours, but they never found a hotel room.
He is a mediocre millionaire loser artist who has impregnated all the women in Paris.
What are we doing in this party?
I can’t afford Sam Taylor Wood.
Next time I won’t even tell my family that I came.
Cab rides are more expensive here than in New York.
And now we have to pack to take everything back.
Let’s go to Marlborough to see the Boteros.
I sat with her for two hours and in the end she didn’t buy anything.
They didn’t deliver the works until Saturday and they didn’t even apologize.
I am so sick of Facebook.
It’s Russell Simmons!
I am looking for the next El Lissitsky.
It’s impossible to get a reservation at this restaurant.
Aqua is more relaxed, but the work is less good.
They don’t know how to make good mojitos here.
This year they didn’t bring anything political.
There aren’t any good moderators anywhere.
She makes them in three different sizes.
I had no idea that you were the same artist!
You are better off going to Gagosian and buying a Nan Goldin.
It was a one-by-one inch gouache, and it was four thousand dollars.
I am sleeping on the floor of my dealer’s hotel room, but please don’t tell anybody.
It works when you make a VIP face.
To say that he gained weight is an understatement.
When is your art convention going to be over?

Recording of neapolitan song Maria, Mari’ by  Eduardo di Capua (1865-1917)

(click here to listen mari, mari )