Control Mechanism
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Project idea: during dinner at an artist residency, bang on a glass
with a utensil, as if one were about to make a toast, somewhere out of
sight. Don't say anything when the room becomes quiet. Repeat gesture
two or three times throughout meal.
[Concrete plan: get several people to bang glass under table surreptitiously
at different times/places in room during the meal. Make sure owner J.
and manager G. aren't there. Rehearse beforehand. Do at end of second
week.]
Decide
instead to clear project with manager G. and owner J. This calling to
attention is something that they use to make announcements at dinner concerning
the program. I assume that they are cool.
Talk
to G. at dinnertime. He quickly says that my project is obnoxious, akin
to pulling a fire alarm. I tell him that it is non-destructive, unlike
pulling a fire alarm. And that I am interested in the pauses in between—when
the audience stops to listen. Another employee chimes in, saying that
the project is terrible, like crying wolf. I tell G. that I wanted to
clear it with him as a sign of respect—that this signal is primarily
used by the administration. We agree that I must speak to J.
M., who is interested in my projects, is sitting at the table with his
mouth open.
I go speak
to my friend K., for a while. He says that this now is the piece. He also
says that if the original plan had occurred, the piece might have functioned
as a kind of institutional critique.
Late during dinner, I approach J. He says, "absolutely not"
as I sit down. I start laughing—I think it is a joke. He is serious—G.
has spoken to him about it already.
W., the visiting artist who is also a Polish political refugee, is sitting
across from us at the table. He had spoken about 'artistic freedom' at
his lecture the previous evening, and how great art cannot exist within
compromise. He is wearing his poker face.
I eat my dessert
and ask for the reasons why not. J. says—the dinner area is an area
free of art—there are no paintings in the dining room. It is a neutral
space. I ask if my piece seems like too much of an institutional
critique—if that is why—and ask if residents ever make announcements,
such as about going to the movies together. He says that once someone
stood up and suggested having a box on hand for donations for a group
alcohol fund, which he disapproved of. J. talks about the need to control
the space. He says, sex, drugs, rock and roll, all that. I wonder
if he would be disturbed to know that I am having an affair with one of
the residents. He talks about how once a woman sculptor placed blocks
of wood under all the tables in the dining hall to raise them slightly—and
that he asked her to remove them. He talks about how the same woman put
a bowl of round, polished white stones in the salad bar, and how he thought
someone might have eaten them by mistake if they weren't paying attention.
I ask if why not is
about public versus private space. He says—people shouldn't have
to participate if they don't want to. In the past people have staged pre-announced
events in the lecture hall.
I ask J. how
he feels about postmodern art. Among other things, he says—if you
pull the plug, (meaning electricity), you can still make drawings with
charcoal, and that this tradition stretches back thousands of years
to paintings in caves. And recently, all the residents keep a laptop in
each studio, which disturbs him, but when he mentioned it as a problem
at a meeting with the other trustees, they did not agree that it was a
problem. He senses a widening gap between the residents and the visiting
artists—but—he is emphatic on inviting that kind of artist
(heroic abstract male painters mostly). He has been around for thirty
years and does not believe in trends. I say, it is hard for me to
know about trends, I have only been around for ten years, but this
is the direction that my work is taking now. Then J. talks about what
the center is, how he came up here thirty years ago as a hippie and
stayed to found the center. How they provide free art classes to
the local public school two days a week. How they pay property taxes to
the town even though they don't have to. How a lot of studio center
employees are on the town's board. I wonder if they control the town.
He talks about meditation, and Venice, and Tintoretto—and says he
does not go to the Biennale even though he is there every year at the
same time. We finish our conversation, and get up, and bus our dishes.
He says, "I hate to burst your bubble." I say that it’s
okay. He says, "but we would've nailed you," while grabbing
my neck, hard, from the back. He quickly changes this to a massage-like
maneuver on my shoulders. I try to laugh this off as I walk away.
2006
