naive optimism: performance art in public space

in continuation of my thoughts on the potential of performance…

- performance evades documentation and therefore stabilization. it creates possibilities of collective memory and myth-making. or erasure from history.

- it holds greater potential for blurring the lines between "art" and "life." because it is not something that can be isolated as an object (and therefore deemed completely external to ourselves) but takes place as an event in space over time (what people do everyday with more or less degree), it can directly address our definition of "normal behavior" and perhaps subvert it, redefine it, or at least reconsider it.

on tuesday, july 23rd, performance artist dovrat meron moderated a roundtable discussion called from site-specific performance to hit and run interventions in the public realm at glasshouse in brooklyn. also part of the bipaf (brooklyn international performance art festival), the discussion followed a presentation by meron on her work, untranslatable words, in which the artist (with a giant plastic ear held to her head) asked people on the street for words they found difficult to translate into other languages. 

around 13 artists and curators were present for the roundtable--many perform or organize performances in public spaces and shared some of their past experiences. for example, rafael sanchez, who often does traveling performances, spoke about the reception of back to africa, 2000, in which he chased buses (in new jersey?) in white face, asking people whether it was the bus back to africa. some, he said, would think him a(nother) crazy person, stand back, and watch in amused or fearful silence. others engaged more actively with the work by responding that yes, the bus would take him to africa, but he has to get off at some point and take another bus.

his anecdote related to other topics raised during the talk, including that of response, censorship, and city regulations. meron opened with an observation that, unlike berlin, where she is based, new york city has very clear distinctions between private and public spaces. but there are those "public" spaces that are semi-private--legally, they may be the city's property, but the locations fall under the semi-control of residents and other private sectors. this was perhaps the most disconcerting (although expected) part of what the participants brought forth as a difficulty of performing in public:

#1. by law, performers do not necessarily need a permit to perform in public, as long as they do not a sound device such as a speaker, megaphone, etc. and do not perform in or next to a park. however, laws of "public disturbance" apply. these appear in several different forms, but they are similar. an act may be considered "disorderly conduct," for example, when the doer has the intention "to cause public inconvenient, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof:

1. He engages in fighting or in violent, tumultuous or threatening behavior; or

2. He makes unreasonable noise; or

3. In a public place, he uses abusive or obscene language, or makes an obscene gesture; or

4. Without lawful authority, he disturbs any lawful assembly or meeting of persons; or

5. He obstructs vehicular or pedestrian traffic; or

6. He congregates with other persons in a public place and refuses to comply with a lawful order of the police to disperse; or

7. He creates a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose."

many of the "definitions" for the laws utilize subjective modifiers such as "obscene," "threatening," "offensive," and "unreasonable." the most striking phrase in the last example is "any act which serves no legitimate purpose." who sets the criteria for a "legitimate purpose?" or any of the other qualifiers for that matter? 

if anyone present considers a performance to fall under any of those descriptions, he/she is free to report the performer, who then risks being arrested.

#2. the disturbing part: those who have the power to judge and determine criteria for the "legitimacy" or "threat" of a performance in a public space are the residents, police/law, and possibly most powerful of all, private sectors with money (corporate shareholders of some sort). if one performs on the sidewalk outside of the shiny citigroup center in midtown east, for example, one can be kicked out--maybe more forcefully than if some residents in hell's kitchen complained about some crazies "causing inconvenience." thus the interpretation of various laws--including those on "selling expressive matter" as maria hupfield put it--changes according to those who hold power. in this society, it is probably those who have financial influence.

cara starke of creative time, who was also present at the discussion, noted that budgets are generally set aside for obtaining permits. however, ultimately, as jill mcdermid offered, the issue is not about permits and law, but reception by those at the site. is a work "crazy," "cool," or "art?" to the artist, it probably doesn't matter how the work in interpreted, as long as it creates an effect during its course and hopefully after. but the modes of interpretation sometimes play significant roles in whether or not the artist can present the work at all. it is disheartening to realize that people will be harassed for their expressions--and silenced--if those with money perceive them as inappropriate.

to work around this for larger projects, some try to go through institutions and other parties associated with the location to receive the ok--that is, depend on these powers for the legitimization of the work. however, this method, too, inevitably has its restrictions--these parties have the final say in what can be shown and what cannot. "politically sensitive" material may be censored if the decision-makers do not wish to be aligned with those views. receiving legitimization requires compromise. some artists at the discussion voiced their preference for the "hit and run" route--they may risk getting arrested, but better that than compromising their art for an elite that fears what they do not know.

fear is another topic that was raised. essentially, the interpretation of an act as "threatening," "violent," "disturbing," etc. stems from fear. of what? many artists don't perform with the intention of harming strangers.

the source of fear seems to be a surprise encounter with the unfamiliar. like high school kids picking on someone who likes to hide in a corner and read comic books instead of going to house parties or playing basketball after school. difference causes a "disturbance" to a "norm" and "general order." seeing a stranger suddenly come into their neighborhood to do things they haven't seen people do there (whether it is just asking passersby questions or rolling on the ground flailing their arms about), people who respond in fear probably feel something akin to having an "intruder" in "their" space. 

thus the importance of prior research. starke elaborated that this may not necessarily be an academic read-up on the history of the area, but interaction with the residents, gaining a feel for their "cultural literacy" (that was someone else's term but forgot who said it). acceptance (regardless of what the law or big financial powers say) will depend on this trust--the performer not being a "colonizer," but someone who hopes for mutual exchange on an equal footing.

artist geraldo mercado's statement toward to the end of the discussion is apt here: "is there art here and do people want it?" perhaps the responsibility of the artist is to break open the desire for art through trust. once you have that, you have the potential to transform another person--maybe an entire community or the world.

art bullshit: friday night with weird art people

from mimi fadmi's untitled

climate change: language action poetry facilitators-from asia with love

9pm - 1am friday, july 16th, 2013

at grace exhibition space

840 broadway 2nd floor, brooklyn

as part of the brooklyn international performance art festival (bipaf)

multiple venues

july 4, 2013 - july 28, 2013

from miao jiaxin and lee heeran's money

over the past few years, i have inevitably accumulated more artist and art-related friends than not, but i still have a few friends who don't consider art a big part of their lives. many of them--with jobs in or students of finance, law, or government politics--tell me they don't "get" contemporary art. because i am supposed to be an art critic, they don't say so exactly, but i can hear something like: "art seems like bullshit." they find it inaccessible--its meanings only decipherable by an extensive background in art history. 

i don't really "get" art either, but i try to see a lot. i tend to process information very slowly and carefully so i feel more comfortable with object-based art rather than those which unfold over time. media such as film or performance give me anxiety since i feel i may miss something if i do not pay it extreme attention. this is especially so for live performances--at least i can replay films if i can get my hands on them. so i shy away from performance art. i see less and "get" it less. my choice to see a performance rather than objects is a gamble: when i invest my time in it, i may not be able to write about it or worse, not enjoy it because i find it too cryptic.

i do like the potential of performance to sidestep the commodification of art. sure, places charge money for tickets and the event can become more precious because it is ephemeral. but even with documentation, the fleeting act cannot remain as it is--passed around and reproduced the same way as objects. the performance is already dying as soon as it begins. once over, it is forever dead. but it also lives on through individual and collective memories, where it continually changes shape. that's how myths and legends are created--or forgotten altogether.

from dylan christiawan's performance

a friday night. i finally devoted myself to an evening of performances, part of the bipaf. titled climate change, the event presented work by artists from korea, japan, indonesia, hong kong, and new york-based émigrés. 

the website of the venue--grace exhibition space--declared their lack of a "stage" blurs the line between performer and audience, "the way things should be." i laughed because that's what everyone says. "anyone can enter" and "everyone is free to participate," but as claire bishop has written once on rirkrit tiravanija's work, who is this "everyone?" even if there is no architectural divide that delineates performer and audience, those with power and with none, insider and outsider, that divide is clearly felt. i expected to feel a tension and divide as i did on the first two days of the gramsci monument. however, my friday night was one of the closest experiences i've had to this blurring.

i went alone. i am clearly an outsider to performance art. though many people there seemed to know each other there, that didn't seem to matter. it felt like a casual and open house party, the kind where one expects people to show up uninvited, mingle, and have fun like everyone else. no insider codes, only basic social etiquette. despite the fact that i was (i think) the only person there writing furiously on my notepad throughout most of the night, i never felt unwelcome. maybe it helped that many present were performance artists themselves--i find that artists more used to interaction with strangers (directly or at least being watched by them) rather than those who make objects or ideas in solitary confinement most of the time have more flexible walls. as an introvert who goes to events alone, i tend to repel people (yes, i have magical powers), but during breaks between performances, many came up to me to start a conversation and artists said hi to me (i had never heard of any of them). one person did an e.t. thing at me with his finger. i responded by touching his finger with mine, and mimicked his gestures when he touched his finger to his chest and between his brows. (i later found out he was a performance artist. he thanked me for "giving [him] the finger." indeed i saw him do it to other strangers and they would not lift a finger. punny roll)

the structure of the event was very casual. a performance, then a few minutes break to set-up for the next one, then another. the "stage" moved around constantly around the spacious venue. the event went way past the designated end time, 11pm. but i enjoyed every minute of it.

image credit: bushwick daily

i arrived a few minutes late, so i missed the first performance by (i think) yuenjie maru from hong kong and i began my night with w christiawan's action poetry #9. the indonesian artist was dressed in a white cotton dress (the kind for prairie frolicking, age c. 12) with the front unbuttoned. he stood below a camera on the ceiling that pointed directly down to the floor. the camera's images were projected onto a screen behind christiawan the whole time, with a red dot and minutes indicating that it was recording. most of the time, the artist was facing away from the audience or sideways so that my gaze kept shifting to the screen. the screen didn't provide much of a frontal view of the work either, but the framed image possessed an uncanny cinematic lure. the directly downward shot rendered his body (his bald head) abstract. when he began to use props (an ipad, a dead chicken? and an egg, black tape) their arrangements within the frame became flat pictures. he paused frequently between his acts of holding his ipad (photographic close-up of his own face) upside down between his legs, pulling out a stiff chicken, then later an egg also from between his legs. 

the juxtaposition of his emotionally charged but carefully executed movements with the flat still images on the screen called forth an uncomfortable reminder of our own relationship to the "physical" and "digital." here, the two realms appeared separate, functioning regardless of the other's rules or activities. but the recording image held sway--was it because i'm also part of a generation used to living through the screen and the camera? even at a live performance, my eyes turned to the screen. my favorite quote by david levi strauss came to mind: 

"it's not that we mistake photographs for reality; we prefer them to reality. we cannot bear reality, but we bear images--like stigmata, like children, like fallen comrades. we suffer them. we idealize them. we believe them because we need what we are in them."

the disturbing aspect is that the projected (preferred) image completely eliminated the charge of the artist's gestures, which simply became indifferent forms. a broken egg at the center, half of a chicken peaking from one side, and a bare, limp arm of the prostrate artist also cut off by an edge of the frame. when the kneeling christiawan held up the egg toward the ceiling with a trembling hand, his fearful offering to the camera dominated the field of my vision; yet, the screen displayed a plain egg as a center of focus. the artist's knees and shortened limbs became other formal components of a compositional image. dramatic climax: when he later began wrapping his head with black tape--covering his nose and mouth--he struggled to breathe, but the screen showed next to no hint of his pain. christawan was silenced, and the recorded image will refuse to speak.

most of the work presented was political. the next work was by arai shin-ichi, ironically titled, i like america. on the wall a large collage of black and white photocopies of american magazines and other media. the japanese artist had written "i like america" upside in red; adjacent to the collage also hung a copy of the 84th issue of october magazine (spring, 1998, according to my calculations). arai began by reading a short introduction about himself (from tokyo) and his hometown (a countryside near tokyo). he took down the collage and journal, placed both on the ground--the latter in front and center, close to the audience. then followed a weaving of his personal narrative and painting. he recalled his memories as a child--idolizing the very expensive coca cola, american troops giving children chocolates, and even sang and danced the japanese commercial for del monte ketchup ("derumonte, derumonte, derumonte kechapu"). according to the content of each anecdote, he sprayed tubes of del monte ketchup, heinz mayo, hershey's chocolate syrup, french's mustard, or relish. in the beginning, his painting seemed like offerings to the shrine of american pop culture--especially the gentle sprinklings of relish by hand--but his movements gradually took an angry turn as he violently squeezed the containers, banged them against the floor, and shook them in the air, spraying the surrounding viewers. 

when his painting was "done" ("more black," he said once, and took out more chocolate syrup), he told the audience about when he first learned of jackson pollock, clement greenberg, john cage, etc (1998?). he held up the copy of october and said reading the journal was difficult because of the english, and it contained few images. he read the list of editors and contributors, tore off the cover, and laid it at the same place on the ground.

japadog. sausage fest. he proceeded to strip naked. he slipped on, swam in, and muddled his condiment pollock. a strong scent of mustard and sweet vinegar filled the space. he stood up to read the first sentence of the first page, tore the page in half, and put one half in his mouth. handing the other half to an audience member, he looked straight at him/her and said, "i like america." 

then repeat. 

he must have gone through half of the volume when one could no longer discern the words he was reading. he had difficulty breathing. he teared and coughed with his mouth full of october; the very words he tried to read prevented him from speech. a painful few minutes. then he took out the saliva-soaked pages from his mouth, bowed and said, thank you.

next, an equally political and angry language flower by korean artist, gim gwang cheol. on the ground lay a parcel wrapped in newspaper (international herald tribune) and red rubber string. gim slowly unraveled the string by pulling one end and allowing the parcel to turn over on its side. he tied one end of the string to an index finger of one audience member, the other end to that of another across his stage. he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and unwrapped the newspaper, which contained a single red brick. he twisted the taught string around his neck without using his hands and hung a loose piece of string near his head. his right foot on the brick, he proceeded to read the paper (the tribune and english print of korea joongang daily), turning and pausing at different angles with each open page. 

when he was done reading, he removed a box cutter from his pocket and began shredding the paper. the knife ripped down through the pages and his hand shook them out until none remained whole. he twisted their ends into bunches and held them in his mouth. only the top of his head peered over. the paper ribbons spilled out--an explosive bouquet of disembodied words.

after squeezing a whole orange over his head, he furiously tied the spare red string around the shreds. around and around the string went, binding the voluminous flow into one stiff and suffocated braid. it stuck out straight from the artist's face like a mute beak. his neck still fettered by the same red string, he drew near the audience members and swept over their faces with the end of the paper rod. the communion inflicted change: gim vehemently began to twist and turn the paper still clenched between his teeth. he freed his neck from the string with his knife. finally removing the paper from his mouth, he used the same knife to shred one end, which spilled out again into a paper bouquet. he tied the other end to the brick, its base. alas, the final product. declaring it a "language flower," he thanked the audience and bowed.

(due to time/space constraints and laziness, i am skipping the next three performances by indonesia's mimi fadmi, korea's park kyung hwa, and indonesia's dylan christiawan.)

the last piece, titled money, was a collaboration by new york-based artists lee heeran and miao jiaxin. the work gave a refreshingly sexual turn to the largely political trajectory of the evening's performances. the process of prior preparation, pleasure, then a much longer process of an aftermath/clean up--here money and sex were virtually synonymous with each other. miao in his sharp black suit was the pleasure/sex/money-seeker, lee in her red lipstick, black spandex, and red high-heeled boots, the sultry and dominant pleasure-giver. 

like many pleasures in life, miao's was short-lived; most time was devoted to its preparation and "clean up." to prepare for his "blow job," miao took up put on a white painter's coverall and climbed a ladder to cut a square opening in the ceiling. he stripped down to his underwear and lay face-up on the ground. lee approached with a red leaf blower and a pile of rubber material. placing the rubber on top of miao's passive body, lee inserted one end of the blower into an opening of the deflated balloon and began to blow. the balloon grew and grew--it contained a mass of u.s. dollar bills that flew about the expanding space. when miao's body became barely visible and the balloon loomed close to the ceiling, it finally popped. a short climb to the climax. 

then the unsexy aftermath. after lee tapped miao, motioning him to get up, both crouched on the ground to gather the scattered bills and pieces of rubber. miao put on his black suit and white coveralls while lee wrapped the money into a neat bundle. her job done, lee strutted away, flashing the black heels of her shoes. miao spent the next 15 minutes  placing the bundle in the ceiling, nailing the square shut, spreading two rounds of wall sealer around the edges, and finally, painting over it. tedious and long-drawn process. was the pleasure worth the trouble?

i am not used to writing about performance so trying to write about some of the work this evening took me longer than i usually take for other posts (excuses!). i find that performance invites poetry, though, and i feel freer as a writer even simply describing the movements i saw. performance also creates more possibilities for art writing through its peculiar interaction with memory. i replay and relive the past, but it changes each time i recall. but perhaps all the more difficult to write about because of it.

i haven't been to many other events, but i plan to, and highly recommend others to attend at least one during the bipaf. it runs through july 28th. even if you don't "get" it, it's fun. give artistic bullshit a chance.

a dream of haptic realism

ying li. recent paintings.

new york studio school 

8 w 8th street

new york, ny 10011

june 6, 2013 - july 20, 2013

confession: i have a b.a. in art, but i never received a proper art education until college. because my mother was a fairly abstract painter and sculptor while i was growing up, the idea of getting a "formal training" rarely pressed me with great urgency, even though she had undergone traditional art curriculi. i drew mostly black and white cartoons and caricatures. i was an attentive observer of the world around me, but what i put down on paper were shapes resulting from my own heavy-duty imaginative filtering process. i owned my medium of expression--or felt my skills sufficient enough. i did not deem it necessary to know about the rules of proportion and perspective.

when i took an actual (the real deal!) painting class in college, i thought it one of the most difficult things i had ever done. i could sketch out a cartoon rendering of a scene or person in a few seconds, but paint would not do what i wanted it to do. this was incredibly frustrating to a person who was used to expressing herself visually. i was at the mercy of paint: i knew what i was trying to paint, but the mysterious mess of my canvas often resembled puddles of decomposed restaurant waste. to avoid muddying my colors, i spent lengths of time just standing before the easel. seeing my timid and trembling brush, my professor came up to me and told me not to be afraid of the canvas. easier said than done, i thought. but when i saw her paint a landscape for the first time, i finally understood what she had meant.

ying (we called her by her first name) and painting have been friends for decades. just like any old friends, they know each other very well--maybe too much. they share stories and laughter; they also fight. "be physical!" she used to tell us. for her, their time together appeared to oscillate between violent disputes and sessions of lovemaking. her land- and seascapes reflect the deep and complicated relationship between them and more.

the richness of her paintings stem from the two having gone to and seen these places together. she breathed the salty breeze of an island shore through the medium of painting. she heaved a bittersweet sigh under a shower of fiery maple leaves through the medium of painting. their memories cross paths but they also diverge. her paintings display a constant negotiation between their shared experience--a tumultuous love evolving as they journey through scenic adventures in nature.

photographic reproductions can never do justice to her work. her paintings are three-dimensional (like tree bark, she has said in an interview); a photograph inevitably flattens her strikingly haptic interaction with her medium. ying sculpts paint: she piles it up, smooths it over, twists, builds, carves paths. though small, her beautifully colorful paintings compete with the immersive experiences of large abstract paintings by pollock or rothko. 

each canvas submerges the viewer in a stream of hazy dreams that dramatically unfold with time. when we dream, our vision is blurry and the details of the scene slip from our memory, but the emotional experience feels more real than in real life. when we awake, the feelings linger, though we cannot recall exactly what we have dreamt. ying gives equal weight to every aspect of being present somewhere. she is a painter, but sight is only one gateway to the mysterious world of dreams, feelings, memories, and thoughts. we feel as we recall. we smell as we reminisce. a landscape may alter very little, but it begins to evolve in our (un)conscious as soon as we leave it. 

ying's paintings faithfully convey how we experience places as they change over time--as we change. we look back at photographs of the past to remind ourselves of things beyond what they contain within their frames. ying's work is her collaboration with her friend and love in their attempts to recreate the visceral, those things beyond the frames. as i stand before each, i willingly stand in awful surrender to how their memories unfold together. i can only dream of such romance between myself and writing.

visible intruder

thomas hirschhorn's gramsci monument

975 tinton avenue

bronx, new york.

july 1, 2013 - september 15, 2013

swiss artist thomas hirschhorn is an international star, whose work has been shown in the venice biennale 2011, the current icp triennial, and is also part of permanent collections of moma and the tate modern in london.

i happen to like some of his work, probably because of the political content. for example, the disturbing but penetrating video, touching reality, 2012 (refer to my icp triennial post) and his "fill a room with shit" installations, such as concordia, concordia at chelsea's gladstone gallery last year. i like his art because it displays a particular interest in the political implications of consumption (material and immaterial) and the conditions which produce and surround them. 

so i consider myself a semi-fan. and since i read some of marxist theory for my thesis research, i had to visit the artist's new project, gramsci monument, dedicated to the 20th century italian thinker. this is the last of hirschhorn's monuments after the spinoza monument, 1999, deleuze monument, 2000, and bataille monument, 2002. 

gramsci monument is located on the grounds of forest houses, a public housing area in the east bronx near 163rd street. in writing and his opening day speech, the artist repeatedly emphasizes that he did not choose the location, but the community chose him. he deliberately sought a non-central location (as opposed to manhattan's highline, etc), but he attributes the specificity of the forest houses to an invitation by erik farmer, president of the forest houses tenants. hirschhorn recalled that, during their early meetings, he told farmer, he is "not interested in making art for the community, but with the community." the artist has given great attention to the aspect of collaboration--he does not shy away from mentioning farmer's name multiple times, giving credit to other members of the community. 

and the efforts show: from the appearance of the construction (graffiti tags and murals by locals decorate the wooden facades, hand-written signs here and there overflow with the appearance of homemade-ness..) to the selection of activities (wednesdays are poetry readings, thursdays are fieldtrip days, sundays open mic..), i get the sense that the residents are co-creators of this project. they also print a daily newspaper for the community--profiles of residents, local news, copy-and-paste blurbs on gramsci, hirschhorn's interviews on the monument--and air a radio station run by locals. they play the music they want, have on-air interviews/conversations with residents on various topics. during times when there are no events scheduled, the radio plays through the speakers on stage. its seating area and adjacent "gramsci bar" provide hang out spots.

i went on two consecutive days: monday the 1st, the opening day, and tuesday the 2nd. the experiences of each were very different. thank god i went on both.

my first visit made me angry. i liked the idea of a "living" monument created with the local residents. it is not a stand-alone object that purports to represent gramsci or his work, but a 2.5-month long meditation of his ideas on the level of practice. gramsci believed that education should be close to life--some of the monument's various events, such as the lectures by marcus steinweg and seminars led by a rotating roster of scholars, are obviously pedagogical, but other activities, such as tuesdays' "running events," open mics, and radio blend "life" and "education" seamlessly together.

but because it was opening day, there were a lot of non-resident visitors. i had unpleasant flashbacks to my time in venice: members of the elite art circles reuniting in foreign territory. or rather, foreigners intruding upon a life and community already present. 

the bare-minimum construction of the "temporary pavilion" added to this ambience: the raw wood boards bear no alterations besides murals and graffiti, sofas are covered in brown tape, white plastic lawn chairs labeled "gramsci monument" litter the stage area. 

what got me offended was this "ghetto" mock "pool" with a sad projection of water spewing into a small square lined with blue plastic. are children supposed to swim in this thing? it was worse than sprinklers in public parks or playgrounds--surely they had funds to make a basic fountain or other mechanism that emits water. was the messy taping and cheap blue plastic so necessary?

adding to the ethically questionable nature of the architectural aesthetic was of course the presence of the visitors who clearly lead lives very different from the residents who built the monument "from bottom to top" (a recurring phrase in the monument's daily newspaper and other writings around the project). remember that these are the PROJECTS in the east bronx, housing members of a struggling but also tightly knit community (i, at least, got the impression that the families there all knew each other) and not necessarily a destination (there are no major shopping malls nearby for example, a culinary gem, or landmark architecture. this is a fairly residential neighborhood). this is not to say that some of the "white folks" present are not struggling to get by, but being able to call oneself a "lover" and knower of art is a privilege. not many have the opportunity to learn why picasso's paintings are considered "high" art or the leisurely time to visit a museum with an entrance fee, or travel out of their way (unless they live nearby) to see some artist's project on a monday afternoon. would these two crowds--art world "foreigners" and residents--bump shoulders otherwise? probably not. and i got the sense that they were not just "bumping shoulders" but that the fairly sizable gathering of their own kind turned the scene into a sort of cool and fun "fieldtrip" with friends (and, perhaps, enemies, but familiar ones) and the locals simply provided the labor to create that opportunity. maybe i'm committing my own racial profiling, but i thought i saw the same faces i've seen at other show openings and even venice. in one case, i had met the guy (an editor at frieze?) at my mfa program when a professor invited him to speak to the class.

 the very first 5pm "philosophy lecture" by steinweg annoyed me even further. the questions "who is he speaking to? who is this for?" ceaselessly popped into my head. he made references to gilles deleuze, jacques lacan, plato and the classical tradition, marguerite duras… under the assumption that the audience understood them. although there was a fair sprinkling of residents near the stage prior to the lecture, they disappeared altogether once he began speaking into the microphone. it didn't help that his manner of speaking was very boring and that he had an accent. i found myself falling asleep at the front row. would non-insiders be willing to expend so much energy straining to decipher his jargon?

it was as if the locals labored to build the monument, but ultimately for the enjoyment of a select few who were not part of their community. build the stage, but the show is not for them.

the insider-ness of the opening day, i admit, is inevitable, since hirschhorn is a superstar and all. of course he's going to draw a crowd of friends and fans.

and, although i complain about the elitism of art a great deal, i am guilty as a semi-member. i am not "friends" with cindy sherman or larry gagosian, but i, too, enjoy the privilege of visiting the forest houses on a monday afternoon "for the sake of art," as i also had the leisurely time and money to visit venice, not on a travel grant for a journalistic assignment. as boring as his lecture was, i understood and recognized the steinweg's jargon and references--possible as the result of a privileged education and time to read all those books.

when i returned the next day, i got my reality check: i was the foreign intruder, "objective" ethnographer. 

let's say that on the first day, people took the time out of their busy schedules to commemorate the monument's opening in the late afternoon. but people have lives and real jobs (apparently except me). on the following day, i was the only non-resident there, aside from the artist and his crew and maybe one or two friends of the artist's people. when i arrived around 3:30pm, i saw a group of young men gathered outside the radio studio, watching a friend speak to the dj and suggesting songs to play. mothers were sitting in the plastic chairs, telling their children to be careful. girls were gossiping about people at school and showing each other pictures they took of themselves with their cellphones. one boy somehow got a sock stuck on a basketball hoop and an older girl had to rescue it with the end of a broom.

my presence felt inappropriate there. even as thoughts materialized in my head, i hesitated to pull out my notepad or camera. i did not receive many strange looks because the residents had probably been warned about visitors, and had already experienced the flood of foreigners invading their grounds the previous day. but i still felt self-conscious--there is no such thing as being an invisible observer. i am as present and a participant as much as anyone else there.

the intimate nature of tuesday's ambience and the constant presence of the artist (he has temporarily moved to the neighborhood for duration of the project) changed my mind. that day's "running event" was a showcase by "the forest houses steppers," a dozen or so kids dressed in red t-shirts and red bandanas around their heads. they were notified at the last minute about their performance (as i overheard, some were only told the previous day) so they frequently stopped in their steps (HA!) in confused deliberation as to the next move. but the audience members, all familiar to the performers (except me), were supportive and cheered them on. after a while, the kids gave up trying to stick to their choreography and formed a circle to have freestyle solo dances. as they chanted, "go tanny, go tanny, go tanny," a skinny boy twisted his shoulders and skipped his feet rapidly to the beat, spun around and landed in a split, followed by others' enthusiastic cheers. another one stepped up, and then another. i cracked a nostalgic smile: it brought me back to my high school days when i gave awkward performances of the harlem shake while my friends chanted the same "go candy, go candy" and showered me with the same cheers ("a" for effort? i can only do a grotesque parody of the shake).

watching this brief performance, i felt the love and warmth of a close community. the monument did provide a space for them to gather, bond, and share; it was not "just" an outsider artsy fartsy white guy's "profound" project. and even if it was, he seemed almost a part of that community as well. i saw him greeting everyone there like long neighbors. even as he flipped through odd pieces of wrinkled paper labeled "to do" in thick marker, he turned to ask a resident about how her son is doing or waved at a kid running between the chairs. i have more respect for this artist. good thing i did not judge based solely on the opening day.

i plan to visit the monument a few more times over the course of its run. i do not have a clear idea yet of how specifically gramsci's ideas are being realized there, its impact on the residents, or what this means for art. will this create a bridge between two worlds? will it be an "enlightening" pedagogical device for "non-art" locals? for example, i still hold mixed feelings about the philosophy lectures. 

but perhaps i will find out over the next few months. i will post updates on the gramsci monument in between those on other shows.