MAKE DESTRUCTION #GI2014 #NOTES

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make destruction

let’s wreck art

It’s not art – by wrecking it I am then creating its value as art – that is PROBLEMATIC!

Defend the PANDA – why????? this exhibition is a distraction from the social ills of the city and the strangling of resources in areas outside of the main institutions.

The fact that it is a public space within a public institution is problematic from the start. The institution defines the nature of ‘public’.

It fits into an institutional notion of art. It is asking for the validation of a public space. It’s the manipulation of a person’s practice to achieve a ‘public’ agenda.

Aesthetically there is nothing to discern one work from another, it’s the same thing over and over again.

It may be aesthetic, but it is not art.

There is a different kind of pleasure looking at it than other exhibitions, it’s like the artwork on the fridge.

This is not art, this is children’s work, it has a lack of intent to make it art. I have no problem at all destroying it .

Sacrifice everything around something.

By placing their work in the institution they are opening up their work to critique.

Play is fleeting and I don’t like the preservation of play, especially in an institution.

 

We have to destroy it before they can come  in and claim their work.

 

At 4:45 four people arrived at Gallery 2 with bubble wrap to defend the artworks. They had encountered the exhibition, observed the creation of work, noted the ‘destruction’ event and decided that they would put a call out for recruits to help them defend and save works in ATELIER PUBLIC#2. They hadn’t made the work, they just felt it needed to be defended from the destruction.

At the same time inside the exhibition, Anthony was about to begin a [too brief] conversation with academics and art critics about their thoughts on destroying the ‘art’. I sat back and listened to a very different conversation than I had come across previously about this exhibition. They were looking at the gallery with nobody in it and making judgements on that. They hadn’t witnessed the art being made, the shared conversations, the performance of the whole. The conversation moved at a fast pace and felt like it was a shared motivational talk to build up the energy in the room and begin the destruction. Almost like baiting each other to see who would be first.

When it came it was fast, the work began to be ripped off in frenzy, there were no tentative steps. There were some decisions made at the start, then it became indiscriminate. The gallery was opened and the queue of defenders and destroyers flooded in. The work retaliated by refusing to be ripped off floors and windows. There was delight, energy and fun in the gallery. Works were ripped off, repositioned and then ripped off again. Adults and children were jumping on work to destroy it. They were shared pleasures in destroying and saving work. Work that had been saved, while the rest was sacrificed, was then destroyed when the destructor’s back was turned. The realisation of what that meant was harsh. You were either a destroyer or  defender – did you need to change sides?

In amongst the ferociousness of the destruction the defenders methodically and calmly saved works returning them to the ‘fortress of protected works’  (thanks Emma for that description). They blocked an entrance to a gallery corner, but people got past and ripped work off walls and tore apart sculptures.

At a certain point the destruction began to give way to a clean up [of sorts] and Anthony gave a 5 minute warning that it would end. In the middle of it all a tour for BAM construction management came through the gallery as part of a corporate gallery event they were having. Observing what was happening they looked like they wanted to stay, but moved on. People were still arriving in the gallery to destroy, but it had been so fast and furious, with now a substantial selection of saved works that they joined in the ‘clean up’.

The energy in the gallery ebbed, people rested, others left to go home, the conversations began around what had been done, what should be next and how they felt now.

Eventually the saved works began to be repositioned back where they were. I felt as I had done before when witnessing the de-installation of ATELIER PUBLIC last time by two of the artists, but this had been at the end and like previous ‘destructions’ had been behind closed doors.

 

 The aesthetic, as well as the art, felt destroyed.

 

Friday morning Anthony and I met in the gallery. We should leave it as it is, he said. On the one hand, I felt like I could agree with that. We had said we would destroy and to hide that was a really uncomfortable feeling. But at the same time visitors would be coming in cold to the exhibition later on that day and presented with what we could see in front of us to me was problematic.

We agreed to create something out of the destruction and make sense of the space before reopening and set to work. Our conversations while doing this were random, but interesting, around the roles that artist, curator and institution have.  I am interested in conversations about the institution being complicit in the risk, rather than just the artist, and how does that limit or expand what we are able to do. At the end of the day I am curator but I am also the institution, being completely embedded in that. I can make decisions as a curator, but that can be overridden by my duty to the ‘institution’ and colleagues, hence our 3 hours spent ‘curating’ in the gallery yesterday. As Emma Balkind pointed out it is problematic around the notion of the public institution defining the nature of public within its space.

On the other hand being completely embedded in the institution offers me the opportunity to experiment, critique and reflect on what we do, the encounters we create and the control we relinquish.