I. Hunting (or “in the morning there is meaning”)
“Art is one of the many
products of thought. An impressive one, perhaps the most impressive one, but to
revere art, and have no understanding of the process that forces it into
existence, is finally not even to understand what art is….Even the artist is
more valuable than his artifact,…but the process itself is the most important
quality because it can transform and create, and its only form is
possibility…..The artifact…is only important because it remarks on its source.”
Le Roi Jones/Amiri Baraka, “Hunting Is Not Those Heads
On The Wall” (1964)
“….but in any case the thing’s got to come into being,
something has to happen, or all
We’ll have left is disagreements, desagrements, to
name a few.”—John Ashbery,
“One Coat Of
Paint” (April Galleons, 1987)
In considering the symbiotic relationship between artifact
and artistic process, the “Head on the wall” is a striking image to characterize
art works in galleries or museums. It emphasizes the beautiful trophy of the
so-called successful hunt abstracted from the process of hunting, as well as of the hunt’s functional necessity (that resulted in the creation of practical
necessities like food and clothing, whether called ‘craft’ or ‘culinary arts’).
In Early Modern (pre-20th century) Western Art, such “death” was
often championed as immortality---the
sublime object can outlive the artist. Baraka clearly makes no such brag, but this
doesn’t mean he rejects the creation of “things.”
“Art is identification, and the slowing down for it. But
hunting is not those heads the on the wall.” This is the only time he uses the
phrase in that essay, but it’s telling. This “death” (or “Immortality”) is more
accurately (modestly and intimately) a cessation, a pause, in the mad rush of
the hunt, the process, or of what Ashbery would call “disagreements,” however
arbitrary (a poem is never finished, only abandoned; a song is never finished,
only recorded). The artifact, or thing, may not provide any absolute closure,
but there was a real ethical foundation in the creation of the first gallery or
exhibition setting---as a sacred (even if ad hoc) place. Likewise, the concept of art as an end-in-itself, if
understood as a temporary absolute, is not dismissed. Baraka does revere that
attention, the slowing down that the creation of artifacts entails, just not
the fetishism of it at the expense of the process.
Even if the artist is “cursed with his artifact,” he’s
careful not to say, “Hunting is better, or is always better, than those heads on the wall”—and in this sense, his
essay is more radical than those who do suggest we he should eliminate the
artifact. Rather, it’s needed precisely to illuminate the process, and
enable its continuing. The process may give the artifact meaning but the artifact gives the meaning form. In order to “push the envelope,” there must first be an
envelope to push. [i]
II. Bringing The Work
Site Into The Harris Gallery
Bettina’s Hubby’s recent construction site installations
illustrate the struggle with the artifact Baraka explores. Hubby starts with an
idea “to create outside the confines of conventional exhibition settings,” yet
her photographic and mixed-media Construction Site series was first made public at the Harris Art Gallery at
The University of LaVerne in November 2012. In this setting the primary
emphasis was on the “heads. “Art-critics and enthusiasts gave positive reviews
to her choice in subject matter as well as aesthetic beauty of her
site-specific installation art, but her artwork went beyond static portraits or
still life “documentary photography” in a number of ways. This two-person show,
with Chad Attie, was itself deeply influenced by the kind of thinking that was
in the air when Baraka his essay in 1964.[1] As
Jon Leaver puts it in the press release for this show:
Since emerging in the late
1960s and early 1970s, site-specific installation art has sought to reject the
notion that artwork is independent of its surroundings. In line with this
current in contemporary art, this exhibition brings the life of the street
directly into the gallery.
Hubby’s inspiration for the
Construction Site series came literally from the street outside her front door.
The imagery incorporated into her photographic and mixed-media installations
derives specifically from the road works taking place on Rowena Avenue in Silver
Lake, the site of her studio.... Accordingly, she has brought the work site
into the gallery in the form of five sections of chain link fence, onto which
are clamped delicate silk panels printed with her photographs of construction
work. These photographs are manipulated to subtly kaleidoscopic effect,
producing a mirroring similar to a Rorschach inkblot, an invitation to the
spectator, perhaps, to imbue the work with personal meaning. Other works in the
show include ceramic tiled panels that further evoke and aestheticize the
paraphernalia of road works, as well as photo-collaged wall decals depicting strange
hybrids, conjoining organic forms and machinery."
Leaver, as well as other art critics who wrote of the show,
emphasize the aesthetic detail of the artifact, but notice the tension between
the verbs and nouns! As Hubby’s process manipulates
kaleidoscopic photographs of construction work, and places them on silk panels
clamped onto sections of a chain-link
fence, her conjunctions between the sky and the machinery, the yin and yang,
also reveal contrasts. Using “masculine” and “feminine" media and forms
and processes, the symmetrical mirroring of the large water pipes before
they’re placed underground, in my own personal imbuing of meaning, resembles
fallopian tubes as a site of construction, for instance—though her gendered
juxtapositions in her work cannot be reduced to mere anatomy.
At the Harris Gallery show, the thing came into being, and the show certainly illustrates one way life can be brought back into the museum
(even in the form of the holes in a
chain-link fence). These objects become commodities for sale and appreciation,
but at least as importantly an occasion for more hunting. As Leaver writes:
As with much of Hubby’s work,
the project is participatory and inclusive; for her the construction site is
not a distant subject of her disembodied lens, but something to be engaged.
Accordingly, for Hubby, this successful and innovative show
at the Harris Gallery could not be the be-all-and-end-all, the closure or culmination of a fascinating process. In part, because the process of construction at the site
continued, in her own front yard outside
of her live/work space; whether she liked it or not, she could not avoid
returning to the source! Socially and environmentally, this controversial
construction site was larger than her and she could not be an observer of it without also being an
actor in it-- since her art was contingent on the construction worker’s work (whether you call it art or not).
III. Construction+Art:
The Rowena Street Exhibit
In her Rowena Street exhibition, she brought the gallery
back into the street, the site of her original inspiration. This phase of her
engagement was the antitheses to the Harris show. The work becomes imbued with cultural meaning
that was implicit in the Harris Gallery, but now the primary focus, even if at the risk of
de-emphasizing the “actual art” itself—a risk she gladly took to create
work that doesn’t corrupt viewers
into “accepting the material in place of
what it is only the remains of,” as Baraka puts it.
Hubby had begun documenting the construction site on Rowena
(The River Supply Conduit Improvement Project commissioned by the L.A.
Department of Water and Power) because, like many residents and businesses in
the area, she was frustrated by the noise, the dirt, and the underlying
politics of this project (now into year 3 of what was supposed to be a 1-year
project). Hubby, however, also saw the similarities between what she does as an
artist and what construction workers do—and felt increasing solidarity,
especially as she became more aware “of the neighborhood tensions that the
workers have to fend off," as she told Catherine Wagley of the LA Weekly.[2] If
one of the of functions of “documentary art,” is to call attention to the lives of its subjects, the Rowena
exhibit certainly achieved that more than most documentary still-lives are
able.
A construction site, as a workspace, is much more an
embodiment of what Baraka calls “hunting.” A construction worker understands
work a little differently than even the most innovative conceptual artist; the
finished project just means the end of the gig, the end of a paycheck---a sense
of accomplishment too, but, unlike in an art-gallery context, they get paid for
the hunting more than the heads. If these construction workers
didn’t actually create what they were paid to, they would likely not be re-hired!
Yet that doesn’t mean they are not also “artists” (if that term is used
honorifically).
Understanding this, Hubby wanted to celebrate their ongoing work, so she threw a party on
the construction site itself on Saturday, January 12, 2013, an ‘off day,’
(though a few workers still could be seen working), that transformed it into a
gallery space; her printed invitation emphasized the “casual party” nature of
this event for the benefit of a workers and general public[ii]---but
it was also a highly political conceptual art piece with civic value. The
workers “played,” but Hubby worked. While
Hubby displayed many of the same works she had shown at the Harris Gallery on
the actual chain-link fence, the “hardhats’”
unfinished works-in-progress presided
over the event. In this context the work had a radically different function as
well as meaning. The construction site became more than a “found object.” The
event itself—which was well documented, became as much a part of the art as the
photographs.
Since it was primarily billed as a party, balloons, candles,
food and music became as important as her own artwork. She unveiled new
art-objects, created specifically for this site-specific context—most notably, the
iconic “disco ball” hanging from a large excavation crane that loomed over the
site and the traffic cones stuffed with flowers; the cones could still serve
their primary functional purpose while also doubling as vases. She also symbolically
invited the attendees to literally eat
her photographs, as the icing of the cake she served, and photographed the
half-eaten cake (another form of excavation or digging). While the photographs
that emerged from this event are beautiful and thought provoking, they only
tell half the story. In this context, the objects, and even her role as
“artist,” were superseded by her role of party host, project coordinator, and
even political activist—her relentless hunt.
She invited me to provide the musical entertainment. Hubby
understood how a dirty 1983 Ford Econoline with a piano bolted to it (courtesy
of mechanic High Kilroy), conceptually, is analogous
to a large crane with a disco ball hanging from it. She also painted the van
with chalkboard paint so that the workers and their children could create
visual art as I performed. We set up a microphone outside the van and many of
the construction workers and their families as well as singers from the
surrounding neighborhood (Michelle Rose, Tif Sigfrids and others) joined in for
“street karaoke.” The construction workers sang along to “We Gotta Get Out Of
This Place” (poignantly joining in on the “work, work, work” chorus) and sang James Brown’s “I Got You” in hilarious
falsetto after sucking on helium balloons—to name but two highpoints. No one cared if we were creating “art” beyond
the transient event—and, musically speaking, we weren’t creating marketable
“product,” but for that night at least, the tensions between the neighborhood
and the workers were not evident, as the audience became participants; the
subjects became co-creators in the art, and the artist became curator as well
as observer; producer as well as consumer.
This party certainly lived up to Hubby’s claim “to create
art outside of conventional exhibition settings.” It became a media event—not
simply the antithesis of the Harris Gallery show. Taken together, these two
construction site exhibits, complemented each other, and suggest new
possibilities for how we create and exhibit art and music in the 21st
century. This was not lost on Elsa Longhauser, the director of The Santa Monica
Museum of Art. SMMOA found itself in the middle of another construction site
controversy, and invited Hubby to be a year-long resident construction artist
to make a virtue out of necessity.[3]This
provided Hubby the perfect context to further develop, and synthesize her findings of her first two construction site exhibits—largely
because it was both a construction
site as well as a conventional
exhibition setting.
IV. The Dig The Dig Potluck:
Santa Monica Museum of Art (July 21, 2013).
On July 21st, 2013, Hubby brought her artwork and
curatorial acumen to another controversial construction site: the Bergamont
Station, adjacent to the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Hubby’s “Dig The Dig” installation
was an outdoor event that brilliantly occupied the liminal space exactly between the construction site and the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Though
officially invited by the museum, and held on its parking lot (separated from
the site by a chain-link fence), the event had the blessing of the construction
site, and both construction workers and art cognoscenti were invited to
participate (and the input of both was essential).
“With the validation of SSMoA Monica,” as Rose Apodaca puts
it, “the celebration-cum-art installation took on a different significance from
the Rowena chapter—albeit without the institutional or art world sobriety” of
the first chapter at LaVerne University. Like the Rowena event, it was a party
to celebrate the workers whose construction work on Olympic and 26th
she had chronicled, as the Museum’s “Resident Construction Artist,” in the months
leading up to the event. Hubby expanded most of the ingredients she had
included at that event (the disco ball, the cones, the food, etc.), but,
socially, it had many more similarities with a conventional art opening for
group exhibition. While this installation was billed as a “potluck dinner,” and
included a rich away of food and beverages, what Hubby served up was an
embarrassment of riches that simply cannot be digested in one visit to the
museum cum construction site.[4]
V. Curating Is Not
Those Heads On The Wall
Of the over 300 attendees of this event, there were only a
handful of construction workers present; the vast majority were patrons of the
museum, fellow artists, or people from the community who had heard about the
event through KCRW or the other pre-show publicity. Over 30 artists, working in
a wide array of media (from artifact-based work to process-oriented work)
contributed.[5]
As a result, there were many more patently artistic focal points at this event, with a site
map posted on a blog to allow curious viewers to navigate the event.[iii]
As one of the musicians invited to provide “entertainment,” I was especially
impressed by the way Hubby spaced the layout of the event so the musicians, and
DJS, were far enough away from each other so as not to compete. Since the space
itself was more expansive than either the Harris Gallery or Rowena Site,
Hubby’s own art-work took on a larger scale, as she displayed “super-sized
photographic murals on vinyl” (in contrast to Harris’s silk): “a kaleidoscopic
vision of dredged earth, ponderous machinery, verdant palm trees and sea-blue
skies”(Apodaca).[6]
She also expanded her use of the traffic cone motif; this
time stuffing the traffic cones with sunflowers—because they last longer—and
streaking them with tasteful brushstrokes which complemented the orange, and
the presence of the cones was heightened by her use of orange table-cloths,
utensils and actual oranges in bowls. Barbara Gillespie decorated each tall
cocktail table with crocheted orange and white miniature “cozies,” The
Inflatocorps Cone Bar created a giant nylon cone, and Ivette Soler conceived a cocktail
called The Safety Cone. Thematically, the flower in the cone provided the
central iconic image, or thing, that
often started the discussions, yet the discussions went beyond it in
fascinating ways.
In her role as “curator and project coordinator,” contrast
and juxtaposition of such contexts deeply influenced Hubby’s decisions on which
art works, and artists or creators to include.[7] As
a writer, I was immediately impressed with the text art by Christopher Michlig and Eve
Fowler. Michlig’s posters were nothing but the single word “YES” or “NO,” the
primary dualistic juxtaposition,[8]
while Fowler chose one of Gertrude Stein’s Tender
Buttons as her text to hang on 4 adjacent posters. Hubby used them for the
show “purely due to the day-glo palette and poetic nature of their messages in
contrast to normal construction site signage” that suggest analogies with the
cone, but the specific text Fowler decided to use was entirely her own and suggests
other juxtapositions worth further investigation (Fowler was not present at
this event).
VI. Branching Out
Likewise, the inclusion of my “piano van” project
clearly relates thematically to the flower in the cone or the disco ball on the
crane. Hubby did not dictate my choice of material; the event, however, certainly
played a part in the nature my “performance art” at that event, as I found
myself interacting, often one-on-one, with those who visited my parking space
during the four-hour stint before my official 20 minute performance. In this
context, there was very little gregarious dancing—to either my music or the DJ
at the other end of the site-- and no interactive, if debauched, street karaoke
as at the Rowena event. I did receive requests for some songs, and appreciative
listeners, but more often I found myself in fascinating discussions with other
artists and art appreciators about the presence of the piano in the van as an
installation piece in Hubby’s exhibit.
Since the event necessitated that Hubby “branch out” from
her role as visual artist into her role as curator, it became clear that I must
branch out from my role as musician. The mere concept of a piano in a van may
be a static artifact, but improvisation,
in this case primarily in conversation, became the hunting, which allowed me to at least begin the process of interactive harmonizing with the practices of the
other artists at this event in a way music could not in this context.
Indeed, at the heart of Hubbyco’s curatorial projects, is
her putting a diverse group of artists in implicit dialogue, to explore the
ways each artist’s practice intersects with the others. These conversations
became explicit at Dig The Dig, and
as I found myself engaging in them, I experienced how the conversations became the art, or more importantly the
hunt, in which the artists could begin to discover ways in which are practices
can be further coordinated to intersect with each other.
VII. Language,
Introversion, and the Question of “Conceptual Art”
In this discussion, I’ve purposely tried to de-emphasize the
use of the term “conceptual art,” to describe Hubby’s ongoing achievement.
Certainly Hubby tries to avoid the term—for her the execution of the works (the
‘heads on the wall’) is clearly not a “perfunctory affair” (as Sol Le Witt put
it in his seminal 1967 definition in ArtForum); but as the presence of Christopher Michlig’s text-art shows, Hubby
certainly incorporates the central concerns of that historical “movement,”
creating art that questions its own nature. While many have pointed out Hubby’s
affinities with her mentor, Ed Ruscha, who elevated the status of language
itself as art (and was present at the event as a “culinary artist”), and
others who have produced art by exclusively linguistic means, I detect even
more affinities with Christine Hill’s Volksboutigue
projects. Hubbyco, like Volksboutique, could be characterized as “an exercise in labor, in public service and
conversational skill” revealing “the
dichotomy between a working atmosphere and its result---between introversion
and extroversion.” It shows “the mess behind the scenes” exhibits mistakes
and "capitalizes upon chaos” (Volksboutique
Manifesto).[9]
In Hubby’s case, the conversational skill both precedes and
extends beyond the “event itself.” Talking and writing have a similar symbiotic
relationship in the Art of Conversation. Behind the scenes, the creation
of a blog months before the event to document her role as Resident Construction
Artist became at least as important as her delivery of flowers to the
construction site. Those were the first two things Hubby did at SMMOA, and in
expanded proposals she planned both bulletin boards and billboards not simply
to publicize the project but to engender discussion on its civic and aesthetic
value. In the 21st century, such “virtual reality” becomes as
crucial as attendance at actual events, whether we like it or not.
The so-called necessity of “web presence” these days in the
culture industry (on-line applications, on-line classrooms, wiki-leak activism,
MP3 culture, etc.) has lead to an increasing placeless, and eventless, culture. Yet overzealous attempts at
reactions to this (such as the Occupy Movement, which became dominated by those
who believed that their actual physical presence at various City Halls around
the country was more “in the trenches” than those who were working on the “virtual”
trenches (through teaching, the web or art) are not the answer. Why? In part
because they don’t make room for introvert!
But Hubbyco’s vision is capacious enough to reveal the
dichotomy “between introversion and extroversion,” and thus make room for the
introvert as well site-specific extrovert, between the “doer” and the “thinker.
In this sense the launching of the blog alongside
of her beautification project at the actual site shows how the event
becomes the thing that exceeds itself. As an introvert, I feel
in many ways more present in Hubby’s
project in writing about, and beginning to analyze some significances, of these
pieces than I did when at the actual event (though it was fun-work while I was
there!).
In this sense, the event became less of a culmination or a
climax of Hubby’s construction work installations and more of what Rose Apodaca
refers to as SMMoA’s “first chapter of engagement with the revitalization of
its environs and its own metamorphosis.” As I look forward to Hubby’s proposed
books, and even a panel discussion (which may include as many of the artists
present as she can corral, her
ongoing blog and proposed book and other documentation), I considered writing a
DIG THE DIG theme song, but Samo Hunt had already done that (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXAXQEwQeaI
).so—for now I decided to write a sestina. It only focuses on one aspect of the
event, but one that should not be overlooked:
[1] Baraka was clearly not alone in the idea that museums
and galleries that de-emphasize their surroundings conferred the negative value
of a reified ‘death’ (as opposed to a positive value of ‘immortality’ onto a
living process). You can even see it in Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna,”—“inside
the museums infinity goes up on trial...” The highway blues that Dylan sees in
the Mona Lisa’s smile could also be called ‘the hunting.’ Yet The Harris show
illustrates one way a gallery can bring life back in.
[2] http://blogs.laweekly.com/arts/2013/01/silver_lake_construction_rowena.php
[3] While most agree bringing more mass transit to the
area will be great for the community, “it’s a sad irony,” as Lisa Napoli noted,
that it resulted in the destruction of the much beloved Track 16 Galleries. The
Museum (itself a beloved, and anything but staid, institution) remains, and
while temporarily inconvenienced by the “dig,” is ultimately looking forward to
the new station.
[4] The documentation has begun. Tyler Hubby filmed many
aspects of the event; Marlene Picard (and others) photographed the event
rigorously, and here’s Ruben Diaz’s time-lapse Bird’s Eye video of the event,
for starts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1BC__nbntA
[5] Gordon Bowen, Josh Callaghan, Alice Clements, Eve
Fowler, Steve Hurd, InflatoCorps, Kristin Beinner James, Adam Janes and Justin
Miller, John Knuth, Karen Lofgren, Omar Lopex, Christopher Michlig, The
Modeling Agency, Adrian Paules, Nora Jean Petersen, Pat Pickett, Nancy Popp,
Olivia Primé, Jim Skuldt, Mike Slack, Mariángeles Soto-Díaz, and Keith Walsh.
Additional creative contributions from Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin
Young), Samo Hurt, Barbara Gillespie, Dave Cull, Tyler Hubby and Zig. music
from T. Kelly Mason, Soy La Mujer, and Chris Stroffolino; and cocktail artistry
by Ivette Soler and a bespoke scent created by The Institute for Art and
Olfaction
[8] see Apodoca for a further discussion of the possible
significances, both aesthetic and political, Michlig’s posters took in the
context of Dig The Dig.
[9] http://www.eigen-art.com/files/vb_manifesto.pdf A
fascinating art-school dissertation could be written on the striking
similarities (and differences) between these two artists. I’ve had the pleasure
of working with both, and plan to discuss this in a future piece that goes
beyond the scope of this essay.
[i] Baraka’s own body of work, as artist, public
intellectual, culture worker and activist in over 60 years of public life is
itself an embodiment of this symbiosis. His work in forming collaborative institutions
of self-determination (from his work with The Black Arts Repertory Theatre in
the 60s to his recent events, co-hosted with his wife Amina Baraka, at the
Spirit House in Newark) is exemplary, and go beyond the terms of this
particular early essay of his.
[ii] Construction+Art+Outdoor
Exhibit+Party
If you are a construction worker, this invitation is
especially for you
Bettina Hubby has making photographic works of the
Rowena street construction project in
Silver Lake over the past year.
Workers and the site itself—have become the
inspiration and subject matter for this recent art project
As a way of thanking you and giving back, Hubby is
inviting you and your family to a casual outdoor party.
Saturday—January 12, 2013---5-730 pm
LOCATION: The biggest construction site on Rowena
Avenue between Fletcher and Hyperion. Look for the orange balloons and
candlelight!
Locals from the neighborhood are also welcome to join.
Hope to see you at the site!
*Food and veberages are being generously donated by
ATX, Atwater Village and Bar Brix, Silver Lake and special thanks to Raven Spa
[iii] (this was where I included the Site Map as an endnote, but BLOGGER won't let me post it!)
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