Art de Funct

Last night at Lars and Christines' dinner party I met a fellow named Michael Rakowitz whom Christine became friends with as she was writing a story for CBSonline. It was good news all around to encounter a grounded, sensitive, and courageous artist who has been well received on many levels. Today I went to visit his store/art piece which was the reinvigoration of his father's Iraqi import/export business. His work reflects an awareness of its context, which I am particularly fond of. It is my obsession that this type of work can often only exist as an obsolete gesture, however, much of his work is made to have a function. It makes me want to jump up and down.
In listening to an interview with Rikrit Tirivanja at the Walker this morning and last week seeing Vito Acconci speak, there is a general progression towards utility in many conceptual artist's work. Or maybe I am just seeing it now because it is what I am concerned with in my own work. Vito moved from poetry to performance to 'installing of himself in a room' to architecture and it makes perfect sense. And Rikrit accidentally wound up serving curry in a gallery when he was meant to fill the space of the gallery up as if it was his apartment; he ended up asking himself whether his apartment was comprised of objects with the potential to be used or with objects that facilitated doing and being.
My last big-ish installation was in Chicago as part of the School of the Art Institute's symposium called 'Negotiated Localities'. As a part of the RiderProject several times over, Michele Gambetta (curator) asked me to participate in an exhibition in Chicago that would involve a team of SAIC students, a truck, a panel discussion, and a nice hotel room with a budget for supplies. I answered: "hell yes."
I made a piece called "everybody's ideas"-- a floor for the bottom of the raw Rider truck and a small library. The piece consisted of faux faux wood floor planks: brown paper laminated, varnished, and cut into plank size panels. On the paper was printed the initial proposals from each participant in the show. I was thinking a lot about the path an idea takes as it develops into a physical thing.
I think this exploration arose from my general dissatisfaction with my installation of the Infinite Museum in Peekskill this year. (A truly ambitious idea, it was understood by many as a gallery to show the work of 'forgotten' people of Peekskill. The humor within the main idea of the piece were completely lost by everyone including the curators and those involved from the HVCCA's side. )
The planks were installed on the floor of the truck with white molding creating a frame for the floor. The planks were layed out so that there was a bit of a winding path to the back of the truck so there was a visible relationship between the new and old floors. The 'path' made by my planks reminded some of the yellow brick road of the Wizard of Oz, which was fortunate since the show was titled "Emerald City". Also on the floor was a tiny wood shelf with four books filled with the proposals of each artist in the show. I handwrote each one and traced images from some proposals. The reason I made this component was to create an access point into each piece and each artist. I wanted the ability for the piece to become a tool. However, I wrote such small text and created such an invisible reference library that it ended up as an obsolete gesture. Nobody used it. I don't know if I have the courage or the confidence in my work to make something that people use. I talked about the problem of the futility of my work in my lecture at SAIC which can be viewed here.