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TIME BASE
DEFAMATION OF CHARACTER:
WATCH THE K FOUNDATION BURN
A MILLION QUID
and the Universe:
an interview with
JOHN LATHAM
The practice of British artist John Latham (19212006) encompassed sculpture, performance,
installation, film, conceptual, and book art. In
the following interview, conducted by NP James
in 1991, Latham discusses two of the works on
view in Time Base and the Universe, Story of RIO
and The Niddrie Heart. His comments illuminate
aspects of unified theory of existence, which
combined art, science, and philosophy, thus
challenging the views of professionals in each
field.
“So are they the Dadaists of the 90s.....or merely
evidence of the enormous wealth that two
number one hit records can bring?”
— David Lister, Modern Painters, Winter 1993
NP James: The range of works exhibited comes
from the 1950s and ‘60s leading to a more recent
series such as The Story of RIO.
John Latham: Reflective Intuitive OrganismRIO, right.
NJ: RIO is a seventeen panel piece made in 1983,
and seems to summarize the book reliefs of the
‘60s. What is the message it carries?
JL: In the middle of the century, the tracks all
coincided at a point, which was a bit mysterious.
I say a dimensionless point, but that’s where
the trouble starts; the unaccountable death of
common sense.
NJ: Can you expand on that?
JL: A dimensionless point is nowhere and
everywhere - a nothing. When in physics the
John Latham, Philosophy and the Practice of, 1960. Collection Nicholas Logsdail. Courtesy John Latham
Estate and Lisson Gallery, London.
result came through that the universe collapses
to a dimensionless point, that was literally
unbelievable, even by Einstein who found it
out. In art, one presents a work to level with art
−all art. One has to have that kind of nerve and
conviction. So when Robert Rauschenberg put up
a blank canvas as a work, he was saying, all (art)
is on a par with zero action - nothing. If you look
at literature you find philosophy also conceding
defeat. The facts defy logic all round, don’t they?
Only James Joyce, artist, was able to win out by
shifting language, grammar and syntax into art
syntax. The book in itself is a perfect example
of event structure. Translate nothing into event
structure and you get a non-extended state,
which is where I think we find the blank canvas
work, that Rauschenberg couldn’t follow up.
Minimalism homed in and got lost where you had
to get minimal in time. John Cage got near, but
he never rationalizes about his work, does he?
When I came to see books as form in painting,
after point marks, that had to be thought about
and accounted for what they did. There has
been no future in object-based minimalism,
unless and until you think of a mark as there,
and least with respect to time. The not there has
no clock time, so when you see an object that
(continued on page 3)
artists on artists
February 1992: The KLF announce their departure
from music at the Brit Awards. They bring a
dead sheep to the ceremony, intending to chop
it up and throw chunks into the audience during
their performance. The plan is abandoned
after discussions with BBC lawyers. Instead,
Drummond ends the performance by taking out
a large automatic weapon and shooting blanks
towards a shocked and captive crowd. An offstage voice announces, “The KLF have now left
the music industry.” A bike messenger is sent to
pick up the KLF’s award for Best British Group
later that evening.
Kalup Linzy talks about Charles Atlas & Leigh Bowery
Filmmaker Charles Atlas is a pioneer of
media-dance performances created directly
for the camera. In TEACH (Leigh) (1992-99),
Atlas works with Leigh Bowery, the celebrated
Australian-born, London-based performer, club
owner, and personality. Wearing a costume that
culminates in a pair of exaggerated prosthetic lips
safety-pinned to his cheeks, Bowery lip-syncs to
Aretha Franklin’s Take a Look. Bowery performs
the lip-sync twice, first with an over-sized pair of
red rubber lips that open up to reveal Bowery’s
teeth behind them, second with a closed, pouty
pair that obstructs his own mouth entirely,
A P.S.1 Special Projects artist this
past summer, Kalup Linzy’s work involves
performances for video that often take the form
of short mini-soap operas or lip-syncs, such as
his 2006 rendition of the Hunter and Jenkins song
Lollypop with collaborator Shaun Leonardo. Linzy
also co-organized Kalup Linzy’s Birthday Party,
a suite of live performances that took place in the
P.S.1 Courtyard this past July. In reaction to Atlas
and Bowery’s collaboration, Linzy spoke about the
dynamics of lip-syncing, drag culture, and the fine
line between the comedic and the tragic.
What first interests me about TEACH is
simply the song Atlas and Bowery choose to work
with, Aretha Franklin’s Take a Look. “Dear lord
what’s happening to your precious dream.” It’s
a very emotional piece, and I actually have my
own personal history with the song. In high
school I used the Natalie Cole version as the
score to one of my first 15-minute soap operas.
It was a project for science class, a video about
saving the environment. My cousin was cradling
her newborn for the camera, making this “Savethe-Children” plea with Cole singing in the
background. “Every boy and every girl, denying
themselves a real chance to build a better
world.” I got an A for the class.
The first time I watched TEACH was
very moving, mostly through a mixture of my
own memories of the song and the power of
Bowery’s performance, which comes off as so
heartbroken, sad, lonely. That personal element
leads me to wonder where emotionally Bowery
is locating his entry point into the song. As a
performer, you come up with a few images and
memories that drive you. Lip-sync in particular
is a very physical way of feeling emotions; for
most lip-syncs in drag, it’s about embodying a
feminine energy—whether it be Aretha Franklin,
Natalie Cole, or another diva.
An issue in drag performance is the lack
of distinction between persona and personality
−in other words, between the character a
performer assumes and their off-stage identity.
With Bowery, those prosthetic lips are key. First,
they really add a whole new level to drag, where
typically there’s a pronounced over-emphasis
and attention on doing up the lips. I’ve never
FALL 2006
seen anything so over-the-top (then again I’m
from Florida, so who knows). Second, the sheer
impossibility of those lips establishes that this
is a without-a-doubt screen persona. It becomes
a three part performance—Aretha’s voice,
Bowery’s body, and the surreal image that Atlas
captures on camera.
For another mini-soap-opera I made in
high school, I staged a scene where my cousin
got hit by a car the day of her wedding. It wasn’t
supposed to be funny but people were rolling.
That happened to me all the time. Whenever I
related stories people would laugh—even when
I had to report serious bad news. I’ve learned to
embrace this and play up the humorous element
in my work, but those early frustrations were a
lesson in how comedy and tragedy slip so easily
into one another. There’s a flip between drama
and comedy in Bowery’s two takes. The first
go-round is unimaginably sad. The second time
he creates something far more comedic and
campy.
That element of humor in the second take
might have something to do with Bowery’s
limited means of expression. His lips are covered
entirely, so his eyes and brow do all the work.
For the camera, acting is usually of process of
paring down. Right at the beginning of the video
Bowery says he wants to avoid using his hands.
He gets the difference between theater, where
you have to throw your arms up in the air to
communicate anything, and film, when a twitch
of the eyebrow can carry the scene.
On a related note, I really like the spareness
in the piece: the close-up on the face alone,
the simple blue backdrop, nothing else. When
I was planning my piece Lollipop, I opted for
a similar aesthetic—a blank wall and a pair
of hats. I could have been much more ornate
with the costume details and the setting, but I
like leaving things open. Furnishing only a bare
minimum of gestures lets the audience bring
their own interpretation to the piece. When
all the questions aren’t answered, there’s a lot
more self-researching involved in reacting to the
piece. Ultimately it becomes more personal.
Atlas’s one addition on the film surface
is a single black line that runs down the screen
and creates different effects—it splits, reverses,
doubles. In other words, it mirrors, a nice
connection between the piece and the Aretha
song. “Take a look in the mirror, look at yourself.
But don’t you look too close.” I wonder what it
means to be taking a look in the mirror when
you’re as done up as Bowery is, so beautiful and
strange. Lord, what’s happening to this human
race? That mirroring effect also accentuates
the profound feeling of loneliness in the piece,
because when you’re looking in the mirror,
probably you’re alone—unless, of course, you’re
doing something freaky.
Curator Neville Wakefield describes
Defamation of Character as being rooted in the
“post-punk era” —a label derived not from art
history but from popular music, where the term
identifies bands, such as Joy Division and Gang
of Four, that assumed the iconoclastic impulse
of punk but drew upon styles ranging past its
rapid-fire three-chord progressions, such as
disco, dub, and reggae. Likewise, the artists
of Defamation of Character draw on a plurality
of styles and moments within art history—
Minimalism, Pop, the tactical outrages of Dada
and the Situationists —and find common ground
in their shared attitude of calculated defiance
and creative destruction.
Perhaps it’s appropriate, then, that one
featured pair of art-provocateurs should be
equally notorious in both art and music. The KFL,
the duo of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty,
released #1 U.K. pop hits such as 3 A.M. Eternal,
What Time Is Love, and Justified and Ancient
before they withdrew from music and embarked
on a series of elaborate (and costly) media
pranks under the aegis of the K Foundation.
Their film Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million
Quid (1994) will be premiered in the U.S at the
opening of the exhibition. The following is a brief
incident-by-incident account of their exploits
from 1992 to their disbandment in 1995 on the
cliffs of Cape Wrath in Scotland.
July 1993: The K Foundation announce the
recording of a new single, K Cera Cera, by taking
out an extensive series of advertisements in
major U.K. publications, though nothing is for
purchase. The single is “available nowhere… no
formats . . . not planned for release until world
peace established.”
August 1993: The K Foundation publish a new
ad reading “Abandon all art now. Major rethink
in progress. Await further announcements.”
Two weeks later, a follow-up advertisement is
released: “It has come to our attention that you
did not abandon all art now. Further direct action
is thus necessary. The K Foundation announce
the ‘mutha of all awards,’ the 1994 K Foundation
award for the worst artist of the year.”
November 1993: The K Foundation release K
Cera Cera as a limited edition single, available in
Israel and Palestine only.
November 1993:The K Foundation purchase three
advertisement spots during the live coverage of
the Turner Prize award ceremony in London. They
awarded the £40,000 “Anti-Turner Prize” for the
“worst artist in Britain,” to Rachel Whiteread,
who had won that year’s Turner Prize. Whiteread
refuses to accept the prize money until the K
Foundation vows to burn it. She distributes the
full sum to artists in financial need and charity.
August 1994: In the single biggest cash
withdrawal in British history, the K Foundation
take out £1,000,000 and bring it to a boathouse
on the Scottish island of Jura. There they burn
the entirety of the money over the course of an
hour. The proceedings are filmed by their friend
Gimpo. “Afterwards, Jimmy and Bill looked
so harrowed and haunted,” a long-time friend
recounts. “And to be honest, they’ve never really
been the same since.”1
August 1995: The K Foundation return to Jura
exactly a year later to screen the premiere of
Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid, the
title of Gimpo’s original recording. The film is
subsequently presented around the U.K., with
Q&A sessions following each screening. A book
documenting the events titled K Foundation
Burn a Million Quid is also published.
November 1995: The million quid screening tour
is abandoned half-way through. A moratorium on
all K Foundation activities is announced through
an advertisement in the little-read “Workshop For
A Non-Linear Architecture” bulletin. Drummond
and Cauty agree in a written contract not to
speak of the Million Quid project for twentythree years (until 2018). A rented car containing
the contract, film, and projection equipment is
pushed over the cliffs of Cape Wrath in the north
of Scotland.
“Burning Question,” The Observer, February 13,
2000.
Research by Beatrice Johnson.
1
Charles Atlas. TEACH (Leigh), 1992-99. Video stills.
Courtesy the artist.
My Alter Ego is a Turtle An Interview with Burt Barr
By Alanna Heiss
As was revealed in the last issue of the
P.S.1 Newspaper, I am admittedly overly fond of
figurative imagery involving animals, which begins
to explain why I was so struck by the video Fall
by artist Burt Barr. The piece shows two turtles
locked, quite literally, in carnal embrace and stuck
on an incline. The male’s shell is tilted backwards,
arms flailing in excruciating slow motion.
For me that piece has proven to be an entry
point into a marvelous body of work by Burt Barr.
Direct yet challenging, his work playfully addresses
the conventions and constraints of video, executed
with panache. A veteran of the downtown scene
and the longtime partner of the choreographer
Trisha Brown, he has also turned his video work
into an offbeat chronicle of the New York arts
community. Recently, I sat down with Barr to
discuss his progress as an artist, Burt Lancaster,
and the habits of house-painters.
AH: Let’s start at the beginning. How did you first
get involved with video?
Burt Barr: I started working at about fifty. Up until
that point, I looked, then I acted. I made my first
video in 1984. Trisha had a video camera that she
used for recording rehearsals. I picked it up one
day and that was that.
AH: Why have so many of your videos involved
other artists?
Burt Barr, Fall, 2003. Video stills. Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Company.
BB:They were people I knew from the neighborhood.
Over time I realized that I was documenting a
period of a time and a people in New York City,
the Lower Manhattan arts community: Carroll
Dunham, Elizabeth Murray, Stephen Mueller,
Dorothy Lichtenstein, Trisha, Nessia Pope, Cecily
Brown, Billy Sullivan. Downtown performers as
well.
AH: I can’t help noticing that most of the people
you’ve mentioned are very good looking. Looks are
important to you then?
BB: Well, the pieces were very stylized. They were
black and white, and they had cinematic references.
For instance, the piece with Billy and Cecily was a
(continued on page 3)
MUSIC IS A
BETTER NOISE
BY NICK STILLMAN
I can distinctly remember the first time I heard
the music of all three artists I’ve included in the
section of Music is a Better Noise I’ve organized.
From left to right: Don Van Vliet, Doc at the Radar Station, 1980; Rodney Graham, Getting it Together in the Country: Some works with Sound Waves, Some Works with Light Waves and Some Other Experimental Works, 2000; Kai
Althoff, Welcome Back to the Workshop, n.d. All collection of Bob Nickas.
Music is a Better Noise: Recommended Listening
Playlist by Bob Nickas and Nick Stillman
Kai Althoff [Workshop]:
People take action to receive certain results,
like the Workshop now deliberately giving in to
a momentary urge to make music, 1990
Talent, Meiguiweisheng Xiang, & previously
unreleased Mundwinkelplage, 2000
Es liebt Dich und Deine Körperlichkeit ein
Ausgeflippter, 2001
Welcome Back to the Workshop, n.d.
Devendra Banhart:
Oh Me Oh My..., 2002
The Black Babies [EP], 2003
Rejoicing in the Hands, 2004
Niño Rojo, 2004
Cripple Crow, 2005
Bjorn Copeland [Black Dice]:
Black Dice, 2000
Cold Hands, 2001
Beaches & Canyons, 2003
Miles of Smiles, 2004
Creature Comforts, 2004
Smiling Off, 2005
Broken Ear Record, 2005
Ball / Peace in the Valley, 2006, 7-inch single
Barbara Ess:
The Static, My Relationship, 7-inch, 1979
Y Pants, Y Pants, 1980
Radio Guitar (Barbara Ess and Peggy Ahwesh),
Radio Guitar, 2001
Ultra Vulva, Twist In Bed, 7-inch EP
Eye [Boredoms]:
Anal By Anal EP, 1986
Osorezan no Stooges Kyo, 1988
Soul Discharge ‘99, 1989
Pop Tatari, 1993
Onanie Bomb Meets the Sex Pistols, 1994
2001 Boredoms, 1996
Super Are, 1998
Vision Creation Newsun, 2001
Seadrum/House of Sun, 2005
Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom:
El Monte, 2005, 12-inch
The Days of Mars, 2005
Relevee, double 12-inch
Kim Gordon & Thurston Moore [Sonic
Youth]:
Sonic Youth, 1982
Bad Moon Rising, 1985
Daydream Nation, 1988
Goo, 1990
Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, 1994
Murray Street, 2002
Sonic Nurse, 2004
Koncertas Stan Brakhage Prisiminimui, 2005
Rather Ripped, 2006
Rammellzee:
Rammellzee vs. K-Rob, Beat Bop, 12-inch, 1983
Rammellzee, Bi-Conicals of the Rammellzee,
2004
Death Comet Crew, This is Riphop, 2004
Rodney Graham:
UJ3RK5 – EP, 1980
The Bed-Bug, Love Buzz, and Other Short Songs
in the Popular Idiom, CD, 2000
Getting it Together in the Country: Some Works
with Sound Waves, Some Works with Light Waves
and Some Other Experimental Works, 10-inch
EP, 2000
P.S.1 Audio Companions
WPS1.org Art Radio has partnered with Time Out New York
to provide P.S.1 visitors with exclusive audio tracks to accompany selected exhibits. These Audio Companions are available
as podcasts under the Listen Up! link in the Arts section at
www.timeout.com/newyork. Download these files to your computer and import them into your MP3 player before visiting the
museum.
These audio companions have been selected by the artists to
creatively refract and/or amplify the viewer’s experience of the exhibit. Only in
some cases do they actually describe the work. These tracks are not intended to
replace the P.S.1 guided tours.
John Latham: Time Base and the Universe
Excerpts from an interview between Alanna Heiss and John Latham recorded at
the 2005 Venice Biennale.
What is Happy, Baby?, CD, 2000
Rock is Hard, double LP, 2003
Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30, 7-inch single, 2006
Tim Kerr:
Big Boys, Where’s My Towel/Industry Standard,
1981
Poison 13,LP, 1984
Bad Mutha Goose and the Brothers Grimm,
Tower of Babel, 1987
The Monkeywrench, Clean as a Broke-Dick Dog,
1992
Jack O’Fire, Six Super Shock Soul Songs, 1993
Lord High Fixers, Talking to Tomorrow, 1995
King Sound Quartet, The Get-Down Imperative,
1997
The Now Time Delegation, Watch For Today,
2001
Total Sound Group Direct Action Committee,
The Party Platform … Our Schedule is Change!,
2002
Christian Marclay:
Record Without a Cover, 1985
Record Without Grooves, 1987
More Encores, 1989
Footsteps, 1990
Esquizodelia, 1995
Event, 1998
Christian Marclay/Thurston Moore/Lee
Ranaldo, Fuck Shit Up, 2000
William Hooker, Ulrich Krieger, Alan Licht,
Christian Marclay, DJ Olive, Lee Ranaldo, Text
of Light, 2004
Guitar Drag, 2006
Chuck Nanney:
DelayedLividity, 2004
Don Van Vliet [Captain Beefheart and The
Magic Band]:
Jutta Koether:
The Halal File, 1990
Diadal (Rita Ackermann and Jutta Koether),
1998
Jess Holzworth & Jutta Koether, The Outer
Sound Project, CD, 2001
Electrophilia (Steven Parrino and Jutta
Koether), Black Noise Practitioner, 2004
Reena Spaulings, 3-CD set, 2005
Safe as Milk, 1967
Strictly Personal, 1968
Trout Mask Replica, 1969
Lick My Decals Off, Baby, 1970
Mirror Man, 1971
The Spotlight Kid, 1972
Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller), 1978
Doc at the Radar Station. 1980
Ice Cream for Crow, 1982
Mark Leckey:
DonAteller, Radiohead, 2001
DonAteller, US EP, 2001
DonAteller, Dominator, 7-inch single, 2003
DonAteller, Never Ever, 7-inch single, 2003
Jack Too Jack, EP, 2006
Alan Vega:
Suicide, Suicide, 1977
Suicide. The Second Album + The First Rehearsal
Tapes, 1999
Alan Vega. Deuce Avenue, 1990
Alan Vega, Dujang Prang, 1996
Suicide, American Supreme, 2002
AMY GRANAT: There are many aspects of cinema zero that I really like, and one is its ambiguous
nature, where “Amy Granat” ends and “cinema zero” begins.
It’s really hard to say, but cinema zero(s) are usually one-night events...events where I handpick
films, live performance, musicians and combine them all into a type of live mix tape... I don’t
consider myself a curator when I put these nights together...my choices are much more intuitive
and personal than anything else.
Katrín Sigurdardóttir: High Plane V
A montage of ambient and environmental audio captured by the artist.
AG: I think that in all of my work, I have a tendency to either reduce or to push things to the limit and
yeah... sometimes when you’re reducing things, they get ripped apart. I don’t know if I ever thought
about why before...hmmm...good question.
Amy Granat
Atmospheric electronic audio distilled from her installations.
PS1: You have programmed events around zig-zags, circles,
the color blue. Why the predilection for formal unities?
What’s been the unlikeliest juxtaposition to come out of it?
WPS1.org Art Radio is available as an MP3 stream and is compatible with iTunes,
Windows Media Player, Real Player, and others. There is also a four-channel podcast feature, a WPS1 blog, and extensive notes and links for all the content.
PAGE 2
Alan Vega: I think everyone remembers the
first time they heard Suicide, so I’ll tell a better
anecdote: the most appropriate time I ever
listened to Suicide. It was Thanksgiving Day and
I was stranded in the Midwest with a friend of
mine, far from home. We had a car and impulsively
split for Chicago at around 8pm. We made it most
of the way there but ended up sleeping in the car
in a big parking lot in a town called Michigan
City. When I woke up I couldn’t feel my feet but
could see my breath. We had to drive at about
half the speed limit that morning the fog was so
dense, and the first town we drove through was
Gary, Indiana. Medieval power lines everywhere,
burnt-out cop cars rotting in ditches, not a
single person in sight. Frankie Teardrop was our
soundtrack to Gary. Alan Vega screaming bloody
murder about 20 year-old Frankie, gettin’ evicted,
no money, no food, killing his wife and kid. It was
America in my face, and I’m still not over it.
PS1: In addition to your installation work, you are a founding member of Cinema Zero, which has
organized evenings of projection and performance at the Swiss Institute, Sculpture Center, and
The Kitchen. What’s the goal of this collaboration? What does it do that “Amy Granat, artist”
doesn’t, or can’t?
PS1: Film is already a collaborative medium—performance, cinematography, and music all get
crammed into the film reel. Cinema Zero tends to turn that process inside-out by combining
screenings with live performance. What interests you about this reversal?
About WPS1.org Art Radio
WPS1.org Art Radio is the Internet radio station of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
providing a 24-hour stream and on-demand archive of cultural programming. The
station operates out of the historic Clocktower Building in lower Manhattan where
a network of interlinked studios stream live and pre-recorded talk, performances,
and historic recordings to a world-wide audience.
Rammellzee: When I was young I had a friend
with a cool older brother and we used to steal
his mix tapes and tape them ourselves. The one
I remember best was Butthole Surfers-heavy on
the A-side and started the B-side off with this
otherworldly, spacey rap jam called Beat Bop
by K-Rob and Rammellzee. I had never heard
anything like it, especially the nasally guy who
rapped, “Get freaky, yeah bay-bee! Get freaky,
yeah yeah bay-bee!” sounding like he was trapped
at the other end of an abandoned subway tunnel.
That’s Ramm, and I had no idea I was hearing a
true early hip-hop classic produced by some guy
Basquiat. Judging from his incredible 2004 album
Bi-Conicals of the Rammellzee, the evolution is
only marginally underway.
From: Amy Granat
Sent: Thursday, October 5, 2006 10:43 AM
To: P.S.1
Subject: Cinema Zero
Sam Samore : The Suicidist
Processed sound clips from film soundtracks.
Philip Maysles
A short statement written and compiled by the artist.
Barbara Ess: The first DJ slot I got at my college
radio station was from 4-6 am on a Monday
night. It was the middle of winter in Ohio and
there was no heat in there. My school had a
great, if somewhat ravaged, record library and
previous DJs had written stuff like, “STEAL
THIS AND WE’LL KILL YR GRANDMUTHER!!!”
on the sleeves of good records in threatening
Sharpie scrawl. One of those nights I tempted
fate and slipped one into my bag to bring home
and copy: The Static’s My Relationship 7. I had
been getting into early Glenn Branca (good
winter music) and knew The Static was his pre“guitar army” stuff. I dug Branca’s Elvis-croon,
but really dug that dissonant, whirling, droning
guitar sound. Research uncovered that Barbara
Ess was playing one of those guitars. I must have
listened to My Relationship 100 times that winter
and Ess’ Y Pants 7 on 99 Records was one of the
next ones I surreptitiously copped.
AG: I think this is another example of my tendency to reduce. I
don’t know why, but in action movies I have a tendency to fall
asleep (Gladiator I was out within the first ten minutes). It’s
just too much... I shut off. A screen where nothing happens
though... it’s got my full attention. I like things really simple
with endless possibilities...and so with zig-zag (for example),
you wouldn’t believe how complex it became. it all started with
bourroughs and johnny yen and the death trauma...then went
to dovzhenko...pudovkin......on and on.
An unlikely juxtaposition: I put Patsy Cline between some
pretty heavy structuralist films in Switzerland...”lovely turtle
dovey doodley-pochin”...thank you patsy. lovely indeed.
Above: Cinema Zero flyer, 2006. Below: Amy Granat
at Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels (1973 – 1976). Photo:
Drew Heitzler.
BASE
E.V. DAY SWEET HEAT TIME
and the Universe:
Sweet Heat, your project in the P.S.1 Boiler
Room is your first sound-piece. Why the
new medium? Was the opportunity to work
with the Boiler Room the impetus?
After 9/11, I had an idea to make a piece where
you are suffused with the sound of cat purring
titled Quadraphonic Purr Chamber. Multiple
purring speakers could insulate you in a
pleasant way until you became suffocated or
satiated by it. I never figured out the right space
for it and eventually my shell
shock faded and I began to
work 3-D again. When P.S.1
Curatorial Advisor Nick
Stillman invited me to do a
project in the Boiler Room
I remembered the idea and
the context seemed good
for sound. The original idea
developed into something
more
humorous
than
soothing.
The Boiler Room is a site that reminds me
of playing “Truth or Dare” in grade school. It
feels like the kind of place where you know you
are trespassing and hope not to get caught.
Clandestine. You do things there that you don’t
want others to know about or see. Not occupied
but active with mechanical equipment, the
cockpit of the building. I sense a lurking vibe in
the Boiler Room. Stray cats prowling for rats,
drinking water from leaky pipes and defending
their turf. I was inspired by the ambience and
function of the otherwise defunct space….A
sneaky space.
How do you see this piece extending
out of your previous work—the G-Force
flight patterns, the exploding couture, the
tongue-clams?
It seems straight forward to me in terms of ideas
and sensibility, the difference is the medium.
I like to think of what I do as deconstructionpositive, and a completed piece is usually
realized through some transformation of a
sexual or feminized trope into a statement of
power and independence. Here I am using the
feminine feline characteristics of purring (of
course boy cats purr too, but cats are feminized
and referred to as a “she”). In Sweet Heat, the
inviting sound of purring is transformed by
speeding up the sound levels into an automotive
vehicle’s roar. The Boiler Room is filled with
the sound of seductive purring from multiple
speakers. By exploring the room, visitors trip
sensors and the purr revs up, peels out, and
eventually downshifts back into a lulling purr.The
formula of the G-Force installations functions
similarly: the thong panty
is transformed from the
lure that draws a line
to enhance the body’s
sexual goods to a jet
fighter that is suspended
in flight, independent
of its intended design.
Also, I’m playing with the
idea of the velocity of gforces in relation to the
G-spot. With Sweet Heat,
I wanted to have fun with
the analogy/euphemism of “purrs like a kitten.”
Rumor has it that your own cat Pudge Pie
served as inspiration for the piece.
My cat purrs, but her “persona” does not
exemplify the dynamic I am going for here. The
sound of a cat purr connotes for me sublime
comfort. The piece isn’t so much about cats but
rather feminine stereotypes and having fun with
the consequences.
How did your sound consultant Stephan
Moore become involved with piece?
Carrie Fucile, an artist who was working for me
this summer, was also interning at Issue Project
Room, where Stephen Moore had just designed
and installed a 16 hemispherical speaker system
for the cylindrical exhibition space. When I told
her about my idea for Sweet Heat and that I had
no previous experience working with sound
as a medium she introduced us. Luckily for
me, Stephan is a cat guy and a brilliant sound
master!
Photo: PudgePie, Edmund Lee, 2006.
an interview with
JOHN LATHAM
(continued from page 1)
persists, you are unaware of it being dynamically
informed. Physics has no equivalents for this in
terms of mass/energy, nor has language. But it
is where we can make the shift from the illusion
there is in object language.
NJ: So you’re accounting for things more in
terms of energy and impulse?
JL: Energy as “informing component”, where it
comes to the human end; impulse deriving from
the nothing side of the event.
NJ: Study for the Niddrie Heart is a recent
sculpture made in Berlin, that has large glass
panels set like open book covers, with one little
book inset through the panel, floating upwards.
JL: In the last few years I’ve used glass to
represent nothing, and it is an appropriate
material to do this. It’s very hard, you can see
through it, so it’s not an object. In photographs
it’s difficult to puzzle that there’s anything there
at all. But when you place a book through it,
that is by contrast, very much like the extended
world, like a person with a whole history that
goes down a line. The Niddrie Heart in Berlin is
called that because of a previous project I was
doing in Scotland The Niddrie Woman on a site
in West Lothian.
NJ: Are we talking here about a found monument
in the landscape?
JL: Yes, I found these fragments in 1975 on a
Scottish Office feasibility study, and called it
The Niddrie Woman. I had been asked to look
at an area of derelict land that was mapped out.
I went to it and, blow me, if I wasn’t actually
Sam Samore, The Suicidist (continued) (#19), 2003. Courtesy Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan.
ARTIST SAM SAMORE FOUND DEAD!
looking at my work an accreted pile of stuff, selfformed, and made with a regularity of method
used to get the stuff there–dragging carts or
truck loads of burnt shale pieces, and dumping
them at the end of the railhead. The process had
been going on a hundred years and what they’d
arrived at was these vast tips. The torso is a
kilometer long and still preserves the anatomy,
complete with vagina and a nice little embryo,
but very sculpturally organic. The Niddrie Heart
was to have had a book relief set on it, built to a
height of some twenty five meters on a platform
one hundred meters high, with a comparable
beacon to go up on the torso. The torso and
the heart belonged to an undistended but
figurative sculpture of a woman, representing
the dismemberment of a human being. Scottish
legend has a giant in it and here I had found
a female giant, with a wonderful bilaterally
symmetrical torso, and a huge separate heart
splashed out on the landscape, and even a
little embryo looking pinned down, by factory
works, chimneys, etc. I’ve visited the site many
times since, taken many photos and made the
equivalent for self-observation of this animal,
this organic event, in the use of two book forms.
The interlocking books seemed to contribute
to what was simply organic shape–its think,
its reflective and intuitive extension. So it was
different from the animal world, to the extent
that it had a reflective, intuitive faculty up there
somehow. That to me is still a proper project to
complete.
This interview appears courtesy of Cv/Visual Arts
Research Archive, London. For more information,
please visit www.tracksdirectory.ision.co.uk.
DEFAMATION
OF CHARACTER:
THE K FOUNDATION
August 1993: The K
Foundation publish a new
ad reading “ABANDON
ALL ART NOW. Major
rethink in progress. Await
further announcements.”
Two weeks later, a followup advertisement is
released: “It has come
to our attention that you
did not abandon all art
now. Further direct action
is thus necessary. The K
Foundation announce the
‘mutha of all awards,’ the
1994 K Foundation award
for the worst artist of the
year.”
The K Foundation, 1993. Courtesy
Jimmy Cauty.
My Alter Ego is a Turtle
An Interview with Burt Barr
(continued from page 1)
bastardization of From Here to Eternity. Every time
they embraced the waves would smash, and the
rough surf would break up their embrace, so they
could never fully consummate anything. In my piece
The Pool, Klaus Kertess swam back and forth in a
pool while I drained the water out. He swims until
there’s no water left and he’s crawling like a crab,
which references the movie The Swimmer. Both of
those are Burt Lancaster films. Some connection
there.
AH: There also seems to be a connection between
you and Warhol. BB: My pacing is similar to Warhol’s. Very
methodical. Warhol of course did all these extended
shots of people sleeping or the Empire State
Building, much like the Watching the Paint Dry
pieces I’m showing here. I came out of a painting
background, which is why I did those pieces. Later
I read a biography of Willem de Kooning. He was a
house painter much of his adult life, and after he
finished painting a room he liked to sit and watch
the paint dry.
AH: My all time favorite is the turtle piece. It’s
really a fabulous piece—and extremely sad.
BB: A dance of death.
AH: Not even a romantic death. Pathetic death.
BB: Yes, the male turtle can’t extricate himself. The
arm movement is just fantastic. That’s why I called
it Autumn or Fall—it’s the end. My first turtle piece
showed at the Whitney Biennial in 1997. It was the
epitome of slow motion: 45 seconds of footage
slowed down to 10 minutes. I thought, “If you want
slow motion, I’ll give you slow motion.” So I filmed
a turtle and called it Slo-Mo.
AH: Clearly turtles are to you what Weimaraners
are to William Wegman. They belong to you.
BB: The curator Susan Rosenberg says my alter
ego is that of a turtle—sure and slow-moving but
getting there. Lately I’ve been on the biggest run
of my life. I think every artist has a certain run. I
started not that long ago and am really committed
to making one work after another.
AH: Yes, you’re a very important artist and one
that’s important to the community. And as Miss
Jean Brodie once said, I think you’re in your prime. Philip Maysles, El Negro Motherwell, Frenchy’s, Project Row Houses Round 23, Houston TX, 2006.
BLACK IN WHITE PHILIP MAYSLES
Artist Philip Maysles’ essay “Black In
White” explores “how [Abstract Expressionist
painter] Robert Motherwell’s deployment of visual
form is determined by a latent racial sensibility,
instilled through white cultural memory and lived
experience.” The following excerpt discusses the
many names Motherwell considered for a painting
eventually titled In Black and White No.2. A full
version of essay is available as a broadsheet
outside the Projects room at P.S.1.
Motherwell’s symbolic use of color and his
(uneasy) alliance of visually rendered ideas and
linguistic terms animate a motif Toni Morrison
finds in Euro-American letters that she calls
an “Africanist presence.” The character
Queequeg in Moby Dick and Poe’s Nu-Nu are
prime examples of fictional black characters
spawned by a “complex notion of blackness in
the Euro-American imaginary that has fueled
contemporary notions of racial difference.”1 It
is important to distinguish “Africanist” from
African or African American, for the presence
represented in American literature is not that
of a full human subject but rather a specter of
darkness fabricated for purposes of white selfreflection. That this same impulse is generated
in American visual art can be most clearly
understood through a story H. H. Arnason relates
about a painting Motherwell made in 1976: “At
first, the artist entitled this work Kilimanjaro
because he regarded this painting as a symbol of
Africa, especially because of its monumentality,
but after long reflection, he concluded that, ‘the
painting must not be read as a mountainscape,
or as a landscape at all, but as an event, an event
pervaded by an unnamable presence.’”2
This forces one to pause: is the “event”
Motherwell struggles to name restricted to
the encounter between the painter and his
canvas as theorized by Harold Rosenberg, or
does something far more explosive haunt his
unconscious?3 Motherwell’s effort to name
this third presence is particularly revealing,
as Arnason continues:“Motherwell tried and
discarded many titles for this work: Haiti,
Haitian Black, African Rhythm, Rhythmic Africa,
The Heart of Darkness, and Black Rhythm.”4
Motherwell’s allusion to Haiti (the birthplace
of Black revolution in the West) indicates that
the effort to name this “unnamable presence”
involves the conflation of a mountain in Africa
with a Black presence located in the heart of
the West. Motherwell’s Africa paintings and
prints (Kilimanjaro, Africa Suite, Africa No. 1 and
2, and Black and White No. 2), created between
1965 and 1976, coincide with the Black Power
movement and Afro-centrism in America and
Decolonization movements in Africa. As the
real presence of a political black subjectivity
intensified in the public sphere, the racist black
shadow in the Euro-American imagination
became problematic—both improper and
improperly threatening. Implicit in Motherwell’s
search for a name for this painting is a regard
for an imagined Africa that raises questions of
(his own) freedom in relation to the backbeat of
popular protest and uprising he both fears and
admires. However, the discarded title referring
to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness connotes
a colonialist voyage into the “dark continent”
envisioned through and ultimately concerned
with the cognitive prism of Western thought. So
while independence struggles ousted colonial
rule, Motherwell recoups “black Africa” as raw
material for his creative fantasy in the realm of
the symbolic.
Also note that Black, Haiti, Africa,
and Rhythm are interchangeable terms.
The connection Motherwell draws between
blackness and innate rhythm is a racial fantasy
that frequently pervades white responses
to “Black” music, sexuality and physicality.5
Alongside Threatening Presence, Primordial
Sketch 1-14, Bleeding Black No. 3, Black Figure,
Kilimanjaro, and Africa, Motherwell’s titles
associate irreducible, organic black forms
with fear, violence, the primitive body, nature,
sensual rhythm, and Africa. However, that
abstract paintings titled Africa might actually
express ideas roughly pertaining to Africa was
lost on Motherwell’s contemporary partisan
critics. Motherwell continued to make AbstractExpressionist work at a time when racial (and
gender) politics were unavoidable in the social
sphere. But the notion that Motherwell’s semiconscious, racialist instincts might appear in
symbolic abstraction remained unthinkable
as his work of the 60s and 70s continued to
be situated within a dated high-modernist
discourse. In a notable exception, Emily Genauer
teases out the relationship between title and
content in a negative review of his 1965 exhibition
at MoMA: “An enormous Africa (18 feet long)
reduces whatever emotional associations or
significance that continent has for the artist to
a looping, vaguely sexual pendulous curve in
black on white. It’s too much—and far too little.”6
Genauer’s reading of eroticism implies but never
admits Franz Fanon’s insight that in the White’s
reading of the Black “the Negro is fixated at
the genital; or at any rate he has been fixated
there.”7 Motherwell’s Elegy Series (1948-1991) is
comparable to an extended performance where
he obsessively crafts symbols of male sexuality
in black paint.
Returning to Arnason’s account of the
painting initially titled Kilimanjaro, “[Motherwell]
finally named it In Black and White No. 2 because
it seemed in some way to be related to another
large painting, In Black and White. ‘But I may
change my mind,’ he remarked. ‘The unconscious
is not easy to title.’”8 Motherwell boldly grasped
for awareness of a corpus of “unconscious”
meaning (somehow related to an interior black
image of Africa), which he ultimately jettisoned,
returning to the safety of a dualistic, re-used
title. I ask then, what to make of this secreted
narrative? Is the painting simply a formal matter
“In Black and White” because it has been titled
as such?
Morrison (1992), p. 11.
Arnason (1977), p. 91.
3
Harold Rosenberg, “American Action Painters”,
The Tradition of the New. New York: Horizon
Press (1959), p. 25.
4
H. H. Arnason (1977), p. 91.
5
See Ronald Radono, “Hot Fantasies: American
Modernism and the Idea of Black Rhythm”,
Music and The Racial Imagination, Chicago:
Chicago UP (2000), p. 462 (Ronald Radano ed.)
6
Emily Genauer, “Motherwell Show: ‘Shut up
and Paint”, New York Herald Tribune, October 1,
1965.
7
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks. New
York: Grove Press (1967), p. 165.
8
H. H. Arnason (1977), p. 91.
1
2
PAGE 3
Installation of High Plane V in progress. Photos: Jenny Louise Hamblett, Beatrice Johnson and Caitlin Kerker-Mennen.
Katrín Sigurdardóttir: Small Wonder
BY ELNA SVENLE
P.S.1 ARCHIVES:
GORDON MATTA-CLARK
Katrín Sigurdardóttir’s site-specific
installation High Plane V required
architectural and structural modification
not unknown to P.S.1’s corner galleries. For
P.S.1’s 1976 inaugural exhibition Rooms,
Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-78) modified
the corner galleries in a similar manner
by cutting into the floor and ceiling of the
third, second, and first floors, creating
Doors, Floors, Doors. Gordon MattaClark was known for site-specific works
involving dramatic physical changes to
architectural spaces. For example, an
earlier work, Splitting (1974), literally cut
through the middle of a house, splitting it
in two.
P.S.1 Newspaper Contributing Staff
Jason Bard, Klaus Biesenbach, Yng-Ru
Chen, Antoine Guerrero, Jenny Louise
Hamblett, Alanna Heiss, Jeannie Hopper,
Donell Hutson, Beatrice Johnson, Jelena
Kristic, Christopher Y. Lew, Brett Littman,
Sarah McLemore, Caitlin Kerker Mennen,
Bob Nickas, Erica Papernik, Marianna
Pegno, Elana Rubinfeld, Franklin Sirmans,
Nick Stillman, Elna Svenle, David Thorp,
Eugenie Tsai, Neville Wakefield, David
Weinstein Contributing Artists Burt
Barr, Jim Cauty, E.V. Day, Amy Granat,
Kalup Linzy, Philip Maysles, Ed McGowin,
Stephan Moore, Katrín Sigurdardóttir
Special Thanks NP James, Noa Latham
Editor Colby Chamberlain
SUPPORT Operations and programs of
P.S.1 are supported by the P.S.1 Board of
Directors, the New York City Department of
Cultural Affairs, The Office of the President
of the Borough of Queens, The Council of the
City of New York, the New York State Council
on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National
Endowment for the Arts. Additional funding
is provided by individual, foundation, and
corporate contributions to the Annual Fund.
AEF Exhibitions at P.S.1 are made possible
by the Annual Exhibition Fund with support
from Peter Norton and the Peter Norton Family
Foundation, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, The
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Lawton W. Fitt
and James I. McLaren Foundation, Marie-Josèe
and Henry Kravis, Jerry I. Speyer and Katherine
G. Farley, Philip Aarons and Shelley Fox Aarons,
Kathy and Richard S. Fuld, Jr., Lily Auchincloss
Foundation, J. Christopher Daly and Sheldrake
Organization Inc., Rosa and Gilberto Sandretto,
David Teiger, Michel Zaleski, Enzo Viscusi, Sue
& Edgar Wachenheim Foundation, The Broad
Art Foundation, Mimi and Peter Haas Fund,
Dennis W. LaBarre, Julia Stoschek, Pamela and
Richard Kramlich, Richard Anderman, Paul
Beirne, Douglas S. Cramer, L. Matthew and
Elizabeth Quigley, Mathis-Pfohl Foundation,
SilverCup Studios, The Friends of Education
in honor of Peter Norton and Gwen Adams,
and The Contemporary Arts Council and The
Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern
Art. INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL
SPECIAL PROJECTS International and
national projects are supported in part by
The Jerome Foundation. Fine Print Fine Print
is made possible, in part, by public funds
provided by the New York State Council on
the Arts, a State Agency. Media Sponsor
Time Out New York is the official print partner
of exhibitions and public programs at P.S.1.
Katr�������������������������������
ín Sigurdardóttir: High Plane V �����
This
exhibition is made possible by the Baugur
Endowment Fund. Additional funding is provided
by the Center for Icelandic Art, The AmericanScandinavian Foundation, and the Ava Olivia
Knoll Fund. Loris Cecchini This installation
is made possible by FENDI and the support of
Rosa and Gilberto Sandretto. John Latham:
Time Base and the Universe This exhibition
was organized in collaboration with the John
Hansard Gallery, UK with support from the
Henry Moore Foundation. The realization of this
exhibition would not have been possible without
the support of John Latham’s many friends,
former assistants, and family—as well as
Nicholas Logsdail and the Lisson Gallery. Their
commitment has enabled a comprehensive cross
section of Latham’s work to be brought together
for the first time in many years.
FALL 2006
– Caitlin Kerker Mennen
Contemporary artists such as Tom
Friedman, Jeffrey Vallance, and Charles LeDray
have all embraced the miniature—yet few allow
it to dominate their practice as fully as Katrín
Sigurdardóttir. In sculptural presentations
inspired by visited or imagined places, she
employs this minute form to address notions
of memory, time, travel, and place. The Green
Grass of Home (1998) consists of a small crate
containing representations of public parks
in San Francisco, Reykjavik, New York, and
Berkeley; in Model (1998-2000) a toy-sized
highway crisscrosses the wall and floor of the
gallery; in High Plane (2001-06), presented in
its fifth iteration at P.S.1, mountains the size of
sugar loaves generate an icescape akin to Arctic
topography.
Small-scale art has a long history. In 16thcentury Europe, miniature portraits emerged
as a popular practice, often commissioned by
noblemen wanting to introduce their daughters
to long distance suitors, or sailors and soldiers
craving a souvenir of their loved ones while far
away. Miniature portraits remained prevalent
until the mid-19th century when they were
gradually replaced by the faster and more
economical daguerreotypes and later by
photographs.
In the history of Modern art, small
expressions have often been overshadowed
by the grandiose, such as the huge canvases
of Jackson Pollock and fellow Abstract
Expressionists or the gargantuan land art
projects by Robert Smithson or Walter De
Maria. Alongside there have been a number
of prominent explorations of the minute: the
Russian Constructivists’ maquette-like objects;
Alexander Calder’s traveling Circus (192631), which frequently crossed the Atlantic in
his suitcase; Alberto Giacometti’s delicate
wood stage The Palace at 4 AM (1932); Marcel
Duchamp’s various Box in a Valise (1941/66),
containing miniature reproductions of his most
significant works; and Joel Shapiro’s dollhousesize sculptures from the 1970s exhibited
strategically on the floor of the gallery space.
The small artwork evokes memories,
echoing the many miniatures of childhood: the
Barbie palace, the Lego fortress, or the Marklin
railway. The fantasies animated by toys—as well
as by scaled-down artworks—create isolated
and more detailed environments, enabling
the mind to wander effortlessly. Engaging in a
small painting or installation cuts one off from
the normal experience of time, the reduction in
scale skewing one’s perception of duration. In a
study carried out by the School of Architecture
at the University of Tennessee, the subjects
were asked to spend time with scale-models
of human habitats in three different sizes: 1/6,
1/12, and 1/24. They were asked to move around
the figures and come up with activities for the
specific spaces. The subjects were then to
report when they believed they had taken part
of the exercise for 30 minutes. Their answers
showed remarkable results: the experience of
time shrunk in accordance to the diminished
scale of the model.1
The miniature begs to be scrutinized, and
with close investigation the vast difference in
scale between the real world and the world of
the miniature gradually shrinks. The miniature
also changes one’s perception of the context
in which it is presented. In the case of Katrín
Sigurdardóttir’s High Plane V (2006), the viewer’s
head is turned into that of a giant. The reduced
scale of the ice landscape automatically imposes
a reevaluation of the size of the surroundings,
making one believe that the room-sized icescape
stretches into infinity. The perception of time
spent in the work might also be influenced by
its size, and, as with many of Sigurdardóttir’s
miniatures, one feels as if they awaken memories
of places visited or seen, even though they might
primarily echo the games played as a child.
1
Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of
the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the
Collection. Durham and London: Duke University
Press (1993), p 66.
LEGAL NOTICES
Thomas Demand, Bullion,
2003. Collection of Sarah
and Gary Wolkowitz.
Ed McGowin’s Name Change
a brief
history of
the gold standard
The Gold Standard refers both to a
curatorial conceit—bringing together a range
of historical figures and younger artists through
their use and investigation of a single common
material—and the longstanding economic
practice of tying a nation’s currency to a fixed
quantity of gold. Given its distinct color, density,
and easy divisibility, gold has been a definitive
marker of value in cultures around the world,
and it remains desired for its beauty, rarity,
and durability. The gold standard, however, has
become yet another casualty of the twentieth
century, whose tumult and complexity proved
too much to sustain it. The eventual collapse of the gold standard
in the United States was set in motion at around
the same time The Gold Standard’s earliest work
was completed. A proud bauble in gold-leaf of
a boisterous consumer market, Andy Warhol’s
Untitled (Shoe) was drawn during the artist’s
successful first career as a fashion illustrator
in 1952. As the U.S. domestic economy surged
forward, U.S. currency was pouring into Europe
under the auspices of the Marshall Plan, a
massive effort to rebuild and stabilize Western
Europe following World War II. From 1948 to
1954, the United States distributed $17 billion in
grants overseas.
According to the Bretton Agreement, a
monetary management system established
in 1944, gold was fixed to U.S. currency at
$35-an-ounce. As dollars flowed out into the
international economy, this fixed rate became
increasingly untenable, particularly during the
presidency of Lyndon Johnson, who declined
to raise taxes to help finance the Vietnam
War or his ambitious domestic initiatives. The
overabundance of dollars on the market in
the 1960s is not unlike the over-proliferation of
Warhol’s Gold Marilyn within The Gold Standard.
Sturtevant’s Warhol Gold Marilyn (1973) and
Louise Lawler’s Does Andy Warhol Make You
Cry? and Does Marilyn Monroe Make You Cry?
(both 1988), both reproduce an absent original
BY COLBY CHAMBERLAIN
Warhol piece, itself strangely reminiscent of an
oversized minted coin: circular and dull metallic,
with the typical chiseled presidential profile
replaced by the silkscreen skin of celebrity. By
1971, U.S. gold reserves could cover only 22% of
the dollars on the market.
In 1971, President Nixon suspended
the gold standard, making U.S. currency no
longer convertible to gold (except on the open
market). By 1976 all countries had followed suit,
inaugurating an era of “floating” currencies.
This term from economics connects to a
notion in semiotics, the “floating signifier”—a
signifier without a referent. An example par
excellence of this phenomenon would be
Thomas Demand’s 2003 photograph Bullion.
The photograph appears to show stacks of gold
bricks but is actually an elaborate deception.
Rather, Demand photographed a construction
that he meticulously fashioned from paper and
subsequently destroyed. Gold here exists—and
possesses value—only as an image; meaning it
operates independently of reality.
Subsequent to the gold standard, the
symbolism of gold veers between precious
and cheap. It remains a vestige of authority, as
demonstrated by Wolfgang Tillmans’ photograph
of Queen Elizabeth’s gilded carriage, Regina
(2002), but it also easily bloats into chintz; in
Thomas Hirschhorn’s Necklace CNN (2002),
for instance, a glut of plastic tape and gold
wrapping paper turns the familiar emblem of
a supposedly trust-worthy news-source into
a grotesquerie of bling. Either way, Alfredo
Jaar’s video on non-mechanized gold mines in
Brazil, Introduction to a Distant World (1985),
affirms that the desire and fascination for gold
is not without its consequences. Unrelenting in
its depiction of mass drudgery and inhumane
working conditions, the video is a harsh reminder
of gold’s connections—historical and ongoing—
to conquest and exploitation. The symbol and
substance of wealth, scarcity, and market forces,
gold continues to impact both high culture and
bare life.
At right is a special notice published in the
Washington Post on September 11, 1970, by the
law firm of Ira M. Lowe announcing the name
change of William Edward McGowin to Alva
Isiah Fost. The announcement is both routine and
extraordinary—a step in the process of changing
one’s name within the U.S. legal system.
For Name Change, artist Ed McGowin
changed names twelve times between 1970 and
1972: from Alva Isiah Fost, to Lawrence Steven
Orlean, to Irby Benjamin Roy, and so on until
he changed his name back to William Edward
McGowin in March 1972. With each new identity,
McGowin created a distinct body of work,
assuming a different set of concerns, materials,
and aesthetic strategies. For McGowin, these
changes needed to be legally binding rather than
pseudonyms. “I wanted to lend some gravitas to
the project,” says McGowin, “and to signify that
these weren’t capricious gestures.”
The majority of legal name changes come
as a result of shifts in marital status and are
easily obtained. By contrast, McGowin’s project
falls under a category, termed in the legal system
as desire, that requires applicants to petition
a local court stating a reason for the request.
A judge reviews the petition and may hold a
hearing if the petition is suspect, in particular if
the applicant may be trying to avoid prosecution
or outstanding debts. Petitions that pass without
question usually fit into familiar narratives, such
as a foreign-born citizen wanting a name more
familiar to English-speakers, or an actor taking
on a stage name. Not many petitions involve
individuals changing their names on a regular
basis as part of an ongoing artist’s project.
To push his twelve name changes through
the Superior Court of the District of Columbia,
McGowin worked with prominent Washington
lawyer Ira Lowe. Lowe was able to secure support
for the project among his contacts within the
legal community; the second signer on the
petition was U.S. district judge John Sirica (who
later became a household name while presiding
over the Watergate cases that led to the 1974
resignation of President Nixon). The project
was nearly derailed, however, when jurisdiction
over name changes transferred to another
Washington court in 1972. A new judge unfamiliar
with the project nearly refused McGowin’s
petition to change from Edward Everett Updike
back to William Edward McGowin. “I thought I
was going to be stuck as Updike indefinitely,”
remembers McGowin.
Applicants for name changes are typically
required to take out advertisements announcing
the ruling in local papers specified by the
court. In McGowin’s case, ads were placed in
the Washington Post and the Washington Law
Review. Also, as with most legal procedures,
there was an accompanying court fee. “Each
petition cost me $150,” says McGowin. “That
was a lot of money for an artist in 1970. By far, it
was the most expensive part of the project.”
Top: Advertisement from The Washington Post,
September 11, 1970.
Bottom: T. M. Dossett, Medgar, 1997, 16" high, 12"
wide, carved and painted wood.
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