The Contract Moment

With every work of art there is a contract moment where the curator, administrator, institution, or organization must formalize an agreement about the artists’ work and his or her intent upon its exhibition. Agreements may take place as formal contracts between the exhibitor and the artist, or as informal correspondence through email, but either way there is some sort of agreement from each party as to what to expect in regard to the exchange of work for space. In an ideal setting, the exchange is mutually beneficial for both parties. All of this we know.
But what about work that doesn’t require physical space, or work that only requires space for a brief moment such as a performance art or art that diminishes over time? The introduction of non-object art throughout the late 60s and early 70s required a dynamic shift between artists and museum institutions. This shift was a reminder that with each artist there requires a sort of learning curve for every institution and with or without the help of contracts, there needs to be a willingness to learn.

I will for the time being avoid the looming institutional critique and instead focus on the artist and his or her relationship to these entities as moving and changing support systems. Without a malleable framework, the support system hardens into an institutional archetype; An old paradigm for old forms.

We must not build on top of outdated paradigms. If new trends outmode our current frameworks, perhaps it would be best to develop new ones. If the contract is constructed from what we know or expect from a proposed work of art, what good is it when we encounter something that exceeds the agreeable parameters or contract limitations? Do we shift the system or do we shift the work of art? Not often does the work of art make it out on the other end of this question without changing slightly, but once in a while the system is required to make a greater shift and it is these instances which I hope to elaborate on over the course of the next few weeks. By honing in on the dynamic between these important love-hate relationships, we can highlight an important exchange that takes place that will perhaps give us the ability to see eye-to-eye as collaborative forces rather than opposing ones.

As an institution that is obligated to the manner of contemporary art, it is within reason that such a place would be looking for new, innovative, unique and often times (admittedly) strange works that are tapping into uncharted territories, or at the very least, the not-so-charted territories. However, the artist, and all his or her vigor, must undergo a laundry list of liabilities and sanctions that prevent the work from being what it could be in order to exhibit it how it must be seen rather than how it ought to be seen. This frustration is nothing new to artists who have interacted on any form of base level with any institution or organization. And occasionally this limitation brings to bear a much stronger work of art in the end.

Let us take for example Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s Breathing is Free project in which he is attempting to run the distance equivalent to the diameter of the earth (12,756.3 km) as a memorial to refugees who spend their lives searching for a new home. After speaking with Trevor Martin, Director of SAIC’s Department of Exhibitions, there has been a number of ‘contract moments’ with the school in preparing for this particular event to happen in the city of Chicago. Just to name a few, they had to negotiate costs for hiring two assistants to photograph and film the run as well as a driver, not to mention the navigator that would drive across the city with them. Another concern was the liability in hiring these sub-contractors. Let us not forget risk. What if the artist gets injured while running through the unforgiving traffic ridden streets of Chicago? To top it off, Nguyen-Hatsushiba was injured after agreeing to the project and now they are negotiating to have 15 runners complete the run in place of him. This proposes a new sort of development that could potentially enhance the outcome of the project by launching it into a more collaborative gain.

Although contracts, loan forms and letters of intent have significant value for all participating parties, it is within these seemingly minor negotiations that require flexibility between the artist and the institution. The communication that takes place (at variable degrees), is what I would consider the contract moment. It is within this moment that I am proposing a platform, framework or at the very least a resource for use that will be helpful for all ends of the spectrum when considering this agreement between persons and entities that is perhaps much more than signing the dotted line.

Lets face it, with new forms, non-forms, non objects, temporary and dematerializing art, there often lacks an adequate framework for institutions to license an exhibition that will host these types of projects. When works of art push against the etiquette, there must then be a reevaluation towards the limitations in relationship to the mission of the institution. and it is exactly these dimensions which, when explored will create a learning curve for all ends and perhaps a resource of types that will challenge the re-scripting of contracts in order to be able to host a new kind of work.

Instead of understanding these agreements as limitations, let us begin to view them as platforms for something new.

you may also view this article @ Chicago Art Magazine http://chicagoartmagazine.com/2009/10/the-contract-moment/

D is for Distance

Distance occurs not by degrees but by small catastrophes. It is not there, or, small as it may be, it is. Like the princess and the pea, you can lay as many mats as you like over the fact, but if it is there than it is there. Our perception of contact is an illusion. On a molecular level, I am never actually touching you. There are strong and weak nuclear forces keeping us apart. “It is sad that the air is the only thing we share. No matter how close we get to each other, there is always air between us."

In the beginning, God created… Before the beginning, for all we know or need to know, God simply was or perhaps not simply but it may be enough to say that all that was was God, but then, suddenly, catastrophically, at the beginning of things that could begin, God created. There was now something other than God. In order to create, God had to separate himself from his creation. “God could create only by hiding himself. Otherwise there would be nothing but himself.” “In a sense, God renounces being everything.” Distance is necessary for creation. Distinction. The waters from the waters…

Or you, broken with a clean break from my chest, still sleeping when I awoke and for the first time beheld myself or not myself and you and your gentle sigh that stopped my breath inside itself. Singular. I would insist that time had stopped were it not for the rhythm of your chest, it’s rising and falling – it was here I learned of waiting and counting, of measuring the distance between apexes, the agony of moments and silence and the sweet end your voice brings to both. It was here I learned of the eternity my heart was knit to contain, to drink from unceasingly, to contemplate across that first journey on which my hand made to prove eye’s best guess. O mystery! What did you see at the waking of my touch?

Hagia - holy. Both the Greek and the Hebrew terms mean first pure and clean, but necessarily imply then a separation from the impure or common that they remain in their pure state. To sanctify (hagiazo) is to set apart. A saint (hagia) is one who is set apart, a holy one is a set apart one. To be holy is to be beyond, to be other than. "To soil is to modify, it is to touch. The beautiful is that which we cannot wish to change. To assume power over is to soil. To possess is to soil....To love purely is to consent to distance, it is to adore the distance between ourselves and that which we love."

The Greek prefix para- denotes a position beside or next to, yet it can also mean beyond, for what is beside us must not be us, and what is not us is beyond us. This distance between us is reality, and any attempt to bridge it is illusory. We must prefer real hell to imaginary paradise. Between you and I is not merely air, but an aporia, a chasm that cannot be crossed.

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river

Is a strong brown god – sullen, untamed and intractable,

Patient to some degree, at first recognized as a frontier;

Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;

Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.

The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten

By the dwellers in cities – ever, however, implacable,

Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder

Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated

By worshipers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.

- T.S. Eliot

We act as though our bridges, practical and pragmatic as they may be, have subdued distance. “We thought they were intended to have houses built upon them. We have erected skyscrapers on them to which we ceaselessly add storeys. We no longer know that they are bridges, things made so that we may pass along them, and that by passing along them we go towards God” (Weil). These imaginary bridges can only lead us to imaginary ends, and all the while, the brown god of distance waits to leap up and shatter our illusions, leaving us with nothing. We must embrace and not ignore him. “It is necessary to touch impossibility in order to come out of the dream world. There is no impossibility in dreams – only impotence.” “The links that we cannot forge are evidence of the transcendent” (Weil).

"It’s also nice that we share the air.
No matter how far apart we are,
the air links us." - Yoko Ono

E is for echo