Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, Gordon Matta-Clark
'I was very happy that I could see some works from these three important figures from the arts scene in downtown New York during the 1970s. I chose this exhibition because they were more concerned with ideas and process than with finished objects, and their place to create was mainly the city. I found some similarity between their ideas and my practice in public space. They used the city as the setting for their work, taking art out of the conventional gallery context and performance off the stage.'
Exhibition Catalog
It’s curious for me to think that they wanted to take art out of the conventional gallery context and performance off the stage, but I saw this exhibition at Barbican. It happens all the time that these unconventional practices are the most absorbed by the art institutions. And after that, these big places for art are happy to announce that these artists were trying to escape from their power. And it’s even more curious that the artists also get more power after this situation. This experimental art group emerged in a time of economic crisis and we can see that their attitude in their practice was a reaction to that. Why they did so many works in the street. What does it mean to use the street to produce artwork? The street was for a long time a place for revolution, for making changes. Today people can do the revolution using internet or other resources. I think street some special particularities that I should make reference: it is democratic in the way that it is open for everybody and not only to art specialists; it is a place of freedom because you don’t have any restrictions of time and space. I mean, if you are producing something in the street you can choose at what time you want to start and finish it because it’s not attached to any institution or event. It can be, if you want. But it was not the case with these artists. In relation to space questions, in the street you have more freedom to choose where do you want to place the work. Of course that if you want to do it on the window of a commercial establishment, probably you need to ask for permission but you don’t have a curator to tell you where your work should be placed. The other thing is that you don’t have an audience, so you don’t need to worry about expectations, you just need to concentrate in what you are doing. I think this exhibition was very well organized. I found a very good way to exhibit to put the objects from the performances and the videos next to each other. The video is a virtual document. The objects give a sense of real that is missing in the video. And the performances help you to imagine how they were. I see these performances as didactic performances. I felt that they were death. I’m sure that when they were done in the seventies they had a fresh and exciting feeling, because in that time these artists were discovering new things on their work that made sense in that period. I mean, they are still vanguard works today because what is vanguard stays frozen in history and they have the particularity of being always present. But I felt that the performances in this exhibition were a fake recreation of what happened with a big intensity in the past. I think this is the problem with repetition. There’s a wear of the work. It looses intensity. Of course it depends of the work. Sometimes it makes sense to repeat. Here it makes sense to repeat in the way that it is didactic. But I think the work is not alive anymore. In relation to the works that were firstly made on the street (for example Open House from Gordon Matta-Clark) and are then appropriated by museums or galleries, there’s for me a kind of domestication and you can feel it. You can feel that the objects are out of their natural habitat. So, there’s a feeling of artificiality. The art works appear to be packaged products. I understand that it has to be done, and it’s at the same time fortunately that this appropriation happens. Otherwise, the importance of these works in the history would be just ignored and forgotten. The domestication of these works is the only way to preserve their value. I’m not talking about commercial value. I’m talking about real value. Value for society and art evolution.
Filipa Guimarães, London 2011
'I was very happy that I could see some works from these three important figures from the arts scene in downtown New York during the 1970s. I chose this exhibition because they were more concerned with ideas and process than with finished objects, and their place to create was mainly the city. I found some similarity between their ideas and my practice in public space. They used the city as the setting for their work, taking art out of the conventional gallery context and performance off the stage.'
Exhibition Catalog
It’s curious for me to think that they wanted to take art out of the conventional gallery context and performance off the stage, but I saw this exhibition at Barbican. It happens all the time that these unconventional practices are the most absorbed by the art institutions. And after that, these big places for art are happy to announce that these artists were trying to escape from their power. And it’s even more curious that the artists also get more power after this situation. This experimental art group emerged in a time of economic crisis and we can see that their attitude in their practice was a reaction to that. Why they did so many works in the street. What does it mean to use the street to produce artwork? The street was for a long time a place for revolution, for making changes. Today people can do the revolution using internet or other resources. I think street some special particularities that I should make reference: it is democratic in the way that it is open for everybody and not only to art specialists; it is a place of freedom because you don’t have any restrictions of time and space. I mean, if you are producing something in the street you can choose at what time you want to start and finish it because it’s not attached to any institution or event. It can be, if you want. But it was not the case with these artists. In relation to space questions, in the street you have more freedom to choose where do you want to place the work. Of course that if you want to do it on the window of a commercial establishment, probably you need to ask for permission but you don’t have a curator to tell you where your work should be placed. The other thing is that you don’t have an audience, so you don’t need to worry about expectations, you just need to concentrate in what you are doing. I think this exhibition was very well organized. I found a very good way to exhibit to put the objects from the performances and the videos next to each other. The video is a virtual document. The objects give a sense of real that is missing in the video. And the performances help you to imagine how they were. I see these performances as didactic performances. I felt that they were death. I’m sure that when they were done in the seventies they had a fresh and exciting feeling, because in that time these artists were discovering new things on their work that made sense in that period. I mean, they are still vanguard works today because what is vanguard stays frozen in history and they have the particularity of being always present. But I felt that the performances in this exhibition were a fake recreation of what happened with a big intensity in the past. I think this is the problem with repetition. There’s a wear of the work. It looses intensity. Of course it depends of the work. Sometimes it makes sense to repeat. Here it makes sense to repeat in the way that it is didactic. But I think the work is not alive anymore. In relation to the works that were firstly made on the street (for example Open House from Gordon Matta-Clark) and are then appropriated by museums or galleries, there’s for me a kind of domestication and you can feel it. You can feel that the objects are out of their natural habitat. So, there’s a feeling of artificiality. The art works appear to be packaged products. I understand that it has to be done, and it’s at the same time fortunately that this appropriation happens. Otherwise, the importance of these works in the history would be just ignored and forgotten. The domestication of these works is the only way to preserve their value. I’m not talking about commercial value. I’m talking about real value. Value for society and art evolution.
Filipa Guimarães, London 2011
