Category Archives: The Everyday

Nevin Aladag, Session (2013)

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“Session is a video triptych shot in Sharjah’s urban areas and desert. In this musical composition, different kinds of Arabic, African and Indian percussion instruments, all found in the United Arab Emirates, are played by the elements – the sand, the sea and the wind.”

From Wanderlust catalog: “Aladag’s work explores the textures of socio-spatial environments and global cultural identity. In Sessions we are thus invited to become not only viewers and listeners, but also voyagers and cartographers, navigating the enigmatic edges of our surrounding environments through surfaces and socially activated gestures.”

Mary Mattingly, House and Universe (2013)

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woman pulling ball of objects

Mary Mattingly, Pull, 2013

“Based on philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s book Poetics of Space with a chapter by the same name, House and Universe describes duality and interdependency within local and nonlocal space. House and Universe is an allegorical series of photographs that combined living systems like floating geodesic capsules with bundles of personal objects I had collected and carried with me. When I was making this work in 2013, I had bundled almost everything in my possession into seven large boulder-like forms that could be rolled or pushed.

One photograph shows a place I lived in between a series of storms when the houses were covered in whatever scrap was available. A bundle sculpture is in front of the homes, symbolically connecting climate disasters with consumption.

That title alludes to the story of Sisyphus (the trickster who was tricked in the end) which stuck with me throughout the series, as I dragged these bundles from one place to another, across towns where I was invited to recreate performances, and back into and out of exhibitions and studio spaces.

Another image shows a naked body of a person in my life from behind, with a large boulder of things provocatively titled Life of Objects.

Own it.us was made at the same time: an online library that catalogs the things I bundled and illustrates the pathways of these objects, and how they came into my life. I’ve spent considerable time living in and within ecosystems or shelters I’ve co-built, some pictured in House and Universe, those experiences have asked me to reconsider my surroundings, to vision how collections can function as monuments to consumption, and how, as an inhabitant of NYC, I help make the collective monument called a landfill.

In absurd performances, I would pull the bundles through NYC, Really to emphasize the weight of these objects.

The sculptures’ wrappings are inextricably intertwined like cycles of production – through a chain of formal and informal exchanges, an object is mined, made, distributed, bought, exchanged, eventually thrown away, where it becomes something else. The photographs of these things echo the cobbled together things themselves: pieced together with images of disparate place, time, and space.  Like time capsules, they function as obstructions and proposals. They block, interfere, and frame an encounter.”

Allan Kaprow, Taking a Shoe for a Walk (1989)

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people dragging shoes

From Wanderlust catalog, Kaprow states “Any avant-garde art is primarily a philosophical quest and a finding of truths, rather than purely an aesthetic activity.”

Score for Taking a Shoe for a Walk (1989)

pulling a shoe on a string through the city

examining the shoe from time to time, to see if it’s worn out

wrapping your own shoe, after each examination, with layers of bandage or tape, in the amount you think the shoe on the string is worn out

repeating, adding to your shoe more layers of bandage or tape, until, at the end of the walk, the shoe you are pulling appears completely worn out

Fallen Fruit, “Public Fruit Maps” (2004-ongoing)

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Screen Shot of Public Fruit Maps

Screen Shot of Public Fruit Maps

“One of Fallen Fruit’s core projects is to map neighborhoods to which we are invited, mapping all the fruit trees that grow in or over public space. Only pick fruit that is on public space unless you have permission from the property owner. You can find all of our map on the Endless Orchard. If you want to contribute to our online maps- email us! The maps are hand-drawn and distributed free from copyright as jpgs and PDFs. They are regularly reproduced in the media and have been exhibited in museums and gallery exhibitions internationally. The dimensions of the maps are variable and range from 8″ x 10″ to 40″ x 60″. This is an ongoing and ever-expanding project.

NOTE: These maps are for entertainment purposes only. Never trespass or take fruit from private property. Only pick fruit that is clearly in public space- for example hanging over the sidewalk or in the parkway. If you are not sure, ask. Also if you are happy to help us with providing a map, then please make sure that it is your own work. We do not want to deal with someone like this trademark attorney Denver has to offer. Unless you have their permission of course. This is all for a bit of fun and just makes apple picking a lot easier. We look forward to having you onboard!”

photo of feet with fruit in bags and a map

map of fruit trees

Kate Gilmore, “Walk the Walk” (2010)

women walking in yellow dresses on a yellow structure

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Like the mazes of office cubicles in so many of the buildings that surround Bryant Park, Walk the Walk comes to life over the course of a working day.

From Monday to Friday, Kate Gilmore’s performance-installation creates a spectacle of color, movement and sound from 8:30am to 6:30pm. Gilmore (b.1975, Washington, D.C.) presents a cubic structure, open on all sides, with a flat roof that functions as a podium. Working in shifts, groups of women take to the roof where they perform an improvisational choreography of everyday movement, such as walking, shuffling, and stomping. Neither professional dancers nor theatrical performers, Gilmore’s participants resemble a random sample of female office workers. They vary in age, race, and body type. Free to perform their artist-assigned task as they choose, they must nevertheless conform to a strict uniform of yellow dresses and beige shoes.

Members of the public are invited to observe the piece from the surrounding Fountain Terrace, but also to enter the open structure. The yellow theme of the women’s dresses continues on both the exterior and interior walls of the structure. Once inside, visitors may hear the reverberating sounds of the movement overhead. In this eccentric concerto of irregular footfalls, the physicality of Gilmore’s performance is experienced anew.

Kate Gilmore is best known for her physically demanding performance videos in which she is typically the sole protagonist. Walk the Walk is Gilmore’s first live public project and also her first to deploy other participants. Her interest in striking and often incongruous images continues in this piece, with its unexpected transformation of architecture, figures, actions, and location. In this way, the artist makes us aware of our assumptions about the codes of appropriate behavior and the limits of self expression. How do the attributes of gender, age, and appearance shape our perception of both social roles and personal desires? In Walk the Walk, Gilmore literally and metaphorically turns the inside out, inviting us into a world at once all too familiar and strangely provocative.

Richard Long, “A Line Made by Walking” (1967)

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a line walking into the grass

Richard Long, A Line Made by Walking (1967)

  • Left a trace
  • Art made by walking
  • it was a fundamental interruption of art history: anticipates a widespread interest in the performative

This formative piece was made on one of Long’s journeys to St Martin’s from his home in Bristol. Between hitchhiking lifts, he stopped in a field in Wiltshire where he walked backwards and forwards until the flattened turf caught the sunlight and became visible as a line. He photographed this work, and recorded his physical interventions within the landscape.
Although this artwork underplays the artist’s corporeal presence, it anticipates a widespread interest in performative art practice. This piece demonstrates how Long had already found a visual language for his lifelong concerns with impermanence, motion and relativity.

Gallery label, May 2007

“Thus walking—as art—provided a simple way for me to explore relationships between time, distance, geography and measurement. These walks are recorded in my work in the most appropriate way for each different idea: a photograph, a map, or a text work. All these forms feed the imagination.” − Richard Long

Rut Blees Luxemburg, “Chance Encounters” (1995)

In the series, Blees Luxemburg photographed herself and another woman as they approached strangers in London’s Square Mile. The photos could be said to create a pattern of behaviors of people who inhabit in this urban landscape.

Her “Chance Encounters” are by no means actual chance encounters. Luxemburg spends a long time with the landscape itself before she snapped every photo. She is patient with her production, resulting in merely more than 20 photos per year[2]. She put a lot of conscious thought into every single shot because she wants her photos to tell stories and generate possibilities of profound thoughts. She wants her audience to think about what may have happened behind the subjects of these photos. In a way, we can say that they tell stories of the habitat without involving the inhabitants.

Another theme of her photography is the beauty of the unexpected. She loves to visit marginalized spaces in the city where we don’t usually consider appealing. She described herself as a Flaneuse while working on Chance Encounters. She wandered in the city and observed for serendipity. These moments come from the ignored part of our life but it reflects so much of our life.

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Jeremy Deller, “Procession” (2009)

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“I like what has happened in Manchester, historically, politically, musically, and I’ve always enjoyed being there – so when I was asked to make a public artwork for Manchester International Festival in 2009, I assembled a procession of the city’s people and their activities. It was mostly a celebration of public space and the people occupying it: buskers, smokers, car modifiers, The Big Issue sellers and so on. One of the elements was Valerie’s Snack Bar, this café in Bury Market, which just seemed to be a great gathering place for OAPs. The snack bar was almost exactly replicated and put on the back of a lorry and taken for a spin. As with any procession, there are lots of contradictory elements: some are traditional, others are contemporary or even futuristic. I wanted in a way to try and make something a bit like a procession you would see on ‘The Simpsons’, a sort of social surrealist event full of bizarre, funny, wrong-seeming things.”

Matthew McCaslin “Check It Out” (1998)

stack of tvs

Check it Out, 1998; TVs, VCRs, handtruck, clock, electric liights, electrical hardware. Photo: Courtesy Feigen Contemporary

This messing looking sculpture features TVs stacked on a rolling cart in combination with other objects. The screens show shots of urban commuters hustling to and from locations. It showcases the walking ritual of commuting. (credit: Walk Ways catalog)

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“In the beginning, video artists used television sets simply to present videos tapes; later, people realized the monitor had its own potentially sculptural presence. Matthew McCaslin, who has focused on the technological infrastructure of everyday life (his installations bring into view wires, pipes, studs and other normally hidden stuff), has filled two galleries with sculptures that incorporate television sets. Surrealistic essays on the mechanization and the mediation of modern experience, they range in tone from dryly clever to mysteriously meditative.

Though the materials used are similar, Mr. McCaslin’s shows in Chelsea and SoHo are as different as night and day, literally. The pieces in Feigen’s well-lighted space deal mostly with work, transportation and other daily processes. At the entrance, a boombox in a wheelbarrow plays the sound of a cement mixer. In ”Check It Out,” a stack of four televisions broadcasting tapes of pedestrians hurrying in an airport is punningly strapped to an industrial hand truck.” [credit]

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“Check It Out has a single stack of four video monitors accompanied by a large clock face sitting on the floor to its left, and by two yellow construction lanterns, one on the ground beside the clock, the other hanging over the far side of the screens. The screens project the image a shifting mass of people as viewed through security cameras in shopping malls or train stations. The mass of bodies, filmed in such an indiscriminate manner, based upon spatial position within a particular building, becomes both a current of human activity and a narrative of human reflection when shown in intermittent movement or listless waiting. There is a great pleasure in being able to view this mass as it mills about, and then sometimes one “actor” steps close to the camera lens, even notices it, and shows the depth of individual self-consciousness in a tic, a nervous smile, or a look of slight horror. When the film loop ends, as in other works, these images are replaced with a fine mist of static, which tends to heighten the sense of visual pastiche formed by the combination of recognizable entities with a nonrepresentational depiction of space. The visual images and even the flow of static enter into the context of narrative and drama, made physically approachable by the lamps and by the constantly moving clock beside the screens.”

Gibson, David. “Mining the Urban Divide: The Work of Matthew McCaslin.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, vol. 26, no. 2, 2004, pp. 66–72. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3246367. Accessed 17 Jun. 2022.