[credit]
Roadstains #3: Coke spill from parked car on Potomac Ave. Chicago, Fall 2004 / Installation in process, view #3, Hand cut wood relief: Finnish and Baltic Birch plywood painted with latex paint to match wall color, 2017
Ryan traced spilled drinks in the street as he went walking. He transferred them to wood carvings painted white.
“Paradox of Praxis 1 (1997) is the record of an action carried out under the rubric of “sometimes making something leads to nothing.” For more than nine hours, Alÿs pushed a block of ice through the streets of Mexico City until it completely melted. And so for hour after hour he struggled with the quintessentially Minimal rectangular block until finally it was reduced to no more than an ice cube suitable for a whisky on the rocks, so small that he could casually kick it along the street.”
“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.”
Michelangelo Pistoletto, Walking Sculpture (1967)
Pistoletto (1933-) rolls a ball made of newspaper down the streets, beckoning the participation of the whole community. This work is considered part of the Art Povera movement.
Efrat Natan, Head Sculpture
Head Sculpture (1973) by Efrat Natan (1947-) has photo documentation that presents a descriptive view of what occurred during the walking performance, and what it looked like from multiple angles. In this work, Natan used a wearable T-shaped sculpture that narrowed the field of view and hearing for the wearer, emphasizing concepts of surveillance and mapping. The photographs showcase both the sculpture and the figure in the street.
“Natan walked through the streets of Tel Aviv, her head covered by a hollow plywood, T-shaped box/mask/sculpture the morning after [the independence day] military parade [in Jerusalem, five months before the outbreak of the Fourth Arab-Israeli War], meld[ing] the language of minimalism, body art and installation art of that period with Christian influences (public self-signifying is a mark of Cain; the act is one of walking the Via Dolorosa).” [credit] The sculpture “can be read as a cross, as an airplane, and even as an angel with outspread wings.” [credit]
“The Minimalism went well with my shyness: it was a kind of mask. The space, which sits strongly in my body, led me to Body Art”, Natan says. Body Art sets up the artist’s body as a central object to be viewed, and puts the tension between the body as subject and as object in the center of the action.” [credit]
“The T-shape is reminiscent of the children’s house in her kibbutz. The sculpture’s visual appearance calls to mind Robert Morris or Charlotte Posenenske. Due to her restricted field of vision, Natan could only see part of the people surrounding her.” [credit] ”
“The kibbutz, where she had lived from her second year of elementary school until the end of her 11th-grade year in high school. The T-shaped structure of the children’s house, the most familiar architectural structure of her life in the kibbutz, contained bedrooms, a dining room, the showers, and a classroom. The long side of the children’s house, with the dining room in the center and the bedrooms on both its sides, faced west.” [credit]
“Head Sculpture (1973) was Efrat Natan’s first street performance to a chance audience. In many ways, this work was a harbinger of an artistic genre of quiet action in the public space, which was recognized thanks to the remaining photographic images. Such works, that combine body art and minimalist sculpture, are formed in a space that is devoid of institutional artistic context, with the very occurrence often affecting the content of the work. Thus, for example, the title of this work was given by two random tourists who were observing Natan walking along Dizengoff and Frishman Streets, her head stuck in a hollow MDF sculpture in the shape of a cross, or the letter X or a plus sign. One tourist said to the other: “Look! A head sculpture!”” [credit]
From the Wanderlust catalog: “Natan draws on her upbringing in her work, which reflects the Israel “religion of labor” and the ideological imperative of “making do with little.”
“The flattened aerial perspective transforms the human form into a sculptural object and suggests modes of surveillance and mapping, which are emphasized by the function of the sculpture itself”
“Her performance suggests a framing and reduction of the senses and the ambiguity inherent in collecting a narrow field of vision and hearing.”
Teresa Murak, Procession (1974)
“In the very early spring of 1974, the artist put on herself a cress seeds coat grown earlier (the working method being a reference to the tradition of handiwork and “female labor”), and set out on a Procession through the streets of Warsaw, thus introducing the figure of Mother Nature into a realm specifically belonging to culture. This gesture, primarily referring to the relationship between the feminine and the natural being—also a main focus essential to feminism, albeit differently—present in corporal feminism, was at the same time a political one, an intervention in urban space which manifested a sensitivity extremely different to that officially valid in the People’s Republic of Poland.
The cress seed, a small fast-growing plant with a distinctive smell, became Teresa Murak’s trademark. Co-existing with the artist, in most cases the plant becomes the subject of her examination and the object of care while her art practice connected with the seeds is based on the idea of co-existence.
The action was documented on photos as well as oral history.” [credit]
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.”
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.”
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
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!”
Rosemarie Castoro, Gates of Troy (1969)
Castoro walks and drags a roll of aluminum through the streets of SoHo. The unfurling and dragging of metal recollects the parading of Hector’s corpse behind Achillles’ chariot, with Castoro cast as a vengeful Achilles. She is protesting the difficulty of being a woman in an art-world dominated by men.