Artist's Installation Diary
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October 19. 2002. I spent a few more hours in the freight elevator at 50 Washington installing my wall-piece yesterday (see details and map below). The elevator never sat still for more than five minutes. The building has 10 floors, fully leased, mostly with commercial tenants (artists are the exception; they're all corralled on 5). Deliverymen bring boxes in; workers bring boxes out; and all day long it's garbage, garbage, garbage. The 8th Floor is the powerhouse tenant: a company that makes low-cost plastic items such as carry-all bags, videocassette cases, and so forth. The owner appears to be Indian and his employees African; the latter were constantly getting on the elevator with dollies hideously overloaded with boxed merchandise, grunting back and forth as they try to maneuver motorized and non-motorized handcarts through the door. One of them looked to be about a hundred years old--I thought maybe he was the other guy's Dad. He got the job done, but just barely. (The UPS guy, who knew everyone in the building, made fun of them to me: "Those guys moan and groan at each other and you don't know what the fuck they're saying.") Another place makes IKEA-type furniture; I saw a number of disassembled bedframes go through the elevator. As for the trash, after doing this project I feel like a pop-abstractionist version of Mierle Laderman Ukeles. (At one time the Official Artist of the NY Sanitation Department, this eco-conceptualist is famous for her piece Touch Sanitation, where she shook the hand of every garbage truck driver in NY.) I asked about the trash at 50 Washington: it supposedly goes out three times a day, but a couple of maintenance guys never stopped getting on the elevator with garbage. Even after 6, when the DUMBO art tour had officially begun and visitors were sprinkling through, one of these guys was still wheeling his plastic tub on and off the elevator. By 3:00 pm, I had reached the stage of making my piece where I needed to get back from it, so I could see the whole and add or subtract struts. Instead of the sculptures that Barnett Newman complained about bumping into when backing up to look at paintings, I kept putting my feet down on bulging, refuse-filled plastic bags.
I did get a non-stop stream of commentary from elevator users yesterday. The knuckleheads who gave me a hard time a few weeks ago came back through ("Look, it's the tape-test guy!") but were actually complimentary (for guys) when they saw the piece. One of the 9th Floor employees gave me a full blown interpretation: "It's an elevator molecule... See, you got metal, plastic, electricity, oil (?), the whole elevator is here in this molecule." In fact, I got a mostly enthusiastic reception until the NY art-erati started coming through (and I'm one of them so I can say this): maybe the poker-faces expected more bells and whistles? Another elevator in the building is draped in sepulchral black cloth, backlit in red light, and pulsates like an enormous beating heart. I can't really compete with that.
October 21, 2002. I installed my piece Molecular Dispersion (Elevator Kit) in the freight elevator at 50 Washington in DUMBO (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass) NY on Thursday and Friday. The piece was open to public viewing in connection with the DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival on Saturday and Sunday (Oct 19 and 20). Lots of people came by both days, as they wandered around the fifth floor touring the open studios. In my previous post I described installing amidst the chaos of a normal busy day in the elevator; the contrast between that experience and my weekend experience was marked.
On Saturday and Sunday, the building's management decided for crowd control reasons to keep my elevator frozen on the fifth floor with the doors open, while allowing other elevators to service the floor. This was nice because it kept the work on "permanent" view. But it was also not so nice, because the art was no longer in a functioning, workaday environment. People either entered, pushed buttons trying to get to other floors, and left in frustration; or saw the explanatory text on wall outside, realized it was an art show, then gave it a quick look from the doorway. If they'd been using the elevator, they'd be immersed in the environment for however long it took to get to their floors, and they'd see the art full-on, with the depth-effect (such as it was) of the simulated 3-D molecule floating on shiny metal. From the doorway, seen at an angle, glare and wall-smudges are more pronounced and the depth was lost.
Nevertheless, some people were curious enough to enter the space for a better view, from what I could observe standing in the hallway talking to friends, which kept me in a good mood. If I happened to be in the elevator talking to someone, however, it created an interesting social dynamic. Seeing us in the lift, people would assume it was working, and walk in and push the buttons. When one of us inevitably piped up to say "It's not working," about 6 out of 10 visitors got huffy. At least four type-A personalities actually said, with sneering sarcasm, "So what are you doing in here, just hanging out?" When I said "It's an art exhibit" I either got the hand-over-the-mouth "I'm so sorry" reaction or the eye-rolling "Well la-di-fucking-da."
There's an awful lot of free-floating hostility out there; two of the friends I was talking to (one of whom had recently exhibited in a public space) discussed with me how art becomes a lightning rod for all that anger. Of course, anything that smacks of conceptualism (or presumed superior posture on the part of the artist) just generally pisses people off. Not guessing I was the artist, a couple of guys read the text aloud in pretentious voices and then loudly dissed the work, while their girlfriends giggled appreciatively. But that kind of reaction was the exception--when all was said and done, the piece was too brightly colored and "fun" to really hate. (Some people expected more of an elevator-filling spectacle, to which I can only say, I'm sorry, I think this particular type of structure would have diminished the more it surrounded you--one wall was enough!)
In any case, the project was an adventure. Thanks to curator Ombretta Agrņ for including me in the exhibition and bringing tours through each day. Also, big shoutouts to James, Gregory, Claire, Ross, Deb, Matt, Jim, Sarah, Alex, Linda, Dave, Mike, Janet, Brian, Cory, and anyone else I might have missed that came by. Jim took some nice pictures with his Danger hiptop and posted them while he was in the elevator; the sheer immediacy of that publication I find mind-blowing. I also like the way he shot them, in a kind of "descent into the Microverse" montage. I'll have some more pictures up soon.