Which Building in Los Angeles would you like to have demolished? / LAXART
Which Building in Los Angeles would you like to have demolished? / LAXART
Gustavo Artigas: Vote for Demolition
Internationally acclaimed artist Gustavo Artigas will produce his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles at LAXART.
For Vote for Demolition, Artigas is developed a survey to compile a selection of buildings in Los Angeles with the least aesthetical values. The project is a study in how locals see their own environment and about the democratic possibilities of changing it. He relates this investigation to Marcel Duchamp's concept of infrathin – the indescribable conceptual membrane that overlays plastic representation. Artigas' highly accessible yet formally and intellectually advanced artistic interventions in Los Angeles expose the thinness of community and the vast
tensions that can foreshadow societal breakdown. It is no accident that this city experienced terrible race riots in recent history, making it a perfect site for Artigas to develop his investigation. Artigas has put together a list of buildings in Los Angeles that will be voted on by residents through a website he has designed and in various voting booths that will be located throughout the city. The survey Artigas initiates will be publicized through a
postering campaign and results will be translated by the artist in the form of a formal inquiry for demolition of the winning building to the local government. Using this survey as a point of departure, Artigas will create a sitespecific incarnation of this project at LAXART and produce a video simulation of the demolition of the winning building. The exhibition brings together LA's broad-based public art initiatives and efforts to expand across borders and internationalize programming.
2 Comments
his selection of buildings is sort of ridiculous. 'least aesthetical values'? really?! did he pick these on his own, or was the list also generated via a wider field of opinions?
disney hall
staples center
broad museum
rodeo drive shops
pacific design ctr
kodak ctr
not all winners, but not the worst in l.a. by a long shot. turning what seems like a joke-y poorly put together survey into a real demolition petition is irresponsible, even by 'internationally-acclaimed artist' standards. what do we learn from this? what is the take-away?
maybe the artistic interest is in the ambivalence/frisson a voter feels when faced with a choice about 6 projects, none of which should be torn down?
in all the art-survey course copy about duchamp and societal breakdown, where is the redeeming value in suggesting that any of these huge investments of time, skill, resources, and energy should be demolished?
With George Hemphill's permission we began preparing Man Ray's Portraits for their entry into the electronic age. Prototyping this book into an electronic, hypermedia format would provide us with some insight into how a visual history book based on portraiture could provide a "human-face, human-interface." The prospect was deliciously dada. It might illucidate Duchamp's definition of the infra-thin: "The exchange between what one puts on view ... and the glacial regard of the public (which sees and immediately forgets). Very often this exchange has the value of an infra-thin separation, meaning that the more a thing is admired and looked at the less there is an infinite separation. How then to create the interface? Where to begin?
I find this discourse very enlightening and provocative in a mass examining way.
Of course, it is absurd to think any of these buildings would actually be demolished and I really think the interest of this work at that point surpasses the immediate physical destraction of selected buildings upon the request from the city.
Except, it mobilizes everything else but the physical. I think the connections, non survey portions, are pretty much indisputable in the light of actual events and developments that took place in Los Angeles and continues to be relevant. There are also few inplicit points on the use of certain buildings and men behind them (other than and in addition to the architects.)
There is the immediate start of mechanism in the artist's work that makes some of the dialog between buildings via society via political via economical discussions possible. I think the conflicts and their immediate impacts are very visable in the work. It ultimately launches a meaning discussion. It is very interesting all the selected buildings are part of 'marketplace' examples and symbols. For me this trumps the literal reading of simple petition effort which is pretty much used as a decoy.
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