The Imagined Gallery

1998-06-01T19:25:00.000-07:00

Under My Volcano
A project by Margaret Crane
Various locations, June 1998

For her 30 day life-art performance, Margaret Crane will live solely in faded grand hotels in former colonial capitals. Subsisting only on room service and the kindness of strangers, the artist will explore the relationship of man and culture in the absence of nature.

1998-04-07T19:23:00.000-07:00

Proposal For Artspace
A Project by Marshall Weber
San Francisco, California 1988
New York, New York 1998

To ensure the feeling of hopelessness the gallery will be painted black.
To imply the attitude of commitment the entire gallery, including offices, will be painted black.
To reveal the relationship between shelter and privilege the walls will be chained together.
To portray the false association of wealth with spirituality the walls will be chained to the ceiling.
To depict the limitations of form the walls will be chained to the ground.
To evoke the stance of postmodernism the chains will be slack.
To convey the bad faith of commerce the chains will be heavy.
To emote the baseness of complicity the floor will be chained to the door, and the door will be locked.

1998-01-07T19:21:00.000-08:00

All The Monuments Of Hitler In Berlin
A project by Eileen Fergus
Various locations in Berlin, Germany
January 1998 - December 2000

All the still-extant monuments, buildings and public works built in Berlin during the Third Reich, painted gold.

1998-01-01T19:22:00.000-08:00

World Theatre Event: An Imagined Homage To Yves Klein
A 24-hour action on November 27,1998
Submitted by Stephen Perkins, 11:30am, New Years Day, 1998

1. Paint the world International Klein Blue.
2. On November 27, 1998, re-publish Klein’s one-day newspaper Dimanche (originally published November 27, 1960). Translate the texts into all the world’s languages. Distribute globally.
3. Let the world’s weather systems disperse the paint.

1997-01-17T17:59:00.000-08:00

Gallery For Those Who Are Blind
An Unrealized Project by Nina Iskrenko (1951-1995)
Moscow, Russia
From a letter dated January 1, 1994, received February 8th, 1994, & reconsidered January 17th, 1997

Well, some people from radio asked me to write a play for their radio-theatre. I did it. Now it is "Audiogallery," or "Radiogallery," or, more exactly, "Gallery for those who are blind." Of course, the poems are exhibited there in the gallery, however rethought and interpreted not as usual poems, but as the audio-pictures created by the method of ouster (sequential & absolute). It means that the words once appeared among images begin to push out those images up to their absolute exclusion. At finish point the picture is completely transformed into the text.

Now we can imagine our Audiogallery where the visitors (public & some actors & actresses) first of all put on the blindfolds and take the canes (or are attached to a special lash, different for men & women & combined with the guide (also blindfolded)). There is an excursion inside a big glass cube containing nothing (or almost nothing) except voices - audiopictures and different kinds of "human noises."

Well, there is only one kind of audiopicture in the whole "gallery for those who are blind," the picture called "My Struggle" (or "Mein Kampf, you know). It begins with the words: "I kill the women as (they do) in films...." Then it contains the careful & detailed description of different ways of killing the mosquito-females, however, the word "mosquito" is never pronounced. As if we deal with real murdering of real women. And it is real murdering, by the way, but that particular murdering of the most awful things being present in women's anima [or animus].

By other words - "My Struggle" is directed to eliminating the negative part of so-called "wandering feminine beginning" dissolved in nature.

The are four (five) imaginable exhibition spaces in our gallery. The picture itself is demonstrated in the first space, in space 2 there are four fragments of the same object. Then there is a narrow black vertical tube in the middle of the gallery - it is a "monastic cell" - the space for individual communication with our artwork, then space 3 for the rear of it. At last space 4 - for the art critic discussions. So eight poems are audio-exhibited.

During the excursion all the women occasionally disappear, at the end of performance only men are present inside the glass cube. They put off their blindfolds and see the giant figures of mosquitos surrounding the cube outside (it's swarmed around). Those MOSQUITOS have the holes for faces and these holes are filled by the faces of women who took part at the same excursion.

1997-01-10T17:57:00.000-08:00

Imaginary Exchange: An Action For Two People
A Project By Stephen Perkins
Iowa City, Iowa
Late afternoon, Friday, January 10, 1997

A imagined simultaneous relic(uilibrium) in the offices of Stephen Perkins (Iowa City, Iowa) and Scott MacLeod (San Francisco, California) taking place on 12 noon Sunday, January 26, 1997

1997-01-01T17:54:00.000-08:00

Kotsu
A project by Luca Miti
Roma and other locations in Italy, and possibly Wroclaw, Poland
Various dates and times, 1997

*Composition for small Japanese car, bell, road and driver.*

The bell is placed inside the car. When the car moves, the road “plays” the bell or the bell “performs” the road (the score). It is a private music, a travel music. Usually not more than five persons can listen to it (the maximum possible in my car). The place of the performance, my car, is a private place. People outside don’t know that I’m performing the piece, and, if they know, they can’t listen to the music - they just see the “auditorium” (the car) going by. But they can see the score (the road). It’s very dilutate - one sound every two hours, in some situations - e.g. travels on good roads.

(*correction: “...small Italian car, and Japanese bell...”)

1996-12-18T17:51:00.000-08:00

The Hardened Part
A Project by Aaron Noble
Upstairs bedroom, 47 Clarion Alley, San Francisco, California
December 18, 1996

This is confirm my imagined participation in your retrospective on the 26th - rather, this is the act itself or at least the artifact, tricky to distinguish. The hardened part.

It's Sunday. At two minutes to noon I go into my room, careful not to look directly at the object. Viewing position is awkward. I end up kneeling on the bed but erect from the knees up, not resting on my haunches. L-shaped. My eye level is near the bottom of the painting. Breeze through the window.

I begin looking. Inevitably I think of Raegan Kelly and get stuck there a while. Then I think of trains, freight trains, then passenger trains in Europe, a dream film that's a composite of Shoah, Pierrot Le Fou and The State of Things then back even further to a state of solitary movie-going that preceded all this, and the word "promise" seems horribly poignant and seems to refer only to the past and only to places other than here.

I break the connection at 14 minutes, 40 seconds.

1996-11-28T17:47:00.000-08:00

Security Guards
A project by Belinda Myles
Center for the Arts at Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco, California
November - December 1996

Guarding the guards. Watching me watching you. Thirty private security guards surveilling this art gallery's security guards. Lots of uniformed people casually walking around in black shoes, looking at each other.

1996-11-27T17:41:00.000-08:00

The Space Underneath Rachel Whiteread
A project by Naomi Bacigalupi
Various locations
November 27, 1996

Comprised of various positions. As relating to volumes. Performed with and without Bruce Nauman.