In the world of the avant-weird, playing off the established boundaries of art is critical if one wishes to find success. Granted, those boundaries are arguably in tatters after several decades of increasingly outlandish and often infamous exhibits. But trends do remain in both style and approach, giving the art world some defining shape and giving us, and you, a way to exploit it.
While more unique approaches like slicing up huge animals or wrapping gigantic buildings in shiny paper may actually require some innovation, there are plenty of lesser-known artists who make their living producing works with simple, easy-to-follow formulas. The following projects involve exactly this approach, and require a minimum of effort. While success within the established art world is not a guarantee, for the few minutes’ work required, even the bragging rights of having produced “some real cutting edge stuff” are worth it.
And so, we begin. First up: minimalist film. This worthless genre has been dropping more bombs than the IRA ever since since Andy Warhol’s Empire, a seven-hour grainy black-and-white movie of the Empire State building. The form has never really died, and is actually thriving here in Washington, D.C., courtesy of the Hirschhorn museum. A recent exhibit, Marina Abramovic’s The Hero, was a 17-minute film of the artist sitting on a white horse, holding a white flag. If you picked up the Hirschhorn’s materials for the exhibit, you would have learned that the horse is “a potent symbol of war, heroism, purity, strength, bravery and steadfastness.” Thank you, Hirschhorn and Abramovic. Last year’s films from Tacita Dean were slightly better, if only because the images weren’t so blatantly symbolic as to be patronizing to the viewer. Nonetheless, Dean’s two movies were lengthy shots from the top of a rotating restaurant and the top of a lighthouse, respectively. Not terribly interesting.
But while we may not be interested, we can at least get in on the game. And even if we can’t get in the game, we can at least flood the market with cheap imports. The Voice Leisure staff-directed 6:38 Mile (2002) chronicles a runner’s successful attempt at running one mile on the track above Yates. Worthless? Definitely. But does it pay? Only time will tell.
Our second project, a sound installation, requires slightly more effort. Sound installations are deceptively simple, involving little more than a room filled with speakers. While a wide variety of approaches can be used, they are generally designed so that as one moves around the installation, the sound changes dramatically via acoustic tricks or out-of-phase speakers. Additionally, the sounds used in most installations are a far cry from recognizable music; the current trend is to bombard the listener with sine waves of varying frequencies.
So it’s more complicated than just walking from one room where your roommate is playing Led Zep to another room where someone is playing Mozart, but not much. For a lo-fi sound installation, look no further than a few tape decks and some “whale sounds” cassettes. It may not be worth anyone’s time, but that isn’t the point. The point is to convince people that you’re “up-and-coming.” Outlandish accompanying documentation illustrating how your work is directly tied to avant-garde crazies of the past (e.g. John Cage or Karlheinz Stockhausen) can provide that extra breakthrough-inducing push.
Having completed one or both of the above projects, you need only don a turtleneck, sit back and set your stopwatch for 15 minutes. If fame is not forthcoming, you probably screwed up.
Suggested films
- Melancholy Maytag?Using time lapse cameras, videotape the inside of a refrigerator thoughout the day. Empathize with its emotional loss each time the door opens.
- Leap of Faith?Set up a camera in front of Healy Hall and film students avoiding the school seal at all costs. Or, set up trip wire for Candid Camera-type fun.
Suggested installations
- Dueling Roommates?Place two computers running Winamp in a small room. Exhibitgoers enter in pairs, and try and drown one another out.
- Babel 101?Participants don headsets and listen to vocab list tapes in obscure languages, while three skinny Euros scream classic rock lyrics over a megaphone.
