“100 Works of Impossible Art”

At the Louvre last January, I saw a temporary exhibit on the art of the list, curated by Umberto Eco. The exhibit itself was underwhelming, but one piece — a large list written on one of the gallery walls — struck me as interesting raw material for possible spin-off projects. The list, “100 oeuvres d’art impossibles” (i.e. “100 Works of Impossible Art”) by Dora Garcia, runs through ideas that could never be realized. #50. Change the name of a large city. #51. Change the names of all the inhabitants. The effect is one possible work of art, a list that is also a poem.

When first standing in the gallery, I found myself interested in what it would mean to present this list, complete with its original title, cut down to only a fifth or so of the entries, still with their original numbers — bringing into question issues of lists as inexhaustible expeditions that strive for but can never reach completion. Here’s a sample of the fractured poem I ended up with (translations throughout are mine):

1. Live someone else’s life.
12. Live multiples lives.
16. Relive your childhood.
24. Invert the sexes.
31. Finish someone’s incomplete work.

Later, when only a few of the 20 or so “works” I’d copied down still stuck with me, I became interested in the fragmentary nature of lists, and how these small, staccato commands/suggestions could be further broken down to highlight this. Specifically, I was thinking about pacing, and decided to enforce a pace for the viewer/reader by placing small chunks of those few “works” on index cards, which could be flipped through as in a slideshow Quickly thrown together, they actually gave me a lot of pleasure to read through.

In going back through my sketchbook over the last few weeks, I found the cards again. How could I preserve them without just taping them down to a page, where they’d all be read at once? Instead I photographed them and put them together in a Flickr set. The pace of clicking through such a set, it turns out, is quite similar to that of flipping through a pile of index cards. Try it out.

Ultimately, I’m quite happy with the project as a mini experiment in list-making and medium. For those fellow purists and French readers, as well as those with a soft spot for found poetry, I leave you with Garcia’s original lines for the translations on the cards:

100 oeuvres d’art impossible
Ne plus bouger
Tout rappeler
Tout oublier
Changez le sens des mots
Arrêter de dormir
Dormer sans arrêt
Vivre la vie de quelqu’un d’autre.