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.
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Going back to your first idea:
I know this is what I do and all, but I love seeing these as tiny art games to play. Each number, each step, is its own game. In each case, constraint is at an absolute minimum (the ruleset for each is a short, vague sentence), which leaves interpretation — play — quite open.
Some are easier than others. Finishing an incomplete work is actually a pretty fantastic idea for a public challenge (and a project that I already have on a long list of projects), but how does one live multiple lives? Don’t we do that already in the internet age?
What if you swapped internet identities with someone for a week? You answer their email, post on their Facebook, comment on forums, shout into their twitterverse — and they do the same? Aren’t you living that person’s life, albeit a fragment of it?
My monsterID really is a meatball, isn’t it? Sigh.