Control and chance

Some of you may have caught one of my IG posts in the last month where I have soft unveiled a new work, which used to be called remixes (locals may have seen prior iterations at Golden Belt Arts in Durham or at Hartwell in Raleigh via Charlotte Russell Contemporary). While the piece still has the element of up cycling, the primary impetus and hope for the piece is that viewers will interact with it in the way I can be seen interacting in the stop motion video below. Not 100% certain what I’ll title this one yet*.

I’ve also previously done collab work with the audience using a web form, early on in development of the wooden cube system I’ve developed, which resulted in works like below. My collaborators were other friends who would give me instructions (an inverse Sol Lewit) via web form- they would indicate quantity, size and color of cubes that I could use to create a temporary work. Each participant was emailed an image of the configuration of cubes I made based on their instructions.

So I am still interested in Sol, sort of. I think the idea of an… idea that becomes a machine is interesting in 2023 across some dimensions that didn’t even exist in the ’60s. Also, as an artist interested in contradiction, I like the idea of inverting Sol’s positioning of his idea as the impetus for an audience-collaborator’s use of materials and giving the same materials but no prompt.

I have also integrated this thinking as part of my ongoing activation at/in my friend, Tom‘s, studio space at the Carter building on South Glenwood in Raleigh. I’ve made the open invitation to folks who pop through the space during the First Friday art crawl to participate in assembling the piece, and their reactions have been not surprising (they show surprise, and almost always uncertainty, too) and instructive. People also call them blocks btw (not “cubes”) because, well…

At first when I started all of these projects I felt like their guiding theme was a hypothesis of mine regarding the role of the audience in creating the content of the (non-figurative) work. Now, maybe, I think… the thematic entree for ideas into this work relates to another part of my practice, my afore-mentioned interest in contradiction, in particular the contradiction of the desire for control and chance to both exist in the work. These two concepts seem really material (haha) in the context of (American, middle class) life in 2023, no, oops- 2024 (Happy New Year, readers!). What I mean is that I have a sense, in my gut, that giving control of something you own to others, and letting chance- real abdication- steer outcomes in your work brings up all the feelings. Further, this set of actions seems to have a level of associated risk, in the context of this moment, that feels specific and intense. Said differently, I feel weird just trusting other people not to use power over me, or something I made, for ill intent. I am only beginning with this blog to attach words to these feelings and impulses and I look forward to talking about these ideas with many of you over the coming weeks!

*The working title I have for the piece, which will be shown publicly at Wilma Daniel’s gallery at Cape Fear Community College, is “Go Ahead Make Sense Of It All.” Part instructions, part acceding, part admonishment.