{"id":400121,"date":"2002-12-15T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-12-15T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/?p=400121"},"modified":"2002-12-15T23:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-12-15T23:00:00","slug":"everyone-is-invited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/flex\/everyone-is-invited\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyone is Invited"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
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Everyone is Invited:<\/b>
\r\nInterview with Sal Randolph [1]<\/a><\/sup>,\r\nBerlin, 5 November 2002<\/b><\/p>\r\n

Franciska\r\nZ\u00f3lyom:<\/b> If I told you that I was a Hungarian art historian working\r\non my thesis about social sculpture, what would you reply? Who are you<\/i>?<\/p>\r\n

Sal\r\nRandolph:<\/b> I guess I would reply that I\u2019m an artist from New York,\r\nworking mainly on independent art projects that are social architecture,\r\nsocial organisations or possibly even social sculpture. Although it\u2019s\r\nnot exactly the expression I use, it is certainly part of the thinking\r\nthat falls within that concept.<\/p>\r\n

F.Z.:<\/b>\r\nYour work aroused a lot of attention when you did the free biennial<\/i>\r\nin New York earlier this year. Was that also a parallel event to an\r\nofficially organised art show, as it was in Frankfurt?<\/p>\r\n

S.R..:<\/b>\r\nThere is a very big biennial in New York: the Whitney Biennial, and\r\nit was definitely a kind of response to that. Actually, they had a bit\r\nof the work in Central Park, but the biennial itself was mainly confined\r\nto the museum. And the idea here every time they organise this biennial\r\nis very much about the idea of selecting \u2013 to select the most interesting\r\nbest young artists. In fact, I very much like the work of the curator\r\nwho organised the biennial this year. Nevertheless, I thought that this\r\nwhole idea of selecting was deeply problematic, so I wanted to have\r\na biennial that took place everywhere except in the museum. I wanted\r\nit to be throughout the whole city, and I made no selections. It was\r\nan experiment to see if it would be interesting, to see what would happen.<\/p>\r\n

F.Z.:<\/b>\r\nProbably more than ever, the dynamics of selection have very decisive\r\nconsequences on both the credibility of the curator as a public agent\r\nwho defines values and that of the artist whose work is introduced into\r\nthe art market. Did you also reflect upon this in your work?<\/p>\r\n

S.R..:<\/b>\r\nMy work has to do a lot with the idea that is very deeply a part of\r\ncertainly the American culture: i.e., that only a few can be known,\r\nonly a few can be preserved; that there is good art and bad art \u2013 that\r\nthere is a sense, a kind of filtering job, that the museum and galleries\r\nare doing to keep the public away from bad art that might bore them\r\nor \u201churt\u201d them in some way. There is a kind of actual fear of that art.\r\nTo me, in a psychoanalytical sense, it was very interesting: something\r\nthat everybody is so afraid of. I was very curious, and one of the reasons\r\nI wanted to do the project was that I wanted to see all that \u201cbad art\u201d.\r\nActually, I thought that would be difficult and challenging for me,\r\ntoo, standing there with art that I thought was very bad.<\/p>\r\n

F.Z.:<\/b>\r\nBad in which sense?<\/p>\r\n

S.R..:<\/b>\r\n(laughs) That\u2019s it exactly: I think this question of bad art is not\r\neven answerable.<\/p>\r\n

F.Z.:<\/b>\r\nDid you expect that you would be confronted with old-fashioned, anachronistic\r\nor simply overly traditional artistic approaches like epigones of modernist\r\nsculpture or abstract expressionism?<\/p>\r\n

S.R..:<\/b>\r\nYes, I guess so. Some of that tradition I like, of course \u2013 I did feel\r\nthat it would be art that was\u2026 You know it\u2019s hard to say, because we\r\nreally didn\u2019t get very much of this bad art. Now, it\u2019s a kind of fantasy\r\nof what bad art is but I imagined not so much only just traditional,\r\nbut people who were pursuing their work in a sort of unthinking or retrograde\r\nkind of way. I mean, there are definitely people I know who do traditional\r\nwork that I like. I don\u2019t know what is that bad art that I\u2019m so afraid\r\nof, or that everybody is so afraid of.<\/p>\r\n

F.Z.:<\/b>\r\nIn the context of free manifesta,<\/i> you use the term \u201cself-selection\u201d\r\nof artists who applied for participation. Do you think there is really\r\nsuch a mechanism?<\/p>\r\n

S.R..:<\/b>\r\nYes, I found that people curated themselves actually fairly well. Especially\r\nin New York, I really noticed that most of the participants were people\r\ninterested in the same questions that I was \u2013 that otherwise they wouldn\u2019t\r\nhave cared about the show if they weren\u2019t interested in these questions\r\nof art and money, inclusion and exclusion, public space and commercial\r\nspace or institutional space. I guess this sort of political story of\r\nthe show, because in New York the art market is so powerful that it\r\nwas a question of doing something that was completely outside of the\r\nart market but had a certain scale to it. I found there were all kinds\r\nof work that people had been doing in the \u201960\u2019s, and some of these artists\r\nwere still working, invisibly, because there is no dialogue about this\r\nkind of work that\u2019s going on now.<\/p>\r\n

F.Z.:<\/b>\r\nWhat was the response to your project?<\/p>\r\n

S.R..:<\/b>\r\nIt did stir something up. I uncovered a lot of artists who were doing\r\nwork that wasn\u2019t really being talked about or shown in the context of\r\neither museums or of group shows or gallery shows. Many of them showed\r\nin galleries, but they showed a salable version of their work, and there\r\nwere these other projects that they loved, that they couldn\u2019t really\r\nshow. And so I came to feel that there was a big network of people out\r\nthere doing \u201cfree art\u201d \u2013 whatever that exactly means. Art where no money\r\nis changing hands.<\/p>\r\n

F.Z.:<\/b>\r\nSpeaking of money, how did you cover the actual costs?<\/p>\r\n

S.R..:<\/b>\r\nIt was very inexpensive: I just paid for it. There was one big party,\r\nand we printed a map of the city with the full schedule on it, and I\r\ndesigned the website. It was an organisation of one person, so there\r\nwas no one to hire, and that was the whole thing, in fact. For 6 months,\r\nI was involved full-time with the free biennial<\/i> and the free\r\nmanifesta,<\/i> so I completely neglected the free words<\/i> project.\r\nPeople would write to me, and I was barely able to write back. It is\r\nextremely difficult to keep all these projects alive: some of them end\r\nthough, which is actually useful.<\/p>\r\n

F.Z.:<\/b>\r\nWhere did the free biennial<\/i> finally take place?<\/p>\r\n

S.R..:<\/b>\r\nAll over the city \u2013 outside and inside. Some of it in people\u2019s studios:\r\nthere were obviously net-art projects, telephone and mail projects.\r\nIt represented a very broad idea of what public space could be.<\/p>\r\n

F.Z.:<\/b>\r\nWhat about the juridical part of such a project? In New York, e.g.,\r\nare you free to intervene in the public space?<\/p>\r\n

S.R..:<\/b>\r\nI think is very much like in Germany, for instance: if you stand on\r\na street corner and make your performance for ten minutes, let\u2019s say\r\n\u2013 that\u2019s not exactly illegal. Some of the things that took place in\r\nthe public space were not illegal, but some were. Swoon<\/i> did a\r\ngreat illegal outdoor street party for the free biennial<\/i>. With\r\na noise-band and postering art in the streets, with works by 15-20 artists,\r\nmany of whom are part of this Swoon Union Project<\/i> and fire-dancers,\r\nand so on.<\/p>\r\n

F.Z.:<\/b>\r\nDo you think that such events are comparable to the early times of the\r\ntechno-movement, when people believed in free and spontaneous communication\r\nthrough partying?<\/p>\r\n

S.R..:<\/b>\r\nYes, possibly. I believe in parties \u2013 they are kind of magical. One\r\ncould say that the party is a very ancient tradition as an art form:\r\nthe festival religious tradition of parties. I think a lot can happen\r\nat a party. This is partly why I like (Rirkrit) Tiravanija\u2019s work: it\r\nis the party-like, event-like quality that it has. Something is given\r\n\u2013 usually at a party something is being given: food or music \u2013 and people\r\ncome together, and maybe for a minute their habits are not the same\r\nin that new place.<\/p><\/a>\r\n

F.Z.:<\/b>\r\nComing back to free manifesta <\/i>\r\n[2<\/a>]<\/sup><\/b>,<\/i>\r\ncould you tell me how you came to know about the offer Christoph B\u00fcchel\r\nmade on ebay<\/i> [3<\/a>]<\/sup><\/b>\r\n?<\/p>\r\n

S.R..:<\/b>\r\nI got the invitation by e-mail. I\u2019m on a regular art mailing-list called\r\ne-flux<\/i>, a sort of announcement list for museums and galleries,\r\ngenerally. The auction took place on the ebay<\/i> website, so the\r\nbidding was public, and there were about \u2013 I\u2019m just guessing \u2013 30 different\r\npeople who were bidding on this.
\r\nIn the end, free manifesta<\/i> had 225 entries, many of which were\r\ngroups, so that approximately 300 people were involved. Again, I designed\r\nthe website, I composed a list with free culture links,<\/i> including\r\ntexts by Marcel Mauss, the Situationists, etc. That is a sort of theoretical\r\nbasis of these last few projects, such as free words<\/i>, free\r\nbiennial<\/i> and free manifesta<\/i>. That\u2019s what I was reading while\r\nI was thinking about doing them: I was studying the Situationists, Dadaists,\r\nMarcel Mauss, net culture, etc.<\/p>\r\n

F.Z.:<\/b>\r\nOne of the presumptions in your thinking is that social speakers gain\r\ntheir access to broad channels of communication and to actual power\r\nthrough a consensus, which is negotiated by a larger group (the public).\r\nThe consensus is therefore variable and alterable. Is it the active\r\nparticipation of many that you try to evoke by using the term social\r\narchitecture?<\/p>\r\n

S.R..:<\/b>\r\nFor me, the term social architecture has a number of implications: the\r\nidea of an organisation or a structure created by consensus is one of\r\nthem. I picked the term because I was trying to help myself and to help\r\nother people think about the way social organisations could be art forms.\r\nArchitecture implies a structure that people use and inhabit. The word\r\ncatches both the formal and structural aspects of the idea, and also\r\nthe sense of an artwork, which can also be functional, a use-space.
\r\nUnlike physical\r\narchitecture, however, social architecture is mainly created in the\r\nimagination and expectation of its participants. It can be created,\r\ndestroyed or refashioned very quickly and fluidly, under some conditions\r\nit can endure. Social architecture is a kind of living form, in a continuous\r\nact of self-creation: what Niklas Luhman and other theorists have termed\r\nautopoeisis.
\r\nAt the beginning\r\nof the conversation, you brought up Joseph Beuys and his concept of\r\nsocial sculpture. Though Beuys is of course enormously interesting,\r\na lot of qualities in his work that are very particular to him, like\r\nthe shamanistic qualities, are definitely not a part of my work. I think\r\nthat I was more influenced originally by people who were influenced\r\nby Beuys, and I found my way back to this aspect of his work later.\r\nIt was people like Ben Kinmont or Tiravanija who made me interested\r\nin that kind interactive, outside-of-the-gallery work. My very early\r\ninfluences were John Cage and Gertrude Stein \u2013 an idea of art that is\r\nplayful and that has a lot of chance and randomness in it. Cage was\r\nable to work in so many different media so freely, and was able to live\r\nfreely, which is something I admire.<\/p>\r\n

F.Z.:<\/b>\r\nFree words<\/i> consists of 3000 books that you \u201cshoplift\u201d into<\/i>\r\nbookstores, instead of taking them away. People discover them in the\r\nshelves and can take them home for free. The text in the book is a compilation\r\nof words in a neutral, nonhierarchical order, which reminds me of the\r\ncontinuous flow on a digital banner.<\/p>\r\n

S.R..:<\/b>\r\nThe purpose of the text is to give the feeling that you can use it for\r\nwhatever purpose you want, and not necessarily read it from beginning\r\nto end. I heard people say all different things about how they use it:\r\nsome people are doing art projects with it, cutting it up or making\r\na journal out of it, or one woman even told me that she was teaching\r\nher five-year-old child to read with it\u2026 People use it for their own\r\nreasons, and I don\u2019t need to control what those are. I tried with the\r\ndesign to make that feeling palpable. I was thinking also just in a\r\npersonal way of minimalist painting, wishing that in another life I\r\nwas a minimalist monochrome painter \u2013 or Agnes Martin. I accumulated\r\nthese words that I was using for writing other poems, and I never expected\r\nthem to appear in this order that I was just collecting them in. Before\r\nI started this work, I was looking at all of my writings of the last\r\nten years, all of the poems and all of the raw material, and I suddenly\r\nrealised that I was more interested in all the raw material than I was\r\nin the finished poems. Whenever you write, there is this quality to\r\nit, a kind of self-consciousness, this feeling that someone is going\r\nto read it someday, even if it\u2019s just a diary. But this, especially\r\nbecause I took apart the words, is the least self-conscious text I have\r\never written. I never even expected to read it myself. That quality\r\nin it became very interesting to me, and I chose to present it completely\r\nin chronological order, and not to edit it at all, even though there\r\nare things in it that are slightly embarrassing to me, but I decided\r\nnot to take them out because it had this very literal quality to me.<\/p>\r\n

F.Z.:<\/b>\r\nWhat about future projects?<\/p>\r\n

S.R..:<\/b>\r\nThe projects I\u2019m planning next are also in the area of social architecture.\r\nI\u2019m working to create two linked organisations, an open-source record\r\nlabel and a political lobbying group on the subject of copyright and\r\nintellectual property. Like some of my recent projects, these grew out\r\nof meditations on the meanings and implications of the word free, and\r\nout of a study of gift economies and how they function. It seemed important\r\nat this time to work on projects which will operate primarily outside\r\nof the art world, in part in order to clarify the way in which the social\r\narchitectures or organisations themselves can be a kind of art form.<\/p>\r\n

F.Z.:<\/b>\r\nWhat would you consider as the most important driving force in all your\r\nactivities? Are you thrilled by exploring the possibilities of the context\r\nyou work in, or is it the social moment in it, the fact that you meet\r\na lots of people?<\/p>\r\n

S.R..:<\/b>\r\nWell, there are a lot of things, of course. For instance, I love to\r\nlearn how to do things. I think it keeps my work changing, so now I\r\nhave to learn how political organisations are structured, how record\r\nlabels run, how you make records: I have been researching the whole\r\narea of the music world, what the networks are\u2026 Doing things I do is\r\nboth difficult and not difficult. They certainly do require an enormous\r\namount of work and resistance, of course. In a way, buying your way\r\ninto a biennial is a sort of ridiculous and certainly vulnerable thing\r\nto do. You\u2019re going to expect to be criticised \u2026 so when I was bidding,\r\nI went through all kinds of emotions and feelings that were interesting\r\nto recognise. On the positive side, if you do anything interesting,\r\nthen some people will just like it.<\/p>\r\n

F.Z.:<\/b>\r\nThank you!<\/p>\r\n

Updates\r\non recent activities of Sal Randolph can be found at http:\/\/www.highlala.com<\/a><\/p>\r\n

<\/a><\/p>\r\n

1]<\/b>\r\nSal Randolph studied biological anthropology at Harvard University,\r\nthen worked in a high technology company, subsequently returning to\r\nschool to study poetry. Lived for a while in Provincetown (RI), where\r\nshe exhibited for the first time in a gallery, initiating mostly unprofitable\r\nprojects. Her work gained broader publicity in 2001 when she started\r\nfree words<\/i>, followed by free biennial<\/i> and free manifesta<\/i>\r\nin 2002.
\r\n[back]<\/a>
\r\n2]<\/b> The show took place in Frankfurt am Main from 24 May through\r\n25 August 2002.
\r\n[back]<\/a>
\r\n3]<\/b> B\u00fcchel\u2019s participation in this year\u2019s Manifesta<\/i> consisted\r\nin auctioning his invitation to the show on Ebay<\/i>. While he named\r\nhis work Invite yourself<\/i>, free manifesta<\/i> turned this claim\r\ninto Everyone is invited
\r\n<\/i>[back]<\/a> <\/i><\/p>\r\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Everyone is Invited: Interview with Sal Randolph [1], Berlin, 5 November 2002 Franciska Z\u00f3lyom: If I told you that I was a Hungarian art historian working on my thesis about social sculpture, what would you reply? Who are you? Sal Randolph: I guess I would reply that I\u2019m an artist from New York, working […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":630121,"parent":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}