As a response to Waldemar Januczszak’s London Times article, ‘What is Art for?,’ Adam Parrish and I created the following participatory event for one of Marina Zurkow’s classes at ITP. Everyone got under the table and described specific place they remembered from childhood. It was an interesting mix of stories about: beaches, bamboo groves, laundry baskets, climbing trees naked by the highway, jumping up on kitchen counters, eating steak sandwiches in a basement dark room, using a fishing pole off of a NYC balcony to drop notes on other people’s terraces, swimming pools with frozen chocolate bars, wrestling with twins, and hanging out by the creek. Thanks to everyone for participating.

Photo: Carsten Holler, Tate Modern

• experience-based
• role of spectacle: internal/external
• collapse of the viewer/performer/piece
• Political act of artist calling the piece ‘test site’—experimental, experiential applications transform high art institution into a lab space
• relationship between sliders/spectators as an interruption to general adult and museum etiquette/mobility
• Accessible Protocols — slides (kids: park; adults: emergency exits)
• Art brings Magic
• context breeds meaning
• Who can appreciate this?
• What do people expect of art?
• Why do people go for an art experience?
• Change conditions
• Escapism vs Presence

Other Relevant Projects that Play in this Space

Cocaine Buffet, 1998 and 2002, Rob Pruitt
Turrell’s P.S.1 piece
Rirkrit Tiravanija’s dinner pieces in galleries/museums that explore the role of the artist, building on Joseph Beuys’ concept of ’social sculpture’ and Bourriaud’s ‘relational aesthetics’

Pieces that have gone beyond museum as ‘test site’

improv everywhere Operation: Best Buy
smiling flashmobs in belarus or here

» Reference