This episode of "The Art Assignment"
is supported by Prudential.
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We are in London, and are about to meet up
with Peter Liversidge, who begins each work by sitting
down at his typewriter and writing proposals
for what he might like to do.
Some of these he does not realize,
like I propose to dam the Thames and flood the City of London.
And others, he does.
They've included offering gin and tonics
to his audience in hand-etched glasses,
flying flags over Edinburgh saying a simple Hello,
making a large lightbulb sculpture that randomly
illuminates the words before and after,
and lodging an 18th-century cannonball in a wall
of the Aldrich Museum.
Since 1992, he has done a number of what he calls postal pieces,
by placing postage and writing an address directly
on an object and sending it through the postal system
to the exhibition site.
Liversidge's proposals are invitations to action,
dynamically including the exhibition
site and you, the viewer, in their creation and reception.
He encourages us to think about what is and is not possible.
And today, he's going to offer up some proposals specifically
for you.
Hello.
I'm Peter Liversidge, and this is your art assignment.
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I always try to make the work evolve during the show,
so the show changes.
So it's not always-- there is a live element to it.
And that live element often isn't
there, because the live element can just
be the visitor thinking about a proposal, which
is-- addresses them directly, and doesn't exist as a work.
And it's almost as if they're-- the physical realized works are
the support structure for the works that don't exist.
So it's almost as if, OK, so-- let's say you're in the show,
and you're looking at the proposals, and you say,
OK, well, this exists.
This actually has some sense of itself in the space,
in a space.
Then you read the next proposal, which is unrealized,
and somehow they support one another.
It's like saying, well, OK, we fired a 17th-century cannon
into the wall of the gallery.
So if that's possible, why is it not possible that this happens?
You know, whatever this is.
And I thought the idea of a proposal being
the quintessential beginning or starting point,
you know, you propose to do something,
and then potentially you do it or you don't do it.
And that materiality, whether it's a physical thing or just
the idea, became really key to the work.
It was about the imagining space, rather than the actual.
And in that way, it can be anything.
You know, and my version of the work
is just my version of the work.
If we all, all three of us, read the same proposal
from the same book, we all bring ourselves to it.
We have this different way of imagining that.
You know, if we all read "Moby Dick,"
we all know it's about a whale trashing a boat,
but we all imagine that boat slightly differently.
You know, you may have more rigging on your boat,
or I've got less sails or whatever.
Do you know what I mean?
It's that sense of how that-- how imaginations in individuals
work, which I'm really interested in because then it
doesn't-- the work doesn't have to be just the work.
Your assignment is to respond to three proposals.
Now, I've not written those proposals yet.
I'm just about to do that.
But what I'd like you to do is either
pick one, or maybe all three, and respond to those
as you see fit.
I very much look forward to seeing your response.
Thank you.
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OK, John, which of these proposals
would you want to do the most?
Well, this is not going to surprise you
because you know that I am obsessed
with the relationship between the experienced world
and the actual world, and the relationship between matter
and sensation.
So you're gonna kick a rock?
I'm gonna kick a rock.
As for me, I thought I was gonna
go with the dress like your parents,
but I already kind of dress like my mother a little bit.
Yeah.
Although to be fair, your mother is very fashionable.
She is.
Thanks.
So I think I'm gonna go with the mountain stream.
And that's gonna be my way of dealing with the world.
So Peter's talked about how he was influenced
by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's card game "Oblique Strategies."
Right.
It's a set of 100 cards that they designed in 1974.
And it's different strategies for dealing
with creative dilemmas.
But this is a little bit different because, you know,
Peter isn't offering us an oblique strategy,
he's offering us specific instructions.
Right.
This is textbook instruction art,
where Peter is asking you to do this thing, and by doing it
you are bringing into the world Peter's artwork.
But of course, those of us doing the assignment
do have a lot of agency in how we execute these proposals.
Exactly.
Everyone is gonna respond to these in different ways.
And this gives me the chance to talk about this book,
"Do It," that actually exists in real life, as well.
And it's an exhibition that was conceived by the curator Hans
Ulrich Obrist beginning in the mid '90s.
And he invited artists from all over the world
to submit instructions for artworks
that could be made and remade in different exhibition sites.
And I'm gonna share with you a few of those instructions.
Some result in things that can be seen in a gallery,
like Sol LeWitt's instruction, a black, not-straight line
is drawn at approximately the center of the wall
horizontally from side to side.
Alternate red, yellow, and blue lines
are drawn above and below the black line
to the top and bottom of the wall.
While others, like Allan Kaprow's, dictate something
that happens during the course of the show-- sweeping the dust
from the floor of a room, spreading
the dust in another room so it won't be noticed,
continuing daily.
Or Andrea Slominski's instruction,
tip a bicycle seat so that the front points upwards, and use
the seat to squeeze lemons.
Or Maurizio Cattelan's demand, the curator or organizer
of the exhibition must wear only his or her underwear and shoes
at the opening of the show.
Others are prompts for the audience
to do a particular thing, like Simone Forti asking
us to think about climate change,
sit for some moments in dumb grief,
dumb knowing, dumb amazement.
Like the "Do It" instructions, Peter's proposals for us
signal the wildly diverse and divergent ways that prompts,
even very specific ones, can be interpreted and reinterpreted
and shared with the world.
I propose to write a choral piece
to celebrate the opening of a new building at Tate Modern.
The choral piece will be performed once
by a choir of 500 singers presented in the Turbine Hall.
The songs and vocalizations that they perform
will be based on interviews and observations of Tate.
The interviews will be conducted with members of staff,
from the director to the porter, with the architects
and builders of the new building,
with visitors, Friends of Tate, local businesses,
and a local primary school, so to obtain
as rounded an impression of Tate as possible.
The gathered material will be distilled
into songs and vocalizations that trace the museum's history
from when it opened on the 12th of May 2000
to the opening of the new building
to the public on the 17th of June 2016.
The performance on Saturday the 18th of June
will be sung by 24 different choirs,
representing many different communities from across London,
echoing how the original material for the songs
was gathered.
And that's the end of the proposal.
So it just describes-- and that's
one of the key things of the proposals,
they're descriptions.
They don't say, in this case, it's
[INAUDIBLE] although there were 25 choirs by the end of it,
that it represents the beginning of something.
That sense of a proposal, I think
we were saying at the start, is just the beginning.
It's always-- it always has this sense of being in a moment.
Not necessarily the moment, but a moment.
And in this, this just describes the work, but not the work.
It gives you a beginning, an introduction.
Yes, they are proposals, but they are also
potentially a starting point for someone to do something
that they wouldn't necessarily have done otherwise.
Now, that will appeal to some people, and not to others.
So I'm just as happy for them to be unrealized as I am realized.
Perhaps that should be one of the questions to people,
why did you realize the work?
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