Art Spotlight: The Desk
I know I pretty much immediately stopped updating this as soon as I started to again, so I apologize.
My subject today is a piece I saw about a month ago at an exhibit in a university space downtown (“XL Project” on Clinton St). The majority of the show was an interactive project-experiment-study involving social conceptions of the physical appearance of dinosaurs, but what I really want to talk about is an installation in the adjoining room. I forget the title, or if it even had a title card at all, but there was a desk with a comfortable-looking rolling chair pulled up to it. Scattered on the desk were various papers, letters, and envelopes, mostly typewritten. All of them regarded a man’s search for his birth mother. (Most of the names were blacked out, but the man’s name was left visible - it was the same artist as the one who created the dinosaur project.)
The first letter that caught my eye was one of those vague, formal, impossible-seeming documents you see in movies or book about adopted children looking for their birth parents: something like “If you are the person name above, and you lived at such and such an address at such and such a time, please respond to me at this address. I have some important information for you.” I saw a few more of these queries, as well as some letters between the agency searching for the mother and the artist. And then my gaze fell on a handwritten response: “I am that person. What did you want to tell me?”
That was the extent of the visible items. I knew the artist was interested in human interaction with art, as evidenced by his dinosaur installation, but I hesitated to move things and flip through the papers. It seemed like it would be such an intrusion, like furtive snooping in a private office rather than exploring a public exhibit. Besides, the arrangement of the papers seemed calculated to whet curiosity, which indicated that they hadn’t been touched by other XL patrons…or maybe the girl working on her laptop and keeping idle watch over the place restored everything to its proper order after people had rummaged?
I walked away without touching anything. Now part of me wants to go back to XL Project and see if the exhibit is still there and, if it is, look through and rifle through and touch and read everything on that desk. Was she the birth mother? If so, was there a happy reunion? Or did she resent being found?
But another part of me wonders if discovering my particular reaction to such an installation was the point, after all.
Edit: Ryan and I happened to pass XL Project while walking downtown, and I wanted to show him it, so we stopped. Since I was there, I checked the desk. It turns out the possible birth mother never replied to the explanation for contact when it was sent to her. Strange, how knowing the uncertainty feels so much better than being uncertain because I don't know.
My subject today is a piece I saw about a month ago at an exhibit in a university space downtown (“XL Project” on Clinton St). The majority of the show was an interactive project-experiment-study involving social conceptions of the physical appearance of dinosaurs, but what I really want to talk about is an installation in the adjoining room. I forget the title, or if it even had a title card at all, but there was a desk with a comfortable-looking rolling chair pulled up to it. Scattered on the desk were various papers, letters, and envelopes, mostly typewritten. All of them regarded a man’s search for his birth mother. (Most of the names were blacked out, but the man’s name was left visible - it was the same artist as the one who created the dinosaur project.)
The first letter that caught my eye was one of those vague, formal, impossible-seeming documents you see in movies or book about adopted children looking for their birth parents: something like “If you are the person name above, and you lived at such and such an address at such and such a time, please respond to me at this address. I have some important information for you.” I saw a few more of these queries, as well as some letters between the agency searching for the mother and the artist. And then my gaze fell on a handwritten response: “I am that person. What did you want to tell me?”
That was the extent of the visible items. I knew the artist was interested in human interaction with art, as evidenced by his dinosaur installation, but I hesitated to move things and flip through the papers. It seemed like it would be such an intrusion, like furtive snooping in a private office rather than exploring a public exhibit. Besides, the arrangement of the papers seemed calculated to whet curiosity, which indicated that they hadn’t been touched by other XL patrons…or maybe the girl working on her laptop and keeping idle watch over the place restored everything to its proper order after people had rummaged?
I walked away without touching anything. Now part of me wants to go back to XL Project and see if the exhibit is still there and, if it is, look through and rifle through and touch and read everything on that desk. Was she the birth mother? If so, was there a happy reunion? Or did she resent being found?
But another part of me wonders if discovering my particular reaction to such an installation was the point, after all.
Edit: Ryan and I happened to pass XL Project while walking downtown, and I wanted to show him it, so we stopped. Since I was there, I checked the desk. It turns out the possible birth mother never replied to the explanation for contact when it was sent to her. Strange, how knowing the uncertainty feels so much better than being uncertain because I don't know.