"(Meant to be) Lost and Found"
Displaced-correspondence-as-public-art by Anthony Discenza, Charles Gute, Jonn Herschend, and Jamie Hilder
October 22 - 26, 2009
All sorts of places
New York, New York
Project Description: For this collaboration with Invisible Venue (IV) Anthony Discenza, Charles Gute, Jonn Herschend, and Jamie Hilder have each created artworks that resemble correspondence. Each artist was invited to create work inspired by the accidental intimacy and curiosity of discovering someone's lost communication, such as the discovery of a handwritten letter blowing in the wind. In turn, 100 reproductions of these pieces of 'correspondence' will be left in random public spaces* throughout the city to mediate chance encounters with an unquantifiable public audience.
Here printed correspondence provides a metaphor to ask questions about public art, as both printed correspondence and permanent public art appear to be diminishing products of a bygone era in favor of increasing digitization, dispassionate social networking and temporary spectacle. The range of audience engagement is anticipated to mimic that of formally recognized "public art" and incite any number of positive and negative responses: indifference, derision, contemplation, or enjoyment. The production of this project, influenced by the simple gestures of Yoko Ono’s Fluxus postcards, challenges the market-driven budgets and architectural scale of most contemporary public art. Deploying the recessionary conventions of revolutionist movements—including interventionist tactics, low-budget production methods and portability—the works in “(Meant to be) Lost and Found” challenge widely accepted notions of art, public art, and the public for artwork in general.
Each piece of correspondence is reproduced as an inkjet print, unnumbered and unsigned. “This is public art. www.invisiblevenue.com” is printed on the back. Click here to download a complete suite: Download (Meant to be) Lost and Found
The participating artists share an interest in the role of text
and language in contemporary art. Anthony Discenza lives and works in
Oakland, California. His recent projects include a series of illegally posted
absurdist street signs near the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Charles
Gute lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His recent commission for
Socrates Sculpture Park mined the oeuvre of conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth for
the production of state-fair-appropriate signage. Jonn Herschend lives
and works in San Francisco, California. His current installation in
San Francisco alternative space Southern Exposure includes a
fictionalized donor space for the presentation of an accompanying
deadpan video. Jamie Hilder lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. Recently awarded a Fulbright
Fellowship, Hilder, whose work engages performance and social critique, is
completing his doctoral dissertation on concrete poetry.
* NOTES: These 'letters' were left in a variety of spaces around New York and Brooklyn, including: the subway, newstands, hot dog vending stands, bicycle baskets, public parks, libraries, book stores, cabs, hired cars, restaurants, pubs (including McSorley's est. 1854), a real estate office, an alternative art fair, the Creative Time Summit: Revolutions in Public Practice, front porches, front desks, memo boards, and the publishing offices of Artforum magazine, among many other locations. Selected documentation is included below, click to view images larger.
