Transcript of Paul Ramirez Johanas' WorkSpace Talk
Presenter:
"Thank you all for coming tonight for Artistic License, this is a program that the museum began when we opened the year before last, in an attempt to bring artists represented in the museum's exhibitions and collections into the galleries and give them the opportunity to speak about their work, and give you the opportunity to hear from them and ask questions and be engaged. This is something we will continue to do every so often at the museum. As you know we've changed our schedule we're only open on the third Thursday of the month and that's where we're concentrating our programs and so if you look for our third Thursday program that's where you'll find Artistic License. The next one will be in March where we'll be featuring one of the artist who will be featured in the new WorkSpace exhibition, which was created by Annette Carlozzi, and it's an artist's response to Hurricane Katrina. And I'm very pleased to present Ursula Davila–Villa who is our artistic curator of Latin American art who will introduce our artist guest this evening."
Ursula Davila–Villa:
"Good night everybody, I'm glad to see a lot of people even with the cold and rain. So, how do I begin. This is the last time Paul will be visiting Austin in relation to WorkSpace, which is a project that I've been working on with Paul for probably two years now. So, it's kind of a bitter sweet visit for me, because it's really been a gradation process for both of us. We came to a place as both curator and artist, it's not only what you see in the galleries. It was really rewarding, the process of constructing what we have in the gallery space. But going back to Paul, Paul is a New York based artist, he was born in California, he was raised in Honduras. I met him in New York city and we began a conversation that was mostly about previous work he's done which he'll touch on tonight, and the body of work you'll see here almost everything was done specifically for WorkSpace except for three pieces in the installation. But, I'll let Paul talk about it in more detail. By the end of his talk we're going to have some Q&A. I really encourage you if you have questions in the process of the presentation or towards the end, please feel free to interact. I see this event more like a round table more than a formal presentation. I feel this is a space where artists can talk to each other and interact in a very different way. I hope you enjoy it, I think Paul is a great speaker and a great artist, and I've been very fortunate to work with him the last year. And I'd like to take this moment to thank you Paul, it's been a great experience and I'm very happy with WorkSpace, and I look forward to seeing where it goes from now."
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"Well, usually I do the whole song and dance that most artists need to do to prop themselves up and say these works came straight from heaven fully formed. But, I thought it would be really interesting to talk about how did I arrive at this. And when you walk into a museum and you see a show, well, I like to think it's (inaudible) kind of put together, and has a certain purpose, and you see the finished product. And, I thought it'd be interesting to take the show apart and see all the dead ends, things that might have been, because I started to work (inaudible). And, just to see exactly how we end up with an exhibit like the one we see now. And, I think at first I'd like to show you a little background with previous works, to see why I even wasn't going to (inaudible). I think the work I always make is predicated with this idea, sort of a lack of originality, the crisis of the author, that we live in post–modern times, so for better or worse, everything's already been done before, and we're all sort of re–viewing things over and over again. Or a more positive way to see it would be to say like the author Borges says that the act of reading is more creative than the act of writing. That the author writes one thing and it has a singular meaning. But, each time someone reads it, each reader comes up with a new meaning for the work. And as more readers read the text more and more meanings are created. And I really take this to heart, that we just sort of go around reading things, and not literally text, but any pre–existing, could be instructions, scores, plays, things other people have made, words other people have said, steps other people have taken. So for example a very typical piece like this, which would be one of the first pieces I made out of school. Which is just, looking at Edison's drawing. This is Edison's drawing he made when he figured out; the ah–ha moment of how to record sound onto objects; this is the main reference. And, I thought just looking at this drawing can I go back to my studio and re–enact, sort of re–invent that moment of discovery. Except there really is no invention, right? I know what I need to make, I just don't know really how to make it. So, after a fair amount of trial and error I made a recording machine, where I can put narratives, sounds, stories, into an object. And being interested in sculpture that's pretty interesting, right? If an object can have a story in it, not through interpretation, not metaphorically, literally you can put a story in an object. And the way it works, it was really simple basic. It was just like a stretched piece of leather and sound comes through the funnel and, in my case a thumb tack vibrates, and the wax cylinder is spinning and when the needle hits the wax it scores it, and as a sound hits the leather it carves deeper or lighter. And you rewind and put the needle on the groove and this time when you play it the reverse happens, the needle vibrates, the leather vibrates, the air vibrates, and wha–lah you have recorded sound. The question is what to record, can you hear? What I decided to do, was to sort of compress history, and put one text on to another text. So we have Edison, the self–made man who changed the world by making objects, and then we have Apollo 11, the most epic trip mankind has ever taken. And I tried to put one into the other, so when the astronauts were on the moon they had radio contact with Houston the entire time, actually through the entire mission. So, there's a one to one correspondence for that 23 hours men were on the moon that first time, we have 23 hours of audio tape, no gaps; every silence, every piece of static, every throat clearing, cough, everything was recorded. And, I'm basically doing dubbing, just dubbing the archival NASA footage on to my home–made wax records. And indexing them, to a completely obsessive level: from July 20 19 hours 26 minutes 40 seconds 1969 to July 20 19 hours 27 minutes 40 seconds 1969. 60 seconds of discreet history stored in this sculpture this monument, to be replayed perhaps by this machine. And you can see, I'm interested in the archive, I'm interested in stacks, I'm interested in memory, I'm interested in memory being replayed, I'm interested in art that is per formative in some way, like that machine really does record, these things really do have sound recorded in on them. And, I do just record 60 seconds at a time, and I make these libraries, that when they're finished they'll be the full 23 hours. And I'm sort of breaking them down for financial reasons, like the first one is from the thump of the lunar lander to the split second before the first step on the moon. The second library's from the first step on the moon to when they close the hatch when they get back to the module. This one starts when they close the hatch and then they undress and then they sleep for six hours on the moon. So actually, a great portion of these cylinders just have silence on them. So like the recording machine's running and the astronauts are sleeping and Houston reads for vital signs every half hour. So like, armature radio people who are listening to the mission aren't freaked out that the astronauts are dead."
Question from the audience:
"How many recordings have you done?"
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"I have one more to go, which I have this weird superstitious, like you know uhh. Like you know, when you work on something that long you kind of don't want to finish it, but (inaudible). And since they're records they have lyrics. So each section of the project has a book, for example Man on the Moon, which is the title of the work. The second part is called EVA, for extra–vehicular activity . And the books sort of reiterates what's in the cylinders. It says cylinder 399 starts on July 20 1969, exactly the same brief indexing, but here you have transcripts. You know because the piece is incredibly un–giving. Like there's this minimal form on the wall, you can't touch them, you can't play them, but at least you can open this book and see what was said at what time. There's a cast of characters. So again, the idea of a play or a score, I've turned everything into a sort of a play. There's the parts, there's the cast of characters, here's the score, here's history that can be replayed. I mean very literally I think of it as a score. So I've often made pieces of music because I like the idea of a score, as this is not art. It's sort of art. It's sort of like art when it's performed. I don't know, I'm interested in the score, it's in a drawer, no one sees it, what is it? It's a zombie. You know, dead or alive. You open the drawer, sing, oh it's alive again. So, I like that it needs that person. And, in music we don't make such strict divisions as in visual art on authorship, right? You can be a world class musician who's not a composer. And all you do is sing another person's music. And, we don't have that in our visual arts tradition. Uhm we'll get to that. So I'll literally take a piece of music. This is The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and I'll turn each note into a bottle full of water, sort of re–creating the score. And you take a mallet and strike each bottle once and The Battle Hymn of the Republic comes back alive. It's a funny piece, because it's completely culturally biased, right? You must be American, it's your memory plus this piece to play the The Battle Hymn of the Republic. If you've never heard The Battle Hymn of the Republic you don't know the space between the notes, it makes no sense. It's like you plus this equals the piece. I was interested in the The Battle Hymn of the Republic because it was this melody that we recycle. It was religious music, then it was a march, then it was the march of the North in the Civil War, then the North won, and it was the battle hymn for the entire republic, and later it was a union song. And, I just like that idea, we take this form add new meaning and whoosh, take it out into the world. "
Question from the audience:
"Does the viewer need to know how to read music?"
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
No, what happens is you start to play the first few bottles and you're like oh, and then you finish. And a lot of the work has to do with science and history, but there's other ways to interpret the text. And now we're sort of to the present, this is the last sort of background piece that I'll show you. I thought... another way to think of it is this way: these are the last two spots on Earth that had to be conquered; Everest and the South Pole. And for you, me, all of us in this room we can't do this anymore. The map is closed, there is no place we can go and say I am the first human being here, I take possession of it. These are the last two events where that happened. So all that's left for you and me, is to walk in someone else's footsteps. If you want to go to the highest point in New Mexico you get your map, you follow the trail, that was literally made by so many people that they left a track in the ground. You're like a needle in the grove of a record. You just follow it, and you get to the top. But, what's interesting is you still have feelings. There's still something happening. I get to the top and I still have some sense of discovery, conquest, all those bad things happen. You know I feel like a conquistador when I'm at the top. But, I'm not the first person. You know this photo is tightly cropped, there's about 30 people milling around, all with their cell phones, guess where I'm calling you from. So I'm trying to do this gesture of taking possession in some way. I like to think of it like I'm un–taking possession, I'm un–naming this land. So the way the project works is, I literally create a score for myself. It's a book called 50 State Summits. It's an album. It starts it 2002. There's a score of what I'm going to do, go to all 50 states, go to the highest point. There's a little etcetera, an extra chapter, where I put three other geographic sites. Everything that I might do already has a place waiting for it. There's a page of the book. So, page 43 there's a page waiting for the photograph of Texas: Guadalupe Peak. So, then I go to Texas and I climb to the top and I take a picture, and fill in my album. And the way that it's shown is a combination of the filled pages; what I've done, and you know, what is waiting to be played. It's a book, but only in a figure of speech, so it's shown like this. Some things are not so heroic, like Kansas."
(laughing)
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"Some things are really difficult like (inaudible). Some things almost killed me like Utah, where I actually can't stand up because I'm so sick from oxygen sickness. And some of them were really easy like Oklahoma."
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"So there's that, let's call that the exhibition work. But I've also made a lot of, I don't know what to call it, public art, because that's what we call public art. And the public art that I've made, you know in the exhibition work I am the protagonist, doing these actions. But in the public art, I trying to reach the public. And the public work has increasingly become very socially oriented in that sense. I'm really trying to reach the public in a very direct way. And from 2003 to 2005 I basically spent two years only making two works of art that are related. And they have to do with this, in a (inaudible). One was called Mi Casa Es Su Casa which was a project I did for insight. And it's this show that happens right on the border between Mexico and the United States, specifically in San Diego and Tijuana. And, I made a sort of photo essay inspirational talk, where I took photographs of residents of San Diego and Tijuana and I asked them to show me their keys. And then, I asked them to take me to each place the keys opened. And, I made a sort of photo essay of like this person, their keys, this key opens this, the next key opens that. And they just took me through their entire lives; their parent's house, if there was a spare key to their parent's house, cars, lockers, anything, just every single key. And, it sort of creates this portrait of the region. And these are the kind of images I would show, like oh this key opens this house, or this key opens one of these locks. And then, I would do these digressions that would bring it back to the story. Like Oh there's other kind of keys. You need the key to the house and the alarm code. And because people in Tijuana are constantly crossing the border, when people showed me their keys we often had to cross the border. So I kept making an allusion to the border between the two countries that's a kind of threshold that needs a key. I did a weird digression where I talk about passports. I show different people's passports and passports that open different lands. And I talk about ornaments on people's key chains, and how they were like little artworks, and how I wanted to make a real artwork that would be an ornament. And I talked about the (inaudible). And I was just weaving all these (inaudible) information. I talked about space travel because that's the ultimate threshold. And rockets open up that threshold into outer space. And I talked about stamps, and how stamps open up spaces that are inaccessible to us. I can send a message into a space that is otherwise locked. I talked about prisoners receiving letters. And then I just took the slide show on tour. And I toured about 12 sites in both cities, ranging from like a bohemian open mike bar, a prison, an architecture school, a high school, a bird watchers club"
(laughing)
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"I just took this lecture to all these places, and I just talked to people about space and keys. And, I always photographed the key and the lock to the space that I was lecturing. So if I was doing the lecture now I would show the key to the Blanton and the door we came through, just to get people involved; to get them to see that I'm really talking about something that relates to you. And towards the end of the lecture I showed these pictures and said look I thought so much about the situation of open and closed and trust. And, I made these blank keys and they're engraved. One side is engraved with this image and the other side is engraved with this image. And I also said look I also brought here tonight the top keys for this area of the world. So these are the most popular key blanks. And I took out the key to the front door of my house, and I took out the blank and I said I'm going to copy the key to the door of my house. And I had a copy machine on the place, and right there for the lecture I duplicated my key. And then I told members of the audience I would give a key, now the art key right, to anyone in the audience. And, the only price you have to pay: you have to let me copy any key from your key chain and offer it to someone else. And, I just kind of got people to do it by telling them look you're giving a stranger who doesn't know you a key. They don't even know what the key is for. It still is an exercise in some kind of trust. And, what usually happened is two or three people rushed because they wanted it. And then as soon as a few people formed a line, then everybody left. So it's not a big artwork, I didn't reach thousands of people. I reached maybe 500 people. But, each person left with this thing in their key chain. That is like this actual, it's symbolic on one level, but it also is a reality, it really is a key to a stranger's something. So that was really interesting. And, I thought that I really want to make more artworks like this."
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"Simultaneously I made a piece that I think is like the parallel piece. This piece was for the city of Cambridge Mass. And I took this no man's land, This kind of weird nothing place, which was called Taylor Square on the map. And, I took public money for a public commission, and actually turned it into a real park. That is actually part of the park system; the Cambridge park system. It's their smallest park."
(laughing)
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"And, basically it's form is completely normal. I was actually like what should it look like? Like normal, New England, oldie townie, you know commons. And, it's super tiny. It's like from the screen to where I'm standing, and it's in triangle shaped. I actually had to draw it in scale, to make sure that the when the doors open they don't hit the bench or the flag pole. That's why this is tapered, so you know like maybe 2 people can squeeze onto the bench. There's nothing special about the park except that it has 2 doors. And the doors are always locked from the outside and open from the inside. And, I put all of the money from the commission into 5000 keys. That all say Taylor Square on one side and copy me on the other. And I attached the keys to this poster, like where the red spot is, you know like glue where you can detach the key. And, on the other side of the poster was a letter from me to 5000 families around the park: Here's your key from 5000 keys for Taylor Square, Cambridge's smallest park. The park and the keys are part of a public work of art I made for you. (inaudible) ...please add it to your key chain along with all your keys that open your home, your vehicle, or apartments. You now have a key to a space that (inaudible). Please copy it and give it to friends and neighbors. (inaudible)"
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"So, what I wanted to do at the Blanton is take this work, and the other work and merge them if I could, to try and take some ideas of citizenship and monuments, and public art, and some ideas of works that are in an exhibition, that are performable, and see if maybe the part of the work and the other work that's me performing, the public and the exhibition that's performing, that I could merge the works in some way. When I came here, I just took a walk around campus. And I just thought, let me blindly walk around (inaudible) and find the monuments of UT Austin. And to see and be informed about its art. And you know, there's bronze sculpture that will last forever. There's also things like this which I think are kind of interesting, because they're not really monuments but they're sort of kind of like monuments. Where the donors names go to the (inaudible). And then there's also contemporary art, and I thought this may be more closer to what I want, because you can look at it but you can also get in it and be a part of it. Then there's also incidental things, things that the public itself creates, like the stickers on the lamp post. And it becomes like an incidental sculpture. I mean it has authorship, everyone is making the decision to do that. And it is a form, right? It's nice. Then there's strange things. You know."
(laughing)
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"A bridge to nowhere with a plaque. And then things again like this could be a great sculpture. Or these could be sculpture. Or these could be sculpture. There all good. And then there's things that happen by accident. Christo already did this. And then we get to the real stuff, performable sculpture. A pre–existing text with a (inaudible) president, that can be re–lived over and over again. It's my work all over again. And they love the archive, just like I do. Who doesn't like this box. And then I saw this, which I really liked, which is the teleprompter text, you know what I'm talking about right? This idea like the president reads this text that president reads and even those it's his own words, put back on a piece of paper to read back to you. And he's reading them to himself. So the teleprompter was like uhmm I like that. But now I'm going to back track a little bit. So what I thought I'd do is revisit that piece with the bottles, where you play the The Battle Hymn of the Republic. In the end the piece was just a little bit too entertaining. It had that thing where people were involved in the gallery, but it was sort of like a joy ride. And, I thought how can I break that situation. So again, take every note in the melody, remap it into an object. Then I thought take one note out, so that's the note for the (inaudible) or there's a gap. The first chance I had to do this was in China. You might not be able to hear that."
(music playing)
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"You are now listening to the anthem of China during the cultural revolution. It's a piece of music that every Chinese knows because it was unbelievably pounded into their brains during the cultural revolution. But, then after Mao died they switched back to the old anthem. And, this has no official status anymore. But everybody remembers it. So, I thought that's a good melody. In fact, the music was intensely used, so much so that when China sent its first satellite into space, China 1, it only had one function: it was to play that tune in space, over and over and over again. So what I did, instead of you playing the bottles, now I have a series of bells that are automated. So the sculpture, plays the music by itself. But, one of the notes is missing. So as the little electric hammers play the song. ding ding ding ding, and then it gets here and it goes click click, silence, and then so on. So I've taken one note and I'm going to try and give it back to the public I thought. So the way the piece works is the bells play, and the missing note is on a pedestal, and it's up to a member of the Chinese public to take that bell and ring it. And they all know the song, they all recognize it and they all know something's wrong. And my hope, is to just make this bell that has in no way been marked by my hand, to be infused with meaning. Like suddenly even if you don't play it you're thinking well that's broken, this fixes it, will I play it or not? Whether or not you play it is not important, just the thought will I do it or not, and the implications of doing it or not doing it."
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"And I tried to do it again, I took this Woody Guthrie song, that is actually here. And, I thought what if I fragment This land is your Land into individual notes. Each note becomes a pedestal for a bell, and I spread it through the museum. So, everybody plays just one fragment. With the small chance that maybe together, everyone gets organized and they can play the song. It's not going to happen, but I thought it would be an interesting experiment. So I made it, and actually put it into the show to see what happens. And it was just chaos. It was like people ringing bells. It never came together. But, I thought it would be interesting to see. Or I thought I could make up my own songs. Where I could have one of those big prince and princess trumpets with one on there of a made up song. And what I finally did is this piano piece, which is here. Which was the first piece was o.k. I can take all these ideas and make them work. Because we know at the end, and we know what's missing the minute we see it. The minute we see the piano we know something's wrong. There's only one note. The piano is supposed to play many notes, it's an instrument. But, a piano with one note, what can it play? Then you see the video that you can go see in the room, where the piano plays in the reverse situation; they're playing songs. I take protest songs, and one of the keys is missing. So whenever the hands of the piano player go to that note there's a silence. So, of course I had to rewrite the music for the piano because the piano can only play the songs in this way. And again like the bell, I just wanted to make the viewer aware of that. There's a possibility for interaction (inaudible). And making that play with the fact that it's protest music. You know, so what happens when We Shall Overcome, every time the word we comes up there's a silence. And you know I'm asking you do you want to play this note? And, I'm not really interested in people playing a game, trying to fill the music. I just like it to be this suggestion. I was going to play the video, but it's right next door."
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"Okay, so the other component for this show was the idea of clay tablets. I've been working with this since 2002 and I had no idea how to solve it. I knew that I liked this idea of taking the typewriter that I had modified where I could put red slabs of clay and just write into clay. And I was interested in that because of the Sumerians, who are some of my favorite people in the world. And, you know they did all these things: they invented cities, they invited writing, they invented public space. And, I thought it's interesting I always think about the dichotomy of text and visual art, and some don't think text should be used in visual arts. But I was interested in when text was formed, you know the first text that humanity produced it was sculpture. There was nothing disembodied about it. You had to reach into the ground get some clay, take your little reed, and go, do cuneiform. In fact, it was often part of buildings. There was almost no distinction between architecture and writing. So, I was interested in bringing writing back to that really material way of production. But, I didn't really know what to write. One of the things I was interested in for example was, it's lost text. It's like archeology. So I tried to find text that is incredibly significant today that we're already loosing. So I found certain things. For example this is the oldest web page online. The first web page online is already lost. This one was made a few minutes later. And it's on a server in Switzerland. And it says links and anchors. A link is a connection between one piece of hypertext and another. It's just text explaining itself. And, I just took the code. Here's the HTML code for that page, the oldest web page online and I put it onto a clay tablet. And I was like maybe I can make this equation like archeology and the present. But the problem is that most people can't read HTML. So, it's not a very alluring piece. I mean what happened with the Sumerians, is that they would build these huge libraries and put them on these wooden shelves. So when the cities were destroyed, the libraries would catch on fire in war. And that would actually bake the clay. So, like the act of destruction would preserve the writing. So I wanted to do something with this. This is an excavation in (inaudible) and they're finding remnants of libraries. They think that they've found only one percent of all the written text that the Sumerians left behind. And of that one percent they've only read one percent. So it's the equivalent of like in the future they find Borders, and they start digging into that. Imagine how much stuff they're going to find. And they're trying to read through all of that to find literature. But all they're finding is fashion magazines, and car magazines. That's sort of what's happening in archeology. And just, I'm sorry I'm going to digress. I liked the Sumerians also because they invented cities. And as soon as they invented cities they're was art in the cities. And as soon as they're were cities they're were public spaces in these cities. And they invented all these things that are very personal to public art and art in general: monuments. They invented this, we still build these right? Arches. I'll go back to this page. So, at first these were really basic, let's make an archive out of clay and just let it decay. It's unfired clay, let's stack it up. The weight of the top ones starts to destroy the bottom ones. And, I thought this is a lot like smiths. A heap of language, to try and make language into a material. I thought a lot about cipher for this exhibition for example. Which is when the Sumerians had to write something over and over and over and over again. They would make these cipher cylinders which are reversed text in relief. And so then they rolled it on clay, and they could just write something they needed to write over and over again over and over again. But this never got resolved for the show. But at the time I thought, what do I do with the cylinders? And I thought, oh I could stack them into a column in the middle of the space. And I thought it could be like a Trajen column. And I thought about the French Revolution. And how in the Paris (inaudible) they toppled the Trajen Column in Paris. And I was like oh yeah, that would be a really good form. And what about barricades during the French Revolution, that's also related to this. You just take bricks and rearrange them and the city becomes a barricade. And they're are modern barricades, and can I make something with this. But this idea also didn't get resolved. And at one moment I thought maybe I could dig for clay on campus. And, take the clay into the museum and dump it and somehow it becomes a heap of language. But other things happened. Then I thought maybe this would be a clay library and that would be the place where we publish the clay library. And then we move it from here to there. Sort of like this, what we really need is a library cart. And then I thought well let me look at library carts. And then I went to Staples the web site and I started looking up library carts and then I thought well anything that holds a document is a good form for these clay tablets. In fact, anything in the office is good for this. You know this with clay tablets, this with clay tablets, this with clay tablets. But, I thought let me look at the whole taxonomy of the office. This should be an installation. And then a lot of cubicles for a major show, where I take over the entire museum. And then if it has a lot of clay on it, it could be like a buried shed also (inaudible). These are good sculptures, these are good sculptures, these are good sculptures, these are good sculptures. This is a good sculpture, another good sculpture. And then, I bumped into this. And I thought this is it, right? Because this is where it becomes like the other work. Instead of making like a big library where I have to work months and months and months making a million tablets. It's really about one specific text. And this turns the text into a performance. And suddenly, it's a different kind of text that goes here, than on a book shelf. It's something to be said, it's something to be spoken out. And I thought this changes everything. And I thought what other objects can I find? And I just went on a rampage looking for other objects that the pedestal actually (inaudible). The copy machine for example, is one that I thought was really exciting. I was like oh that's performable. You take text, you put it on a copy machine, and you make more copies. And, it was a complete move away from the way I was thinking. Which was library, archive, index. And you know before, I was looking at very different kinds of text. I was trying to find interesting text that had to do with memory or loss of memory. So, I was looking at things like, the Freedom of Information Act. I was trying to download things, different histories, histories that were suppressed. And I was like oh, this is kind of interesting. I mean look at this one, the entire thing has been marked out. And I thought what I really need is a different kind of text, a performable text. For example, something like this suicide notes, or you know Hunter Thompson: (inaudible). But, it wasn't really quite what I need. And I found oaths. And oaths are perfect, right? Because an oath only works when you say it out loud. And I thought this is it. An oath goes on a lectern and that becomes the piece. And this is the oath of citizenship. You do this, you have to learn it. And then I found a portable lectern and put a clay tablet on it. With the oath: Do you promise to tell the truth, nothing but the truth so help you god. And just put it into the exhibition space for the viewer. Again it's not important for me that actually someone actually have the courage to do it. It's just though as soon as you see it, you know the implications. It makes you feel like maybe a little bit you should tell the truth. And I also thought of things like a town crier. But again, this could not be resolved in time for the show. I was just sort of like the person is the pedestal for the text. They ring the bell and they walk around town reading the news. A megaphone and text? But also, that was not resolved. So I went on to the copier, because the copier seemed, well you know how it is in the studio, sometimes you hit a wall, and sometimes you hit a highway. So, the copier was good. And what I thought for the copier was what made sense to reproduce over and over again. And the way to fold it back into performance was to make it into surveys. Because then it's like you need many copies of the survey to find out what people really think, right? The more surveys that are filled out the more we get a general sense of what we think communally. So, I researched surveys and found 6 that I liked. And I made originals out of clay. And then, we have another sculpture."
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"And you notice, that it's really about these objects literally acting as pedestals. It's just about putting that text at eye level, so you can read it. And it was also important to me, for there not to be too much text. Because who wants to go to the museum and read? And so, one would be like: for each of the following items I'm going to read to you, please tell me if it is something that you believe in, something you're not sure about, or something you don't believe in. God, the devil, angels, hell, heaven. Believe in, don't believe in, unsure. And the copies. Another thing we do with documents that is performable, is we make paper air planes, and we throw it away. And that could be another good sculpture, into a garbage can; another office supply. But this is also not resolved for the show. I was like turn it upside down and it's a pedestal. Fill it up. Put it on a pedestal? No you can't have a pedestal on a pedestal. More? Upside down and more? Hmm. And this column. But you know, maybe next year."
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"And the teleprompter is another item that I thought, from the museum, from the presidential library here. Because I thought this is really the ultimate threshold between public and speaker. And, it's the thing where you look into the camera, and you see through a mirror, the text that you have to read. So you see yourself, you're looking into a mirror, you're looking into a camera, you're speaking to others that are not actually there. Here's the camera that I actually chose. I had to do a little photo shop because the clay isn't strong enough, so this lens is actually quite narrow. So I just enlarged it in photo shop. So I attached this for structural reasons. Also, lowered this in photo shop. And printed it big and used my camera for carving. There it is, gratuitous studio shot. And there it is, but what would I use to pedestal it on? Because it didn't make sense to have a pedestal on a pedestal. So, I put it on a (inaudible) pedestal. So, here's the finished piece. And, the final test, I just read state of the union addresses, trying to define a fragment of the speech that would be suitable. And what I found was my fellow Americans, which of course has to be a mirror image and upside down. So when you put it on the teleprompter it gets righted. So, the mirror of the teleprompter places the text in front of the camera, so you can see it and simultaneously address my fellow Americans. Which I like because you are a fellow American as well. So you're addressing yourself as well."
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"And, I still thought of the idea of the index. (inaudible) It was like many many tablets with some text. Like maybe stacked, like maybe we'd make a kiln, or maybe like a barricade. Like this? But again, this piece was another dead end that maybe in the future I could (inaudible). And, I resisted for a long time the music pedestal, because I was like that's too easy. And, I actually looked at karaoke machines, but they're not really interesting, they're just like a black box. I have to make my own karaoke machine. Where you can sing Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land. These are the stanzas of the song. And these are two extra stanzas that are not usually taught in school, but are part of the song. They are super political and left wing, and against private property. (inaudible) And that's the very end of the show."
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"So what I'm going to do next probably is this show up in Aldridge. Where I have this part of the museum. This is a picture of inside the (inaudible). And, I think I'm just going to extend the floor of the exhibition space onto the sculpture garden. And, that way I could maybe have two identical sculptures simultaneously, but since they're made of fired clay the one inside the museum, is preserved forever, but the one outside, as the show goes on and it rains (inaudible) it just sort of dissolves. And I'm already back to my old tricks. I've already learned that it's not the library I need to build. It's in performance that (inaudible), but I'm still trying to resolve this. But I wanted to have a bra ca dab bra, which in ancient Aramaic means I create as I speak. The more I speak the more I create. And with more of these tablets I build something, but I still don't know how to resolve it. This is a Sumerian weird thing. But I found other things doing research for this show that I'm still interested in. Like dropping leaflets to enemy troops, so they know what to say to surrender. And we also have bombs, that explode, and in the cloud of the (inaudible) it'd be either propaganda, (inaudible), or again instructions how to surrender. They're actually still used today in Afghanistan and Iraq. So here's a cloud of fliers. Voice activated locks. You have to say something your name and then the door opens. But what if it's recorded with something else, something you know. What if Martin Luther King's voice is recorded in there, and you have to say I have a dream. And you have to remember the speech and speak his words in order for the door to open. Wishing wells, you approach the wishing well and you throw a coin. Or my favorite, christening ships. I name you the Queen Elizabeth. And those words suddenly, but what is the form of this, I don't know. They make this sort of ceremonial souvenirs. But this is sort of really exciting. But, that's where I'm going to stop, and take your questions if you have any."
Ursula Davila–Villa:
"Are there any questions from anybody (inaudible) I don't think we have a lot of time left. But, you were saying something, that got my attention, that when I was doing the tour that I actually said the opposite."
(laughing)
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"Oh, you said the opposite."
Ursula Davila–Villa:
"Ya, and you said that I'm not really interested in people reading the text aloud. I'm more interested in people just reading the text. And, when I was doing the tour, I approached one of the pieces and I read the oath and somehow I was brave enough to read it aloud in front of the audience, something I've never really done, even though I was working so long with you on the pieces. And it changed the way I confronted the text because I've read the text (inaudible) for such a long time again, again, and again. The minute I read it aloud, the meaning of those words really shifted. And it brought me to a very different place. And, it was a very simple sentence that speaks about truth, and the concept of truth, and commitment. And given that I had an audience, maybe that was really the part that had an effect. That I was committing to this act in front of specific people. If I was reading that to myself, if it would have a different implication. On the tour I had (inaudible), he specifically teaches or studies text that implies performance. But, this is in the world of law. And, they use certain examples like theatre, they're specifically meant to be preformed. Like sentences like you're under arrest, it's a sentence that when it's spoken out loud to somebody it changes everything after that sentence is spoken. And he was very interested in that, in the way that performance can have such a direct effect. But you said that you're not very interested in that."
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"No, I should say I don't think it matters, the piece works whether you do it or you don't. So, what I should say is I don't think the piece fails if you don't read it. Because I'm the kind of person that would not read it out loud. I like to think that it works both ways. That it also means something not to do it. Because I think in a strange way, I mean I don't want to be so overt, but I think that the piece implies ideas of citizenship, what it means to be a citizen. Meaning, that negotiation between public and public responsibility, and private responsibility. So, I wanted to flirt with that, I wanted it to be about that on some level. So, to me, not to engage or to engage are different ways of being a citizen. I won't say good or bad, but different. You know the same way you fill out a form to find out public opinion, you could lie. And, you're affecting public opinion. If you're one of 10,000 people being interviewed, you achieve like .01 shift in public opinion. I don't know, I'm just sort of interested in, hmm, what am I trying to say? We live in really apathetic times, so if it's going to be an apathetic response, I would like it if it could be a very conscious apathetic response. I did not read it out loud. That would be (inaudible). So anyone else?"
Question from the audience:
"Do you have any kind of record as to when people sang the song? Is it recorded, the sound?"
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"Oh, no. It's just like your voice can play along. The recording repeats itself over and over again. Your participation is ephemeral."
Ursula Davila–Villa:
"It's funny every time I've been in the galleries, I've seen somebody sing at the piece. It's always the same piece though."
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"Oh, really."
Ursula Davila–Villa:
"Ya, I think that (inaudible) are drawn to, and it's the oath. And, they are actually trying to speak the oath into the microphone. I assume that it's easier to speak or just say an oath than to sing a song..."
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"Right."
Ursula Davila–Villa:
"or you need to be a little drunk for karaoke."
(laughing)
Question from the audience:
"Did you say you published a book about the key project in Tijuana?"
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"No, I didn't there's the Insight catalog, there's actually a transcript of the entire talk. "
Question from the audience:
"O.k. so when you said you talked about it, oh o.k. I was thinking that when you said you talked about it in a book form. But, I guess you just, that one time"
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"Ya no, I just preformed it those times, and one more time in New York last year. And, you know what's interesting about that piece as an artist, is that I really like that piece, but since it only has ephemeral form, so then I want to push it into a form that's more permanent, like the work that's here. It's like you want your cake and eat it too. You want to do these interventions that are very direct and effect people on a very one on way, and at the same time you don't want to give up object making because you don't have to be there for things to happen. I would say it was like original sin. It's like I got out of the gallery and the next thought is how do I bring it back in?"
Question from the audience:
"I don't exactly know how this works into a question but I think it's interesting how (inaudible)"
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"Ya, because as you know, for better or worse, we're visual artists, and we're at the forefront of the medium and the avant–garde, and we create new form, and find new languages, It's really a matter of tradition, the west seems like it's a matter of tradition, the visual artist tradition has for a long time been that. And, it almost refuses to die, You want to say it's not true anymore, but we still kind of believe it. And, I think again in music or theatre, what they're looking for is innovation in pre–existing... You know it's like we can still go see Hamlet, but what we want to see is really read. It's a more complex relationship between innovation and interpretation. Or different. Ya, I like to say almost for effect, I mean people always say the pieces are like technically, like oh you're an inventor. And, I'm like oh no I'm not. I mean I made all of these flying machines. And people are like oh, you're an inventor. And I'm like no invention here. The outcome was predetermined. You know like, I made a flying machine from a hundred years ago, and of course it's going to fly. The laws of physics haven't changed. But what's interesting is when you say an oath or you do a reenactment it's not neutral, there's an emotional involvement. I mean that's the part I don't understand, and that's why I keep doing the work. It's like when you're reenacting... You know it's like you're singing that love song that you didn't write and you didn't sing and you broke up, and you're singing this sad song and you start to cry too. You know what I mean? Or I also think like the Rolling Stones, in concert, they play a song, they've been playing that song for 5000 times already. Is it old performance, or is it every time a vestibule feeling?"
Ursula Davila–Villa:
"(inaudible) What draws you to the work?"
Paul Ramirez Jonas:
"The performance. I think what draws me in particular to the performance is that strange repeatability. Versus action. Not like Jackson Pollock, you know, unique movement. But, performance like a music box, playing the same song over and over again. That's what I'm drawn to. I'm not actually drawn to the freedom of performance, I'm actually drawn to the restrictiveness of performance."
Ursula Davila–Villa:
"Any more questions?"
Ursula Davila–Villa:
"O.k. well then, thank you very much Paul."
(clapping)
Ursula Davila–Villa:
"Thank you, to everybody that came to the talk. I hope to see you at the next Artistic License. Stay warm."
