Running Piece and Quiet (proposal for Wight Biennial, UCLA) press coverage
collaboration with Michael Rudokas 8/2008
Late last year the New Museum of Contemporary Art re-opened in New York City’s Bowery with an exhibition cycle called Unmonumental. Months later the effort was coupled by the Whitney Museum’s 2008 biennial; the work shared predominantly anti-formal qualities showcasing what Whitney curators Shamim M. Momin and Henriette Huldisch call “lessness.” Each institution offered up its respective monument to the unmonumental, casting a shadow of uncertainty across the New York City art scene. These shows presented the viewer with an emerging post post-modern aesthetic that is expectantly neither static, nor stable.
In response to this modest tendency towards anti-spectacle and in order to share our more prophetic, yet improvisational view towards a new future for art, we propose to train and run The Heart of America Marathon in Columbia, MO. For us, this action represents monumental personal experience; it will be matched by the mediocrity of its greater public significance, but made potent again by fulfilling our contracts with each other, the Wight biennial, our sponsors and the communities of viewers who come into contact with our final visual representation.
Immediately upon our completion of the marathon on September 1, 2008 we will film ourselves for 26.2 seconds, reducing each mile of our race to a second of camera time. During those 26.2 seconds we will state our name, what place we came in and how long it took us to complete the marathon. The videos will be played without sound, side by side, at the Wight Biennial. This proposal comes out of the long tradition of endurance in art and calls upon sport its metaphor. This collaboration will represent a heroic gesture that captures and sustains its climactic moment.
Our proposal consists of several components:
1- Training for the Heart of America Marathon in Colombia, MO
2- Obtaining public and private sponsorship as a way, not only to fund this process, but to enter into a contract with a larger community.
The funds will be allocated towards the following:
A.The production and design of uniforms that boast our various sponsors and affiliations.
B.Cover the costs of registration, gas and lodging.
3- Running the 26.2-mile marathon on September 1, 2008 in Columbia, MO.
4- Creating two 26.2 second long video loops for the Wight Biennial.
art | graphic design | murals