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MOCA Exhibit Details Work As Art By Dan Tranberg
That's one conclusion you can draw from "Pilot," a project that has been unfolding at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland since mid-February. Over five weeks, the museum's main exhibition space gradually has been transformed into a fully functional television studio and production office. Not only that, but the artist behind the project has developed an actual show, which will be taped tonight before a live, sold-out audience. Straddling conventional notions of performance, theater and installation, New York-based artist Christine Hill conceived "Pilot" as "the complete presentation of one episode of a potential late-night TV talk show." Since she arrived in Cleveland in mid-February, Hill, a 1991 graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, has assembled a staff, built a set and developed every detail of the show, including her own stage persona. Step into the gallery and you'll first see a stage set, one not unlike that of "Late Night With Conan O'Brien." Beyond that is the production office, filled with everything you might expect to find there: desks, phones, computers, bookshelves, file cabinets and workers. What's interesting is that it's not a faux office; it's an actual workspace where real work is done. Schedules are pinned to the walls noting writers meetings and rehearsals. When the phone rings, Hill answers, "This is Pilot." In every sense, the activities in the gallery are real work, being done by real people, with a real goal in mind. Of course, because we know that artists are behind it all, it's difficult not to be suspicious. Is this some kind of clever, ironic statement about American media? The more you experience "Pilot," the more the answer is a resounding no. Just as all artists adopt a subject and explore those aspects of it they find compelling, Hill has spent the past decade considering labor within the context of industrious activities that stem from personal passions. Among her earliest projects was " ," a fully functional thrift store, which was included in the international exhibition "documenta X" in 1997. Next came "Tourguide?," a functioning New York tourism office. In each case, Hill fulfilled desires one can imagine coming from personal interests: travel and vintage clothing. But most provocative about Hill is where she goes from there. Underlying all her work is an extreme compulsion for organization and an almost-microscopic consideration of the details that go into the act of fulfilling her goals. Glancing at a bookshelf in the "Pilot" office, you can find a book by media theorist Marshall McLuhan, as well as art historian Lucy Lippard's "The Lure of the Local." Clearly, Hill is not just putting on a show. She's diving headfirst into the subjects that surround her initial idea, which began with a variety of interests. "Pilot's primary motivation," she wrote in the exhibition brochure, "is to channel a series of obsessions (with Improv Theater, with "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," with cottage industry, with personality development) into a cohesive installation taking a recognized form from daily life and adapting it to fit a personal agenda." From a distance, Hill is doing what many of us do when we sculpt careers out of the things we enjoy or believe in. As with most careers, the bulk of it is just plain work. But, cast in the light of such a thoughtful and scrutinizing context, labor, if you joggle your mind a bit, can become art.
______________________________________________ This article appeared in The Plain Dealer, May 28, 2003 © 2007 Dan Tranberg. All rights reserved. |
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