do it
& do it (archive) JUNE 20 THROUGH AUGUST 30
EXHIBITION CATALOG
2015
TOP: do it installation, Michaelis Galleries, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, 2014
Catalog produced in conjunction with the exhibition do it & do it (archive) on view at Napa Valley Museum from June 20 through August 30, 2015. do it is a traveling exhibition conceived and curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and organized by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York. The exhibition and the accompanying publication were made possible, in part by grants from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, and with the generous support from Project Perpetual and ICI’s International Forum and Board of Trustees.
Designed by Meagan Doud
Al SOCIAL MEDIA @NapaValleyMuseum #doitNVM
TABLE OF CONTENTS 2-3
About the Exhibition
4-5
Chronological History
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Varied Interpretations
10-11
Related Programming
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do it (take home)
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“do it” with Hans Ulrich Obrist: The World’s Busiest Curator Talks About the Latest Iteration of his 20-Year Project
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From Our Curator
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Acknowledgements
WHAT IF THERE WAS AN EXHIBITION THAT NEVER ENDED?
2 LEFT: do it installation, Migros. Switzerland,1993
“DO IT IS A KIND OF CATCHER IN THE RYE FOR THE CURATORIAL WORLD; IT IS A TRANSFORMATIVE MANDATORY READ THAT CONNECTS A BLUR OF DOTS INTO A COHESIVE AND INVITING IMAGE OF BOTH THE ART UNIVERSE AND THE UNIVERSE OF IDEAS.” —DOUGLAS COUPLAND
do it began in Paris in 1993 as a conversation between Obrist, Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier who were curious to see what would happen if they started an exhibition that would never need to stop. To test the idea, Obrist invited 12 artists to propose artworks based on written “scores” or instructions that can be openly interpreted every time they were presented. The instructions were then translated into 9 different languages and circulated
internationally as a book. In the 20 years since Obrist, Boltanski and Lavier mused over the potential of “scores,” or written instructions by artists, do it created exhibition formats that could be more flexible and open-ended. Each time it was presented, do it was re-interpreted. Many new versions of the exhibition were formed, including do it (museum), do it (home), do it (TV), do it (seminar), and an online do it in collaboration with e-flux, among others.
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The origin and transformation of do it reflects the necessity of exploring collaboration and shared authorship in a constantly evolving art world. The project’s impetus is rooted in the extraordinary effects of globalization on curating and artistic practice in the 1990s, a time that witnessed an unprecedented expansion of the geographies of contemporary art. Twenty years later, do it has taken place in 60+ venues worldwide and includes nearly 400 artists from across the globe, giving new meaning to the concept of an exhibition in progress, while offering infinite creative possibilities for participating audiences everywhere. Adrian Piper asks audiences to hum a tune in order to enter a room. Ben Kinmont wants us to “invite a stranger into [our] home for breakfast.” Alexandre Singh teaches us how to turn wine into soda. Yoko Ono encourages us to keep wishing. And Mircea Cantor demands that we “burn this book. ASAP,” but John Armleder says to do “None of the above.” The do it (archive) was first presented as the archive room at the Manchester Art Gallery in July 2013, and designed by Project Projects.
Curated by ICI and Obrist, in collaboration with Joseph Grigley, do it (archive) contains installation images, slides, related websites, video and audio files, ephemera, and a collection of location- specific do it books produced in several languages. do it (archive) highlights key moments and impacts in the exhibition’s history: find out about the first presentation at Klagenfurt, Austria; a controversy in Reykjavik, Iceland; the early presentation of do it in Bangkok, Thailand; the 1997 ICI tour across North America; the community involvement in San Jose, Costa Rica; Mike Kelley’s personal do it sound archive; and much more.
TOP: do it installation, Brooks Museum of Art. Memphis, TN, 2000 BOTTOM LEFT: do it installation, Kunsthalle Ritter. Klagenfurt, Austria, 1994 BOTTOM RIGHT: do it installation, Socrates Sculpture Park. Queens, NY, 2013
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A CHRONOLOGIC 1994 Kunsthalle Ritter, Klagenfurt, Austria 1995 Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, Scotland Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporáin des Pays de la Loire, Nantes, France museum in progress, Vienna, Austria 1996 Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, France Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland Centro Civico per ‘Arte Contemporanea “La Grancia”, Siena, Italy Kunsthalle Helsinki Taidehalli, Finland Espace Forde, Geneva, Switzerland Alliance Française, Bangkok, Thailand Uppsala Konstmuseum, Sweden 1997 Tallinna Kunstihoone, Tallinn, Estonia Sala Temporal de la Casa de Moneda, Bogotá, Columbia Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center, Copenhagen, Denmark
Palo Alto Cultural Center, CA, United States Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI, United States 1998 Freedman Gallery, Albright College, Reading, PA, United States Galerija Škuc, Ljubljana, Slovenia Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, United States Edmonton Art Gallery, Alberta, Canada Lamont Gallery, Phillips Exeter Academy, NH, United States Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada Salina Art Center, KS, United States Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, PA, United States Visual Arts Center, Boise State University, ID, United States The Nickle Arts Museum, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada Institute of Contemporary Art, Maine College of Art, PD, United States
1999 Hunterdon Museum of Art, Clinton, NJ, United States Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, NJ, United States The Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ, United States Noyes Museum of Art, Oceanville, NJ, United States University Galleries at the Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ, United States Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, NJ, United States Stedman Gallery, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ, United States Handwerker Gallery, Ithaca College, NY, United States 2000 Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, FL, United States Colorado State University Art Gallery, Fort Collins, CO, United States Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, TN, United States Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ, United States Wriston Gallery, Lawrence University, Appleton, WI, United States Atlanta College of Art, GA, United States
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“do it is not a sprint. do it is a marathon.” -Hans Ulrich Obrist, 2013
CAL HISTORY OF DO IT Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD, United States 2001
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Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia, Perth Soo Visual Arts Center, MN, United States York Arts Center, PA, United States University of Toronto at Scarborough, Ontario, Canada Addison Art Gallery, MA, United States Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, Mexico 2002 TEOR/éTica, San José, Costa Rica Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice Italy e-flux, e-flux.com 2006-2010 George Paton Gallery, VCAM Centre for Ideas, Melbourne, Australia Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou, China
2011
2014
Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo, Montevideo, Uruguay Philip J. Steele Gallery, Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, Denver, CO, United States
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, UT, United States Musée de la danse, Rennes, France Garage Museum for Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa The Galleries at Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia, PA, United States Denler Art Gallery, Saint Paul, MN, United States
2012 Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu, Japan 2013 Socrates Sculpture Park, New York, NY, United States Gund Gallery, Gambier, OH, United States tranzit, Budapest, Hungary MU Artspace, Eindhoven, Netherlands Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, United Kingdom Samek Art Gallery, Lewisburg, PA, United States Handwerker Gallery, Ithaca, NY, United States Stacion - Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina, Prishtina, Kosovo
2015 The Episcopal Academy, Newtown Square, PA, United States Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide, Australia KKW Kunst Kraft Werk, Leipzig, Germany Napa Valley Museum, Yountville, CA, United States
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VARIED INTERPRETATIONS Alison Knowles
Homage to Each Red Thing (1996) Divide the exhibition space floor into squares of any size.
“Each exhibition is yet another truth. The idea is not to recreate or copy works whose original version is to be found elsewhere but rather to create an openended “unfolding” type of exhibition that takes into account local structures and requirements.” -Hans Ulrich Obrist, 1997
Put one red thing into each square. For example: a piece of fruit a doll with a red hat a shoe Completely cover the floor in this way.
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RIGHT: do it installation, Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale. Fort Lauderdale, FL, 2000
LEFT: do it installation, Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale. Fort Lauderdale, FL, 2000 TOP: do it installation, Surrey Art Gallery. Surrey, BC, Canada, 1998
Bertrand Lavier (1993)
The following text is an extract from an analysis of one of bertrand lavier’s works by the french art critic bernard marcadè. The critical text will serve as instruction. It involves making two boxes: one for food, the other for emoluments. Two rectilinear forms, the surfaces of which touch and almost completely overlap. Two time blocks—totally self-enclosed and perfectly sealed off from the outside world and its corruption and consumption—which within their cold interiors attempt to curb the insults of time.
TOP: do it installation, Atlanta College of Art, Atlanta, GA, 2000
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RIGHT: do it installation, Palo Alto Cultural Center. Palo Alto, CA, 1997 FAR RIGHT: do it installation, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Pittsburgh, PA, 1998
LEFT: do it installation, TEOR/éTica, San José, Costa Rica, 2002-2003 BOTTOM: do it installation, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Boulder, CO, 1998
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Michelangelo Pistoletto Sculpture for Strolling (1995)
After reading the daily newspaper, immerse it in water then form a small sphere by compressing the wet newspaper with one’s hands.
MAK
Enlarge the sphere by adding new daily newspapers soaked in water. Continue this procedure until the sphere is a meter in diameter. When well dried out, roll the newspaper sphere outside in the streets and the squares as a “sculpture for strolling.”
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TOP: do it installation, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Memphis, TN, 2000 RIGHT: do it installation, Institute of Contemporary Art, Maine College of Art. Portland, ME, 1998 BOTTOM LEFT: do it installation, Atlanta College of Art. Atlanta, GA, 2000 BOTTOM RIGHT: do it installation, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Pittsburgh, PA, 1998
W
KE A WISH.
DEIRAV SNOITATERPRETNI Yoko Ono WISH PEACE (1996)
Make a wish. Write it down on paper. Fold it and tie it around a branch of a wish tree. Ask your friends to do the same. Keep wishing. Until the branches are covered with wishes.
LEFT: do it installation, Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale. Fort Lauderdale, FL, 2000
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BOTTOM LEFT: do it installation, Addison Art Gallery, Phillips Academy Andover. Andover, Massachusetts, 2001-2002 BOTTOM RIGHT: do it installation, Galerija Ĺ kuc. Ljubljana, Slovenia, 1998
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RELATED PROGRAMMING
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“It connects the local to the global. Most of the venues that have presented ‘do it’ have had local artists and individuals interpret the instructions, but the artists in the compendium are from all over the world. There’s a connection there; to me, that’s the most important thing.” -Kaytie Johnson, Rochelle F. Levy Director and Chief Curator, The Galleries at Moore
do it Opening Party
Friday, June 19 5-6pm Members Preview 6-7pm General Admission Free for Members/$5 for NonMembers Amalia Pica Throw a Party
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“A party of any kind. A party of any size. Make sure you provide your guests with:
do it (for kids)
Wednesdays in July 2-3pm $7 for adults/$3.50 for seniors/Free for kids under 17 (admission to the Museum is included) Enjoy an interactive handson exhibition experience designed specifically for kids! Activities will be geared for kids as young as 3 years old.
do it (happy hour)
Thursday, July 9 and August 13 4-6pm Free; Cash bar Stop by the Museum the second Thursday of July & August for do it (happy hour) to experience all do it has to offer and create your own do it artwork. Artists will perform select instructions during happy hour.
– Fine entertainment – Drinks – Good music – Paper confetti When the party is over, sweep all of the confetti to one side of the space, evenly distributing confetti along the entire length of the wall where it meets the floor.”
ABOVE: do it installation, MU Artspace. Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 2013
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do it (take home) The do it exhibition will not only be realized by Museum staff, local artists, and performers, but also by YOU! Take a look at the instructions listed below. If you decide to do it, make sure you document your artwork by sharing it on social media with the hashtag #doitNVM.
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ARCANGEL, Cory (2012) Photoshop CS: 11 by 8.5 inches, 300 DPI, RGB, square pixels, default gradient “Russell’s Rainbow” (turn transparency off), mousedown y=1100 x=550, mouseup y=2100 x=1450.
ELIASSON, Olafur Physiological Memory (2002) 1) Choose a person, older than yourself, you see frequently—not too often but approx once a week or once a month. Maybe one of your grandparents if they are still alive. 2) Every time you meet the chosen person you press your 2 pointingfingers firmly against your eyes for 10 to 20 seconds until various colors and patterns arise. 3) Try to note or memorize the patterns and colors in connection with the context and repeat the practice every time you meet the chosen person for as long as possible, minimum 6 months. 4) After minimum 6 months of this practice you can recall the person, virtually by pressing your eyes for a while. In the midst of the colors and pattern a sense of presence of the chosen person arrives even after the chosen person has died.
CHAN, Paul Instruction (2005)
13 When you meet someone new tell them the following: “Our modern age is characterized by a sadness which calls for a new kind of prophet. Not the prophets of old who reminded people that they were going to die, but someone who will remind them that they are not dead yet.� Do not be embarrassed. Do not be afraid.
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BOURGEOIS, Louise Instruction (2002)
When you are walking, stop and smile at a stranger.
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Š Louise Bourgeois Trust / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
FELDMANN, Hans-Peter Homework (or Do It Yourself) (1996) Look for a photo of a person who seems likeable or attractive. It’s important that you can assume this person is dead. You don’t need proof, your assumption is enough. The photograph might be found in a variety of places: magazines, flea-markets, a family photo album. In any case, you must take great care in the search, which will continue until your intuition tells you that you’ve found the right photo. However, it is important that the person you choose is a complete stranger. You take this photo and choose a frame according to your taste, as with any home decoration. This can be a wall frame or a standing frame, or possibly a case that you carry around. Having brought this photo into your daily life, and now looking at it frequently, you should, as often as you like, think about who this person might have been, about what his or her life may have been like, about the cause of his or her death. You should find out how close you can get to this person, and at what point you would give him or her a name ...
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GILL, Simryn Somewhere Between (2002) Approach a stranger who you perceive to be somehow different to yourself. The difference between yourself and this person could be of any nature, for instance— age, class, lifestyle, politics, skin color, religion etc etc. However, the category or categories of difference that you chose, should be one(s) that deeply inform your own life. Ask someone to take a photograph of yourself with this person. Send in the photo stating the date and the place.
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TIRAVANIJA, Rirkrit Untitled (1994) Ingrediants 1/2 cup chopped onions 8 garlic cloves 10 dried jalape単o chilies 100 grams chopped fresh ginger 2 tablespoons chopped Chinese parsley 1/2 teaspoon cumin 1 teaspoon shrimp paste 1 teaspoon salt 3 tablespoons oil Equipment electric blender or food processor small skillet electric or gas stove glass jars with good lids (many)
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Combine all the ingredients except the oil in a blender and process until smooth. Heat up the small skillet on medium high heat and add the oil. Slowly fry the paste for 5 minutes until it is fragrant. Remove and store in the jars for distribution. Repeat as necessary. MEIRELES, Cildo Study for time (1969) Study for time At a beach or in the desert, dig a hole in the sand (the size you like), sit down and wait, silently, until the winds wraps it up completely. Study for time In any place, close your eyes and establish a defined area of the sounds your ears can listen. Study for time After 12 hours of fasting, drink 1/2 liter of cold water from a silver jug.
REED, David (2002)
Using a bright green highlighter marker, color over the first diagram of vertical bands. Using a bright magenta highlighter, color over the second diagram of horizontal bands. Stare at these diagrams for 1 minute. Now look at the third diagram and you will perceive halos of color. This effect –the McCollough Effect—is quite uncanny. It’s not a typical afterimage since color is perceivable a day, or even weeks later. Look at only the third diagram in a few days and see if the color effect is still perceptible. How long will this last?
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“do it” with Hans Ulrich Obrist: The World’s Busiest Curator Talks About the Latest Iteration of His 20-Year Project an Artsy Editorial*
July 3, 2013 interview by Marina Cashdan
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Jérôme Bel Shirtology, 2012 © Tate, 2012; Photo: Tate Photography,
“[...] we spoke, really whenever we met, about what exhibitions invented new rules of the game, and what could be rules of the game of exhibitions.”
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Hans Ulrich Obrist (aka HUO) is the art world’s favorite curator. He’s also the art world’s busiest curator. Since 1991, the 45-year-old Obrist has curated and co-curated more than 200 solo and group exhibitions and biennials; he serves as co-director of Serpentine Gallery in London; he has recorded over 2,000 hours of interviews for his ongoing interview project; he is contributing editor of Abitare Magazine, Artforum, and Paradis Magazine; he is art advisor for the biannual Manchester International Festival; and he has one of our favorite Instagram feeds. So it’s no surprise that he was able to get 250 of the top artists to follow his prompt—to create a set of instructions for other artists to realize their work—which will be featured at the Manchester International Festival this week as the most comprehensive “do it” exhibition to date, “do it 2013”. Artsy’s Marina Cashdan caught up with Obrist, where he disclosed the conversation that led to “do it”, the banal inspiration for the project’s name and logo, how artist Ryan Trecartin recently pushed him into social media, and his newest project, which explores his fascination with the first “digital native” generation. Marina Cashdan: I’ve read that “do it” was conceived in Paris in 1993 as the result of a conversation between you and the artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier. Can you tell us any more about this conversation? Hans Ulrich Obrist: A conversation with artists, architects, designers always somehow marks the beginning of my shows, and in this case it was a combination with the two French artists, Christian Boltanksi and Bertrand Lavier, whom I had met when I was a teenager, right at the beginning of my work. I had very regular conversations with them, and they had always to do with exhibition formats. Both Lavier and Boltanski are very interested in these ideas of rules of the game, a very Duchampian idea—
this idea that we mainly remember exhibitions that also invent a new rule of the game; and we spoke, really whenever we met, about what exhibitions invented new rules of the game, and what could be rules of the game of exhibitions. And then in 1993, we had this meeting at Café Le Select, in Montparnasse, which is just next door to the Coupole, which, historically, has always been an artist hangout. We were in the Café Le Select, and the other kind of conversation was really this idea about how exhibitions travel. As a curator I was very interested in that, because we always do these exhibitions which have a limited life span—they go maybe to two or three places, and then they will be dismantled—whereas somebody who organizes or directs operas, or writes theater plays, or a music piece, scores or text can be reinterpreted infinitely for centuries to come. And that’s really what Lavier and Boltanski said. MC: You might say that for conceptual art less emphasis is placed on the materiality of an object and more interest is in the method of reaching that material object, including via instruction, from Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings to Fluxus, notably Yoko Ono’s 1964 book Grapefruit. HUO: Yes, many artists work on such instruction pieces. Obviously it’s true for Fluxus, it’s true for conceptual art, where the instruction plays such an important role, and it’s true also for many different other art forms. We were very inspired by Yoko Ono’s pioneering Grapefruit book, because she was one of the very first artists who had done a big solo exhibition in the form of an instruction book, and that was the famous Grapefruit book. There’s a notion of instruction also relevant for installation art, because whenever an artist does an installation, which then comes down and is reinstalled in the future, there is a kind of a scar, or a kind of partition, when it gets reinstalled, maybe at a later date,
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“The color orange was basically because in Switzerland, where I grew up, there’s a supermarket called Migros. It’s interesting because it belongs to the people; it’s almost like a [cooperative] kind of structure—it’s a supermarket that belongs to everyone, so millions of Swiss people are shareholders in this company [...] and their color is orange. [...] And for me, growing up with this, when Lavier and Boltanski said “do it,” I said, orange.” by the artist or someone else. That’s really what Boltanski and Lavier were mentioning—this idea of installation, but also actually how translation will change if we would have an exhibition made of instruction, or if the instruction were to be translated into many languages. So it not only has to do with repetition, but it has to do with difference. And these are all things we discussed in the three- to four-hour-long meeting. MC: Was it envisioned as a book or mainly an exhibition? HUO: We said that it should be a book, and that the book would become the exhibition and the book will circulate very widely. I got very excited about this idea, because I was always interested by Seth Siegelaub—who was so instrumental doing early conceptual exhibitions, that the exhibition is the book, or the book is the exhibition—and Lucy Lippard with her amazing exhibitions in Seattle. For example, a set of cards with instructions, was the publication, but it was also the instruction according to which the exhibition got built. So these are all things on our mind. MC: How is “do it” different from earlier explorations of instruction that came from conceptual art and Fluxus? Has the Internet changed or shaped the project at all? HUO: One thing that I think was different to the ’60s or ’70s—there’s a whole history throughout the 20th century: Duchamp, already in the earlier part of the 20th century, sent his sister an instruction for a piece from Argentina to her balcony in Neuilly, so it’s also an umbilical cord through the 20th century—but what’s obviously changed in this age of globalization (which could already be grasped in the 1990s) is that doing it is a truly global endeavor, which raised other issues—how would we negotiate this form of globalization in a way that it doesn’t become a homogenized globalization, but a global dialogue which actually produces a difference? And that was a very important moment in that first conversation. The other thing that was
important is, could we do an exhibition that would travel as widely as “The Family of Man”, the famous MoMA photography show, which went to so many places. And we said it would be interesting if “do it” could go to more places, but it obviously wouldn’t be an exhibition which would be sent around the world. It would be an exhibition which would learn from the local context, so that each time you would actually have instructions from local artists. And so that’s what happened already in the ’90s. I mean, it went to Bangkok, to China, it went to Latin America early on. MC: So the recently published book with ICI is a record of the whole history of “do it”? HUO: The book is a history, a story of all these different learning experiences, because wherever the exhibition went, it learned. I think it’s a very arrogant thing for an exhibition to go out into the world and claim to know, to impose its knowledge to the world; it’s important to learn from different contexts. And that’s where, in this conversation with Lavier and Boltanski, early on, we were inspired by Edouard Glissant, the French philosopher, poet, critic, and writer, who said in globalization, it’s important to not, somehow, enhance globalization as a homogenized force, but what he calls “Mondialité”, and “Mondialité” for Glissant, in English you call it “Globality”. “Mondialité” is a difference enhancing global dialogue. MC: In the conversation at Café Le Select did you discuss more ideas for how you would package the project, i.e. how you would brand the project? HUO: Yes, there were some more banal issues that came up in our conversation: how we were going to do the catalogue. I asked Lavier and Boltanski if it should be a manual, and they said absolutely. And I lived next to the Jardin du Luxembourg at the time and so they had a lovely idea that on my way home from Montparnasse, to try to find manuals formachines. And that’s what happened. On the way home I passed by
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a shop for sewing machines, and the owner must have been 80 years old; it was a very oldfashioned store. And he had a Singer sewing machine in the shop window which must have been from the ’60s. It was probably from the same time as Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit book. And there was an instruction manual in this window. So I tried to convince the shop owner to sell me this manual, but he obviously wanted to sell me the sewing machine. I insisted, and after a 15-minute negotiation, he finally sold me the little book, for something like five francs. And that became the template for the first “do it” book. The title, “do it”, came actually from Lavier and Boltanski, and the color orange came from me. The color orange was basically because in Switzerland, where I grew up, there’s a supermarket called Migros. It’s interesting because it belongs to the people; it’s almost like a [cooperative] kind of structure—it’s a supermarket that belongs to everyone, so millions of Swiss people are shareholders in this company. And they have a “Do it yourself” spirit as a company, and their color is orange. They have these orange signs. And for me, growing up with this, when Lavier and Boltanski said “do it,” I said, orange. MC: “do it” has spawned a type of open exhibition model. Can you tell us about this model? Do you see it as a democratic or opensource model for exhibitions? HUO: Yes, I hope that it’s a very open source, in some kind of way. I mean, Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet in ’89, and also ’93 was the beginning of awareness of the internet. I think I had my first email address in ’93 or ’94, so I think when we started “do it”, I wasn’t on email yet. But in ’94, I started to talk to Bruce Sterling, one of the early writers of Wired and one of the founders of the cyberpunk movement. And so Bruce Sterling was also instrumental to reflect off of the digital implication of “do it” and thinking of algorithms. And I think it was Nam June Paik who was the first artist who in the mid-’90s reflected directly the internet within the “do it” project by sending his assistant to a cyber-café, and giving his assistant an instruction of what to do in a cyber-café, and then you also have Casey Reas and Aaron Koblin and more and more digital artists who also joined the project. But I would say the idea of somehow it being an open-source exhibition is something which at the beginning maybe wasn’t so conscious, but is something which definitely later on became more reflected in it.
At the beginning we conceived it mainly as a museum idea and it grew over so many years; it’s a complex, dynamic system with feedback loops. It’s almost cybernetics; it’s a very nonlinear circuitry, the way it grew from A to B to C, again to A. MC: “do it” takes many different types of exhibition models: “do it (museum)”, “do it (home)”, “do it (TV)”, “do it (seminar)”, anti-do its, “do it” online on E-Flux. How would you define these different models? HUO: Quite soon after the museum version had taken off, and in many countries, I started to think it could be also be very interesting if it could happen at home. There could be home versions and so we started to invite artists to do home “do its”, which you find also in the book, and then at a certain moment there was a TV “do it”, so we started to think about how people could do it on television, and then people could do it at home. And that’s how from Damien Hirst to Nancy Spero, to Ilya Kabakov to Lawrence Weiner; about 15 artists created home “do its” for the TV. But “do it” can also leave the museum and the apartment, and go into the streets. I would say at least 20-25 instructions are actually for outdoors. And it’s also interesting that the Socrates Sculpture Park [in Queens, New York] had this idea for the first time to do an outdoor “do it”, an open-air “do it”. It really wasn’t our idea to do an outdoor “do it” version, it’s just that they suddenly started to look at these instructions, and to realize that there are so many versions to be realized outdoors; then they actually decided to do an outdoor version. And then Leon Golub invites us to protest against “do it”. He founded a movement of demonstrations to refuse to do it. So that’s sort of a counter-movement. A lot of artists have an awareness of what other artists have done before them, and I think that’s kind of interesting because if you think about the instruction of Cerith Wyn Evans, his instruction is not to do the Sol LeWitt piece. It’s basically … MC: ...an anti “do it”? HUO: Yeah, and it’s also like when you have Rauschenberg erasing a de Kooning drawing. So we have in the book, one of the instructions by Sol LeWitt, but we have at the same time the instruction of Cerith Wyn Evans, whose instruction is to not realize Sol LeWitt’s “do it”, the wall drawing of ’99, because then the reader, or the museum, or whoever does it, has to make
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a decision to either follow Sol LeWitt, to “do it”, or to follow Evans and to not do the Sol LeWitt. And then you have Rosemarie Trockel who basically does the opposite of Evans. She picks her favorites in the book, and then invites the reader, or whoever does it, to go to page 72, 88, 166, 167 and so on, and to do it again. So that’s the “do it again” idea. So a little over time, these different versions grew, and the book with ICI, and also the exhibition in Manchester, tried to bring for the first time together all these different versions. MC: The exhibition opening as part of the Manchester International Exhibition, “do it 20 13”, is divided between four rooms—the Homage Room, the Archive Room, the Active Room, and “do it” TV. Are there scores that play to, or use, the city of Manchester? HUO: Yes, in Manchester, the museum decided to have several of these pieces go beyond the boundaries of the museum. Allora & Calzadilla invite you to revolve all the light pole lamps in a street to face up. And Ai Weiwei leads us as well into the outside space, actually giving the instruction to make a device to block surveillance cameras. MC: Your Instagram feed is one of our favorites here at Artsy. Do you give the artists prompts to respond to, or just ask them to write anything? Is this, in some way, your own “do it” score shared via a social media platform? And will you ever start a “do it” (Instagram), or a “do it” (Twitter)? HUO: It’s interesting that you mention Instagram because I think that my Instagram feed actually has a lot to do with “do it”, because like “do
it”, it continues to grow, and in another way, “do it” grew out of a conversation with artists. And actually Ryan Trecartin is at the origin of the Instagram project, because I was actually in Ryan Trecartin’s studio in December, to talk about “do it”, and he said, ‘Are you on Instagram?’ and I said, no. So he took my iPhone, downloaded Instagram, and posted on his iPhone a photo of me sort of joining Instagram. And at the beginning, I didn’t really know what to do. But already in that first visit, in [Ryan’s] studio, in the house, it’s full of traces of previous performances and film shoots—it’s really more than a house, it’s a studio, it’s a lab, it’s a place for experiment— and there was this amazing calendar in his office made by hand, and I took a photograph of his hand pointing at his calendar, and that led to the project because then I was really aware that that image included art and other images. But then a few weeks later, I re-read an essay by Umberto Eco, who talks about the disappearance of handwriting, and actually a lot of people nowadays use handwriting less because of the internet. I was thinking it’s interesting because you can obviously lament the disappearance of handwriting, but much more interesting than that would actually be to make handwriting exciting again, and celebrate handwriting within this media. So that started me [on this project]. Whenever I meet an artist or an architect or a writer or a poet, I ask them to either hand-write or email me [an image of a hand-written] sentence, which I would then photograph or upload on Instagram. And so on a daily basis I’m posting these sentences and it becomes hopefully a positive process to basically introduce handwriting into Instagram and Twitter. And it’s again like “do it”—I couldn’t have predicted, when Lavier and Boltanski and
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I started in this coffeehouse, that in 20 years, 250 artists would participate and more than 100 exhibitions would take place. The handwriting project is in much earlier stages.
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MC: Speaking to your other projects, I’m particularly excited about the 89plus project you’re working on with curator Simon Castets. Can you talk about that research project and how it’s being manifested as physical events, including the forthcoming Serpentine Gallery Marathon in October—the ninth annual twoday-long series of discussions devoted to a particular topic? HUO: Yes, it’s actually very connected, because this year of the 20th anniversary of “do it” is also the beginning of the 89plus project, a project similar to “do it” in that it’s a long-duration project; it will grow and evolve over time. It started when Simon Castets and I met four years ago in Yokohama, [Japan]. We talked a lot about this new generation, which is really the first generation that is Internet native. This leads us back to Tim Berners-Lee who invented the Internet in ’89, and ’89 was also the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and many other things happened in ’89; and we said that it would be very exciting to start to look at this new generation, born in ’89 onwards. We wanted to make this research in all kinds of disciplines, so not only art, but also in technology and in science, and music, and just somehow look globally into what these different practitioners are doing. So the founding moment was at the DLD conference in Munich in January, followed by a conference in Art Basel in Hong Kong [in May], and with our colleagues Jochen Volz and Lucia Pietroiusti, we will develop [this as the topic] for the Serpentine Gallery Marathon
during Frieze week October 18-19, [2013], in the Sou Fujimoto Pavilion, the annual Serpentine Pavilion scheme which [Serpentine co-director] Julia Peyton-Jones invented in 2000. There is also a link again to Ryan [Trecartin], because in an interview in the New York Times at the moment of his MoMA PS1 show [in 2011], Ryan [spoke about] how exciting he thinks the generation of artists born in the ’90s is and that he cannot wait to see their work, and now obviously we are at the moment in 2013 that we can actually start to see the work of this generation. And so we hope also that the project will support these emerging artists in a way which is sustained, for example, stipends, grants, and residencies are a very important part—the long-term support to help these artists to produce reality.
*Reproduced in full with permission from Artsy.
LEFT: do it installation, Bangkok: Alliance Française. Bangkok, Thailand, 1996. MIDDLE: do it installation, Kunsthalle Ritter. Klagenfurt, Austria, 1994 RIGHT: do it Moscow, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia, 2014. Photograph Denis Sinyakov. © Garage Museum
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FROM OUR C U R AT O R
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Throw the rules out the window and do it! This exciting exhibition invites everyone to become an artist by the simple act of doing. “You are already doing all of it” are the reassuring words of artist Tino Sehgal. do it encourages participation at any level, from passive to active, insisting upon the legitimacy of the receiver as a cocreator and performer. do it takes artistic production out of the hands of the artist and gives both agency and responsibility to you. By shifting the focus from object to action, the exhibition takes on a life of its own with each country, venue, and performer. We hope that this exhibition will be an approachable point of entry into Contemporary Art. do it invites you to become the artist and contribute to the exhibition. We will also host and produce public programs for all ages, including performance happy hours and kids programs. Social media participation is an important component to this exhibition. Utilizing the
hashtag #doitNVM, please share your contribution with the online community, joining in the global conversation surrounding the exhibition. We want to know, how will you do it? The do it (archive), included in the gallery space, chronicles the exhibition’s 20-year history through installation photos and ephemera. As we thought about presentation of the exhibition, contextualization was an important factor. The archive provides insight into the creative ways that the do it instructions have been enacted by artists and the public alike. From this platform of imaginative invention we ask you to think outside the box as you encounter the instructions in the exhibition. Like your favorite recipe, use the instructions as a jumping-off point for improvisation and discovery. Thank you for joining us in the creation of do it! Meagan Doud Curator
THANK YOU! Supporters:
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do it installation, Michaelis Galleries, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa, 2014
Steve Arns
Participating Artists & Performers: Mikey Kelley Stephen Whisler Porus Walker Lily Ann Page June Altamura William Henpenn Marie Shelley
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INSTRUCTIONS INCLUDED IN THE EXHIBITION Etel Adnan, (No Title), 2012 Carl Andre, (No Title), 2004 Uri Aran, (No Title), 2012 Cory Archangle, (No Title), 2012 Robert Ashley, Four Scenes: Kittyhawk (An Antigravity Piece), 2012 Nairy Baghramian, (No Title), 2012 Robert Barry, (No Title), 2012 Jerome Bel, Shirtology, 2012 Louise Bourgeois, Instruction, 2002 Mircea Cantor, Untitled, 2004 Paul Chan, Instruction, 2005 Amy E. Cohen and Francisco J. Varela, Do It, 1995 Douglas Coupland, (No Title), 2004 Jimmie Durham, Do-It-Yourself Museum Project, 1996 Olafur Eliasson, Psychological Memory, 2002 Elmgreen & Dragset, Dinner for Two, 2002 Hans-Peter Feldmann, Homework (or Do It Yourself), 1996 Gilbert & George, Ten Commandments for Gilbert & George, 1995 Simryn Gill, Somewhere Between, 2002 Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled, 1994 Shilpa Gupta, (No Title), 2012 Allison Knowles, Homage to Each Red Thing, 1996 Aaron Koblin, (No Title), 2012
Julius Koller, Instruction, 1996 Adriana Lara, DO IT 3, 2012 Sol LeWitt, A black straight line is drawn at approximately the center of the wall horisontally from side to side. Alternate red, yellow, and blue lines are drawn above and below the black line to the top and bottom of the wall., 2001 Lucy R. Lippard, (No Title), 2012 Christian Marclay, Instruction, 1995/6 Cildo Meireles, Study for time, 1969 Ernesto Neto, Watching birds fly, the game of three points, 2005 Yoko Ono, WISH PEACE, 1996 Lygia Pape, Good Blood, 2002 Amalia Pica, Throw a Party, 2012 Adrian Piper, The Humming Room, 2012 Michelangelo Pistoletto, Sculpture for Strolling, 1995 RAQS Media Collective, The Robin Hood of Wisdom, 2012 David Reed, (No Title), 2002 Pedro Reyes, Compatibility test for couples, 2001 Hassan Sharif, Black Lines, 2012 Rirkrit Tiravanija, Untitled, 1994 Anton Vidokle, Geometria popular (Popular Geometry), 2001 Hannah Weinberger, Untitled, 2012 Erwin Wurm, Untitled, 1995
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