7. WALK STAND STILL ( How I got to here, without leaving any trace, almost)

WALK STAND STILL ( How I got to here, without leaving any trace, almost)

I constantly annoy myself. No sooner do I establish a technique or a way of doing something than I move instantly to undermine or shift my position. It's like a kind of artistic sabotage. I find it hard to explain to myself never mind to anyone else why I have this constant tendency. But there we are, I have this creative blueprint and it seems I am stuck with it. Perhaps it explains why I find it almost impossible to finish anything. 

Working with amazing performers, all very accomplished in their own field, is a huge element in the work. They all received some small instructions and suggestions and we have developed this version together. So a huge thanks to Lise Boucon, Rubiane Maia, Ash McNaughton, Sarah April Lamb and Randolph Matthews.

Buildings

In the building interventions and disruptions and gallery interferences the work would be destroyed at the end of the show. In the over hundred projects only two works survive, all of them  in the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas made in 1995. Perhaps thats why I am drawn back there again and again to revisit my only exisiting work. Once in 2011, I went back to destroy the work, this was only partly achieved. But I returned since then to work with the MA music students to make a number of musical disruptions in pop up performances in the streets and museums of Caracas.

I guess one of the things that attracts me to live performance is that each version can be altered, changed, usually completely revisited. This ‘tweaking’ goes largely unnoticed by me except when it is pointed out. 

In a way I don't see my work as separate even if, as I usually do, criss-cross mediums constantly, for me it's one work, one process. I am aware that I return to certain themes or subjects. Measurement, cutting, revealing, hiding. I move between abstract, figurative, minimal baroque, fiction and narrative. I would have thought by now I would have discovered what kind of artists I am. I guess I am exactly the kind of artist I am. 

At certain points I have destroyed my work. The installations are designed from the beginning to have a limited life span. In the 2013 work Capital Revisited installed in the streets in New York’s Lower East side has its self destruction was built in. The wheat paste glue we used to create the work in layers on the walls was made weaker so that within months it would begin to peel off and disintegrate.  It did just that.

When I have made shows in galleries, I am always slightly obsessed to clean up and remove any trace of my work or my presence. I have often removed certain things from the places I have exhibited. This ‘light’ finger is very small fry, but the need to take something as a souvenir, makes me consider that I share the same ethos of a serial killer. Perhaps I see my work as a kind of crime scene?