I finally found a good excuse to visit @georgetownsteamplant today. A breathtaking structure and amazing space for art activation. I don’t think this rotary phone was part of the exhibit, but I guess it counts as an art activation in these shots.
The challenge and opportunity of an art activation in a space like this is to blend pieces into their surroundings without being completely subsumed. I found the curation in this show quite masterful, though my gaze betrayed the contours of object and field. And that’s probably why it was designed to be set up and broken down on the same day; this was an event in the strict sense: the space came alive by our comingling.
I think and know a lot more about space and place than any particular artform, but I’m starting to realize that I’m rarely very present anywhere I am. Maybe that’s why I take pictures. It feels like it grounds me in the moment, grasping at it like a butterfly in a net, but in all honestly, it also has the opposite effect. The push/pull of here and not here, all in and checked out, is a running theme in my life, and my body’s been giving out from the pressure of that dissonance. The tricks that kept me going are having to shift.
I applaud the sticks in the mud, the punks that elbow their ways through the crowd and demand attention. I enjoy work that doesn’t watch its tone. Not because I’m a punk or that I feel the same pain or see myself reflected in any work in particular, but because I want to have hope and my hope is kept alive by anyone who is unrepentantly authentic, even if their joke is ultimately on me. Even if I’m not welcome to hang. I celebrate that punch in the gut. I’d rather be winded than suffocated by the stale air of conformity.