Being a Public Fountain (or the Evicted Artist)
“If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art.”[1]
Stepping out into the street and making it the broadest, most open, and stimulating workspace imaginable. In inhabiting everyday places, in the journey between them, finding the small cracks that invite action or artistic intervention. And exposing oneself in the fluid and ever-changing context of public space.
The artist without a studio is not only the precarious artist who cannot afford a workspace, nor the one who missed the deadline for a promising call, but also the wandering artist: the one who gives in to drift and spends hours in the street, observing, playing, the one who becomes so displaced that they stutter their own name, the one who willingly makes mistakes in public (errare humanum est…).
For what exactly is the artist’s studio in its traditional conception? A place that the artist owns or, for reasons that are not relevant here, can call their own. A place they go to religiously, or at least routinely and secularly, to produce their art. Let’s clear the abstraction a bit more: to think, to walk in circles, to occasionally get frustrated, to sigh, to handle ideas with dirty hands, and eventually, to produce something.
However, if we continue to delve into the specificity of this mysterious and still mythologized place in relation to artistic practices, we should ask what can be done in the studio that cannot be done in public space, beyond the door that marks the boundary between everyday life and traditional art spaces. The first answer relates to objecthood. That is, the production of large, heavy artistic objects requiring certain technical apparatus… in short, not conveniently portable or designed for the possibility of movement as Duchamp’s famous suitcase or his less well-known Sculpture for Travelling. What else? Storing, accumulating materials and previous works, perhaps from years ago, even discarded works that are not thrown away, inspiring books that are leafed through occasionally… Finally, one cannot ignore intimacy: the studio space is a private space and, as such, shields us from unwanted scrutiny from others, from their gaze intruding into our work.
These may be the reasons why the wandering artist, the artist without a studio, shows a tendency towards movement, relocation, infidelity to a single medium, and almost necessarily, a certain dematerialization. They carry minimal baggage, they are a breath that tends to define invisible spaces and claim them as spaces for artistic practice, even if only momentarily, a moment as brief as a fleeting action or a photograph. They expose themselves to the curious gaze of others who sometimes linger, other times pass by without asking more questions. They submit themselves to contingency, for the wandering artist can never define too precisely the spatial or even environmental conditions of artistic creation.
I wonder, rereading the initial quote, what would have become of an evicted Bruce Nauman. He would probably have had no choice but to expand his definition of what art must be. Perhaps linking this to play, enjoyment, and desire, rather than duty. Walking with a counterpose on a main street, mapping a vacant lot and running after mice, portraying oneself in a park as a public fountain from which any stranger might drink.
[1] Bruce Nauman in conversation with Ian Wallace and Russell Keziere, Vanguard, Vol. 8 #1, 1979.