Page 44 - Studio International - November 1971

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microscope. I was making visible the exterior using your offspring is that they are biological ws : Do you see that as a break from many of
crust of the thumb by using internal material. extensions of yourself—you can consider them your early pieces, in that it involved a large
Blood lying below the epidermis was used to as part of you. So it's as if I am bending the number of people ?
articulate the surface of the thumb. In a way, I tree by passing information to my daughter. DO: Well, it was just a situation I had wanted to
was defining the work by its own substance. In It's like being in two places as one. I become create for a long time. Other pieces that relate
this case I was making visible the act of making. both sender and receiver. It gets close to magic. directly to that included the footprints made
Using material that is contained in the thumb is ws : How so ? Because you can control at one with diagonally-grooved shoes. I guess these
such a beautiful way to make contact with a remove ? pieces grew out of my studies of World War I
material, to leave an impression. The piece Do: The relationships between your offspring trenches and attack diagrams. There were
becomes completely autonomous. All the and yourself are not something you can easily others : the Guarded Land Mass project in
transfer pieces deal with the transference of account for ... they have an essential mystery. Wisconsin in winter 1970 when I hired an
characteristics of the very thing that is ws : Could you say something about what armed guard to march around and enclose a
instigating the transfer. You're transferring prompted those marching projects, the ones in rectangular land area, and the Protection Piece
coded information. Kansas and at Aspen ? at the Boston Museum. I was particularly
ws. How about the mosquito piece ? DO: I did a series of pieces involving groups of interested in drawing a distinction between
DO: That was Material Interchange forjoe people on land called Ground Mutations, a something that was inaccessible and something
Stranard, done in Aspen last summer. I major one being done in Kansas in 1970, using that was not. By using twelve trained police
captured a female mosquito, placed it inside a the Kansas drill team. I gave them a diagram to dogs to keep people away from ground they
glass jar and laid it over the forearm of Joe follow and asked them to start at opposing ends would normally stand on, I was creating a
Stranard, an old friend. It eventually bit him. of a football stadium. They went through a sphere of inaccessibility.
Think what's happening here. The mosquito is half-hour march that eventually led them to the ws : Could you tell us about the film you made of
filling its body with a material lying below the 50-yard line at which point they broke into a this ?
surface on which it's standing, and then very fast drum roll. When they found they DO: It's a short film showing me weaving in and
becoming airborne. This involves an incredible could no longer drum they stopped. It became a out of the poles the dogs were tied to. These
material displacement. This foreign body is static diagram based on individual exhaustion, poles were positioned such a way as to allow
now carrying your blood around. Your blood in relation to the group, and a method of for one foot access in between.
now conforms to the interior configuration of establishing a configuration at ground level. ws : Were the dogs snapping and trying to bite ?
an insect, it places part of you in a state of But it also dealt with accoustics, because of the DO: They couldn't touch you if you could
aerial suspension. Imagine that mosquito sound swirling around the arena. gauge where you were going, but that wasn't
entering a small opening with that material, ws: It was something you had wanted to do for the primary concern of the project. The
your suddenly existing on that microcosmic at least a year. installation was in front of the Boston Museum;
level. Do : I still haven't done it exactly to my the dogs were guarding land in the same way
ws: You are also exercising a certain amount of satisfaction. A similar piece in Aspen dealt that museum officials guard art objects. In a
control in that situation because you are forcing more directly with duration. I dug a one-acre sense the dogs infected that land with an air of
the mosquito to do something it would do wedge-shaped trench running from ground preciousness, yet there was nothing there—just
naturally. level to a depth of six feet. I wanted this to be barren, snow-covered earth. I liked the whole
Do: Certainly, that's enough. Another project marched in 24 hours a day for a week, in shifts, feeling, the twelve trained dogs, there to serve.
called Indirect Energy Distribution poses the with a drummer moving diagonally across the The piece is really about pure concentration,
same problems. I asked my ten-year-old field drumming constantly. There is not much protection, making by keeping away.
daughter Kristin to bend a small sapling to the to say about it except it was nice to think in ws : What was happening in Rocked Circle
ground. As far as I was concerned, I was terms of that kind of time-span. I was able to —Fear?
bending that tree. The interesting thing about have it done for only a fraction of that time. DO: That was a video piece designed to be shot
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