The
late British artist John Latham (1921-2006) coined the expression “the
Incidental Person” in the context of Artist Placement Group,
known as APG, which he co-founded in 1966 with Barbara Steveni,
Jeffrey Shaw and Barry Flanagan. Contrary to most artist placement
schemes, APG emphasized process, interaction and the artist’s
independence in relation to the host institution, rather than
any short-term tangible outcome. Like an unbiased observer or
a third-party mediator, the Incidental Person placed through
APG in industry, government, education or the non-profit sector
would negotiate the terms of the invitation from the institution
in question and adapt the nature of her or his intervention accordingly.
This incidental function, as Latham explained, “is more
to watch the doings and listen to the noises, and to eliminate
from the output the signs of a received idea as being of the
work.” Latham stresses the incidental person’s approach,
that is, a certain position or attitude vis-à-vis the
context in which she or he is placed. In other words, the identity
of the incidental person is secondary to the effect she or he
has on a given situation, for the aim of the incidental person
is not to be anything in particular but instead “to generate
maximum public involvement, and maximum enthusiasm which goes
with the involvement.”
It is high time to pay renewed attention
to incidentality as an effective approach to pressing societal
issues. Away from the rudimentary right/left or liberal/conservative
labels that paralyze governments and polarize communities, the
incidental attitude is one of self-reflexiveness and acute, humble
awareness of the complex networks of local pressures that inform
a specific time and place. We like to assign tags to artists
who engage with problematics that exceed the confines of the
so-called “art world”, such as socially- or politically-engaged,
relational, performative, etc. But these qualifiers only serve
to quarantine the curious thinker-doer further from society at
large, reinforcing the myth of the artist as exempt from participating
in the “real world.” The incidental person, by contrast,
sees no alternative between “art” and the activities
that regulate social coexistence, such as talking, playing, eating,
reading, teaching and listening. Indeed, “art” itself — as
a word corresponding to a distinct class of objects or actions — dissolves,
becoming just another term for the disposition of someone whose
incidental relation to the context in which she or he intervenes
is simultaneously internal and external: internal to the context’s
unique dynamics, but sufficiently external to it to be able to
see its relevance to broader questions of “life-practice” or “the
everyday” (but such phrases, too, are merely expedient
equivalents for something even more incidental).
In recounting
the origins of APG, Barbara Steveni has said that the initial
incident occurred when Robert Filliou and Daniel Spoerri, who
were staying with her and John Latham to prepare an exhibition
in London, needed some found material. Despite the late hour,
Steveni offered to collect whatever she could find at an industrial
site beyond the city limits. Sifting through debris while the
factory was in full activity, she experienced a “eureka” moment,
as she put it: “Why aren’t we here? Not to pick up
buckets of plastic, but because there’s a whole life that
we don’t touch. This is what people go on about — academics,
artists, politicians — but they go nowhere near it.” This
exhibition includes projects by people who attempt
precisely to “touch” what is “out there”,
who, while meticulously attentive to the context at hand, refuse
to hew to such distinctions as art/non-art, art/life or art/politics.
Antony Hudek
© 2009
This exhibition is supported in part by The CCW Graduate School; University of the Arts London; Cultural Services of the French Embassy; the Mondriaan Foundation; and Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council.
apexart's exhibitions and public programs are supported in part by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Edith C. Blum Foundation, Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, The Greenwich Collection Ltd., The William Talbott Hillman Foundation, and with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts. |
