0:03

well perhaps we’ll begin because we’re at three o’clock um

0:09

uh my name is shauna mccabe and i’m the director of the art gallery of guelph that’s uh hosting this event this

0:14

afternoon um and i’m really thrilled to welcome you all um to this conversation and i’d like to

0:22

offer a land acknowledgement to start um this statement is is quite critical for cultural institutions as it

0:28

recognizes the history and the ongoing impacts of colonialism as well as the historical complicity of

0:34

our institutions through their approaches to the representation of difference producing images and

0:40

narratives that take on an authority in the public sphere and typically a land acknowledgement uh

0:46

recognizes the traditional ownership of the lands upon which an event is held and i thought because we’re all gathered

0:53

virtually here today connected and yet physically dispersed across borders it’s a good moment to

0:59

reflect on the significance of place wherever we are and how the different traditional lands that we reside in and move through

1:05

inform our lives we respect the significance of the treaties that continue to affirm the inherent

1:10

sovereignty of indigenous nations and recognize our responsibility for the stewardship of the lands on

1:16

which we live work and create again thank you so much for joining us we are

1:22

very pleased to be here today speaking about monument to the unelected a project of being a catchadorian with

1:29

the u.s election less than 24 hours away uh we are feeling anticipation even here

1:35

in canada and i know um i was very excited to have this conversation and john said the same

1:40

thing this morning uh in his email um and and i know this sentiment is

1:46

shared around the world and that was why i was interested in having this conversation today

1:52

at the very very beginning of this idea and concept the ideas and intentions at the heart of

1:57

the project monument to be unelected are incredibly relevant um to us um as they all

2:04

speak as i speak to as a project speaks to democracy and democratic process itself um

2:11

and for those unfamiliar with the project monument to the unelected it was first installed in 2008 and today

2:18

the evolving installation includes 58 signs that endorse the runner-up in every presidential election

2:24

in u.s history speaking to what might have been really to choices that are not made as

2:30

americans prepare to make another monumental political decision [Music] right now the installation occupies

2:36

galleries um and art museum spaces as well as community locations across the united

2:42

states including a site in santa ana california presented by john spiak and grand

2:48

central arts center so i just note to everyone who’s joined

2:54

us that everyone has their video off and has been muted for this conversation to avoid any potential noise and i would

3:00

ask if you do have questions to use the q a section of this webinar and we will

3:06

address them and bring those into the conversation a little later uh first i’d like to introduce both of

3:13

these individuals to you nina katsudorian is joining us from

3:19

berlin today nina is an interdisciplinary artist whose work includes video

3:24

performance sound sculpture photography and public projects she’s also an associate professor at new

3:30

york university and her work is in public and private collections including the met blanching museum of art morgan library

3:37

san francisco museum of modern art the margulies collection and sachi gallery

3:43

how you might also have come across her work in 2015 her video accent elimination was included in the

3:49

venice biennale as part of the armenian pavilion which won the golden lion for best national participation

3:57

venues for her exhibitions have also included the serpentine gallery turner contemporary palette tokyo

4:04

istanbul museum of modern art turku art museum museum of contemporary art san diego ica

4:11

philadelphia brooklyn museum artist space sculpture center moma and mola ps1

4:19

also we have with us john spiak who’s joining us from california today john is

4:26

the director and chief curator of california state university fullerton’s grand central arts center in

4:32

santa ana a position he has held since 2011. his curatorial practice focuses on contemporary art and society

4:40

in particular works in socially engaged practices and video through the grand central arts

4:46

center’s artist and resident residence initiative he hosts national and international artists as they develop projects

4:52

prior to this appointment he was curator of the arizona state university art museum

4:58

and in that role he was in charge of the residency series as well as the art museum short film and

5:05

video festival he has curated over 100 solo exhibitions solo and group exhibitions sorry

5:11

working with artists including pop pipelotti wrist uh shireen nashat pablo helguera

5:17

commodity and paul ramirez jonas his projects have received support from such organizations as the british

5:23

council metabolic studio the national endowment for the arts and the andy warhol foundation for the visual arts

5:32

with that i’m so pleased that you could both participate here today and um i’d like to

5:40

um turn it over to nina to tell us more about this project um and then we’ll move on to john who

5:45

can speak about his context in california so over to you and then thanks shauna um

5:51

thanks shauna and john for for being for the invitation for being here and to all of you who i cannot see

5:57

but i trust her out there somewhere um and it’s a yeah it’s a good night to be

6:03

talking about this piece it’s also an unbelievably nerve-wracking night generally um to be thinking about this topic so um i

6:10

was happy to have this to look forward to to take my mind off of the fretting a little bit actually um and i thought it might be useful to

6:18

precede our sort of discussion that might follow with um a little bit of storytelling about the history of this piece because there

6:24

really are a lot of stories to be told at this point um i i made this piece in 2008 it was a

6:33

commission by the scottsdale museum of contemporary art for a 10-year anniversary show that

6:38

was happening there called seriously funny um and the curator who contacted me

6:43

cassandra koblenz um brought me out to um scottsdale and i did a site visit in 2008 with the

6:50

goal being to have an idea for a show that was supposed to be about humor and

6:55

although i work a lot with humor i i very rarely i never really begin a project thinking

7:02

i’m going to try to make something funny it’s something that maybe happens um along the way or as a result of the

7:08

kinds of things that i’m often attracted to or um as a strategy because i think

7:13

there are a lot of useful things you can do with humor as a hook and as a kind of um as a kind of welcome mat to come on

7:19

in um and as i sometimes like to say once i have gotten you close it’s possible to sort of close the

7:25

door behind you and and actually have a conversation with you so that’s one of the ways i like to think about the way that humor can work

7:32

um when i went to scottsdale in 2008 it was for that site visit it was at the

7:38

time uh it was it was november um no sorry earlier than that it was it was you know the election was

7:46

imminent um but there were signs up like this all over and um

7:53

you know the typical kinds of places you see these vacant lots um side of the road people’s front lawns

8:01

and some of them in arizona were particularly big um where i grew up in california i feel like i never saw some that

8:07

kind of got the scale that some of these did but it was an important moment to to visit um

8:14

interestingly also because it was john mccain’s state and he was as i’m sure you remember one of the

8:20

presidential um contenders so i kept noticing these as i was trying to have an idea

8:27

and as i also went around um looking around scottsdale which is a

8:32

place i’d never been i i started thinking about um a lot of the histories of this part of the country

8:38

and um i’m happy we began with a land acknowledgement because these histories were very much on my

8:44

mind and when i saw signs like this sign on that street lamp that said indian school in reference to these

8:51

so-called indian schools um there were sort of these constant reminders of a very bleak violent histories that sort

8:59

of hung like a dark very unfunny cloud on the entire visit for me and the harder i

9:05

tried to have a funny idea the more tragic and awful everything just seemed to be and the more

9:10

awful history american history i seem to see and so i kept sort of finding that um

9:17

the task was getting tough and and somewhere in these two things kind of colliding with one another

9:23

um i started to i guess um have an idea and um and the idea came

9:29

from perhaps observing some of the things about these signs that actually are often kind of funny and one of the things i love is if you look

9:36

at that little sign saying parents support parents support miranda um it’s the

9:41

places they’re put in these little weed patches to make them stand out and they or the sort of graphic design

9:48

that’s involved in these i feel like there’s a very particular kind of design sensibility that comes into these sorts

9:53

of signs and um there’s a nice one there in the middle uh tamara thomas for constable that’s very

10:00

plain and they they kind of seem to often indicate a sort of

10:05

um proud confident voice or an independent voice as eric meyer’s sign

10:10

says or or something which is sort of um a bold and assertive statement but but

10:16

where um you don’t want it going to be too fancy either the sort of

10:21

high brow um language of graphic design has no place in these signs i feel like

10:27

it’s a sort of it’s a sort of language that wants to speak to um a wide swath and that is important about

10:33

the way they are designed in the way that they they want to work so i came up with this idea that um

10:40

would be for this piece monument to the unelected i decided i would call it and the idea is that we would take a look

10:46

at the collective um us past of all presidential elections

10:52

by having this set of signs that had the names of everybody from a major party candidate who ran

10:57

and lost and in doing so there would be a way to think about the collective wrote not taken

11:02

it was important to me that the piece in a curious kind of way was politically very non-partisan kind of neutral actually

11:11

of course paradoxically election signs are usually used to put out a strong opinion about something and in this case

11:17

i was really just showing a statement of of sort of facts along the way to our present moment

11:23

so um the signs are designed in a contemporary style i wanted it to

11:29

have a kind of current day vernacular design feeling so you could imagine any of these people were running for office

11:34

now even for the signs that were very very recent i did not use actual election signs from those

11:41

campaigns so that’s important all of these were designed from scratch um in scottsdale the piece was then put

11:47

up on three different sites um one of them was the front lawn of a house and here you are seeing the kind

11:53

of signage that we used there which bears resemblance to one of these um real estate signs when a house is for

12:00

sale there was something significant about that in 2008 because arizona was in the middle of an enormous

12:06

worse than in other parts of the country mortgage crisis lending prices and um there were a lot

12:12

of house signs for sale so i’m going to show you a few views this is the front of that house

12:19

and it really does end up looking like someone is living here who does not know what year it is or

12:25

has some sort of quite curious idea about contemporary politics um one thing that

12:32

made me happy while we were installing this piece um and i should mention that the first

12:37

time around this piece got installed actually after the election had happened so

12:42

it was already known that mccain palin you can see the sign there had lost the election and somebody came

12:48

up to me and said he kind of was taking it in and he sort of nodded and he said to me i know what you’re trying to say you’re

12:54

trying to say that anyone who we could have elected would have been better than the guy we just elected

13:00

referring to obama and i thought that’s interesting because the piece doesn’t take that position it doesn’t take any

13:05

position but he read this into the piece and i’ve had sort of experiences like this where people take it

13:11

um from from different political viewpoints sort of projecting onto the same thing and and it’s important to me

13:16

that the piece maintains that kind of you know possibility for that projection

13:21

one of the other sites was a vacant lot so i’m just showing you another one of the arizona sites um

13:26

and then the third one and i apologize for this terrible slide my master images for this are on a hard

13:33

drive in brooklyn and i’m in berlin but the third site has a crazy story attached to it it was off

13:38

a freeway um off-ramp and a big road called price road on the corner of price road and

13:44

another road i forgot the name of you would sort of come off the freeway where that black car is and then make a right and you would sort

13:50

of pass the signs on a corner as you did that and if you look just past um

13:57

this is sort of the gravel is where we have installed the signs if you look just past that you see a big parking lot and that

14:04

was a commuter parking lot for a light rail system that ran from this lot and you know further into

14:11

the city so um this comes this becomes important later because the crazy thing that happened on this

14:17

site is that every single sign disappeared all of them were gone all of a sudden one day and

14:24

cassandra cleveland’s the curator called me and said i have something really weird to tell you and i’m trying to get

14:29

to the bottom of it but this is what happened and we scratched our heads we couldn’t figure out you know like

14:35

how all of them could have disappeared at once and i must say this was a tough terrain to install into i remember we

14:41

had to pound really hard to get the signs into the ground on this really hard packed dirt with

14:47

gravel on it the mystery was somewhat solved when we discovered or she discovered that there

14:53

was there were cctv cameras guarding that parking lot and when she got access to that footage

14:58

she could see that there was a white city van that had pulled up along these signs and a worker who had gotten out

15:05

and just very methodically took all the signs and threw them in the van it turned out that obama

15:12

had come to do a visit to scottsdale phoenix at that time to address the the mortgage crisis and a

15:18

city worker had been told to please remove the anti-obama signs at

15:24

a certain particular intersection because obama’s motorcade was going to sort of pass that location

15:29

and the city worker misunderstood my piece to be the anti-obama signs and so

15:34

he went and took them all away which was kind of hilarious although slightly tragic but cassandra then went

15:40

and sort of was told you know if the signs are still around they will be at this particular depot and she went and

15:46

found this depot where you could see all kinds of other election signs that have been torn out from places i guess they were

15:51

placed illegally maybe and um was even told which dumpster they would be in and so in this kind of

15:57

suspenseful way i got these pictures from her where she goes and looks inside the dumpster and there was nothing there

16:03

anymore so they were all gone we lost the whole set but i i kind of love the story i love

16:08

the story in part because of this idea that the president would be so sensitive to us to an anti sign that you know they must

16:15

be shielded from his from his eyes so um 2012 then rolled around and i showed the

16:22

piece in in three different places one was at um an art space in brooklyn called the boiler the pierogi gallery

16:29

there has the other was at the aldrich museum in connecticut outside and the other was at the wall street journal so i’ll quickly

16:35

show you what these look like these this is the wall street journal’s headquarters in washington and i installed it in

16:41

these large large windows that they have facing the street and what was interesting to me about the

16:46

site was actually this news ticker because there was a constant stream of present

16:52

coming through this news ticker um you know to the moment news in contrast to all these things which

16:57

kind of took you back and back and back and back and back in time um in connecticut i

17:03

installed in front of this colonial era house that was part of the aldrich museum’s um

17:09

exhibition spaces and there was something quite nice about that um temporal matching because in fact the

17:16

earliest oldest names on my signs are from roughly around the time of that house

17:21

um so this had a very sort of bucolic you know um connecticut setting and um yeah and

17:28

everything went quite smoothly that year and then we got to 2016 where um

17:35

it was shown again that the scottsdale museum of art in the museum this time they’ve made a commitment to show this

17:40

piece now every four years which is something i’m incredibly grateful for um they’re part of the cycle this time

17:46

around too and i also showed it at um a historical house called lefferts house

17:51

um built in 1793 in prospect park brooklyn um this was a farm and part of a sort of

17:58

um yeah a family lived there and it’s a historic house now where you can kind of learn about all these kinds of

18:03

things that historic houses teach you so i installed on the front lawn and this time around

18:09

the tradition became that i myself came and sort of placed the sign of the most

18:15

recent losing candidate as soon as we knew the results so the next day um i came out of that

18:22

door and put the hillary clinton sign in the ground as a number of press people watched and

18:28

documented this event um in the rain and that was 2016.

18:34

and that brings us to the present moment i wanted to show you this sign because

18:41

this might be my single favorite real life election sign that i’ve seen and i just want to return

18:46

to this point about um the kind of particular design sensibility that these signs often have

18:53

sometimes just very very basic and this is maybe the most basic of them that i’ve seen um so i i’ve been getting

19:00

the question a lot recently have you prepared two signs already for this election and i say of course i have

19:06

you have to be ready with both of them we certainly learned this in many past elections you never really know what

19:11

could happen um so i have the biden harris sign and i have the trump sign all of the

19:18

institutions hosting this have these two signs ready to go and this time around

19:24

um i have been thrilled and quite overwhelmed also by um the the good fortune of having eight

19:31

different places this time want to show this piece one thing i’ve really learned through this project

19:36

is that the mysterious and interesting um fact i guess that you know an artwork

19:42

can mean one thing one year and then sort of take on different meanings as time goes on i mean the piece has been

19:48

the same since it was in 2008 but the world around it obviously changes and um

19:56

i guess i take this to mean this year that this election has had so many people thinking about it and

20:02

it’s been so present on people’s minds and full of so much tension that this piece has sort of somehow gained a kind of traction that i don’t think it’s ever

20:08

had um so um i will show you what it looks like now on all the

20:13

different sites they’re showing it it’s um it’s a pace gallery in new york shown at a very in a very sort of you

20:19

know on a big white wall gallery gallery kind of space um

20:24

it is in scottsdale once again in front of a private home very kind person who has

20:30

allowed us to use their homes this is always the case i’m deeply grateful for these people sean can maybe address this a little bit

20:36

too when he talks um and here you can see we got the old old signpost out of storage it was still

20:43

there from 2008 and we’re using it again um to mark what the piece is i i make a

20:48

point of never ever having my name on the sign i don’t want people to be sort of immediately identifying this as an

20:54

artwork and um it just has the title of the piece and then either a phone number or a qr code or some way you have of

21:00

getting more information here it is in madison wisconsin in front of the home of a former um

21:09

now retired judge judge abraham’s son who served four she was

21:14

elected four times um to to the wisconsin um

21:19

uh like i’m losing my words the highest level supreme court of wisconsin um and um

21:28

apparently i’ve been told this spot in the neighborhood is a place where election signs often appear because it’s

21:33

a little bit sort of between properties and um it’s it’s open and not usually kind of heavily landscaped and so people like

21:39

to put election signs here so they’re sort of in a way in a very natural place this time around um this

21:46

is the piece at catherine clark gallery in san francisco or it’s across two walls and yesterday the

21:51

the show that uh just opened there um has this piece in it

21:57

it’s a picture from the opening this is in oakland downtown oakland california in front of the roots community health

22:04

center um and this reaches a really different audience in a different neighborhood

22:10

than the gallery in san francisco not so far away so i’ve been really happy to get to kind of you know also bring this piece into

22:16

communities that um haven’t hosted this artwork before uh here we are in

22:22

cleveland in front of the cleveland museum of contemporary art where it’s kind of put into three different um or sorry museum of

22:29

contemporary or cleveland is how i should correctly name that institution it’s in three sort of

22:34

um plots of uh landscaping in front and um they sent me these pictures the

22:40

other day i really like this guy who’s kind of like what is going on um i love that picture and

22:48

then it is also in front of an art space there called transformer station and i would ask you to look very

22:55

carefully at the front row for a moment because when i received

23:00

this picture i sort of i had to sort of stop and go wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute why is the trump sign already

23:05

there wait a minute what’s going on and then i realized it’s not my trump sign it is the

23:11

trump campaign sign that someone had apparently put there and what remains

23:17

mysterious was whether they put it in the spirit of a trump supporter adding a political sign to the

23:23

law or if they put it in the spirit of someone who wanted trump to lose and it’s i i will never know the answer to this but

23:28

um it’s the first time a sign a real sign has been sort of added guerrilla style to the piece and i

23:35

wondered if that would happen this time around and it has now and that brings us to um grand central

23:41

arts center um and the installation which they are hosting and chaperoning in santa ana and here we have a very

23:49

california setting with palm trees and a nice front lawn and bright sunshine and warm weather and um

23:55

it looks completely fantastic in front of this house and this may be a good time to hand it over to john

24:02

and i will just mention very briefly um that the the event that we are all

24:10

wildly and scramblingly planning around now is the placement of the newest losing candidate

24:16

sign which of course this time around is very challenging to know how to schedule um we have eight venues we are in four

24:23

different time zones and i’ve also decided that i wanted to have a first-time voter be the person to

24:29

place the sign because i’m on the wrong side of the ocean and i think it’s a good chance to actually

24:34

start to kind of distribute the talking about the peace to more voices than mine

24:40

so um i’m really really happy that everybody is enthusiastic about doing this and um

24:47

we are going to plan on having this event happen on the first saturday after we have a firm election

24:54

result if you’re interested in watching it it will be publicly broadcast on zoom pace gallery will have all the

25:00

information on their home you know on their on their gallery website and um you can sign up and watch it

25:06

happen no matter what happens so john i think i’m gonna go back to the slide and

25:12

and let you speak about santa ana

25:19

thanks nina uh so nina approached us last fall and said the election’s coming

25:25

up um you know the piece because i should in full disclosure cassandra copeland

25:30

is my lovely partner and so i was fortunate in 2008 to watch that

25:36

piece unfold to see it realized to see the panic when

25:42

they were all gone that one day uh and to see them rediscovered and reinstalled um

25:49

with such success uh and cassandra had noted in the comments too that it was installed

25:54

before the election just the election and um in scottsdale the first time and

26:00

transitioned over so thanks because history continues here yeah

26:08

and so when nina approached us uh we started thinking about best neighborhoods and we were trying to think of a neighborhood that

26:14

is kind of a transition neighborhood it’s not a very liberal neighborhood it’s not a very conservative neighborhood

26:19

uh it’s a neighborhood that you know both sides are kind of transitioning through

26:24

all the time in a high traffic zone so we have this amazing funder

26:31

uh supporters of grand central arts center deb and john webb who surprisingly every

26:37

halloween they do this crazy halloween party where they transition their entire home into a

26:44

thematic so i think the last year it was like dismal land and they had created a fake

26:49

front dystopian disneyland in their entire front of their home and

26:55

then as you went into the home it was all transition spaces so with this year

27:01

being covered um no halloween party is going to take place and so i approached john and said hey

27:07

would you be willing to do this piece and i mean it was

27:13

five minutes later and john was let’s do it let’s do it so generously

27:20

we installed tracy gear grand central’s associate director and i went out and

27:25

pounded in these rods and zip tied these signs to to their posts with nina’s guidance and

27:32

direction that john adams be front and center kind of in the middle of the installation

27:38

overlooking everyone so his sign is there and it as we were installing people were

27:45

stopping by constantly and asking questions and having conversations and reflecting on people they had voted for

27:51

or people they had not voted for and um kind of finding the humor in some of

27:57

the signs or the intensity in some of the signs so it was kind of a nice way without

28:03

having to have reception for a piece to have a reception uh over a two-day installation where probably i

28:09

would say 125 to 130 people stopped by just as we were installing the piece and

28:16

since that point the press has come by and other people keep stopping by and posting pictures online and

28:22

sharing images with us and stories with us so uh i don’t know what else to share at

28:28

this point but i would love to hear what shawn is thinking and what questions she might have so or the audience as well

28:37

um i guess uh you know i just the other night a friend and i were

28:43

re-watching the newsroom aaron sorkin’s series and there’s this wonderful line

28:49

about every two years we drive to a fire station and overthrow the government and there isn’t a policeman in the street

28:56

and um i was you know you know you talked about how um the context and kind of the the

29:03

kind of i guess the world around this installation changes and this year it seems like you know the

29:09

project takes even more uh takes on even more poignancy as it highlights you know this peaceful transfer of power that that has happened

29:16

since the beginning right um but that this year uh seems to be you know potentially at risk as a result

29:23

of trump’s unwillingness to commit to accepting a loss of the polls and i’m just wondering if you you know if you

29:29

both have thought of this in relationship to the installation

29:35

yeah i mean it’s um i’ve definitely thought about it and i

29:40

mean it’s it’s sort of come up in just this incredibly concrete way around like i said the planning of

29:46

the sign placement event and there have been there’s been a lot of conversation around um how you know playing this game of

29:55

like when should we make the date and sort of reading and trying to research and it spins you into this kind of strange loop of

30:01

of trying to kind of predict the news which is what so many people i think are just trying to do generally anyway

30:08

um so yeah first time this question comes up as you

30:13

say shauna and i i don’t know i’ve had a few moments where i’ve thought we may be placing that sign like six

30:20

saturdays from now who knows i certainly hope that’s not the case but um i don’t know it’s

30:28

i guess i i don’t have anything profound to say here it’s very much been on my mind yeah

30:34

the thing i’ve struggled with this time around i will say is that it has been really important for this piece to be as

30:41

i was saying sort of non-partisan in some sense and um

30:46

and there has been a way in which i think at least four years ago when i placed the sign in the ground i tried to be quite

30:52

kind of neutral and factual in my in my carriage and in temperament as i

30:58

did that and um it’s difficult for me this year to try

31:04

to keep my own political opinions out of this piece it’s really hard and i’ve sort of tried to do that when i

31:09

speak about it um in a press context because i want i feel really strongly

31:14

about that being important because i don’t want people to sort of um shut out their engagement with the

31:21

piece because they perceive it to have a political slant or because the artist does and so you know i did an interview um well i

31:29

won’t even say what station i did it with but there have been a few journalists who’ve tried to bait me a little bit by saying what sign do you

31:35

think is going to be added and i i just you know i i won’t answer that question and i reiterate that the piece isn’t

31:40

really about my views on on this um question but

31:46

but i do think about the moment where the sign will get placed this year and um how it will be you know on one

31:52

hand perhaps difficult to suppress my relief and happiness and on the other hand perhaps difficult to suppress my um

32:01

despair if trump wins i’ll just say forthrightly in this context i think i

32:06

can say that so i don’t know um i’d be curious john when you’ve been speaking with people if

32:12

you how you deal with that if people sort of have asked you to come forward with your own personal opinion or

32:18

um if you’ve ever been put on the spot

32:23

at this point i haven’t been put on the spot in terms of

32:28

that issue with a patron yeah but in my own mind i’ve really been

32:34

thinking out you know we’re going to have a first-time voter install that sign

32:40

and we’re going to make it a public event yeah and if there are some people that aren’t happy about that how do we ensure that

32:46

person’s safety and how do we prepare for that so we i’ve we’ve really been thinking about that how do we make sure that that person’s

32:52

safe and they don’t become uh you know a key figure in that process

32:58

um they don’t become villainized or you know it’s there’s amazing people in these signs that have lost

33:04

um and it’s the history of the united states it’s fact so yeah this year i think it feels a lot

33:11

different i did you know i haven’t been involved with it in the scene in the past but this year

33:16

it does feel like there’s an intensity and when you see some of the stuff that’s happened over the last few days you know there’s an intensity of

33:23

of campaigning and um and strategies that i’ve never seen before in my life yeah

33:29

yeah yeah i suppose i’m even open to the idea that we

33:35

we’d uh you know we rethink doing it publicly like i don’t know i i really feel like

33:41

there’s sort of a need right now to be open to any possibility including doing the whole thing differently than it’s been done which

33:48

made me not doing it i don’t know it’s really hard to predict there is

33:54

actually uh you know back to what you were saying you know there is almost an inherent balance to the project so you know it doesn’t it it

34:02

it reflects that history right so i think um it’s it’s interesting that we’re looking at now

34:08

right now and today um and even that balance becomes more vivid

34:14

in a situation with extreme imbalance right um yeah yeah

34:21

um i wonder too if you could um talk about you know you talked about

34:28

sort of the sign um design and i know that that’s quite a conscious uh you know planning process for you

34:36

um and there’s this humorous dimension that you know signs not only for contemporary politicians but

34:41

um we’ve got you know those incorporating names from the 18th century who obviously wouldn’t have had a

34:51

um but i think it also really points to how media has changed because at some point

34:56

these signs would have been you know kind of an informal pull right they would have probably been given a sense

35:01

of how communities were leaning and um just you know just given um

35:07

you know right now we’re just we’re so bombarded by visual data and other information about

35:12

polls and and how people are voting i’m just wondering can you talk about um the project in that format in terms

35:20

of you know just this sort of visual culture history sure um i mean i will say that i’ve been

35:26

looking at a lot of a friend of mine who’s in texas has been posting a lot of um

35:32

images of her neighborhood as she walks around and a lot of people have signs in their lawns and i i still think in many parts of the

35:39

country it seems to work like that kind of poll that you were talking about where people you know you kind of know what the

35:44

neighborhood is voting by what you see on the lawns and um yeah so i’ve

35:50

yeah i i think that part of it is still intact um it’s strange in new york it’s

35:57

it’s you know lawns are scarce so these aren’t these things aren’t sort

36:02

of signaled in the same places i feel like you see signs put in people’s windows or they’re kind of um

36:08

maybe yeah this kind of promoting of a candidate shows up with different forms

36:14

but um but i i shawna can you ask me again the kind of the question of the design related question i’m not sure

36:20

i um well i know that you talked a bit about how you um you know they’re not based on real

36:26

signs but do you want to just i know you were doing research with the designer and just right right so they i should say

36:34

they are based on real signs in the sense that we based almost every single sign on a

36:42

sign that a candidate somewhere actually used at some point so we have been cribbing

36:48

from real signs um that we find online or see out in the world to make all of

36:54

these but these aren’t the candidates actual real campaign signs so um

36:59

yeah so that i mean you know the one i showed you for this go around the trump um the trump and then biden

37:06

harris one somebody pointed out in a recent talk that i gave about the piece that the trump sign is blue

37:12

which doesn’t make sense for a candidate from the republican party and i said that’s exactly why i made it blue

37:17

because there needs to somewhere be a hint that this isn’t actually kind of the but then you know

37:23

that that sort of fell apart when i saw that one that was added to the lawn in um

37:28

in um cleveland which was blue so i you know i whoops i guess that that

37:34

logic didn’t hold but um but yeah i i

37:41

we’ve sort of and when i say we i should mention the fantastic designer that i worked with evan gaffney who

37:46

you know working very closely with him we sort of designed this original set of 58 signs and then since 2008 i’ve been

37:52

designing the additional ones myself but um yeah looking at ones that seem to

37:58

have that sort of you know it when you see it quality of an election sign um

38:04

some of them it was particularly sort of fun to sometimes pick some slogans that were not the

38:10

campaign slogans but associated with that candidate so sometimes they were sort of like michael dukakis was known as the

38:16

massachusetts miracle and we decided to kind of put that on his sign even though that wasn’t his campaign

38:22

slogan um so you know there is some there’s some realness into

38:27

in some of these signs as well in that sense um we have a question from terry

38:32

williams um he says bumper stickers are another classic manifestation of election signage in the u.s have you considered a

38:39

roadshow version i love that idea yeah like yeah

38:44

that would be really nice you could you could someone this year as a gift sent me um um she had found in a thrift

38:52

store somewhere these perfect like unmarred absolutely perfect like they had

38:57

never been taken out of the box perfect nixon bumper stickers and she sent me two as a gift and um

39:05

it was just such a funny object to kind of have i um yeah yeah so yeah bumper stickers maybe

39:12

maybe next um and john i’m just wondering you know i know

39:18

you’re you’re very interested in social practice and that’s your sort of primary focus of your

39:23

territorial um uh practice but i’m just wondering if you know how

39:28

i think um grand central art center is obviously entrusted in kind of civic discourse and

39:34

so how do you you know how do you see the installation in relationship to the community and kind of the conversations going on and

39:41

and the century’s role in that

39:46

well i think at this time when we can’t be open um you know how we could do a project that

39:52

the community could engage with still on their terms in a safe way

39:58

and you know it is an election year it is time to think about histories and his histories that are

40:06

these kind of strange histories i was just thinking about our conversation earlier about these

40:11

peaceful transitions of powers and then i think about the aaron burr you know it’s it seemed more civil when

40:17

you could just call somebody out to a duel and you know shoot it out um it seems kind of ironic

40:23

that you know we’re at this point where it’s where we think it’s you know so

40:29

traumatic or but i guess it was just as traumatic back then people just did it in a different way um so for us i

40:37

mean this is an opportunity for public to come and to engage and to think about you know our histories and i

40:42

think that’s what we do at grand central we think about relevant issues of our time um we think you know we have two

40:48

exhibitions up right now one dealing with uh kind of community and marketplace in

40:54

terms of uh latino hispanic communities and then we have another one um that’s by alpha dear luna who’s an

41:01

artist from mexico city and so we have those as storefront exhibitions and then we have william camargo

41:07

who’s thinking about the local histories of santa ana from you know hangings that occurred

41:13

back in the turn of the century the first turn of the century right down the block from grand central

41:20

to our current police uh rating of eighth most violent police force in the united states

41:26

um you know their current history is and then they’re fact and i think that’s what we try to do we try to to have exhibitions that are rooted in

41:33

fact that bring up conversations that are relevant today and

41:40

try to create relationships and connections and i think that’s the most important thing a lot of our institutions can do especially where

41:46

we’re located and these times that we’re living in there was also a question in the chat i just

41:51

want to get to it because i because of my wife and i know the answers it says was the original title

41:57

seriously funny um was the original title seriously funny and now it’s monument to the

42:02

unelected if yes reasons for the title change and i think you can address that

42:07

if you would like oh sorry no i i i wasn’t clear when i said that um the exhibition

42:14

that i was invited to be in was called seriously funny and the piece i made for the exhibition seriously funny

42:19

was monumentally unelected so two different things i keep i don’t think all day all day

42:26

i’ve been concerned i was gonna say monument to the unexpected oh yeah that’s a

42:32

perfect sporting slip for today yeah yeah um i like this idea of history too

42:38

because um you know one of the things we we you know the history that we see in in kind of

42:45

visual culture and media today is so much recent history right and i imagine you know the even the list of

42:52

presidents historically in the united states would not be you know common knowledge for most people little let alone the

42:58

runner-ups runners up i guess and so you know for you nina maybe for you as well john

43:04

do you see this in terms of education as well is there an educational component sure and there is certainly a

43:11

big fat history quiz here for anybody who arrives at this piece and you know now i have to tell the shameful story of

43:17

something that i found out just a few weeks ago i don’t even know if i’ve told you this yet sean but but what is so interesting through the

43:25

years of this for me have been the sort of very very um well-informed history buff types who

43:32

sometimes end up seeing this and have not just once but twice now

43:37

corrected an error in the work and i feel really like it’s really irks

43:43

me because i i checked and checked and checked my facts on the list before i had the sign

43:49

made i consulted with two ivy league history professors to get them to look over my

43:55

you know historical research to make sure all these names were correct um and yet still somehow even 12 years

44:03

after making the piece this year someone caught a typo and the typo is in that triangular sign

44:11

that says adams bush the blonde john that you stuck right under the palm tree in the image

44:16

that we’re looking at now um and it’s got this big glaring face of atoms on it

44:23

and this guy wrote to me and said um he said it so politely too so nicely he was like

44:28

i i wondered if on the adam’s bush sign you were making a sort of oblique

44:34

reference to the later bush you know father and son who became president

44:40

because the person who was his running mate adams was actually richard rush not bush

44:48

and i thought i cannot believe i have another error and another sign so it was too late to do anything about

44:54

it this time around but 2024 i have a correction to make and

44:59

a new sign to print because that has to be corrected and um i decided this year to just or once i

45:05

found this out to just kind of take the view of it sort of proves how how easily the

45:11

facts of the past slide away from us because as i said it took 12 years for one person to

45:17

to bother at least pointing this out to me and it slipped by a lot of people so yeah

45:26

on that note as well i think the owner of the sum john webb he constantly tells me how much he

45:34

likes the way you informally personalize tom jefferson you know it’s not thomas jefferson it’s

45:39

not that formal but it’s like it’s it’s tom you know the good old

45:45

yeah and tom have to say i love the the herbert hoover because it’s the sign below the herbert hoover says

45:51

prohibition and optimism and then it’s got this picture of him that just

45:59

i have yeah see if i can i have to see if i can bring you to an image of herbert hoover from one of the

46:04

past uh yeah we that’s another one where we kind of made up and he’s there in the lower

46:10

right hand corner you can just see it um he’s looking very serious but this this slogan prohibition optimism

46:17

we kind of made that up so i mean those were platforms he ran on in a way but yeah it’s a good question

46:25

here um it touches on something we mentioned a little while ago nina um how is the meaning of this piece

46:32

changed in the current context which is critical of the monument during black lives matters and indigenous first nations movements

46:38

i’ve especially i’m especially interested about this in terms of its temporary nature its malleability and

46:45

the non-durability of the material yeah that’s a great question and all

46:50

really great observations and i think that through different works and if there’s

46:56

time maybe i’ll i’ll perhaps breeze you through another one where i’ve tried to sort of think through the monument and how that might

47:02

work but i mean when we think if you sort of gave someone a pop quiz and said

47:07

monument what comes to mind you know i i would wager a guess a bet that many people

47:13

would say you know an old dead guy made of bronze standing on a pedestal like there’s a

47:18

sort of permanency to the thing there’s a kind of um you know a validation of certain

47:24

histories power structures all of these things the reason why a lot of these things are being torn down right now and or criticized or thought through again

47:31

in a different way and and so yes i think it is meaningful to me to make something to call it a monument and to make

47:38

something that is really flimsy and which in some ways tries to sort of say that um

47:44

there’s also a lot of history that that we for better or worse and you really could feel that way about any of these

47:49

signs you could feel that it’s for better or worse that we forget about this person but that um that there’s a lot that kind of

47:56

um that kind of um disappears and some of it we probably

48:03

you could say also i would argue some of the histories we don’t remember about some of these people we should probably be remembering

48:09

more or thinking more about or remembering more so um so yeah i mean i agree with

48:16

everything the question asker points out about this and and certainly in certainly through a lot of the recent

48:22

black lives matter um you know actions and and the movement it’s it’s

48:27

um there has been so much interesting attention on monuments and and what to do about them and a kind of

48:33

refusal to keep living with them when they stand for things that are really objectionable um

48:41

if there’s a moment i’ll jump to this other should i do that yeah okay all right can i just state one

48:48

thing though the last part of that says and the non-durability of this material man nina has some requirements for these

48:55

signs they’re on super thick corrugated plastic and they’re all installed on

49:00

heavy duty rebar so they are pretty darn durable and that’s kind of yeah i mean i will

49:07

say that like it pained me a little bit this year to produce eight sets of 56 signs made of

49:12

more plastic put in the world so i’m hoping not too many disappear so i can reuse these in the future

49:18

it feels like it’s sort of nice if these sets have have sort of a long a long life so um

49:25

yeah i thought it would be interesting to mention this though um because we’re also having a conversation sort of between many places but canada

49:32

and the us um among them so i i had this commission in 2013

49:38

which was this um commission for the us government they have a program called um percent for art

49:45

where you know when the government builds a new building the commission a certain amount of their budget is

49:50

allocated for to art for that building or for that site and um usually when these commissions happen

49:57

it’s a process of um you know you submit a proposal and they pick one and you end up making the

50:02

piece that they’ve picked that you’ve proposed in this instance though they sort of approached me and said

50:08

we’d like to work with you would you be interested in making something for the site and i didn’t we didn’t have an idea on the table and

50:14

i i said um i would be interested i i am really interested in in many ways

50:21

broadly defined sort of border situations and this this site was a border a border crossing

50:26

station between um a very small town in northern northern northern maine called van buren

50:32

and then on the other side of the river that divided the two towns from one another the town town of st leonard in

50:38

new brunswick um and i went up there i saw the site

50:43

um and i started thinking again it’s kind of you know gotta have an idea where see i think i

50:50

have this marked on the map up there yeah that is where um that’s how you know pretty remote place and um

50:59

the border station was being rebuilt because the river had risen one year and washed away part of it in a flood so

51:06

skipping ahead in the story replaced it with an absolutely enormous facility which um i have yet to see in

51:12

person because i haven’t made it up there yet um i started thinking a lot about what happens when you cross a border and

51:17

these moments where a place the new place you’ve arrived in tries to kind of

51:23

quickly define itself for you so there’s a sort of welcome moment welcome to maine welcome to wherever but

51:28

then also these sort of symbols that begin to appear or sort of mascots or um lots of things that that are trying

51:35

to kind of um introduce you quickly and efficiently to the new place where you are

51:40

and um so that kind of thing i have a real fondness for awkward

51:45

public sculpture i will also say and so i love things like that crazy star which is sort of sinking into

51:52

the ground although maybe it’s supposed to be rising out of the ground um so i just began to collect images like this where

51:57

there were sort of these welcome welcome to estate moments but also started thinking about roadside

52:03

attractions and how often those take animal forms um i love things like this too i’m

52:09

always when i’m on some road trip really excited when i encounter one of these kinds of things and um yeah so you know

52:18

they they ran the gamut and i made a really big collection of sort of a image scrapbook of lots of

52:23

these and this one um i can’t quite read now anymore on the slide but this squid was

52:28

made somewhere for somewhere in canada and that’s the artist with the rendering that then became the sculpture i love this thing

52:35

um so i i thought and i thought and i thought you know what could i do

52:40

at this border crossing moment and there’s also a sort of tension that

52:45

exists with these commissions sometimes because the people working in the building um sometimes frankly i think would rather

52:52

have this money allocated for the artwork go to something else so you’re not necessarily as as an

52:58

artist working on one of these sites the thing you are working on is not necessarily

53:03

always really that welcome and and i felt very strongly i didn’t want to make something

53:08

which would sort of be in that spirit of you know i’m from somewhere else i don’t know a thing about this place i’m going to pop in and

53:15

impose my artwork on you and then kind of leave so it was also important to me to make something that had to do with

53:21

with the place but also that i thought people in the place would like and not just the people working at this

53:27

border station but the town that was sort of there um van buren that they might like

53:32

so i began to research state emblems and discovered that every every u.s state has this crazy long list

53:40

of sort of like over determinedly long list of things that are state emblems and in the case

53:47

of maine it wasn’t just the moose which is the state mammal but it the list went on and on and it was

53:53

things like the state’s soft drink and the state dessert and the state treat which was different from the dessert and

54:00

and the state dirt there was even a state dirt there was a state arctic exploration vessel and of course

54:06

the state flower the state tree the state you know bird and and all these things and so what the piece became in the end

54:14

because i was also of course um um bound to producing something that would

54:19

last for 80 years outdoors in northern maine kind of challenging weather conditions and i thought well it really should be

54:26

bronze for that reason but it really should also be bronze because monuments are bronze and i’m going to make a monument like

54:32

this is going to be some kind of a monument and what it became was a sculpture this is just a digital rendering of

54:38

all of these symbols incorporated into one place so this is all of maine’s symbols in a

54:44

sculpture it’s a life-size moose with all of the different things kind of piled on if all of these things find a

54:52

space somewhere so you’ve got a cat on the back you’ve got chickadees on all the antlers the state bird

54:57

the leaping landlocked salmon which is the state fish and so on and so on and so on

55:04

this is what it looked like right after it got installed um the landscaping has not grown in yet

55:10

so now it’s sort of standing in taller grass and looking a little bit more like a moose might be standing there

55:16

um the thing that um made me really happy about this finally it took four

55:22

years to get to the point where all of us were ready to move ahead with an idea that i’d proposed is that the town really

55:28

likes it and apparently they’ve nicknamed it um marty the moose from martin van buren also one of the people on one of my

55:34

signs and um so it’s kind of had this you know it has become kind of a roadside

55:40

attraction and it is also kind of a you know bronze proper monument and um it sort of looks this is the sort

55:47

of point where you you leave the border um stationary and enter the town so it’s kind of right there

55:53

right there on that border as well so that’s the story i thought it would be interesting to to

55:59

share with you tonight um yeah well they’re both very much counter monuments in some way

56:06

yeah a little bit of critique within them yeah or just maybe i’m

56:12

trying to make the case that like there are a lot of things worth commemorating and i think some of those things don’t have to be famous

56:17

dead people at all like there you need to be people so um yeah

56:24

i wonder too is um you know we’re talking about this generations and a genealogy of graceful

56:31

losers basically when you look at this insulation and um our most recent instance when there’s

56:38

been sort of significant consideration of a missed opportunity was probably with hillary clinton

56:44

um most recently but i wonder if doing your research if any other situations had um

56:49

kind of struck you and really caused you to speculate what might have been right in another election i think one

56:56

has to think about gore you know that year that was such a another one of those very just sort of

57:03

disorienting what is going on moments um gore bush so that’s pretty recent too um but you

57:10

know i haven’t done i have not done a deep dive on every one of these people i am the first to admit

57:16

that you know for me too like some of these names remain

57:21

unexplored histories for me so i mean it’s been sort of like in this nice way as i sort of described earlier

57:28

a piece where i have been sort of sometimes educated through it by other people who know much more than me

57:33

about some of these people um and that’s been a real pleasure

57:38

um question from lexa walsh hey alexa thanks for tuning in how is being in

57:44

berlin this year affecting your election anxiety very interesting

57:50

question um it feels on one hand

57:56

i mean uh you know i’ve had a lot of exchanges with friends the last week saying you just can’t imagine how tense

58:02

it is here it’s so intense in the us right now and um i don’t feel that in a sort of i walk

58:09

out the door and see it way but on the other hand it feels a little bit to me like i’ve been watching

58:15

the country where i come from the way i would watch a house on fire with all my friends stuck inside it it’s been really

58:21

hard the last um seven eight months to kind of just constantly be worrying about are people

58:27

okay for so many reasons there’s so many ways one could not be okay right now so um

58:33

yeah it’s complicated it feels strange to be far away at this moment it feels in some ways it has felt kind

58:40

of bad not to be able to participate in some of what’s been going on there politically in ways that i would have done if i’d

58:46

been in the us i’ve been trying to do some of those kinds of things here um

58:52

so yeah i mean i’m i’m with you all although i’m over here

58:57

um and i voted i voted so can i go back to that last question

59:04

too because i think those ideas of disappointment or surprise i think of the truman dewey you know

59:10

there’s that famous where truman’s holding up the newspaper that says dewey wins

59:17

you know so i think it’s it’s not just these recent but it’s probably been going on for a long

59:22

time where there’s these upsets and surprises um probably more rapidly dispersed

59:28

information because we have these anticipations because of polars we have these there’s just a more of an intensity to

59:34

it now because we do have these expectations that are even driven more because of the rapid sharing of information that

59:40

the internet provides

59:46

well we’re at an hour mark so um if anyone has any final thoughts nina or john

59:54

just hang in there everyone i guess that’s my final thought and it would be really lovely um if any

1:00:01

of you are interested in um attending our sign placing event whatever that is going to look like

1:00:06

whatever that will be and whenever that will be but i just want to invite everybody again and and just to reiterate that the info

1:00:12

about it will be on um pace gallery’s website and all eight institutions are

1:00:18

we’re all doing this together which has been a really really nice part of it um i have to say it’s it’s

1:00:23

made me feel really good um to be collaborating in this really huge scale way right now

1:00:29

on this it has been a sort of good bolstering feeling against all of the bad feelings so so yeah

1:00:36

thanks john among many of you who might also be from the other institutions listening

1:00:43

thank you nina for the opportunity and thank you sean for the opportunity to to have a conversation the day before

1:00:49

the election which couldn’t be a better timing to think about these issues in a heavier way well thank you both for

1:00:56

uh joining us today and thank you to all of the attendees who who are here um if you have any further

1:01:03

questions you can always email me at the art gallery golf and i can pass them on so anyway

1:01:09

um i hope everyone uh everything goes well and do vote if you have the opportunity in cans all right

1:01:17

take care everyone

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