Stephen van Dyck's “Guerrilla Artist-in-Residence” at Home Depot.
Guerrilla artist-in-residence event #1.
I had been wondering: what makes someone an "artist-in-residence"? Artist-in-residence programs traditionally invite an artist to do their thing at a museum or conservatory. But Laurie Anderson was artist-in-residence at NASA, McDonald's and in an Amish community. I ran into Tom, my Integrated Media professor, and was given a hackneyed metaphor about a New Year's Eve party. And Sara was there with him--she's my mentor and one of my favorite professors--she told me you can be artist-in-residence anywhere, and artists usually get invited but can sometimes get the job by asking. And in that same moment, Tom said, "why don't you do this for your IM project?" Why didn't I think of that? Then and there, I decided to give up stake in my old idea and take his advice.
I chose Home Depot, because I recently spent a lot of time there buying and cutting wood to build and stain my desk and bookshelves. I've indulged in its essence, seen how it functions and I'm not very fond of the place; this has become the basis for my interest there; working against my intuition is sometimes fruitful, too. With my new-found expertise, I figured I had the resume to apply. But I can't actually tell them that I'm an artist-in-residence for them either. At first this was because I would have to write a letter and wait several weeks, and I don't have that much time. But I grew to prefer this new limitation. Guerrilla artist-in-residence? If it’s a collaboration between an artist and the opportunities of a particular institution, then what happens if we're ill-matched? What happens if I don’t work with them on agreeable terms? (Read Wikipedia's definition of "artist-in-residence.") What if I'm using their facilities for art without their knowledge? Aside from the more obvious hindrances, what new opportunities are created in this guerrilla version?
The Exploratorium in San Francisco lists as one of its goals for its artist-in-residence program: to develop new insights and understandings by incorporating the artistic process with other investigative processes. If a scientific institution wants to incorporate the artistic process with the scientific goal of investigating and understanding, would the Home Depot equivalent be to incorporate the artistic process with the business goal of marketing research or sales? Should I demonstrate how a product could be used to make something really nice? I could show customers photos of my desk, but I'm not sure how interesting that would be for them.
Oh yeah, so, today was my first day on the job. Last week I got my work-shirt made. It's a normal white t-shirt with an 8" x 8" Home Depot logo with the words "ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE" beneath. I wore it today and waltzed around the store, swept their floors and moved carts to the right place in the parking lot.. It was pretty late, so I figured I could be a part of the night crew. Laurie Anderson said in an interview that she learnt from the McDonald's experience "an interesting kind of teamwork." I didn't have that experience. It also put her in a new enviroment and awkward situation where she was led to have new reactions. One employee harangued me and Tod for attempting to film. Actually, it was more of a plea than a haranguing. After telling asking us not to, he paused, then whimpered, "Please?" How could he know if we were allowed to be there or not, and whom it was who may have given us permission? When I got anywhere near any other employees, they would look at me really confusedly, seeing an unfamiliar person in an unfamilar version of their uniform. Perhaps this is about exclusion rather than inclusion.
Afterwards, Tod and I rewarded ourselves with probably transfatty trip to In-N-Out in Hollywood. At the register I asked Employee Ana how she felt about working there. She said she loves it because she meets people of all kinds: rich and poor, educated and illiterate, young and old, local and tourist. And then she said everyone has some good and some bad in them. I was so surprised to be having such a philosophical conversation in this setting. Now I'm thinking I will try to spark more interaction with people and worry less about my officiality at Home Depot.
A typical artist-in-residence is in full agreement and supportive of the institution for which they're working. What happens when this relationship isn't developed and the artist is free to work amid the institution's grounds without the influence of favor? Or worse, what happens if the artist is completely against the place and functions as a terrorist (of sorts) as a critique of its affiliations and values. I'm spending two weeks coming and going from Home Depot as I please, researching my role as an artist in a privately-owned public environment, enhancing the role of the market as a center for cultural investigation, initiating internal and public discourse about the relationships among art, capitalism, money, politics and private property.
I'm currently at work as Home Depot's guerrilla artist-in-residence. Each day I've been going into the Home Depot on Sunset in a self-made uniform and creating some kind of experience for both myself and the people at the store. Early Friday evening I'm organizing a group to go into the store, wander around through the aisles, find products that you think would make a nice musical instrument, and then accrete into a small ensemble. Why not alleviate the constant consuming with a little bit of creation? At most I'd like to get other customers interested in playing with us, and at least we'd just provide them with some entertainment. LA has more of a lack of public space than almost every other city, thus I feel extra justified in wanting to turn a Home Depot aisle into a place for recreation and congregation. Don't you? At the end of our music improvisation--the ending will be determined by either us or the store-- we'll play the items as we return them to their shelves, then leave. Please let me know if you're interested in coming!
My writing advisor Christine told me the Home Depot equivalent in Australia has a "sausage sizzle in the car park" every Sunday afternoon. What has led the American people to become subservient in the power relationship with businesses? Let's take back our land from these fat cats. It's popularly believed that you have lived the American Dream if you own your own house, backyard, lawn, driveway and car, and have a wife and kids to live it with, best epitomised by the suburban lifestyle. What business feeds off this idealism better than Home Depot, this "dream" of an exclusive club of family units, flaunting their materials, these gods and goddesses granting power only to those who share the same ideology (mythology?) and have the same advantageous predispositions to succeed in life?
For my third event, I decided to make it a bring-your-own-product-to-work day. I brought in music: “Pornophony,” a sound installation made out of gay porn audio.It played from a tape recorder, which I hid in the nails and screws aisle in an open box of nails.The moaning of men emanated into the aisle just loudly enough that it seemed as though the nails themselves were doing the moaning.Home Depot is noisy, so you really had to get up close to hear it.It was kind of beautiful really.Surrealistically pretty to hear these moans of pleasure coming from rows of boxes of nails. Or so I was thinking as I stood there surrounded by boxes of tiny metal rods listening to voices of young men filmed faking sexual pleasure for big bucks. One man with a long white beard, probably part of the night crew, wandered by and suddenly looked startled, then walked around the corner snooping around for the source, but then lost interest.An hour later, the same man walked by again, and this time he really heard it.It must have been at the point in the composition where a lot of orgasms happened.I was leering from a distance, pretending to shop for brass screws.He moved boxes of nails around, looking beneath them anxiously as though he were putting together a jigsaw puzzle while being timed.The tape recorder almost fell out, and he didn’t even notice.I didn’t want him taking it, so I came up and grabbed it, and said, “Oh, I must have left this here,” then pulled it out of the box.The man looked startled: “Oh, sorry!” in a repentant tone as I scurried away.I wonder if Home Depot’s Republican-bred military-supporting values got in the way of his assuming anything queer.For some reason, no one suspects faggotry in a place for the men—if I could name any specific place in this city as the locus of manliness, it would probably be Home Depot.Maybe it was my Home Depot shirt that made him cower; maybe he didn’t want to piss off someone in a position of authority.Whatever the case, he immediately got the hell away from there.
You’re not really having a conversation if you’re preaching to the choir.Seems like a lot of “the art world” is so insular, as though only artists can understand each other’s work, and I believe every human being can perceive something from a work.Another interesting issue in a paid workforce environment is: what happens when there is unconditionally free help?During my sound installation, I organized the nails and screws in that aisle during my waiting, and put more carts away on my way out.
To reiterate my thesis, I’ve been dedicating my time to a research project in the Home Depot setting, exploring the role of artist-in-residence without an agreement, seeing if I’m liberated into a less biased role in reaction to the place.I’m not an ad for my residence, at least not necessarily a positive one. Laurie Anderson seemed to bring only positive attention to McDonald’s, America's heart attack resource.And as for NASA, the most she critiqued was the colors in the photographs of stars not being accurate.Unlike other artists-in-residence, I’m not campaigning for the recognition of employees’ hard work either.This is not about just some people.No one gets away victimized.Home Depot is one spot on a larger grid, and looking from that perspective on the grid, there is a lot to be asked.
As for the second event.Our little ensemble at Home Depot made beautiful music.I was very grateful that one friend showed up with a high-tech sound recorder.It's nearly impossible to film in there, especially in the evening.No customers joined in as hoped, but we got a lot of people's attention.There were seven of us, most of whom grouped and regrouped about five times, creating five or six different instrumental ensembles within an hour or two, and at least thirty instruments in total.To make noises, I remember using a spray bottle, a wooden bowl and wooden knob, two ceramic pots scraping around each other like one does with crystal wine glasses.
(Video added March 29, 2007.)
In my last entry, I asked the question, “Why not alleviate the constant consuming with a little bit of creation?”A friend pointed out that Home Depot is a place of creation.Yes, but always with exchanges of money involved.I think LA needs more attempts at using space for creation without money involved. I rarely see any congregating happening on the streets that doesn’t look gang-related or involve money.Instead of organizing a youth group sidewalk chalk playtime, and instead of organizing a senior bike-a-thon, I’m aiming to get anyone of any age, class or language to interact more even during their work and errands, and not in a way that money initiates.Home Depot is not the only place where I could have organized this ensemble, but Home Depot is still a private-owned business more than it is anything else, so I was commenting on that trait in specific with the ensemble.
You know how there are all these probably-illegal immigrant Latinos standing outside Home Depot all the time? I think this is only true in California, because I don't remember any loitering men in the HD parking lots in New Mexico. If you haven't bore witness to this phenomenon, they're looking to do your gruntwork, in case you need to reshingle your roof or something. They have an interesting role in the Home Depot infrastructure, standing out there because they can't get hired legally, yet Home Depot makes quite a profit out of their presence. I decided to join them and stand with them. Take on a different kind of worker role in Home Depot. Except I wore short shorts. I got them at Victoria's Secret. Green ones with silver cursive writing on the butt, and they keep nothing hidden. And my face was a little bit dolled up, but I looked like a very pretty gay boy version of myself if nothing more. And I wore my "Home Depot artist-in-residence" work shirt.
As we arrived, I was whining and moaning about have to actually go through with it. I told Tod to film from the car, and I would stand out on the curb with the men. As quick as I got out and started walking in the parking lot, the Illegals started whistling and hollering at me, seemingly reacting to every motion I made as I crossed the way. I lingered around a tree about fifty feet from the men, afraid to let anyone see me, but still posed like a prostitute to fulfill my performance. As time progressed, I got a little bit better at sticking my legs out. With all those men cheering at me, it was hard not to start feeling at least a little bit good about my body. Cars would drive by. Heads would turn to see my long bare legs and then look away. One of the men yelled out, "La chica es guapito"—the girl is a pretty boy. Home Depot employees would avoid eye contact as they pushed long trains of carts past me in my waiting. One woman stood as a spectator for at least twenty minutes, and might have been filming me, also. The wind was strong and cold and the least of my concerns. I should have gone over and talked to the Illegals, and Tod was telling me to, but I was so scared of them. I was afraid they'd touch my butt. One of them was laughing with another and gesturing like he was slapping an ass, while another had his cell phone out to take a picture of me. Then I started putting the carts away again, since, after all, I'm still the artist-in-residence. A lady in her car rolled down her window and told me to go inside and get warm. She also told me my legs were "sheet white." I told her that I was "just doing my job." "You work here?"
Tod, now hiding behind cars as he filmed, kept telling me I should just go to them. "The two of us can take em on," he said. I figured, if I didn't do it, the footage would be so boring. I made my way towards them, and then all at once, they charged toward me and gathered around me in a circle. They said they were looking for work. One asked if I was needing their help, then he looked downwards at my body. I didn't know how to respond to that. They asked what I was doing. "The same thing you're doing." Several of them walked away when they realized I wasn't about to hire them. "What kind of work are you looking for?" another asked, eyes also moving downwards before walking away. And as they dispersed, I repeatedly shouted to them, "I work for Home Depot!" and pointed at my shirt. One stayed behind and bummed a cigarette from Tod as he was still filming me. The guy asked if I was "un modelo" and called me "sexita." Tod told him he agreed. Then, some skinhead-looking men came out of nowhere and asked us what we were doing. I casually turned around and looked at one of them, then said, "looking for work." "No you're not!" he retorted. "Turn the camera off." So we did, and we left.
Guerrilla artist-in-residence event #5: the critique.
For the fifth and seemingly final event of this series, I presented my project for my Integrated Media critique class. Usually projects in this class tend to be object or installation-based, but I somehow managed to avoid worrying about just showing videoclips of me standing in short-shorts in a parking lot. I arrived with my laptop and the videocamera, and was even lacking some of the cords I needed. The professors and class loved that I wasn't prepared for the presentation; I'm apparently subverting the role of the artist just by being a bum about it, let alone not assuming any intellectual superiority by way of a rigorous slide lecture. I somehow felt so comfortable though upon beginning with my presentation that I was easily persuaded to read about the series of events via this very blog. At a progressive art school, blogs are an easy way to the critiquers' hearts, I am realising. I wound up showing and reading from the blog, then playing the video from each event, and they wouldn't even let me edit out the dull parts. I've decided this is how I'll have it in its final form: a webpage with the blog entries and unedited video clips interspersed.
Through most of the critique I didn't say much and also didn't understand much. Critical jargon leaves me staring off into an empty corner a lot, or sometimes accidentally right at someone. One professor said that my work fell into the realm of "social slapstick," somewhere between social theory and slapstick humor, that I'm not really either of them, but actually a synthesis between them. That the strength of the project existed somewhere in between the thoughtful ideas in this blog versus the naive slapstick of my Home Depot activities. At Home Depot I didn't necessarily carry out the kind of labors so rigorously as one might expect from a performance artist. I think the professor was implying that my work winds up being as much about me doing the project as the project itself. I'm noticing that that happens to/in my work a lot: I try to make a thoughtful project, and the result drifts in and out of a story about me doing the project. I was also praised for the way I performed as "artist" instead of (or, in addition to) assuming the role and being the artist. In the video I seemed as though there was an expectation as artist that I had to consciously fulfill, even though I was already doing the art just being there, being filmed and wearing the shirt. I was somewhere in between being natural and consciously pursuing a work of art.
Another professor explained that I work within in-betweens. The perceiving mind acknowledges the borders of things, so what about the space inside the borders? The word "liminality" was also used, but I haven't yet given it an official place in my lexicon. I drifted away from the original goals of each event into new situations with interesting trajectories. Here I am trying to comment on the probably-immigrant labor force by dressing up like a hooker, and my priorities get rearranged by the development of the situation, having to make on-the-spot decisions for my personal welfare. Gosh, am I really guapita? A lot of potential problems in making this kind of art were freed from their gravity in my piece, maybe, with an approach of anything-goes-ness. The discrepancy between the video and the blog writings, the oscillation between the two, and the philosophical disconnect created a kind of emotional in-between space. I sound high and mighty in my writing, well-conceived and analytical, and then in the video I don't know what I'm doing, like I lost control. Sara, my mentor, said I looked vulnerable the whole time, and she worried about my safety, and Anna (Oxygen), too. The audience often felt nervous and empathetic. Said I was putting myself in risky situations. For this reason, most concurred that the lengthy, unedited videos never got boring, because it built suspense for them. Reading directly from my blog, I ended up reading the parts where I referred to Sara as my favorite professor. And then the other professors were like, "Hey! I thought I was." But I liked those moments.
We get in to schools because the schools like our work.What if they didn’t?What if you are able and willing to learn new things to make work that doesn't fit with everyone else's?Should I know everything before I learn?Do you have to be friends with your friends? The artist-in-residence relationship usually functions this way. Home Depot is a kind of resource, like a school, and as artist-in-residence, I'm a kind of student. What about guerrilla students? Why not allow any respectful person to use any available resources to learn, whether or not their usage is conventional? Home Depot has so far agreed with this question. So long as I wasn't filming, they couldn't care less if I gathered eight people to percuss in their aisles or if I stood half-bare in their lot. No wonder it's well known as the best place in Hollywood to go cruising for gay sex. And even worse, for such a seemingly subversive project, I couldn't have received more praise from the professors and institution that I'm maybe critiquing. What if you've subverted roles and/or spaces, and no one notices? Breaking a social contract but no one notices because they're not looking for it. Maybe I haven't even really tested this yet, with the videocamera always weighing me down. During my critique, someone mentioned a spy supply store that could hook me up with the technology I need. Right now I barely have the resources to upload the video I captured already. I had to return that video camera I used; Wal-Mart gives you your full money back if you return anything within thirty days. Money and possessions are such a hassle; there's no in-between there.
Some people have expressed a problem in the way I referred to the freelance workers in front of Home Depot as "probably illegals." I'm aware that I made a racial jump: I saw Latinos looking for work and assumed that they're illegal. I'm just like you; I'm skeptical of me, too, for saying that. It's exactly what I thought, though, and as long as I'm not censoring or editing myself in my video or blog, I might as well say it the way I thought it. Yes, I'm racist. I'd rather be reckless and analyse the nuances of that than smoothen all the edges. The city of Los Angeles has almost 4 million people within its city limits, 3/8ths of whom are foreign-born. "Of 1,512,720 foreign born people, 100,252 were born in Europe, 376,767 were born in Asia, 64,730 were born in Africa, 94,104 were born in Caribbean/Oceania, 996,996 were born in Latin America, and 13,859 were born in Northern America. Of such foreign-born people, 569,771 entered between 1990 to March 2000. 509,841 are naturalized citizens and 1,002,879 are not citizens." I doubt very many of those non-citizens got work visas. Many of the Latinos I've met just being out and about here have told me they're illegal. Anyhow, why do you think these men at Home Depot are standing in a parking lot all day sweating in the hot sun waiting for work? If these men could just go in to any store and apply, I'm sure they would rather. I wish this government were in such a way that I or anyone else wouldn't just assume they were illegals. The issue to me is not even necessarily whether they're illegals but how they're being exploited by a big corporation like Home Depot. Standing with these workers as artist-in-residence is an attempt to comment on the role of laborer. Wearing the short-shorts and blush, etc, maybe I’m saying illegal immigrants are functioning financially as prostitutes in America. Again, my goal is to ask questions through gestures of performance more than to answer them.These are my natural reactions to Home Depot and its space.
Or maybe the whole act itself, putting myself with singled-out immigrant workers, was racist. My professors actually defended me on this one. Tom said my actions would have been racist, but then I responded to the security man saying I was "just looking for work." Because I really was.
Watching TV to take my mind off things. It's weird how they talk about Americanization of foreign countries as though it should happen or be expected to happen. "Is Afghanistan starting to get American like the rest of the world yet?" Conan O'Brien asks Anderson Cooper, who is obviously gay and won't tell us, so how can we trust him with important news? And this first question is completely valid, because it seems there's no way the Americanization won't happen at this point. It already has happened. This helplessness is exactly where I'm at. There's a monster we seem to think we can't stop. In a system so big as this one: capitalism, America, the universe, mortality, Bush, the state of the world in 2007, time itself, how can we—the insignificant, the individual, the indistinguishable—do anything? I often hear my professor Norman Klein expertly predicting the future of politics and culture. He says we're on the brink of a catastrophic political change, and there might not be a distinct war, but probably poverty and starvation and limited energy resources, much worse than it is now. The problems are only getting worse and worse until one day it's gonna burst. What if Bush is only a glimmer of what's yet to come? This might all sound extreme, but it's that burning reaction to thoughts like these that motivates me to go into Home Depot and act in all the ways I'm not supposed to, violating the social contracts one assumes I assume. Home Depot is an exaggerated microcosm for the world's infrastructure, both socially and politically. There is no "I" in "world." Feeling that way, we each become an outsider to the unity of everything. Imagine one iPod that everyone is forced to listen to. It's like I'm trying to tear myself out of my own body, but after all the squeezing and pulling and veins bursting out of my forehead and ripping through my intestines and bones and tearing chunks of flesh apart, no soul is freed. I am and we are going to fail anyway, so I might as well make it art?
