{"id":3389,"date":"2010-04-16T17:25:17","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T17:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hub-dev.bates.edu\/museum\/?page_id=3389"},"modified":"2021-08-12T13:42:43","modified_gmt":"2021-08-12T17:42:43","slug":"reststop-the-proposal","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/exhibitions\/y2008\/reststop-the-proposal\/","title":{"rendered":"Restop: The Proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bates College Museum of Art,\u00a0January 18 – March 4, 2008<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Proposal for the American Pavilion at the 2009 Venice Bienalle,\u00a0W<\/strong>illiam Pope.L, Artist;\u00a0M<\/strong>ark H.C. Bessire and Roger Conover, Custodians.<\/p>\n

CUSTODIAL VISION OF WORK TO BE COMMISSIONED<\/strong><\/p>\n

Western culture proceeds with such speed that there is hardly time for digestion anymore. We consume and we discharge. Whatever we ingest into our systems one moment (food, art, information), we eliminate the next. At biennials, the rate at which visual consumption takes place induces a special kind of art-sickness.<\/p>\n

We propose a rest stop.<\/h4>\n

A rest stop where the experience of getting in line, going to the lavatory, and taking some refreshment afterwards offers relief. As you enter la zone de la merde<\/em>, shit is not what it seems to be. In RESTSTOP, it becomes a mati\u00e8re \u00e0 penser<\/em>. This is not to say that the act of elimination hasn\u2019t already been recognized by philosophers as a kind of thinking, or that the toilet, as Slavoj Zizek reminds us, has not been considered an ideological site. But in RESTSTOP, the act of disposal on the part of art-wasted visitors will be given its own time, and the potty its own place\u2014not marginalized between pavilions or exiled to service sites. As such, RESTSTOP will be more than an art stop. It will encourage those who come to the American Pavilion to do so with a sense of purpose\u2014reminding them why they are there, and why, in 2009, the act of relieving oneself in a national art pavilion is a critical act.<\/p>\n

The 42 sanitary and private units forming the nucleus of RESTSTOP will not only offer a sanctuary for thoughtful voiding, but their accumulations will be connected (by visual and acoustic semiotics) to a faux plumbing system culminating in one of William Pope.L\u2019s special recipes\u2014a post-potty “tea” or after-deposit “sweet” meant to fortify spent visitors before they return to the Giardini. (We ask jurors to protect the secret; the liquid issuing from the faucets will actually be quite innocent\u2014hot chocolate).<\/p>\n

RESTSTOP represents the long-overdue return of excrement to the field of cultural production, reminding visitors that voiding is a critical as well as a biological ritual, a quotidian as well as Biennial act. And, furthermore, that pissing is not only a byproduct of liquid consumption, but that it also relates to the flow of foreign policy, immigration quotas, and global politics. Taking a page from Lacanian psychoanalyst Dominique Laporte\u2019s treatise, History of Shit<\/em>, we think RESTSTOP\u2019s aims can be best stated in quasi-Nietzschean terms: “All we hope to do is remove a few masks with the roar of our laughter, laugh some masks off the figures of power.” But RESTSTOP is by no means a joke. Not only does the project provide something that is completely unexpected and necessary for visitors, it also affirms the role of the art spectator as the real Producer in 21st century art exhibitions and biennials.<\/p>\n

Remember Luis Bunuel\u2019s Phantom of Liberty<\/em>, where the roles of eating and excreting are inverted\u2014where people sit at toilets around a table, casually conversing, until they want to eat, then sneak off to a small room to do so?\u00a0 In RESTSTOP, it is the roles of art consumption and elimination that are reversed.\u00a0 People avail themselves of the Biennale sights, then go to the American Pavilion relieve themselves of some substantial artistic burdens. Even in the midst of great art, we still have to shit. Is that what this project wants to say?\u00a0 Is this an art service project, or is there some septic political agenda? RESTSTOP encourages speculations, sputterings, and emissions of all kinds.\u00a0 To this end, and leveraging the editorial and literary experience of the custodial team, toilet paper will not be the only ply in evidence.\u00a0 A book and other discursive materials will further develop the project\u2019s political, philosophical, and artistic dimensions.<\/p>\n

Further Note on Project Realization and Maintenance:<\/h4>\n

The pavilion will be installed with simple materials, the basic elements being 42 portable lavatories, speakers, amps, serving table, ceramic mugs, and concessionary castle.\u00a0 Commodities will be dispensed to visitors by servers at the opening, and later self-served.\u00a0 As with his previous projects, most of the resources the artist needs will be collected from the vicinity of the venue, in this case Venice.\u00a0 The installation will be labor intensive on-site, but not fussy or precious. Sound will be one of the vectors giving the space its character and affect.\u00a0 This will involve speakers and amps, but neither the audio loop nor the other \u201cplayback\u201d system [hot chocolate] will require elaborate engineering.\u00a0 Simplicity is at the forefront of WPL\u2019s design work–simplicity that creates meaning and ambiguity.\u00a0 Achieving simplicity-of-system in projects\u2019 hardware is a hallmark of WPL installations; human beings are the software that make the projects complex.\u00a0 High priority will be given to identifying a portable lavatory supply company which can both provide the units we want and fulfill the full service contract (waste removal, sanitizing, restocking) we need.\u00a0 The custodial team underscores its awareness of the importance of maintaining the compartments\u2019 and the Pavilion\u2019s sanitation at all times; therefore a substantial portion of the budget will be allocated to the project\u2019s environmental engineering and service aspects.<\/p>\n

WHY SHOULD THIS PROJECT REPRESENT U.S. AT 2009 BIENNALE?<\/h4>\n

Everything you have read up until now is an attempt to demonstrate that this would be a radically appropriate exhibition to represent the U.S. in Venice at this time–on many levels.\u00a0 Here we offer some further thoughts on this question, but we hope your own imaginations will be sufficiently stimulated by what you read here to imagine still other reasons, for that is part of this metabolizing project\u2019s function.<\/p>\n

Despite differences that may separate people in terms of nationality, political affiliation or religious persuasion, when it comes to defecation, all people tend to migrate to certain socially recognized sites, and take care of business in more or less the same way. RESTSTOP will be housed within the American Pavilion, but it will attract an international audience.\u00a0 It will solidify their common mission. Different poetries and politics will be read into the fact that the American Pavilion not only offers comfort and relief, but places its own offering in critical relief.\u00a0\u00a0 Will it surprise anyone that RESTSTOP entails no surveillance, imposes no restrictions on those who visit, and requires no I.D. to enter the booths? Or that it imposes no limits\u2014except perhaps in the case of extreme emergencies–on the length of lavatory stays?\u00a0 Will critics speculate that once inside the privacy of the (identical injection- molded plastic) booths, users will perform according to different cultural attitudes toward time and materials?\u00a0 Washroom business marketing experts at Kimberly-Clark have reported\u00a0 that Asians tend to accomplish the # 2 operation more quickly than Americans, and that Americans typically use twice as many toilet paper squares per sitting as Europeans.\u00a0 A fuller accounting of these and other cultural considerations will be made at press conferences and in the publication.<\/p>\n

Five hundred years ago, Michelangelo recognized the sculpting virtues of dung\u2014a material that was plastic when fresh but hard when dry.\u00a0 At about the same time, Leonardo da Vinci designed the first folding toilet seats in Rome.\u00a0 Now, America brings to Italy a new installation designed specifically for the American Pavilion in Venice, one that shows how the ethical and aesthetic transformations of history can be understood as precipitates of waste.\u00a0 We think one of the best ways to demonstrate this is to bring a bunch of very small plastic rooms to a big art show in Venice, and let people sit down and think about art with their pants down.<\/p>\n

In a line, RESTSTOP brings to Venice an updated model of what the world has always known America to be–the great melting pot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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