Lauren van Haaften-Schick & Charles Simonds (2018) To Offer/To Exchange, Performance Research, 23:6, 12-19, DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2018.1533751. 

Journal digital edition: https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2018.1533751

Download manuscript pdf here. 

Abstract:

Since 1970 artist Charles Simonds has created miniature clay Dwellings for an invented civilization of ‘little people’. Sited in the margins of urban public space, they appear as playful and generous interventions in decaying and chaotic city landscapes. Passers-by stumbling upon these structures often linger to observe Simonds’ slow and measured work and sometimes take it upon themselves to watch over the Dwellings, caring for ‘theirs’ as a cherished part of a neighbourhood. Beginning amidst an artistic climate of experimenting with alternative exhibition models and an ethos of democratic circulation – as in conceptual art’s various ‘dematerialized’ practices and in earthworks – the Dwellings take on the issue of dissemination by proposing that they be encountered as ‘a gift, free and clear’. Setting Simonds’ practice apart is his priority that the work exists as a public good. That intent is reinforced by the Dwelling’s very materiality, for the inevitable crumble or erosion of clay renders them so fragile that moving them would destroy them, ensuring that they can never be privately owned, but can also never be preserved, ‘whether motivated by a heartfelt, helpful desire to protect them, by greed or personal gain, or simply by the innocent desire to have one for himself’. That is not to say that the Dwellings leave nothing to be possessed – what can be kept simply does not resemble familiar objects of property. Instead, the works are carried forward as memory or embodied archive by those who have experienced them. These aspects of the work demand, in perpetuity, a wholly different notion of exchange that is more akin to an offering, and, indeed, to a gift, in all valences of the term. These observations are the springboard for a series of conversations between Simonds and van Haaften-Schick in 2016 and 2018.