I used to think of art in terms of the old Greco-Roman amphitheater, where the structure defines the public and the event in a circular manner. The spectacle and the spectator are roles that take turns within this structure and I had associated art with the plenitude, the fullness and the vicissitude of these changing encounters. Thus, as a former manager of artistic events, I thought of art framed within the marquee of spectacle. The artist was an impresario of his own performance, and hence the marketer of his own programme. Which then means a contention for the public as I have seen in the garish, competing, almost hallucinatory effects of such advertisements on Times Square.
I am thinking now of those afternoons last year when I walked within the ruins of the Arenes de Lutece in Paris, one of the few remnants of the Roman (or Lutetian) period of the city. I remember the silenced arena and circular reconstruction of rows of limestone benches. What if art is indeed also a construct, represented only by this circle, this empty space for performances...for all expressions and thoughts of the possible and not simply of the permissible? What if art is the only construct in the public and private mind that is left to be emptied, time and again, so that it is perpetually renewed and therefore, dedicated to the exercise of freedom - a human condition that yearns in all of us, regardless of origin and epoch? What if art is not a fullness, not an archive of past works, but a provisional space untethered to any history or theory: what if art is the institution of "what ifs?". Then art is not Times Square, but the open Arenes de Lutece. Or a town square that is open to all markets, like the old Fulton fishmarket in Lower Manhattan? And so: there can be archives of art, but art itself is not simply an archive.
Suppose art is a frame of time, but that which occurs before and after the event and performance, much like the desolate silence, uncanny quietude of a street market in Manila, in the wee hours of the morning, before the tents and the hawkers come to trade? Or else a superhighway before rush hours, looming not with emptiness or drone dead time, but the fecundity of promise, of anticipation? Then as the aftermath, the time following the cessation of crowds, is not art that point when we sweep clean the debris and deritus, refuse and residue? For art to be fresh and responsive, it has to be subjected to a diligent housekeeping. For everyone to have a fair share. Then art is not the art market, nor the art scene, nor even the artists who practice within. As I said, it can be only provisional, and like tenants who have had their time up, they have to exit every end of the market day.
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