8:20am | On Thursday at 5:00pm, a team of students in the Museum and Curatorial Studies program at CSULB will present “S.M.S.: An Archive of the 60s” at the University Art Museum. The archive includes a limited-edition series of work created in 1968 by over eighty artists, including Yoko Ono, Joseph Kosuth, Meret Oppenheim, John Cage, Claes Oldenberg, and Marcel Duchamp. Using a variety of media, these boxed collections were mailed to individuals with the objective of creating a personal experience with the objects.
The curatorial team includes Elizabeth Hanson, Sarah Finer, Seija Rokea, Denielle Johnson and Grace Chu. Tracy Gordon spoke with me about the show.
Sander: Please tell me a bit about the Museum Studies program.
Tracy: It is a Certificate in Museum and Curatorial Studies. Under the guidance of Dr. Nizan Shaked, the program director students take a series of theoretical classes that prepare them to produce an exhibition from the ground up that is mounted at the University Art Museum on campus. This consists of: formulating the show’s thesis, contacting the artists, curating the work, corresponding with the museum, producing a professional brochure with a designer, and of course going through the install process. Students work collaboratively, our core group consists of six individuals.
The project draws from the UAM collection. The name of the item is the S.M.S. Portfolios. It was a Mail Art exhibition from 1968. It is a collection of multiples, that were reproduced and mailed out to subscribers to the Letter Edged in Black Press, Inc. It was a mixed-media project that bypassed tradition channels of art production and dissemination. Over 70 seminal and lesser known artists, poets and members of the 1960s New York Avant-Garde participated.
We are showing the entire series, six portfolios in all that arrived bi-monthly. They portfolios contain a variety of art objects. There are works on paper, assembly kits, do-it-yourself projects, 3D objects, drawings, audio works, puzzles, and games. There was a strong emphasis on interaction in the project. Viewers were able to manipulate and experience the work in the original context.
To simulate that experiential, tactical, multi-sensual experience we are displaying the works in flat files. The objects are arranged by portfolio, with the exception of some of the 3D objects which will be displayed in vitrines.
Viewers will able to open and close the drawers to see the pluralistic nature of the project. This approach does not categorize the works along rigid lines of classification, but allows the viewers to see the overlapping affinities between the works.
Sander: How did the original exhibition influence this one?
Tracy: The element that has stood out to the group is the spirit of the 60s. In particular, the year 1968. That transgressive overhaul, that element of dissent that permeated politics, art and social dynamics. We wanted to simulate that spirit in the display and in our theoretical approach.
Sander: What was your theoretical approach?
Tracy: We were influenced by the shift in thinking that occurred in that period ushered in by writers like Michel Foucault. The theoretical approach is layered, but begins with looking at history.
How do we approach history? In what ways do present factors influence our representation of the past? It was a huge shift in thinking that occurred in the 60s, that history was constructed by individuals. It was not an objective “science”, but something that met the needs of the historian. The discourse of history is in flux, based on accumulated knowledge.
SMS was a series of works made by artists from different art movements: Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus, Color Theory, Conceptual Art, Mail Art and more. We examined our context and thought: How do these pieces fit together? What is the logic?
That is our tendency in art history, to classify. [It is] an extension of the the tradition of the Enlightenment. But how do you categorize something that evades categorization? Instead, it hints at the emergence of postmodernism, an era of pluralism, questioning master narratives and the evasion of static, fixed meanings. The design and theoretical logic speaks to this pluralism. Instead, it attempts to show how all of these movements converged in the 60s.
Dada didn’t go away. Think of it as a field, rather than a single overarching movement. To speak to this we use the metaphor of the archive.
Sander: Wasn’t Mail Art part of a larger anti-establishment movement but, specifically, a reaction to what many artists saw as a gentrification and commodification of art?
Tracy: YES!!! That is the subversive element in the project. Its reaction to the growing commodification of art, and the co-option of subversive art movements and projects by institutions. William Copley, the Surrealist artist and collector, was the ‘Daddy Warbucks’ of the project. He reacted to this condition by titling his project: Shit Must Stop (S.M.S.) Conceptual art was also responding to this condition.
Sander: : I know that you’ve talked generally about the kinds of work in the collection, but can you give me one or two specific examples of pieces being shown that you found especially interesting?
Tracy: Joseph Kosuth’s “Four Titled Abstracts” [are] characteristic of his “Art as Idea as Idea” series. It consists of four sheets of paper (these were all reproduced) on a black background with white typeface dictionary definitions of the word, “abstract”. It is an inquiry into language and its instability. It uses a sterile aesthetic, what has been termed the “aesthetic of administration” (see Benjamin Buchloh). Conceptual art reacted to the conditions we discussed, but like its Dada counterparts, in SMS it pushed the borders of art.
Conceptual art permeates contemporary art. I find it interesting how linguistic inquiries trapse through Dada, continue into the 60s, and even today.
Another example: I love the work by Betty Dodson, sexologist and writer of the groundbreaking text, “Liberating Masturbation.” She produced the work “Friends,” a print of a heterosexual couple engaged in copulation. Overlaid is this garish pink cellophane. The work is beautifully drafted by the artist and writer, but it functions on a different level today.
It evidences the rise of Feminism. It is approached from a sex-positive perspective, something that was being promoted at the consciousness-raising sessions. It shows us that the struggles for women’s rights weren’t so long ago. And how far have we come? What is that legacy? How do we historicize it? Who are it’s forgotten heroes, like Dodson?
This work has a different meaning for us today. That is the nature of our approach. These multiples have become art objects. Yes, that is one point. They are now in an institution, not being mailed out. But also, and just as significant, they function as historical evidence. They become a lens in which to view the past and break down the shift in social norms. That resonates for us today when we are trying to pass legislation on health care for example: How can that be paralleled with the struggles for basic human rights like equal treatment in the workplace, or gay marriage? To what extent has the 60s resurfaced today?
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