do it (museum)
In 1994, in cooperation with the AFAA (Action Francaise d'Action Artistique), twelve original do it texts were translated into eight languages and sent as a diplomatic dispatch to each country with which France maintains diplomatic relations. The first do it took place in September 1994 in the Ritter Kunsthalle in Klagenfurt, Austria, and the exhibition has since been realized in Bangkok, Bogota, Brisbane, Geneva, Glasgow, Helsinki, Ljubljana, Nantes, Paris, Reykjavik, Siena, Thallin, and Uppsala.
do it follows a few "rules of the game:"
1) Each museum must select and create at least fifteen of the thirty potential actions/artworks. The process of selection ensures that not only will the individual artworks diverge (like Lavier's translations) as a result of interpretation, but that a new group constellation will emerge each time the exhibition is presented.
2) The instructions are to be realized by museum personnel or by the community at large. Neither the exhibition curator nor the artists are to be involved in the realization of the exhibition. There will be no artist-created "original."
3) The participating artists' do-it-yourself descriptions from which the exhibition is recreated each time should be approached with a spirit of "free interpretation." There will be no traditional "signature" of the artist so that do it artworks cannot accrue a static "character."
4) At the end of each do it exhibition the presenting institution is obliged to destroy the artworks and the instructions from which they were created, thus removing the possibility that do it artworks can become standing exhibition pieces or fetishes. (See # 6 for exceptions.)
5) The discrete components from which the artworks were made are to be returned to their original context, making do it almost completely reversible. The mundane is transformed into the uncommon and is then converted back into the everyday. do it appears in order to disappear.
6) Several artists have proposed an alternative to the total reversal and destruction of do it exhibitions -- a do it "economy" -- whereby artworks realized per the artists' instructions may be "authorized" as "originals" and in this way become the property of museum visitors or even institutionalized as part of a museum collection through a one-time payment to the artist.
7) Each artist participating in do it receives complete photographic documentation of their work.
do it stems from an open exhibition model, an exhibition in progress. Individual instructions can open empty spaces for occupation and invoke possibilities for the interpretation and rephrasing of artworks in a totally free manner. do it effects interpretations based on location, and calls for a dovetailing of local structures with the artworks themselves.
The diverse cities in which do it takes place actively construct the artwork context and endow it with their individual marks or distinctions. For example, some of the artist's instructions specify the participation of community members. Most instructions are relational in that they construct bridges between various communities and performance sites. The everyday, profane context of the exhibition site flows into the exhibition space according to the individual artists' instructions. The boundaries between interior and exterior become porous.
It is important to bear in mind that do it is less concerned with copies, images, or reproductions of artworks, than with human interpretation. No artworks are shipped to the venues, instead everyday actions and materials serve as the starting point for the artworks to be recreated at each "performance site" according to the artists' written instructions.
Each realization of do it occurs as an activity in time and space. The essential nature of this activity is imprecise and can be located somewhere between permutation and negotiation within a field of tension described by repetition and difference. Meaning is multiplied as the various interpretations of the texts accumulate venue after venue. No two interpretations of the same instructions are ever identical.
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