Why goes to Y

<<Ephememorial

E-pheMEmorial

an interesting word which occurs to me as referencing my former artworking interests, the transience of this performance, along with the ideas of the MEmorial and the preponderance of the digital mediums.>

In a message dated 3/23/02 12:13:24 PM, gulmer@english.ufl.edu writes:

Re- Why goes to Y

> Ephememorial

> E-pheMEmorial

> an interesting word which occurs to me as referencing my former artworking

exactly, good continuity, plus E-morials are not permanent or rather are

"virtually" permanent (in the several senses of the term, like being

"virtually certain" means that you are not quite absolutely certain).

best

Greg >>

In a message dated 4/21/02 6:53:33 PM, stfr@earthlink.net writes:

wishing Y

<< I went down today, though, to look at the Y, and it was really spectacular.

I was moved by the tender little pompoms, fragile as wishes, blown around

but still there. I watched a guy try to dig one out of a sidewalk crack

with his toe & I asked him what he thought. "I don't know what they are!"

he said, "but they're everywhere. They're multiplying!" I took lots of

pictures -- a few are attached. I imagine you documented things well, but I

though perhaps I could add the element of time and fate. I think it would

be interesting to also go back in a week, and two weeks and see what was

still there. I'd be happy to put the pics I took on a cd and hand them over

or send them.

I would be really interested to know what your experience has been with this

piece -- how it felt to do something so large and so ephemeral. I've been

thinking alot about this because it is also characteristic of the biennial

as a whole.>>

In a message dated 4/22/02 12:01 AM, Willpap writes:

Re: wishing Y

<<It would be great, if you find yourself in the area over the next couple of weeks to take some pics of the slow disappearance of traces of the project. I have a feeling some parts may stay around for a while. I'll be up pretty much perminantly in a couple of weeks and will also look for residuals.

I talked about the Biennial with a friend who's very much the long term gallery painter and asked him why he thought at this moment in NYC, that there is such a prolific support of ephemeral projects though the Free Biennial? He said he felt it was both affirmative in terms of the possibility of non materialistic intentions of making art, as well as reflective of a sense of mortality in the city at this moment. The fact that there wasn't much to see on the tour seems a reminder that what we see in art is so often a trace. And if we are conceptually inclined, it is of course the non retinal, the activity, the intentions, the shift of relationships that can charge even the most meager remnants of materials and media into infinite significance. Nothing particularly new in my thoughts here, but your project in a larger sense perhaps recalls, reinspires the powers of signification in a fragile moment. And similarly, I have taken on pom poms to see if I could make then stand for something important, to be an artwork, to convince a theorist that they could carry out theory, to stand for a memorial to an event of epic proportions.

Buying a Van Gogh at Southby's 60mil

Sending the truck home with a Serra Spiral 2mil

Buying a Wilson Sisters DVD, 250K

Seeing remnants of Free Biennial works on the streets of New York........Priceless>>