Photo Until It Becomes Marble, 2018
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Hang a photo you like.
Let visitors cut out their favorite parts and take them.
For instance, if the visitor likes red, let him take all the red parts.
Ask many visitors to cut out their favorite part until the whole thing is gone
Intervention on “Photo until it becomes marble”
Yoko Ono, 1961 summer
Grapefruit
Along with granite and steel, marble is one of the most commonly used materials in the construction of monuments. The aim is for the monument to remain “standing” for as long as possible. That is why so many monuments accumulate in cities. They have no expiration date and only disappear if they are stolen or if the political ideal they were intended to represent is no longer shared.
Monuments should be temporary, or made of materials that are less resistant to the passage of time. A monument could represent something for an hour, for example. Its photographic documentation would ensure that its memory would last forever.
Photography has become marble.
Monumentality and ephemerality, improvisation and scale, and the parameters and protocols of sculpture have been central starting points for an intensive three week project developed by this transnational group of artists. Using a varied and unconventional selection of materials plus technical support from the Fellesverkstedet team, the group have responded to the challenge of producing work that is monumental in impact yet temporary in nature within the dramatic dystopian setting of a rundown former factory in Oslo’s Grønland district.
The exhibition forms part of PRAKSIS’s eleventh residency Monumental — Temporal, developed with Gereon Krebber in collaboration with Fellesverkstedet. It will showcase the physical outcomes of the residents’ work, play, and experimentation.
Nicholas John Jones
Curatorial text for the exhibition “The Monumental-Temporal”
PRAKSIS, Oslo, 2018
