Born Under Punches

When I was in high school, I was a head-up-my-ass art kid.

I was full of ideas and had very little actual knowledge to go with them. For my final project one year, I made a very silly, complicated sculpture out of some old TVs and a huge quantity of duct tape. It was a very satisfying sculpture, because part of the process involved smashing one of the TVs with a sledgehammer. They shatter like plate glass, did you know? I expected it to explode.

The middle TV in my little TV tower was painted with the words “Don’t Deify Art” in acrylic paint, which stood out starkly against the background of static when the TV was plugged in and turned on. This seemed like a commonsense-enough aphorism at the time; I was just getting into Duchamp and the Dadaists and felt smugly convinced of the validity of my sentiment. Interestingly, however, people viewing the sculpture uniformly misread it as “Don’t Defy Art”. At the time, this misinterpretation only made me feel more smug about my “fuck you, art world” attitude. Thinking back on it, however, I realize that what I interpreted as a mistake is an entirely valid engagement with the piece. It might be “wrong” in absolute terms, but the space between viewer and piece is theirs to occupy however they like.

I guess I still have my head up my ass.