Agency

I just returned to Pittsburgh after a month-long trip to Australia. I've spent the past week sorting notes and images and making sense of my whirlwind tour of the Aboriginal art world. I didn’t think it was possible, but one show topped the rest: “Warlpiri Drawings: Remembering the Future,” curated by Dr. Melinda Hinkson (Australian National University) and hosted by the Charles Darwin University Art Gallery in Darwin, NT.

Some examples of the objects on display at S&S, objects within a hyper- or encompassing object that is itself part of a larger set of phenomena and practices that both transfer and transform individual objects and give them efficacy and power.

Mathias Goeritz (German, active Mexico City), Message No. 7B, Eccles. VII:6, 1959. MoMA

This enchanting cup was presented to me as I waited wearily at the counter of a coffee shop.  I normally drink tea so I don’t have a lot of lattes in my life experience.  But this cup was beyond exceptional, and certainly the turning point of my day.

I asked the barista, how did you do that?  She said, “a flick of the wrist.” 

I visited the Met two days ago and found myself in the period rooms of the American Wing.  I was interested in the new interpretive tool, the screen with a menu of options, in place of the old static placard that listed all the objects in a horizontal format.  It puts a whole lot more information at the visitor's fingertips and seems to give us more agency as well because we choose to navigate: we can focus on "people" rather than "objects" and so on.