5. Letter to the council , following in footsteps, logical structure.

 

The symposium documentary Four Shapes for Four Spaces includes eight sound bites of Escobedo talking over the video image. This includes the statement “...I’m interested, not in putting up a sort of monument to somebody, but to making the city more beautiful. And I’m not really afraid of using the word function in sculpture — I believe sculpture should be functional.'“  This is one of three significant points made in the documentary, the first is the point noted above at 5:23-5:35 (Escobedo talking on 'function in sculpture’), the second at 8:40-9:03 (Escobedo talking on 'sculpture and painting’'), the third at 10:08 - 10:34 (Escobedo talking on 'happenings and the artist belonging to our natural environment’').

https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/four-shapes-for-four-spaces-1972/quotes

These three points give precedence to proceed with the presentation of three key elements of installation where sculpture, video and photography make up the developing formal outcome. Escobedo’s note of functional sculpture can be ambiguous in its parameters but allows a particular perspective to view intentions from. Noting sculpture and painting, sculpture as painting, painting as sculpture is a discussion seconded by Rosaline Krauss’ statement eight years later, “....sculpture and painting have been kneaded and stretched and twisted in an extraordinary demonstration of elasticity, a display of the way a cultural term can be extended to included just about anything.” Escobedo goes on to note the ideas of happenings, gatherings becoming relevant to artistic discourse, continuing on to talk about the artist trying to connect, connect with their surroundings, to the ‘natural’ environment, in my case the environment or surroundings I find myself in.

In taking the time to question what is going on when doing something, is engagement with a ‘natural’ environment wasting time? Time is continually measured, time for sleeping, time for eating, time for shitting, time for working (9-5). In trying to exist and engage with a world that presents itself as a physical and tangible reality. I ask myself, what am I doing, what is going on?



Krauss, R. (1979) Sculpture in the Expanded Field, October 8 (Spring 1979), 30. https://monoskop.org/images/b/bf/Krauss_Rosalind_1979_Sculpture_in_the_Expanded_Field.pdf (Accessed 13-5-21)