LITANY : pittsburgh is art
Creating a litany of Pittsburgh-based artists’ names. The video – simple animated text, in a clean font – will be installed during the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Deployed on monitors in different spaces, and projected on an exterior wall, and (hopefully) as bits that surface on the digital billboard that overlooks the Benedum center downtown …
LITANY : traditionally a Catholic prayer listing the names of saints or characteristics of Jesus, Mary, or other elevated human beings. As a meditative practice, it encourages the practitioner to contain something imagined and limitless (G-d) in the particular (specific names).
I want the work to remind viewers of the presence of this community of people who live in Pittsburgh. More often than not the public discourse around the creative community here points to other things as referents – cultural institutions, larger performance-based organizations, gallery spaces. This distances us, conceptually, from the creators themselves.
The art object stands between the artist and the audience as a medium for communication, as the carrier of meaning. The art object replaces the body of the artist, stands in for the artists’ voice as a particular articulation of vision. The art object usually a necessary form of communication – replacing words – and the artist must, necessarily, be absent in order for the viewer to pay attention to the work of art.
Art is a way of knowing. Making relies on direct experience; so does being an audience member.
The names become a stand-in. Names are easy referent-connections – we can imagine these people, these actions. All of them living in this community. All of them present, making.
I want to include everyone working with audience – musicians, filmmakers, performing groups, writers who read, writers who publish, painters, sculptors, etc. etc. etc.
Use of creators’ names is only by permission given by the artists themselves. The work grows because of published artists’ direct participation in the project. If you would like to permit me to use your name for the LITANY, please email me at [REDACTED] >at< gmail>dot<com with some discussion of how you put your work in front of an audience. Links to web documentation, places where your work is for sale, or ongoing projects are welcome.
