Curatorial Statement

In the history of art, there have only been a handful of events and exhibits that have been dedicated to the theme of instruction. Many of them occurred at the height of Fluxus activity in the 60’s and 70’s, when artists like Alison Knowles, Yoko Ono and Ken Friedman began breaking down musical composition to the level of the event score and exhibiting it as Instruction Art. But the idea of Instruction Art never maintained momentum or achieved widespread usage.
Maybe the reason for the small number of instruction-based shows is because it simply sounds boring. The isolated instruction means nothing, and therefore has no appeal.
But in actuality, there is no such thing as an isolated instruction, and that’s precisely where the notion of instruction becomes interesting.
The instruction demands interaction. The presence of instruction provokes a physical and/or conceptual process of collaboration, of interpretation. It is a building block of power structures and, in its authorized state as law, code, and rule, it is the guiding grid of society. Every day we follow a myriad of instructions, some visible, some absorbed into the structures of daily life, yet we hardly ask why we obey, what it might mean to disobey, and what other ways there are to interpret a given instruction.
The “instructioning utterance” (a coinage that refers to J.L. Austin’s “performative utterance”), creates a contract that binds the receiver in a relationship of interaction.
In How to do Things with Words, Austin explains that performatives utterances like ‘I promise’ or ‘I bet’ are speech acts that are “not normally thought of as just saying something”, and similarly, instructions do more than what is said in the delivery of them. The delivering of an instruction (or command, or order etc.) brings with it a projection of an execution that extends beyond the delivering of the words.

In the arts, especially the performing arts, the instruction is often given secondary status to the performances that it instructs. In music, theatre, and dance the score is kept from view of the audience, often memorized, as to not to ruin the illusion of unscripted reality. Performance is a subject of much critical attention, and with the emergence of the interdisciplinary field of Performance Studies programs it would seem that it’s a subject of increasing interest and analysis. But as for the instructions, scores, and notations that provoke, inform and guide the performances, no such burgeoning critical discourse exists.
But T.A.Y.I., along with a number of other recent instruction-based art projects like Hans Obrists Do-It, Miranda July and Harrell Fletchers Learning to Love Your More, and the Corporate Commands project Kanarinka, is a recognition of the possibilities of instruction – how it works and how to use it.

The purpose of this exhibit is not so much to explain what ‘instruction’ is, but to show various forms in which it can exist and also to bring encounters with instruction to the fore. Instructions are everywhere, waiting to be followed, refused, and creatively interpreted. An increased awareness of the structurally absorbed codes and instructions is an increased freedom for practical deviations and responsible disobedience.

The artists contributing to the event/exhibit highlight many of these issues regarding instruction. Kevin Thurston upsets the usual hierarchy of performance outlined earlier by exhibiting not the performance of the instruction (in his case, “rinse twice daily”), but the (unsightly) artifacts.
Reminiscent of Sol LeWitt’s instructions for wall drawings, Julia Dzwonkoski uses instructions to demonstrate the dilemma of authorship; Julia conceived the idea for her signs, and handed her idea off to professional sign painters and had them realize the idea (“Make the best sign you can make”). The signs not only fall under her authorship because of the authored idea/instructions, but also bear her name, Signs by Julia.
Lauren Bender’s performance LACK also reflects issues of labor and task-completion. In her performance, Bender follows the instructions on how to assemble a table from Ikea. The completed table (the exhausted labor) then becomes a utility on which other artists can exhibit their work.
In Building Gary Kachadourian’s Suzuki 500cc (Without Instructions), Seth Adelsberg (for whom the piece was written by Ric Royer) somewhat counters Bender’s performance by attempting to build a model Motorbike without referring to the instructions. The result is a potential clump of strangely configured plastic.
Zoe Laughlin and Cindy Rehm show how instruction can be an obsessive and detailed. Yet through their reliance on systems of measurement, their pieces also point to the difference between the technical interpretation of machines and the indeterminate interpretation of humans, thus illuminating the gestures of identity that resonate in every completed task, every interpreted instruction.

This entire exhibit was built upon instructions, from the original call for work to the final interaction between the audience and the art works. So go, look at the art, play with the art, make some art, give some orders, break some rules.

Ric Royer; ricroyer@gmail.com