An Application of Discourse
The director of Santa Monica Arts center invited me to make a new production that would “critically analyse the institution itself as a device of fiction, deception or illusion”. My proposal was to try to take the ideology with which the Santa Mònica currently defines itself on its website and apply it literally for the duration of the exhibition.
Some of the actions proposed to put the ideology into practice were: suspend management functions, collectivise salaries or use the director’s office as an exhibition space, allowing the public to enter the offices.
To carry out the project, I also invited all the people who work at the centre on a daily basis, including contractors, interns and subcontractors, to meet with me, although not all of them accepted the invitation. After listening to their contributions on the ideology of the centre and its implementation, it became clear that it was intrinsically impossible to apply the discourse to this institutional reality, except as a mere symbolic gesture.
Faced with this reality, I decided to terminate the contract by publicly declaring the application of the institutional ideology as an act of impossible content, and, in this way, comply with the director’s request.