Another Misspent Portrait of Etienne de Silhouette

(1999 - 2004/05/07/09)

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The centre of attention

A 246 page Vogue Hommes September 1986 #92 magazine, with Sylvester Stallone cover, erased and inscribed by approximately 250 people in the years 1999 to 2004.

Its (un)making

Over those five years mostly random individuals were asked to completely erase, with a rubber-eraser, a page of this intact and out-of-date French men's fashion magazine. They were also asked to anonymously write in pencil on their erased page both the time it took them to do this and whatever monetary value they currently received at work for their time, translated into an hourly rate or rates. The sum of these literal and symbolic expenditures gave each page a nominal value that, when added to that of all the other pages, established a value, of sorts, for the work as a whole - 267 hours 49 minutes and 5 seconds... valued at AUD$11,349.18... . The shortest time taken to erase a page was nine minutes, while the longest was around three and three-quarter hours. The value accrued 'on' each page ranges from nothing in a number of instances - some contributors were receiving no calculable monetary compensation for their time - to one page 'worth' over US$1,000. No one was paid for their time. The front and back covers of the magazine, though noticeably worn by years of scuffing, remain unerased.

The project

Since 2004 this work has taken different forms on the occasions of its public presentations: Another Misspent Portrait of Etienne de Silhouette, Melbourne, Australia (2004/05), Think with the Senses - Feel with the Mind. Art in the Present Tense, Venice Biennale 52. Exhibition of International Art, Venice, Italy (2007), Behind the Image | The Image Behind (on covering and uncovering media), STUK Kunstencentrum, Leuven, Belgium (2009) and at the Simon Preston Gallery, New York (2009/10).

With the erased magazine-artefact as its centrepiece this mass-collaborative erasure and (re)inscription work has been staged in conjunction with: a multifaceted 'response' component presented by invited contributors involving talks, discussions, and performances generated in direct response to the work or to the wider social and/or artistic context of its production and dissemination (nine locations in Melbourne '04/'05 and six on-/off-site events in Venice '07); an installation of closely related works and an archive (Venice '07, Leuven and New York '09); and a shortwave broadcast (Leuven '09).

The transcripts of the site contributions in 2004/5 are on the 'AMPEdS' page sidebar or at this link. Those from the 2007 Venice Biennale of Art presentation are also available online and can be accessed here. For the project's February 2009 staging in Leuven the 'response' program was replaced by a twice-daily shortwave radio broadcast. The online details of this, including sound clips, can be found at the Leuven sidebar link or here by clicking here.

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