“Water Spilled From Source To Use” Lawrence Weiner
If this piece looks familiar to those who visit frequently here, it is! The piece is a repeat with some valuable information added in a note from David Abel:
For over twenty years now, when I visit New York City, I find myself visiting and trying to take the right photograph of this site. It’s located on Greenwich Street before Canal. I find the text totally intriguing. Why? Try as hard as I can to memorize, I can never remember the ‘proper’ order of the words. The odd, ‘backwords’ syntax, the curious use of the past tense (”spilled”), also baffles my desire to make the phrase mean something. Could it be as simple as a complicated way of saying water always flows from its “source” to some form of “use.” Or is the phrase a wry comment on the function of the two very visible drainpipes down each side of the residence? And the ‘use’ is ironic in that the water goes into the gutter or wherever? Or is it a wry comment on the owner of the building, Jon Hendricks, one of the founding (’source’) members of Fluxus? Or is the intention to baffle the walker in a way that we are compelled to stop and look at this early 19th century Federalist era cottage, built in 1820. (And in that sense, is the piece a political act? Political art being one that compels us to look closely at the “polis”, the city? ) And why, the knowledgable may ask, has one of the founding members of Fluxus chosen to live there - Fluxus being one of the most ephemeral - albeit wonderful - contemporary art movements of the last half of the 20th century? My partner, Sandy - a native New Yorker - tells me that the building’s origins and history probably had little to do with the decision to buy. In the seventies these old buildings - even as well built as they are - were dirt cheap. Not many New Yorkers wanted to live on a corner of Canal Street - thus its utter affordability made it attractive to artists.
Undoubtedly someone is writing a criticial work on the work of Lawrence Weiner and some of these questions will be answered publicly. And undoubtedly - in the context of Weiner’s history of text pieces - there is much more light that may be shed on the work. Or maybe there is already a book that includes a look at this work.(?) Actually, since I love the immediacy and freshness of the work - the way it arrests the eye and simultaneously provokes one to examine its meaning - I am not how much I want to know - how much I want my experience of the piece to be enhanced by further knowledge.
Appropos of this idea (or approach to an artwork), I am made to think of how recently I read an ancient Chinese poem (translated by Kenneth Rexroth) to my 90 year old mother. Her immediate response to hearing the poem was, “That’s potent.”
I asked what she meant by “potent”.
“It’s strong,” she said.
Well, what do you mean by “strong”?
“Nothing interferes with it.”
Her sense of authority sometimes astonishes me!
Over the days I thought about that. I had to agree that what she said, ultimately, possibly applied to any great work of art. Nothing interferes with it! Nothing in the work sabotages or distracts from the piece. Something about looking into or hearing a great work will take our hats off. (Or is it socks?)It takes a while before we can even begin to reflect on its construction, influences, ‘what makes it work’ - the elements that enrich a critical enterprise and, ideally, the deepened appreciation of a particular work.
Something about my first and continued apprehension of this Lawrence Weiner work - even as its type face begins to deteriorate - does that. I still have to pick up my hat!
Of course the fact that my slightly demented mom can also say such a thing also takes off my hat!
Addendum:
David Abel, poet and friend, who was closely familiar with this neighborhood in the ’70’s and ’80’s, sends this note in response:
I have a poignant history with that storefront myself, slightly
predating its current status. If I’m correct, it had been the location
of Backworks, the Fluxus-focused store that Barbara Moore and Jon
Hendricks, together, ran in the 70s . . . I’ll never forget several
Backworks experiences: walking in to see/hear a dozen of Joe Jones’s
automated musical instruments gaily playing themselves; my first
Something Else Press exhibition (I still have that checklist — legend
has it that Barbara was the only paid employee the press ever had); a
Diter Rot exhibition, my introduction to his work.
The neighborhood is full of such sites for me: nearby, in a building of
the same vintage, the Ear Inn, which in its first years (under the
exemplary management of composer RIP Hayman) was of the very same
aesthetic bent as Backworks, and the unofficial watering hole of the
downtown alternative music scene, New Wilderness foundation, Segue
readings, etc.; and, a little further afield, Phil Niblock’s loft, aka
Experimental Intermedia Foundation. Those were the days of discovering
performative possibilities, while still an on-again, off-again student
at Bard — meeting Jackson MacLow, Franz Kamin, Charlie Morrow, Ellen
Zweig, et al., and performing in their pieces; writing my own first such
works, etc. The last of the NY Avant Garde Festivals; the New Wilderness
Ocarina Orchestra; the 12th International Sound Poetry Festival; and so
much more . . .
Thank you, David. Now, of course, I would be interested in the notes of anyone, even Lawrence Weiner, on how the text and its situation on the building came about in 1984.
