This Project is a Joke
In January of 2015, The Lunder Art Center at Lesley University opened to students. In the previous year Morgan Lacasse and I proposed to place photographs of bathroom grafiti in one of the bathrooms. They selected our proposal from many and we were awarded the Lower Level Men's room.
The Proposal that I wrote is here below.
We would like to propose for the Lunder Art Center restroom that the graffiti from the 700 Beacon St and 601 Newbury St restrooms be framed and displayed there. It will look best lined up along the longest available space, the Lower Level Restrooms.
We would like the pieces to have the same prestige and feel of a museum exhibit. A line will go on the floor proclaiming where restroom patrons are to close to the art. It will probably take up a considerable part of the walking space and would be a large inconvenience if obeyed.
Museums in this day and age are a mystery wrapped in an enigma and I would like to bring that paradoxical predicament even a step further: to the restroom, of the restroom.
In much of what I learned about art, it is almost never made by the rich, but it is displayed for the rich who enjoy participating in absurdly priced leisure activities. I could never afford to even consider viewing the art on display at the MFA without my art-student status.
If I add up what it would have cost me to view this art (that I could look up on a computer for free) since I started college, I could purchase an all inclusive two-week trip to the Caribbean.
I am very put off by this obvious classism on who should view masterpieces of the past.
Here in the restrooms of LUCAD, artists have whispered and caressed their secrets into the walls. Is that not what we go to the museum for? To attempt to understand the inner workings and inspiration of the masters? We are the future masters, and we have spilled our secrets onto the walls. We mourn their memory when they are painted over. We will relic in their absence in the new building.
It is also the great irony that there is no secret inner workings or inspiration. The great mystery proclaims ‘it’s probably just an infection’ and ‘I just want something to be sure about.’
It is the anonymous voice written on the walls and it speaks to you alone like you are the only one that should know it. It is a great treasure to find a new voice on the wall. I would like to display these voices and not forget them, they have created an experience for me at LUCAD and I dread the months it may take before a solid hilarious marking gets put up in the new building.
Is this proposal project not to attempt to diminish the unwanted voices of degenerate art in the restrooms?
‘White walls in an art school, you people disgust me’ – first floor, 700 Beacon handicap restroom, sharpie. (RIP)
‘Who watches the watchmen? Me!’ – Third floor, 601 Newbury, female restroom, scratched onto the toilet paper dispenser.