Charles Gute: So, the deal is, we were talking the other day, and I mentioned that I’d done an installation at ATA—I think it was in 1986 or 87—and that there were parts of the work that were still there on site, but that they were no longer visible, having been boarded up in the skylight and behind some other architectural renovations. And at the same time we were discussing a possible collaboration for ATA’s webzine. And then you had the idea that I should describe the piece, as it once existed, to you over the phone. You would draw it based on my description, and the resulting transcript and drawings would be the collaboration…

Kent Howie: Right.

CG: And I liked this idea, because my main memory of the installation is of the work having been so mired in theoretical baggage—with each of the parts having a very specific theoretical subtext, and then all these subtexts obsessively fitting together in such a way as to form an even more inaccessible secondary meaning—that the work was basically impenetrable. It looked interesting, but nobody had any idea what it was supposed to mean. And so the idea of talking about the piece in purely physical terms—to describe it without allowing myself to explain it—seemed like a useful exercise. And since the original meaning was virtually opaque, and the existing remnants are invisible, I figured that running it through the Kent Howie filter couldn’t hurt.

KH: Uh, are we on the thing yet? Are we talking yet?

CG: Yeah.

KH: O.K., cool. [laughter] Go ahead…

CG: So I imagined you would want to make three or four drawings of the work’s individual components, like details, and maybe one or two drawings of the overall work.

KH: What was the title?

CG: The thing was, the title kept changing. I remember there was a photo of it published in Artweek that referred to it as Modernist Construct, so let’s just call it that.

KH: And part of it was in the skylight?

CG: There were—still are, I suspect, behind the boards—twenty-one individual glass panes, each about one by two feet. You should draw this. Are you drawing this?

KH: Twenty-two of them?

CG: Twenty-one, all in a straight line. Each panel had a letter in it, except for one, which was blank, between the two words that were spelled out. The letters were all in caps, in something like a Times Roman font…

KH: Which I don’t have a clue… well, maybe I do… It’s not like heavy metal, is it?

CG: It’s a serifed font. And the two words were German: UNSERE EMPFINDSAMKEIT.

KH: [laughs] How do you spell it?

CG: There was one letter in each pane of glass: U-N-S-E-R-E. That’s the first word. E-M-P-F-I-N-D-S-A-M-K…

KH: NK?

CG: No, MK, as in Martin Kippenberger. M…K…E as in elephant, I as in igloo, T as in tiger.

KH: Oh my god, no wonder nobody could figure that out. How long was the skylight?

CG: I don’t know, maybe twenty-five feet long. You’re sketching this?

KH: Yeah.

CG: OK, so that skylight text was the backdrop for these other two parts, which had a kind of mechanical relationship. There were two recessed bays at each end of the skylight, and in each one there was a pulley, and across the two pulleys there was a galvanized steel cable, which was attached to something on each end, which is what I’ll describe now. For that you’ll probably want to do two separate drawings.

KH: OK, I’m going to move on to the next drawing…

CG: One end of the cable was attached to a Beethoven bust—an inverted Beethoven bust that I had cast with a large eye bolt sunk into the base of it, so that the eye bolt could attach to hardware that would then attach to the galvanized steel cable. Basically there was hardware that connected the cable to the bottom of the Beethoven bust, so he hung there overhead, upside-down, above the stairway.

KH: The stairway to what is now Craig Baldwin’s room?

CG: I guess…

KH: Oh—and that wall wasn’t there. That makes sense… How high up was Beethoven?

CG: Maybe fifteen, twenty feet. He looked sort of forlorn up there. And he weighed about 40 pounds. He was basically suspended up there because this cable across these two pulleys functioned as a kind of scale, or balance. The other end was attached to this other component, which was heavy enough that it could hold Beethoven aloft.

KH: Can you say that again?

CG: The other end of the cable was attached to this other component—which is what you probably want to draw next—which rested on the floor. Now I’ll describe this heavier component that sat on the floor: there was a wooden forklift pallet, and on it there was a square aluminum plate about 1/4 of an inch thick, slightly smaller than the pallet.

KH: Was it thick?

CG: About 1/4 of an inch thick. And in each corner of the plate there was a hole, drilled by Howard Fried, who then invoiced me for the four drilled holes. And each of those holes connects to the galvanized steel cable. The cables from the four corners all fasten together at one point to the main cable that leads up into the skylight.

KH: Cool.

CG: OK, now, what was on this plate was this text—this manifesto text that I wrote. There were 228,000 copies of this manifesto, each one shrunk down to about two by one and a half inches, and reproduced at that size. So it was tiny, and the text was difficult to read because it was so small. And all these texts were neatly stacked up in a grid, so it formed a huge brick of texts—a big block of 228,000 tiny texts.

KH: Was there any significance to the number?

CG: I’m not allowed to talk about that. The thing was, the viewer could take the texts, and there was this potential that, over the course of the show, eventually people could take enough copies to lighten the pile of texts so that it could become lighter than the Beethoven bust, and Beethoven would begin to descend, and this platter of texts would begin to ascend up into the skylight.

KH: Oh. Huh…

CG: And people actually did take loads of these texts, but they never took enough for Beethoven to move.

KH: And meanwhile you can see this German word in the skylight…

CG: Right, with the light coming through it, very dramatic, and then there’s the text of the tiny manifesto itself. You want to try and transcribe it while I read it to you?

KH: O.K. Go ahead.

CG: Alright. It was printed all in capital letters. There was a heading at the top that said “FEELING POSTMODERN?” and then there was this dense block of text that said,

“DON’T FOOL YOURSELF. BEWARE THE TREACHEROUS AND VULGAR AESTHETICIZATION OF PAST FORMAL INNOVATION THAT RESULTS FROM ITS CASUAL APPROPRIATION AND MISUSE BY INDIVIDUALS WHO EITHER DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER, OR WHO ARE SUCH OUTRIGHT GREEDHEADS AS TO PURPOSEFULLY PERPETUATE CONCEPTUAL DISBASEMENT FOR THEIR OWN SELFISH GAIN. INSUFFERABLE TO THOSE WHO STILL HEED THE PASSIONS AND SENSIBILITIES OF MODERNITY, THESE MONGOLOID PRACTITIONERS DARE TO INDISCRIMINANTELY PILLAGE AND DILUTE THE QUINTESSENTIAL CONSTRUCTS OF RECENT GENERATIONS WHILE RATIONALIZING THEIR IRRESPONSIBLE EXPLOITS WITH SUCH INANELY TAUTOLOGICAL CONCEITS AS "PASTICHE" AND "PLURALISM". BUT NO AMOUNT OF JARGON—NO MATTER HOW ELOQUENTLY OR DOGMATICALLY EMPLOYED—WILL EVER JUSTIFY THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY ASSORTMENT OF BASTARD PROGENY THAT CORRUPTS OUR GALLERIES AND CONCERT HALLS TODAY: CONSIDER THE USE OF TEXT AS A CONVENIENT SIGNIFIER TO SUPERFICIALLY REFERENCE THE NOW CANNONIZED RIGORS OF CERTAIN "CONCEPTUAL ART" PRACTICES WHICH HEROICALLY DEMATERIALIZED THE ART OBJECT OVER 15 YEARS AGO! CONSIDER THE SUDDEN PROLIFERATION OF NEW "MINIMALIST" COMPOSERS WHO SOMEHOW EXPECT THAT THE MERE USE OF REPETITIVE MOTIFS IN A SCORE WILL CONSTITUTE A MEANINGFULL CONTRIBUTION TO THE ALMOST WHOLLY ABANDONED CHALLANGES OF "PROCESS MUSIC"! CONSIDER THE NAUSEATING AND UTTERLY INEXPLICABLE REBIRTH OF COLORFIELD AND HARD-EDGE ABSTRACTION PAINTING! INDEED, NOTHING IS SACRED TO THESE CAREER-MINDED USURPERS OF OUR PAST; FOR THEY SUBSCRIBE TO THAT BOURGEOIS MENTALITY WHICH TRADITIONALLY SUPPOSES THAT EVEN THE MOST NOBLE ACHIEVMENTS OF OUR PREMODERN ANCESTORS CAN BE REDUCED TO CHEESY ICONS IN THE FORM OF BEETHOVEN BUSTS AND POSTCARD REPRODUCTIONS. IN THIS SAME INSIDIOUS WAY, ALL THE GREATEST BREAKTHROUGHS OF OUR OWN TIME WILL BECOME HOLLOW DERIVATIONS; METHODICALLY DISINFORMED, RUTHLESSLY MATERIALIZED, AND MASS-PRODUCED FOR THE FINANCIAL BENEFIT OF YUPPIE-ORIENTED STOREFRONT VENUES. NOT A FRIGHTENING PROSPECT? OF COURSE IT IS. ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU MAY BE THEIR NEXT VICTIM. WHY WAIT UNTIL THESE SHAMELESS CANNIBALS STEAL THE FRUITS OF YOUR HARD-WON CRITICAL ENDEAVORS, QUICKLY AESTHETICIZING THEM INTO THE NEWEST DECORATIVE TREND, WHILE LEAVING YOU, BROKEN SPIRITED, TO IMPOTENTLY BEMOAN YOUR LABORS AS YOU WALLOW IN THE DEPTHS OF ALCOHOLISM OR WORSE? CLEARLY, THE TIME TO TAKE ACTION IS NOW.”

And then at the bottom there’s a footer in a large bold print that says, “BEWARE…”

KH: [laughs]

CG: O.K., did you get all that?

KH: No. I mean, yeah, I did get all that.

CG: Yeah? Good. Did I mention that there are no squirrels or elves in this piece?

KH: No. No, there aren’t any.

CG: No squirrels perched on the, uh…pallet. [laughs]

KH: Right.