Restagings No. 3: Fall (C.A.) 2019
Sunday, October 13, 2019 || 2pm–12:30am
Restagings No. 3: Fall (C.A.) is a collective ritual—a 10 ½ hour performance—for a community of performers, writers, and their witnesses. Carl Andre’s 1968 sculpture Fall is the work’s source. In Andre’s work, steel plates remain unmoving on the ground. In Fall (C.A.), performers slip beneath the plates, raising them again and again. Andre liked to say, “My work doesn’t mean a damn thing. There’s nothing hiding under those plates.” This work responds, “Lift them up. Let’s see.”
For Levine, in creating the Restagings, which address art monuments of the 1960s & 70s, it was impossible to ignore Carl Andre’s work. But Andre is a troubling figure, linked inextricably to the death of his wife artist Ana Mendieta, for which Andre was tried and ultimately—though controversially— acquitted. Levine felt there were two choices, either side-step Andre’s work—leave it undisturbed on its ground—or challenge it, look underneath, unbury what it tries to bury. This second path is the one taken by this work. Haunted by Mendieta’s enduring presence, Levine invites in a group of artists, transforming Andre’s Fall from a sculpture into a site on which to present and recall a multiplicity of creative voices.
Andre’s claims of meaninglessness share a vocabulary with men’s claims of innocence that we hear across the media today: “It means nothing, it was nothing… they over-interpret, she misunderstood… you’re seeing things, you imagined it.” As we know, some people can define the truth that surrounds them; others have it done for them.
In Fall (C.A.), two performances take place simultaneously on opposite ends of the gallery. In the larger back of the space, a performer lifts and lowers a weighty panel (wood rather than metal), marking a line of their body on the board in graphite—an echo of Mendieta’s Siluetas. Near the entrance, and visible from the street, a performer composes text in response to the movement score on an electric typewriter, framing their performance with their own interpretation. An accumulating sound installation is created using cassette recordings of the typing, text, and movement.
Fall (C.A.) is the third work in Levine’s Restagings series, which re-reads minimalist and conceptual artworks as works of performance. Producing five pieces over five years, Restagings works from an iconic cadre of 1960s artists—Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Richard Serra, Carl Andre, and Walter de Maria—all of whom were closely associated with dance and performance artists of their era—Yvonne Rainer, Simone Forti, Ana Mendieta, and Carolee Schneemann among them.
Fall (CA) is the third collaboration between the artist and the gallery, which presented Restagings No 1: Choreographing LeWitt in 2017 and No. 2: Of Serra (to movement) in 2018.
Contributing Artists: Sareh Afshar, Chloë Bass, Kyle Bukhari, Esy Casey, Donna Costello, WooJae Chung, Atiya Dorsey, Rebecca Fitton, Camilo Godoy, Carolyn Hall, Greta Hartenstein, June Lei, Clarinda MacLow, Maho Ogawa, Kristopher KQ Pourzal, Janet Passehl, Vitche-Boul Ra, Londs Reuter, Dave Ruder, Elisa Santiago, David Thomson, and Edisa Weeks.
Photos: Esy Casey and Christian Holland.
