Currently Reading: Mark Dion, 1997, Phaidon, London.
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He criticises the museum as conceiving the audience as childlike and passive, simplifying questions and giving reductive answers. Rather, the museum should provoke questions not spoonfeed answers. Dion wants the museum to be a time capsule: “If someone wants to update the museum they should build a new one.” (p.17). Transparency about the elusive workings of the museum is critiqued too; “The museum needs to be turned inside out – the back rooms put on exhibition and the displays put in storage.” (p.18). “Freeze the museum’s front room as a time capsule and open up the labs and store rooms to reveal the art and science as the dynamic processes they are.” (p.19).
A few notes I think a repeats from Archaeology but worth noting again: Dion sees the fieldwork as performative and likes when people can engage with the work on different levels (p.25). History Trash Dig and History Trash Scan (Civitella Ranieri) superficially borrowed the method of archaeology. He notes that one of the reasons he made these works [concerning rubbish] was so he wouldn’t get pigeon-holed as ‘zoology-themed’ (p.29). His method is generic, but always specific. “During my digs into trash dumps of previous centuries I’m not interested in one moment or type of object, but each artefact – be it yesterday’s Juicy Fruit wrapper or a sixteenth century porcelain fragment – is treated the same.” (p.30).
On the environmental aspect of working with rubbish (p.33): “I am generally pessimistic about the fact that the environmental movement has shied away from providing a more systematic critique of capitalism. It has become more corporate, divisive and collusive, missing an important opportunity to present a meaningful challenge to the juggernaut of world market economy. Environmentalism has become eco-chic, another gizmo, another category or commodities.”
In Survey, Lisa Graziose Corrin brings in some important influences on Dion’s practice that are relevant to my research in their own right. Hans Haacke – Dion’s former teacher – created his own ecosystem using samples of raw sewage and industrial run-off collected from the city’s plants (p.46). In praise of the interdisciplinarian and polymath, she also references Joseph Beuy et al’s Free University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research which promoted an understanding of art as connected to other activities, not restricted to trained art professionals (p.49).
Corrin compares Smithson’s “view of the museum included a pointed critique of its arbitrary categorization of fragments and artistic media.” (p.50) “The categorizing of art into painting, archaeology and sculpture seems to be one of the most unfortunate things that took place. Now all the categories are splintered into more and more categories, and its like a interminable avalanche of categories.” “Smithson liked the museums precisely because of their ‘uselessness’.” Conversation with Robert Smithson, 1972, p.48/49.
In the Discussion with Alexis Rockman Extracts, 1991, featured on the pages alongside Concrete Jungle (The Birds) (1992) and Concrete Jungle (The Mammals) (1994) (both featuring assorted rubbish), Rockman notes, “You seem to come to [ecological issues] from a more clinical, methodological position wherein you generate a revisionist ‘official story’ of natural history in a pseudo-documentary format.” (p.119).
And a final note on shit from Dion: “The modernist cube … is the environment without nature. … In the same way that our culture does not acknowledge shit, distance itself from production of food or denies the processes of ageing.” (p.120).
