Bad Job/Cruel World: Stupidity 2001, Part II, US$700 Stunt with Wedgy

2001, New Museum for Contemporary Art

Some things just have to be done. Some things have to be done again and again and again. Not necessarily for the benefit of a wider audience but more importantly for the widening of the task itself. Disguised as ritual that has been disguised as mundane disguised as productivity, there (hopefully) is something that reveals itself through repetition. Remove the possibility of success but keep the dumbest drive for completion and the perfection of choreography remains. In the window of the New Museum hung a large, tall sculpture of a naked woman standing with her back to the window facing the street. Next to the sculpture, for two days, eight hours a day, a work person in uniform continuously climbed a ladder in order to fix the underwear on the sculpture and fell dramatically from the top rung of the ladder only to get up and try again. The “work person” was a hired professional stunt person.

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