Tiffany Zabludowicz, ‘Tiffany Zabludowicz on the Business Lessons of
"Work in Progress," Her Corporate Times Square Artist Residency’,
Artspace, June 2016
Last month, the young art collector Tiffany Zabludowicz was given temporary
access to an empty corporate suite in a Times Square office building and decided
to transform it into the site of a three-week artist residency. She launched the
project, called Work in Progress, with a column on Artspace musing on whether fineart can ever really be an office job. Part two chronicled the artists' happy embrace of the
setting, where Gerhard Richter met Slack, the productivity-optimization app. This
week, Zabludowicz concludes her account of the residency with a valedictory
column to debrief us on the fruits of her short-lived startup.
During the residency, our neighbors in the building kept popping in to ask us what
kind of companyWork in Progress was, probably intrigued by our sharpie-onpaper signage. At one point I heard one of the artists respond, comically, “We are
an art production business.” By the beginning of last week we really were. Each
artist worked quietly in their own offices, with total efficiency and
determination.Cyril Duval pointed out that in a regular office, meetings take up a
large portion of the day. That was certainly the case for us—a constant flow of
gallerists, curators, collectors, and art writers came in for studio visits and to see
the space in action. Our coffee runs became more and more regular. We all started
arriving earlier and staying later. The momentum was rolling, and it was non-stop
creativity. Business, in other words, was booming.
Sarah Meyohas had to leave for Brazil on Friday, May 20th, but in her wake she left
some scrawled notes on the glass wall of her office explaining (to those who could
understand it) the inversion of chemicals to create synthetic opals, which she had
been researching with a lab at Harvard. She also left two cylinders filled with a
milky substance, which slowly evaporated throughout the week, leaving an
opalescent sheen on their glass edges. I shut and locked the door of her office,
leaving it an empty fish-tank of an artist’s studio.
On Thursday afternoon I received a text from her from Brazil. During her time at
the residency she had put in a trade, her first short ever. She was
shorting Abercrombie & Fitch and last Thursday earnings came out. She had
just come back from a waterfall and an excited position. Business success!
On the same day as Sarah left, Etsy took down Brad Troemel and Joshua
Citarella’s online store of conceptual art products, UV Production House. The
timing was problematic, as Brad had to present on the store on a panel at eFlux that night. With no store to show, he used a found Google image of a urine
conversion device, one of their less subtle products.
It’s no wonder they got removed when a product, “airBNB Housing Solution: remain
on your Lower East Side apartment’s fire escape in a hanging tent while guests pay off
your months rent” went completely viral, being re-blogged and disseminated
throughout the Internet well outside of art-centric spheres. The amount of traffic to
their store had to catch Etsy’s attention, and with such playful "products" it was
unsurprising that the company could detect something that violated their terms
and conditions of sale. Brad and Josh were not deterred, however, and continued
to create their wares while patiently and optimistically communicating with Etsy
about the store’s return.
Haley Mellin finished her paintings and prints with quiet and precise efficiency,
sending them off to Detroit, where they will be shown as part of "War Games," a
show curated by Benjamin Godsill in a stunning abandoned church. She bought
into the office a couple of precious color copies of her Reader, the most
comprehensive collection of essays about Post-Internet art to date. I flicked through it
regularly during the week. Haley left on Thursday and her office was shut and
locked: another fish-tank. What remained were some unused prints, a palette on a
paper plate, and a few other art-making tools.
I had noticed that more and more dancers began to appear in Sigrid Lauren’s
office. She converted two office chairs into dance props by inverting one and
ripping the other apart and nailing them both to desks. These became anchors for
dance, and she began to think about the suction that the canyons of Times Square
evoke from above, and how muscles could reflect that.
Violet Dennison continued to work throughout the night and invited her
artist friend Coco Young to collaborate with her. They began to make a film of the
square below, zooming in with a long-distance lens onto the bustling action on the
street and also onto the people in offices across the way. Cyril delved even further
into the square, wearing fun clothes to infiltrate the crowds and taking a lot of
selfies for a publication. He also began to make friends with a Russian street artist
called Khasan, whom he watched paint every morning on his way into the office.
By Wednesday of last week, the energy hit overload and all talk became about the
opening on May 26th, our "Office Hours" party-cum-open-studio event, which was
hosted in collaboration withPerforma Visionaries. Cyril decided he was going to
involve Khasan in a performance. Sigrid was going to activate a black-walled room
that had a glass front wall, which was probably used for presenting slide
presentations by the office workers who preceded us. Violet was going to show her
film, and Brad and Josh wanted to do presentations on UV Production House. We
had only 48 hours before the opening, and the office was buzzing.
On Thursday morning I got a call from Violet. She wanted to turn her office into
what was essentially a solo show, and asked if she could bring a large sculpture
from her Brooklyn studio, half-expecting me to say no to this wild suggestion on
the day of the opening. But our little corporation was built on spontaneity, and so I
found a man with a van, and before I knew it Violet had arrived with a large metal
structure made up of tangled metal rods, which found its perfect home in the
middle of her wonderfully hectic studio floor. She also acquired colored filters to
cover her lights, and her office glowed red and pink, enchantingly.
Next door, she installed her film projector onto a pillar. Viewers could watch the
40-minute footage of Times Square, which had a vintage quality, in front of the
backdrop of a view of what was depicted on screen in close-up. At one point Coco
said that she had been working on a film for four months and was as happy with
this film, which had only taken her and Violet four days to make. The office space
did encourage quick action and incredible creations. In one empty office, Violet
placed across the floor three bionic coffee-cup sculptures, It is our pleasure to serve
you (or profane words scrawled black across the sun), 2015, which seemed as though
they had crawled out from under the desk.
On Thursday evening, the event began and Performa Visionaries and a fun
assortment of friends began to arrive. I was thrilled when Sherry Dobbin—
director of public Art at the Times Square Alliance—popped by the office. The
night before I had finally stayed up late enough to see Jennifer Steinkamp’s
amazing flowers dancing across the screens of Times Square at midnight, as they
were doing every night as part of her guerrilla show organized by Times Square
Arts. Sherry said that she loved the residency, as it was for her just more proof that
art belongs in Times Square.
We were all thrilled when on Wednesday, Etsy restored the UV Production House
store, removing only a couple of problematic products from the Internet. On
Thursday night, Brad and Josh displayed in their office a slideshow of screen shots
of UV Production House on a large Mac screen placed atop a stack of brown
wooden desk drawers. Dull black chairs were laid out around the edge of their
office, evoking the atmosphere of a waiting room. Against the backdrop of Times
Square at night, they began to present the project to people as they milled through.
After presenting their work to so many visitors throughout the residency, Brad and
Josh were ready to describe the project with great fluidity and skill. In our little
Sterling Cooper, they had both become Don Drapers.
Sigrid Lauren rehearsing for her performance in her office
At one point we moved everybody towards Sigrid Lauren’s performance, where she
sat radiant in a white shorts suit in a white office chair and gave muffled
instructions against a rhythmic beat to her dancers, who used the dismantled office
chairs to move with pulsating gestures against a backdrop of an empty screen
emitting an eerie blue light. Then we shifted to the other side of the office to watch
Cyril Duval tie a rubber band around an inflatable hotdog, which he had covered in
a bombproof material so that it still maintained the shape of the inflatable but was
harder and stronger.
The yellow rubber band suggested bondage, and mustard. The hotdog was
displayed in the middle of a brightly lit glass-walled office, and crowds gathered
around outside it, watching as Khasan came and spray-painted the bun of the
hotdog. Cyril didn’t like its original dull beige color, and Khasan painted it a vivid
bright orange and yellow instead.
After the performances, the night became a lovely and joyful celebration. Later, we
headed to Planet Hollywood to finally experience some true Times Square
dining. After a mandatory photo at the photo booth, we sat down with large goblets
filled with a mysterious blue substance and ate tacos and sliders.
So, back to my original question: “Can making art be an office job?” It certainly
can’t be a real office job—a desk and computer alone weren't enough to satisfy
these residents, who, inspired by the space, ended up expanding out of their offices
and filling the whole floor with explosive and creative energy. However there is
something to be said for bringing artists into an office space in Times Square. It’s
simply inspirational—especially when one only gets access to it for such a short
time. I was surprised to observe that, instead of stifling individuality, an office
space actually encourages creativity. Maybe that is because the setting streamlines
productivity—or maybe it was the dancing lights of Times Square, shining in, that
threw everybody into such a thrilling fervor of art-making.
Over the weekend, it was with a heavy heart that I watched the artists begin the
huge task of clearing out their offices, leaving the space ready for demolition so
that the next office could begin to move in. Lucky them. On Monday, Violet and
Coco had a screening of their film for their friends, and then on Tuesday—after
FLUCT used the space to do some final filming—everything was cleared out. But at
least we had these three weeks to launch an LLC, go toe-to-toe with Etsy, create
unforgettable artworks, and activate this magic space.
The "Work in Progress" staff and friends at Planet Hollywood