Gordon Matta-Clark

Foreclosure

Pt. 4

Reza Negarestani, “The Corpse Bride: Thinking with Nigredo.”
Reza Negarestani, “The Corpse Bride: Thinking with Nigredo.”

In order to negotiate the philosophically fraught relationship between body and soul, Cicero drew attention to a lost fragment from Aristotle in which the philosopher uses a singularly vile form of torture practiced by Estruscan pirates as an allegory for embodied life.  

This time we shall say: ‘Be the dandy of ambiguities. On pain of losing yourself, love only that which overturns your order.’ As for the pig, he wants to put everything definitively in its place, to reduce it to possible profit; he wants everything to be labelled and consumable.

— Alain Badiou, “What is it to Live?”
[1]

Ted Greenwald's "Voice Truck," part of Gordon Matta-Clark's Open Space (1972)

reconstruction of a related Matta-Clarke's work

In May 1972, the artist Gordon Matta-Clark installed a dumpster in front of 98 Greene Street in Soho (Manhattan). The work was called both "Open Space" and "Dumpster." The Dumpster was filled with construction debris and other material, formed into three corridors. For Ted Greenwald's contribution to the installation, he created a special audio work. Greenwald installed a tape recorder on the delivery truck for the Village Voice, his long-time day job. Six reels were recorded. One of the tapes, featuring the most dramatic action of the day, was stolen from the cab of the truck: in the middle of Times Square, mounted police galloped up to a subway entrance, tied their horses to the entrance, and ran down into the subway.

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