Education and Community Programs

Playwright Kira Obolensky is known for her keen intellect and vibrant imagination that has led her to write about topics as far ranging as American garage culture and a hermaphrodite in the Victorian era in both books and plays.

She was kind enough to answer a few questions about her role in the collaborative endeavor Permanence Collection, an in-gallery play she co-wrote with Ed Bok Lee for a project with the Walker and the Playwrights’ Center. Her responses below channel some of our internal Walker meetings, where programmers sit around to discuss how visitors respond to the permanent collection, the act of looking and the meaning of creativity. Needless to say, our conversations are far less clear and poetic than Obolensky’s.

Were you familiar with the Walker’s Permanent Collection prior to this project?

Yes, I’ve been a regular Walker-goer for years.

Has working on Permanence Collection changed or shifted your thoughts about the Collection or the current installation?

Writing the piece has really changed the way I view the installation–simply because the process of creatively engaging with a work of art is different than simply viewing it. One of the questions the play asks is why is there such a difference? How can the act of viewing art be in itself creative? “Art is a conversation”--someone famous said that--and in our play I think we finally get to really talk to the art work. The process of writing the play has coalesced some more nebulous feelings I’ve had as a museum goer, walking through the Permanent Collection. For example, I’ve always been aware of the shift in feeling/emotion I get as I progress through the collection. We used that shift in feeling as a starting point.

What was the process of writing a play based on a roomful of art like? How did you work together to draft the script?

The process of writing a play that is about art, without being ABOUT art in a didactic way was challenging. I think we both knew we didn’t want the piece to feel like a skit which is the easy way to do something like this. We wanted something more layered, more mysterious, slightly ambiguous but also entertaining to watch. In many ways I think it was slightly intimidating for both of us to face the innovation and masterful work of the collection and to attempt to stand next to it.

We wrote the piece in its first draft as an exquisite corpse. I started it, then Ed wrote the next scene, and then I wrote the next one and so forth. That said, once it was in its first draft form there was a lot of hands-on collaboration between us and Hayley [Finn], getting the themes to surface, and attempting to find action in each scene. We also realized on our first rehearsal that there were far too many words. Because of the marble surfaces, acoustics are difficult and it became clear that each scene needed to be cut in half. So a fair amount of writing and editing has happened on our feet.

What artworks were particularly interesting to you and why?

I love the David Smith piece (The Royal Bird) in the mid-century room. It is as if something is being born from the abstraction and color fields. It struggles to take flight--a kind of representation even as the paintings in the room resist.

The Jasper Johns set piece in the Pop Art room is a reminder to me of how theatre is at its core spectacle and visual.

The Bruce Nauman video is compelling to me as a work of theatre.

The Gober chair is so layered and narrative…it’s meaning shifts constantly for me. It tells a story that evokes irony and paradox. It is in a room filled with ironic works of art. It itself has irony to it--but it’s not a one-liner. It reminds me of how nuanced irony can be.

In the Mythologies room, I’m particularly fond of the scale of the scale of the artwork. I love how big and challenging the pieces are, and yet how delicate they are up close. The Mehretu painting has such a fine line in it and yet it maps something enormous.

Tell us how you came up with the title for the play.

One of the ideas in the piece is about permanence. In the first scene Harry says, “It’s not fair they (the art work) gets to stay put and we grow old.” It strikes me that this idea of the artwork as permanent is true it doesn’t change in its being, although it’s interpretation can be in constant flux. The viewers of the artwork age and move and change, and the theatre they unwittingly create in the galleries is entirely impermanent.

Permanence Collection is performed again on Thursday, May 15 at 7 and 8 pm in the Walker galleries.

This post was written by Marty Marosi, current Walker Art Center Teen Arts Council (WACTAC) member, about the 20 Under 20 exhibition.

Hello from St. Paul! This day is significant because it’s the second and last day of curating, and also the same for how many times I’ve been in St. Paul.

We’ve been putting the St. Paul show together by working with each piece like, well, let’s just say they don’t call ‘em ‘pieces’ for nuthin. We’ve looked at all the pieces in a giant group and picked out ones that seemed to work together. If an artist had multiple works, we considered it in its entirety. Then from there, we put it on the wall, and have been practicing a whole ‘mix ‘n match’ and trial and error process. Luckily we don’t make mistakes.

(Here’s a picture of Witt spouting off some philosophy)

Witt (WACTAC superfan) is workin like a dog over here, he paces back and forth all the time. With how long the spaces are in this warehouse, each trip takes alost 20 minutes. He hasn’t eaten anything all day except doritos for lunch and toast for breakfast. But I think he’s milkin it a little bit because he said he ate just ‘a piece of toast’, leaving much to the imagination as to the scantness of his meal. Nonetheless, I saw him sporting the tired-man’s beard a couple days ago and I think he needs to just kick back and let the WACTAC’rs do some work for a change.

While David puts his life on the line to hang up all the art, I get the real cush job of documenting our progress and eating snacks to sustain myself. David is the real strong-silent type, but we like having him around.

Putting all this together has been a trying process, both emotionally and physically. At one point I thought my body wouldn’t take another kit-kat after eating so many during the initial curating phase, but I endured.

Before we got to this point, we spent countless hours down in the WACTAC bat-cave looking at what seemed like, and probably was, thousands of artworks. It was like No Exit down there. Sartre said ‘Hell is other people’ and the temperature became infernal with all the bodies in the room. One benefit, however, was how much muscle mass I gained from raising my arm for multiple votes and re-votes.

Overall, this has been a great experience. It’s been a long and elaborate process, but that makes the fruit of our labor that much sweeter. We hope this contest and show will be successful in continuing our objective to reach other teens (and tweens) out there who want to get involved with the art world.

If you have a chance, check out the series of 20 Under 20 events happening in the coming weeks.

As part of the Richard Prince: Spiritual America exhibition at the Walker, Education is sponsoring a series of three tours related to broader themes in the show.

This Thursday, Paula Rabinowitz will lead the second in our series American Mythologies: The Art of Richard Prince Part 2 Fetish. She’s the chair of the English Department at the University of Minnesota, professor of cultural studies, feminist theory, and visual culture. She’s written several books including They Must Be Represented: The Politics of Documentary, and Black and White and Noir: Americas Pulp Modernism. She’ll explain to us why anyone would read a book like Student Nurse in the first place and how the act of collecting is itself a fetishistic practice.

She’s in the midst of reading prose and meeting with students as finals approach, but I did get her to answer some of my questions in anticipation of this Thursday’s tour.

What is the history of pulp fiction novels and the artists who painted the covers?

The history of their production and reception is very complex–dating from the 19th century in France and US where books were not really bound but covered in paper, then the emergence of paperbacks as we know them through Penguin in Britain, and finally with the emigration of some Penguin publishers to the US just before WWII, here. Pocketbooks was the first US paperback publisher–followed by many others–including Signet, started by someone originally associated with Penguin.Copyright precluded any use of the “bird” insignia so the title of the publisher is a joke as it uses a medallion–a signet–but the name is a homonym for cygnet–a baby swan–deep insider literary joke. Paperbacks were distributed through magazine and candy sales methods rather than through usual booksellers distribution processes; they were sold at candy stores, train and bus stations and so forth across the country–even in places without bookstores. The range of materials published is vast–from trashy nurse novels to Freud or Faulkner (both of whom would have trashy covers) to appeal to a broad reading public.The cover artists–for instance Robert Jonas and James Avati (known as the Rembrandt of paperback)–were influential designers and superb draftsmen (almost all men–though the back covers of Dell books often had maps drawn by Ruth Belew), who incorporated modernist and realist influences. Again they too appealed to wide audiences–books were published in runs of close to half a million minimum.

Can you make a comparison to the artists who painted the pulp fiction covers and Richard Prince's art in terms of high art/low art?

Cover artists were concerned with bringing attention to the product being sold–their works were meant to be eye-catching, to be lurid and informative (sort of) yet they were meant to be reassuring, in that the images, colors, format were regularized and familiar–they were parts of a series. People knew what to expect. I think Prince is tapping into this idea of replication and familiarity–witness recent Christie’s advertisement in the New York Times that one of his nurse's is being auctioned and expected to bring in six to eight million dollars.

What was behind the stereotype of the femme fatale/caregiver image that is portrayed in the nurse paintings?

Sex and Death–night work (like a prostitute) but within an institution (like a prison guard)–care and trauma. Birth and death–uniforms (especially in 1930s-1950s iconography) that cross health (doctor’s whites) and religion (nuns’ habits ) I could go on and on–and will on Thursday.

Collecting is an essential part of Richard Prince's artistic practice, and you've said there is a fetishistic aspect to that. Why?

Same but different–countable, uncontrollable–secret and widely available (at least for those of us without money who cannot collect art)–obsessive.