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Identification and Creation

Object Number
2009.50
People
Sharon Hayes, American (Baltimore, MD born 1970)
Title
In the Near Future, New York
Classification
Audiovisual Works
Work Type
installation-slide projection
Date
2005
Culture
American
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/330881

Physical Descriptions

Medium
9 actions, 9 35mm slide projectors; 230 original slides (729 total)
Dimensions
Dimensions variable
Ideal dimensions: 167.6 x 1249.7 cm (66 x 492 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
[Tanya Leighton Gallery] sold; to Harvard Art Museum, March 2009.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, The Jorie Marshall Waterman '96 and Gwendolyn Dunaway Waterman '92 Fund
Copyright
© Sharon Hayes
Accession Year
2009
Object Number
2009.50
Division
Modern and Contemporary Art
Contact
am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
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Descriptions

Commentary
In the Near Future is a slide projection piece that operates as a piece of time-based media galleries, a sculpture, as well as documentation of a series of performative activities engaged in by the artist. For each action the artist stood in a public street in New York City holding a sign that conveyed either a slogan from an actual historical protest (i.e. I am a Man) or an amalgam of protest language (Nothing will be as Before). In each instance the artist alerted friends and fellow artists that she would be doing this activity and asked them to come and document the event. This documentation was subsequently transformed into slide form and was projected on the wall. The ideal version of the installation sees the project in a linear form, with the images at different heights on the wall, resembling musical notes or words in a rebus-like sentence.

The work examines a host of ideas: the tenacity of American democracy's belief in the idea of free speech and assembly as hallmarks of our version of freedom, even as restrictions on speech and assembly have increased markedly in the years after 9/11. The work also plays with the role of history, memory, and memorialization with regards to the history of protest movements for social justice. Indeed, the work suggests that such activities tend to defy memorialization and hence are subject to a very particular kind of erasure. So too the work engages with the history of performance art, in particular the transitory nature of such work and its reliance on documentation and the ensuing debate about the precise role of that documentation-is it art or not etc. Here Hayes knows the work will exist only as documentation and plays with the interdependence of her actions (the performance) on others (friends taking pictures). This complicated relationship to authorship and presence rhymes with the logic of social protest work and its need for dynamic leaders, dedicated participants, and ready access to the public sphere for the dissemination of dissenting ideas.

Publication History

  • Julia Bryan-Wilson, Julia Bryan-Wilson on Sharon Hayes, Artforum (New York, May, 2006), Ill
  • Johanna Burton, Sharon Hayes: Art in General, Artforum (New York, March, 2006), Ill.
  • Malgorzata Charylo, Sharon Hayes, Frieze (London, October, 2008), Issue 118, p. 305

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu