Janine Antoni

The intimate body is of principle interest to the work of artist Janine Antoni, famous for blurring the lines between performance and sculpture in the early 1990s. Antoni's Gnaw famously characterizes her provocative style; displaying two 600 pound cubes of chocolate and lard respectively, that were bit, chewed and licked by the artist in an act of strenuous repetition. Upon inspection the work has preserved the mark of her body and it's relationship to the form of the piece. Gnaw, like many of Antoni's proceeding works, is at once a gesture of great intimacy and of her complete and utter absence in the space, leaving the viewer with truly only marks of process.

It is the honesty of the process in Antoni's work that I find consistent throughout her repertoire and what I found to be particularly applicable to thinking through the creative assignment regarding the shape of the Westside Courtyard. In regard to Antoni's sculptural portfolio; these pieces are astoundingly tender and fully aware of the object. You can detect the mark of time in works like Lick and Lather, in which she quite literally licked and lathered two portrait busts made of chocolate and soap sculpted in the image of herself.The time spent and the process taken in each and every one of these works is obvious- and terribly important. So, it was with this inspiration that I went again into the West Side Academy to spend time in the space. I recorded the audio of my walk through the space and created two poems in an act of documenting process- in which I was both integral and invisible to-

a.

Found the janitor in the back kitchen mopping hastily.
He says he doesn’t know what goes on after hours, but there is no way I’m going out there.

God forbid there is a fire.
It’s not happening on my watch.
And before you go... I’ve been wondering....
Why do you all think you can change the world here?
There is so much trash on the street.
Why don’t you start with the neighborhood. Don’t you care about the neighborhood?
I’m doing my part. I’m picking up the trash here.

Told him we all have to start somewhere. 

b.

                                                                                1.

17.83”

North

Hicks goes in there or whatever- she’s flipping out- throwing chairs- this and that- he call’s the parents- then we go on lock down- call the police-

what a pain in the ass.

2.

17.83”

West

Another day at Westside. I don’t know how he hasn’t lost it yet.

Not too many could survive here.

3. 7.58”

East

You can teach them however but

it doesn’t matter if it’s not how they do it at home. What’s your momma gonna do when you get out in the big fat world? Do you think they care about what goes on at home out there in the big fat world?

4

7.58”

South

You see, he wouldn’t let me solve his problem.

He is a nice boy but he doesn’t want to be in English. He got mad. He’s running in the hallways, calling people bitches. He didn’t want to be in English.