Adria Pecora, “Atlas, Sisyphus, et cetera,” Street performance, Magnificent Mile, Chicago, Earth Day 1990. Photograph credit: Dean Randazzo.
As a graduate art student in Chicago, I got the bright idea to enact, “Newspaper Sphere,” (a performance by Michelangelo Pistoletto) on Earth Day, 1990. In my rendition, I transported a solid sphere of newspaper throughout the shopping district, Magnificent Mile. Dean photographed the event and another friend video-taped it. I didn’t stop to talk to anyone. Surprisingly, few people even looked at me. As the video attests, most people feigned as though it were routine to encounter a young woman on her hands and knees pushing a ball of newspaper down the sidewalk with her head. As an homage to my interlude with the Federal Reserve, I entered the bank’s revolving doors with the ball and sent the guards a flurry.
Adria Pecora, “Atlas, Sisyphus, et cetera,” Street performance, Magnificent Mile, Chicago, Earth Day 1990. Photograph credit: Dean Randazzo.
The performance drew from childhood visits to the “Atlas,” statue in the mall at Rockefeller Center. That sculpture made an impression on me when I was a little girl, not least of all for being gigantic (befitting a titan). Frankly, it scared the daylights out of me. Classified as Art Deco (Moderne), the scale and style of the sculpture—which was designed by the German-born American artist, Lee Lawrie—is redolent of large-scale European sculpture of the 1930s such as those that decorated pavilions at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. Lawrie also designed porticos and gilded carvings on Center façades including, “The Arms of England,” which paid tribute to 620 Fifth Avenue’s primary tenant, the British monarchy.
Adria Pecora, “Atlas, Sisyphus, et cetera,” Street performance, Magnificent Mile, Chicago, Earth Day 1990. Photograph credit: Dean Randazzo.
Downtown Manhattan there is another massive public sculpture: the brass bull at Wall Street. The artist was an Italian immigrant. He invested $360,000 into its manufacture and deposited it under cover of night without having obtained permission from the city. He just put down a 7,000-pound sculpture in the environs of the New York Stock Exchange and Federal Reserve. In recent years, a statue of a girl was installed in dialogue with the bull. She appears to be staring it down, embodying girl power as it were. The girl statue was to have been temporary, but has yet to be removed due to public appeal. Perhaps the stand-off will remain one for the ages. Fitting to suggest a dual in the environs of JP Morgan Chase and Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (the respective legacies of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton).
I donated a photobook of my street performance, “Atlas, Sisyphus, et cetera,” 1990 to an artist book collection. Because the collection was later acquired by The Museum of Modern Art, the book slipped into the repository. MoMA sent me a letter.
I had intended the play as an homage to Albert Camus. I admired his courage and moral compass during World War II since my time as a student in France. During Covid-19, there was a resurgent interest in, “The Plague.” His essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” grapples with the meaning of life and questions whether it is worth living.
Talking points for a séance with Camus:
Yes, there is tedium, burden, and suffering.
But life—in and of itself—is miraculous, a joy to behold.
As you suggest, the meaning of life exceeds the limits of reason.
You call this threshold of understanding ‘the absurd’.
Does this conflate awe with stupor, fascination with fantasy?
If not ‘divine’, might we settle on ‘marvelous’?
(On second thought, strike that; it’s been sullied by sadomasochists.)
Man can’t hear the frequencies or see the colors that exist in the world.
(Ask the dogs and the hummingbirds!)
Man manages to lose touch with five senses.
The arrogance of posthumanists who endorse the anthropocene!
Placing man at the center of the universe….
Is this concept not as flawed as the notion that the sun revolved around the earth?
Are scientists who argue against certainty to be criminalized like Galileo and Bruno?
What was it that Heisenberg said? The uncertainty principle…
For all that man knows—or think he knows—there seems so much left to discover.
A humble perspective seems required by creatives, doesn’t it?
It was nearly the second millennium when man discovered his innate immunity.
Little more than two decades later he would have technology reprogram biology?
Why transform the human species to connect to a digital interface?
The Internet of things! A surreality for sure!
I prefer reality, however limited my perception of it.
Those who would mechanize man would render blood metallic.
Are these people sociopaths, megalomaniacs, Bond villains?
Voltaire would have us crush them!
What is the mind in relation to the world?
What is consciousness and the love that surrounds and connects us?
As you may know, Camus was an atheist and a pacifist and a member of the French Resistance. He was criticized by peers when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for maintaining neutrality during the Algerian War of Independence. His mother lived in Algiers. He retorted, “Between justice and my mother, I choose my mother.”
That’s the greatest statement. Ever.
Thanks for reading.
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Peace and love,
Poppy