So I took an older refrigerator, not one that looked beautifully old, just old-so it didn’t look like a brand new object-and I tried to change its shape by throwing stones at it. But I thought the refrigerator would be totally neutral. If I threw stones at some other object, they might be sad or angry. If I threw stones at a television set, they might be happy. It’s a manmade object that doesn’t have a huge weight of metaphor and meaning, like an automobile or anything else. I used a refrigerator because I thought it would be the one manmade thing that nobody would care about. It was a little silly, but I had been using stones as a tool, as something that moves, instead of monuments and buildings that are stationary, static things. And I wanted to see if I could use stone as a tool to change a manmade object instead of using it as a manmade object, a tool, to change a stone. I wanted to use cobblestones in honor of the ’68 uprising in Paris, when people were throwing cobblestones. I took the fridge out into the courtyard, a beautiful courtyard, every morning and threw stones at it. The show I did there I called Anatomy Lesson. So it still looked like an old, giant, medieval hospital. It was vacant after the Revolution, and then it became the art center. Catherine Bompuis was the director of FRAC Champagne-Ardenne (Regional Funds for Contemporary Art), and she had champagne in her office, always ready for artists! And the place where we showed, the college, had been a hospital run by Catholic nuns. I did it in France first, in a town called Reims, which is where all the French kings were crowned.ĭe Bellis: And it’s the city where the champagnes come from, right?ĭurham: Yes, indeed. Photo: Gene Pittmanĭurham: I remember this very well, because I did it pretty soon after we had moved to Europe. Frigo (1996) with the video Stoning the Refrigerator (1996). I would love for you to describe the work a bit, because it was the first work of yours that I saw, and because as a recorded performance it informs part of your practice. Then you showed a video, Stoning the Refrigerator (1996), which is one of the works on view here. Listen.” That was the beginning of your lecture. You were in front of the crowd, and you smashed the stone on the desk and said, “Don’t talk. You had long hair, glasses, and a stone in your hand. If you put a pin there you can twirl a map of America, and it’s pretty much the center.ĭe Bellis: The first time I met you, was in Como, during the Fondazione Ratti summer residency. And it really is in the center of North America. It’s flesh-colored dark pink until it’s wet and then it’s red, almost like blood. It’s kind of like soapstone, only much more dense, and harder. You cannot chip it, you cannot chisel it, but you can carve it very beautifully. I’ve made three pipes out of this pipestone, and it is absolutely magical stone. It is very sacred stone, therefore it gives people an idea that we have to do better, when you feel this stone, when you smoke a pipe in this stone. Officially in the US it’s called “catlinite” because George Catlin discovered some people making pipes out of this stone. Last summer you were telling me that there’s a part of Minnesota that is at the center of the continent-ĭurham: There’s a place, over close to North Dakota, called Pipestone, and it is the place where everyone gets this beautiful red stone to make pipes for smoking. Photo: Gene Pittmanĭe Bellis: There’s also a site-specific link to the exhibition’s title and location. Installation view of Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World, with A Pole to Mark the Center of the World in Berlin (2004) at right. And one easily feels at home in every place, where I’d rather not feel at home. And it’s not so easy, because there are such nice things to love in the world. My ambition in life, I have said this many times, is to become a homeless orphan. I like seeing all the different things here at the center of the world: the flowers, the humans, the dogs, the stones, everything. Therefore, I must be at the center of the world. And I’ve noticed that half the world is in front of me and half of it is in back. Jimmie Durham: I’m not yet old, but I’m beginning to get old.
What does the “Center of the World” mean to you? Vincenzo de Bellis: Let’s start out with the title of the show. In a new interview with the Walker’s Vincenzo de Bellis, coordinating curator for Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World, Durham goes around the world, and around the gallery, offering color commentary on specific works in the exhibition-from a piece made in the 1980s using red costume underpants once owned by a New York City exotic dancer to a piranha/shark hybrid created using discarded Murano glass found in Italy in 2015. In more than five decades as an artist, Jimmie Durham has called many places home-from Houston, New York, and Pine Ridge to Cuernavaca, Brussels, Marseille, and Rome.
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