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ART TO BE ENCOUNTERED IN RANDOM PLACES
a manifesto inspired by the work of Michael Paul Oman-Reagan
december 15, 2002, Field, Portland, OR

The ideal place of art is not a museum, gallery, or even displayed on the walls of one’s home. Art should be encountered on art’s own terms, where it can truly challenge its own assumptions and your own as well. The institutions we have created to house, store, display and trade art don’t allow for these types of encounters with art. When we enter such a place we enter with certain and specific expectations, we know that the objects we are about to encounter are art because they have been categorized by the ´experts as such. We are safe in this knowledge. But art should never be a safe endeavor. It should threaten its own extinction at every turn, it should question its own presumed authority. In a museum if a work of art attempts to do so it is a pointless exercise, it has already won it’s battle, it has already been redeemed.
Art should instead be approached with innocence, unexpectedly. The ideal place to encounter art should be in a random place, as a surprise, as a discovery. This type of encounter allows the definition of the object to be tenuous. The object then can inspire wonder and spurn the imagination; it can then properly avoid staid art-historical questions and their narrow definitions. Rather, simple questions such as: "What is this object?", "How do I approach it?" and "Can I touch it?" are the ones to be asked. These questions should not only be asked by those who encounter art but also by the producers of it. It is when art is produced and encountered without context and heavy baggage that it can begin to raise such questions, and it is only when these questions are raised that art can be said to be truly revolutionary.