There were some artists who used art as a weapon to criticize the modern city and its problems. They tried to change viewer's perception and make improvement on the reality by revealing the paradox and problems of cities on their piece. Such activitie...
There were some artists who used art as a weapon to criticize the modern city and its problems. They tried to change viewer's perception and make improvement on the reality by revealing the paradox and problems of cities on their piece. Such activities developed into ‘Urban Intervention’ during 1960s. Urban Intervention rebels against social and spatial authorities of urban life and leads the viewers to participate and discuss upon the subject through various forms of activities that are freed from the conservative art range.
Gordon Matta-Clark was one of them who hoped to reform such issues of modern city. His Urban intervention was about the problems of 60’s and 70’s New York City. With great interest and critical consciousness, he intervened problems of New York by using many different methods.
Despite great economical boost and technical advancement after the Second World War, New York has suffered from the great deal of economical and social problems in 60' and 70s. The economic crisis on the secondary industry and oil shock caused unemployment and poverty. Urban Space divided by ocial class reproduced discrimination and inequality on the race, ethnic, and poor. Reconstruction of the city, which was facilitated by modernism architecture and excessive speculation in real estate caused demolition of lives of low-income families, collapse of community, and monotonous cityscape. Moreover, new technology, household's garbage and building waste caused steep rise of environmental pollution.
In order to intervene these realities of New York, Gordon Matta-Clark attempted several different methods. It includes: violating boundaries through proceeding private affairs in public places and cutting down buildings in order to unify the urban space, nonprofit sale and squatting buildings to challenge the ownership, and recycling garbage and forming communities to recover environment and alienated people.
His works that violate boundaries demonstrated proceeding private affairs in public places and cutting down buildings. Taking shower or doing housework, Gordon Matta-Clark showed private activities in public and invited passers-by as characters in his work. These works blurred boundaries between private and public, artist and audience, and artistic space and realistic space. Also, breaking down the windows of a modernism architecture's building, Matta-Clark criticized New York architecture that gave no concern to the low-income class and fragmented the urban space of New York so that they may break away from their territory and building relationship with the society.
Matta-Clark went to abandoned houses on the suburban district and cut down their interior wall, threshold, and floor to unify the domestic space. Then by bisecting a whole house, he opened the isolated place to the outside. The structure of the house, divided by the walls and having some hidden paces, served as a model of social structure of the divided urban space and its neglected peoples’ lives. Such works of Matta-Clark hoped to unify the fragmented structure of New York.
Challenging the ownership is done by selling lands and food for non-profit and taking over private owned buildings. Matta-Clark bought inaccessible lands from the auction and re-sold them. As a result, he cynically reports the reality of New York: using lands, a living space, as a tool to make profit, even commercializing useless lands, and controlled by owners of building and lands instead of by inhabitants.
Also by creating non-profit restaurant to provide artists with cheap food and source of income, he supported artists who opposed commercial art and authoritative art system, and also challenged political and economical system of New York. Matta-Clark went into abandoned buildings that did not allow anyone else to use because it belonged to a private owner. By squatting such buildings he tackled on a paradox where some closed down buildings for profits while some cannot even find a place to sleep at night, and sought a right not as a owner but as a user.
Lastly, he created works for environment and a neglected class of people with recycling garbage and forming communities. Matta-Clark made pieces using trash and abandoned building to recover polluted environment. Recreating abandoned materials into an art piece criticized the history of New York which has repeated construction and destruction, production and abandonment under the illusion of development. Matta-Clark’s interest in abandoned material was ignited from his interest in neglected people. By creating local communities which were disintegrating with constant redevelopment and economical crisis, he hoped to recover the lives in New York. He gathered citizens from low-income area to express social dissatisfaction in graffiti on his own truck to visualize their collective opinions, and exhibited the truck to publicize the issue. Also he created community center in low-income area to provide employment and reform the region that is becoming a slum. It strengthened sense of social belonging and bond so that the inhabitants can voice their opinion in society and start changes on their own.
Matta-Clark’s urban intervention which took such diverse methods arouse public attention to the problems of present-day cities, and hoped to rupture social hierarchy. And he expected his audience, the citizens, to be the main source for the change. In his activities, art took a role in criticizing and changing the realities of modern city.