Muscle Memory aims to present what scholar Glenn Adamson calls the " material intelligence" of NYC union construction trades workers. This group has been comprised of members of a workers/artists collective called the Workers Art Coalition (WAC) with further engagement with International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local #3 electricians who are students and alumni from the Empire State College Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School for Labor Studies along with other allied construction workers from other building trades. The resulting public work not only reflects on artisanal practices and processes both material and social, but also consciously lays claim to art.
Using materials that are familiar to members of the Workers Art Coalition from the construction site, Muscle Memory exemplifies a principle of dynamic symmetries with specific shared proportional relationships that can be found in nature such as in the shape of shells. The sculpture reprises the modernist object in spiraling electrical conduit, building off an earlier iteration of the form conceived by electrician artist Paul Vance for a show based on Sherry Arnstein's Ladder of Citizen Participation at ABC NO Rio.
Architect Gyorgy Doczi has theorized that shared proportional relationships-the kind that can be found in the proposed sculpture- result from a dynamic union of opposites and extends to social relationships in animals and further, that sharing itself “is indeed one of the basic pattern-forming processes of nature.” Muscle Memory will serve as both object and record of an event, an event of navigating this sometimes difficult notion of sharing, and of collaborative practice.
With Paul Vance as lead artist,WAC constructed the work improvising on its final orientation for Socrates in a process of “distributed authorship” that privileges collaborative processes while seeking to create an instance that upends the ways visibility often plays out in art/architecture authorship -rendering the constructor invisible, for example. The sculpture and the project –realized in the public space of Socrates signals the desire to shift these relations for a time and create greater engagement with a blue collar audience.
The sound component of the piece, composed by Workers Art Coalition artist Setare Arashloo resembles spaces of gathering, conversing and sharing stories and includes portions of an archive created for the Archie Green Fellowship at the Library of Congress and includes the voices of Lou Alvarez, Rinna Case, Harold Garcia, Shantar Gibson, Anthony Incandela, and Kim Spicer, all IBEW Local #3 Electricians. Their interviews can be heard in full by visiting the Library of Congress full archive which is to launch this Fall and will be linked to through Workers Art Coalition website.
Using materials that are familiar to members of the Workers Art Coalition from the construction site, Muscle Memory exemplifies a principle of dynamic symmetries with specific shared proportional relationships that can be found in nature such as in the shape of shells. The sculpture reprises the modernist object in spiraling electrical conduit, building off an earlier iteration of the form conceived by electrician artist Paul Vance for a show based on Sherry Arnstein's Ladder of Citizen Participation at ABC NO Rio.
Architect Gyorgy Doczi has theorized that shared proportional relationships-the kind that can be found in the proposed sculpture- result from a dynamic union of opposites and extends to social relationships in animals and further, that sharing itself “is indeed one of the basic pattern-forming processes of nature.” Muscle Memory will serve as both object and record of an event, an event of navigating this sometimes difficult notion of sharing, and of collaborative practice.
With Paul Vance as lead artist,WAC constructed the work improvising on its final orientation for Socrates in a process of “distributed authorship” that privileges collaborative processes while seeking to create an instance that upends the ways visibility often plays out in art/architecture authorship -rendering the constructor invisible, for example. The sculpture and the project –realized in the public space of Socrates signals the desire to shift these relations for a time and create greater engagement with a blue collar audience.
The sound component of the piece, composed by Workers Art Coalition artist Setare Arashloo resembles spaces of gathering, conversing and sharing stories and includes portions of an archive created for the Archie Green Fellowship at the Library of Congress and includes the voices of Lou Alvarez, Rinna Case, Harold Garcia, Shantar Gibson, Anthony Incandela, and Kim Spicer, all IBEW Local #3 Electricians. Their interviews can be heard in full by visiting the Library of Congress full archive which is to launch this Fall and will be linked to through Workers Art Coalition website.
