RICHARD SERRA IN N[ew] Z[ealand]
Returning to something
I knew as a working-
class kid.
Here,
at the landscape,
really [returning].
Do
some people you like to play with > a quantum leap?
Elevational
right angle to the fall of the land.
Retention for color.
A highway abutment.
I wasn’t going to build in concrete!
Not continuous / your eye stops.
Not have imagined that the piece was going to come in as well as it did in
[New
Zealand.
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD US / 3-30-05 (4:52 PM)
This text incurred its final revision today before I learned of the death
of Robert Creeley, with whom I felt privileged to be friends for over
thirty years. I particularly enjoyed informally collaborating with him on
unannounced performances within contexts in which we were both physically
present. Synchronicity rather than accident must in this instance account
for the New Zealand setting, the visual art coverage, and the triply self-
conscious performance within a performance. It was initially written
during Alberta Chu's in-person screening of a film "officially described"
as follows: "Richard Serra designed his 20-foot high, 875-foot-long steel
curtain Tuhirangi Contour for the Farm, a private sculpture park deep in
rural New Zealand. At the center of Alberta Chu's beautiful minimalist
documentary is the combative but friendly relationship that developed
between artist Serra and the Farm's owner, sports and business mogul Alan
Gibbs. Gibbs' original expectation was for a cheaper, lighter, and more
manageable piece than the 650-ton steel structure he finally got. Time-
lapse photography chronicles months of construction until, finally, the
beauty and grandeur of the colossal sculpture comes to pass (Alberta Chu,
2003, 29 minutes)." Only words which literally exited Richard Serra's
mouth during the film found their way into my text.
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