www.museumpeace.com/10/0980.htm

posted at: www.marcelduchamp.net

Re: Duchamp says viewer finishes the work or art?
by Stephen Lauf, 2002.10.28 17:57

Having thus been prompted by YaLing Chen's post, I went to read "The Creative Act" within a copy of the latest reprint of Salt Seller, a book I purchased at the Philadelphia Museum of Art something like two years ago. I know I never read this book cover to cover, but I probably read the short 'essays' when I first bought the book. Anyway, before reading "The Creative Act" today, I first (re?)read the text right before it, namely, "Regions which are not ruled by time and space....", text of a television interview of Duchamp by James Johnson Sweeney January 1956 filmed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. [I was in Philadelphia at the time, but still in my mother's womb, waiting for the last hours before Spring it turned out.] This reading turned out to be completely apropos because earlier today I composed and uploaded a series of webpages entitled Dossier Duchamp which comprise [almost] all the images I've taken of/within the Duchamp Gallery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art since 11 February 1999.

Being now more aware of "Regions which are not ruled by time and space...." I propose Museum Studies 6.1 where visitors to the PMA Duchamp Gallery are encouraged to bring along a copy of the Duchamp/Sweeney interview text and then speak some of the passages while in the Duchamp Gallery, thus somewhat closely renacting sound waves first produced by Duchamp and/or Sweeney within the same space, yet at a different time, obviously.

The next time I visit the PMA Duchamp Gallery you can be sure I'll reenactingly speak "There is a symmetry in the cracking, the two crackings are symmetrically arranged and there is more, almost an intention there, an extra--a curious intention that I am not responsible for, a ready-made intention, in other words, that I love and respect."

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