How to make space-time and influence people

ADRIENNE Rich in 1977 wrote that women students speaking in public often ‘throw their words away’ unconsciously advertising that they think they ‘do not deserve to take up time and space’[1]. Reading this recently I couldn’t help but think that this is the opposite of what artworks do – they not only act as if they deserve to take up space and time, they actually produce it. As a maker and viewer of artworks what follows from this, is an inference that I’m still endeav-oring to find a way to articulate, which is, that artworks somehow make reality.The idea that art works produce space time is not new – but I believe the most compelling artworks do this, not out of some necessity, or in the service of some formula, but perversely and stubbornly, they can do it abjectly or with great self importance, but chiefly they do it in ways that are not constructive, utilitarian or purposive. This art is complex, it is not reasonable, good for us or useful, it does not establish facts or speak to definitive conclusions. The artwork is not an agent and yet it performs a speculation