Popularity: The Spectator as Statistic

In this interview, Joshua Schwebel discusses his public intervention project Popularity. Over the course of a single, five-week exhibition, Joshua Schwebel paid people to attend a gallery as counterfeit spectators. Schwebel did so to artificially inflate the popularity of the show. The action was executed without the knowledge or consent of the staff of the artist-run centre, or the artist whose show was inexplicably popular. Schwebel’s “art public” of thirty-five people per day attended a single show every day for five weeks, standing in the gallery for a minimum of ten minutes. In total almost 1,000 counterfeit visits were generated.