Replacing Home: From Primordial Hut to Digital Network in Contemporary Art

Two: Reusable Sites: Gordon Matta-Clark’s Fake Estates and the Odd Lots Exhibition

| 33 REUSABLE SITES GORDON MATTACLARK ’S FAKE ESTATES AND THE ODD LOTS EXHIBITION On October 14, 1973, the real estate section of the New York Times presented a report on the city’s auctioning of tiny property plots. Appearing over time, between and inside of larger lots drawn up by architects and city planners, these unusable gutter-spaces, small in size and odd in dimension, could be purchased at bargain prices by anyone interested in owning a piece of New York City. One such interested party was the artist Gordon Matta-Clark. At the time of the newspaper interview, Matta-Clark had just come away with a sliver measuring one foot by ninety-five feet, another one without any pedestrian access, and had bid furiously on but lost yet another lot measuring four by five feet. Speaking to the Times reporter, MattaClark explained that he planned on using his purchases as new works of art. “The artworks,” he proposed, “will consist of three parts: a written documentation of the piece of land, including exact dimensions and location and perhaps a list of weeds growing there; a fullscale photograph of the property, and the property itself. The first Two 34 | Reusable Sites two parts will be displayed in a gallery, and buyers of the art will purchase the deed to the land as well.”1 Nothing of the kind, however, was unveiled during Matta-Clark’s short lifetime. Until a few years ago, what anyone knew about the initial development of this real estate project was ambiguous, contradictory at best. But in 2003, Cabinet magazine’s editorial team undertook this task, dedicating an issue to a fervent, much-needed search for information on the location of the original lots, Matta-Clark’s process of acquiring them, and the development of his intended art project. Interviewing those in close contact with the artist , editors Jeffrey Kastner, Sina Najafi, and Frances Richard began to piece together a narrative. They discovered two batches of deeds pertaining to a total of fifteen small parcels of land, fourteen in Queens and one on Staten Island, bought by Matta-Clark on October 5, 1973, and by his assistant, Manfred Hecht, on January 11, 1974. They learned that it was his friend Alanna Heiss who first introduced Matta-Clark to the city’s auctions. Heiss, founder of the Institute for Art and Urban Resources, a small organization that uncovered abandoned sites around the city in order to open temporary exhibition spaces, recalled that Matta-Clark had accompanied her to an auction at the Roosevelt Hotel. While Heiss pined over the larger lots that were well beyond her means, Matta-Clark instead became interested in the slivers of property up for sale, all listed in the price range of twenty-five to seventy-five dollars. The next time the two friends went to an auction, Matta-Clark made his first purchase.2 Retracing the artist’s steps was not, however, the ultimate goal of Cabinet’s interaction with Matta-Clark’s unfinished work. In fact, the magazine also initiated a cycle of return, reuse, and replacement by launching a project of their own that reactivated and extended Matta-Clark’s initial workin -progress. Along with their detailed research, which was published in the Spring 2003 issue, Cabinet also presented three new proposals by contemporary artists Jimbo Blachly, Matthew Northridge, and Clara Williams, who were each commissioned by the magazine to create work related to one of MattaClark ’s property plots of their choice. Each commission was informed by the material dimensions of the original site, and in turn informing Matta-Clark’s Reusable Sites | 35 exploration of spatial ownership and belonging. All three commissions, very much like Matta-Clark’s initial involvement with his property plots, remained notional proposals on paper. A couple of years later in 2005, Cabinet again revisited Fake Estates. The magazine applied to repurchase the ten remaining lots since repossessed by the city due to delinquent tax bills. Even though the city was no longer auctioning off gutter-spaces, the editors were able to acquire annually renewable property licenses for some of the original sites. The magazine then partnered with the Queens Museum of Art and the White Columns gallery in Manhattan—an outgrowth of the 112 Greene Street exhibition space that counted Gordon Matta-Clark as a founder. Fake Estates was then renamed Odd Lots and reborn into two new...