Erica Cheung + Kristi Zaragoza: Hi, Lenka and Phillip! It’s good to continue having you in Black Cube’s orbit. In 2020, you joined Black Cube through the Sabrina Merage Foundation Artist Fellowship program. During your fellowship—which took place against the backdrop of a pandemic—you worked collaboratively on a site-specific project in Pittsburgh’s Troy Hill neighborhood. This project culminated in three parts: a plaque artwork entitled Historic Site, an artist-run gallery space, and a durational group exhibition in said gallery space that featured the works of 27 artists responding to words from the bronze plaque. To start, tell us about the Historic Site plaque—what is it, where is it, and how did you land on it as a focal point of your fellowship project? 

Lenka Clayton + Phillip Andrew Lewis: Hi! Thanks for the questions.  

Historic Site is an 8 foot tall bronze plaque that is permanently installed on the public facade of our studio building which is in the Troy Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA. Around the time that we were invited to become Sabrina Merage Fellows with Black Cube we had purchased the dilapidated building with the dream of creating a studio space for our collaborative practice near to our home (we also live in the neighborhood). When we moved into the building, there was a small bronze plaque, installed by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, which detailed the short eleven-year history of the building as the top station of an incline train. It was remarkable to us that this history which concluded in the late 1800’s was commemorated, while all subsequent events in what we assumed was a complex and storied life as a 120-year-old building in the centre of a community, was ignored. The timing of the fellowship was perfect as it gave us the structure, support, and focus to consider this more formally, and the resources to bring it to a substantial conclusion. The pandemic invited us to work with what was available, and this is what was in front of us at the time. Our studio was often the only place outside the house where we were allowed to be. 

EC: What was the research process for Historic Site like? Did you ever come across conflicting or confusing information, and how did you separate fact from fiction (or how much did distinguishing between the two matter)?
 

LC + PAL: As it was the pandemic, many avenues that would usually be obvious starting points, like the local library and university historical archives, were permanently closed. In other ways the pandemic circumstances worked to our advantage, as we were able to reach out to a wide variety of experts, anthropologists, biomorphologists, local and national historians, the director of the national aviary, etc. who were all bored at home and all answered the phone. We delved deeply into online newspaper archives, as well as online local history, and also reached out to around 30 experts in their fields. The question we gave to everyone was what for certain has happened on the specific plot of land and/or building that our studio occupies. We looked as far back as human knowledge stretches, and as far forward as anyone can confidently assert. We also interviewed many of our neighbors. Everything that is written on the plaque can be backed up as factual. It mattered a lot to us that everything on the plaque was true and that we could prove it. 

KZ: Troy Hill is nationally recognized as a deeply historic neighborhood, nestled in an otherwise bustling city, and is known for maintaining a rich inter-generational community. In what ways did you draw on community knowledge to help inform this project?
 

LC + PAL: We spoke to many neighbors who shared photographs, historic documents, and in one case, an entire manuscript about the local area and every business along every street. Oh, and that’s where we first saw the photographs of Danny DeVito standing in front of our building. The process also gave us a perfect excuse to speak with neighbors and to hear all sorts of interesting stories.

EC: What was your methodology for distilling down the information you learned into the plaque text? What considerations went into selecting a particular tone/voice to write with? How did you decide what to include and what not to include? 

LC + PAL: We acknowledged everything that we found out over the year long investigation that we could back up as factual. It was important to us that the tone was informative, but friendly. Easy to read and with a feeling of flow, which, given the giant pile of fragmented research was a challenge. We wrote several versions and got feedback for legibility and flow from readers of all ages and different backgrounds. We tried to find a voice that would feel direct and thoughtful for a wide variety of readers, and not to include too many dates or barrier language which we felt would make it a less interesting read.

KZ: The plaque's language intertwines place with rich sense of ecological community, describing both ancient and modern human history, as well as events that involve the area’s flora and fauna, and even the land itself. What inspired you to take this approach? Did your research impact your own sense of living as a part of this vast network? 

LC + PAL: I think we live with a sense of being permanently intertwined in a cultural, emotional, ecological, geographic, political tangle! This is what made the first plaque seem so one dimensional and cold to us. It felt entirely removed from the place, and in judgment of it. The idea came because of this omission, which to us felt glaring.

EC: What’s a favorite sentence of yours from the Historic Site text? (One from each of you, please!)
 

PAL: The first sentence—Between 400 and 600 million years ago, this exact location lay deep underwater at the bottom of the ancient Iapetus Ocean. 

LC: Although it appears stationary, the ground beneath your feet is still in motion, moving westward at a rate of one inch per year.

KZ: Historic Site debuted to the public in September 2021 and featured performances by local German choirs, the Teutonia Männerchor & Damenchor, as well as by John Carson, who sang the entirety of the 1,022 word plaque to the tune of five traditional Irish songs [excerpt here]. What was it like to work so closely with the community to unveil Historic Site and truly bring the project to life? 

LC + PAL: It was delightful. Thrilling, and hilarious. It felt very moving to create a special beginning moment for the plaque in what we hope will be a longstanding residency.

KZ: What have some of the local reactions been to the project in the years since unveiling Historic Site’s plaque?

LC + PAL: We regularly leave the studio and see people of all ages reading the plaque. We have in fact observed a pickup truck screech to a halt at the sight of it and the passengers all jumped out to read it. We have seen a teenage boy on a motorized scooter, circle back and stop to read the whole thing and laugh gently to himself as he went. But in reality, we can only know 0.000127% of what happens in the life of the plaque, and we are content knowing that it has its own rich readership and life that is not answerable to us. We just put it out in the world.

EC: The 2021 unveiling of the Historic Site plaque also coincided with the launch of your project space Gallery Closed, which opened with the durational group exhibition Historic Sight. Over the course of a year, Historic Sight rotated through the work of 27 artists, with each artist providing a single image that responded to a given phrase from the Historic Site plaque. What was the intent behind bringing in so many different artists to translate your words into visuals, and are there any particularly compelling image-interpretations from the exhibition that still stick out to you today? What was it like to then archive this lengthy intervention as a book?



LC + PAL: We have now completed two seasons of programming in Gallery Closed and are currently fundraising for a third. The first season, as you described, featured 27 world renowned artists who each responded to a fragment of text from the plaque with an image of some kind. We don’t like to pick favorites as it was the group and its diverse set of outcomes that collectively hung together as a visual translation of the text that felt so exciting. What thrilled us the most was the range of responses, from found imagery to personal collections, historic archival images from major museums, well known artworks taken from personal portfolios, visual poetry, collages made in direct response to the prompt, and many previously unseen works from artists including a score from the composer Philip Glass that ended up being recorded and released for the first time, because it was exhibited for this project.

Making the book and building the website have been great ways to expand Gallery Closed’s audience by sharing the project beyond the geographical site of its location. It was also the way that we thanked the artists for their participation, and shared the project as a whole with them. Up until we made the book they had only been aware of their fragment of text.

EC: Since Historic Sight, you have continued to organize exhibitions in and around Gallery Closed. The byline for Gallery Closed is “closed 24/7 open 24/7,” which is a nod to the space’s unique format: the building itself is never ‘open,’ but all exhibitions are viewable, 24 hours a day, through two street-facing windows. Tell us how this unconventional viewing process came to be, and why you’ve stuck with it (even expanding to other establishments nearby!).

LC + PAL: Gallery Closed is always open. It’s not really a question of sticking with it, that is the central core of the location and without that it wouldn’t exist. We asked ourselves the question, which of the unquestioned tropes of our shared art-worlds can be done away with in order to make this a space that is more accessible to visitors, and more sustainable to operate. We observed during the pandemic that the situation of things having to be closed in one way (physically, say) led them to being more open in others, whether they went online so were accessible to new populations, or they started tweaking their engagement with people, realizing that they need to change to reach people in their situations. This oxymoron was both fascinating and inspiring to us.

We also allowed ourselves the agency to delete elements of a typical gallery experience that we personally didn’t find compelling; silent empty spaces, the feeling of being watched by gallery attendants when you are looking at art, the social cues and norms of being in a rarified space, openings as a way to view the work, formality, limited opening hours, entry fees, etc. We also realized that though 25% of the American public say they visit a gallery one time a year, 99.2% of the population might find a flicker of interest in glancing through lit windows every evening. Gallery Closed favors these odds.

KZ: What type of in-person events have you hosted on site in the years since opening Gallery Closed?

LC + PAL: We have had walking tours, hosted museum groups, given private tours and been filmed by documentary and news crews, and we have hosted several public artist talks.

EC: How has the overall project’s meaning aged over the past years? Why might the work still resonate today?

LC + PAL: The work is about time and made out of time and is an acknowledgment that tomorrow is connected to yesterday is connected to a million years ago is connected to an unimaginable future.