Description
Douglas Huebler used diverse systems of documentation to chronicle rule-based but unscripted events and encounters. Variable Piece #70 stands as the most ambitious project of his career—to make a photographic record of “everyone alive.” The utter futility of the premise was liberating, and Huebler would set different terms of play for each foray. For Variable Piece #70 (In Process): 166A, he asked participants to describe themselves by selecting from a set of 80 placards imprinted with different personal characteristics. This work features all five people who posed with the sign reading “One person who may be culturally dislocated.” Far from a fastidious archivist, Huebler pursued Variable Piece #70 until his death, always undermining the project’s potential rigor with allowances for subjectivity and humor.
Accession Number
213931
Medium
Typed and signed statement, typed list of characterizations, five chromogenic prints mounted on two panels
Dimensions
Top panel: 40.6 × 116.8 cm (16 × 46 in.); Bottom panel: 40.6 × 96.5 cm (16 × 38 in.)
Classification
photograph
Credit Line
Contemporary Art Discretionary Fund