September 21, 2007
Sharon Hayes in midtown
At half past noon on Monday, the artist Sharon Hayes emerged from the UBS tower on Sixth Avenue (between Fifty-first and Fifty-second Streets), microphone stand and small amplifier in hand. She set them down on the sidewalk and, without preamble, began speaking the text of an anonymous love letter, catching and holding the eyes of passersby willing to meet her gaze. She spoke plainly, addressing a “you” seemingly far away, perhaps in the Middle East. The letter’s tone was melancholic and its details were specific to our moment, addressing not only the war, but also the steam-pipe explosion in Manhattan and other recent events; it began by mentioning the arrival of autumn. Fifteen or so people stood at the curb listening and watching; by the time she had recited the six- or eight-minute letter three times, seamlessly blending the end of one recitation with the beginning of the next, another ten office employees had stopped to take the measure of her action. The insertion of private woe into the impersonal environment resounded in me and—somewhat unexpectedly—brought to mind the Maximilian Colby song “Balance,” which combined an anonymous woman’s recording of Judy Grahn’s epic poem “A Woman Is Talking to Death” (1974) with a long, brooding hardcore song. (The mid-‘90s hardcore band is now so obscure it is difficult to learn about it online, much less hear its music.)
The performance, titled Everything Else Has Failed! Don’t You Think It’s Time for Love?, is part of Art in General’s twenty-fifth-anniversary exhibition, at the UBS Art Gallery. Hayes repeated it at 12:30 PM each day this week, each time reciting a different letter. Phrases recur, including “I am so much yours I am no longer myself,” and the sign-off, “… I choose my words carefully, and I say to you goodbye.” The dominant sentiment remains longing: “Why can’t you be my country?” the narrator asks at one point, encapsulating Hayes’s fusion of personal anguish and political circumstance. As the week progressed, repeat viewers could begin to stitch together a narrative: The two lovers had once been together in New York; the absent partner’s family demanded that she leave the United States; the left-behind partner offered to leave, too, but was rebuffed; now they communicate primarily by letter, with distress and bewilderment as the communicative motifs.
Who is the author of these letters? Each speculation colors the interpretation of the performance. Is it Hayes herself, and is this public “respeaking” (to use the artist’s term for her earlier performances) as harrowing for her now as it was when it was happening? (And is it an ongoing correspondence?) Is the narrator fictive, making Hayes’s story a mirror held up to the audience of office workers on their lunch break, expressing collective emotions otherwise unacknowledged publicly? Small details continually overturn one’s conclusions without breaking the spell of the performance. On Thursday, in mentioning a political protest in Washington, DC, the letter’s author mentions wanting to “tell the fucking President to call off the National Guard.” The phrase could as easily have been uttered in 1967 as in 2007.
That so profound a resonance can be achieved through such simple means is testament to Hayes’s talent. She has for several years been “respeaking” historical texts and creating other performances that commingle the private and the public; for further reference, see this May 2006 Artforum profile of the artist, written by Julia Bryan-Wilson. Everything Else Has Failed... will stay with me for a long time.