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As an employee of Oregon’s largest university, I am enmeshed in a bureaucratic machine both monstrous and humorous. I interact with administrative assistants in a similar position to mine throughout the university system on a daily basis.
For a show called The Incidental Person, currently up at Apex Art in NYC, I’ve collected phrases from my colleagues that they wish they could stamp on the paperwork passing across their desks and service windows. The result (as seen in the phrases at the top of this entry) is a collection of rubber stamps less invisible and less anonymous than Date Received, Copy, Urgent or Paid.
Contributors to the collection include: Dan Ward, Cashier; Rachel Browne, Cashier; Sarah Roberts, Data Specialist; Andrew Bremner, Program Assistant; Connie Blumthal, Receptionist; Ruby Ramirez, Office Specialist; Colyn Ward, Office Specialist; Mercy Joy Luebke, Human Resources Coordinator; and Trudy Pellechia and Tammy Hooper, Human Resources Assistants.
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Antony Hudek on The Incidental Person:
“The late British artist John Latham (1921-2006) coined the expression “the Incidental Person” in the context of Artist Placement Group, known as APG, which he co-founded in 1966 with Barbara Steveni, Jeffrey Shaw and Barry Flanagan. Contrary to most artist placement schemes, APG emphasized process, interaction and the artist’s independence in relation to the host institution, rather than any short-term tangible outcome. Like an unbiased observer or a third-party mediator, the Incidental Person placed through APG in industry, government, education or the non-profit sector would negotiate the terms of the invitation from the institution in question and adapt the nature of her or his intervention accordingly. This incidental function, as Latham explained, “is more to watch the doings and listen to the noises, and to eliminate from the output the signs of a received idea as being of the work.” Latham stresses the incidental person’s approach, that is, a certain position or attitude vis-à-vis the context in which she or he is placed. In other words, the identity of the incidental person is secondary to the effect she or he has on a given situation, for the aim of the incidental person is not to be anything in particular but instead “to generate maximum public involvement, and maximum enthusiasm which goes with the involvement.”