Art

What does art do if not offer us a different take on how we see ourselves and the world? We expect to find this in galleries, engaging with paintings, sculpture, film or photography but sitting down with a bunch of strangers and making a giant sandwich?

Well oddly it can be found there too, as I discover when I join Californian artist Marc Horowitz for an afternoon at the Hayward Gallery. Horowitz is in residence in the Project Space for the latest incarnation of his ongoing project ‘The Center for Improved Living’, for which he’s transformed the gallery into a DIY TV studio (with a faux-forest theme) and is hosting ‘The Me & You Talk Show’ three days a week, offering public access-style open slots on Sundays and running a weekly workshop. It’s all about bringing people together, engaging in conversation, sharing problems and ideas and undertaking absurd or banal activities with the simple idea that meeting and gaining an insight into other people’s lives can enrich our own.
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For my workshop ‘How to Make a Killer Sandwich’ I’m joined by a small group of students, several studying fashion, one a biochemist and all young and female. After our brief introductions off we all trot to the local Costcutter and fill up Marc’s basket with whatever we fancy to build one giant sandwich. Cheese, olives, avocado, falafel, houmus, chorizo, honey, bananas, lettuce, Marmite and tomatoes all get bagged up with a large sliced Hovis and back we go to begin constructing a multi-layered snack.

There’s been no explanation about what the point of this exercise is. ‘I’m a bit nervous about this, because I don’t know how it’s going to work out either,’ Horowitz confesses, and no one has asked, but perhaps precisely because there is no structure and no expectations, we just get down to the task, chatting cheerfully as we decide what each layer should consist of, helped by encouraging interjections of ‘that’s awesome’ from our genial host. A few latecomers turn up, two who were misdirected on their way to the Rodchenko exhibition, but they decide that this looks more fun and join in too.

So how is this art? Well you could file it under several art historical headings – it’s performance, has the DIY aesthetic of Fluxus, and like Dada and Situationism it’s breaking down boundaries between art, culture and everyday life. In that sense it’s also very contemporary, because we can all be artists now, communicating and creating through blogs and websites such as YouTube – making and sharing films, photos, and our deepest and most banal thoughts with millions worldwide. Which is in fact exactly how Horowitz’s art career began.

A likeable prankster from childhood, Horowitz graduated in business and economics and worked for a brief while in Silicon Valley before boredom led him to take art classes. From there he began filming performance-based stunts (offering piggy-back rides to shoppers on Rodeo Drive, serving free coffee in the local park from a machine attached to a 1,500ft extension lead from his kitchen) and posting them online. Horowitz got the attention of the press when a catalogue shoot he was working on allowed him to write ‘dinner w/marc’ with his phone number on a notice board in one of the images. More than 15,000 people called and Horowitz spent the next year driving round America having dinner with strangers and appearing on talk shows. Whether the level of response reveals a sense of open curiosity and optimism in the American psyche or just a desperate need to reach out and make friends is a debate in itself, but during his travels Horowitz also received 25 marriage proposals and found himself on People magazine’s list of the 50 most eligible bachelors.

Back at the workshop, once we’ve completed and all munched messily into our bizarre culinary creation (who would have thought avocado with honey could taste so good?), there’s no denying that sharing this simple activity has created a great feel-good camaraderie among all the participants, Horowitz included, and everyone is swapping emails and inviting each other out for drinks.

It’s hardly surprising that Horowitz’s enthusiasm for his absurdist antics have found him labelled a comedian as often as an artist (maybe think Dave Gorman but without the analysis), but Horowitz’ motivation is not just about trying to create laughs. ‘It’s also about bridging the gap between art and entertainment,’ he says, ‘and I get as much out of doing this as hopefully the people who join in do.’

Horowitz has staged similar projects in galleries in Milan, Paris and Geneva, as well as back home in LA, and seems almost by default to have found a place in the art world for how he’s chosen to live his life in the real world. For his next project he’s planning to draw his signature on a map of America and then drive around it. You can’t help but wish him luck. It’s certainly all food for thought or as Horowitz would say – ‘pretty awesome’.

‘The Center for Improved Living’ continues at the Hayward Gallery Project Space until April 13. Documentation of this and other work by Marc Horowitz can be seen at www.thecenterfor-improvedliving.blogspot.com and www.ineedtostopsoon.com