ABSTRACT
In the spring of 1971 the artist Gordon Matta-Clark roasted a whole pig on an open spit underneath the Brooklyn Bridge and served it to participants, attendees, and passersby at Brooklyn Bridge Event, a multi-sited exhibition of the new Institute for Art and Urban Resources (Figure 12.1). 1 Pig Roast, as the piece was entitled, as well as Food, Matta-Clark’s restaurant-cum-performance which opened in an old luncheonette in SoHo the same year, constructed temporary spaces of community and conviviality in the city and made room for a thriving culture of artists of various sorts. This work of social relations seeking to bring art closer to everyday life has had a decades-long afterlife in what one critic describes as “a growing urbanization of the artistic experience.” 2 Artists, taking the social encounter, the act of being together in public, or the space of relations as their end, rushed in where urbanists left a void. As Matta-Clark’s projects unfolded in the marginal spaces of New York City, a more ambitious project to redefine the city’s open spaces was coming to an end. Pig Roast under the Brooklyn Bridge, Gordon Matta-Clark, 1970–1971. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315884141/77456718-6894-490c-8628-c07d15df5de4/content/fig12_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Photo documentation: Richard Landry © 2013 Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / David Zwirner / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and London.
