Draw a Straight Line and Follow It
Draw a straight line and follow it by the composer La Monte Young can be seen as a music score, a piece of visual art, a poetic text, a performance instruction, or a proposal for some kind of action or procedure. A piece of writing or a printed object, it is also – inseperably – an invitation to be performed or realised. It may be taken as a tool for something else, as script for a project or production, to be ‘realised’ as language, object, and performance. It may even shift away from a realisable direction toward an internal activity.
The words form Young’s Composition 1960 # 10 (to Bob Morris), October 1960, published in An Anthology of Chance Operations (1961/1963). Since then, it has been responded to and modified many times by artists and musicians such as John Cale, Milan Knížák, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik.
In 1961 Young decided to repeat Composition 1960 # 10 twenty-nine times, with individual works evenly distributed to comprise a full year’s work. The resulting compositions 1961 # 1–29 premiered at a Harvard-Radcliffe Music Club concert organised by Henry Flynt, in which Young and Robert Morris arduously traced a straight line twenty-nine times using a plumb line and yardstick, sighted with them, then drew along the floor with chalk, and performed it as a repeated, real-time task structure.
According to Young Composition 1960 # 10 can be performed in many ways.
Invited by Tate Modern, a number of contemporary artists have taken up this sentence as deliberately and imaginatively as they liked to make something of their choice – whether action, reaction or activity – to occur within Tate Modern temporarily, repeatedly, or throughout all three days of The Long Weekend.
Programme
Nairy Baghramian
Spanner (Stretcher/Peeping Tom), 2008
Level 5, Idea and Object, Room 1
24–26 May, all day
Luke Fowler / Lee Patterson
B8016, 2008
Starr Auditorium
24–26 May, 16.00–16.30
Judith Hopf
Drop No. 2, 2008
Level 3, stairwell
24–26 May, all day
Melvin Moti
Untitled, 2008
Turbine Hall
24–26 May, 11.00–16.00
Bojan Šarčević
A proposal conceived in my bed last night, 2008
Level 2 Cafe
24–26 May, 12.00 and 16.00
Jan Timme
On the Occasion of Tate Modern's ‘UBS Openings: The Long Weekend 2008’ a Fly Will Be Released in the Turbine Hall on 24th May, 2008
Turbine Hall
Richard Wright
1000 Circles, 2008
Throughout the building
24–26 May, all day
Curated by Alice Koegel
Free, no booking necessary
