As a counterpoint to Wall’s conclusions

As a counterpoint to Wall’s conclusions — that the intervention of the mirror (and he is, here, making a case for Graham’s own mirroric interventions, for example, his 1978 Alternation to a Suburban House) puts an end to what he calls the nihilistic game of the glass house — I want to offer, as a means of concluding tonight, the following:

The audience completely filled Outpost’s modestly sized space

Outpost Art Visual Art Source

Outpost ARt at Worky

Something “within” the space of Graham’s enclosures remains inaccessible. I think Graham is aware of this. In fact, in each case, we have a construction which models — gives structure to — the architecture of more than one institutional discourse; and it is precisely with these constructions — these machines which, more than anything else, produce spectral effects — that Graham acknowledges this inaccessible or other space, a space upon which and around which the architecture of an institution will have been erected. It is this phantom or cryptic topography that Graham relentlessly pursues in his extremely calculated set-ups. Each is a rehearsal, then, of an operation which would see uncovered nothing other than the “geometry of concealment” which is responsible for what we perceive as a unitary spatial field. If I am correct, Graham’s constructions do not simply constitute an intervention, a cut or incision in certain institutional spaces. They are, rather, a (re-)marking or doubling of what already marks, inhabits or contaminates the ostensible limits of such spaces. They are, in a word, crypts inasmuch as they model a cryptic topography. To the extent that we can say that we can occupy these strange constructions, these crypts, there will have been access, not to the crypt itself, but to what it gives rise to: a sense of place, of place and of the taking place of what we are compelled to still call an event.

But I have by now overly complicated things, made too much of Graham’s model, his demonstrator as well as his offhand demonstration, a demonstration for which there can be no conclusion, no deciding or determining instance that would bring the operation to a close. In concluding, then, my verdict will be short and to the point: a demonstration? No, for nothing, here, tonight, will have passed as a demonstration.