CHARLES SIMONDS

Simonds thought the area belonged to Little People, who actually occupiedspaces that by the early Seventies were part of the urban squalor and decay.Their dwellings were constructed, most characteristically, in irregular, accidentalspaces in downtown walls that belonged to neglected or abandoned buildings.It was as if the Little People chose sites that could not otherwise be utilized.I think of Socrates, in Plato's Republic, designing a society no other societywould care to conquer, so little did it have anything worth fighting for. The tinydwellings for invisible inhabitants had little to fear, other than being washedaway by rain, or the vandalisms endemic to slums. But downtown Manhattan,where Simonds worked, had an inexhaustible supply of otherwise uselesscrevices to build in .There are films (by Rudy Burckhardt and others) that show Simonds atwork in the Seventies, surrounded by an appreciative body of spectators, mainlyneighborhood children. He lays a course of small clay bricks, with slightly longerlintels crowning the windows and doors, using a large tweezers to place thebricks. Nothing better illustrates his workspace than a film that shows anautomobile in flames in the background, to which neither he nor his audienceis paying the slightest attention. Burning automobiles was a routine activity foryoung males with nothing better to do. Apart from the small dwelling takingform, brick by brick, it is a scene of undiluted squalor, Simonds' art excepted. Inan e-mail, Simonds writes:Charles Simonds working on Dwelling, East Houston Street, New York City, 1972I think no one has ever been able to realize how radical theDwellings in the street actually are. And how I still perceive them tobe. The art consciousness is entirely time culture bound, unable tosee outside itself, as is normal. But my role in that context refers tomany other cultural referents as regards the artist's role in a cultureor a society.7