Variable Piece #70 (In Process): 166A

Description

Douglas Huebler used diverse systems of documentation to chronicle rule-based but unscripted events and encounters. Variable Piece #70 stands as the most ambitious project of his career—to make a photographic record of “everyone alive.” The utter futility of the premise was liberating, and Huebler would set different terms of play for each foray. For Variable Piece #70 (In Process): 166A, he asked participants to describe themselves by selecting from a set of 80 placards imprinted with different personal characteristics. This work features all five people who posed with the sign reading “One person who may be culturally dislocated.” Far from a fastidious archivist, Huebler pursued Variable Piece #70 until his death, always undermining the project’s potential rigor with allowances for subjectivity and humor.

Variable Piece #70 (In Process): 166A

Douglas Huebler

1975/76

Accession Number

213931

Medium

Typed and signed statement, typed list of characterizations, five chromogenic prints mounted on two panels

Dimensions

Top panel: 40.6 × 116.8 cm (16 × 46 in.); Bottom panel: 40.6 × 96.5 cm (16 × 38 in.)

Classification

photograph

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Contemporary Art Discretionary Fund