Instructions for a Walk Off Line : stanley brouwn’s deviations from the norm as a strategy for arts bureaucracy

Abstract: Instructions for a Walk Off Line engages in a reparative reading of Fluxus and Conceptual artworks, with a focus on the practice of stanley brouwn, to outline a set of strategies for contemporary artists to approach the role of bureaucracy in mediating their relationship with art institutions. This research starts from the observation that modern and contemporary art museums are increasingly invested in inviting underrepresented artists into their spaces without engaging in the necessary structural changes to meet their conditions for being included. Bureaucracy is one of those structural elements that maintains and perpetuates certain norms and excludes those who do not have proximity to them. In the approach to Fluxus and Conceptual works, this thesis relies on intermedia and queer theory to analyse how bureaucratic form, language, and function are appropriated and fused with artistic media to expose normative systems, destabilise them, and deviate from them. stanley brouwn’s Aantal stappen of meters in de richting van diverse steden in the collection of Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven is taken as an exemplary case, as brouwn is known to have a specific set of conditions for the display and dissemination of his work. Situating brouwn’s practice in relation to the strategies of appropriation, exposure, destabilisation and deviation, this research proposes his work and conditions as a relational practice of walking off line. The notion of the line, a recurring formal aspect in brouwn’s work, represents the norm that brouwn and his contemporaries deviate from. The museum staff and the audience are invited into this process through different instructions and conditions for the installation of, and engagement with the work. This thesis demonstrates that these instructions are not static but allow for interpretations and invite playfulness. The strategies in this research are offered in the same way; they are not presented as a single way of walking off line but invite a range of possibilities based on the needs and conditions relevant to the context of working with bureaucracy in the arts today.