Art Interview: Speaker Project Mastermind Juan Angel Chávez

It's really quite large. It's as big as a good-sized bedroom.

Yes, I always describe it as a two-to-three-car garage. And 80% of it is found materials. The only parts that aren't found materials are the structural supports, like the two by fours that you see in the rafters. The rest is found materials: found plywood, signage, and materials that people use in construction sites and so forth.

Is this the first time that you've built this structure?

No, it's the second time. The first time, it was built in Chicago for the Hyde Park Arts Center, which was the brave institution that wanted to take the risk and allow me to do this project. As a proposal, it didn't look anything like this. It was a digital rendering of what a box would look like. It was not very descriptive in terms of materials—it was very descriptive in terms of form and function—but it was a big to-do.

So, I built it in 2007. It was a three month exhibition, and it was very successful. And now we're traveling with the show. Now it's here at MassArt, and we'll see where it goes next.

You're based in Chicago.

Yes.

Did you go to school there?

I went to school there for a short amount of time. I'm actually what you call an art school dropout? Or reject? Or a combination. But it wasn't because of rebellious ways or anything. I actually couldn't finish school because I had a financial situation with it, and I couldn't speak English at that time. Well, I could speak English, but I couldn't write English.

Anyway, I got involved in the art field after that. I did numerous years of assistantships in public art and I brought all of that to my own practice later on.

The structures upstairs are built with found materials. Did your experience in public art influence that choice?

Aesthetically, I always have been drawn to found materials because I come from a place in Mexico where no material is left unused. There's always a different way to figure out a form for using it, for whatever reason. You know, you can get a [milk] gallon and cut it in half, and then you have a scoop. That kind of thing. So, I've always grown up with this versatile perspective on objects.

In terms of art, I was always fascinated by [Robert] Rauschenberg, and I always thought, "How the hell does he make these gigantic things?" I started thinking a lot about his collages, and throughout my career and throughout the years I spent in public art, I started noticing what the objects that I was picking up represented.

In a lot of ways, in the kind of areas where I was working, I started getting more involved in this idea of wanting to know the histories of the people who lived there. This kind of nosing around. I couldn't infiltrate their lives, but there would always be these objects where I had a kind of intimate relationship with them, in a very inherent way.

I could take a an object, like a dresser, and there would be stickers all over it and some marker. That's great, you know? There's a direct connection to these people; I get so much visual information from that. I like the fact that it has such a connection with everyday life, the ordinary, the common. And, by sort of collaging with that, [my art] became more accessible because we all live with these objects and we're all connected to these objects in some way or another.

You can say, "Oh! That's a traffic cone. Or a light fixture. Or siding." It's something you immediately recognize. It's not like: "How did you make that surface?"

And the rooms you have built are designed to look like speakers, which, themselves, are pretty familiar. Explain to me why you want to bring people inside the speakers.

Well, I was thinking about sculpture, and I was thinking about it from the perspective of public art. I was thinking of major works, like the Picasso in downtown Chicago or the Anish Kapoor in Chicago, and noticing how an object that size can have such an interesting interaction with the people. It becomes more of a playground. It's not just an object anymore; it's this thing where you can gather people to have an experience. It's a lot different from an experience in a museum setting or a gallery setting. This is actually accessible in a lot of ways.

And that idea, I saw in a three-dimensional form, as a sort of vague perimeter that is never defined. A space relationship. And that's why I wanted to make the Speaker Project. I thought, okay, making this experience, making this object to generate experiences that could generate accessibility in various ways. One would be sound.

Music, I think, is a lot more accessible than visual art. It's a lot easier for everybody to accept. So, bringing that into it would be a vehicle for larger participation, for a deeper interaction with a three-dimensional object, a visual arts object. And that's the kind of avenue that I wanted to travel. Making an object and bringing people from different audiences who come and participate; it's an involuntary participation.

People come to see art, but it's an object that's larger than you can see on a wall; you had to enter it. And there's a sound that's creating a sort of ripple effect of experiences and relationships with the object. And that's mainly what I was trying to accomplish.

It strikes me that you have also set up spaces for people to interact with each other. There are three rooms upstairs in the gallery that look like a basement rec room, where you could imagine gathering with your friends to listen to records or something.

Yes, I built the three rooms in response to the speaker itself from the three, simplified forms that people gather [around] and experience on the actual speaker itself. And all I did was invert them. So, you take all the sound and the resonances that you can have from the objects, that you get on the outside, and just, kind of like, turn them inside out and flip everything inside.

They're more like experiments. We won't know until we have a performer inside [the speaker] what their function is going to be.

Ideally, the sound will travel in and come out the other side and vice versa. You'll grab frequencies that are higher up and bring them down, or you'll have this one-to-one interaction where two people are inside the speaker, or three people are inside the little rooms, and anybody passing by can catch any kind of vibration or conversation and expand it inside so that you'll have these different connections to it. The tubular one, the cylinder, is actually the opposite way. It brings you in and it throws everything out. And the other one is turning the traffic cones inward, so you can have your own little listening station.

Those were all created here. Those were all Boston materials. There's nothing foreign to them. And that's part of the work as well, that you have that sort of relationship, that you know where something comes from.

They seem pretty cozy, too. I mean, there's the one that just has the Teddy bear up on the wall.

Well, you never know what you'll find.

Have you constructed an idea about where that Teddy bear came from? What its story is?

Well, the Teddy bear came from a vacant lot where all the ships are, and I think where there are seafood places here in Boston, like on the seashore? The Teddy bear was just hanging on a fence, and all around it was abandoned factories, a couple of cop cars, and buildings that say "condemned." And it's just a Teddy bear, randomly hanging loose on the fence. He had to come along.

Speaker Project is a sculpture, but it's also a performance space. How did you select the performers for the project?

I kind of leave that aside. I'm not that knowledgeable about who's going to be playing because I leave that up to the site. And I think that opens a new relationship. I mean, it is my work, but I'm also open to somebody's suggestions in terms of performance, and collaboration in that sense.

It changes from place to place. We have a set of programming that was done. But, I think that some of the more successful performances in Chicago were the sitar players or the neighborhood band that came, or the Baptist choir who came down one day for no particular reason. I think that that is a little more interesting than just hearing a rock band jam. I mean, you can hear tons of that, but if you open it up to different levels of participation, you're going to have different kinds of people come to play.

First two images by Tom Griggs, courtesy Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Second two images taken of the Chicago installation of The Speaker Project and courtesy Juan Angel Chávez. Visit his website.