Miranda July is a fiction writer (No One Belongs Here More Than You), a filmmaker (Me and You and Everyone We Know), a performance artist (Things We Don’t Understand and Are Definitely Not Going to Talk About), and an occasional sculptress. It’s that latter designation that’s the focus of a new public art installation, the comparatively terse “Eleven Heavy Things,” organized by Deitch Projects, which opened late last week in New York’s Union Square Park. (The installation will remain in the park through October 3rd.) The sculptures, many of which revolve around a line of text written in July’s own hand, prod the viewer into audience interaction. “What I look like when I’m lying,” reads one, a white tablet through which the viewer can stick his head. A trio of pedestals — labeled 'The Guilty One,' 'The Guiltier One,’ and ‘The Guiltiest One’ — asks participants to gauge (and flaunt) their general culpability. Three of the sculptures are wordless “headdresses,” decorative sculptures that July compares to the dialogue-free stretches of a movie: “The shapes are those parts of this piece.”

“Eleven Heavy Things” originally appeared at the Venice Biennale; this is its first appearance in the U.S. ARTINFO spoke with July the day that the sculptures were unveiled and discussed art-as-prop, the potential triteness of short phrases, and how Rodarte provided a lace-based inspiration for the project.

These works have all been shown in Venice. Was that mostly an art crowd?

One assumes that it’s also a lot of tourists. If you’re a tourist in Venice you go to the Biennale. Where it was installed was a beautiful little garden, but you wouldn’t just happen through it if you weren’t looking. The great thing about Union Square — [while] we were watching, everyone would walk through, they’d linger, start taking pictures of each other.


Were other venues discussed?

Washington Square in New York was first discussed. Which, actually, has a graveyard underneath it. You can’t dig very easily. There are bones. A number of other parks were presented and this seemed clearly like the best one. The great fear is that you're going to make a park worse. A park’s pretty good to begin with — you don’t want to mess it up. Luckily, I think the installation is pretty delicate. It doesn’t overtake the park.

I noticed that in a lot of the literature about the work you’ve called them professional props, photo opportunities — I didn’t see too many times when you referred to them as just sculptures.

Most of the people who were engaging with them today, were they thinking of them as art? They certainly weren’t afraid to touch them, which is great. I kind of appreciate that they’re coming off almost like play equipment or something. For kids they totally are; that’s all they are. I mean, there’s so much, however you’re approaching them. They’re definitely sculptures too — they were made for the Biennial — they’re that. You know my background. I think when I was invited to be in that show I took it very literally. “Now I’m going to make some ART.” Almost like in a cartoon, what art would be. And yeah, of course I had to figure out how to do that in my own way. The fact that I had to make heavy objects that had to be shipped — it’s like, I can’t believe I did that, with all the other options I had.

For Venice, did they give you any parameters?

It’s not a commission. You’re just invited to be in the show as an artist. I went and did a site visit and sent them different ideas. This was the one I was most excited about. They didn’t have any money that year; that was right when the economy was falling apart. They were like, if anyone’s getting money it’s going to be the person from Africa. You seem like you could find some money. And that’s how Deitch got involved. They all had to be fabricated. Jeffrey paid for them to be fabricated.

This is Deitch’s last hoorah in New York.

Well, it just happened. We’ve been planning this for so long. No one knew it was going to end up being right now. I’m finishing a movie, and they were kind of like, “Um … if we could do this … now … ”

You’re a writer and a filmmaker. A lot of these pieces have a heavy text component. The work you did before, The Hallway, was all text. When you’re thinking in a visual art context is that what you go to right away: phrases, sentences, words?

No. It’s pretty new to me. I mean it’s all art, right? But it’s sort of new to me to make objects. For both the Japan show, which The Hallway was for, and this one, I had a lot of other ideas first that didn’t involve text that I got pretty far with. And I think in the end, some of the sculptures don’t have text. That was great for me to be able to mix them. Me not having to be there performing was important to me. How can I do a performance without actually being there? And that was by having other people perform and creating the reason for them to do that.

That’s to me why they’re different than sculptures. You wouldn’t buy one of these eleven and just have it in your house, in a private gallery. It seems like it needs that public component.

People have bought them. They’re an edition. This set is intact, but we’ve made them, sold them. I’m curious what those ones are doing in the world. I’m not sure.

As a set of eleven, or individually?

I think one person bought two or three, one person bought one. Some of them do stand alone better than others. I could see somehow just treating it more as an object. It can work that way too.

How did you settle on eleven? Is that sort of arbitrary?

I had more than eleven ideas, and it was an editing process. I made all these little drawings. I had them laid out on the floor at one point. I remember going through with my now-husband [filmmaker and artist Mike Mills] — us haggling, getting down to “What would just be trite?” It’s easy with something short to end up being oddly trite.

Some of these are a bit sweeter than others — the one that tries to get strangers to hug each other, for instance. Is that a part of the editing process, to strike a balance?

Even the stranger one — it says, ‘We’re just hugging for the picture. When we’re done I’ll walk away quickly.’ It’s trying to get strangers to hug each other but also acknowledging that it’s just a setup, maybe totally uncomfortable. And then the rest are like: guilt, lying, some sort of broken-woman feminism … And then these abstract ones. I feel like they come across, at a glance as really sweet, but if you really look, there’s nothing in there that’s just sweet.


The hugging one — did it work? Did strangers hug each other?

It was fun to sit in Venice and watch; occasionally someone would ask someone. They’d do it, grinning their heads off. You saw a lot of people who already knew each other hugging. I guess what I also like is that the sculptures seem so inviting. Maybe they’re inviting enough that in the moment you don’t think twice about doing it to take a photograph, but then the artifact you have, the souvenir is a little more complicated.

Is there a place that you’re going to collect all these photos, or do they just live on people’s hard drives and photo albums?

I thought about doing a Web site, but it seems like we’re past that. You can just search for it on Flickr. I’ve typed in ‘Eleven Heavy Things,’ and there’s a fair amount. I feel like that’s enough for me.

Is there anywhere else in the world that you would really love to have this up?

I so wanted this to happen. I haven’t thought past it. This was the big thing: if it could, after Venice, go to New York, be somewhere central. There’s a lot of bureaucracy to get that to happen. So I don’t know. I know that there are plans for it to travel, and it probably will. But I can’t think of anywhere quite as exciting, to be honest. To me, this is like the best. It’s such a walking city; it’s English-speaking; it’s so central. If they were to all go in my garage now I’d still be satisfied. I mean: there’s not enough room, though.

Can this kind of public art happen in L.A.?

I’m sure it could. But God, it’s pathetic — nowhere jumps to mind. You try and think, where are the people? I’ve thought about the beach — Venice Beach.

It does remind me of those things you put your head in, where you’ve got the body of a bodybuilder, or a mermaid.


What are those called? I’m such a sucker for those things. When I travel, I’m always trying to pose with everything. Those were an influence.

I had seen that in L.A.’s Elysian Park, there’s some sort of museum-in-the-park project this summer, with public installations.

You need enough of an infrastructure. I mean, what’s going to happen when they get tagged? There are some sculptures where I was like, ‘Wow, I did leave an awful lot of blank space.’ We’ll just see what happens. There’s one — this lace one — that I hand-painted, over weeks. I’m not a great painter. It took a long time. And I’d really like to see that one just stay as it is. I didn’t think of it at the time, but I realized after I made it — I did get married the week before the Biennial, I spent all this time painting this lace headdress … I was also hanging out a lot with Kate and Laura Mulleavy [of Rodarte]. They loaned me all their lace books. That’s where I got all my lace patterns from. To some degree — I’m not going to make clothes, but it was on my brain.