A major figure on the contemporary art scene, Lawrence Weiner was a prolific artist who, from the late 1960s until his death in 2021, developed a sculptural art practice that centered mainly on language, in which the material realization of a work was only one potential outcome and where the same work was sometimes produced in several different media. His interest in reproducible media in general, and in film and video in particular, took shape in the late 1960s and can be understood as the expression of a desire that remained important throughout his career: to make his art widely available, notably through publications, works in public spaces, films, and videos.

Following his first videos, made between 1970 and 1972, [1] which were the recordings of simple actions carried out in real time, the artist turned to written—structured and scripted—creations, the first of which was A FIRST QUARTER, in 1973. [2] These more complex works aligned with Weiner’s desire to give material substance to his protocols within compositions that involved multiple actors and layered psychological relationships. He developed a mise en scène that he defined both as the context and the conditions in which the work materialized. [3] DO YOU BELIEVE IN WATER? was shot in 1976 in the New York arts center The Kitchen, where it was also presented, the same year, in the form of an installation comprising a video projection and accessories used during the shoot. [4] Psychology—of both the actors, mostly recruited from his circle of friends and colleagues, and the characters they portrayed—played an increasingly important role within the structure of the work. Here, a gay actor, uncomfortable with female homosexuality, stands in an exhibition space where several performers and elements of scenery (pedestals, tables) are painted in pink, violet, and silver. [5] In the background, two women kiss, strip, and embrace each other throughout the duration of the video, while other actors, apparently ignoring them, devote themselves to a variety of highly stylized games and exercises. The tension here arises not only from the intrusion of eroticism into this childlike setting, but also from what is left unsaid between the characters and the actors, who were chosen precisely because of their conflictual relationships. An ambivalent connection is thus established between performers and spectators, as the video, filmed in real time, progresses and as the viewer analyzes the different layers of communication between the protagonists. The work also reflects the artist’s long-standing interest in eroticism and pornography, themes that he explored throughout his career, culminating in the creation of two films inspired by pornography. [6] The soundtrack features music from New Guinea interspersed with texts spoken by Weiner that pose rhetorical and unexpected questions [7], adding an additional layer of meaning to the work. A performance that is both theatrical and elementary, DO YOU BELIEVE IN WATER? is a complex work in which Lawrence Weiner exposes his textual sculptures to real life and human relationships by placing them in a more mundane context than that of his earlier works, which were detached from any narrative framework.

Coline Davenne, 2021

Translated by Anne McDowall

[1] TO THE SEA/ON THE SEA/FROM THE SEA/AT THE SEA/BORDERING THE SEA, 1970; BEACHED, 1970; BROKEN OFF, 1971; TO AND FRO/FRO AND TO/AND TO AND FRO/AND FRO AND TO, 1972; SHIFTED FROM SIDE TO SIDE, 1972.

[2] Lawrence Weiner, A FIRST QUARTER, 1973, 16 mm film, black and white, sound, 85:00.

[3] See Bartomeu Marí and Lawrence Weiner, “Show (&) Tell”, in Bartomeu Mari (ed.), Show (&) Tell: The Films & Videos of Lawrence Weiner: A Catalogue Raisonné (Ghent: Imschoot, 199>[4] “WITH RELATION TO THE VARIOUS MANNERS OF USE – DO YOU BELIEVE IN WATER?”, solo exhibition, The Kitchen, New York, September 25 – October 18, 1976.

[5] See “Benjamin H. D. Buchloh in conversation with Lawrence Weiner,” in Alexander Alberro, Alice Zimmerman, and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Lawrence Weiner (London: Phaidon, 1998) p. 26.

[6] A BIT OF MATTER AND A LITTLE BIT MORE, 1976; WATER IN MILK EXIST, 2008.

[7] For example: “Is tongue kissing like ass kissing? Heads or tails? Can you make that kind of quality judgment about colors?”