Artist Carolyn Lazard Has a Radical Proposition for Museum Visitors: Have a Seat, and Be Comfortable
Carolyn Lazard’s video CRIP TIME (2018), now on view at the Museum of Modern Art, lasts only 10 minutes but feels much longer. The entire work is one unbroken take, shot by a camera pointed down at a table, upon which are laid seven pillboxes, one for each day of the week. For some viewers, that shot offers an achingly slow experience; for others, its images will appear all too familiar.
Across the video’s runtime, Lazard can be seen opening the boxes and dropping in an array of pills—circular tablets, maroon discs, gigantic blue capsules. Lazard’s hands move with deliberation, only rarely faltering as a pill slips away before it is picked back up again and dropped in its rightful place. The medications properly distributed, the video ends with Lazard shutting the cases, restoring them to their former state.
CRIP TIME’s title alludes to the concept describing the pace at which disabled people experience life. Yet those searching for grand statements about chronic illnesses will not find it in this work, which reports on daily rituals undertaken by Lazard and people like them.
“I find myself interested in the labor that facilitates our staying alive and that labor is care and care work,” they said in an email interview.
Works by Lazard in the spirit of this one have appeared in venues ranging from the Whitney Biennial to the Venice Biennale. Their latest show is now in its final week at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the city where they are from.
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