The Poet, The Fever Hospital | Part 1

I'm Bernie Miller, I am the artist that has produced this work. What you're looking at here is a piece that's made out of a number of different materials and a variety of shapes. It's located on a plaza that belongs to the City and the municipal offices for the government are located in these buildings that surround the plaza.

And I took my cue for the concept of this work from the idea that: "here we are supposedly in the place of democracy, I wonder if I can make a truly democratic piece". And, you know, artists do talk about the "intentionality of the artist". And this interesting phrase came up having to do with what an artist intends and what the viewer gets out of a piece. And that is the concept of, "policing meaning".  And I always thought that, "Well, that's about as undemocratic as you can get, if someone were to do that". And my generation of artists were very interested in getting rid of that idea that something is highly intended and that it only means one thing. So this work, in a way, is an exercise to see how much meaning I could get to come from the viewers as opposed to me putting it in there.

So I basically generated five separate artworks for the site, and what they are, are collections of things and themes that have interested me. But basically you could say that it is, in fact, from my part it is meaningless because all the meaning should come from the viewer. It's an assembly of forms with no intended meaning.

Want to hear more? Check out Part 2.

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