Manifesto for Maintenance, 40 years later
Forty years have passed since Mierle Ukeles wrote her Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 1969!, which launched her trajectory as the premier maintenance artist in the world and ultimately led to her selection as the Percent for Art artist selected to contributed to the Freshkills Park master plan. Art in America published this interview with Mierle about how she came to write the manifesto and what it means to grapple with maintenance in your artwork. A great quote near the end:
‘That is what maintenance is, trying to listen to the hum of living. A feeling of being alive, breath to breath. The same way that the sanitation department sends out 1,600 trucks every day, it is like this repetitive thing that as much as you chafe at the boredom of the repetition is as important as the other parts. And I know that that has to be a part of culture.’
