An Open Letter to Pittsburgh

April 20th, 2022

I don't suppose there are many visitors to Pittsburgh whose first instinct is to head down to Market Square and take a photograph of a maintenance hole cover.

But, on my return to Pittsburgh two weeks ago, this is exactly what I did.

Stripped of supporting context, this might rightfully be dismissed as oddball behaviour (I'll explain my reasons for it later), but my urge to revisit this particular instance of street furniture speaks to me of my very specific and profound relationship with the place.

It's a relationship that the intervening days have only strengthened.

I'm now back at my desk at home in the UK, reflecting on the past few days, days during which I presented a new work in downtown Pittsburgh. Here, to be precise, at 320 Smithfield (aka 'the old liquor store’).

Less precise, is my use of the first person pronoun in 'I presented' because the work in question, People We Love, has notably little to do with me, my ego, or anyone else's, for that matter.

This is perhaps an odd claim for a work consisting of almost ten hours of intensely personal video portraits. Something happened during the filming of the 100+ Pittsburgh's citizens gazing at a loved one that seems to have stripped these faces of all self-consciousness. Their portraits meet our questioning gaze without artifice, hostility or self-curation. Instead, they stare back with honesty, vulnerability, and love.

Taken together, this collective body of faces speaks eloquently of time and place. This is Pittsburgh, USA, in 2022. However, when you step forward and look at any one of them in detail, with the curiosity that all these faces invite, each and every one of them speaks to the timeless and universal humanity of us all.

Many thanks to each person who chose an image of the person they loved and engaged with the project. One of the greatest pleasures of my very happy visit was that I got to meet so many of the embodied, lively and articulate people behind those increasingly familiar faces.

People We Love is a silent, contemplative experience. It takes a little time and some concentration to fully engage with the work and imagine the stories that its portraits suggest.

When the work was first exhibited in York, UK, in 2020 & 2021, it was with a different community and in the markedly different setting of York Minster.

York Minster, a building constructed for quiet contemplation, seemed, in many ways, a natural home for the piece.

Perhaps so, but People We Love is not a religious work. It is contemporary, bold, and inclusive. While I'm delighted that it found such a sympathetic first home in York and its Minster, I was interested to see it speak to (and of) more diverse and inclusive communities. I was fascinated to see how People We Love would fare, standing alongside the noise and distractions of the contemporary city.

With enormous thanks to Jeremy Waldrup and the team at Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership for making it possible, People We Love made its US debut in Pittsburgh, and in a most wonderful setting too.

Jeremy and Renee Piechocki (the work's producer in Pittsburgh, and without whom none of this would have happened) did a superb piece of placemaking by turning an empty liquor store into a pop-up gallery. The resulting space exhibits the aesthetic and attention to detail of a first-class gallery but does so with a generosity and inclusivity that entirely aligns with the work's intention.

The gallery is open Wednesday through Sunday until June 5th, but the exhibition can also be seen from the street, twenty-four hours a day. I'm so pleased about this. I found the sight of the seven screens and their slow cycle of faces - all witnesses to life's many joys and pains - staring out of the darkness into the street and the night beyond, both profoundly moving and consoling. I hope others may too.

As I said at the beginning, I have a particular and fond feeling towards Pittsburgh and its people. When I walked down to Market Square on my arrival, it was to revisit the site of Congregation, a work that I made (with Tom Wexler) in 2014.

Like People We Love, Congregation was a deeply participatory piece, one that would be nothing without the community's engagement. Tom and I had the great honour of producing the work in multiple cities around the world, but few, if any, took it to their hearts in the way that the citizens of Pittsburgh did.

I found precisely the same level of engagement, openness, and curiosity on my recent visit. Further enhanced by a visit to Carnegie Mellon University to meet with four extraordinarily engaged and interesting MFA students, I once again found Pittsburgh to be the most beautiful and inspiring place to work and I’m hugely grateful to it.

And so, finally, to that maintenance hole cover.

Perhaps, having expressed my enthusiasm for the citizens of the 'burgh, it seems odd that an inanimate portrait of the city's street furniture should hold pride of place over my dining table, but it does, and has done for the last eight years, ever since Renee Piechocki (also the producer of Congregation) sent me a brass rubbing she'd made of the unassuming metal disc.

I suspect many of my guests have wondered why it hangs there, though few have asked. It has presided over many convivial evenings and seen enough bottles of wine pass beneath it to fill an empty liquor store.

Why?

Congregation was a work that relied on body heat for participation. A thermal imaging camera tracked participants' movements through the square. We soon discovered that this maintenance hole cover sat over a warm drain, warm enough for it to be a permanent, though static, participant in every cycle of Congregation in Pittsburgh.

This would typically have been an irritant, but somehow, in this instance, it perfectly embodied the city's desire to participate, to engage, and to make light in the darkness.

To revisit it the other day in Market Square was to revisit an old friend, the first of many I saw during that week.

It means even more to me now. As does Pittsburgh.

Thank you all.

Kit.

A PDF transcript of the Artist’s Talk I gave at the launch on Friday, 8th April, is available above and a simple video recording of the talk is here.