Reality Properties: Fake Estates
Gordon Matta-Clark, 1973

Links
Visceral Facades by Matthew Fuller
Essays on Matta-Clark
Guggenheim's collection

For the work Fake Estates, Matta-Clark bought the deeds to fourteen microplots of land in Queens and Staten Island that had been "left over in property deals, or that teetered just off the edges of architectural plans drawn slightly out of whack: a foot-wide strip down somebody's driveway, a square foot of sidewalk, tiny sections of curbs and gutters" (Fuller). In an interview for Avalanche magazine in 1974, he explained, "Buying them was my own take on the strangeness of existing property demarcation lines. Property is so all-pervasive. Everyone's notion of ownership is determined by the use factor." Fake Estates preceded his cutting and splitting period, which would earn him far greater recognition, but it clearly demonstrates the same unique, deconstructionist impulse.
Matthew Fuller, in the compelling essay Visceral Facades, tells us, "rather than partaking in the functionalist urban sublime of the glass and steel skyscraper typified in the architecture of Mies van der Rohe - with its interior opened to make it more governable - Matta-Clark's work operates a dis-enclosure of urban space: its malfunctions, voids, shadows."Fuller goes on to describe how one might use Matta-Clark's techniques to approach digital media: "use faults; disturb conventions; exploit idiosyncracies."

Fuller's essay first exposed me to Matta-Clark and subsequent research into the latter's diverse body of work has given me many points of articulation for the directions I'm currently interested to explore.

Submitted by
Brett Schultz

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