How serious are the promises we make to one another, the vows we take, or the pledges made by our civic leaders?

Public Trust asks participants to examine the value of their word. Participants declare a promise that is recorded in a drawing they can keep. They are asked to give their word in a way that’s consistent with their beliefs, such as swearing on a sacred text. That promise is published on a monumental marquee board, placed amongst promises made by politicians, scientists, economists, companies, and weather forecasters, all chosen daily from headline news.

Find the installation outside the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), and make your pledge!

Public Trust is a public realm artwork, a series of interactive performances that asks the public to vouch for their promises from a vast array of collaterals: taking oaths over sacred or civic texts, swearing over holy objects or materials, calling on a witness, making a pinky promise etc. As willing participants utter their promises, and then “give their word” in whatever way they see fit, their promises will go up on a large-scale marquee display board (anonymously) for much wider publics to read. The board will also display other promissory statements culled from that day’s news - political promises, the weather report, scientific predictions, promises from popular culture figures, economic forecasts and more.

Ramírez Jonas believes a work can create clearly defined situations, ones that allow participants to speak in public and invite self-reflection. Furthermore, works like Public Trust create a dialogue, where participants can learn from each other and themselves by reflecting on the premises of their speech. Together this framework creates the opportunity to question suppositions that typically go without question.

Artist Talk

Join us for an artist talk with Paul Ramírez Jonas. Paul will reflect on his pioneering practice, which spans participatory performance and public art, exploring how acts of trust, exchange and collective imagination resonate in times of political and cultural polarisation.

This is a free  outdoor, participatory artwork.

This artwork is highly visual with written and spoken text in English.

There will be a BSL Interpreter available on Saturday 18 October from 12 noon - 4 pm

This artwork will be audio described.

SENSORY NOTES

• Audience Interaction (optional)

• Audience Participation

• Outdoor Event

VENUE & SEATING

Outdoors, under the awning, in front of the Gallery of Modern Art. Wheelchair accessible. GOMA venue access information.

Seating- Seated and standing.

Sensory Notes:

• Audience Interaction (optional)

• Outdoor Event

Language: English (written and spoken)

Visit our Festival Access Page.

Audio INTRODUCTION

Listen here to an audio introduction to Public Trust, written and spoken by the artist Paul Ramirez Jonas. In this introduction, Paul details information about the artwork, what to expect when you visit the installation, and some visual descriptions of the artwork, along with insights into his intentions and inspirations that have informed the work.

Artist Bio

Paul Ramírez Jonas was born in 1965 in Pomona, California, and raised in Honduras. He earned a BA in studio art from Brown University (1987) and an MFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence (1989).

Ramírez Jonas’ work ranges from large-scale public installation and monumental sculpture to intimate performance, video, and drawing, and traces the universal aspiration to an elusive perfect world. From driving west in pursuit of the sunset (Longer Day, 1997), to recreating failed flying machines (various projects, 1993–94) and transcribing the communications of the Apollo space mission (Men on the Moon, Tranquillity, 1990–), his practice is characterised by a bracing, albeit nostalgic, idealism rooted in a faith in human resilience. Sensitive to the processes of globalisation, he reveals its simultaneous tendencies towards interdependence and exclusion.

Exploring the parallels between various public gathering spaces, Ramírez Jonas’s drawing series Admit One (2010–13) and Assembly (2013) chart a typology of assembly halls, churches, cinemas, stadiums, and theaters that underscore the fundamental nature of the human need for connection. In The Commons (2011) and Ventriloquist (2013), the artist revived the monument (here the equestrian statue and the portrait bust, respectively) as a vehicle for communication by replacing the form’s immutable granite or marble with cork—a material that is both degradable and the traditional medium of community noticeboards.

Key to the City (2010) was a citywide intervention in which twenty-five thousand keys to private or normally inaccessible spaces throughout New York City were bestowed on certain individuals in a special ceremony, revealing that culture can still be a freely shared experience, while also highlighting the increasing privatization of urban space.

He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Art at Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP).

Credits

Lead Artist: Paul Ramírez Jonas
Produced and presented in association with Fierce
Originally commissioned by Now + There