5. A Sense Of Precarity

A work of art is finished when the artist says it is finished. Whether the work is then displayed or published or just left in a drawer, the artist will not change it from that point on. When shown, an artwork usually does not come with an announcement or declaration that it is complete. The audience assumes the work must be complete because it is on display.

What if someone were to show a work that was purposely unfinished? The incompleteness would become part of the work. People would view it with the expectation that it might be revised in the future. What if someone went even further and declared that nothing they create is ever finished, that anything shown could change at any moment? The audience might then feel a sense of precarity about the work they are viewing. They might want to take photos or videos of it, to freeze it in time, to capture the different stages of its existence. But insofar as these secondary media are not the artwork itself, they will never fully replicate it.

What about an artwork that can be copied exactly — like this text you are reading right now? I could tell you that this fragment is unfinished, but you could still make a copy of it, preserve it exactly as it is in this moment before I can make any changes. Copying would then seem to produce multiple artworks, each representing the primary work at a different point in time. In this way, writing is not like life at all, for a living being cannot be contained in a static medium. A living being is constantly changing, constantly revising itself and its presentation. It is always more than anyone can capture or preserve.

So how alive can a written work actually be? Is it not always a corpse abandoned by the side of the road?