An Evening with Joseph Cornell

VISITS WITH JOSEPH CORNELL THURS., APRIL 8 AN EVENING WITH JOSEPH CORNELL SAT., APRIL 10

THERE ARE ENTIRE academic careers devoted to understanding the works of a single master artist. At this level of arts criticism, every measure of music or brushstroke on a canvas is considered deeply revealing. Perhaps the artist revealed Oedipal issues with this choice of a color, exposed a life-long infatuation with the girl next door with a single verse or mocked his country's government in five notes. But what if, instead of relying on scholarly guesswork, we could just ask the artist directly? And if not directly, then with a little help from a storefront psychic?

Anne Walsh and Chris Kubick, known collectively as ARCHIVE, have tried this approach three times as part of their Art After Death project. Most recently, they engaged the spirit of artist Joseph Cornell, who died in 1972. They invited five professional mediums to sit separately in a room with several of Cornell's artworks, and without even knowing his name, they were asked to contact the late artist.

ARCHIVE is not poking fun at mediums. Each session is recorded and edited by ARCHIVE, with the final product allowing the artist to speak from beyond the grave, as well as existing as a piece of art consisting of the collaged speech of the participants (both Walsh and Kubick are deeply interested in language and communication). They see the process as a three-way collaboration, in which "ARCHIVE collaborates with the artists collaborating with the psychics collaborating with ARCHIVE."

Even skeptics should find the resulting sound work oddly engaging. This latest project is an expansion on the short work created for the 2002 Whitney Biennial. The audio recording, packaged with an 18-page booklet of text and images, is finally getting a proper New York City release at Printed Matter on Thursday. ARCHIVE also presents the work through performance lectures and gallery installations, which they will offer at ISSUE Project Room on Saturday as "An Evening with Joseph Cornell."

The idea originated as a spoof on those detailed audio tours museums sometime offer, with Walsh and Kubick planning to script and record fictional interviews. Discussing it in an interview with Gwynneth Porter, they said that in the end seances seemed no more absurd than contemporary criticism.

"Pretty much everybody thinks it's pretty fun, or totally odd, or an exciting idea," Kubick told Porter. "I think everybody's just glad that somebody else is foolish enough to spend their hard-earned paychecks on spirit mediums, so they don't have to do it, and they can still get the truth."

I can't wait to find out if Beethoven really does turn over in his grave.

April 8: Printed Matter, 535 W. 22nd St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-925-0325, 5-7, free.

April 10: An Evening with Joseph Cornell, ISSUE Project Room, 619 E. 6th St. (betw. Aves. B & C), 212-598-4130, 7:30, $7.