Manifest destiny

8 Broeltoren Noord, Broelkaai

tue-sun 13h-17h (mon closed)

Manifest Destiny was originally presented at SITE Santa Fe in 2008 as an intervention where part of the Tsien and Williams ramp was cut off, thereby creating a 16-foot-high platform. Golia wanted visitors to leap from the top of the platform in a

kind of trust fall, which would be broken by a thick stunt pad. 

"This intervention will generate a situation where, if the visitors desire, midway through the exhibition they can jump from the platform onto the red foam mattress or just go back. This gesture arose from pure instinct upon first encountering the ramp. The response will be equally instinctive on the part of the visitors: they can jump or they can choose not to jump. The ramp forces an experience and logic onto the space by interrupting its circularity. I replace this imposition with a physical experience, different from that which was intended.

I remember hearing the Beastie Boys singing, “Ride with me, I’ll take you to the border.” Well, here I take you to the border and I want you to jump. The quotidian experience is replaced with a concrete, emotional experience. The work is shaped by trust from all involved."

Part shaman and part showman, and, in a way, completely both, Piero Golia’s work addresses issues of identity and the role of the artist through the powerful tools of humour and irony.  Although Golia calls himself a ‘small artist’ – referring to his physical size, his self-deprecation stands in stark contrast to the at times Herculean endeavours the artist pursues in order to make something of a legend of himself.