There is a place in Santa Cruz that embodies, for me, the perfect synthesis between the city’s motto, “Keep Santa Cruz weird,” and a devotion to the world of creative imagination that is both lighthearted and heavy with sense, even though its sense is often nonsensical. Off Elm Street in downtown, there is a courtyard through which one has to pass to arrive at the Felix Kulpa Gallery. As with any courtyard prefacing a gallery, this one too has some artwork in it; but there is one particular object that catches the eye: a phone booth with a phone on which water cascades like fountain water on a sculpture in a public square. The object is, of course, striking, because of the unexpected contrast between a practical thing—the phone—and the kind of water one only sees as a decorative environment in many big cities’ downtown graced with a fountain circled by griffins, or muscled, naked bodies, in which pigeons and toddlers like to play for the delight of vacationing onlookers. But while it is quite normal to see sculptures of fantastical animals or naked bodies serve as static pretexts for the constantly moving water, it is certainly unexpected to see a phone in this position. On the other hand, for the new generations who have rarely seen a phone booth, and the future generations who will likely never see a public phone, except in the movies, the phone in itself may be just as outlandish as an antique sculpture.
Insofar as any work of art is pure uselessness, the phone that has been taken from its useful condition and rendered utterly useless, a decorative object glistening like quicksilver under the translucent water, is the absolute symbol of a work of art.
