Joseph Egan
Constant for the Place on Mars

“Constant for the Place on Mars was an ephemeral environmental art work and its thematic structure was determined by and referenced to actual events taking place on another world far away in space. The Viking explorations of 1976 provided a current event of intense emotional and philosophical complexity. Investigations of a purely physical nature are conducted through information by machines in the absence of any man. The sculptural tableau at 112 Greene Street was conceived as events of a primarily visual nature analogous to those on Mars of real investigatory content (i.e., scientific observation) to which the public had access in predominately visual and non-verbal modes (i.e., photographs transmitted via television). The sculptures were ghosts of non-existent questions and hence within the realm of art and wishfulness, the ‘sculptural’ machinery on Mars were bodies determined in appearance by the questions they were wondered into existence for. The contrariness of the aforementioned is not unlike the startling news that Mars in, in fact, extremely cold.” [artist’s statement]

Excerpted from Brentano, R., & Savitt, M. (1981). 112 Workshop, 112 Greene Street: History, artists & artworks. New York: New York University Press.