‘I’m Art’ : Hundreds of Volunteers Join Political Statement by Becoming Part of Karen Finley’s MOCA Work

Naked under the sheets, her eyes half-closed, T. Margaret Bird lies motionless as the museum fills with the lunchtime buzz of corporate types and schoolchildren. Just to let them know that she is not a statue or a mannequin, but indeed flesh and blood, she runs a hand through her hair and rolls over. And, if anyone asks why she is flat on a mattress in a museum, she has a ready answer: “I’m art.”

She’s not the only one.

In the next room, a man wearing pajamas sits up in bed and says he’s art too. So does the woman reading a magazine in the chair alongside him. They’re not joking. It’s all part of a day’s work for the volunteers in Karen Finley’s living installation, “Memento Mori,” at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Answering ads placed in local papers and posted at art colleges, 400 people have called the museum about volunteering, with 350 signing up to work three-hour shifts. Some are Finley fans, others are simply intrigued with being an art object.

But most say it is their anger over issues such as AIDS, abortion and censorship that compels them to put in the hours as part of the political message in Finley’s work.

“I created a structure and people came in,” says Finley in a telephone interview from New York. “What’s going on in their lives and how they relate to the art, that’s where art happens.

“Every day in the installation is a new story,” says Finley, who will be performing her work-in-progress, “A Certain Level of Denial,” Wednesday through Saturday at MOCA.

In one room of “Memento Mori,” volunteers hand out ribbons and carnations and ask museum-goers to write the names in a hope chest filled with sand of friends and family members who have died. In two sickbeds, volunteers read or chat with those pretending to visit them. In another room dedicated to issues such as abortion and women’s inequality is where T. Margaret Bird lies, giving up another afternoon for the exhibition.

“I want to see this installation succeed,” says Bird, 42, an artist from Hollywood who has worked more hours than anyone else. She has worked nine shifts since the show opened in early June and has signed up to work another seven shifts. “Although you’re just lying there, it’s like you are doing something of worth for society.”

Everyone who volunteers is invited to a three-hour master class with Finley and will receive one of her signed drawings. Those who work at least 21 hours--22 volunteers so far--can attend a daylong workshop run by Finley, who has gained notoriety in recent years with her provocative performances. She is one of four performance artists suing the National Endowment for the Arts, alleging that the denial of their fellowships in 1990 was politically motivated.

Kenneth Scott Wiener has volunteered six hours in a visitor’s chair and 12 hours in one of the sickbeds “to see what my friends who’ve died from AIDS have gone through,” he says. A 20-year-old student from Pasadena, Wiener says it’s not easy thinking about death and dying or watching people react to the exhibit. “I leave after three hours with a heavy heart. I have to go somewhere to relieve the pressure.”

Mark Morgan, a 35-year-old clerk from Hancock Park, wanted to be in the installation because of “a lot of anger over the NEA and AIDS.”

“I can’t be effective with money because I don’t have any to donate, but I can be effective with my time,” says Morgan. But after just three hours volunteering in the sickbed, Morgan says he was surprised by some of the visitors’ reactions.

“I am tall and thin. This is the image of AIDS,” Morgan says. “I’ve experienced stares and pointing and a refusal to enter (the room). At that point, there is no difference between the representation and the disease.”

To prepare themselves for such reactions from visitors, Morgan and other volunteers attended an orientation with Finley and museum workers.

“We talked to volunteers about how to interact with people walking up and asking, ‘Are you sick?’ ‘Do you have AIDS?’ ‘What do you think about this exhibition?’ ” says Sharon Selico, MOCA’s visitor services coordinator.

In fact, visitors’ reactions to the installation express the gamut of emotion--from complaints about Finley’s message to others crying and talking about friends and family who’ve died. In one instance, a woman yelled about how she thought AIDS “was a wonderful thing to purge the Earth,” says Wiener. Recently, a man from Spain who said he had AIDS sat for three hours with a volunteer who also has the disease, Selico says.

For a 43-year-old antique dealer from Irvine, the real people in the exhibition drew him into the room but made him feel uncomfortable. “I didn’t expect to see a real person in an exhibit,” says Tom Silk. “I felt like I was intruding on them--that I couldn’t look at them. It gives me a chill.”

For Marie McNabola, 65, from Corona del Mar, the real people give some life to Finley’s political point. “You’ve seen the words before and the message. It seems dead. You need people,” McNabola says. “If one of our congressmen came in here, he would fall over.”

Whether or not the visitors like the art, the lasting effects of the work may be on the volunteers themselves, from the hours spent watching people watch them, to time spent thinking about the art’s message.

“It’s like I’m in a twilight zone, I know what’s going on,” says Bird of her hours lying in bed. “I think of everything from how long can I go without going to the bathroom to what this means to people to what I am going to have for lunch when I’m done.”

John McClung has spent 12 hours in the museum asking visitors to remember their lost ones by adding ribbons and carnations to part of the installation. A retired psychiatric social worker and a museum volunteer for two years, McClung says working in Finley’s installation “is not like saying ‘Can I check your bag’ at the information desk,” a job he does at MOCA every Thursday afternoon.

“It’s not the kind of art I like. I don’t like message art. Museums are supposed to be sacrosanct. But it’s hard to resist,” McClung says. “One time a comforter started singing, ‘You are my sunshine.’ I nearly broke down.”