Pose Your Question – David Horvitz in Conversation at firstsite

As part of the exhibition programme for Intimate Bureaucracies: Art and the Mail, we are very lucky to have a visit from artist David Horvitz, who has created a mailing project especially for the exhibition. Some Cut Flowers is a mailing project in which David sends individual flowers in plastic water bottles from the United States to the exhibition on a daily basis. Due to customs regulations controlling the import and export of fresh cut flowers, it is possible that some of the flowers will be confiscated. But this is Horvitz’s intention – the flowers are meant as gift for the customs officials, not their ostensible destination.

Horvitz thinks of the container of the flowers as a carrier ‘moving through the global transport infrastructure’, but points out that ‘the flower is a carrier too – to customs, as a carrier of pests, disease and potential hazards, but to the sender – a carrier of sentiment, affection, love.’ The project is growing as the exhibition continues – the flowers that arrive, the emails and photos Horvitz sends every day and the customs slips that arrive without their packages are all on display. So far several of the bottles have arrived, but we have also received a flimsy customs slip without the accompanying bottle.