Trying to convert a sponge into a stone (you’ll never break a window with it)

The sentence that gives this work its title comes from Cornelius Cardew’s diary. It was written in 1973, just as the composer was becoming a Maoist, abandoning all avant-garde artistic practice to devote himself to music in the service of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Great Britain. If this sentence is a sharp criticism of political artworks that are confined to the art world, it also marks Cardew’s distancing himself from the Maoist doctrine that an artwork considered bourgeois can always be hijacked to serve the interests of proletarian revolution. The sponge usually used for household cleaning in the exhibition space is left to dry for the duration of the show, and will be returned to its original function at the end.