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CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts

April 19 - May 20, 2012

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360 Kansas Street San Francisco, CA 94103
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On Apology
From April 19 through May 19, 2012, the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts will host the exhibition On Apology. The public apology has in recent times become a widely prevalent phenomenon. Politicians, corporate and pop-culture figures, from Bill Clinton to Toyota’s chief executives, have openly expressed remorse for everything from minor private indiscretions to major corporate wrongdoings. The mechanisms for “saying sorry” are crafted for broad public consumption and conveyed through the mass media, and are accordingly all-pervasive. The effectiveness of the broadcast apology is complicated by public expectations for reconciliation or recompense, and the unlikelihood of these expectations being met. Despite the fact that overuse has arguably rendered the apology a bankrupt form of meaningful expression, it persists as a means of damage control, and, ironically perhaps, of enshrining a kind of idealism. On Apology investigates public and private iterations of the apology, examining how apologies are formed, their subtlety or lack thereof, and their potential, if any, to accomplish real change. The works included in On Apology document and satirize contrition, reconciliation, and remorse in both constructed and real-life situations.
On Apology Shaun Gladwell, Apologies 1-6