Joshua Schwebel works between site-specific performance-intervention and documentation. He creates objects that function as catalysts towards, or documents of, events. These can be exhibited in a gallery. However, these objects / documents do not concretely prove whether the event to which they refer has occurred, or if it will occur. Instead, the work problematizes the seeming direct relation between what is certain and what is uncertain in an event and its record. His work catalyzes situations that displace an expected physical presence or temporal present with an erasure or delay. Schwebel uses the relationship between event and document to resist the spectator's desire to verify the happening that is no longer or not yet present. The encounter with the event itself (if it occurs), takes place outside of the frame of art. In this case the event is inexplicable, unexpected and somewhat disturbing.

I try to shift the expectation that things are as they seem. I love being able to cheat and to play with the immaterial aspects of what we take so seriously.