Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Taketo Shimada, Calder Martin
Keith Connolly & Yuji Agematsu
can we expand MUSIC? (CWEM)
At Hanne Tierney's FiveMyles
558 St. Johns Place in Brooklyn
Curator: Yuzo Sakuramoto



Yuji Agematsu, Found Objects at FiveMyles



by Alison Knowles


Making the trip out to FiveMyles last week gave me the chance to support this brave and exciting endeavor created some years ago by Hanne Tierney. FiveMyles, derived from Five 'Myles' (names of the deceased male members of her family) is located in a profoundly underprivileged section of Brooklyn serving the ethnic youth of that community. She has brought in significant culture to these deserving people by buying a large ground warehouse space without any windows and making it very attractive.



Yuji Agematsu, Found Objects at FiveMyles

'The four artists in this exhibition are both musicians and visual artists. This exhibition is presented as an attempt to explore different aspects of encounters between sound and image. With an emphasis on creative process, the exhibition, consisting of four installations, is itself an experiment into a possible unfolding of such encounters. It is also meant to be a documentation of, or status report on these artists, the first in an on-going series.'


Taketo Shimada, Work Environment Installation at FiveMyles

The place was packed, free beer flowed as the performers arrived for the "closing" of the event "can we expand music?" or CWEM. These musicians: Taketo Shimada, Keith Connolly, Calder Martin and Yuji Agematsu had a variety of instruments and installations available to look at and talk about. Calder Martin's plastic bag sculpture initiated the space as it quietly moved in the open air(the warehouse doors were open) and franks and hamburgers were cooking on the barbecue next door. Taketo's floor instruments were spread out on various rugs and colorful cloths. The longest sitar-like stringed instrument (hand made by Taketo from a length of wood with strings attached and pegged for tuning) show his interest in string resonance theory particularly of the Kirana school of Indian music. His music is heard without electric enhancement. This remarkable instrument is supported by boxes decorated by the candy wrappers he uses to make his art. Very beautiful drawings of Pandit Pran Nath completed Taketo's homage to the master. I wanted one of these drawings but learned that they were not for sale.


Taketo Shimada, at work tuning an instrument at FiveMyles

The work of Yuji Agematsu attracted me since collecting street objects is a pass time of mine in artmaking. Yuji packaged tiny portions of what he had picked up in tiny plastic bags, hundreds of them to be picked up and looked at. The street cullings were from one year of walking the same city blocks.


Keith Connolly, design process wall pieces at FiveMyles

This combination of visual art and music was a safe haven for this community and the opening and closing reminded me of the vigor of the lower East side of the 1970's. Bravo to Hanne Tierney.



Taketo Shimada (meend tanpura) Tres Warren (Guitar)
video by Kristin Mullane Shimada at Can We Expand Music
curated by Yuzo Sakuramoto




Caitlin Cook and Calder Martin
video by Kristin Mullane Shimada at Can We Expand Music
curated by Yuzo Sakuramoto




Alison Knowles, NYC

Taketo Shimada has made music with Tres Warren of Psychic Ills as Messages since 2006. Doug Mosurak of Dusted commented that the Messages 7” record released by The Social Registry “is some heavy, humid drone, pregnant with 4am electricity. Best record in the Social Registry’s singles series to date.” His work has been shown at Postmasters Gallery, Wall Space Gallery and Emily Harvey Foundation.

Calder Martin is a guitarist and visual artist and the founder of the band Vizusa. Arthur Magazine said that Vizusa’s debut LP “VizUSA is the new psychedelic simple, hard: the rock and roll of Buddy Holly bare bones with the doors of perception jimmyin' and repetitious riff milkin' of Les Rallizes Dénudés.” Calder has produced video projections at the Kitchen for Caitlin Cook and company, and live music and installations at Deitch Projects with Exceptor. His work has been shown at Emily Harvey Foundation and Participant.

Keith Connolly is an artist and musician, and is a founding member of the No Neck Blues Band. His most recent work was exhibited at Parade Space in London. In New York he has exhibited his installations and performed live events at Greene Naftali Gallery, PS 1, Roulette and the Sculpture Center.

Yuji Agematsu is an artist/photographer. For the past thirty years he has been picking up discarded things from the street and meticulously archiving them. He has worked with Tokio Hasegawa, former member of Taj Mahal Travellers, and studied yara with Milford Graves. He is also a fervent fan of Cecil Taylor and Miles Davis.

can we expand Music? curator Yuzo Sakuramoto is a New York-based researcher, translator and the publisher of the legendary, now defunct fanzine Music. He recently translated the liner notes for the Taj Mahal Travellers album, Live in Stockholm 1971 and DVD, on “Tour,” as well as Takehisa Kosugi’s Catch Wave ’97.

#permalink posted by Alison Knowles : 6/23/2009 02:23:00 PM

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The 53rd Venice Biennale, 2009
Making Worlds, Directed by Daniel Birnbaum
with Bruce Nauman, Wolfgang Tillmans and more...



John Baldassarri Project
Photo: Press CD, La Biennale di Venezia 53 Esposizione d’Arte

by artist and critic: Emilio Fantin

What should an Italian be considering during a trip from the city of Bologna to the city of Venice bound for a biennial circus of art? An Italian who is at that moment reading an article about the Italian Prime Minister's latest "conjuring tricks." An Italian who lives in a nation who's gags, jokes and public clowns have migrated into the institutional sphere using positions of power to harvest techniques of parody from progressive discourse?

No more "spaghetti" but anecdotes. This seems the sudden pleasure of politicians and pedestrians: kidding someone or kidding around at something to fulfill their heartfelt interest. They mock their own institutions, anyone's work, collective or individual suffering, murders, garbage, sickness, the dead and life itself. Dry drunks clowning for themselves and seeing the world flat as a cartoon, but dominated by "cunning," the hidden character trait of the two dimensional hero. Each little pun, caricature or gag hides the gratification of cunning, the pleasure of faking everybody out and making fast money. Everything else is useless and without application, parliaments, laws, human rights, human beings, old people, kids and, of course, useless democracies. But this Italian parody is the spectacular backdrop in front of which our clowning divas debut for this year's society soap opera, the Mediterranean Character, dangerous yet vulnerable and sometimes capable of salvation. Meanwhile in the European situation, something very different is emerging: the last elections showed that in most of the European states neo-Nazis gained a large percentage of votes from which they are at this moment extracting sizeable power and dangerous capability, but what fears could possibly lurk in the hearts and minds of Italians.

With this fleeting insight in mind I stared back at the day, scratched an itch over my eyebrow and committed myself to the carefree abandon of the great circus of tourism, 2009's 53rd Venice Biennale.

First stop: Sant Erasmo


"Sant Erasmo from the boat"
Photo: Emilio Fantin

Sant Erasmo is a beautiful island where I myself have installed a work in an ancient fortress, "Fortezza Massimiliana," for the show IsolaMondi, which is one of the collateral events of the Biennale. Collateral events, parties, meetings, openings constitute the true earth of art scenes today in Venice, where the biennial itself is just one of the shows and it might not be the most interesting one.


"Fortezza Massimiliana"
Photo: Emilio Fantin

Sant Erasmo is an example of the variety of places that constitute the residential area of Venice. It is a big island, where only six hundred people live. It is where the most vegetables and fruits sold at Venetian market are produced. It is covered with Gardens and vast green areas.


Emilio Fantin, "Inner Encounter," inflatable structure, 2003
Photo: Emilio Fantin

Second stop: Giardini e Arsenale


"Arsenale, Gaggiandre, Before the Exhibition"
Press CD, La Biennale di Venezia 53 Esposizione d’Arte



Arsenale, Corderie, Before the Exhibition
Press CD, La Biennale di Venezia 53 Esposizione d’Arte

"Venice." Here we are, and the entire city is involved in the Italian art scene's biggest carnival. I asked some folks for their impressions. Cesare Pietroiusti and Mario Pieroni said to me: "I like this vortex: happenings, openings, performances , different places and people not just the Biennale itself. What we like is the general "status," the atmosphere." A few days later, in her intervention at the meeting "il Falso Oreste" in Bologna, Francesca, a young girl, said: "...it is only this vortex that justifies operating the Biennale. Language, messages and expressions of the artists are not important: here art work functions like a merry go round in a huge amusement park."

I jump from Giardini to Arsenale from Palazzo Fortuny to Punta della Dogana, a new space restored by Pinault Fondation. At the Arsenale there are few works worth seeing; better to spend time at Giardini's international pavilions.


Bruce Nauman, Three Heads Fountain (Juliet, Andrew, Rinde), 2005 (detail)

Someone told me the choice of Bruce Nauman for the American pavilion was a political choice and a very expensive one. Here again, instead of inviting a young talent, we are put in front of another "political choice." I am known for having criticized this kind of thing and I still do, but in this case the power of the artwork outstrips that of the critic. Among all the art works that I have seen in this 53rd Biennale, those of Nauman and Tillmans really touched me. I'm very happy to have seen Bruce Nauman's work, which is clear and simple because his manner of drama and capacity for depth leaves absolutely no ambiguity. The work speaks to my heart and mind directly, through lightness, successfully liberating itself from the Biennale's amusement park culture and taking me along. Wolfgang Tillmans too, shows the beauty of simple images and colors. A good artist is able to create imagery with few things. All he needs is the courage to relate himself directly to the world, without bluffing, simply drawing on personal wisdom and humility.


Wolfgang Tillmans, Installation, 2009 (detail)
Press CD, La Biennale di Venezia 53 Esposizione d’Arte

Third stop: Palazzo Fortuny


Palazzo Fortuny Façade, Mario Merz (1925–2003) "Fibonacci Sequence," 2002
Photo: Press CD In-Finitum Palazzo Fortuny, Venezia 2009

At Palazzo Fortuny the show "In-Finitum" is a wunder-kamera immersed in smooth darkness. Art works of various ages dialog inside a beautiful context furnished with different objects, a sort of historical dialog between images and objects. The setting up of the exhibition is extravagant, curious, but it is very difficult to remember a single artwork.


First Floor, Sala Grande, Palazzo Fortuny
Berlinde De Bruyckere (1964) Infinitum 2009
Thomas Houseago (1972) Figure (Oedipus) 2008
Anonymous, Small basin with double zoomorphic resemblance
Anonymous, Portrait of Colleoni from the collection of Mario Fortuny
Photo: Press CD In-Finitum Palazzo Fortuny, Venezia 2009

The show at "Punta della Dogana" is an ostentatious display. The restoration of the old building made by Tadao Ando is, of course, beautiful, but the exhibition "Mapping the Studio: Artists from the François Pinault Collection" is anything but. The atmosphere resembles one you might "enjoy" from the interior of a glamour yacht berthed nearby. A crude demonstration made in bad taste.

Fourth stop: Ponte dei Sospiri


"Advertisement" Ponte dei Sospiri, Venezia 2009
Photo: Emilio Fantin



"Press Office" 53rd Venice Biennale
Photo: Emilio Fantin

Around the city: Inside this huge forest of varied artistic proposals and events we wonder whether a tree, a bridge or a colored wall are works fabricated by artists or if they merely look so. In the biggest museum of souvenirs, the city of Venice, it is difficult to separate daily life from the tourist attraction, especially when every little thing trumpets an industrial parade of art. The famous "Ponte dei Sospiri" (the Whispering Bridge) has been appropriated by a huge advertisement, and is headquarters to the Biennale Press Office. I actually find it one of the best installations of the Arsenale.

In this article I will avoid reviewing individual art works of the Biennale, you can find that and reproductions anywhere, rather I prefer to relate a feeling, a "status" which can be experienced in Venice as well as in many other artistic events or festival nowadays: commoditization and slavish obedience to the rules of the culture industry and a palpable sense of the consequent loss of true research and meaning in art making itself.

This enables demagogy, a strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions and expectations of the public: the Italian pavilion expresses a cliché of political thinking which affirms that art has to be subdued to the role of entertainment, castrating its capacity to generate ideas, transformations, to get to the heart of things and the heart of the people.


"Poetic Loss" casual installation at Giardini, Venice
Photo: Emilio Fantin

Why this happens is understandable. Today artistic choices and exhibitions are managed by boorish collectors and ignorant politicians. Not just in Italy, but here it is frankly due to a particularly low consciousness about contemporary art.


"Poetic Loss" casual installation at Giardini, Venice
Photo: Emilio Fantin

What we might discuss, after having seen such a "biennale," is something about the industry of culture itself, which, of course, includes the art-system. As Paolo Virno suggests, "fabricating politics" out shines the reality of work itself. The equity in verbs like creating, producing and making is cashed out. According to Guy Debord, the show is a productized form of human communication, yet it is also a staple of the culture industry. Artworks function as special devices of communication, as such they are interchangeable and adaptable to varied trends. Regardless of what they transmit, express or evoke they stand subsidiary to the culture industry. As it expands and monetizes communications in traditional sectors of the daily economy, eventually it requires the very role of the artist to be conformed to its strategy. It requires art making to sacrifice its sovereignty. The artist is scripted to the character type of independent thinker, original inventor or simply autonomous worker. Omnivorous and ravenous, involved only in its own flourishing, the show alone, must go on however.

Emilo Fantin

#permalink posted by Artist Organized Art : 6/16/2009 10:36:00 AM

Monday, May 18, 2009

The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia,
1860-1989 at the Guggenheim.


Performance by Mary Beth Edelson, Jessica Higgins and Shigeko Kubota at the
Guggenheim preview reception for The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia,
1860- 1989, (AKA the Buddha show)

By intermedia artist Jessica Higgins

I was invited by Alison Knowles, to the formal dinner on January 28th and cocktails on the 29th.

Of course I was thrilled to go, not only because the topic was of personal interest to me and to my own conceptual language, but I also felt honored to see so many of the faces I’d grown up seeing and relating to together or close by in the Guggenheim. The curator had a cozy alcove set aside for The Fluxus group of which I so fondly grew up experiencing around me in a childhood wildness to which I often refer now. The scope of the show is vast and brilliant, so for the purpose of expressing my views experientially I will contain them within that room and a few steps upward toward Larry Miller's work.


Dick Higgins, A Thousand Symphonies, Performance relic of Danger Music #12,
Symphony #860 1967/97 in Three movements.

In turning the corner, Dick Higgins, A Thousand Symphonies, Performance relic of Danger Music #12, Symphony #860 1967/97 in Three movements. The bullet holes reflecting a thought of war or questions on its opposite, such a random period in my life in Vermont. A period of harsh screams, pianos and typewriters somehow abstracted into something else, my father always seemed bigger or slightly abstracted by life itself.


Alison Knowles, The Identical Lunch [2nd Edition], 1973/93 silk-screens in cadmium

Close by Alison Knowles, The Identical Lunch [2nd Edition], 1973/93 silk-screens in cadmium yellow with her friends eating the tuna fish on whole wheat toast with buttermilk brought me back to such a different time. One when artists helped each other and a creative community bloomed. I find myself contemplating Joshua Selman's amazing grip on culture in the 21st century and his extensive work on ArtistOrganzedArt.org. I flip back in time to the crazy reflections of parties with genital cakes, jelly’s and gender switched wedding’s occurring mostly in big open spaces. All those beautiful faces with concepts behind each one ready to share freely and laugh. Shigeko’s silkscreen reminded me of a full moon. Later I met her sitting like a Buddha and she was smiling, which I hadn’t seen in a while. I was introduced to Mary Beth Edelson, and in a spontaneous way we all made an event. “The quirky, abstracted, pull it together” sense re-merged in a flashback.


Performance by Mary Beth Edelson, Jessica Higgins and Shigeko Kubota
at the Guggenheim preview reception for The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia,
1860- 1989, (AKA the Buddha show).Alison Knowles is handed Edelson's
camera to record the spontaneous performative event.
Performance concept by Mary Beth Edelson, 2009.


In my brief wander upward Larry Miller’s piece about his mother strongly stood out as a relation to the Fluxus room, for me one of the most important later Fluxus artists to exchange and influence the next generation of artists who ponder the movement. He stood by his work talking as only he can about all that went into the work or the people who happened to be there, an event itself. The rambling wild thoughts became a trip about hypnosis, identity and Jack Kerouac who he happened to be reading when he made the piece.

I walked back into the room and found myself drawn to the wonderful typography of Fluxus. The bold black lines and design that often draws me in and did as a child, all those boxes I associate with Maciunas and Brecht. I remember trying to sort through my own toys and being particularly fascinated by toys that came in boxes with pieces.

It was important for me to see George Brecht's Water Yam, 1963 and Fluxus Internationale Festspiele Neuester Music. Several times during my childhood and very early adulthood I visited George Brecht. The few times I met him he had such charm with such fierce ideas. One intriguing visit took place in Koln at a large dinner with Alison Knowles, myself, her travel companion, Hermann Braun and several others who had joined us. At a large bistro specialized in types of beer, a large tub arrived at the table out of which emerged the enormous head of a roasted pig with hoofs and tail decorating the rim. The body was simply missing. The pig's head was cooked and shiny, looking like it might open an eye. As the evening went by there were many rounds of Kilsch required to go with stories of friends and we talked about how it was for me working with Alison at the WDR Radio station in Koln. The laughter, smoke and faces are still etched in my memory. Alison Knowles, my mother, invited me the following day on a trip to the Cathedral, it reminded me of a lighted sand castle as we climbed arduously to the top. Decades later on return I still associated Koln with Kilsch, lighted castles and WDR Horspiels and remember the climb standing in the Guggenheim.

Being at The Third Mind also brings me back to John Cage's visits with my mother and the process of everyday life and everyday art. I saw so much of that in both of them. The outlines of life, the questions and experiences of life art, nature, food and the outlines of John's smile ... the thought of trying one of their mushrooms with concern as they looked them up in a big book ... gentle giants ... I wasn't so sure I should try them, but they smelled good and the names were so beautiful ... and John had co-founded the New York Mycological Society.


Alison Knowles, The Giant Bean Turner, 1995

Alison would later emerge from the swaying architecture carrying the beans in a way I can only begin to say how much I associate a large part of my early adolescence with constant thoughts about beans, whether in soup or in art the point was consistently pondered. She walked with her statuesque gait and appeared and disappeared being with the art she moved through her event. Somehow it had the extra-ordinary appeal of the ordinary with in it. She was just walking down the path.

I could go on reminiscing about many of the others works in this show and the amazing culture and people I was lucky enough to meet that evening. But I will save that for another time and hope this vignette offers a view of experience reflected back into the eyes of a grown child of art who later became an artist herself.


Jessica Higgins

#permalink posted by Erika Knerr : 5/18/2009 03:13:00 PM

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Brooklyn DIY Premier MOMA Feb 25, 2009


IMAGE of: Mike Ballou interview
by artist Claire McConaughy
MEMORY LANE
I got a bunch of emails about a documentary film on the Williamsburg art scene. I thought it would be interesting and I knew everyone from the neighborhood would be there, so, I let it sit in my email in box. I wasn’t completely sure about whether I should go or not. I didn’t even know this film was being made. I’ve been in Williamsburg for ages, but then again, I spend a lot of time in my studio. Then I got an email from my old pal Erika Knerr (who by the way was the person who first took me to Four Walls back in …....hmmmm…let’s say 1990 or 91? Could that be right? Yikes.) Erika emailed and said she was coming to town to go to the premier and wanted to know if I wanted to go with her. Having a pal to cavort with always makes me more into things, so I said yes. Internally I was still a little reserved about going. If I wasn’t in it and I didn’t even know that it was being made I just figured all the cool popular kids would be there and I would be just watching all the fun everyone else had while I was in my studio painting (kind of like now).


IMAGE of: Interviewees

THE MOMA PREMIER
Long story short, Erika couldn’t make it and I went with a new filmmaker friend who is about as far away from the Williamsburg art scene as my new teaching job at Bergen Community College, in Paramus NJ. Gregg Biermann is way cool and he’s a filmmaker so, I thought he could help me be objective when I inevitably would get caught up in recognizing people and places or remembering if I was at some opening or party.

Marcin Ramocki introduced his film, Brooklyn DIY, at the Museum of Modern Art. He had that self-effacing, open quality that Williamsburg artists had and obviously still have so, I was ready to go down memory lane.

Whether I was watching old footage of Test Site mega-parties or succinct, provocative interviews with artists like Ebon Fisher and Ward Shelley, I was glued. The film had an incredibly tough challenge: approximately fifteen years, artists, art making, art in every style and medium possible, community, gentrification, freedom, change, artist run venues, renegades, real estate, documentation and lack of documentation, memory and it’s fallibility, the list of obstacles to creating an accurate film about this subject seemed insurmountable. And here’s the topper – how to make this film an artwork – a living thing that is about the present integrated with the past. With all the obstacles Ramocki faced he also had the best resources any filmmaker could ask for, a bunch of artists. Matt Freedman opened the film with a performance of drawing the history of Williamsburg before the artists came on a white board while Tim Spelios played a drum. Mike Ballou did the majority of his interview wearing a paper maché bear head. (Ken Burns would pay cash money for that.) Amy Sillman was insightful and didn’t mince words while petting her dog. Joe Amhrein, who always seems at ease because of his sincerity and dedication to art. Wild loft party footage. Aron Namenwirth and Nancy Horowitz sitting beside an art installation of Zoe Sheehan Saldaña’s plants growing under fluorescent lights. And I save him for last so you can bow your heads when I invoke the name, “Gene Pool”.


IMAGE of: Gene Pool

Afterward, my present tense colleague, Gregg liked it. I was in a fog. I really wasn’t sure what I thought about the film objectively as a documentary. The audience was packed with Williamsburg artists. All of the well-known characters were there, only a few were missing, the critics and writers attended, and of course the Williamsburg artists were there in true form; Williamsburg doesn’t dress up even for MOMA, and they always look great. Part of my fog was nostalgia and part was that the film was stirring up feelings of being inspired. That time was inspiring. The participants were inspired. Clearly Marcin Ramocki was inspired and submerged himself in the material for two years and sunk his retirement account into it, but that’s nothing any artist wouldn’t do, right?

When it was over I didn’t go to the after party. I guessed that the conversation mixed with beer could go a number of ways, of course a lot of praise for Marcin’s hard work and dedication, which he deserved, and opinions on the quality of the film? Would arm wrestling ensue? Would this be Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman at the White Horse? If any crowd could do that this one could. Other responses would obviously be about accuracy or treatment of different aspects of the scene. I went home and emailed Marcin asking for an interview.


IMAGE of: Ward Shelley showing a “timeline” of the history of the Williamsburg art scene.

THE INTERVIEW
We made arrangements to meet at Fanny’s restaurant on Graham Avenue. When Marcin politely tried to give me directions my Williamsburg attitude popped up as I quickly told him that I’ve lived here forever and I knew the way. Did I mention that Williamsburg artists wear time spent in the trenches like Purple Hearts?

Marcin Ramocki is a media artist, professor, curator, he ran the art space, vertexlist, for five years and has made two feature films. In his artwork he is interested in collecting groups of information so, the segue into organizing historical data into a documentary film is a natural step for him. His approach to organizing this sort of information is not from an analytical perspective even though he does have an interest in mathematics. We talked about Mark Lombardi’s drawings of diagrams of conspiracies as having a relationship to the way he parses information into art.

When he gathers information and composes it into an art work he is both sensitive and practical. He chooses the medium that is appropriate for the subject and figures out how best to achieve it. He has as much as he can afford time and money wise and in the end utilizes what he has available. He gave two years, his retirement fund and his dedication to this film. He recognizes that there may be more to cover on the subject so, as well as seeing his project as complete in its own rite, it can also function as inspiration for hopefully more attention to the Williamsburg art scene. Ramocki emphasized, “This obviously is not the final historic story that everybody will have to follow. It is just one story of certain communities. So, I don’t want people to think that just because I didn’t include something it’s a final word. I’m looking forward to all these other aspects of the story to be covered by someone else because obviously I can’t. Probably if I made it the goal of my life to make a ten hour documentary about the Williamsburg art scene I could maybe do it, but within the framework of what I started, I couldn’t so, I just want people to be aware of that and instead of thinking why wasn’t so and so in it they should think ‘hey why don’t I make something about so and so myself’ because that’s the whole idea of it. I’m just another guy living here. I don’t have any money and I made this with my salary and my retirement fund which I don’t have any more. That’s all there is to it. An idiosyncratic story of Williamsburg. I personally believe that I at least touched upon the important things that were formative.”


IMAGE of: Joe Amrhein

The interviews that framed the historical footage in the film; Ebon Fisher, Amy Sillman, Mike Ballou, Joe Amhrein, Ward Shelly, Jude Talllichet, Matt Freeman, Ken Butler, etc., were wonderful. As Ramocki said at the premier, Williamsburg artists aren’t shy. Ramocki said that the interviews that became performances such as Mike Ballou talking with a bear head on and Ken Butler demonstrating his instruments occurred naturally. The stories of filming the interviews were charming and the ones that got away were good to know about. One story Ramocki recounted about an interview he would’ve liked in the film was the guy who owns De Vito Paints on Graham Ave. “Originally his customers were people from the Italian community who painted their houses for communion celebrations, then there was a period when no one bought paint. When the artists came it was the gallerists coming in to buy paint for their walls. He told the story of this area though sales of house paint! And I thought ‘wow this could be the bridge between the community that was here before, to the new community of artists’, but he said he wouldn’t do it. I think he just didn’t like being on camera.” Some other people were just camera shy so, some of them ended up being narrators. Eric Heist, of Momenta, who doesn’t appear in the film was absent because of scheduling problems. Ramocki also talked about additional footage of Joe Amrhein discussing Mark Lombardi’s work, that didn’t make the final cut because it felt like a separate subject and became overly dramatic due to Lombardi’s suicide.


IMAGE of: Test Site

ANTHROPOLGY OF A CULTURE
Ramocki was very aware of the vastness of his subject and the challenge of “representing the different ‘tribes‘ of Williamsburg” and he acknowledged that he had his own proclivities because of affiliation with his ’tribe’.

When I asked him what he hoped the audience outside the art world would take away from his film he said, “When I was doing the interviews I would tell them to not assume that everybody knows what we’re talking about. That was why I basically sampled different little pockets of Williamsburg and made stories. Obviously I couldn’t cover eveything. I made representative stories and themes. We’ll see, but hopefully they’ll get a sense of this homemade artist community that really can happen in any city with a little luck. Berlin is certainly a similar community and I got an email from someone in Toronto who wanted to see it because he said that they have a couple of wanna be Williamsburgs in Toronto so, they want to see what I have to say. And I think its true that a lot of large cities have versions of Williamsburg. So they’re probably going to get a kick out of it. There’s sufficient amount of fun and party for most people to enjoy it.”


IMAGE of: Giglio

Given seven to ten more minutes of film, he would’ve liked to have seen a deeper discussion of the artists in relationshihp to and the pre-existing neighborhood. Since there was so much to cover regarding the art scene and its relationship to the time, location and economic environment, he affectionately said he made the choice to focus on the artists and how they became a community, “My goal was to show this funny community. This happy, funny place.”

He described the process of making the film as a collaboration. He gave great credit to his editor Jessie Stead for her expertise, wittiness and female perspective on editing. He praised Lalo Molina the director of photography. And noted the communal spirit of the crew and subjects as being key in the realization of the project. He humbly added, “This is just one film from one poor Polish guy.” When asked who encouraged him most he responded, “Everybody was into being a part of the film and encouraging the making of it. From the moment Mike Ballou opened the archives of Four Walls. Obviously it needed to be done. There was definitely a need in the community to do it. I don’t know if I was the best person to do it, but there was talk about this person and that person making a documentary, but I was the one to do it. So, I guess my little documentary is the first after all.” We ended by talking about rumors concerning a “real documentary” being made with a “real producer from Hollywood” with “real money” to which Ramocki added, “I feel comfortable being ‘unreal”.”

All photos are stills from “Brooklyn DIY”.
http://www.ramocki.net/brooklyndiy.html



#permalink posted by Erika Knerr : 3/28/2009 11:29:00 AM

Thursday, March 12, 2009

The Green Light Tour


by artist correspondent Eva Mantell

On Saturday February 7th, 2009, a small group from the Arts Council of Princeton set off with me to New York City to explore green art and design. Picture us all driving in an ordinary, smog-producing van from New Jersey through a tunnel and emerging into an imaginary world, the green city, a model of sustainable living, with organic gardens growing up the sides of friendly buildings and clean streets filled with cheerful, creative citizens.

This week Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy, Nobel-Prize Winner, physicist, was interviewed in the New York Times and let it be known from the top down that we need a revolution in science and technology. We need replacements for fossil fuels and new ways to curb CO 2 emissions. Solar needs a serious upgrade. Alternative fuels and clean ways to burn coal need to be invented PRONTO. We knew this, but now you know it too.

Calling all engineers, P.H.D's, politicians and investors: start small, start big, be brilliant, talk amongst yourselves, make it happen, and then lay it on us. We'll take one in every color.

We, the consumers. What exactly are our obligations towards being sustainable, when we don't have enough green to invest in green updates, and to buy those green treats? What's happening to the dream when everything is tasting so stale right about now?

The environment has been on my mind for about 20 years now. For quite a while I have been making my own art out of broken umbrellas, the mail, magazines and other abject ingredients, including most recently, paper coffee cups. Seeing that those paper cups we throw away are in effect a group environmental sculpture anyway, on view at your local landfill. I thought I'd see what I could do with this vessel, this little disposable grail that has known the human touch and taste of human lips. I took a few photos of some pieces in the snow that fell last week, putting the coffee cups back on the ground where they were headed anyway. Finding what is human in these things, finding something new to do with them, is now eagerly called "recycling in art," which my literal mind says ought to be taking old paintings or sculptures and grinding them up into new ones, or something like that (not a bad idea!). My own use of the stuff around me presents a situation where a particular material is being asked to behave in a way that argues against its original utility. It's not literal recycling, but a lament for our relationship to the environment.

But it's fair to say you can recycle in jewelry, as mining new metals actually pollutes a great deal, and you can literally melt down old pieces to make new ones. Meet Lisa Linhardt, a young jewelry designer in the East Village, whose entire M.O. embodies environmental and socially conscious principles. From her artful, salvaged display cases to her reuse of metals from existing pieces to her support of education and the arts in the developing world, she really embodies a new approach. The jewelry is cool and lovely and the old anthropologist in me practically had a cow when I saw her carving tagua nuts into rings. These nuts apparently drop from trees in the rain forests of Ecuador and are an eco-friendly substitute for ivory. I might have to get some myself and check back with you soon.


At the studio of I-Beam Design in Chelsea, Suzan Wines is in the middle of preparing for her class at Cooper Union on the design of the city when we arrive. The city of the future is not the beautiful emerald vision of my dreams, but an unsafe, unsanitary chaos with populations surging and infrastructures overburdened or non-existent. Megacities in shambles. She and her partner Azin Valy created a prize-winning design for refugee housing using the simple idea of fitting wooden shipping pallets together to create temporary shelters that can be plastic sheeted, insulated with local materials, stuccoed, and gradually expanded as needed. The idea is so simple, so practical, so confident, so humane, as medical supplies and food will be delivered on pallets, so the materials will be right there.

But to Wines the idea isn't enough. The pallet house has been built as a model, but has yet to house or help a population of refugees anywhere in the world. Ideas can begin to seem like a luxury. But what ideas: we get to see many designs of cool urban renovations that have been built and an as yet only imaginary green city complex in Manchester, England, with canals and canal boats that clip right onto the apartments, like floating elevators. Oh, to float my boat.


Onto Black and White Gallery in the Terminal Building in Chelsea on 11th Ave and 28th St., we meet up with three artists using clothing in their work: it's hands-on work with material which seems so manageable, so personal and so private after our discussions of architecture within such a complicated context. Orly Cogan traces sketches of femininity in thread, making stops to embroider some mythic moments, Adam Niklewicz crafts Freudian situations from memory and dreams, and Tamara Kostianovsky creates exposed, animal flesh from girlish clothes. The body is still a funny, mythic and ultimately tragic place.



Our last stop is Paula Hayes, a sculptor, thinker and landscape artist whose soft forms containing plants sit on urban rooftops, balconies and in the wilder contexts of suburban landscape. It's a soft world in here as one translucent bulbous element after another peeks out at us. As she speaks about her art she gently puts on a living necklace, an epiphyte plant that would originally nestle in the crook of a tropical tree. The boundaries are getting soft again, as she seems to me to change herself into a kind of tree, supporting another species on her skin. Her artworks are messages in bottles she is sending into the future. Tend, nurture, protect, spray with mist, repeat.


#permalink posted by Erika Knerr : 3/12/2009 09:45:00 PM

Friday, February 06, 2009

The NEA In The Age Of Obama
Who Will Benefit From The Value Of Creativity





by artist Nayana Glazier

New work emerges publicly by way of a daunting task. It can overwhelm even the most outspoken of artists. Whether by way of a confusing relationship between pre-existing venue and artist, or, by way of artists organizing their own venues. The goal, to have their work experienced by others in a meaningful way, from the margins of their price oriented societies, increasingly supports the necessity of a mutually reinforcing and ever present backdrop. The commercial art gallery, this, along with the more subjective questions of artistic integrity etc.

Art making takes everything you've got. Your studio is full and you're ready to show your work, but then you hit the insurmountable. The success of your art making seems measured rather by who is showing your work, not by what the work is itself. You're sinking into a suspicion that for generations your own family-of-(wo)man has been buying into a perceived exclusivity. Perhaps this sense of the apartness is a driving factor in the evolution of the exhibition space from the more traditional gallery to what was formalized in the 1980's, by what the late Senator Helms raged against, the Artists' Space Movement in the age of the uncensored NEA. Yet, clearly it seems to many of us that for all time, the artist-gallery relationship, or rather the perceived relationship, has spurred artists to seek alternatives, if only for the sake of integrity in the artist to artist relationship.


Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery (announcement)

I don't often make it down to the city, however my spies do. Apparently, in the art capital of the world, while the future of art cannot be determined, the present itself is becoming increasingly unpredictable as well. On exhibition from September 6, 2008 to October 4, 2008 at the James Cohan Gallery (Chelsea, 533 West 26th Street, NYC) was the combination of the Chinese conceptualist Xu Zhen, Dutch sculptor Folkert de Jong and NYC based artist Martha Colburn. The program was presented as three separate exhibitions flowing together to create a conversation of artistic expression.


Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery, Chelsea

What follows includes quotes from Martha Colburn, Film artist and Elyse Goldberg, Director of the James Cohan Gallery. I'll also include Stephen Cahill, multimedia artist, Turners Falls MA and Ric Sanchez, Painter and multimedia artist, Orlando Florida on the issue of the perceived relationships between artists, galleries and art making in the USA today.


Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery, Chelsea
Martha Colburn (NYC): Art can't be In a cave to be seen by others and I think the gallery is a great place for artists which do not, for instance, show in museums or caves…I show in cinemas, music venues, lots of squats in Europe and festivals, the web, and galleries, and now I remember, I have shown in a cave in France more than once, so I guess I have to re-call the cave comments.
Stephen Cahill (Turners Falls): I've never shown in a gallery, I've submitted to a couple places, either 'we're not showing that kind of work' or 'its too big.'

Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery, Chelsea

What is the future of the artist-gallery relationship and what is this relationship now? Emerging artists often talk about galleries as they might describe the pyramid rituals of the Pharos. Few actually even know the real process of creating a relationship. Perhaps the most admirable artist is one who produces art for arts sake alone and does not care if others see or interpret their work. But there are many more artists who crave blessings for turning the pedestrian into a rarity.
Stephen Cahill: It was one of those things where it seemed unattainable. If you think about the large amount of people producing work and the small amount of venues, it's a game of odds almost.

Martha Colburn: They saw my film at Art Basel Statements, which is a competitive show, next to the big hall of big shots…

Elyse Goldberg (NYC): We saw her work (Martha Colburn) at Art Unlimited in Basel Switzerland.
When discovered by James Cohan Gallery, however, Colburn had the benefit of inclusion in the Basel Art Fair. By contrast, Cahill does not have the benefit of being featured in a highly respected exhibition to bring attention to himself. Take this as a sample of the often complicated way in which artists reach larger audiences. They may need to be previously established at some level and, despite exceptions, rarely do commercial galleries put the time into an artist based purely on the quality of their work. This, creating a level of perceived difficulty.
Ric Sanchez (Orlando): I think galleries are too rigid and demanding. They want you to be established before they offer you space.
Obviously galleries can't accept every artist who sends work. Though, with the growing percentage of artists taking exhibition space into their own hands, will the artist-gallery relationship, and in turn the gallery-collector relationship, change?


Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery, Chelsea

Many artists feel that "obscurity" may be the highest level of visibility their work ever achieves. Euro-centric art history apologizes for the "cultivation" process with myths of great masters wrestling with talent arriving later at a larger more visible stage that takes an entire lifetime to achieve. Or, more frequently, occurs after death. Such is the acceptance of an invisible hand chaining a series of seemingly random events to an inevitable accomplishment of having work presented before a wider audience. In today's click driven post Warhol media minute it has become a miniscule accomplishment. In such a paradigm an artist's primary goal is arranged around having their work seen by the maximum number of people. Those who excel at this often do not know what they have achieved and those who have not attribute the fact to the insurmountable.
Martha Colburn: I was just so happy to have the film show in NY … I don't think I've ever felt obscure. When I really got rolling, I just made lots of records and books and films. I got my more professional "art-world..." I got the ball rolling in Europe for five years before coming to NY and made installations and shows all over the world.
What does showing in a gallery setting as opposed to an improvised exhibition space present for the artist? Each day artists become more resourceful about where and to whom they present their work. Counter to the gallery paradigm, this strategic approach brings more profound meaning to the work. Yet it is the prospect of a sale that draws artists back to the gallery experience and with it the perceived status they achieve through price.
Elyse Goldberg: We have beginning collectors, collectors who have known the gallery for many years and/or come here specifically for artists that they are interested in collecting. This is quite nice, because in the process we can introduce them to other artists whose work they may not be aware of. Of course, museum curators and directors as well as art consultants frequent the gallery.
Gallery exhibitions are one way emerging artists build a collector base. Alternative venues rarely provide a draw from more established artists' work and collectors have difficulty learning about them. While finding venues is a necessity, equally necessary is finding new ways to attract the attention of collectors, curators and museum directors to them. Though emerging artists believe that their ultimate goal is to produce a living income from their work, artists who's work stands on its own may feel the opposite. The ultimate goal being to improve their work; to reach to a higher level of artistic expression and human understanding. Accordingly art would simply exist to present ideas and feelings to a public audience.
Stephen Cahill: I'm not truly all that interested in showing in a gallery anymore, my works sell in the venues I'm putting them in now and I don't need to sell the work. I do it for me.

Elyse Goldberg: The goal of exhibition is always to present the viewing public with works that illuminate the artists' ideas. Hopefully these works will raise questions. A positive or negative response is always welcome.

Stephen Cahill, Turners Falls, MA

Galleries in more obscure locations like the Nashawannuck Gallery in Easthampton MA or The Gallery In The Woods in Brattleboro Vermont use space differently than galleries in more high profile locations. In order to remain viable they present artisans and craftsman made objects which provide financial stability while reserving space to show artists with more experimental ambitions. The ability to present works based solely on feeling or expression is a luxury mainly afforded by co-presenting other objects for sale in the setting. Though these venues present art of no less quality this further perpetuates questions about the artist-gallery relationship and the work's relative appeal to viewers and potential collectors.


Stephen Cahill, Turners Falls, MA
Martha Colburn: Taste does not matter, at the end of the day, I think the artists determine most everything. With original, motivated and innovative work taking the stage because it is just those things. For real. Not for fake.
Ultimately I think alternative venues serve as locations that hold honesty tightly in their hands. To quote Lowell Downey1. of Hatley Martin Cultural Forum, San Francisco, 1992, "Freedom of expression is probably the second most significant thing that art organizations have yet to achieve. Freedom of expression cannot be tied to financial support." Or, Veronica Enrique1., artist organizer, San Diego, 1992, "But our greatest accomplishment has nothing to do with the material attributes of our spaces or what is done within them. Rendering a true reflection of artists in their society is how artists' organizations have created an attitude."

Yes, galleries like the James Cohan Gallery, Gallery In The Woods and Nashawannuck Gallery do important work and can be different, presenting challenging ideas to the public for their view, but generally commercial spaces coerce by default, because they perpetuate the accurate perception of an industrial pyramid.
Nayana Glazier: What do you think galleries' expectations are for artists and their work?

Martha Colburn: That it be great and get better, or I guess they trade you in for someone else. I would do the same.

Ric Sanchez, Orlando, Florida

It is this that creates the fear in emerging artists. They fear the initial rejection and if they are accepted to present their work they fear possible rejection following on. I have always subscribed to the philosophy that the worst thing that can happen is the word "NO" and it is by that very word that the impression of the impossible goal of the gallery finds its vector.
Martha Colburn: I didn't do the galleries for many years, but that's because my scene was (that) underground, but it still is, I mean one should not exclude the other. It's fine if people make that choice, but I don't see why in such a big world excluding any venue makes any sense.
To quote Helen Glazer1. of The Rosenberg Gallery, Baltimore, 1992 "Here in Baltimore, 15 years ago, it seemed as if there were hardly any mid-career artists around. Unless they had teaching jobs, ambitious artists tended to flee to a larger metropolis - such as New York - at the first opportunity. I credit the artists' spaces that came on the scene about 10 years ago with helping to change the climate for artists, encouraging them to stay and contribute to the cultural life of the community… artists in Baltimore and Washington by and large might as well have been 400 miles apart rather than 40, but as they began to exhibit together in the alternative galleries, the two communities became acquainted, to our mutual benefit."

That really is the hit of it all. If artists are making the work, why do we in fact care what type of venue it is presented in, who sees it and if it ever sells? Should it always be at its core about the creation (of the art) above all else? Can satisfaction come from presenting ones art to an audience, or come from the recognition that others feel the same way, or have had the same experiences? Ultimately human experience is universal to humanity, art being a large carrier for the sharing of those experiences. The 'movement' of artists working for themselves and providing their artist run venues for presentation is hardly a new one.


Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery, Chelsea
Martha Colburn: Creativity put to the purpose of art and not industry or the exploitation of other people or for the evils of the world can be nothing but a good thing, be it for sale or not. The 'direction' of art, the world's too big to figure that out.

Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery, Chelsea

By contrast I quote Edmund Cardoni1., Hallwalls, Buffalo, 1992 "Despite all the efforts of artists' organizations and the artists we serve, we failed to change society even enough to ensure our own continued survival, to preserve our little niche. We thought the alternative spaces we had created (both literally and in the larger sense) were a permanent feature of the American landscape, but we have found out they can be closed. Those of us not burnt out, with something still left to sacrifice, and with the resourcefulness of outlaws, will have to take to the hills and carry on the fight. Allow no quarter. Don't try to appease them. Corporations and governments will not help us now. Even the Constitution will not protect us. It's a whole new ballgame."

Or, Linda Burnham1. of Highways, Santa Monica,1992, "…I'm sure it is considered politically incorrect to admit this, but there is not one artists' organization I know of that is more than two steps from disaster at all times. It is no wonder that the smallest puff of wind from Jesse Helms has sent us reeling. Organizations that were borderline last year are now way behind and exhausted from dealing with the censorship crisis, let alone the failing economy that has reduced subscriptions, memberships, donations, and ticket sales."


Stephen Cahill, Turners Falls, MA

While the direction of art may be unpredictable all we, as a community, are left to do is to shape our own direction. Keeping our work as integral as possible, forming our own exhibition spaces or working with the few galleries who are on the same page.
Elyse Goldberg: I believe that all artists, like musicians, writers, filmmakers, any person who creates anything, would hope that you have produced something that has 'something' to say, that can touch another person's awareness. That can have an effect whether it engages, lifts one's spirits or effects profound indignation. Basically it is to communicate. Selling the work is always amazing, no matter how many times I have witnessed it. People who acquire art are to be acknowledged. They keep the fires burning, and their belief in the power of art is inspirational. This may sound naïve, as everyone is obsessed about talking about the market and high prices, low prices or no prices. I believe In the basic presumption of art which is always to try to challenge the status quo and take us on a journey.
This is perhaps the most essential part of this whole question. What is art's purpose in the context of the artist-gallery relationship and the artists who develop alternative venues and progressive galleries? Is it along Elyse Goldberg's suggestion to fulfill the need to present work and affect others with expression?

One might wonder what those obsessed with the desire to achieve presentation at a perceived "high level" gallery are truly after. I too have always sustained that the goal in my own work is to express and evoke a feeling in a viewer, positive or negative; for me, this effect makes the work a success, regardless of the venue or number of viewers. But, is It essentially this idea and desire that at times sees artists organizing their own venues and in essence their own directions? How did artists fail to effect the direction of the gallery system as we know it today?


Stephen Cahill, Turners Falls, MA

I quote Joshua Selman of Artist Organized Art, 2007 "Dealers say to artists, 'We want you to think creatively. Spend all your studio time thinking, feeling, practicing as creatively as possible. We are looking for only the most creatively minded artists. Meanwhile, we (the commercial dealers) will think strategically.' After ten years, who do you think is going to come out on top?"


1. Organizing Artists : A Document and Directory of the National Association of Artists' Organizations by Dc National Association of Artists' Organizations, Washington, published 1992

2. National Endowment for the Arts (2000). The National Endowment for the Arts 1965-2000: A Brief Chronology of Federal Support for the Arts. Washington, DC: National Endowment for the Arts.

Elyse Goldberg, Director James Cohan Gallery, New York, NY http://www.jamescohan.com
Martha Colburn, New York, NY, Multimedia Artist http://www.marthacolburn.com/
Stephen Cahill, Turners Falls MA, Multi Media Artist doosel9 at yahoo dot com
Richard Sanchez, Orlando FL, Multi Media Artist and Painter http://www.myspace.com/artbytherls

James Cohan Gallery 533 West 26th Street New York NY 10001 Tel 212.714.9500 Fax 212.714.9510 Hours Tuesday - Saturday, 10am - 6pmhttp://www.jamescohan.com
Nashawannuck Gallery, 40 Cottage Street, Easthampton, MA 01027 http://www.nashawannuckgallery.com
Gallery in the Woods, 145 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT 05301 http://www.galleryinthewoods.com/


Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery, Chelsea





#permalink posted by Nayana : 2/06/2009 01:06:00 PM

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Aron Namenwirth at Vertexlist
“Made in U.S.A” Williamsburg, Brooklyn


Aron Namenwirth, Jay Davis, Kelly, Dan Kopp and "Obama"
138 Bayard Street, Brooklyn NY 11222
"Made in U.S.A" on display until February 1, 2009
http://www.vertexlist.net/


by Erika Knerr

December 14, 2008: I arrived at the gallery and spoke with Marcin Ramocki, the founder of the gallery while waiting for Aron to arrive.

Erika Knerr: Is this the old Four Walls Space?

Marcin Ramocki: Yes, it was Four Walls until 1999, then Leo Koenig’s first space in 1999, then Mike Ballou’s Film and Slide Club, then Vertex List since 2003. I did five years and I just passed the space on to a friend of mine, Charles Beronio, who’s going to do the next five years.

EK: And will it remain vertexList?

MR: Yes. We are starting our second five years. Charles is already the director and Sunday is my day to be here. For me five years of an artist running a gallery is enough.

(Phone rings) That’s Aron. What’s up? He’s coming here.

(Aron was watching his gallery artMovingProjects...) http://www.artmovingprojects.com/ (...which opened John Giglio’s thoughtful show, “Designing Heaven,” the night before.)

EK: How often did you do shows, was it a full schedule?

MR: We’re open 3 days a week and we had 8-9 shows a year. This space took off. It’s a great location because everybody knows it as Four Walls.

EK: It’s a great legacy to have especially as an artist run space. Is the new director also an artist?

MR: Yes, he’s an artist and has his studio in the back.

EK: How was the opening last night?


Mary Baronne and Tom Moody

MR: It was good. We had about 100 people. There was also a performance by Glomag. http://glomag.com/. It’s much easier for me now because there’s less pressure since I’m not in charge. I still do everything that’s online, we have a blog http://vertexlist.blogspot.com/, so I still write that. Sometimes the blog gets rolling and sometimes we’re all doing other things. This has been a nice, interesting adventure; it was five years of my life. You’re welcome to check out the back, you probably know the way.

EK: It’s been a long time since I’ve been here.

I went to the back and reveled a bit in my memory of attending Four Walls events there and was introduced to Brian Conley, who Marcin interviewed for his documentary on the Williamsburg Art scene premiering at MOMA on February 25, 2009. Aron arrives to do the interview and talk to me about his show, but we end up bull shitting in the back room for an hour with beers beforehand.

Aron Namenwirth: I came to New York in 1987. I was living in New Jersey, but half my friends were here in Williamsburg. We all left Yale in 87 and I moved to Hoboken with John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage, Matvey Levenstein, and Joe Begonia. We split up, half of us, like Jim McShea and Dik Liu and some of my other friends where here, so I would be coming out here as much as I was going to the Lower East Side, which was also what was going on then, so I’d just come over the Williamsburg Bridge. It was really fun. It freaked me out a little bit, some of the stuff that was happening on the waterfront, the movies they were showing about sex change operations and penile insertions. I was pretty green back then.

Brian Conley: There were a lot of intense characters.

AN: There was this place called the Freezer that was a little space upstairs on Grand Street. It wasn’t a gallery proper. It was a performance space. People would do performance art. Then at the gallery that I moved into, artists were coming by all the time to pick up there work, which I didn’t have and the place was just trashed and the city was coming after me because they had given them all this grant money for gear and they took the money and split.

BC: Who was that?

AN: I don’t want to name any names. They got all this money at the very end. It was a time when spaces like Brand-Name Damages and Minor Injury finally started receiving money.

BC: This was non-profit?

AN: I don’t know if they had status but they got grants and what they did was bought really expensive video recording equipment, TVs, stereo equipment and then they just split. They bought gear for themselves and they closed up shop. Then I was getting these letters? That was the early years.

I got an email this morning from Amy Sillman apologizing for not being at the opening last night.

MR: Amy, Amy’s interview was awesome. She’s the one (in the documentary) that dished some dirt.

AN: She wouldn’t be afraid to do that?

After an interesting dialogue about Brian Conley’s project in the Middle East we get back to Aron’s Show.

MR: You saw Osama Bin Laden out front in the gallery? No one can tell it’s Osama Bin Laden.


(left) "Osama Bin Laden," (right) John Berens w/ Bin Laden

AN: I had a guy all the way at the other end of the gallery saying, “is it Santa Claus? Castro?”

BC: That’s Obama at the other end right? He’s got the George Washington curls?

AN: Yeah, it’s Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bush, Bin Laden. And there’s the Spirit Surfers.

MR: And the abstract stuff.

AN: It’s not abstract stuff. It’s imagery. “Spirit Surfers” is all these religious leaders. Jesus, from Jesus Christ superstar, which I noticed their doing again, Mohammed, Buddha, Martin Luther King and Osama again and they’re all competing in this one little painting. It becomes a blurry face.


"Spirit Surfers"

BC: What? Did you just map them all on top of each other?

AN: Each one occupies a different grid and so there are four grids.

BC: So they’re not on top of each other, they are beside each other.

AN: They’re next to each other. Each one occupies one of the four grids, then it repeats. So you’re just getting one fourth of the information. And then there are five images in this painting, so one is completely covered. Mohammed is completely covered by Martin Luther King? I’m particularly fond of that painting. I just can’t stand organized religion. It seemed like a nice way to deal with it.

BC: So you went to Yale? Who did you study with there?

AN: I’d say the people now that had the greatest impact on me would be Mel Bochner and Andrew Forge and Jake Berthot.

BC: That was a really divergent group.

AN: Yeah, really divergent. Everyone was in complete disagreement. William Bailey was there. That was one of the first things I noticed when I started doing studio visits, because I would line them up boom, boom, boom, one after the next and I’d take notes and I noticed how they would completely contradict each other. So I became very skeptical of any kind of criticism at that point because there was no consensus. It was really confusing to be a student there then. The sculpture department was really good and I hung out over there. Oh, and Veja Celmins was one of my favorite teachers there. She was great to have in the studio.

BC: I’m sure Mel Bochner was pretty hardcore.

AN: He was totally hardcore but he saved my ass because?

BC: This was in the 80's right? He was doing those terrible paintings then.

AN: Yeah the 80's. I didn’t have any work after my first semester and they did these pit crits and I just had all this crap on the floor of my studio. Everyone else had seven paintings that they put up and I didn’t have crap. I just had all these drawings and they were all crumpled and they were all over and I was freaked because it was my turn. My friends dragged all my work out of my studio and left it on the floor of the pit and the faculty was silent. No one had anything to say. And I didn’t have anything to say. It was one of those incredibly awkward silences and then Mel Bochner says, “This is the most interesting work of this class”. And then all of the sudden everyone had all these great things to say. They’d pick up one little thing and pass it around. It looked like scatter art?

EK: Do you want to talk out front, Aron, with the work... This is the piece you were talking about with the intermix of religious icons? I love this piece. The body of work is great together as a whole show. I think it’s really cool that it’s come together in this moment.


Mary Alpern, John Illig, Erika Knerr, Sakurako Shimizu
Photography: John Bailey

AN: Well I finished most of the show in 2007. I didn’t work on much of the show at all this year.

EK: When did you do Obama?

AN: I did Hillary and Obama at the same time. I did her first and then he followed. They were both finished before he won New Hampshire. I thought she was probably going to win, but I liked him better. He was my first choice. Then when he won I was disappointed that he didn’t pick Hillary for his VP.

EK: Then you thought, now I have to do a Biden? lol

AN: No, No, there isn’t going to be a Biden.

EK: It’s not going to continue, this project?

AN: I don’t know. I never know. I doubt that I would just sever it, but I’ve been working on this work for 6-7 years. I’ve done 2 other previous shows of work that led up to this. They were more like this one, North and South. They are stills from the North Pole and Antarctica, different glacial landscapes from both locations. Basically the images all occupy one of these four pixels so there are four images sitting next to each other on four separate grids and they just obliterate each other.


"Party City"

“Party City” is also four images, a Chinese stockbroker, guys with suits with golden shovels breaking ground for the Chinese version of the NASDAQ, the building is designed by Rem Koolhaus, and a group of soldiers from Darfur with shovels and guns. All these images are off the internet. The fourth image is a group of people, friends of my mom’s Cynthia Bloom at her memorial service. I planted all these flowers in the sand, so all these people where around the flowers in the sand thinking about her.

EK: When did your mom die?

AN: In July. So that was the last image, I painted that image over the last image of the stockbroker. I finished this one in the fall about a month before I knew about the show here. It was an all black painting at one point. I started it in 2006. This is one of the earliest ones but I kept working on it and it evolved. At first it was more morose and now I think of it more like the Mexican day of the dead, a celebration of death. The subject matter is death ridden, but I see it as a positive thing.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to paint anymore, because there are a lot of other things I like to do too. My media works and writing.

EK: I like your blog, I check in on it every so often.

AN: It’s sadly honest.

EK: I love it. That's what's great about it.

AN: I love it too, but don’t want to perseverate on it. I just write it and get it out there. It seems when there is a spelling mistake the reader loses faith so I will work on that. In terms of the paintings I’ll tell you how it all happened. After I did the first show at VertexList 2005, I was thinking that I really needed to make the subject matter of the paintings more clear. I felt like I was hiding, I was creating eye candy. I was thinking of them like Trojan horses, a way to deliver content into the world in a way that it could exist and be accepted and I began to think of that as cowardice. I wanted to bring the subject matter to the surface and see how that felt.

EK: You felt like you were obliterating the image?

AN: Yeah, the paintings that preceded these had all this really heavy content like wounded children in Israel being worked on, images from Darfur, Abu Graib etc.

EK: But they weren't necessarily readable?

AN: They were multiple images so the images when combined disappeared. They cancelled each other out.

EK: So you could talk about what the images were or have it in a text, but it wasn’t visible.

AN: It wasn’t there. So when I would talk about it, people weren’t seeing it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_1cm8Ckr0Y So I thought what if I exposed it. My biggest fear of exposing it was the collision with Chuck Close, because I thought they’re just going to look like his paintings. But I rationalized that they were coming from a completely different place. He was coming from photorealism. I was working out of the computer and out of media and off the internet, so it was such a different place that they were really very different paintings. I like Chuck Close. I admired him when I was a student, but I didn’t want to make any kind of comment about Chuck Close. I wasn’t interested in making appropriations of Chuck, it was just that this was how they were going to look and some of the things that were happening were just as close to Seurat and pointillism as they were to Close. When you back up the image comes together. He also didn’t think of the building blocks of his paintings as pixels they were dots.

EK: That’s what I was going to ask you. I looked at Chuck Close on line before I came here since he was the first thing I thought of and they don’t talk about the pixel at all, they talk about a topographical mapping so I see that they are technically different.

AN: They don’t talk about the computer. They don’t talk about Photoshop. His work came out of the printing process, which was pre pixel. But in the end they arrive at the same place. So there was a lot of anxiety, because I didn’t want that reference to be so strong to override the content of the painting.


"George Bush"

So I did this painting. This was the first of the figurative paintings, George Bush. I picked a subject of someone a totally despised. The painting came together almost effortlessly, because I had been working with these pixels for a while. I had a figurative image, where the orientation of the painting was predetermined. Like these [the combined paintings] the images are rotated. In the landscape paintings, I would turn them.

EK: You mean the image could be upside down.

AN: Yeah, I didn’t want to have a horizon line. I didn’t want them to be recognizably landscape. I wanted them to be completely open so your mind can infinitely put together different kinds of images, like bunny hunting. Something that was really bad about abstract painting, I wanted there to be bunny hunting that could happen.

With the George Bush painting it completely came together. It was so much easier for me to make the painting, because I knew exactly what I was doing with it. But then when I got the image I was completely horrified with it, of having George Bush in my studio and he’s been there for three years, looking at me. So I wasn’t sure if this was a good move.

Perry Hoberman came over and he said, “This is a terrible idea, this is too obvious, you’ve moved your work in a terrible direction. “You are making a one liner.” “He’s like a mug shot.” I made him like a mug shot so he would look a criminal, which he is. So here I had this painting. I tried flipping it upside down, but then we have George Bazelitz. So I just made another painting Osama Bin Laden, which was much more successful, he’s another villain, but works on many different levels.

The first Paintings I used the mosaic filter. I was doing them ass backwards, some cockamamie way and Marcin said, “You know there’s a filter in Photoshop for that process, just use mosaic. I just used a really simple filter to create the pixelation. I took an image that was small and blew it up and mosaiced it so I could get the one-inch square.

EK: Did you project it?

AN: No, I laid out a coordinate map, and I numbered the pixels on the top and sides and bottom. I wanted to have a one to one correspondence with the actual source, so I took a really small picture of Bin Laden that when blown up to five by four feet, the actual pixels, are what you’d be seeing. There wouldn’t be any filter used, so it would be what it is. There would be no translation.

EK: Was it a black and white image?

AN: The color is just what it was. I did change the photo. He originally had a rifle, but when it was translated he looked like he was flipping the bird at the viewer because the rifle blended into the background. I wanted the image to be more neutral, so I erased that part of the painting. I wanted to paint a picture of Bin Laden that wasn’t blatantly antagonistic, or confrontational. I also thought this painting reminded me, with the light and the color, of El Greco, or a Byzantine painting. There’s also an ambiguity about it. People don’t really get it. It’s not like the Bush were you could see it immediately. We are also conditioned to recognize Bush’s image, but with Bin Laden there are not that many pictures of him and he’s a specter. If you do a Google search for him only a handful of images come up.

Next I did the Hillary painting. I wasn’t really sure how I felt about her. I again picked a very small picture of her from her website. I did change the color. I wanted to make her more sensual. I was thinking of Hillary/Marilyn Monroe ala Andy Warhol


"Hillary"

EK: You definitely get that from it. It’s such a hot painting. She looks like Marilyn.

AN: The quality of the surface is different. It’s the only painting in the show that’s shiny. It was the result of technical issues with the birch delaminating and having to top coat it etc. But in the end I was really satisfied with the Hillary, because she seemed like the slipperiest. I never really got a feeling for who she was. And that’s the case with all of them. That’s why I think the portraits being pixilated really suits them. They all have an out of focus ghosty feeling. The way the media projects these people we have no feeling for how they really are, which is what portraiture is all about, trying to capture the essence of the person. The media gives us a detached or disassociated state of what the person actually is. I wonder if they know who they are. If they don’t know who they are, then we’re certainly never going to know. So for me the pixelation is a perfect way to represent them? There’s this whole discussion on Rhizome called the Rematerialization of Art, by Ed Halter http://rhizome.org/editorial/287

It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot as I’ve been working on this project. People that work with computers want to take what they do and bring it into the world. It’s all about taking it off the screen and making it part of the world. So with this, it’s taking something off the screen and making it part of the world, then putting it back on the screen again on my Blog. So there is this full circle, and Tom Moody talked about that in his review.
http://www.tommoody.us/archives/2008/12/14/aron-namenwirth-at-vertexlist/

EK: Obama seems to have a bit more authenticity, somehow, in his personality.

AN: I don’t know does he? I felt his first real decision was choosing Biden. Biden is from Delaware who represents all these incredibly wealthy corporations trying to find tax loopholes. There aren’t too many people that have as many connections to special interests as Joe Biden.


"Obama"

EK: The Obama is very fuzzy. Your portrait of him, it’s not as clear as Hilary. I do really like Brian's comment about the George Washington curls.

AN: Obama was still my first choice and he’s the best chance we have to heal all the wounds that were made.

EK: I like that there is a time factor in these. That they were made over 3 years; you didn’t just whip them off.

AN: I was making this argument and nobody was listening. I felt like I was all alone with this for a very long time.

EK: It gives some vindication. It’s now become timely.

AN: I was worried that these wouldn’t be shown. I wanted them to be shown before the election and it didn’t happen because of personal issues. Then Charles came to me and I think it’s even more timely. People can think about it now.

The way I came to the title was a great process. It came about before all this Made in USA stuff came about.

EK: What do you mean by Made in U.S.A stuff coming about?

AN: Right now they’re talking about redoing the New Deal. There’s this whole movement away from outsourcing. I think that’s what the Chinese NASDAQ was eluding to. I was thinking for weeks what I would call the show. Then I had found this half assembled model airplane made of balsa wood when I was cleaning out my Mom’s house. I had started it when I was 10 or 13 years old. I decided to finish it and I painted it. Then I looked at the box and I noticed it said, “Made in U.S.A.” and I thought that’s it! All the problems and all the solutions are here. We made Bin Laden, we made all these issues with the environment. It’s a collision of the good and the bad. And now we have to remake it. We have to recreate infrastructure. In the first New Deal, the President tried something and if it didn’t work he would try something else. But now with technology the way it is, if you try something and it doesn’t work, you’re screwed. You can do huge amounts of damage to an infrastructure with computers if you make a mistake. So it’s a different world. I don’t know if there’s as much room for trial and error. They’re gonna have to get it right the first time.

EK: That seems like such a shame because trial and error is part of the process of figuring things out.

AN: There’s a really interesting article about Yale. Yale is supposed to be such a great university having created all these great people. Now you start pointing at the people. Yale created George Bush, Yale created the Clintons. What great thinkers were these people? How many good decisions did these people make? It focused on the quality of thinking. It’s supposed to teach them how to think. Right? But they’re not doing that. I don’t think Obama went to Yale.

EK: He went to Harvard.

AN: Yeah, so we’ll see. I’m really hopeful and really skeptical at the same time.

EK: That’s good.

AN: There’s a weird thing about making political art. There’s a taboo, or stigma associated with political art. I see that as a challenge. Some of my favorite artists like Leon Golub, when we were in school, I couldn’t stand him. I thought he was exploiting these issues, using them for his own self-promotion. Something about that really pissed me off. But then when I started getting involved in it myself, it seemed like the art that I most admired like Goya’s “Disaster’s of War” and Picasso’s “Guernica,” are works that are really difficult. Sometimes it will be propaganda. The art audience is pretty tuned in. So your preaching to the choir, but at the same time, is everyone going to make polite decorative art? And that’s what’s happened.

Aron Namenwirth is a painter, media artist, curator, and co-director of artMovingProjects founded in 1995. Aron was born in Ipswich Mass. He got his M.F.A. in Painting in 1987 from Yale. He works and lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Aron’s work is involved in contemporary American politics, war and consumerist culture. He recently showed at Momenta, vertexList. and Galapagos. Namenwirth’s Video and Animations have been screened at Diva in Miami. He has written and curated for Zing Magzine. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Time Out, Italian Vogue, and Broadcast on PBS and CNN. http://aronnamenwirth.blogspot.com/


ABOUT VERTEXLIST: vertexList is an artist-run space in Williamsburg Brooklyn, founded in 2003 by Marcin Ramocki with a mission of supporting emerging media artists. Currently the gallery is directed by Charles Beronio and seeks artwork conceptually involved in exposing the codes of post-capitalist culture, both via new and traditional media. vertexList is named after the property of a vector image which holds all numerical information about the image. http://www.vertexlist.net/, http://vertexlist.blogspot.com/

#permalink posted by Erika Knerr : 1/17/2009 01:03:00 AM

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Meditation on Mediations— An East West Cultural Exchange: Dialogue, Misunderstanding, Growing Pains and an Evolution of Artists Before Egos



CamouFLASHED Mediations
Curators: Mariusz Soltysik, Aurelia Mandziuk, Anja Tabitha Rudolph, Roland Dolfing
Event in frame of Month of Mediations - MEDIATIONS Biennial, 3-30 of October 2008, Poznan, Poland


MEDIATIONS BIENNALE
Biennale director: Tomasz Wendland

Voyage Sentimental, curator: Lorand Hegyl
Identity and Tolerance, curator: Gu Zhenqing
Corporeal/Technoreal, curator: Yu Yeon Kim

By artist Erika Knerr




Thursday, October 2, 2008- As an artist in CamouFLASHED Mediations I had the luxury of actualizing my sound installation, Atmospirit, The Last Breath and the Big Wind on my birthday. The painted white circle on the floor was dry and I suspended the pillows from the ceiling. There were the typical problems of finding materials and tools. I needed a ladder to reach the ceiling and managed to negotiate one of the few available.

There was some mix up that evening about when exhibitions were opening so Suzy Sureck and I went to the opening of "Voyage Sentimental" at the National Museum a day early and were turned away by the guards. Luckily, Eric Binder, a Slovakian artist from Bratislva, showing in "Voyage Sentimental," was returning with supplies. He was able to get us past the guards as his guest. This was great to get a preview before the opening. Most of the work was installed and a few of the artists were hanging and/or finishing their installations. We were struck by the contrast of the slick white Museum space to our abandoned Old Printer house with all its character. I liked the less precious approach of Eric Binder finishing his large, playful, graffiti influenced drawings suspended directly from the ceiling. We also met Barthelemy Toguo from Cameroon with some of the strongest works in this show. There were quite a few big name art stars in this venue like Anselm Kiefer, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Hermann Nitsch, Arnulf Rainer, William Kentridge and Marina Abramovic among others. I was happily pleased to see the beautiful, straw blown drawings of Roland Flexner, from New York. I was also struck by the amount of figurative and narrative works here, but made sense for this more traditional setting.


That evening at the Dragon Pub I spoke to artist Adam Klimczak about Dresden and the continuation of Camouflash there with the young group of artists who formed the UNACTO group about 2 years ago. Above all he stressed that there is something quite positive about the fact that the Dresden group of artists are trying to organized themselves, like we have done, in Lodz, and that’s a good thing. All the details are not so important in the end.
“We focus on non-commercial, experimental and alternative work….created often in unconventional spaces such as streets, shops, factories or public places" Galeria Wschodnia, Lodz
Friday, October 3, 2008. This was the longest day of the trip. I awoke early this morning at the Hotel Ryzimsky where most of the Mediations Artists were staying about a 15-20 minute walk to the Old Printer House, which housed CamouFLASHed Mediations and also one of the three feature exhibitions of Mediations Biennial, curated by YeoYeun Kim from New York, titled "Corporreal/Technoreal." I got to the Printer House later than I had hoped. CamouFLASHed Mediations opened the next day at 12:30 PM. There was still an overwhelming amount of work to do to prepare for the opening. Reinigungsgesellschaft, an artist collaborative in the space next to me on the first floor had arrived to install their video, The Japanese Garden, 2008. We worked through a few problems with lighting and basic co-existense of two installations with sound. There’s with the sound of children and a security guard explaining behavioral rules and the cultural meaning of the garden in Berlin at the recreation park “Gardens of the World,” mine with the sound of basic meditation instruction, overlaying the sound of wind and the breath of my father, a few days before he passed away.

I was able to mostly finish my installation today and resolve some issues with the pillow heights and with the recommendation of a Viennese artist we met the day before, Clemens Fuertler, I wrapped the bases beneath the pillows with white cotton fabric. I was still unhappy about using a laptop for sound of the audio. It was not loud enough and the fact that the laptop with sound was stolen from my installation at "Disappearing in Art", in Dresden, and was left without audio for 7 days of the installation was disconcerting. After many requests for speakers I ended the day with confidence that speakers would arrive by morning.

Friday night was the opening of the first two Mediatons shows, “Voyage Sentimental” at the National Museum and "Identity and Tolerance" at the Zamek Castle Cultural Center (Kultury Zamek). We missed the 6:00 pm opening at the National Museum still working on "Camouflash". Luckily we saw the preview the night before with Eric. The contrast was dramatic between spaces. Ours is a gutted old unheated shell of the old Printer House (except my room actually has heat which I was given as a good space to encourage meditation). The National Museum space is a huge open atrium with many smaller, white boxed rooms. We did make it to the Zamek Castle. This was a Historic space. A favorite piece, a performance on the front steps, near the entrance, was a fallen angel by SunYuan & Peng Yu simply titled Angel, 2007. There were great videos in the lobby space of the Zamek Castle now the Cultural Center of Poznan.

Upstairs was a large hall with people waiting for speeches from the curators and organizers. The entrance of the rest of the exhibition was down another hall near the beer tap and wine table. In trying to go in I was promptly stopped and pointed back toward the direction of the speeches, so more waiting, than another attempt to pass the ladies guarding the hallway to the artwork. Once again turned away by the stern, cross-armed guards. The speeches finally came and went with movement toward the drinking hall. We ran in to Warren, a Polish writer we knew from NY and had a brilliant talk about 12 years of living cycles. Warren was a fixture at every art event in NY for 12 years and has now migrated to Warsaw as he sees more happening here than in New York.


Next we were moved to a banquet where all the artists, organizers and curators where invited for a big spread of sushi, polish dishes, fruits and drinks. Off the balcony, there was a lovely view of the Castle gardens. Being that our opening was the next day at 12:30 pm, Mariusz, Agata, Aurelia, Margaret, Henrich from the Dresden group and other artists & installers worked all night with one or two hours sleep to prepare works.

CamouFLASHed Mediations was an enormous undertaking for the curators. It was overly ambitious and chaotic to deal with this beautiful old building, the Old Printer House in Poznan, smack next to a Sheraton Hotel and a short walk from the main railway Station (Poznań Główny). Not only did art need to be installed on three floors of about 8,000 sq. ft. each, walls were built and painted, electricity run to spaces for a huge number of monitors, projectors, lights, speakers, laptops etc. to be set up and all of this in only 4 days before the opening. This is an amazing “portrait” of overcoming obstacles.

"Camouflash" was first shown in a smaller venue, an old office building connected with the Patio Art Center, in Lodz, Poland, in October 2007. Conceived by Mariusz Soltysik and co-curated with Aurelia Mandziuk, this show was tight and concise in its curatorial vision and openness toward supporting it’s artists to realize their works. At the time there were also obstacles to leap in terms of the building, wiring and cleaning an old building for a show that was almost all media based. This idea in itself is a paradox; to show so much new media in an old world building that was not at first technology friendly.

So this was a similar case in Poznan, but on a much bigger scale. The next obstacle was moving from its second incarnation, “The Disappearing in Art” that took place in Dresden in a contemporary building shell of future offices, a little more than a month earlier. A group of young artists from a group called UNOACTU in Dresden, headed up by Anja Tabitha Rudolph became interested in "Camouflash" after their first UNOACTU project in which Mariusz Soltisik, Adam Klimczak and others from Lodz were involved.

Soltysiks approach was adopted by UNOACTU. At this point, a mixed encumbrance occurred. UNOACTU took Soltysiks concepts and ideas in "Camouflash" and augmented them thematically, with the subtitle “Disappearing in Art,” expanding the ideas of hyper-reality and presenting "Camouflash" now in Dresden. Interestingly an experiential and generational shift occurred, where a group of young, recently graduated art organizers are hosting a group of seasoned artists and organizers with a long and important history from Lodz.

Looking at the experiential differences in cultural and generational shifts is one way of understanding the different styles of organizing. This was not only a cultural exchange between artists from Poland and Germany, but also between the parallel histories of both Dresden, from GDR, and Poland, coming from the soviet bloc era ending in 1989. A new generation of artists organizing in their twenties, grew up for the most part in a Germany undivided, giving them a different perspective.

Egos are a huge part of the art world, commercial or otherwise and of the “artist” mentality. "Camouflash," coming from a long history of Construction in Process, The International Artist Museum and Galeria Wschodnia is the anti market, anti economy driven art world, supporting social change through artistic exchange. It takes a position of artists for artists, where egos play a secondary role. This is antithetical to the commercial gallery system of the art world. This contrast of approaches is important to the continued shift of a post-communist Central Europe and for future generations of global artist organizers in general.



A third time around, this incarnation, CamouFLASHed Mediations was back in Poland for Poznan’s first international Biennial,with yet another expansion, including curator Roland Dolfing from Luxenboug, and Inner Spaces bringing in painter Soazic Guezennec, and others. CamouFLASHed is about something other than a tightly thematic Biennial exhibition and highlights it’s strong contrast to the three main shows supported by the Mediations Biennial. Tomasz Wendland brilliantly invited "Camouflash" as a large “fringe” exhibition to show a deeply multilayered, multi-cultural, inaugural Biennial presentation for Poznan.

So with unquestionable odds and little funding all involved came together with big ambition in an enormous undertaking. There was chaos, many problems much compromising, swirling egos, envy of the finished white cube for some, incredible dedication, fear, frustrations, family, dancing, laughter and drinking, very little sleep, a nice hotel, over 300 artists from around the world all convening on Poznan for the Mediations Biennial because of the efforts of Thomas Wendland & Co.

Saturday October 4, 2008

Saturday morning Suzy and I had to check out of our hotel, drop bags at the Train station and get to the Exposition before the opening at 12:30 pm. I needed to check on the sound of Atmospirit. On arrival I found boxes of brand new Creative speakers and a DVD player and 2 laptops. More than I needed. I had a very short time to set it up myself, since everyone else was still installing, cleaning on the second and third floors and perhaps rooms down the hall from me, on the first floor. A little miracle happened and I hooked it up right the first try and the sound was perfect for the room.

Breaking through our limited expectation
of the way things should be, and when
things happen spontaneously, in unexpected
ways, we learn from this.


Yu Yeon Kim’s opening of "Corporeal/Technoreal" took place in the same Printer House building as CamouFLASHed and opening at 12:00 noon, just a half hour before ours. "Corporeal-Technoreal" is part of the main program and had a different quality. It was a strongly curated new media exhibition of video work and one sculptural floor installation by Yuan Shun. His “O” Project, of a mist shrouded landscape of the Forbidden City was a stand out. The content of Yu Yeon Kim’s show was the harshest, most heavily psychological. Another favorite was Oswaldo Macia & Partrick Jolley’s, Soufle, 2008, film, sound. The room on first glance showed projections that looked like beautiful color field painting. On further investigation one realizes the color comes from “flowing surfaces of edible sauces and the audio track is of machines used in slaughterhouses. The sauce also feels like blood.

A highlight of the day was seeing Richard Wasko there. I was very happy to see him after many years and he is in good form. He was there with Marika Kuzmicz and friend, from Rempex, Galeria Sztuki Wspólczesnej in Warsaw. He joked that this photo would appear in the New York Times, only better here for AOA. The enigmatic Wasko disappeared as quick as his wit. He has a big exhibition up now at the National Museum in Lodz documenting his years there and in Berlin.

Now there was movement upstairs for more speeches by the curators of CamouFLASHed this time. After this was a strong performance by Janusz Baldyga titled, Cheated – Rescued, 2008. At the beginning of the performance he announces, “Be Careful With Glass”. There were two pieces of glass, one wrapped with bandage with an image of a soaring hawk , the other plain, laying flat on the floor. He slowly unwrapped the glass, while at the same time wrapping himself in the bandage, letting it fall time after time and finally shattering on the floor. The second part consisted of taking the plain glass sheet, sliding it down a corner of the wall till it fixed itself there. It eventually smashed from the force of gravity some time after the performance ended.


The other performance by Gabriele Horndasch called Found Footage, 2008, became a wall installation on it’s completion. She started the dart throwing earlier that morning, before the opening and ended about a half hour into the opening. Each throw of the dart is replace with a nail where a wire hoop in hung. There is a beautiful sense of time in this work where the image on the wall is built up slowing creating a layered wall drawing. The active, almost violent action of throwing the large dart is offset by the stillness of the final piece.



Event in frame of Month of Mediations - MEDIATIONS Biennial, 3-30 of October 2008, Poznań


Artists:
Anna Adamczyk, Chrisitian Aschman, Janusz Bałdyga, Olga Bergmann, Martin Brazina, Sarah Browne & Gareth Kennedy, Henrik Busch, Agnieszka Chojnacka, Charlie Citron, Stephen Cornford, Disorientalism, Shige Fujishiro i, Sven Giessmann, Karolina Głusiec, Kristaps Gulbis, Shilpa Gupta, Soazic Guezennec, Tobias Hantmann, Eytan Heller, Jessica Higgins, Tatsuya Higuchi, Gabriele Horndasch, Eric Van Hove, Markus Huemer, Bernd Imminger, Adam Klimczak, Anna Klimczak, Erika Knerr, Patricia Lippert, Krzysztof Łukomski, Christine Mackey, Anna MacLeod, Cristina Maldonado, Tomasz Matuszak, Nadja Verena Marcin, Marina Naprushkina, Aisling O’Beirn, Łukasz Ogórek, Mariusz Olszewski, Arianne Olthaar, Pia MüllerSusana Pedrosa, Wiktor Polak, Ewa Szczyrek–Potocka, REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT, Grit Ruhland, Andreas Sachsenmaier, Mariusz Sołtysik, Suzy Sureck, Aki Tarr, Richard Thomas, Elżbieta Wysakowska – Walters, Miyuki Yokomizo
#permalink posted by Erika Knerr : 12/30/2008 10:25:00 AM

Friday, December 05, 2008

Festival- Hopping Paris
Spring, Summer 2008, Slideshow



Angie Eng

If yesterday was "spend," today is "save." Economize money, energy, space, time, water, food, thoughts. If I'm not watching images move, or moving images, then by default I'm roaming. A to B, equals New York to Paris. At a discreet global position, vaguely sitting in cafes for hours chatting, discussing, debating. Cartesians: "wearing the clock" not "watching the clock." Spending vagabond days, writing, editing, reading, but do we, with one glance, have enough information to spark a sequence of ideas, feelings, inspiration?

Le Cube Festival 2008, Issy Les Moulineaux, www.cubefestival.com | Festival Nemo 2008, Élysées Biarritz, www.arcadi.fr | Festival Agora 2008, Ircam, www.ircam.fr | Exit Festival International, MAC Creteil Maisons Des Arts, www.maccreteil.com | VisionSonic, La Générale en Manufacture, www.lespixelstransversaux.net | Vision-R Festival, Mains D'Oeuvres, http://www.mainsdoeuvres.org | Scènes Ouvertes à L'insolite, Le Theatre de la Marionnette, Theatre de la Cité Internationale, www.theatredelamarionette.com

Angie Eng is a media artist who works in video, installation and time-based performance. Her current work draws inspiration from nomadic cultures. Her work has been performed and exhibited at the Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, Lincoln Center Video Festival, The Kitchen, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, Roulette Intermedium and Experimental Intermedia. Her videos have been included in digital art festivals in local and international venues in Cuba, France, Greece, Japan, Holland, Germany, Former Yugoslavia and Canada. She has received numerous grants and commissions: New Museum of Radio and Performing Arts, Harvestworks, Art In General, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York State Council on the Arts, Jerome Foundation and Experimental TV Center.

#permalink posted by Angie Eng : 12/05/2008 08:50:00 AM

Monday, November 24, 2008

The Art Connection
www.theartconnection.org
by Tova Speter



The Art Connection is a Boston nonprofit organization (currently celebrating its 13th anniversary) that seeks to enrich and educate under-served communities by expanding public access to original art. This distinct program places the work of donor artists on the walls of community service organizations. Within these healing environments, the art provides welcome opportunities for reflection, inspiration, comfort and hope. Sometimes, just one painting or sculpture can make a difference. This simple but powerful idea has resulted in thousands of installations into scores of organizations, giving those who often have the least access to art direct contact in their own communities.

A win-win for both artist and agency – the artwork is seen by many community members annually, often those who do not have regular access to original artwork. The artists feel good about gifting a work that has the potential to really make a difference in the life of someone in need; the agencies feel good about respecting their clients and staff by creating a warm and welcoming environment; and the community members feel good about experiencing artwork firsthand, often when they are accessing services during a difficult time in their lives.

Agencies must qualify for the program through an application process and must provide direct services to an underserved community. Common placements are homeless shelters, health clinics, community centers, and treatment facilities.

Perhaps one of the most significant components of our program, agencies create a selection committee of clients as well as staff to look through the art portfolio and choose the work that is most meaningful to them. In this way – a dialogue is created not only between staff and client, but also between staff and art, and client and art, and vice versa. The selection process is empowering for all involved and allows for a deeper look into artwork and what it means to them.

No need to take our word for it. The program has caused such a stir that it has expanded already to Washington DC and New York City. What people are saying:

Artists:
“It fulfills a lot of purposes… one of them is that there is not enough art in public spaces… and from an artist’s perspective, I want people to be looking at art as often as possible.”
-Ken Beck, artist

“Part of making art is communicating. Work sitting in a closet is not communicating with anybody.”
-Martha Jane Bradford, artist

“It is important to me that my artwork reached appreciative audiences who may have limited opportunities to view original work.”
-Marian Dioguardi, artist


Community members:
"When I walk into a room I’ve never ever been into, I look around and see what’s in it. If there’s lots of art I feel wanted. If there isn’t, I feel lonely.”
-Fifth grade student, Paige Academy

“Both times I was arrested, my mom would never come to visit me. She’d always send someone else to pay my bail and see where I was. But she came here, and she saw this painting (Difficult Decision by Fay Chandler) – and then she came back the next week. She sat at the table, and just looked at that painting. And we talked. I was shocked. I still can’t believe it.”
-Wanda, resident, McGrath House

Agencies:
“If you can’t bring the children to the museums, you need to bring the museums to the children.”
-Bill Walczak, CEO, Codman Square Health Center

“Fine art reveals creativity, imagination, beauty, emotional involvement and intellectual stimulation to all who see it. This is the kind of benefit that says to all our stakeholders, ‘We value you, we appreciate your efforts in treatment and recovery.’ The chronically under-resourced public health sector cannot offer luxurious environments, but through donated art, we can help provide a setting that encourages healing and wellness.”
-Carolyn Ingles, Director of Support Services, Metro Boston Mental Health at Shattuck Hospital







Comments from Demetri Yannopolous, Boston Rescue Mission:

The client opens the door panting and sweating. “Man, those stairs always kick my butt,” she gasps. There are six floors in the Boston Rescue Mission, and each floor serves a purpose in helping people recover from homelessness. The halls of the Boston Rescue Mission are filled with emotions: fear, hunger, hope, joy and transformation. They are now also filled with art as The Art Connection has helped make even the walls part of the recovery process. Residents struggle every day to get their lives back in order, but with the help of generous artists, the Mission has become a warmer place.


The Boston Rescue Mission has been working on transforming the lives of the poor and homeless since 1899. Reverend John Samaan, President of the Boston Rescue Mission, commented that “We now have splendid pieces of artwork that will brighten people’s lives for years to come.” The artwork now decorates the halls of the Boston Rescue Mission, and clients have begun to take notice and talk about what it means to them emotionally and spiritually. Erica, a client living at the Mission exclaimed that “Every day I face my demons, but the artwork has brought much needed comfort and beauty into my life. It gives me hope.”


Art offers all of us an opportunity to experience emotions, thoughts, and feelings that we can’t find elsewhere. It is a chance to escape to new worlds, to engage in discussion, or to gain a spiritual breather. The art donated through The Art Connection now provides the opportunity not only to make a person feel better, but to truly be a part of a person’s life during their road to recovery.



Comments from Marian Dioguardi, donating artist:

Donating my art through The Art Connection has always been meaningful for me. It is important to me that my art work reaches appreciative audiences who may have limited opportunities to view original art work. My art's placement with the East Boston Health Center, this summer, was especially meaningful. You see, I grew up in East Boston selling my crayon drawings door to door to my understanding neighbors on Webster Street. My neighbors were always gracious and generous with me and now it's my turn to say thank you and give something back to the community.

As an active and clumsy child I was an all too familiar face at the EBHC, then known as "The Relief Station". After asking my ritual question "How many stitches did I get?" I was always relieved and released once again to play, run and inevitably to fall. Now the EBHC continues to play an important part in my life as it cares for my parents Nick and Marie, life long residents of East Boston. Having my work chosen , hanging and welcoming everyone to the East Boston Health Center as me and my family have always been welcome gives me great pleasure.

Other info:
The Art Connection was established in 1995 as a vehicle for distributing original works of art to public, charitable, and educational institutions, in a manner pioneered by Fay Chandler, a painter and sculptor working in Boston since the early 1970s. As Fay began considering what would happen to her unsold inventory of work at her death or disability, she became convinced that the best result would be transferring the work, in conjunction with the work of other artists, free of charge, to interested public and nonprofit organizations in the community that have no funds for purchasing art. The program grew as founding directors recognized a demand for expanding public access to the visual arts and from their ability to build a unique program to meet that need. Since its inception 13 years ago, this unique gifting program has supported over 250 agencies in their personal selection of over 3700 pieces by 250 artists and collectors.

If you are an artist interested in donating work or an agency representative interested in receiving work, please contact us at info@theartconnection.org. Also- check out our new website at www.theartconnection.org

Tova Speter, Boston



#permalink posted by Erika Knerr : 11/24/2008 03:49:00 PM


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