Structural Patterns

Today I met the artist Sharon Paz who is a fellow resident artist at Helsinki’s HIAP. Following our meeting, I watched a 2012 video work of hers and absolutely love it, check it out!

DISTRACTED DESTRUCTION, Sharon Paz, 2012 from Sharon Paz on Vimeo.

EXCESS at Stamford’s Franklin Street Works

Terri Smith, the director of Franklin Street Works, a not for profit art space in Stamford CT, invited EXCESS NYC to Stamford for the city’s first Art Walk. The food rescue and composting bike was installed at an empty store front in downtown Stamford along with a poster installation that reveals some of the realities underlying EXCESS. And for a one day event on Saturday June 15th, the bike circulated downtown Stamford to collect discarded edible food that was eaten at a picnic in Franklin Street Works’ backyard.

Food contributed by Stamford farmer’s market, Napa & Company and Lorca Cafe

The big food collection occurred as EXCESS happened to ride into the Bedford Street farmer’s market as the vendors were breaking down. We went from vendor to vendor and asked if they had food that they would be throwing away. One vendor invited us to take everything! We got boxes of fruits and vegetables from him, amazing avocados and bell peppers that would not have been good for another day. We made a great avocado spread for the evening. Other fruit and vegetable vendors gave us bags of fruits.

We also collected a small amount of compost. It was all the discarded fruit and seeds that vendors cut up for people to try that were discarded. It appeared that a lot more could have been collected if it wasn’t already packed in trash bags with other garbage.

The few restaurants that had agreed to put food aside for us either forgot or could not contribute. However two businesses entirely came through – Napa and Company at 75 Broad St. Adam the chef is great, understands composting and food waste and was eager to contribute.

Leyla, the owner of Lorca Cafe on Bedford was also entirely on board. Her employees were expecting us with bags of baked goods, a real treat for everyone visiting the gallery. Tomorrow is the final day of the storefront installation.

EXCESS NYC downtown Stamford store front installation

EXCESS poster installation at downtown Stamford storefront

EXCESS poster installation, Stamford CT.

As part of Upgrade! San Francisco, I will be doing an artist talk this Thursday, May 30th from 7-9pm at ATA, 992 Valencia St, http://www.atasite.org/
And a two-day rotoscoping workshop Saturday, June 1, 2013 at 11AM – 4PM and Sunday, June 2, 11AM – 4PM. To sign up go to:
http://physicaltraces.eventbrite.com/

Last Saturday, I met with Keith Estiler and Edgar De La Vega of OBTRUSIV MAG to discuss art. They’ve put the interview on their Art & Culture column, the article is titled – Pricking the Public. Here’s the video:

Sonja Sharp of DNAinfo.com was excited to discover to whom the compost and food rescue bike at the Sterling lot belonged. She got in touch with Brooke and I and ran a story on the project – Bodega Bicycle the Vehicle of Choice for Crown Heights Food Waste Crusaders. It’s perfect timing as we’ve completed our first two weeks of picking up coffee grounds from Lincoln Station.

When visiting Brooke Singer’s prints at the Hudson Valley
Center for Contemporary Art (HVCAA) as part of the ambitious Peekskill Project V, I documented Thomas Hirschhorn’s Laundrette installation that is part of the HVCCA’s permanent collection. I was immediately enthralled by Hirschhorn’s installation as I found it much more approachable than more recent sprawling installations with little way in to the tumultuous sea of media.

Laundrette of course presents a ton of appropriated media from video to magazine, newspaper, audio, book excerpts, stickers, but it is all framed in a laundromat. I spent countless hours of my childhood at a laundromat near the corner of Mission and Kingston or Eugenia Avenue, right near 30th and Mission in San Francisco and Hirschhorn’s Laundrette immediately felt familiar from the variable sized washer and driers to the soap dispensing machine.

I love the framing of this critical content – that immediately alludes to having to wash all our dirty laundry generated by the Capitalism’s insatiable desire for capital. And to inform the audience beyond the video news snippets, day time television excerpts and a gluttony of disturbing media that is being cycled in the washing and drying machines, Laundrette is fortified with quotes and texts from Nietzsche, Spinoza, Klein, Popper, Deleuze and Guatarri. And as usual with this sort of work, I love it, but walk away wondering what the point is. The people viewing it are left leaning artists or collectors that may feel guilt at their wealth, but are comforted by the labor of the artists that they support.

EXCESS is a community-based art project that investigates the large amounts of organic waste in urban centers and creatively employs new tactics to divert food from landfill and back to people to consume or compost. Can we make smarter urban infrastructure where edible food gets eaten, organic waste is turned into compost, compost is used to remediate contaminated lots, vacant lots are transformed into gardens and cities save money while reducing greenhouse emissions? EXCESS NYC is currently active in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

The food rescue and composting bike will be circulating in downtown Stamford, CT in conjunction with the exhibition Strange Invitation at Franklin Street Works.

Today at 10:30am Brooke and I are presenting our neighborhood composting project at the Just Food Conference as part of MAKING ART WITH FOOD IN MIND (ENGAGING NYC COMMUNITIES) panel. We’ve made an initial video cut documenting the project thus far that we’ll be presenting as an introduction and then briefly describe where we are at and how we are moving forward with EXCESS NYC.

EXCEDENTES/EXCESS 2011-2013 from Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga on Vimeo.

About the panel:
10:30-11:45am
Food & Finance High School (Sign outside of the building reads Park West High School)
525 West 50th Street, New York, NY

MAKING ART WITH FOOD IN MIND (ENGAGING NYC COMMUNITIES)
For centuries artists have given us new ways of seeing the world around us through the lens of food. The last decade has been especially rich as artists respond to the challenges and concerns of feeding ourselves by creating models that are local, sustainable and community-oriented. In this workshop, visual artists will offer practical advice on using food creatively while fostering social change.

Speakers: Atom Cianfarani, Co-Author of A Roof Grows in Brooklyn: The Do-It-Yourself Green Roof Workbook; Jason Gaspar, Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum; Lisa Gross, Boston Tree Party; Brooke Singer & Ricardo Miranda Zuniga, collaborating artists on “Excess NYC”; Tattfoo Tan, artist

A Macaulay College student, Tyler Alterman that once took a class of mine (Intro to 2D Animation) is working on his senior project – a cognitive science lab in a truck. Watch the video, it’s the type of project that I can’t help but to support due to it’s good energy and idealism. It would be great to see an ice cream type truck with a giant brain buzzing around New York City!

Child playing “a geography of being | una geografia de ser” at the NY Hall of Science

This the final weekend of the exhibition ReGeneration at the NY Hall of Science in Corona Park. Various events and workshops will be occurring today. Catch the show before it comes down! Click here for more information on ReGeneration

The exhibition features my own “a geography of being : una geografia de ser” – an interactive art installation that reflects upon the dynamics of the undocumented immigrant population in the United States, specifically in relation to undocumented youth. The installation consists of wooden kinetic sculptures with animated displays titled “Undocumented Drones” and a video game that places the player in the role of an undocumented youth that must face several challenges in the search for self-determination beyond the imposed constraints of citizenry. View Documentation of the Installation. Or play the game online.