Structural Patterns

Last night, upon the invitation of Moritz von Rappard, I attended the performance of KLASSENTREFFEN by the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse theater company at PS122 and it was excellent. KLASSENTREFFEN is a documentary theater piece in which the performers retell their personal stories as Turkish immigrants living in Germany or first generation Germans of Turkish descent. The piece revolves around identity politics and the memories and emotional histories that are recounted touch upon cultural loss, the difficulties of being Turkish in Germany, and ultimately the construction of cross-cultural identity. I don’t feel that the stories told represent new discoveries or new perspectives regarding the “other,” rather the power of the piece lies in entering these people’s lives and listening to the accounts not from an actor, but from the individual who has lived the difficult experience of defining oneself between cultures. It is the unveiling of personal experience from the individual in real-time that establishes an emotional reaction in the audience.

Pictured above sitting in a row are the performers: a taxi driver and owner of a taxi company, a publicist, a Green Party politician, a police woman (the first female police commissioner), a Turkish/German pop music producer, and a professional actress. The last man in the row is Moritz von Rappard, the production manager and I don’t recall the second to last man, sitting to the right of Moritz, I believe he may have been an artistic co-producer. Sitting behind the actors are artistic director Shermin Langhoff and director Lukas Langhoff

The Tea Party FYI, an information website about Tea Party sponsored candidates serves as a resource regarding how these candidates might vote as your representative. The site opens with a question “If you’re angry, scared and exhausted, would you hold a crying baby?” And then wonders why you would vote out of anger…

The site presents information in a concise manner and focuses on five legislative topics: What the representative might want to Abolish, Cut, Repeal, Amend or Oppose:

Click on a candidate and get concise information:

Most importantly vote today! And check out Tea Party FYI

I once had the opportunity to hang out with Daniel Martinez in Tijuana during inSite05, he’s an amazing person, charismatic and smart and generally I’m a fan of what he does and has to say. However this show I hated. It was boring and not compelling at all. The text and numerical figures of human carnage painted on to the walls of the gallery are blunt and sad realities of humanity, but the display fails to do anything, even hit the viewer over the head, which I think is what Daniel is trying to do. Putting this stuff inside of a commercial gallery is simply silly, stupid and claims the viewer as ignorant. If an artist is really going to try to use a commercial gallery as a platform to declare outrage at human carnage, then do something with it. This show does nothing. Or perhaps the gallery sold some of the work and they made $$$.


I kind of liked the hare bomb, could be a compelling symbol in a more interesting installation.

Fun facts by Daniel Martinez

If he had really exploited the fun house mirror or just the fun house as a point of departure, perhaps it could have been a stirring installation. “HUMAN LIFE IS A MISTAKE WE ARE NOT HERE BECAUSE WE ARE FREE WE ARE HERE BECAUSE WE ARE NOT FREE…” BLAH BLAH BLah blah blah…

If there is a revolution in public practice happening today it is not in a conference at a private art college. Revolutions in practice can not be captured and summarized at a conference. The very notion of Creative Time Summit conference runs against “revolution,” “public,” or “practice” and mutes anything powerful or inspring about these terms, simply because it is curated and caters to a particular audience. In many ways it is a closed session. And the term “Revolutions in Public Practice” reads as hyperbole in the context of an art elite conference.

I was at a round table discussion at Conflux today and afterwards headed to a Lower East Side Bar to meet a bunch of friends who had been at the Creative Time Summit. Once there, I asked people how the Summit had been and it was the usual conference response… what’s the point? why are we here? it was the usual conference scenario… The usual reactionary responses to a conference. And my response to people is do not be duped by the catch terms “revolutions,” “public,” and “practice” as well as “summit” and “creative time.” This is my problem with such a title, it is not revolutionary or public, so please don’t misuse these terms; these terms have already lost so much meaning or power. Most of the people I spoke with didn’t go the second day, rather they tuned in and out from home.

Creative Time Summit is however an exceptional moment to network and hear a summary of evocative creative ideas and briefly exchange perspectives with like-minded individuals.

Sadly people buy into “The Creative Time Summit” as if it is a revolutionary agent, but it’s just another conference, put on by another institution that is far removed from anything revolutionary – whatever meaning that term can carry in relation to contemporary art that is safely nested in Western networks of capital.

The Temporary Travel Office has published a set of artist audio works as audio tours of sites in North America. Last winter, Ryan Griffis contacted me to contribute to the publication by revisiting Dentimundo, a 2005 project commissioned for inSite05 that investigates medical tourism in the form of US citizens traveling to Mexican dentists along the border for dental care that is unaffordable in the United States. For the project, I traveled the length of the U.S./Mexico border and met with dentists and patients to learn about this detail of the border economy and relations.

For the publication “Stories in Reserve,” I revisited all of my old files, photographs, interviews, research and writing to compose a narrated audio work. I recently received the publication that also includes America Ponds by Sarah Kanouse and Siting Expositions:Vancouver by Ryan Griffis, Lize Mogel and Sarah Ross. The publication includes a full color booklet with statements by the artists and translations of the works as necessary along with three CDs for each of the pieces. It’s a great little publication and worth checking out online for free – Volume One.

During our stay in Santiago at the end of July to beginning of August, the curator of “portables” and our host, Ignacio Nieto took us to a community television station and media school, Señal 3 (Signal 3). Located in La Victoria, considered amongst the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods of Santiago, Señal 3 pirates its signal to the immediate area. The government and police do not intervene, because they are afraid to enter the neighborhood.

A mural in the hallway leading from the television recording studio to the post-production and broadcast studio.

During the visit, I took the opportunity to interview one of the members who established and helps maintain the community TV station. Learning in detail about the history of Señal 3, seeing their outfit and what they have created as well as their mission is absolutely inspiring. The men who established and run Señal 3 grew up together in La Victoria and were once vigilantes of their neighborhood… ignored by the police and government, it was up to the community to keep the peace. The members of Señal 3 earn a living through video production as they maintain a pirate television station that they’ve transformed into a local media center.

The broadcast studio.

Community media has a long history in La Victoria. In the 70s the neighborhood ran pirate radio, in the 80s the local church was given large televisions that would be stationed on various corners of the neighborhood for major soccer games. Señal 3 with it’s current members has been broadcasting since 1997.

The transmitter in a converted alley way between houses.

The television broadcast was once bounced from member home to member home as necessary. However, several years ago, the home next to one of the members was raided by the police. The owner was selling drugs and pimping girls. He spent time in jail and upon returning to his home the neighborhood would not allow him to remain. The members of Señal 3 made a bid for the drug dealer’s home and then transformed it from a drug den and under age brothel to a community media center… they established a home for their transmitter.

The classroom!

Today the house has a dedicated television studio, a mixing and production studio and media classroom. The members were always dedicated to community television production and working with local kids and neighbors to create programming. However a three years ago, Señal 3 was awarded a major grant by a Spanish institution. They used that grant to establish a proper classroom, equipped with high end iMacs and a projector. Each school year, Señal 3 accepts a handful of kids to run a year long media production course that covers video production – shooting, editing and broadcast as well as computer graphics and web programming. Their intention is simply to make these kids into media producers rather than passive consumers.

Soon they will begin fund raising for the next enterprise, a new building where Señal 3’s current home stands. The new building will offer the community better production facilities, larger classroom… a place where kids in the neighborhood will have access to tools that Chile’s educational system will never make available to those of La Victoria.

Since returning from Chile a couple weeks ago, I’ve been assembling the project site for Miracle of Chile that questions Milton Friedman’s famous phrase. As part of the project, one may run through a maze that displays Flickr images shot by participants in Chile depicting what they consider to be the Miracle of Chile. Along side of the maze are Twitter entries for Miracle of Chile. It is through these entries that I learned that 33 miners were trapped on August 5th when a mine collapsed. It’s now been 17 days and it is reported that all 33 miners are alive! Uncle Milton, that’s a true miracle!

Last November I received an invitation from Ignacio Nieto to participate in an exhibition titled “portables” at the Museum of Fine Arts of Santiago. Last Friday I returned from Santiago, following two weeks of production.

Early this year, I contacted my old friend Kurt Olmstead to work with me on a project that I knew would be beyond the scope of anything that I could do alone within a period of several months. Kurt was on board and we started discussing the premise of the project – Chile as the laboratory for neoliberal economic philosophy of the Milton Friedman flavor. Kurt and I grew up in the midst of Reaganomics. In the 80s, Reagan and Thatcher embraced Friedman’s neoliberalism and Chile was framed as the example of what privatization, deregulation of the markets and cuts to social spending will do to control inflation and allow a nation’s economy to prosper. In 1981, Friedman declared the phrase “Miracle of Chile” to reflect the transformation of Chile’s economy through his neoliberal philosophy as implemented by the Chicago Boys, Chilean economists who studied under Friedman.

It is now 2010, we live in the midst of a global economic crisis and are now questioning the neoliberal economic formula. The art project consists of a workshop, public discussion, bus intervention and a virtual labyrinth. Each element asks participants in Chile to identify the Miracle of Chile in the scope of their city and personal lives. A documentation site is available at www.miracleofchile.com

Two workshops were held as part of the project, one with middle school kids and a second at Matucana100 Cultural Center asked participants to document the Miracle of Chile in their public space.

Street situations, an interactive sidewalk tile invites pedestrians to ask one another “What is the Miracle of Chile?”

As an example of privatization of public space, a small bus intervention was executed on bus rider handles sold for advertisement.

La apertura para la exposicion portables es el sabado, 14 de agosto a las 18:00 horas en Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mall Plaza Vespucio, Santiago, Chile y permanecera hasta el 19 de septiembre. Curada por Ignacio Nieto, el tema de la exposicion es artistas que usan y crean dispositivos como medio creativo. Portables presenta las obras de Michelle Teran, Chimbalab, Alejandra Perez, Carolina Pino, GraphTech, Otto Von Busch, Ricardo Miranda Zuniga and Kurt Olmstead (fotos abajo).

Yo estoy estrenando El Milagro de Chile, obra colaborativa con Kurt Olsmtead.

“Welcome…
To the truly mobile work force.
To the new paradigm.
Get the innovation right when it happens.
The way we work is now.
What will you choose?”

Whether it’s large companies or small start-ups, the transparency of profiteering on hype is clearer today than ever before. We recognize it as soon as we see it and yet, these people will jump on the latest buzz term to capitalize on vapor… Unfortunately investors will invest, naive management will be seduced and some will buy into these “Cloud” products.

This video is sickening to watch, be prepared to have a bunch of tools try to sound visionary and inspiring (and you really don’t want to witness the little dance moves):

Choosing the Cloud is Capitalism On Hyperdrive… It will make workaholics happy, and their children sad and neglected (although these are most likely people who only see their children on the weekends, so weekend time will be curtailed by emails, txts, mobile conferencing…) As Internet accessibility expands, the office is always at your fingertips.

But people needn’t accept this, a worker’s contract must be established, privacy and inaccessibility is necessary for the imagination… draw the line. Of course these CEOs will say that the Cloud saves time by establishing greater efficiency… don’t believe the hype. And if you really feel the need to jump into the clouds, just use Google. Although it’s not as pretty, Google is well ahead of these companies, and it’s likely to be around longer (and they’re already analyzing your searches anyhow).

I’m primarily reacting to this silly video and the hype revolving around “Cloud Computing.” After all, it’s the roll of entrepreneurs to try and capitalize on hype, to make quick money on tools that are already freely accessible or to cash in on naivety, laziness or ignorance. And if it’s a good product that facilitates some work flow, or has you log into less things, great… But underlying my reactionary response is the need for a critical perspective regarding ease of accessibility. And the pervasive business mentality of the need to always be connected that flows into all aspects of society (not just business)… It is time for a universal social contract to be established that allows the worker privacy and inaccessibility. Today, it’s simply too easy for young or vulnerable employees to be taken advantage of and be expected to be on call or online 24/7.