Structural Patterns

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.

Following a visit to El Anatsui’s exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum (on view through August 14th) a friend commented – what a great shtick – use discarded material and unskilled labor to produce large scale work that can be folded for easy travel in a globalized art market. I’m paraphrasing here, but the point is clear – the work is formulaic and beautifully executed as high-end commodity. My friend is a Filipino-American artist/academic well versed in post-colonial studies and critical culture. El Anatsui is an African artist born in Ghana, working in Nsukka, Nigeria and trained in Western European Art. The brilliance of the work is applying minimalist conventions while using non-Western materials to create large scale abstraction. It is mesmerizingly beautiful to look at and various meanings may be allotted to the work – so it is aesthetic with theoretical potential.

The minimalist conventions include the use of least possible materials and repetition to create the maximum effect by using discarded mass produced materials such as lids from tin cans, bottle caps, newspaper printing plates… As the mass-produced products are from Nigeria or other African countries, the work presents a distinct quality from parallel work created by U.S. and European artists using recycled American and Western products. The unfamiliar labels and unique colors of these discarded elements adds a veil of the other for a Western art audience. All this said, there is plenty of reason to praise the work – it is aesthetically beautiful, unique, grand in scale, works from a distance as well as up close, reflects waste while recycling the waste and the artist brings racial diversity to a still all too white art world.

In the end, I’m writing about the work because I find it problematic. El Anatsui is embraced by the Art World and in his work, I perceive the colonizing effects of Western Art and Art History. By combining his Western Art training with the products of his culture, he has established a unique niche. In the end the work doesn’t move me. I don’t feel that the various pieces present an entry point. They are nice big objects, neat to look at for a bit, but with little resonance. If I was an art collector, on the other hand, I’m sure I’d buy in to it and see both it’s material and constructed cultural value.

Click on the images below to view at larger dimensions.

Following the opening of Mexican artist Ivan Puig’s solo show at MagnanMetz gallery in New York City, Iggy and I visited with Puig and caught up regarding the SEFT-1 project (SEFT is an acronym for Sonda de Exploración Ferroviaria Tripulada or Manned Railway Exploration Probe). I first learned about the project in 2006 when Puig was just getting started on the concept of exploring abandoned railroads through out Mexico using a vehicle designed to travel the on the railroad tracks as well as car roads when necessary. Ivan was interested in seeing first hand what had happened to the communities that were built along the tracks and largely subsisted from the trains running throughout Mexico. Many of these communities are small rural populations that depended on the trains for various needs.

Puig spend a year traversing the abandoned railroad system with his half-brother Andrés Padilla Domene. As described on the exhibitions press release “The two set off from the National Museum of Art in Mexico City to begin their investigation of abandoned railways throughout Mexico and Ecuador, collecting evidence of their travels through photo, video and audio. Puig and Padilla Domene recorded contemporary landscapes, infrastructure and details of the everyday life of inhabitants to create a futuristic exploration of the countries’ pasts. Their progress has been consistently updated on the project’s website, www.seft1.com, where the public can follow the trajectory of the vehicle, view images of artifacts collected and listen to interviews with those they have met along the way.”

It appears that the SEFT-1 will be traveling to the UK to explore abandoned railways throughout the British countryside sometime in the next year. By doing so, the artist will expand the archive of stories regarding locomotive technology and the communities surrounding the technology.

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.

I had forgotten about Frank Moore’s paintings until this past fall when Martha Wilson invited me a long to a meeting with Fales Library director Marvin Taylor. Marvin is an amazing cultural resource, a big fan of the Lower East Side arts movements of the 70s and 80s, he’s a guy filled with interesting stories. (To learn more about Marvin Taylor, visit Betty Ling Miu’s blog.) Before the meeting, Marvin asked Martha and I to sit down and watch “Beehive” a 1985 experimental dance film directed by Frank Moore and Jim Self. For the making of the film Frank Moore transformed his studio into an elaborate bee hive in which the dancers perform the elaborate lives of bees. Following the meeting, Marvin dropped us off at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery to see “Toxic Beauty: The Art of Frank Moore,” a retrospective that continues from the Fales Library special collections to the street level gallery across Washington Square Park.

It had been over a decade since I had seen “Beehive” or spent time with Frank Moore’s paintings and I immediately recalled how much these paintings inspired me during undergraduate years at UC Berkley. The paintings are detailed, elaborately portraying societal shortcomings. An element that strongly stands out in Frank Moore’s paintings is the construction of frames that are thematically tied to the paintings. Each painting has its own unique frame from copper water pipes to a frame wrapped with collaged maps. The exhibition captures how prolific Frank Moore was until he died of AIDS at the age of 48. Roberta Smith wrote an excellent review of the exhibition for the NY Times.

From the Creative Capital Foundation: http://artswriters.org/

Articles
Jennifer Krasinski, A Rain Check to Oblivion: A Dispatch from the Jill Johnston Archive (Los Angeles)
Daniel R. Quiles, Counterpublic Access: “The Live! Show” and “TV Party,” 1978-1984 (Chicago)
Rebekah Rutkoff, Lillian Schwartz: Light Pen/Paintbrush (Brooklyn)

Blogs
Caryn Coleman, The Girl Who Knew Too Much (Brooklyn)
Farrah Karapetian, Housing Projects (Los Angeles)
Meg Onli, Black Visual Archive (Chicago)
Harbeer Sandhu, Critical Condition (Houston)

Books
Negar Azimi, The Shahbanou and the Iranian Avant-Garde (New York)
Eva Díaz, The Fuller Effect: Contemporary Art and the Critique of Total Design (Brooklyn)
Jennifer Doyle, The Athletic Turn: Contemporary Art and the Sport Spectacle (Los Angeles)
Elena Filipovic, David Hammons’s Bliz-aard Ball Sale (Brussels)
Ara H. Merjian, Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Politics of Art History: Heretical Aesthetics (New York)
Alan W. Moore, Art Squats (Madrid)
Zabet Patterson, Visionary Machines: USCO, Techno-Utopia and Technocracy (Brooklyn)
Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Photography in the Age of Catastrophe (San Francisco)
Michael Taussig, Twilight of the Idols (New York)
Stephen Zacks, A Beautiful Ruin: The Generation that Transformed New York, 1967-1985 (Brooklyn)

Short-Form Writing
Quinn Latimer, Basel, Switzerland
David Rimanelli, New York
Patricia Tumang, Quezon City, Philippines
Harry J. Weil, Brooklyn

The installation “a geography of being : una geografia de ser” that consists of a video game and networked kinetic wooden figures revolves around the immigrant experience. The installation is on view as part of ReGeneration at the New York Hall of Science through January 13th, 2013.

Last Thursday, October 25th was the celebration for the opening of ReGeneration, an exhibition at the New York Hall of Science in Corona Park, Queens that will be on view through January 13th. I will be writing one or more extended articles regarding the works in the exhibition. Meanwhile, I am posting a video of the Undocumented Drones being installed at the Hall of Science as part of my installation titled “a geography of being : una geografia de ser”. This is an installation comprised of a video game and three wooden figures with screens and motors that are networked to the game. The figures or undocumented drones help the player along through the game at specific points. Each figure has a corresponding icon on the game screen that tells the player that the small robot has a message. If necessary, the player may step away from the game to view the undocumented drone’s embedded screen for instructions.

This is the title screen for the new game that I’m building. The video game is one component of the installation titled “a geography of being” that will be featured as part of the exhibition ReGeneration at the New York Hall of Science. “a geography of being” is a creative reflection on the realities of undocumented youths in the United States. The exhibition opens on October 27th 2012 and will be on view through January 13th, 2013. Along with the video game, “a geography of being” will feature kinetic wooden sculptures titled “undocumented drones” that are networked to the game to help the player along the three levels of the game.