Archive for the ‘performance art’ Category
Ivan Puig at MagnanMetz

Ivan Puig’s SEFT-1 probe at MagnanMetz Gallery, Chelsea, NYC through March 9, 2013
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.”

Ivan taking a picture of Iggy inside SEFT-1, a special treat as he was allowed into the sculpture

Iggy inside SEFT-1
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.
Dubstep: Must See Again
Public Broadcast Cart in fall 2011 Art Journal
Sarah Kanouse has published an excellent essay on radio as art practice in the public space. The essay “Take It to the Air: Radio as Public Art” is printed in the fall 2011 Art Journal and discusses three different art projects utilizing radio as the primary medium. Following the introduction, Sarah discusses the work of Jon Brumit and Neighborhood Public Radio, my own Public Broadcast Cart and the work of art collective LIGNA. The final wrap up of the essay is quite inspiring:
In these projects, radio is a prosthetic technology that transmits the physical world into the space of electronic communications and materializes the vast space of electromagnetic resources into something material and physically apprehensible. In so doing, it forces a confrontation with and contestation of the rules that govern and control the use of both spaces, positioning radio for creative interventions in manifold public spaces – not only those we inhabit with our bodies, as much of the best public art does, but also those we inhabit with our passions, our excesses, our energies, and our speech.
Mobility at Momenta Art, Sept 9th – Oct 17th
I’m the one artist without a cart in the exhibition Mobility, however the curators elected to include my “Undocumented Drones” as part of the show. The exhibition looks great, upon entering the gallery, I wished that one of my carts was available for the show, unfortunately they are either disassembled or in another part of the world. The exhibition opens Friday, September 9th and runs through October 17th, hopefully my bots will survive. The images below are a preview, the paint bucket in the first photo is not art.
From left to right: Undocumented Drones, Blender by Hidemi Takagi and Pimp My Piragua by Miguel Luciano
From left to right: SOS Mobile Classroom by Tattfoo Tan and Máximo González’s Changarrito
Consume Love by Atom Cianfarani
Close up of an Undocumented Drone – a series of modified hobby robots that have been enhanced with an additional microcontroller, screen and radio module. Each robot presents a rotoscoped animation until it receives a twitter message with the tag “DREAMers”. Upon receiving the tweet, the animation freezes, the motors are activated and the message or tweet is displayed.
The Undocumented Drones represent a near slave class within the United States that exists for cheap labor and does not have a voice – the undocumented laborers contributing to this country and primarily concerned with providing for the children and family. The twitter tag “DREAMers” alludes to the children of undocumented immigrants, brought to this country at a young age who have grown up in the United States, but may not have a right to higher education or employment. The DREAM Act was introduced a decade ago to create a pathway toward citizenship for undocumented youth. The DREAM Act has never been passed, however many of the young adults who would benefit from it have exposed themselves as undocumented and become activists; they are the DREAMers. Each bot juxtaposes the silent day laborer with the activist offspring.
“Breaking into Business” by Alex Villar

Alex Villar climbs up a scaffold and breaks into a business
I just came across video documentation of a new public performance by Alex Villar – “Breaking into Business” that he executed as part of the Open City festival in Lublin, Poland. In “Breaking into Business”, he literally performs the concept of “Open City” by walking through the city pushing a scaffold on casters, setting the scaffold below a business window, climbing up the scaffold and into a window. As I watched the video, I kept wondering if all these places had agreed to his visit or what was the reaction within the location as Alex stepped into the building from a second or third story window. Unfortunately, the videographer only follows Villar on the street and we never see the interaction within the building. As is the nature of Alex Villar’s performative work, the focus is on his action, movement and intervention in and through the urban space.