Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga

Structural Patterns

Reflections on Art, Technology and Society

Archive for the ‘public_art’ Category

Grand Opening of El Ranchito

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The art center, El Matadero in Madrid, Spain inaugurated its latest project – El Ranchito last Thursday, December 15, 2011. El Matadero is dedicated to contemporary art practices and El Ranchito is a gigantic space (Nave 16) within El Matadero that is dedicated to artistic research, process and social engagement. Brooke and I collaborated with two artists in Madrid to begin a long-term project titled EXCEDENTES/EXCESS that revolves around food waste in our cities. Below are images from the final night of preparation for the opening and photos from the media tour on the morning of the opening as well as an image from the opening.

El Ranchito

Platform to view exhibition designed by Nerea Calvillo of C+ Architects

El Ranchito

View from platform of the exhibition El Ranchito

André Komatsu

André Komatsu in discussion with curator Luisa Fuentes Guaza


André Komatsu employed largely discarded construction materials around El Matadero to create “Landscapeknowhere – Timeout”. I enjoyed getting to now André Komatsu, however, I found his installation to be very formal, not particularly interesting and not in line with the mission of El Ranchito – research oriented and engaged with social practice.

Zoohaus

Inteligencia Colectiva constructed "Offfficina en El Ranchito" future admin office for El Ranchito


Inteligencia Colectiva bases its practice in traveling the world to discover, document and adopt alternative means of construction. Their mission is to create a public archive of alternative modes of construction. As part of their residency, they constructed the future administrative space in El Ranchito that will be self-sustaining through a bicycle generator located at the top of the office tower.

Todo por la praxis

A large collective - Todo por la praxis - created a series of practical sculptures from discarded materials


Aesthetically one of my favorite installations or series of works is by the collective Todo para la praxis. Of all the resident artists, this group has been perhaps the busiest at designing and constructing. They have created a series of practical sculptures designed for public use. Amongst the constructions are a mobile street kitchen, a dining space, a mobile boom box, an info center. They continue building new things through workshops that they lead. Soon a children’s table and workspace will be introduced.
Todo para la praxis

Public gathering space by Todo para la praxis

EXCEDENTES/EXCESS

Installation presenting research from the project "EXCEDENTES/EXCESS" concerning food waste in Madrid & NYC


“EXCEDENTES/EXCESS” is a collaborative project between RICARDO MIRANDA Zuniga Y BROOKE SINGER (NUEVA YORK), JOSE LUIS BONGORE, BEATRIZ MARCOS Y SISSA VERDE and was selected as part of the public call for El Ranchito. The project revolves around the large amounts of food going to the dump when there are plenty of people hungry in the cities of New York and Madrid. In NYC the focus has been research and we hope to construct a “composting bicycle” in 2012. In Madrid, the realization of the food rescue and redistribution cart (pictured last in screen documentation) has lead the Madrid group to researching the possibility of establishing a law that would facilitate the collection and redistribution of discarded food that is safe to consume. A law similar to the Good Samaritan Law in the United States, signed by President Clinton.
EXCEDENTES/EXCESS

Research archive for the project "EXCEDENTES/EXCESS"


EXCEDENTES/EXCESS

Madrid team realized the cart for food redistribution with the help of Todo por la praxis

Written by ricardo

December 19th, 2011 at 8:44 am

Interview with Joel Berg, Segment 1 – On Food Waste

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This past week, Brooke and I met with Joel Berg, director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger and author of All You Can Eat, How Hungry Is America. We sought out Berg, because we’re collaborating on a food reclamation project with Spanish artist Jose Luis Bongore for a residency and exhibition at El Ranchito.

The goal of the project is to introduce mobile carts to food vendors in Madrid where they will place food that will otherwise be discarded as trash. Due to the high level of unemployment in Spain, dumpster diving is not uncommon. The desire is to present a system that will facilitate the reclamation of discarded food.

Here in NYC, Brooke and I have been researching food waste from supermarkets and in general the systems in place to salvage food. Questions we’ve been asking include: What goes to organization such as City Harvest? What stores participate in food redistribution? What becomes landfill leading to methane and greenhouse gas? So we decided to consult an expert. Joel Berg has devoted much of his career to eradicating hunger in the United States. We asked him if food reclamation at the supermarket level is a worthwhile endeavor. Below is the initial sequence from our interview. Shortly I will post more edits.

Written by ricardo

November 12th, 2011 at 7:30 pm

Mobility at Momenta Art, Sept 9th – Oct 17th

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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.
Mobility exhibition at Momenta
From left to right: Undocumented Drones, Blender by Hidemi Takagi and Pimp My Piragua by Miguel Luciano
Mobility exhibition at Momenta
From left to right: SOS Mobile Classroom by Tattfoo Tan and Máximo González’s Changarrito
Mobility exhibition at Momenta
Consume Love by Atom Cianfarani
Mobility exhibition at Momenta
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.

Written by ricardo

September 8th, 2011 at 7:46 pm

“Breaking into Business” by Alex Villar

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"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.

Written by ricardo

July 27th, 2011 at 8:09 am

Santa Fe Museum of International Folk Art

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Two pieces that struck me while visiting the Museum of International Folk Art today:

Mexican paper mache doll sales on a bike

Bicycle Paper Mache Figure Store

I couldn’t get close to this bicycle, so I shot it from above.  Since the Chivas mascot is prominent amongst the paper mache figures, it’s safe to assume that it’s a Mexican shop on wheels, beautiful!

Decorated Head Set

Decorated Head Set

I failed to write down where this head piece is from, I believe either Bolivia or Peru.  A video next to a few of these featured the man who makes them from discarded objects.  During a festival, men wear these things on their heads, there’s an entire armature within it that the performers need to hold, so that the piece stays in place.

Written by ricardo

July 10th, 2011 at 9:54 pm

Posted in fine_arts,public_art

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La Fulminante en acción

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I don’t know who this performance artist is or who she is protesting against, whether it’s the Colombian government, or multinationals or power in general, but it’s exciting to see (in more ways than one), particularly the street actions, such as the performance on Bolivar’s Monument below.

Eventually she stops dancing and merely sits on the edge of the monument. The video states:

Eventually a police man forced me to step down from the Bolivar’s monument because he felt that my body on the monument’s steps was vulgar and I was ruining the tourist photos. So I continued the action without erotic dancing.

You can see more of artist’s work at: http://www.lafulminante.com or her YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/LaFulminantexxx

Written by ricardo

June 16th, 2011 at 7:42 am

FROM DARKNESS TO DAYLIGHT

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As greater bandwidth allows for higher quality video, I’ve posted a 7-minute single channel edit of a 14-minute 3-channel video installation commissioned by the New Museum in 2004 for an exhibition titled “Counter Culture.” The installation presents three animated portraits reflecting on the history and the future of the Bowery neighborhood. The monitors presenting the animated portraits are installed within a sculptural work made of a series of large steel ducts that have been interwoven together.

The exhibition “Counter Culture” occurred before the ground breaking for the new New Museum building at Bowery and Prince. My contribution to the show focused on capturing three alternate perspectives on the transformation of the Bowery neighborhood at the time. The three animated portraits are based on interviews with three long time Bowery personalities – Anton Bari, manager of the Bari Restaurant Supply and Real Estate, Bruce Davis, a resident of the last “flop house” in the Bowery, the Sunshine Hotel and Pedro Bisonoro or Morocho a 30 year resident of the Bowery, originally from the Dominican Republic.

Here are images of the original installation in Freeman Alley:
FROM DARKNESS TO DAYLIGHT
FROM DARKNESS TO DAYLIGHT
FROM DARKNESS TO DAYLIGHT
And a link to the site documenting the installation: FROM DARKNESS TO DAYLIGHT

Duke Riley at MagnanMetz Gallery

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I’ve become a big fan of Duke Riley’s work. Riley combines historical research, public intervention and skilled craft to generate narratives that are immediately engaging and subtly layered and complex.

Duke Riley drawing

I Photoshopped the drawings pictured in this post in order to better see the detail that Riley executes in his graphic work; they are worth seeing in person whenever possible. Although the only work documented in this post is graphic representation, Riley works across media and he has gotten the most attention for his public interventions, such as “After the Battle of Broolyn” for which he built a replica of an 18th Century U.S. Revolutionary submarine “The Turtle” and set out on the Hudson to attack a ship, the Queen Mary 2 docked off Manhattan. The NYC Coast Guard hauled Riley and his submarine from the Hudson.
Riley's Turtle Riley's Turtle

The latest exhibition presents two installations revolving around two separate historical narratives – the hobbo ballad “An Invitation to Lubberland” and Petty’s Island, a Citgo owned island in the Delaware River.

I didn’t have the patience to watch the videos portraying An Invitation to Lubberland which presented a late 19th century/ early 20th century dressed man running around underground tunnels. I was much more drawn to the second work presented “Reclaiming the Lost Kingdom of Laird” which consists of an intervention upon a Citgo fuel storage tank and a reclaiming of the island by the Laird Kingdom Liberation Army that published a letter to Hugo Chavez on the Huffington Post reclaiming Petty’s Island.

The project includes a giant portrait of Ralston Laird painted onto the top of a storage tank, interviews with the great great grandson of Ralston Laird, artifacts of the Laird family and beautiful drawings that re-imagine the island. (Ralston Laird was an Irish immigrant who once lived on Petty’s Island and claimed himself king of Petty’s Island.) Below are a few closeups of the large scale drawing pictured above.

Riley's Petty's Island

Riley's Petty's Island

Riley's Petty's Island

Duke Riley goes all out with his work. He ventures across boundaries to realize work that must be taken seriously due to the earnestness of execution. My only point of critique is that his graphic work is consistently in line with hipster subculture aesthetics informed by past eras of Americana and I would much rather see Riley establish his own visual language. Although the visual styles are generally informed by the era of the topic that he tackles it seems to be the same early 19th century U.S. graphic style that he recreates. Perhaps what I enjoy the most is that Riley really seems to enjoy his work thus the research leading to dense narratives that are conceptually and visually engaging.

Creative Time Summit

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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.

What is the Miracle of Chile?

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Circuit mounted to Santiago sidewalk tile
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

Workshop to document Miracle of Chile in public space
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.

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

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

Written by ricardo

August 13th, 2010 at 5:40 am