Structural Patterns

One of the grads, Alex Mallis, in Hunter’s Integrated Media Arts (IMA) program is seeking funding for a film capturing a group of people who feed off discarded food. Support the film via it’s Kickstarter campaign.

“An aging artist, his young assistant, and blind friend arrive by rusted retro car; a Puerto Rican woman and her teenage grandson embark on foot, lead by a rattling grocery cart; a hyperactive twenty-something and his stoned companion leave a Bushwick loft to navigate the subway. Familiar faces and converging philosophies meet to take what others deem unworthy of consumption. The reward of a free and delicious discovery activates a ritual adventure – a night of extraordinary harvest.”
– Alex Mallis, Excerpt from film description on Kickstarter

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:



And a link to the site documenting the installation: FROM DARKNESS TO DAYLIGHT

I had to take a bit of time out to create a small animation describing how I feel about online advertising and Capitalism’s consumption of the web…

If you’d like view it as a SWF (much larger, sharper and quicker download), CLICK HERE

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.