Structural Patterns

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.

Today at 10:30am Brooke and I are presenting our neighborhood composting project at the Just Food Conference as part of MAKING ART WITH FOOD IN MIND (ENGAGING NYC COMMUNITIES) panel. We’ve made an initial video cut documenting the project thus far that we’ll be presenting as an introduction and then briefly describe where we are at and how we are moving forward with EXCESS NYC.

EXCEDENTES/EXCESS 2011-2013 from Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga on Vimeo.

About the panel:
10:30-11:45am
Food & Finance High School (Sign outside of the building reads Park West High School)
525 West 50th Street, New York, NY

MAKING ART WITH FOOD IN MIND (ENGAGING NYC COMMUNITIES)
For centuries artists have given us new ways of seeing the world around us through the lens of food. The last decade has been especially rich as artists respond to the challenges and concerns of feeding ourselves by creating models that are local, sustainable and community-oriented. In this workshop, visual artists will offer practical advice on using food creatively while fostering social change.

Speakers: Atom Cianfarani, Co-Author of A Roof Grows in Brooklyn: The Do-It-Yourself Green Roof Workbook; Jason Gaspar, Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum; Lisa Gross, Boston Tree Party; Brooke Singer & Ricardo Miranda Zuniga, collaborating artists on “Excess NYC”; Tattfoo Tan, artist

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.

A Macaulay College student, Tyler Alterman that once took a class of mine (Intro to 2D Animation) is working on his senior project – a cognitive science lab in a truck. Watch the video, it’s the type of project that I can’t help but to support due to it’s good energy and idealism. It would be great to see an ice cream type truck with a giant brain buzzing around New York City!

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.

Saturday, January 5th from 12pm-4pm
New York Hall of Science on 47-01 111th Street
Flushing Meadows Corona Park, NY 11368
Take 7 train to 111th St stop
***Say code “road to clinic”***
Attendees will get a FREE museum tour!!

FREE community workshop geared to inform and support undocumented youth, children of immigrants and all youth regardless of immigration status with their college application process while providing them with skills to become their own advocates when navigating the education system. Get support with:

filling out college applications (CUNY, SUNY, private)
essay and resume writing
financing college and how to apply for scholarships
legal referrals, Deferred action info and more resources

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.