evidence

Posted on July 20, 2011 by cityperson

In January I went to White Columns to see, “Looking Back,” an exhibit surveying artwork shown in New York in 2010, curated by Bob Nickas. The work was a mix of mostly New York-based artists, young and old, living and dead. One piece that caught my attention was by Candy Jernigan:

Candy Jernigan, Found Dope: Part II, 1986 (detail)
Found objects on paper 28 in. x 39 in.

Broken bits of used crack vials are pasted into into grid formation on a large poster, sealed behind glass, like the butterflies of a 19th century natural historian. Beneath each artifact in the grid is small even block handwriting, marking the date, time and location of its collection, e.g. June 11/Second Avenue at Third street/west side/10 AM. At the center of the grid, towards the bottom, is a hand-drawn map of a section of Manhattan’s East Village, running from Houston Street in the south to Eighth Street in the north, and west to east from Broadway to Avenue A. A small dot on the map is marked with the words “We are here.” Is “here” the site of the piece’s original exhibition, or the home of the artist?

Seven months after seeing this piece, it stays with me as an influence in my own work. The simplicity of the idea, the dedication of the artist to the everyday routine of walking around her neighborhood, and the obsessiveness of collecting and labeling that pariah of all New York trash–used drug paraphernalia–all combine into a portrait of a neighborhood at a particular moment in its history; a moment all but unimaginable in today’s East Village, with its moneyed and policed revelers. What sorts of trash might an observant walker find on her morning walk through the same streets, two decades after Jernigan?

dumpster diving

Posted on July 11, 2011 by cityperson

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Alejandro Duran, Washed Up, 2010

New York based artist, Alejandro Duran, is creating art from trash that washes up on the beaches of Sian Ka’an, in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. Although Sian Ka’an is a federally-protected reserve, the Mexican government cannot prevent the area from becoming the final resting place for trash from all over the world. Duran collects the trash, categorizes the different pieces by color, strips them of labels, arranges his collections in the landscape, and then photographs them. The playful titles of the photographs, such as Nubes, Fruta Negra, and Mar (pictured above) belie the perverse horror of waste which will never biodegrade–carelessly discarded by people who believe what they can’t see won’t hurt them–travelling on the open seas and eventually choking the life of a nature reserve thousands of miles away.

Duran also creates “Product Portraits,” which he labels with the product’s country of origin:

Poland, Shockwaves

Switzerland, Zetafen

United States, WD-40

After photographing these items, Duran uses his own funds to cart the trash to recycling centers; however, this is an extremely difficult undertaking for one artist, working under the constraints of time, money and geography.

Washed Up is truly an exercise in “archiving the city,” if we imagine that cities all around the world create these waste-images of themselves, carried by currents to far-away places.

an other order

Posted on June 14, 2011 by cityperson

Adrian Piper, Pretend not to know, 1989

Order may be private or public. A friend of mine owns an enormous collection of classical music. His CDs fill the walls of a whole big room, floor to ceiling. What is interesting here is that they are chronologically organized by the composer’s date of birth. The order is eccentric because, to his wife’s despair, the owner and recipient of that order is just one person.

Then there is what we can call a public order. Here, there is a distance between the owner and the recipient. The word “order” acquires its double meaning of organization and directives for behavior. In this double interpretation, the owner of the order is the power structure. The order is codified in laws, decrees, and protocols, or is simply expressed through abuse of power.

It is here that art becomes a fundamental activity because it is one of the important tools in creating alternative orders. Using what is essentially a private order, the artist challenges the established and public order by proposing others. When the artist is good, his or her systems are unexpected and revealing. They subvert and expand existing knowledge, at least for the brief instant that passes between creation and the assimilation of the contribution.

–Luis Camnitzer, “Museums and Universities,” e-flux journal #26

speaking with specters

Posted on May 28, 2011 by cityperson

Luis Camnitzer, Last Words (2008). Excerpts from the final statements of death row prisoners, taken from website of the Texas Department of Justice.

What seems almost impossible is to speak always of the specter, to speak to the specter, to speak with it, therefore especially to make or to let a spirit speak. And the thing seems even more difficult for a reader, an expert, a professor, and interpreter, in short, for what Marcellus calls a “scholar.” Perhaps for a spectator in general. Finally, the last one to whom a specter can appear, address itself, or pay attention is a spectator as such. At the theater or at school. The reasons for this are essential. As theoreticians or witnesses, spectators, observers, and intellectuals, scholars believe that looking is sufficient. Therefore, they are not always in the most competent position to do what is necessary: speak to the specter.

–Jacques Derrida (1994), Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International.

foolish journeys documentation

Posted on April 23, 2011 by cityperson

Yesterday’s performance of Foolish Journeys went very well. First, participants came in and signed the book, and then they were given pamphlets (made from a single letter-sized sheet folded in half twice), which contained the Foolish Journeys orientation text.

Then they were given a reading, using my deck of cards, laid out on a tablecloth made of cut up pieces of the official MTA New York City subway maps. The tablecloth was pieced together to create an impossible geography of New York,with some segments of the city repeated, mirrored and distorted, as in a dream.

After the reading, participants were asked to choose the card they would most like to focus upon and encounter in their lives. Once this card was chosen, I scattered small folded pieces of the subway map on the table. Participants were then asked to choose a folded piece and open it. The area depicted in this map could become a site of pilgrimage or further research for the participant–the basis of a personal creative exploration, allowing participants to experience their familiar city as somewhat more strange and unpredictable. Most participants immediately experienced an uncanny or synchronous recognition of the parts of the city depicted on the map.

the danger is really there

Posted on April 20, 2011 by cityperson

Interviewer: Do you ever examine yourself to say, ‘why are you so fearless, compared to other people?’

AW: [laughing] I am so fearful! That’s not fearless. I am more fearful than other people, maybe. That’s why I act more brave: because I know the danger is really there. If you don’t act, the danger becomes stronger.

fairytale

Posted on April 18, 2011 by cityperson

In 2007, for his invited exhibition at the art fair, Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany, Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei did a strange thing. He put out a call on his blog (which was shut down in 2009 by Chinese authorities) asking for 1001 Chinese people to accompany him to the art fair in Kassel.

When I was invited by Documenta, I didn’t want to do a conventional work like painting or sculpture, but rather do a work which directly relates to the real lives of ordinary people… Then the idea came to bring 1,001 Chinese people to view the exhibition as audience, and create a work of itself. The basic concept behind the work is to create a condition which encourages self experience and extends people’s participation of art.

–Ai Weiwei (source)

Ai Weiwei ended up with a whole bunch of regular working people, from cities, from small towns and villages, whom he picked from web applications, off the street, through community groups and through friends and acquaintances. His main criteria was that the candidates be unlikely to have the opportunity to take this kind of trip under normal conditions. The people were put up for a week in a refurbished former factory building in Kassel. Ai worked with filmmakers like Li Pengfei to document the trip. The resulting film is, according to Ai, “a truly realistic documentary about the current spiritual conditions of various Chinese people.”

What impresses me most about this work is the humor at the heart of the challenge to national and global politics which make travel and movement for leisure and pleasure a privilege only those with certain passports and economic means can enjoy. There is heartbreaking beauty in the immensity of taking (and finding, flying, housing, feeding, filming) 1001 people on vacation. The work cost about $4.1 million to produce. The size of that figure is dwarfed by the absurdity of our global systems, which make movement a matter of life or death for many, rendering it almost impossible for most people on earth to say, attend a world art fair in Germany. Is “Fairytale” art?

Fairytale is a work which relates to social, political and cultural aspects… I don’t even care whether it is an art work. –AW

FREE AI WEIWEI!

the living room is open

Posted on April 17, 2011 by cityperson

The Living Room(s), a “non-space for exhibitions, performance and discursive events in Amsterdam West,” is an exciting new venture of my friends, musicians Anat Spiegel and Thomas Mymel, along with curator, Yael Messer and writer, Gilad Reich. According to their website, The Livingroom(s)

is not a modular space- adapting to host a variety of activities; but a variety of activities adapting to the diverse spaces offered to us by sympathetic property owners, shop owners, squatters, buurtcentrums, and artists: like-minded people with a burning desire to see the cohesion of the neighborhood grow. Together we can critically examine our surroundings, create new relationships with our neighbors, and revel in the knowledge of each others perspective.

If you are in Amsterdam Saturday, April 23, check out their kickoff event!

ARCHIVING THE CITY

for the city yet to come

Tag Archives: Art