Tag Exhibition

Entries 11 Total

Vague Terrain 21: Electric Speed | Vague Terrain

Jan 25, ’12 3:39 PM

The urban screen as a form typically fluctuates, a bit uneasily, between two poles: Not purely commercial and rarely purely cultural, a common tactic of the urban screen is to deliver culture in interstitial spaces or timeslots, for example showing video or media art in the last minute of each hour or working with public transit authorities to show animation or experimental video on the television screens in trains or subways….In response to these complex and multivalent conditions, an international network of artists, curators and theorists has emerged for the purpose of discussing and examining the role of the urban screen and to creating discourse among “artists, curators, cultural managers, architects, government institutions, screen operators as well as theoreticians” so as to rethink “the relationship between architecture and public space in the digital age” and to consider the implications of ongoing tensions between commercial and artistic concerns as well as the restrictions that arise from questions of ownership and control in relation to the public context. Whether through the cultural bureaucracy of a municipality or a multi-national corporation such as Clear Channel, screens are regulated, and ultimately cause an examination of what is and is not public.
For us, the networked, global form of the public screen manifestly raises questions about simultaneity, relationships between public and private, issues of centralization and control, as well as causing an examination of the ways in which cultural and commercial spheres intersect – all issues that pierce through and overlay the theme of “electric speed”.
This project might be characterized as an invitation to the six artists – Melissa Mongiat and Mouna Andraos, Jeremy Bailey, Jillian Mcdonald, Jon Sasaki, and Will Gill – to test the formal qualities of the public screen as a medium, because on some level the urban screen implicitly suggests an investigation of the contemporary media environment itself.

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‡ FaceTime « On Stellar Rays ‡

Jan 1, ’12 5:28 PM

FaceTime deals with the state of the face today – a face, which we avidly manipulate, perform, display, distort, detect, scan, enhance, blur, veil and avoid. A face that behaves both as object and subject. Most works incorporate the face as a visual paradigm, a platform for broader explorations and new subjectivities. Questions of identity in such a malleable state of the face, and in the presence of online structures, are at the core of many works.

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Architecture of Fear – a conversation with Trevor Paglen – we make money not art

Nov 22, ’11 6:22 PM

I suspect that there are very few places left on this planet that haven’t been discovered by intrepid explorers. Yet, Trevor Paglen has found and investigated territories that still need to be documented and exposed to the world. If you’ve never seen his photographs, i suggest you swing by the Z33 House for Contemporary Art Center in Hasselt, Belgium. They are part of Architecture of Fear, an exhibition that examines how feelings of fear pervade our daily life.

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“Rendered Aura” by Travess Smalley

Nov 19, ’11 5:21 PM

Last night, Travess Smalley’s exhibition “Rendered Aura” opened at Gloria Maria Gallery in Milan. I’m excited to announce that I wrote an essay entitled “Flashback” to accompany the show. You can read a small teaser below, full text and press release available here.

In 1964, Marshall McLuhan writes:

After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding. During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man – the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our sense and our nerves by the various media. Whether the extension of consciousness, so long sought by advertisers for specific products, will be “a good thing” is a question that admits of a wide solution. There is little possibility of answering such questions about the extensions of man without considering them all together. Any extension, whether of skin, hand, or foot, affects the whole psychic and social complex. (Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, pgs. 3-4)

The possibilities of an expanded consciousness, ushered in from the promises of new technologies, the “electric age” and pharmaceuticals shook the historical moment in which McLuhan wrote the above, and it is responsible for producing the aesthetic, cultural sensibility and genre known as “psychedelia.” The circumstances McLuhan described in 1964 are still with us. And with it, psychedelia, which has resurfaced in varying forms over the past few decades, over and over again.

The commercial interest was there at the very start, already present in
McLuhan’s question of whether extended consciousness is “a good thing” or not. The use of psychedelia for profit is so ubiquitous and commonplace, that it’s easy to forget its original spark of revolutionary potential. Psychedelia emerges now as a stylistic motif, a mood enhancer, nostalgia. With its every resurgence, it’s imperative that we understand the surrounding conditions, as they detail how the mind is extended, and towards what end.

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Hyperjunk: Notes on a New Nature : Bad at Sports

Nov 11, ’11 9:17 PM

This week I am in New York City installing a show at 319 Scholes, a recently cited “go to” venue for all sorts of media-related arts including live audio/performance, digital interactive work, and netart. The show entitled Notes on a New Nature is a physical iteration of an ongoing research project that started several years ago with a lecture presented at The School of the Art Institute and has since had many manifestations in my own visual practice, as well as an ongoing image blogg and other literature/writing.
The above video is an introduction recited from the Front Range of Colorado concerning the central thoughts I’ve been developing with this research, as well as questions I continue to have regarding the depiction of landscape and nature amidst the proliferation of digital culture.

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Review of Jennie C. Jones’s Exhibit “Absorb/Diffuse” in the Wire

Nov 7, ’11 5:30 PM

I wrote a review of a solo exhibition by Jennie C. Jones entitled “Absorb/Diffuse” in the November issue of the Wire. The exhibit was up at the Kitchen in New York City from September through October. I won’t give it away, but I examine how Jones integrates aspects of graphic notation into her practice. You can read the full article in the print or digital edition, available here.

"Absorb/Diffuse" at the Kitchen (Photo: David Allison, courtesy of The Kitchen)

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Better than a haunted house…

Oct 29, ’10 1:24 PM

I checked out “Lost Symbols” last Saturday at St. Cecilia’s Convent in Greenpoint, a group show on the occult curated by Victoria Keddie and Jennifer Zazo. The building itself is gorgeous, with crumbling ceilings, old stained glass, and 19th century molding. The exhibit stretches across all four floors of the convent, and the majority of the artists were provided a room of their own to completely take over. There are 30+ artists involved, with performances and screenings each weekend. (Schedule here.) Given the theme, there were plenty of pentagrams, altar candles, incense, and the like. The creepiest work by far was a small room on the third floor, whose walls and ceiling were entirely covered in meticulously neat, ancient-looking script. I had my camera in tow, and took some shots below.

Today and tomorrow are the last days to see Lost Symbols, and the space is open from 11am-11pm.

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Ear to Ear Documentation

Jun 4, ’09 1:05 AM

I contributed two mix CDs to the exhibition “Ear to Ear”:http://jeffkhonsary.com/ear-to-ear/1 organized by Jeff Khonsary last year. The first mix compiled all my favorite songs from 1996 (the height of my riot grrrl days) and the second was a selection of “ice music” – music that was either made with ice or sounds like music made with ice. My old fanzine from middle school/high school Suburbia was also on view. Here are some photos:

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Operations of Sound

Nov 29, ’07 7:13 AM


the Old Operating Theater


Tim Wainwright, Bonewax boxes from Harefield Hospital

Sound artist John Wynne and photographer Tim Wainwright debuted their new work FLOW yesterday at the Old Operating Theater in London, an original 19th century operating theater and museum. Inheritance Projects, a curatorial agency programming site-specific contemporary art projects in heritage museums, commissioned the piece specifically for the exhibition and event program Operations of Sound. FLOW incorporates both video and audio documentation from Wynne and Wainwright’s artist residency at the Harefield Hospital in Middlesex, a leading center for lung and heart transplantation. The artists spent the duration of their residency capturing the intricacies of the surgical environment and its impact on transplant patients and their families. They maintained a blog throughout, which can be found here. FLOW is installed in the room housing the museum’s collection of antique surgical equipment. Inheritance Projects will also use the theater to screen ITU, a surround sound and video piece filmed in the hospital’s Intensive Treatment Unit.

Operations of Sound will be on display until December 15th.

Ethical private investigator team in WA carries out specialist investigations

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The Reanimation Library opens up a new space! /// “Play” at Proteus Gowanus

Sep 10, ’07 9:33 AM


Image above from the Reanimation Library’s collection

Ooo! This is exciting. The Reanimation Library is a collection available for creative re-use of found and discarded books. Andrew Beccone, who began the library, co-curated a wonderful exhibition series last year on the topic of libraries for the gallery Proteus Gowanus. He is now opening up a space just next door. See below for more about the Reanimation Library’s space and the new exhibition series Play at Proteus Gowanus.

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The Reanimation Library will be debuting its new space this Friday, September 14th at 6:00 PM. The Library has moved into a space adjacent to Proteus Gowanus, which it is sharing with the Museum of Matches and an archive of material produced by the Anonima Group. Proteus Gowanus is throwing an opening reception for its new exhibit, “Play.”

You can see pictures of the new space here:

http://www.reanimationlibrary.org/pages/072007.htm
http://www.reanimationlibrary.org/pages/082007.htm
http://www.reanimationlibrary.org/pages/news.htm

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Proteus Gowanus invites you to the opening reception for the yearlong interdisciplinary exhibit Play Friday, September 14, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

“You shall not bite, or not bite hard, your brother’s ear.”

Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, (1944)

It is with great excitement that we launch our 2007/2008
interdisciplinary theme “Play” at Proteus Gowanus. This year we will explore the versatile meanings of “Play,” investigating its history and future as the bedrock of culture; its regenerative power as the creative basis of every discipline and as the spark that ignites the child’s imagination; and its darker role in our entertainment-obsessed culture. The exhibit will include an array of play-related art, artifacts, objects, books and events (Check our website for details), and will unfold over the course of the year generated by suggestions of visitors to the gallery, a growing number of “PG Correspondents,” and by the rich interdisciplinary resources of nine collaborating non-profit organizations.

We introduce the year with the Play Book, not a catalog, but a book to be played with – a loose compilation of artist-designed games, play-related text and images, including pages of anagrams and palindromes, ponderings on the meaning of play, conundrums by Lewis Carroll, and a short play by Gertrude Stein. A description and pre-publication subscription offer is available on our website. The Play Book is the first of a series of publications called Proteotypes that grow out of Proteus Gowanus programs.

Proteus Gowanus is also pleased to announce:
Two new permanent installations of an archival nature have joined The Museum of Matches, A Cold War Room in the space adjacent to Proteus Gowanus: The Reanimation Library www.reanimationlibrary.org, an independent library serving artists, writers and cultural archeologists; and Anonima, an archive of art, books and ephemera from a 1960’s artist collaborative.

The Play exhibit and programs will be co-curated by Maddy Rosenberg and PG Co-Founder/Director Sasha Chavchavadze.

Play Correspondents include: artist/animator Pahl Hluchan;
artist/filmmaker Jeanne Liotta; Brooklyn Museum Librarian/Curator of Books Deirdre Lawrence; toy designer/historian/educator Karen Hewitt; and author/video game expert Heather Chaplin.

Play Participants include: Rosaire Appel, Gerard Barbot, The Brooklyn Museum Library, Cabinet Magazine, Ted Chafee, Heather Chaplin, Chris Cogburn, Donn Davis, Susan Dunkerley, Joanna Ebenstein, The Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, Marty Greenbaum, Melissa Henley, Karen Hewitt, The Kentler International Drawing Space Satellite Flatfile of Contemporary Prints, Halona Hilbertz , Pahl Hluchan, Sharon Horvath, Leslie Kerby, Jenni Knight, Tom La Farge, Jeanne Liotta, Desi Minchillod, David Moore/Bing and Ruth, Place in History, Shervone Nichols, Debra Pearlman, Alan Rosner, Lance Rutledge, Sally Sturman, The Institute For Figuring, Dan Torop, Ugly Duckling Presse, Paulus Van Horne, Vertical Player Repertory, Wendy Walker, Jane Zweibel, 99 Hooker.

The Artistsbook Library: Eileen Arnow-Levine, Carol Barton, Mindy Belloff, Doug Beube, Mark Staff Brandl, Stephanie Brody-Lederman, Catya Plate, Libby Clarke, Lucinda Cobley, Beatrice Coron, Maureen Cummins, Sandra C. Fernandez, Anne Gilman, Geoff Green, Martha Haydn, Bob Heman, Susan Hensel, Kumi Korf, David Lantow, Andre Lee, Jill Mckeown, Veronica Morgan, Florence Neal, Heidi Neilson, Susan Newmark, Sarah Nicholls, Donna Maria Perkins, Amee Pollack Laurie Spitz, Purgatory Pie Press – Dikko Faust and Esther Smith, Evelyn Eller Rosenbaum, Maddy Rosenberg, Susan Rotolo, Elsie Sampson, Miriam Schaer, Susan Share, Shirley Sharoff, Carolyn Shattuck, Robbin Ami Silverberg, Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, Micki Watanabe Spiller, April Vollmer, Debra Weier.

Come visit!

Proteus Gowanus
543 Union Street Nevins Street Gate
Brooklyn, NY 11215
www.proteusgowanus.com
infoproteusgowanus.com
718-243-1572

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