Artistic Innovation, Like the Web, Is Often Hidden

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Lisa Jevbratt, 1:1 (2), Interface - Every, 1999-2002

Lisa Jevbratt, 1:1 (2), Interface – Every, 1999-2002

Heard a segment on The World tonight on the “Dark Side of the Web.” The piece focused on police action against illegal activities on the “dark web,” many of them reprehensible, but it also made me think of Lisa Jevbratt’s project 1:1, which she first created when part of the artist collaborative C5 in 1999 – only a year after Google was founded.

It’s commonplace to talk about artists as visionaries of the world to come, using new technologies in ways that were not even imagined let alone intended by their makers, which nevertheless “soon” become the norm. It’s so commonplace that the trope has become almost meaningless. Lisa didn’t invent robot crawlers or data viz or discover how much of the internet is unseen, unknown, and inaccessible, even to Google, but she sure as hell created an amazing project that did use visualization of big data to create just this understanding – some 15 years before public radio can do a general interest story about the visible web being only the tip of the iceberg.

Artistic innovation is often hidden in some deep valley between hype and fantasy that only time can clearly reveal. That’s a conundrum worth supporting.

Check it out.

Night Visions (173 days)

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Last Saturday, the StarTribune reprinted a story, which they called “Stop counting followers,” at least in the print edition. It was called “Quality over quantity in social media” in the original Chicago Tribune version. I’m not sure if this a difference that makes a difference, but the article caught my eye because Northern Lights.mn is currently going through a process to better understand the 40,000 people or so who show up at Northern Spark.

This process is part of our organizational work through the Arts Midwest ArtsLab Peer Learning Community, which is designed to support Resiliency in the arts community and enable the development of ideas and skills that strengthen the Ability to adapt to Change.

One aspect of this project is functional: to implement a Customer Relationship Management system. I have no doubt that this alone will allow us to communicate more efficiently and more effectively with our various audiences: donors, attendees, artists, volunteers, etc. You can only go so far with spreadsheets and Google docs.

But the real thrust of the program is to “move” some of that 40,000 audience to or toward the “core.” What is that core, you might ask? I know I do. The obvious marker is how do we get someone who attends and enjoys Northern Spark, a free event, to contribute to it. We sometimes call this the MPR model. But what is our pledge drive? More importantly, contributing is a potential outcome and not an actual description of this core. It’s about more than a transaction.

In my fantasy notion of the MPR model – I have no inside knowledge of their actual process or thinking – this non-transactional core is exemplified by the “driveway moment.” And we have something similar at Northern Spark, at least from my point of view: “night visions.” These are the moments that some people describe in our surveys of the event, and on social media.

“I had so many beautiful interactions with the city and her art, but the part I never expected was walking back to my car across the Stone Arch Bridge, sun rising over the smokestacks of the power plant as the city was slowly waking up around me. The river was inexorably making her way to NOLA, and I stopped and realized how amazing the little apple is. I have lived here for ten years and never experienced her in such a way before. It was our little secret: the river, the little apple, and me. A magical night!”

I have curated art and created cultural platforms for over 20 years, and never have I experienced so consistently such genuine enthusiasm about an event. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t criticisms. There are, of course, and there should be. But these night-vision-driveway-moments, quite honestly, keep us going. Keep us trying to make Northern Spark something that is truly Sustainable, Resilient, and with some Awe.

My goal as Artistic Director and our goal as an organization is to support the artists, build the audiences, and create the environment that enable these moments to occur. It is also our goal and desire to understand them. If you have a night-vision-driveway-moment, we’d love hear about it and for you to share it.

Northern Spark: 175 Days

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175 days. A little less than 6 months.

As we settle into some holiday relaxation – or at least a different kind of frazzle – June 14, Northern Spark,  seems like a long way off. But we have learned from experience that it’s not. The deadline for project proposals is open through January 13 and partner proposals still have some leeway as well, so we don’t even know the full line up of the program yet. At the same time, web deadlines, print deadlines, contract deadlines, permit deadlines, kicksstarter campaign deadlines, sponsor support deadlines, press deadlines, budget deadlines are all advancing like demographics, inexorably.

Over the next 175 days, I want to give an insider perspective on putting this event together. Not just the daily what-I-had-for-breakfast minutia or the here-comes-the-next-appeal appeal, although I’m sure some of that will be mixed in. It’s part of our friending, tweeting, rough and tumblring micro-cultures that sustain the new environment of Sustainability, Resiliency, and Innovation we all find ourselves in.

But I’m also interested in sharing our version, or at least my version of the thrill of victory and agony of defeat that is the human drama of artistic experimentation at Northern Spark’s free, annual, multidisciplinary, multi-venue, multiple partner, dusk-to-dawn, public arts festival.

Sincerely,

Steve Dietz
Founder and Artistic Director, Northern Spark

 

Playing the Building

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Playing the Building at Aria, Nov. 5 - Dec. 4. Photo: Jake Armour

I first saw David Byrne’s Playing the Building at Battery Maritime Building in New York City in 2008. It was after hours, and I was the only person there besides the attendant. It was a magical moment, and the building, under renovation before reopening as the summer ferry terminal to Governor’s Island, seemed to sigh and wheeze and pound its history as I prodded the organ keys. In my mind’s eye, it was late afternoon, and the light was slanting through the grimed windows like a Francis Frith cathedral.

The thing about Playing the Building, however, is that it is intentionally a secular experience. It is not about star power. In the technical rider for the project, it states several times words to the effect: DAVID BYRNE WILL NOT PLAY PLAYING THE BUILDING. Do not ask. This is not a not a blue M&M’s clause. It is out of respect for the intent of the project, which is all about exploration and play, not awe. By exploring the re-programmed keys of the organ, you are drawn to explore the recesses of the building. Where did that sound come from? What made that sound? Why does it sound that way? By hacking the organ, you are encouraged to think about how to hack the building. This building. Any building. Any thing.

I saw Beatrix*Jar at the recent opening of Playing the Building at Aria, the old Jeune Lune theater, and I wanted to ask them what they thought about the relationship of circuit bending to playing around with buildings, but we didn’t get the chance. Maybe we would have discussed Gordon Matta-Clark’s building cuts. Usman Haque’s Evoke, “a massive animated projection that lights up the facade of York Minster in response to the public, who use their own voices to “evoke” colourful light patterns that emerge at the building’s foundations and soar up towards the sky, giving the surface a magical feeling as it melts with colour” might have come up. What’s interesting about Playing the Building is the way it deconstructs the organ and building, stripping them both of harmony and ornament. It’s not really about making music. It’s more about making. And listening. The organ is an amplifier for the solitude of an empty building.

 Theater de la Jeune Lune was a fabled theater company. Playing the building, their building, one can’t help but hear Cyrano in the wings or Juliet on the balcony or perhaps urgent late night whisperings pouring over the books in a back room. It’s a magnificent building. Playing the Building does it full justice and First&First is to be congratulated for bringing this exciting event to the Twin Cities and bringing excitement back to the building of Theater de la Jeune Lune.

 

Travels in Associative Reality

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I look at this nearly every day.

I arrived at The Soap Factory’s $99 Sale late in 2011. Most of the work had already been claimed, but it didn’t matter to me. What I had eyes for, only, was Landscape Simulation : Fargo / Former PetSmart, Westgate Shoping Center, Macon, GA, 2011. At least that’s what is written on the back of the drawing. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time.

I wouldn’t say that it “spoke to me,” but there was something deeply satisfying and nourishing looking at it.

I feel like I squint whenever I look at the drawing. There’s something indistinct about it, but it’s also like scanning the horizon in a Western. Like you’re wearing that battered, square leather cowboy hat that Clint Eastwood wears in The Good The Bad and the Ugly, shading his eyes as he holds  binoculars up to them like a submarine captain, elbows akimbo. Maybe I’m misremembering the binoculars. Does he even use binoculars or just wear that poncho and chomp on a cheroot? And where did the submarine come from? But it’s like that.

I scan this drawing nearly every day, but I’m a lake person, not a plains person. What do I know? What is the attraction? How could something so desolate be “nourishing?” Especially with no water, no weather to eye.

According to its title, the structure is a PetSmart at a Westgate Shopping Center in Macon, GA. Isn’t Eleanor Savage from Macon? When I had my second 50th birthday party, it was about 95 degrees and sweltering. Everyone was sweating like, well, like a pig. I’ve gone to the State Fair for tons of years, but I don’t actually know how or even if pigs sweat. I’ll have to ask the 4H girls about that next year. I still remember that Eleanor said it was just getting comfortable. Like back home. That’s about the extent of my knowledge of Macon. In 2010, I commissioned Chris Baker’s offscript for Santana Row shopping center in San Jose as part of the 01SJ Biennial. I remember it was across from a Westgate shopping center. We would have done it there, if they had sponsored us. We asked them first. I also curated Jennifer and Kevin McCoy’s Big Box (2007) for FeedForward at LABoral. Big Box is all about the “former” part. Nature takes over. Like New York City in I Am Legend.

I attended a great conversation by artist Pamela Valfer and critic Christina Schmid tonight. It was thoughtful and open, and even though there was a lot of talk about Baudrillard, it was everything a public conversation should be but often is not.  Thank you! Christina and Pamela. Nevertheless, by the end, I still hadn’t figured out exactly why me and the PetSmart in Fargo  had hit it off so well.  When I got home, I looked at Valfer’s website, and it turns out she had “renamed” the work on my wall: Landscape Simulation: Fargo (movie)/Vacant Pet Smart, Macon, GA. Not only had the Pet Smart (PetSmart?) changed from “former” to “vacant” but turns out the landscape is from the movie Fargo.

This was necessary, the copying from movies part, Valfer averred during the conversation, because until a recent residency in rural Ireland, she had never really been in nature. While I cannot claim the same, it is impossible to deny that it is nearly impossible to look at nature, especially representations of nature, without a kind of virtual overlay and infinite reflection of representation upon representation. I suppose you could say, a la Baudrillard, welcome to the hyperreal, but Christina said something else that was interesting. She mentioned that in some study, people who looked at representations of nature did not have the same visceral, emotional reaction as people who looked at nature. I’m paraphrasing her paraphrase here, but the point she wanted to make is that the body knows. In some sense you cannot lie to the body and there is a difference between representation and the real.

Pamela Valfer, Landscape Simulation: Fargo (movie)/Vacant Pet Smart, Macon, GA 2011 Graphite on paper 8" x 10"

While I do believe this in my bones – nature is different than its representation – the nourishment of Valfer’s bleak Fargo landscape with its vacant Pet Smart may just be its embedded, rich, complex, seductive, vital history of unnatural associations.

 

 

Installing ReGeneration: Tuesday

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Installing Futurefarmers, Ethnobotanical New York
"Rolodex"
Plant press doubles as seating
Installing view

Today we continued to install ReGeneration at the New York Hall of Science. Everyone is thrilled with SOFTlab’s and The Living’s “cloud” design for the exhibition called Common Weathers. There are still some issues to resolve, but it provides a beautiful focus for the work in a pretty chaotic installation venue.

biomodd [nyc4]’s installation of BIOMODD has been going like gangbusters for a couple of weeks already. It’s a dynamic installation that builds a community as it is built.

Futurefarmers have built a remarkable mobile research station, Ethnobotanical New York, out of the commonest of materials, and it is stunning. It also rewards investigation, from the seats that double as plant presses to the “rolodex” of images to the provocative library.

Shih Chieh Huang installed 99plus. At first we wondered about it being “hidden” in its funnel cloud, but there are some great views from around the exhibition floor, and having to work for these views adds to a certain mystery of peering into the ocean depths.

We also reviewed Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga’s delightful video game, which is at the heart of A Geography of Being: Una Geografia de ser, which he will begin installing on Friday. The wooden robots are awesome!

Tomorrow we install Scott Kildall’s 2049.

 

In Habit work-in-progress

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Photo: Nancy Wong Photography, LLC
Photo: Nancy Wong Photography, LLC
Photo: Nancy Wong Photography, LLC

Saturday I had the opportunity to see a work-in-progress performance of Aniccha Arts’ In Habit: Living Patterns, which will be performed at Northern Spark. Pramila Vasudevan, the founder and artistic director of Aniccha Arts, was an early Art(ists) On the Verge fellow, and I have seen many of her performances over the years. For In Habit, Pramila brought in Piotr Szyhalski in an accustomed but nevertheless new role for him as director for another artist’s work. Jon Keston returns for another tour-de-force sound composition, and the entire crew and all the performers are amazing. The program is stellar and should be a highlight of Northern Spark.

Check out Pramila and Piotr on this video trailer by our new intern Tricia Towey, who will be doing regular progress reports on artists’ work for the next 59 days. And speaking of just days to go, support Aniccha Arts’ Kickstarter project.

 

 

Lights on Tampa Etch a Sketch

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It appears that this year’s Lights On Tampa new work will be primarily Pablo Valbuena’s delicate and transformative etch a sketch-like N27°57’00” W82°27’41” and projects by Juliet Davis & Stephanie Tripp, Eva Lee, and Molly Schwartz to be displayed on a permanent installation called The Portal, which looks from renderings like it may be in danger of being a better idea than actualized project.

Rendering of The Portal, Tampa, FL

Nevertheless, I can appreciate the attempt – and I’m sure the experience will be impressive – in light of this comment from Tampa’s Daily Loaf.

“In its first year, Lights on Tampa was a revelation: Look! Lots of people! Downtown! On a Saturday night! Now that there’s actually a little life in the district’s nightlife, think of this year’s LOT as a party to celebrate a downtown that has, at last, a lot to look at.”

This is my oft-quoted  “network takes over” effect in panel six of Archigram’s Instant City.

Archigram, Instant City, installation view "Edge Conditions," 2006 01SJ Biennial

Introducing Responsive City panel

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In one sense the answer to the question posed in the panel’s title is clear. The responsive city is a fiction. It doesn’t exist, and it may not ever exist, except in our imagination. Thank you for coming.

But seriously, whether it is fact or fiction, of course, begs the question of what is a responsive city.

One way to answer that question is to read and absorb the Situated Technologies Pamphlet Series, for which Mark Shepard is a co-editor along with Omar Khan and Trebor Scholz. As they write in the introduction to the first volume of the series,

“How will the ability to design increas-ingly responsive environments alter the ways we conceive of space? What do architects need to know about urban computing, and what do technologists need to know about cities? How are these issues themselves situated within larger social, cultural, environmental, and political concerns?”

I am certain this panel will shed some light on these questions today.

I am neither a practitioner nor a theorist, but the ideas of the responsive city have animated my curatorial practice at least since 2004, when I proposed the 13th ISEA Symposium – which was held in 2006 in San Jose – have as one of its themes the “Interactive City.” Working with Eric Paulos and a stellar steering committee of artists and thinkers, we acknowledged the slipperiness of the thematic in its call for projects relating to the following topics: Shadow City, Collaborative Challenge, Hybrid Histories, Non-Places, Alternate Playgrounds, Urban Archaeology, Exposed City, Open Traversal, Operational City, Hacked City, Parasitic City, Open Source City, Alternate Economies, Town Hall, Community Mapping, and Parallel Cities.

For every 01SJ Biennial since and for many projects in between, I have worked with a wide range of artists and architects, whose projects are what Julian Bleecker has referred to as “design fictions” for the responsive – or in Mark’s more felicitous phrasing, sentient – city.

What I was interested in proposing today’s particular panel was not only using artists’ practice as a lens to view the debates swirling around the theories and concerns and prognostications about the responsive city, but also to look at work that has gone beyond the thrill of the design probe to instantiation in the fabric of the city. As a producer as well as a curator, I’m interested in that territory that I suppose could be likened to the “value engineering” phase of a building project. Which in my experience, too often means taking out all the cool stuff that animated the project in the first place. Yet, against all odds, our panelists have succeeded in instantiating some amazing projects – which, of course, does not mean there aren’t questions about them or about what they might do “next time.”

So, without further ado, I will briefly introduce each panelist, who will then speak for about 18 minutes, followed by a response from Mark Shepard, after which there may be time for some questions from the audience – or perhaps fisticuffs on the panel. That would be exciting.

Ben Rubin is a media artist based in New York City. Rubin’s work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the Science Museum, London, and has been shown at the Whitney Museum in New York, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, and the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe. Rubin has created large-scale public artworks for the New York Times, the city of San Jose, and the Minneapolis Public Library.

I consider Ben’s Listening Post, with Mark Hansen, to be one of the most significant works of art, in any medium, of the 21st century, and I think it is remarkable that its cousin, Moveable Type, is on permanent, changing display at the New York Times building just down the road. Ben also has a show at Bryce Wolkowitz gallery, which you should see before you leave town, if you haven’t.

Barbara Goldstein is the Public Art Director for the City of San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs and the editor of Public Art by the Book, a primer recently published by Americans for the Arts and the University of Washington Press. Prior to her work in San Jose, Goldstein was Public Art Director for the City of Seattle. Goldstein has worked as a cultural planner, architectural and art critic, editor and publisher. She has written for art and architectural magazines and lectured on public art both nationally and internationally. She is currently Chair of the Public Art Network for Americans for the Arts.

Barbara has been a colleague and collaborator for each of the 01SJ Biennials, and the public art master plan [pdf] she instigated for public art at the San Jose Airport is, for me, is a model or at least pointer to how to think about creating the “rules” to enable an engaging responsive city to emerge.

Cameron McNall is an Architect and Principal of the group Electroland. Every Electroland project is site-specific and may employ a broad range of media, including light, sound, images, motion, architecture, interactivity, and information design. Electroland works at the forefront of new technologies to create interactive experiences where visitors can interact with buildings, spaces and each other in new and exciting ways. A pop sensibility, expressed through whimsy and play, helps Electroland to achieve projects that are accessible and that invite visitor participation.

I have not had the pleasure of working, yet, with Cameron, but at least he now returns most of my emails, and I have always admired the range of Electroland’s work from shadow billboards to frenetic facades and the layered complexity behind each project.

Mark Shepard is an artist, architect and researcher whose post-disciplinary practice addresses new social spaces and signifying structures of contemporary network culture. His current research investigates the implications of mobile and pervasive media, communication and information technologies for architecture and urbanism. Recent works include the Sentient City Survival Kit, a collection of artifacts for survival in the near-future sentient city; and the Tactical Sound Garden [TSG] – which he did present at the aforementioned ISEA/01SJ Biennnial in San Jose – an open source software platform for cultivating virtual sound gardens in urban public space. In 2009, he curated “Toward the Sentient City,” an exhibition of commissioned projects that critically explored the evolving relationship between ubiquitous computing and the city. He is the editor of Sentient City: ubiquitous computing, architecture and the future of urban space, published by the Architectural League of New York and MIT Press.

Mark’s writing and programming as well as his art have all been important influences on my own thinking and practice. There will be a book launch event tomorrow evening at McNally Jackson books, and I think it’s worth noting in the context of this panel that the book, Sentient City will also feature a special “heat sensitive” cover which will change color when exposed to sunlight or touch!

Please welcome Ben Rubin.

Rethinking the Exhibition & Curating Communities

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Amanda McDonald Crowley and Steve Dietz in conversation with Shane Mecklenberger

<b>Skeet McAuley</b>, "Navajo window washer, Monument Valley Tribal Park, Arizona," 1984, Sign Language
The White House Collection of American Crafts <a href="http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/online/whc/index.html" target="_blank">online exhibition</a>, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1995
<a href="http://yproductions.com/beyondinterface/bi_fr.html" target="_blank">Beyond Interface: net art and Art on the Net</a>, 1998
<a href="http://www.walkerart.org/archive/7/96D3639B6E5717946167.htm" target="_blank">Gallery 9</a>, Walker Art Center, 1998
<a href="http://www.walkerart.org/archive/7/B153919DF735B615616F.htm" target="_blank">Shock of the View: Artists, Audiences, and Museums in the Digital Age</a>
<a href="http://aen.walkerart.org/" target="_blank">Art Entertainment Network</a>, 2000
Art Entertainment Network portal for <a href="9E13C5FA142230B2616E" target="_blank">Let's Entertain</a>
<a href="http://telematic.walkerart.org/index.html" target="_blank">Telematic Connections: The Virtual Embrace</a>
Raqs Media Collective and Atelier Bow Wow, <a href="http://latitudes.walkerart.org/artists/index2815.html" target="_blank">TAS</a> (Temporary Autonomous Sarai) part of <a href="http://latitudes.walkerart.org/translocations/index.html" target="_blank">Translocations</a> for <a href="http://latitudes.walkerart.org/index-2.html" target="_blank">How Latitudes Become Forms</a>
<a href="http://www.yproductions.com/writing/archives/fair_assembly.html" target="_blank">"Fair Assembly"</a>, <i>Making Things Public</i>
<a href="http://www.yproductions.com/projects/archives/the_art_formerly_known_as_new.html" target="_blank">The Art Formerly Known As New Media</a>, Walter Phillips Gallery, 2005
Akira Hasegawa, <a href="http://2006.01sj.org/content/view/642/49/" target="_blank"><i>D-K San Jose</i></a>, 2006 01SJ Biennial
Archigram, <a href="http://www.archigram.net/projects_pages/instant_city.html" target="_blank">Instant City</a>, in <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mediachef/263188881/" target="_blank"><i>Edge Condition</i></a>, 2006 01SJ Biennial
<a href="http://01sj.org/art/out-of-the-garage/" target="_blank">Out of the Garage Into the World</a>, 2010 01SJ Biennial
<a href="http://northernspark.org/" target="_blank">Northern Spark</a>, produced by <a href="http://tylerstefanich.com/clients/northernlights/" target="_blank">Northern Lights.mn</a>, June 4, 2011

Log in to www.ustream.tv/channel/iarta to watch the entire event live. Mr. Dietz and Ms. Crowley will also present an additional lecture on Friday at UNT in the College of Visual Art & Design, RM 226 from 10:00am – noon. We look forward to seeing you at our next scheduled ART-TEC Event : Dancing with Wires – Feb. 17, Thurs. 8PM see http://iarta.unt.edu/art-tec.html for details.

Initiative for Advanced Research in Technology and the Arts

Soil Kitchen

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Futurefarmers, Soil Kitchen

Soil Kitchen is a planned temporary public art project by Futurefarmers addressing issues of sustainability specific to the urban environment.

Futurefarmers is one of my favorite artist groups, and I have had the privilege of working with them on a number of projects (Free Soil Bus Tour, Sunshine Still/Speak Hard, A People Without a Voice Cannot Be Heard), so I was excited to see notice of this new project in Philadelphia, Soil Kitchen. The press release from the Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy describes the project –

“[Soil Kitchen] will incorporate community involvement, naturally generated energy, local foods, food exchange, the creative reuse of a brownfield site, and brownfield mapping. This new site-specific public artwork will provide a stage for interaction, dialogue, and education on topics of sustainability that impact every Philadelphian.”

It’s a tall order for a kitchen, but the project builds on a related history of Futurefarmers’ work that bodes well for its success. Victory Gardens – “A local network of home gardens = A community of food producers!” – was an exemplary community involvement project, which sought to at least reference if not recreate the remarkable “community” success of World War II victory gardens. It was also the occasion for the creation of the photogenic Garden Trike, which you can see referenced in the sketch above. Rainwater Harvester/Greywater Feedback Loop was a DIY system not unrelated to the rooftop windmill for naturally generated energy (presumably).

Futurefarmers, sketch of interior view, Soil Kitchen

Futurefarmers, sketch of interior view, Soil Kitchen

The exterior sketch of Soil Kitchen reminds me of a place like Waffle Shop in Pittsburgh, where a normative architectural facade of a restaurant belies an interior experiment in creative sociability. Inside Soil Kitchen, it’s not just dour tree huggers expounding on the chemical propertiesof this and that agent. It’s a party! For Futurefarmers’ Sunshine Still/Speak Hard project as part of Out of the Garage Into the World, they appropriated  the idea of the glamorous prohibition era speakeasy but made it a “speak hard,” where hard truths – or at least assertions in an ongoing debate between solar and bio fuel energy proponents – were debated in forums well lubricated by their sunshine still.

Abiding commitment, expert knowledge/knowledge of experts, social conviviality, a formally beautiful DIY aesthetic, and an uplifting playfulness distinguish Futurefarmers’ projects. I can’t wait to taste test in the Soil Kitchen.

Sidebar rant

Kudos to Philadelphia’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy for commissioning this project, but I can’t help but think that their press release headline “Philadelphia’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy Commissions FUTUREFARMERS for the City’s First-Ever Temporary Public Art Project” identifies just about the least interesting and unimportant aspect of the project. What’s up with that? We produced similarly unimaginative headlines for the 01SJ Biennial, and I also plead guilty as charged. The press is fascinated, of course, by “first,” “most,” “biggest,” and various other ests, but we cater to them in our short term desire for coverage at the peril of lack of understanding and ultimately support over the long term.

Goodbye and hello

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For its first year, Public Address, our blog about experimenting with art in the public sphere, was a collaboration with Forecast Public Art, publisher of Public Art Review since 1989 and one of the premiere public art organizations in the country. Recently Forecast’s pioneering efforts were rewarded with grants from both the NEA and the Warhol Foundation to fund an online version of PAR, and that is where they will be focusing their energies online for the foreseeable future. It has been and honor and a pleasure working with Jack Becker, Melinda Hobbs Childs, Kaitlin Frick, and Nichole Goodwell, and we wish them all the best with their ongoing efforts and look forward to working with them again on Northern Spark and other efforts.

On a personal note, I recently completed a 6-year stint with another pioneering organizations ZER01, as the founding Artistic Director of the 01SJ Biennial in 2006 and again in 2008 and 2010. It has been an incredible run, and I will miss my colleagues and friends on the West Coast dearly, but I also look forward  to directing my efforts full time as Founder, President and Artistic Director of Northern Lights.mn.

And I am especially pleased Jaime Austin, who was the Assistant Curator for the 2010 01SJ Biennial and is now Curator and Director of Programs for ZER01, has agreed to become the West Coast Editor for Public Address. She will be writing about and finding writers about art in public on the West Coast of the United States. Look for her byline soon.

Thank you Forecast! Welcome Jaime!

steve “mediachef”

Requiem for fossil fuels

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01SJ Biennial, St. Joseph's Cathedral, San Jose. Photo Everett Taasevigen
01SJ Biennial, St. Joseph's Cathedral, San Jose. Photo Everett Taasevigen
01SJ Biennial, St. Joseph's Cathedral, San Jose. Photo Everett Taasevigen
01SJ Biennial, St. Joseph's Cathedral, San Jose. Photo Everett Taasevigen
01SJ Biennial, St. Joseph's Cathedral, San Jose. Photo Everett Taasevigen

O+A’s Requiem for fossil fuels was a transcendent performance in St. Joseph’s Cathedral at the 01SJ Biennial in San Jose.

“At the intersection of four virtuosic human voices and the fossil-fueled din of helicopters, jets, traffic, busses, horns, train wheels, and sirens erupts a composition that pours gasoline on Dante’s Inferno.  Requiem for fossil fuels, written and performed by O+A (Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger) with four singers and an 8-channel ‘Orchestra of Cities,”  is a unique setting of the Requiem Mass offered to a world struggling to reconcile its utter dependence on fossil fuels with the coming end of oil, coal, and peat.”

In November, O+A again performed Requiem at the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden, in New York, and the concert will be broadcast Thursday evening, December 2, as part of WNYC’s New Sounds series. Don’t miss it. Below is a mini-preview.

Kickstart the Veterans Book Project

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"Out of the Garage Into the World," 01SJ Biennial
"Out of the Garage Into the World," 01SJ Biennial
"Out of the Garage Into the World," 01SJ Biennial
"Out of the Garage Into the World," 01SJ Biennial

During the 01SJ Biennial in the 80,000 square foot space of Out of the Garage Into the World, there seemed to be one constant, from early in the morning before almost anyone else had arrived to early in the morning when almost everyone else had left – Monica Haller and her work with local vets on the Veterans Book Project Workshop.

The Veterans Book Project is not just another “relational aesthetics” artwork. It is hard work that relies on determination and trust and probably not a few arguments. And the payoff is not just a scrapbook of memories. With Haller’s flexible book publishing template and dedicated guidance, it is a WORK. Of art.

There are no short cuts, no 20 minute versions of the Veterans Book Project. It takes time – and resources. Kickstart the work today.

Public Art the Musical

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Christine Podas-Larson opens Public Art the Musical
Karyssa Jacson, Michael Murphy and Allen Lovejoy find their favorite public art gone missing
Brady Lorenzen laments the disappearance of Western Sculpture Park
Wing Young Huie can't find his University Avenue Project
Maybe the real art is inside each of us
They're off to see the Non Prophet, Marcus Young
PASP board closes with dance - and an ask

Had a great time last night at the fundraiser for Public Art Saint Paul, which featured “Public Art the Musical” (pdf). The musical was a true community effort, directed by PASP staffers Ashley Hanson and Nic Hager with star turns by PASP President Christine Podas-Larson kicking things off with a little soft shoe; Allen Lovejoy, Principal Planner at City of St. Paul; retired senior partner at Faegre & Benson, Michael Murphy; spoken workd artist Karyssa Jackson; University Avenue Project maestro Wing Young Huie;  Brady Lorenzen, a student at Perpich Center for Arts Eduction; and a host of others. It was entirely fun with a clever script by Tom Eggum, Hager, Hanson, and Marcus Young that blended inside-the-capital St. Paul jokes with popular Broadway tunes. The starrest turn, for my money, was by Marcus Young, the Wizard of Oz “Non-Prophet,” who brought it all home, so to speak.

Marcus, now we know what you are listening to on those ear buds, and we can definitely feel it too.

Bravo! Public Art Saint Paul.