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.

How should I explain the idea of agonism to my neighbor across the street?

Pro+agonist: The Art of Opposition A new book and deck of cards by Marisa Jahn explores the productive possibilities of agonism, a relationship built on mutual incitement and struggle.

Warren Sack: “Agonism” is the ancient Greek word for a contest with a prize. In the sense we are using it, is a way of understanding life and politics as a game or contest.

Marisa Jahn: My neighbors do in fact ask me what agonism is. But then I like to throw it back on them. I say, “ok, let’s play a game. When I say agonism, you say…” I’ve gotten all sorts of answers. One person said, “Paradise Lost.” Lucifer wrestling the angels. A physiologist responded that the agonist is a contracting muscle; the antagonist is the muscle that returns the limb to its natural state. A techie person was reminded of the symbiotic relationship between the fig wasp and the sycamore tree. A musician likened agonism to noise. As in, harmony is control, order. Noise is the sum of sounds; it fluctuates between harmony and cacaphony. Noise is difference, polyphony, epistemological and political pluralism.

Mark Shepard: I don’t think you should explain agonism to your neighbor – better to enact it through engaging her – with empathy and respect – on an issue you disagree.

Carl Skelton: There is a variant of agonism, which most people think of as how open-source software happens: an idea gets proposed in an initial form to the widest possible group. Of the many who find fault with it, a small minority will actually propose an improvement, which is then subjected to the same process, except that the original proponent gets to weigh in as a critic. Anybody who cares enough to keep the idea moving owns it. Over time, competing variants and improvements are adopted and discarded by ad hoc groups which themselves persist, peter out or mutate over time.

Carl DiSalvo: Agonism is the truth that your neighbor already knows – legislation doesn’t *solve* anything, the conflicts continue regardless, it’s just the nature of politics.

How does agonism express itself in your practice as an artist?

Mark Shepard, artist comp, structures for dischord

Marisa: If agonism merely describes a condition in the world, then expressing agonism through artwork in fact paints reality more aptly and with greater complexity. Agon makes things fun! Agonistic art practices “work” by coming in through the backdoor to solve problems and intrigue using a different kind of logic.

Carl D: My practice is about creating spaces for an agonistic pluralism to flourish, for creating spaces where we can participate in conflicting values and practices towards the composition of new social conditions and structures.

Mark: As an artist I maintain an agonistic relationship to the discipline of architecture. My work exploits the tensions between architecture and media art with respect to how space is conceived, constructed, organized and interpreted within technologically mediated environments.

Warren: Much of my work as an artist is concerned with politics and publics, and I consider what would it mean to make political metaphors material.  For example, we talk about debates as though they are scored like boxing or wrestling contests, but of course they are not.  What would happen if we devised a scoring system for debates?

Warren Sack, Agonistics: A Language Game

Carl S: Nothing ever gets finished, but you never run out of room for improvement.

We’re clearly living in a fractious time. How can agonism help us?

Courtesy Carl DiSalvo

Carl D: Like any theory, agonism is a tool to think with. So it gives us a way to understand what we mean when we use terms like democracy and politics. From this, we might begin not just “think about” but also “do” democracy differently.

Marisa: Paying attention to agonism helps us reframe how we see struggle. Instead of regarding it as a symptom of a bad or messy or contentious situation, we can instead see agonism as a symptom of an environment that is strong enough to withstand difference and adversity.

Warren: As many theorists have pointed out, our culture is increasingly “gamified.” People tend to think of many everyday actions as moves in a game.  For instance, what does it mean “to make a move,” “to make a play,” “to play around,” “to call someone a loser”? If indeed, all the world’s a game and all the men and women merely players, then what is this game we are playing and how could it be otherwise?

Mark: One would hope that agonism offers a way to come to terms with extreme ideological differences – not resolving them, but at least making the debate more tolerable.

How do we foster a space for dissensus, critical dialogue, and debate?

Marisa: Promote and commit to diversity! This may mean doing the work to figure out how you are going to outreach to people from a different point of view or ilk, subjecting ourselves to uncomfortable situations; and building conditions to foster a sense of tolerance and difference. Listen to who’s not speaking and see why not; create a space where this differential is foregrounded. Understand that you can hold difference; understand when compromise sacrifices particular points of view and when compromise strengthens alliances.

What are you most looking forward to about the Discourse and Discord symposium?

Carl D: The opportunity to have these conversations in public, and to disagree about them.

Mark: The opportunity to encounter and test different ideas on agonism through the various formats planned.

Carl S: The chance to try a few things I’ve been working on, and to find out what might be possible in re-making Hennepin avenue, which seems to have a lot in common with a lot of other urban environments that need some love in North America and Europe.

Related

An Introduction to Agonism: Volume 1

An Introduction to Agonism: Volume 2 

Discourse and Discord: Architecture of Agonism from the Kitchen Table to the City Street

Pro+agonist: The Art of Opposition (download)

Rosemary Williams is also cooking up a storm with her Mom’s Cookies projection for Northern Spark.

Find out at Discourse and Discord: Architecture of Agonism from the Kitchen Table to the City Street, an upcoming public symposium from April 12 – 14 copresented by the Walker Art Center and Norther Lights.mn.

via Susy Bielak

Discourse Karaoke is part of Discourse and Discord: Architecture of Agonism from the Kitchen Table to the City Street, a public symposium copresented with the Walker Art Center.

Karaoke  from a selection of classic and contemporary protest/patriotic/political songs. Duets and larger singing groups are encouraged. Here is a partial list of songs. Start practicing now!

The Beatles, Revolution
The Beatles, Taxman
Black Eyed Peas, Where is the Love?
Black Sabbath, War Pigs
David Bowie, Young Americans
James Brown, Living in America
Buffalo Springfield, For What It’s Worth (Stop Children What’s that Sound)
Johnny Cash, The Man in Black
Tracy Chapman, Talking About a Revolution
Ray Charles, America the Beautiful
The Clash, I Fought the Law
The Clash, Rock the Casbah
The Cranberries, Zombie
The Cranberries, Free to Decide
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Fortunate Son
Creedence Clearwater Revival, Have You Ever Seen the Rain
Billy Ray Cyrus, Some Gave All
Neil Diamond, America
Bob Dylan, Maggie’s Farm
Bob Dylan, The Times They are a Changin’
EnVogue, Free Your Mind
Marvin Gaye, What’s Goin’ On?
Marvin Gaye, Mercy, Mercy Me
Green Day, American Idiot
Lee Greenwood, God Bless the USA (Proud to Be an American)
Woody Guthrie, This Land is Your Land
Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit
Mahalia Jackson, We Shall Overcome
Mahalia Jackson, Black or White
Mahalia Jackson, Earth Song
Michael Jackson, et al. We are the World, We are the children
Janis Joplin, Mercedes Benz
Toby Keith, American Soldier
Judas Priest, Revolution
John Lennon, Imagine
John Lennon, Give Peace a Chance
John Lennon & Yoko Ono, War is Over
Lynard Skynyrd, Sweet Home Alabama
Loretta Lynn, One’s On the Way
Bob Marley, I Shot the Sheriff
Bob Marley, Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)
Bob Marley, Redemption Song
John Mayer, Waiting on the World to Change
MC5, Kick Up the Jams
Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi
Peter, Paul, & Mary, Where Have all the Flowers Gone
Peter, Paul, & Mary, If I Had a Hammer
Pink, Dear Mr. President
Public Enemy, Fight the Power
Rage Against the Machine, Killing in the Name
Helen Reddy, I am Woman
Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the UK
Sex Pistols, God Save the Queen
Bruce Springsteen, Born in the U.S.A.
Standard, Star Spangled Banner
Standard, Amazing Grace
The Staples Singers, Respect Yourself
Edwin Starr, War
T-Rex, Children of the Revolution
Peter Tosh, Legalize It
U2, Year’s Day
U2, In God’s Country
U2, Mothers of the Disappeared
U2, Sunday Bloody Sunday
The Who, Won’t Get Fooled Again
Neil Young, Rockin’ in the Free World

The evening starts with a chalkboard mixer where people pair up with a stranger to discuss the following:

• Describe a political issue that is not black and white to you. Describe one that is.
• How do you think race affects politics?
• Which candidate (local, national, historical) do you most identify with and why?
• What do you think is the biggest threat to our society?
• What influences your political beliefs the most and why?
• Each partner chooses the other’s answer that they think is the most interesting. Each person then writes their answer on a 5 x 7 inch mailing label and wears it for the rest of the evening.

The Third Place Wing Young Huie Photography Gallery is located at at 3730 Chicago Avenue South in Minneapolis. Click here for directions.

During Northern Spark, up to 1.000 bicyclists will use customized, interactive blinking LED devices outfitted with microcontrollers and radio units that allow them to mutually and observably synchronize with others, as do certain species of firefly.

Lights are available online via Kickstarter until March 31.

These devices, in isolation, look similar to conventional LED cycling safety lights, but in groups exhibit an immediately noticeable phenomenon. To maximize the visual impact for all festival attendees, organizers will encourage participating cyclists to gather together in a large group to tour the various festival sites, including a “blessing of the bikes” at the Basilica of Saint Mary and a procession down Hennepin Ave.to start out the night.

This project owes much to the research of Yoshiki Kuramoto, who in 1975 first articulated a mathematical model that describes why, how and when large systems of similar oscillators (things that cycle automatically and repeatedly) can mutually synchronize, without any single coordinating force or leader. With Kuramoto’s legacy (as well as the earlier work of Norbert Wiener and Art Winfree) as a starting point, this project aims to activate and transform the social networks and urban dynamics associated with cycling, by fusing this existing system with one biased towards synchronization. Grafting this artificial system of synchronized blinking lights onto a real-world urban transportation system does two things: first, it calls attention to the individual act of cycling as a component of a larger dynamic system with its own unique patterns and qualities, and second, it momentarily transforms that system through a subtle but pointed intervention in urban social space.

The project will be documented and published on a project blog, and the software and hardware implementation details will be published under an open-source license, allowing others to reproduce the designs or use them as starting points for new projects. Through an open process and significant outreach, organizers receive input and participation from members of the Minneapolis/St. Paul cycling community.

Modified LED bike lights.

Get your Kuramoto Model bike light on Kickstarter today.

To help support our Northern Spark nuit blanche, Elizabeth Armstrong, Neal Cuthbert, Steve Dietz, Vince Leo, and Gary Smaby are each contributing their creative talents as a reward for our Kickstarter campaign.

Gary was quite the music photographer in his youth, and is offering a number of prints of rock stars of the 70s.

Neal’s iPad cover is a marvel of DIY engineering and design using recycled cardboard and bike tires.

Vince’s profound text poems garnered from his all thumbs texting were most recently seen at the Weisman Art Museum as part of Ordinarily Here.

Liz is offering a personal, behind-the-scenes tour of More Real: Art in the Age of Truthiness when it opens at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Steve is teaming up with Guggenheim award-winning artist Marina Zurkow to offer an evening of alien gustatory delights in a home cooked and homegrown version of Marina’s earlier “Not an Artichoke, Nor from Jerusalem” culinary performance at The Artist’s Institute in New York City.

Invasive Knotweed Soup

Including portraits of: Luther Allison, Allman Brothers, Maggie Bell, Sony Bono, David Brenner, David Bromberg, Johnny Cash, Cher, Rita Collidge, Ry Cooder, Alice Cooper, David Crosby, Rick Derringer, The Hollies, Mick Jagger, Elton John, Tom Johnston, B.B. King, Kris Kristofferson, Kenny Loggins, Linda McCartney, Paul McCartney, Mary McCreary, Joni Mitchell, Shaun Phillips, Tiran Porter, Pure Prairie League, Bonnie Raitt, Todd Rundgren, Leon Russell, Carlos Santana, Ben Sidran, Carly Simon, Patrick Simmons, Steven Stills, James Taylor, Edgar Winter, Jesse Colin Young, Neil Young.

See the video for more portraits. Signed 8″ x 10″ prints available on Kickstarter for a limited time.

Drew Anderson, Ghosts Near Sugarloaf Mountain

Mike Hoyt, Poho Posit

Caly McMorrow, Status Update

Anthony Tran, Wire less

Aaron Westre, City Fight!

Over 500 people showed up for the opening of Art(ists) On the Verge at the Soap Factory last week. The show is up through April 15.

Artist talks are scheduled for March 23rd with Caly McMorrow and Aaron Westre and March 30th with Drew Anderson, Mike Hoyt, and Anthony Tran. All talks are free and begin at 8pm.

A related symposium Discourse and Discord: Architecture of Agonism from the Kitchen Table to the City Street takes place at the Walker Art Center April 12-14.

Submissions for the next round of Art(ists) On the Verge are due March 19.

This unique artwork by Andréa Stanislav, who created the memorable 2011 Nightmare for Northern Lights.mn, is now available as a Kickstarter reward for supporting new artists’ work for the 2012 Northern Spark nuit blanche Twin Cities.

Stanislav’s Text Works are recontextualitions of dystopic phrases and sayings from such references as: the Ramones, Sex Pistols, A Clock Work Orange, Nivana, William Burroughs, current catch phrases and video games.The text is embedded between layers of resin polymer, and appear to “float” above the glittering light activated glitter-film base.

Check out other artworks available for supporting Northern Spark by: Jim Campbell, Wing Young Huie, Vince Leo, Ali Momeni, ROLU, Marina Zurkow and many others.

You can also support directly the Northern Spark projects of Wil Natzel, Night Blooms, and Pramila Vasudevan’s dance-performance collaboration In Habit with Piotr Szyhalski, Jon Keston and others.

We did a walk through of all the Art(ists) on the Verge projects this morning, and everything is looking good for the opening tomorrow at 7 pm at the Soap Factory. Above is a short vid of Caly McMorrow’s Status Update. Beautiful.

Great article in MN Daily about the show “Digital Immersion As Art.”

Tomorrow morning WCCO will do a couple of segments on AOV around 8 am and 8:30 am.

Nice preview in Twin Cities  Metro.

Opens Saturday at the Soap Factory.

If you’re interested in participating in Art(ists) On the Verge, proposals for the next round are being accepted through March 19.

Former Art(ist) On the Verger, Pramila Vasudevan (artistic director of Aniccha Arts,choreographer and dancer) has put together a stellar crew to work on In Habit.

Piotr Szyhalski (director); Jasmine Kar Tang (dramaturg and dancer); Caleb Coppock (visualmedia designer); John Keston (musician); Benjamin Reed(installation designer); David Steinman (technology designer); Clare Brauch(costume designer); Cornelius Coons and Annie Wang (graphic designers);Sarah Hoover Beck-Esmay (dance collaborator); Dustin Maxwell (dance collaborator); and Chitra Vairavan (dance collaborator).

And the rewards, beyond supporting such an amazing cast, include a personal dance class, custom screensaver, limited edition poster and more.

We’re thrilled that Patricia Briggs will be writing an essay for the Art(ists) On the Verge exhibition at the Soap Factory, opening on March 3. She was in town this past weekend visiting with the artists about their installations.

Drew Anderson, Near the Ghosts of Sugarloaf
Michael Hoyt, Poho Posit
Caly McMorrow, Status Update
Anthony Tran, Wire less
Aaron Westre, City Fight!

Patricia Briggs is an art historian, critic and independent curator. Her writing appears in Artforum International, Art Papers, Art on Paper, History of Photography, Public Art Review, Sense and Society and online at mnartists.org. She was named “Best Art Critic” of 2008 by Twin Cities-based City Pages. Follow her blog Scene Unseen at http://artsceneunseen.wordpress.com.

Art(ists) On the Verge 2011-2012
Northern Lights.mn/Jerome Emerging Artists Commissions
March 3 – April 15
Opening reception: March 3, 7-11 pm
Artist talks: March 23 and 30, 8 pm
On Facebook

Applications for the next round of Art(ists) On the Verge now open.

Public Symposium

April 12–14
Co-Presented with and at the Walker Art Center

In an era of cultural conservatives and the liberal elite, Occupiers and Tea Partiers, civil uprisings and government crackdowns, perhaps the one point of agreement today is there’s no shortage of disagreement. But if that’s true, then why isn’t there more debate—not online flame wars, not the televised jockeying of political candidates, but live, in-person dialogue?

That question was a starting point for this three-day symposium on agonism in the public sphere. A term unfamiliar to many, agonism describes an approach to politics that embraces difference and disagreement as an important part of democracy. As a series of talks, workshops, actions, and playful experiments, Discourse and Discord aims to explore the structures or “architectures”—whether it’s the built environment, online technologies, songs, or recipes—that can draw people together for genuine dialogue and debate. It also reinforces the notion that democracy thrives on and even requires an agonistic foundation: the friction of varied publics and participation by people of different minds, views, and beliefs.

Join with a range of other unlike-minded people to debate and discuss, disclose and expose—and find out what happens when you move beyond agreeing to disagree.

More information here.

DataVisualization in collaboration with Eyeo

Inter/National call

Application form

Explore a constellation of urban arts and discover the city in a new light.

Help support Northern Spark’s Kickstarter campaign.

From $5 to $5,000 your support can help support the work of dozens of artists at Northern Spark.

Check out the rewards, from limited edition posters to autographed photographs to home-cooked meals and designer seating.

Any amount will help.

Northern Spark is a free, dusk to dawn, participatory arts festival that presents visual arts, performance, films, and interactive media indoors and outdoors in both Minneapolis and St. Paul. In 2011, during the course of one night, there were 50,000 visits to 100 projects by more than 200 artists at 34 venues in collaboration with 60 partner organizations and sponsors.

At its core, Northern Spark is about supporting artists to reinterpret the city through art and creative interventions.

Participating Artists: Drew Anderson, Michael Hoyt, Caly McMorrow, Anthony Tran, Aaron Westre

Northern Lights.mn presents the third edition of Art(ists) On the Verge (AOV3) at The Soap Factory. This exhibition features new work from five Minnesota-based artists. AOV3 is an intensive, year-long, mentor-based fellowship program for emerging artists working experimentally at the intersection of art, technology, and digital culture with a focus on network-based practices that are interactive and/or participatory. Previous exhibitions of work by AOV fellows have been at the Weisman Art Museum (2009) and the Spark Festival at the University of Minnesota (2010).

Feel your heart race as you pull the trigger of Drew Anderson’s “shotgun projector” illuminating the point of view of an animatronic hunter in the north woods of Minnesota. Zero in on Mike Hoyt’s video paintings of the Powderhorn neighborhood and join the online civic dialog. Get on the horn and leave a status update for Caly McMorrow’s sound and light installation. See yourself and the world around you differently in Anthony Tran’s hertzian funhouse mirror. Make your mark on the environment with Aaron Westre’s urban planning video game.

A related symposium on creative solutions for public discourse, “Discourse and Dischord: Architecture of Agonism from the Kitchen Table to the City Street,” will be co-presented with and at the Walker Art Center, April 12-14.

Northern Lights.mn is a collaborative, interactive media-oriented arts agency from the Twin Cities for the world. It presents innovative art in the public sphere, both physical and virtual, focusing on artists creatively using technology, both old and new, to engender new relations between audience and artwork and more broadly between citizenry and their built environment.

Art(ists) On the Verge is generously supported by the Jerome Foundation.

Full call here.

We are happy to announce a number of calls for participation in the 2012 edition of Northern Spark, which will take place June 9-10, 2012. For some background on this year’s Northern Spark see here. The new website will launch later this week at northernspark.org.

Please note that the deadlines for submission are different for different calls.

1. Call for a project in any media/discipline – inter/national

We are looking a  project that is sited/performed in public space and engage a broad public audience in that space. Projects can be in any medium or discipline. This call is funded in part by the NEA is for artists living or working outside of Minnesota. Application deadline: February 7. The call is here.

2. Call for Data Visualization project

This is an open call in collaboration with The Eyeo Festival for a data visualization project. Application deadline: February 7, 2012. The call is here.

3. Call for “platform” project

This is an open call in collaboration with ZERO1 Biennial for a “platform” project. Application deadline: February 13, 2012. The call is here.

4. Call for project in any media/discipline

We are looking for up to 10 projects that are sited/performed in public space and engage a broad public audience in that space. Projects can be in any medium or discipline. Look at the project line up for Northern Spark in 2011 to see the wide range of works presented. Application deadline: February 27. The call is here.

4. Call for Minnesota Center for Books Arts project

Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA), in collaboration with Northern Lights.mn, is accepting proposals for an all-night event in MCBA’s gallery and studio space as part of NorthernLights.mn’s Northern Spark Festival (June 9-10, 2012). Application deadline: January 30. The call is here.

More Calls

More calls will be announced in the coming days. Subscribe to the Northern Lights mailing list (at the bottom of the page), Like us on Facebook, follow us @Northern_Spark or get the tumblr feed to stay informed.

Links

• 2012 Northern Spark website
• 2012 call for projects
• 2012 call for projects – inter/national
• 2012 call for dataviz project
• 2012 call for platform project
• 2012 call for Minnesota Center for Book Arts project
• 2012 Kickstarter

• 2011 website
• 2011 report (pdf)
• 2011 trailer
• 2011 documentary
• 2011 flickr site

On Give To The Max Day, Wednesday, November 16th, you have a special, one-day opportunity to support a special, one-night project: Northern Spark, Minnesota’s only nuit blanche.

Northern Spark is a free, dusk-to-dawn, participatory public art event that takes place in both Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Northern Spark is all media, all night: performances, visual arts, projected images, interactive media, participatory events.

Northern Spark brings together a multitude of artists, creating hundreds of art projects in partnership with numerous arts organizations at multiple venues.

Northern Spark was an exhilarating first-time event for Minnesota. Throughout the night, there were 50,000 visits to more than 100 installations and performances presented by 200 artists in partnership with 60 organizations in 34 locations.

Your support of Northern Spark is support of local artists, who help us to create and sustain a vibrant community year-round by:

• Building a broad audience for serious art and creative fun
• Cultivating open and active civic engagement
• Heightening awareness of the cultural and natural wonders of the Twin Cities
• Partnering with MN arts and cultural organizations, strengthening public awareness and support of our local non-profits

Like an art comet that blazes through the night sky once a year, Northern Spark enters the Twin Cities’ orbit on Saturday, June 9, uniting two cities and bringing together a multitude of artists, art projects, arts organizations, and venues in a confluence of culture and nature.

Please become a co-creator of this remarkable project by supporting Northern Spark through your generous donation at GIVEMN.org.

Northern Spark is organized and presented by Northern Lights.mn.

Northern Spark 2011

If you missed Northern Spark this year, please check out the links below for great video and images from the June 2011 event, all of which is accessible from the Northern Spark website.

As well, we want to share here some of the comments about the event, which over 500 attendees wrote in response to our survey question: “Imagine you are out to dinner with friends who were also at Northern Spark and each person is taking a minute or two to describe the most memorable part of the event. It’s your turn; what would you say?”

“Northern Spark opened up my eyes to more of the arts in the Twin Cities. For once the places that I want to go to collaborated, stayed open and I was able to see what they were all about. Its a great chance to check things out!”

“Northern Spark has tremendous opportunity to become a signature summer event for Minneapolis, much like the White Nights in St. Petersburg, Nuit Blanche in Paris or Fete des Lumieres in Lyon. There was fantastic energy on the Stone Arch Bridge — you could tell people were loving the strolling and being outside on such a beautiful night and craving artistic inspiration.”

“A friend of mine commented that she expected to see the ‘usual art-nerd’ suspects out and about. We realized together that there were many people out who may have never participated in a community art event before. What a great way to expose the entire community to the arts!”

“Art is everywhere. The night of Northern Spark transforms your consciousness. Yes, you read the brochure and move from installation to installation, but you’re also always on the lookout for what might be new or different. Suddenly, everything becomes art: the lights under the 35W bridge; couples stealing a kiss under an archway; even the spaces themselves which you had previously never considered as anything other than no-man’s-land. The next morning, the sensation continues.”

View the complete “report” here (PDF).

Flickr photo gallery.

Brennan Vance, Northern Spark: A Documentary

Press coverage

Northern Spark 2011 website

An organization like Northern Lights depends on a fair and open Internet, as do many of the artists we work with. Join us in protesting legislation that places, once again, commercial interests as a higher value than open culture.

“5×5, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities’s new temporary public art project, will result in twenty-five groundbreaking temporary public art installations that will be installed concurrently throughout the District of Columbia. DCCAH is seeking five highly-experienced and innovative contemporary art curators to select and work with five artists each to develop and present exciting, temporary art works in public spaces throughout the District of Columbia. The resulting twenty-five projects will activate and enliven publicly accessible spaces and add an ephemeral layer of creativity and artistic expression to neighborhoods across the District.”

Northern Lights/Artistic Director Steve Dietz was selected as one of 10 semi-finalists for 5×5. We will be presenting a final proposal in early December. Other semi-finalists here.

On a sunny, unseasonably warm October afternoon, nine people gathered in a circle and wrote a story.  The story was of a tree seed – the sugar maple – at risk of survival due to the environmental impacts of climate change, and the possibilities of its migration north.   It was a story in action and of action, told next to a 200 year old Sugar Maple at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Massachusetts, in the midst of  the largest and most diverse collection of maple trees (genus: Acer) in the world.

Participants spread around the maple grove, picking out seeds that looked mature, dried, and worn.   A viable seed pod needs at least 4 maple seeds (often maples drop seed pairs with only one half of the pair carrying the ability to germinate, and including 4 or more improved the likelihood of the wearable garden’s survival.)  Around the seeds, participants packed dirt, moss, and leaves. to protect them during the next 3-5 months in a cold, damp environment where they are exposed to friction.  Participants addressed the design challenge of making a wearable pocket that could travel on a human body, that could keep the seeds moist and cool, and have some level of friction through its movement.  The creations varied: seed bearing scarves, an armpit band, a garter belt, a jacket sleeve and a pocket-on-a-stick.  The items were decorated with embroidery, with lace, with yarn and with instructions.

To close, each wearable garden was attached to a map to aid in sending these seeds on their way north.  The map included information on the various viable territories for the maple seed, and how they may change between now and the year 2100, along with how to care for the seeds.  It included 3 different highway routes up the East Coast, each ending up in a different region in Canada projected to have the most conducive climate to Sugar Maples 100 years from now.  Each participant had ideas in mind of where they would leave their pods.    One participant was on his way to Maine that very weekend and intended to leave it by a maple sugar shack at the trailhead where he was going to go hiking.  Another was headed to Vermont. Yet another had plans to visit a CSA farm, also in Maine, and planned to leave her creations there.   One wearable garden was hung on a pedestrian crossing sign on a nearby highway, along with the map and a wish of safe journeys.

Wearable Gardens

Oct. 8, 2011

1-3 PM

Arnold Arboretum

—-

A project of Platform2: Art and Social Engagement, an experimental event series that sits somewhere between a classroom, community organizing, and 1960s happenings. Platform2 is organized by Catherine D’Ignazio (kanarinka), Jane D. Marsching, Savić Rasović and Andi Sutton. Andi Sutton is an artist whose current practice explores the ways that duration, dialogue, endurance and exhaustion can push socially prescribed boundaries of human interaction. Working in a solo and collective context, her projects take the form of web, media, and street intervention, video and performance art installation. Her works have been shown nationally in shows and festivals such as Pathogeographies (2007), Contaminate II (2007), PURE: An Exhibition (2006), The Paper Show (2005), Mix NYC (2003), Better Homes and Guardians (2003), Politically Charged (2002), among others.

The show is down now, but it was such a pleasure to walk into Pace/MacGill’s Social Media exhibition and not have to get frustrated about all the work that was overlooked for a show. That is, even though one could imagine dozens of other possible projects, at least it was a strong selection of work whose creators had a history and weren’t just dabblers. David Byrne’s imaginary apps fell short for me, but the “kodak” photo frames for Democracy in Action were a perfect way to “share” his YouTube fascinations (or his assistant’s?). Other work was stronger, however. Christopher Baker’s Murmur Study with its cascading receipt tapes of twitter hashtags perfectly captures the torrent of the information age in all its glory and waste. Aram Bartholl’s Google Portraits are also pitch perfect renditions of the QR code moment. It will be interesting to see whether they retain their funhouse magic in a year or more. Now if only the curators had included someone like Mark Lombardi….

#neversatisfied

Join us for the Pecha Kucha for the Mississippi River Bridge Plaza Design Competition (Weisman Plaza)

Back in March, the Target Studio for Creative Collaboration at the Weisman Art Museum put out a call for a Mississippi River Bridge Plaza Design Competition. Northern Lights.mn teamed up with Short Elliott Hendrickson (Bob Kost, team leader, and Rachel Baudler), EE&K Architects (Peter Cavaluzzi), and artist Christopher Baker, and we were selected as one of four finalist teams.

The broad outlines of all four teams’ (4rm+ula), coen+partners, and VJAA + HouMinn) proposals are currently on view in the Target Studio at WAM. On Wednesday, October 26, we will present our final proposals to an expert jury in the afternoon and to the public at large at WAMChatter. Final selection of will be announced the following day.

Join us Wednesday, October 26 at 7 pm for 24 minutes of exciting pecha kucha by the 4 cross-disciplinary teams about the Mississippi River Bridge Plaza Design Competition at WAMChatter (preceding reception at 6 pm).

Check out the blog of our team’s “discussions.”

SEH/EE&K/Northern Lights.mn/Christopher Baker team members

Bob Kost (SEH), Peter Cavaluzzi (EE&K), Steve Dietz (Northern Lights.mn), Christopher Baker (SAIC), Rachel Baudler (SEH), Michael Imranyi (EE&K), Mister Blue (SEH), Yehui Xu (EE&K), Dongshin Lee (EE&K), Gaylen Perkuhn (EE&K), Amier Hossein (EE&K)

"This call for ideas is not about perpetuating protests; it is about empowering them."

“Storefront for Art and Architecture is making a call for submissions for projects and strategies that offer a new, creative and productive way of spatial occupation for public demonstrations and actions in cities throughout the world. Gathering expertise from the various acts of civil occupation throughout the world during the last months, we ask architects, artists and citizens at large to offer their ideas for enabling acts of communication and action between the civil society and the structures of economic and political power.”

Check out Brennan Vance’s mini-documentary of the 2011 Northern Spark Festival.

Metro magazine's Top 100 list includes Northern Spark at #7

7. Northern Spark, June 4 to 5, 2011

“Modeled after nuit blanche events in Paris and St. Petersburg, the Twin Cities’ first-ever all-night art party spanned galleries and green space on both sides of the river (it even spilled into the mighty Miss via a variety show aboard an old paddleboat). The highlight? Artist Jim Campbell’s “Scattered Light” installation at Upper Landing Park in St. Paul: hundreds of glowing glass bulbs strung together to create Northern Spark’s unofficial nightlight. We’ve been catching lots of Z’s in preparation for next summer’s citywide sleepover, which promises to be bigger and better than the first. northernspark.org“

Save the dates: July 9-10, 2012

Northern Spark is produced and presented by Northern Lights.mn with the participation of 60 organizational partners and sponsors.

www.irrigatearts.org

Irrigate: Art happens here

Soon, hundreds of projects led by local artists will bring new life and vibrancy to the Central Corridor Light Rail Line in Saint Paul, thanks to a new partnership between Springboard for the Arts, Twin Cities Local Initiatives Support Corporation and the City of Saint Paul.  Called Irrigate, this initiative spurs artist-led creative placemaking spanning the six miles of the Central Corridor Light Rail line in Saint Paul during the years of its construction. This is a unique opportunity that brings together huge infrastructure development, a high concentration of resident artists on both ends of the corridor, a diverse ethnic and cultural mix among the neighborhoods, and a city with a strong track record of artist community engagement. By mobilizing artists to engage in their community, Irrigate will change the landscape of the Central Corridor with color, art, surprise, creativity and fun.

Placemaking is the act of people coming together to change overlooked and undervalued public and shared spaces into welcoming places where community gathers, supports one another, and thrives. Places can be animated and enhanced by elements that encourage human interaction – from temporary activities such as performances and chalked poetry to permanent installations such as landscaping and unique art.

How to Get Involved

If you are an artist – of any level, experience or discipline – who lives, works or has a personal investment in Central Corridor Light Rail Transit (CCLRT) neighborhoods, Irrigate invites you to join the creative placemaking movement! Use your creative talents to have an impact on your neighborhood, your local businesses and organizations, and the light rail corridor. Starting October 22, Irrigate is offering creative placemaking training workshops, after which artists will be eligible for collaborative placemaking project funding through a simple application process. For more details and registration information for Fall 2011 workshops click here (http://tinyurl.com/PMworkshops).

If you are a business, non-profit, community group, or other entity that is has a presence on the light rail corridor in Saint Paul, and would like to connect artists to your work, please contact Peter Haakon Thompson, Project Coordinator, at peter@springboardforthearts.org or 651-789-0679.

If you are a fan of artists and placemaking, revisit the website after October 15! We will have a live map to which anyone can share ideas about where placemaking can happen along the corridor, AND, over time, you can see artist-led projects take shape, find out ways to participate, and discover placemaking activities and sites to visit.

For more information, see www.irrigatearts.org

Other questions, contact Jun-Li Wang, Artist Community Organizer at jun-li@springboardforthearts.org or 651-789-0679.

Content | Form | Im-material—Five Years of CONT3XT.NET

“[...] Interpretation is an inherent mode of curatorial practice, and CONT3XT.NET must decide, generally in collaboration with the artists but not entirely, how to manifest the form and content of the network recension of any works exhibited. There is not necessarily a correct answer in this process—although there may be wrong ones—but there is a kind of feedback loop between CONT3XT.NET’s interpretive mode and the content of an exhibition, which is both an instantiation of and a theory about their curatorial practice as translation. [...]“–Steve Dietz, Introduction

Book launch: Content | Form | Im-material—Five Years of CONT3XT.NET

CONT3XT.NET is a Vienna-based initiative founded in January 2006 by Sabine Hochrieser, Michael Kargl, Birgit Rinagl and Franz Thalmair. Programmatically, this group of artists, curators and authors—their different roles and functions sometimes regarded strictly, sometimes as a fluid continuum—work at the basis of contemporary visual, textual and networked practices. Starting from the idea of the context as the most indecisive and variable but relevant constraint of any situation, the collective reflects upon the spatial, temporal, discursive as well as the institutional framework that conceptual artistic practices (on the Internet and elsewhere) are rooted in today.

artists

Maria Anwander, Anna Artaker, Ruben Aubrecht, Miriam Bajtala, Ryan Barone, Mary-Anne Breeze—aka netwurker, Charles Broskoski, Codemanipulator®, Arend deGryuter-Helfer and Aylor Brown, Gerhard Dirmoser, Aleksandra Domanovic, Reynald Drouhin, Nikolaus Gansterer, Christina Goestl, Jochen Höller, Karl Heinz Jeron and Valie Djordjevic, Michael Kargl, Annja Krautgasser, Miriam Laussegger and Eva Beierheimer, Jan Robert Leegte, Ralo Mayer, Michail Michailov, MTAA—M. River & T. Whid Art Associates, Barbara Musil and Karo Szmit, Jörg Piringer, Lisa Rastl, Arnold Reinthaler, Veronika Schubert, Johanna Tinzl and Stefan Flunger, UBERMORGEN.COM, Martin Wattenberg and Marek Walczak

authors

Josephine Bosma, Mary-Anne Breeze—aka netwurker, Sarah Cook, Steve Dietz, Thomas Dreher, Constant Dullaart, Mark E. Grimm, Jeremy Hight, Sabine Hochrieser, Michael Kargl, Jan Robert Leegte, Mia Makela, Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer, Stefan Nowotny, Les Liens Invisibles, Birgit Rinagl, Franz Thalmair, Pall Thayer, Marius Watz

Hope this message finds you well.

If you have visited with the Empty Words (so that we can do our living) performance during the Northern Spark festival on June 4-5, chances are you have walked away with one of the “We Are Working All The Time!” posters. These posters were printed during the performance and distributed to the audience. I am writing to ask you a simple favor:

If you have that poster hanging somewhere, would you please take a quick photo of it in whatever environment it is, and send the image to me?

I started this simple site for this poster series, and my hope is to show the posters in various spaces, where people chose to hang them.

http://weareworkingallthetime.org

There are not too many images there yet, but with your help I am hoping to populate the site very soon!

Thank you for your help,
p.

Piotr Szyhalski

PS
If you know anyone else that has this poster, or if you saw one around, please forward this message to them!

Kiosk from the exhibition at SPUR in San Francisco

Reclaim Market Street! is an exhibition and series of public programs created by the Studio for Urban Projects and hosted by SPUR (the San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association), in San Francisco, CA.

Studio for Urban Projects is an art and design collaborative that, according to their website, “perceives art as a means of advancing civic engagement and furthering public dialogue.” Together, the Studio’s core members–Alison Sant, Richard Johnson, Marina McDougall, Kirstin Bach and Daya Karam–operate a storefront in the Mission District of San Francisco and have created public art projects for the city of Seattle, and the 2010 01SJ Biennial.

Installation shot from Reclaim Market Street! exhibition by Studio for Urban Projects

This research-based exhibition largely consists of a curated set of examples of public projects and interventions that have had positive impacts in other cities that is held together by a clever exhibition design consisting largely of cardboard–cardboard seats, walls, signage, kiosks, and even flooring. The meat of the project lies in its public programs of walking tours, guided bike rides, impromptu parks, and outdoor events that challenge the public to participate in redefining what they expect from (and how they interact with) city streets.

Applications available to the public as part of the exhibition at SPUR.

Indoors, I found the way the exhibition challenges people to take immediate action most refreshing. Within SPUR are work stations displaying applications where you can immediately apply to “Create a Park,” “Make Your Own Bike Lane” or “Plant the Sidewalk.” Outdoors, their project is about gathering people together to acknowledge history while contributing to aspirational scenarios of the future.

This project is a perfect example of how artists are using their practice to help create solutions to real-world problems. Market Street is the central transit corridor of San Francisco. On one side is Ferry Plaza and the bustling Financial District, on the other side is the colorful Castro District where shops and cafes line the street. In the middle is the Central Market District. Originally a theater district, years of economic decline have left it more known for strip clubs, panhandlers, graffiti, and empty storefronts. The City of San Francisco has launched a revitalization campaign and other organizations such as the San Francisco Arts Commission and Gray Area Foundation for the Arts have been actively working to literally bring art to the street.

Paz de la Calzada painting Central Market Dreamscape, 2011. Mural, 1127 Market Street, San Francisco. Courtesy of the ARTery Project, San Francisco Arts Commission. Photo: Lydia Gonzales.

Reclaim Market Street! adds to this local dialogue and is about using Market Street as muse in a public conversation around expand the use cases for city streets beyond automobile traffic to include safe and engaging spaces for bikers and pedestrians. Because Central Market Street District is a place people are more likely to pass through quickly, Studio for Urban Projects has created a framework that challenges people to spend time on the street. A particularly interesting program that will take place on October 15th is “Temporary Urban Experiments in Creating New Public Spaces.” Child-friendly urban planning more often than not sequesters children within fenced off playgrounds. But what if play was incorporated back into street life?

The Imagination Playground installed near South Street Seaport in New York City. Image courtesty of http://www.glenwoodnyc.com/

For this project, they are featuring the Imagination Playground Kit designed by David Rockwell and the Rockwell Group within an urban plaza that is normally dominated by concrete.

With public funds for the arts dwindling, revitalization of cities through the arts and culture is one area that is receiving greater attention in recent times. As an example, the NEA is echoing this call for a revitalization of cities through the arts by recently announcing its inaugural “Our Town” grants that help 51 communities, including San Francisco and San Jose, CA, revitalize their neighborhoods through strategies involving the arts. Creative placemaking is a challenge to reclaim our urban centers, which is precisely what Studio for Urban Projects is doing in focusing their energies toward the Central Market Street District.

Much of what Studio for Urban Projects suggests is common sense. Safe and scenic bike paths through the city, reclamation of under utilized spaces, and a move away from automobile centric civic design. It’s the thoughtfulness of the exhibition design and their collaborative ethos (Reclaim Market Street! also showcases contributions by Futurefarmers, Rebar, and the San Francisco Bike Coalition) that works best in using the arts to promote conversations that have the potential to create lasting change.

So the question is, what urban spaces would you like to reclaim?

1. For one glorious afternoon, my office was the steps of the TKTS booth in Times Square.

2. I’m not saying I got a ton of work done, but in a somewhat surprisingly, all the screenage became almost like white noise. It wasn’t that hard to tune out.

3. For a while I tried to count all the screens facing/in Times Square, but I quickly gave up and wondered if the task could be crowd sourced? Maybe I could create a job for the Amazon Mechanical Turk to count these pix?

4. For many people, the TKTS steps are a vantage point, like a scenic overlook on the Interstate.

5. All the photographing activity made me think about all the “pocket screens” in Times Square. In December 2009, there was an actual count of 364,000 pedestrians in the area. If we assume that 75% of those people are carrying phones or computers with an average screen size of 2″ x 2″, that’s 1,638,000 square inches of screen. Still way less than an acre (about .25 acres), but that’s not even counting all the taxis displays and vehicular GPS devices.

As these devices become increasingly networked, the “power” will not be in the white noise of size but in the magnitude of “connection.”

6. Interestingly, when I met with Glenn Weiss, Manager of Public Art and Design for the Times Square Alliance, he said that his experience with the public art program in Times Square is that somewhat counterintuitively anything over 15′ gets lost in the cacophony of the screens. Up to about that height, and a good project will attract spectators about 5 rows deep. Over that, and the project, even a “spectacular” one, often gets lost.

I think you could argue that above a certain height and the “connection” is lost.

7. Interestingly, the one exception, which perhaps proves the rule, is the Forever 21 billboard, which has a simple set up of a “spy cam” from the billboard pov onto Times Square at street level. In other words, people standing within its penumbra become part of the billboard. Periodically, green screen beauties dance and shake their way onto the (billboard) street with you.

It’s mind numbingly simple interactivity, but there were the crowds gathered 5 deep looking up at the billboard and waving and photographing and paying attention – above 15′.

8. I attended Pavement Politics: Times Square and the Changing Face of New York’s Streets that evening. Prof. Gwendolyn Wright, Columbia University, gave an excellent mini-history of Times Square. In the day, thousands would visit Times Square to get the latest news.

9. In a phrase I particularly loved, Wright said that Times Square, whatever it was called at the time, has always been a site of ephemeral, mediated architecture.

10. Ethan Kent, Vice President of the Project for Public Spaces, talked about some of the simple but effective “moves,” like making Times Square pedestrian-centric, which are part of a larger goal to think of “traffic” as not only cars.

11.
• Stop planning for speed/capacity
• Start planning for community-based outcomes
• Think of streets as public space
• Accommodate diverse users

12. Iterative, feedback loop vs. a straight-line process that hopes to discover a use only the end of the process, when it is often too late

Entrance hall, Çemberlitas Hamam; photo: Ming-yen Hsu

I bought my ticket, a yellow plastic tab, and was given a small cardboard box.  A cluster of topless Turkish men in plaid towels gestured toward one of the narrow staircases.  I climbed to the second level balcony where I was ushered into a wooden cubicle.  I stripped down, wrapped a towel around my waist and stepped into some plastic sandals.  The attendant asked for the yellow tab, then locked the room and handed me the key.

Clutching the cardboard box and key, I went back down the stairs to the lobby, where my burly masseur, Ahmet, met me and shook my hand.  After a quiz to determine my correct nationality, he led me into the cooling-down room.  He removed a small scrub mitt from the box, handed it to me and pointed to the interior of the empty box.  For a moment I thought he was about to do a conjuring trick, but then he pointed inside the box again, rubbed his thumb and forefinger together and said the word “token”.  I pantomimed that all I had was a mitt, key and towel.  No hidden lira or euros.  He rolled his eyes, slapped me manfully on the shoulder and said: “later!”

Pointing toward the edge of the huge marble platform beneath the hot room dome, Ahmet guided me to lay on my back with my head on a small spittoon-like metal headrest, and then left me to sweat for fifteen minutes.  The heat and humidity from the platform was intense, eventually almost hallucinatory as I stared upward at the terracotta dome perforated by round holes.  Every few seconds, a drum-like boom seemed to come from deep inside the walls.

Hot room, Çemberlitas Hamam

Ahmet returned and started splashing me with buckets of hot water, had me sit up, roll over, stand and lie down again.  Next I could feel a softness glide over me and looked down to see soapsuds drifting upward over my shoulders and neck.  Ahmet began to scrub me all over, in different positions, stopping to point out an accumulation of dead skin on one of my arms.  I was doused with hot water again, massaged, taken into the cool-down room where he washed and kneaded my head.

Ahmet splashed me with cold water and returned me to the hot room.  Pointing to the marble platform, he gave me terse one and two-word instructions to lie down for no less than ten minute, take a shower, dry off with a towel, go upstairs and dress, come down and give the token there.  Not upstairs.  Down.

Related Posts

ISEA.1

Bruce Charlesworth is an artist, writer and filmmaker. He one of the pioneers of postmodern staged photography and among the first artists to use video and audio to power aspects of physically immersive “narrative environments.” He teaches in the Department of Film/Video/New Genres at the University of Wisconsin Peck School of the Arts in Milwaukee. He previously reported on Ars Electronica in 2009 for Public Address.

1. I checked into my hotel on Sunday and walked out immediately to head to the the World Maker Faire at the New York Hall of Science. As I turned onto 8th Avenue, there was something not so common in my experience of New York – no cars.

At first it was exhilarating. Sunshine. People. No traffic. A kind of marketplace. What was not to like? I decided to walk down to Times Square to catch the 7 out to Queens.

2. As I walked down the Avenue, I noticed what seemed to be an inordinate number of stands selling “murano-style” glass for $3. There didn’t seem to be any clear difference between the stalls.

3. There were also pashminas and scarves being sold at nearly indistinguishable booths.

4. This booth was no candy ass copy, almost worthy of the State Fair

5. t was good to see The Times reaching out to its neighbors with a robust absence.

6. The LED T-shirts were hard to pass up.

7. But it was the repetition that stood out more than the “unique.” I did some very minimal research, and it appears that this “fall festival” is organized by a street fair organization, Mardi Gras Festival Productions,which, presumably arranges street closure permits with the city and sells space to vendors.

8. Nothing wrong with producing a commercial street festival. The street is still closed. The traffic absent. But it’s not the 85th Feast of San Gennaro, which also, of course, sells space to vendors, where I witnessed the pizza pie making contest a couple of days later.

9. Nor was the Eighth Avenue “Fall Festival” the Bust Magazine Craftacular at the World Maker Faire, which sold “not your mother’s crochet” and other artisan gewgaws that you can’t live without.

10. My point is not to run down the Eighth Avenue Fall Festival per se. It’s unexceptionally true that not all street festivals are created equal. It’s less obvious how to “give back the streets” without still withholding their control. The commercial market stunningly set on 8th Avenue, the fun artisan market with a $28 entrance fee to Maker Faire, and the authentic community festival, also on the streets, are three options.

We are still getting in final documentation of Northern Spark. There is a great photo essay of the event here. Above is video documentation of Christopher Baker’s Waste Not. The projection visualizes in real time time a data dump of the garbage that accumulates every day in Minneapolis. And while not yet part of the public interface, the project is programmable to isolate and visualize various aspects of the waste stream from diapers to plastic.

Baker is also currently showing Murmur Study, at Pace Gallery in New York, a work first commissioned for the Art(ists) on the Verge program.

Esther Polak and Ivar van Bekkum: Spiral Drawing Sunrise

Arriving late Thursday night in Istanbul after a full day of teaching and a drive from Milwaukee to catch my connecting flight to Frankfort from O’Hare… I am jetlagged. I’m in Istanbul for the ISEA (International Society of Electronic Artists) Festival and Conference. Given that I am two days late for the festival, my account will be limited and personal. I’ve already missed much, and will miss more. Simultaneous events are scattered all over Istanbul, and navigation is tricky.

I made it to the conference in the sub-sub-basement of a financial complex, and sat through several sessions of artists and curators presenting papers. Topics included “The Body and Digital Space,” “Philosophy and Ethics of Bioart,” “Locative Sound,” “Robotics, Interactivity and Public Space.” For more information, click here and select Paper Sessions:

That evening, I groggily traveled by funicular and tram to the Sultanamet area of the Old City and went to a Turkish bathhouse to see Southern Ocean Studies by Tom Corby, Gavin Baily and Jonathan Mackenzie.

Projected on the domed entrance hall ceiling of the 427-year-old Çemberlitas Hamam, the artwork depicts the Southern Ocean circulating Antarctica. According to the artists, the project software runs in real-time generating the ocean currents on the fly, to which are mapped various other ecological data sets.

The back-and-white visualization of wind and tide evoked phenomena both small and large: lines of crawling ants and storm-tracking satellite maps. I like the idea of superimposing vortex-like imagery on a dome, and data from a cold place onto one that features heat. As with many new media works with a sociopolitical or scientific agenda, this one was more interesting to me in terms of its real-time data mapping content and symbolism than as a formal artwork. Both the intellectual and aesthetic impact of the piece might have been served by a larger, more encompassing projection in one of the huge domed hot rooms where bathers sweat on their backs while looking upward. For technical or cultural reasons, these options may not have been feasible in a traditional hamam.

I decided to have a Turkish bath.

Bruce Charlesworth is an artist, writer and filmmaker. He one of the pioneers of postmodern staged photography and among the first artists to use video and audio to power aspects of physically immersive “narrative environments.” He teaches in the Department of Film/Video/New Genres at the University of Wisconsin Peck School of the Arts in Milwaukee. He previously reported on Ars Electronica in 2009 for Public Address.

3 more days!

I visited the State Fair yesterday to check out Giant Sing Along, the new “interactivate” project by Mouna Andraos and Melissa Mongiat. The simple wooden structures look beautiful at the top of Murphy Ave., and the field of brightly colored microphones beckons like a cornucopia of delectable somethings on a stick. Only, instead of consuming you are making beautiful music together. The microphones are connected to a sophisticated software systems that does some melding and tuning of your voice – even mine – to each song and amplifies the sound so that even a few people can belt out a rousing chorus. Choir karaoke indeed. Check out the vid below and the playlist at the end of this post.

Giant Sing Along is open all day every day during the Minnesota State Fair, but do join us for a special performance by the Prairie Fire Lady Choir at 5 pm on Saturday, August 27.

Andraos and Mongiat come from the fields of interaction design and narrative environments, and research new ways to tell stories. Regarding the fair’s Giant Sing Along, Andros and Mongiat write, “Building on the contagious, positive energy of the fair, participants will connect with one another by sharing in a collective and moving musical experience. This uplifting activity is accessible to all and designed with the goal of inspiring guests to do something in unison.” The two design large-­scale projects that impact cities down to tiny ones that fit inside a pocket, bringing art to everyday life and inviting the public to become active contributors. More of their work can be found at livingwithourtime.com.

Presented by Bremer Bank, Giant Sing Along is a co-production of the Minnesota State Fair, the Minnesota State Fair Foundation, and Northern Lights.mn.

Playlist

Don’t Stop Believin’ – Journey; Joy to the World; My favourite things – The Sound of Music; Rolling in the Deep – Adele; Friends in low places – Garth Brooks; It’s my life – Bon Jovi; Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen; Hey Jude – The Beatles; Pour some sugar on me – Def Leppard; Take me out to the ballgame; Summer Nights – Grease; Thriller – Michael Jackson; Bad Romance – Lady GaGa; Keep Holding ON – Avril Lavigne; American Pie – Don McLean; Sweet Caroline – Neil Diamond; Happy Together – The Turtles; Yellow Submarine – The Beatles; You are my sunshine; Stay – Lisa Loeb; Your Song – Elton John; Brown Eyed Girl – Van Morrison; Piano Man – Billy Joel; Purple Rain – Prince; Mean – Taylor Swift; Summertime – Kenny Chesney; Soul Sister – Train; Come Sail Away – Styx; Firework – Katy Perry; Never Gonna Give You Up – Rick Astley; Living on a Prayer – Bon Jovi; I need to know – Marc Antony; Copacabana – Barry Manilow; Dynamite – Taio Cruz; Turn On The Radio – Reba; I Love Rock and Roll – Joan Jett; This is For Real – Motion City Soundtrack; Still haven’t found what I’m looking for – U2; Boyfriend – Big Time Rush; Bennie and the Jets – Elton John; Baby – Justin Bieber; Hotel California – The Eagles; God Bless the USA – Lee Greenwood; Ring of Fire – Johnny Cash; YMCA – The Village People

Call and Answer at Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Northern Spark, June 4, 2011. Photo courtesy the artist.

According to Amanda,

“We reached all our goals and went far beyond. In one evening we served over 400 pieces of pie in two hours, printed 2000 books, had close to 50 amazing volunteers who did everything from bake pie, photograph, cut pie, make coffee, run a letter press, greet people at the door, read their poetry,  play in the band, and call a square dance!  I think about 1,500 people came through the doors of the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and at least 500 strangers held hands!!!!”

Amanda is going for it again.

The Call and Answer Project will be coordinating the largest square dance in the Twin Cities as part of the Walker Art Center’s Free First Saturday from 12-3pm on Saturday September 3rd. The day’s events will include a photo booth where if you pose for a photograph holding hands with a stranger you will receive one of the four books from the collector set of handmade letter pressed books that Lovelee designed about life lessons learned through square dancing. Each book was printed by volunteers as part of Northern Spark and folded by another volunteer. There will a space for both kids and anyone who wants to add a drawing to a very long and large accordion book of utopic objects. It will be the premier of Call and Answer, a short documentary about human connection and Minneapolis’s Monday Night Square Dance. The movie will be playing on a loop inside the Walker. Most importantly from 1pm-3pm there will be a live band playing and square dancing! Local caller Ann Carter will be teaching you everything you need to know.

Amanda Lovelee, Call and Answer Project, MCBA, Northern Spark, June 4, 2011

For more information please go to – http://callandanswer.wordpress.com/ or
http://blogs.walkerart.org/openfield2011/event/free-first-saturday-square-dance-withamanda-
lovely/

All promo videos for an exhibition should be this entertaining!

Opening August 11, “The Walker presents the latest phase and first US exhibition of Baby Marx, an ongoing project by Mexican artist Pedro Reyes that looks at the potential for mass entertainment to operate as a radical educational tool.”

At the end of the video, above the subtitle Romance, it appears that Che Guevara is hitting on a school teacher/librarian, who is the only woman who appears in the trailer. I wonder if the exhibition will include female theoreticians and activists?

Battle of Everyouth by Ali Momeni and Jenny Schmid with students from Washburn High School was presented at Northern Spark. It is a projection-based performance staged at multiple sites on and around the Minneapolis Institute of Arts , which is blend of live cinema, participatory theater and live performance. The Battle of Everyouth creates a context for exploration and conversation on the theme of global youth and violence.

A “mixing station” staged in front of the museum produces large-scale panoramic projections onto its facade using live video feeds from numerous dispersed performance contexts. The performance contexts that generate the raw materials of the projection are centered around a miniature urban set on display outside the museum. These performance contexts are run by students from Washburn High who act as the messengers as well as the listeners in this work. They use two types of devices in their interactive rapport with the public, which are both mobile and wireless. The first is an ornate hat, which is designed to capture up-close video footage of faces. The second is an augmented briefcase used to capture writing and drawing with markers. Video feeds from these interaction devices are projected onto architectural components in the miniature set, and simultaneously recorded and manipulated by Momeni and Schmid as they project at large scale onto the museum.

Supported by

MIA Inside/Out: Battle of Everyouth is made possible by a Joyce Award and a grant from the Friends of the Institute with additional support from Best Buy Children’s Foundation. Presentation of The Battle of Everyouth at Northern Spark is also made possible in part by a grant provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature from the Minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.

LA-based Machine Project is coming to the Walker Open Field. You don’t need to choose between Tragedy on the Sea Nymph: An Operetta in Three Acts Starring an All-Dog Cast, Car Theft for Kids, the Apple II Beeptacular Spectacular or Mowing the Field – with bells on. It’s all happening during the Machine Project Summer Jubiliee July 19-29. Check out the line up and don’t miss at least 7 of the projects by this remarkable group during this limited engagement of limitless engagement.

I have to admit I love most of Karolina Sobecka’s work. This new responsive, generative lobby video with immersive sound, Forth, seems amazing.

I’m sure there were functional and likely budget reasons, but it’s a little disappointing that it’s such a SCREEN, especially in contrast to a lot of her other work.

Sobecka was part of the MAW residency program in 2010, and her Wildlife was a big hit at the inaugural 01SJ Biennial/ISEA Symposium.

Mouna Andraos + Melissa Mongiat, Giant Sing Along, Minnesota State Fair, 2011. Concept sketch courtesy the artists.

In order to have the best summer song list ever, we need your help! Submit tunes you love, can’t resist, need to share, or bring back memories. It could be a song that gives you that lovin’ feelin’, a dedication to a few of your favorite things, a traditional folk song, your choir’s best song, or something that makes you wanna rock and roll all night.

Vote now here by July 1.

Music Machine, Group Karaoke, DIY Choir, Electric Campfire

There is a new kind of “machine” coming to Machinery Hill at the Minnesota State Fair this August. It’s a “music machine,” and everyone is invited to take your vocal chords for a spin. With your friends. With your family. With your church choir. With total strangers. Step up to the field of microphones and belt out the words on the giant LED screen. Don’t worry, the 36 microphones are specially designed to “auto tune” voices – or add disguising reverb and other effects.

Giant Sing Along by Montreal-based artists Mouna Andraos and Melissa Mongiat is a giant sing along that puts the “together” in The Great Minnesota Get Together. It’s a machine that combines disparate voices to make common song. It’s group singing around the electric LED campfire karaoke style. It’s a make-your-own-choir opportunity. And yes, it’s song at the end of a stick – a field of stick-microphones inviting you to participate. Or watch as long as you can till you can’t resist participating.

Whether at a stadium, around a campfire, on a dance floor, as part of a choir, or as a family holiday tradition, there is something powerful in the act of singing together – beyond beautiful voices, it’s about the collective shared experience. That collective shared experience is the heart and soul of both the Minnesota State Fair and Giant Sing Along.

Giant Sing Along will be located on Murphy Avenue, across from the Pet Center. It’s free and open to all guests each day of the 2011 Minnesota State Fair.

Giant Sing Along

Giant Sing Along field of microphones. Concept sketch courtesy the artists.

A field of 36 microphones offer an open invitation for anyone to reminisce both the historical and popular American music repertoire.

A giant screen features lyrics of recent, old and very old songs, from chorals, country music and any other musical background relevant to Minnesotans through a voting process. Songs that no one can resist.

Beyond the initial reference to karaoke, Giant Sing Along is actually a proper sing along since karaoke is really about one person performing in front of an audience. Here the goal is not to reproduce a song performance, but to live a communal experience. Jay Livingston, Montclair University, explains it well: “In a sing along, our goal, our motivation, is to do something together – in this case, sing the same song – and our pleasure comes from doing it together. Sing along is less about performance, more about group activity, and we wind up sounding like, well, us.”

The system will integrate different sound technologies to stimulate participation. A sound processing system will auto—tune the voices, lightly adjusting the pitch and reverb so that anyone, even the ones less familiar with singing, can sound good, and feel comfortable taking part.

Giant Sing Along will also increase the impact of each participant’s voice: The more people sing, the more voices will come out – 1 person sounding as if 2 people were singing, 2 persons as if they were 4, 3 as 6, up to 36 voice which in turn will sound like almost 100 people are singing together. And if more than one person sings in each microphone, the sing along will truly sound giant!

Andraos and Mongiat

Andraos and Mongiat come from the fields of interaction design and narrative environments, and research new ways to tell stories. Regarding the fair’s Giant Sing Along, Andros and Mongiat write, “Building on the contagious, positive energy of the fair, participants will connect with one another by sharing in a collective and moving musical experience. This uplifting activity is accessible to all and designed with the goal of inspiring guests to do something in unison.” The two design large-­scale projects that impact cities down to tiny ones that fit inside a pocket, bringing art to everyday life and inviting the public to become active contributors. More of their work can be found at livingwithourtime.com.

Presented by Bremer Bank

Presented by Bremer Bank, Giant Sing Along is a co-production of the Minnesota State Fair, the Minnesota State Fair Foundation, and Northern Lights.mn.

A group of guest writers have been invited to contribute to Public Address throughout 2011. Sue Bell Yank is a Los Angeles based writer and arts organizer. She is currently the Assistant Director of Academic Programs at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and adjunct faculty in the Roski School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California. Her writing has been featured in the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, the Huffington Post, Mammut magazine, and various arts blogs including her ongoing essay blog entitled Social Practice: writings about the social in contemporary art (www.suebellyank.com).–JA

Teenaged, bespectacled Magali Bravo confronts the camera straight on as she and her small brother make their way to school through the streets of South Los Angeles. Weaving past the chain link of empty lots, nondescript motels and broad, shadeless expanses, the pair enters three corner markets in search of fresh produce. In crisp white polo shirts and khaki shorts (dress code of choice for LAUSD public schools), Magali and her brother move with a confidence that bespeaks their belonging to the neighborhood – but her face betrays disgust at the processed food choices available. Wrinkling her nose at the camera, the only fresh “produce” she finds are a few sad crates of withered potatoes and bruised bananas on the floor of one liquor store.

Magali’s video, entitled “You Can’t Put a Price on That,” is one of five videos produced through a collaboration between an interdisciplinary artist-run collective and consulting group called Public Matters, the South Los Angeles Healthy Eating Active Communities (HEAC) Initiative, and high school students at The Accelerated School.This youth media project dedicated to exposing the challenges of healthy food access in South L.A. was only one aspect of an integrated action plan that included developing a partnership with the local city council office, creating a “youth ambassador” program at The Accelerated School, bringing together various community organizations, businesses and advocates, and culminating in two Market Makeovers. One of these “makeovers” occurred at Coronado Meat Market, a corner market run by Magali’s godfather, and her video documents members of HEAC as well as her classmates moving displays, repainting, marking clear prices, and generally redecorating the store to highlight fresh produce and healthy food options [1]. Magali was clearly the impetus behind her godfather’s participation, and her energy is palpable, infusing her fellow teens and rendering the peppiness of the thirty-something HEAC project leaders somewhat redundant.

Video: You Can’t Put a Price on That,” Magali Bravo

Public Matters, LLC, a self-described “rag-tag group of consultants” [2], is the artist-run initiative behind the production of compelling videos like Magali’s, and the connective tissue linking constituents in many-tendriled collaborations like the South L.A. Market Makeovers (2007-2009). Their goal, simply stated, is to “work with community members to create media about their neighborhoods…to develop in them a sense of ownership over these places and a belief that they can directly shape their neighborhoods’ future. The media content reflects and benefits the community that has helped create it, advancing a specific community defined agenda or initiative.[3]” Though the precise role of Public Matters shifts over time and within projects, their tendency to involve themselves in social issues of great magnitude (such as tackling South and East L.A. food deserts [4] to provide increased access to healthy food and education about nutrition) necessitates a mode of working that includes multiple partners. For Public Matters, the size and scope of these partnering institutions often matches the enormity of the problems they take on – the group has gone from working with the community organization HEAC to a research center at UCLA Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance, or REMAP), to a major inter-university research institute called the UCLA-USC Center for Population Health and Health Disparities. Along with huge university bureaucracies also come massive funding opportunities, and additional state and federal governmental entities to answer to – for example, the current round of East L.A. market makeovers is funded by a 5-year grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Los Compadres Market, South Los Angeles, 2007. Courtesy Public Matters, LLC.

Their lack of interest in one-offs and commitment to durational, sustainable projects that bring social benefit places Public Matters in an undefined, hybrid, interdisciplinary realm with many other artist-run initiatives that lack a traditional relationship to object-making and the commercial art market. By their university partners, Public Matters are perceived not as an artist collective, but primarily as on-the-ground liaisons with the most direct contact with schools and community organizations. They bring a way of engaging stakeholders through participatory media production that differs dramatically from traditional methods of public health messaging. From within their own organization, the boundaries between art, public health, social benefit are fluid, and become labels of convenience for different situations. Creative director Reanne Estrada maintains a separate studio practice, but sees herself engaged in a “continual practice of creative, collaborative problem-solving” in which her solo practice would suffer without Public Matters, and vice versa [5]. Mike Blockstein, principal and founder of Public Matters, very much considers the collective his art practice, and the various other consultants have diverse relationships to what they do as part of Public Matters. In his treatise on art and politics entitled Dark Matter, artist Gregory Sholette sums up this ambivalence towards definition when writing about similarly fluid practices: “I allow those who claim to make ‘art’ define it on their own terms, even if their identification with the practice is provisional, ironic, or tactical, as for example when art Steve Kurtz (with Critical Art Ensemble) insists ‘I’ll call it whatever I have to in order to communicate with someone.’[6]”

Project 3 (a.k.a. the Market Makeovers crew). Front row (left to right): Brent Langellier, Mike Blockstein, Reanne Estrada, Debra Glik, Alex Ortega, Heather Hammer, Rosa-Elena Garcia, Jeremiah Garza; Back row: Ron Brookmeyer, Nathan Cheng, Mike Prelip. Courtesy Public Matters, LLC

The UCLA-USC Center for Population Health + Health Disparities Team with Scientific Advisory Board + Community Advisory Board members. Courtesy Public Matters, LLC.

The interdisciplinary, shifting, and hybrid nature of Public Matters by no means implicates a lack of definition in purpose or goal. Rather, their organizational structure is tactical and deliberate, designed to maintain a nimbleness and flexibility supple enough to react effectively to a highly charged and overwhelmingly huge social issue. Perhaps for this reason, Public Matters has chosen to incorporate as an LLC rather than a non-profit – both Blockstein and Estrada worked extensively in the non-profit sector and understood the hierarchical professionalization necessary for such tax-exempt status. They were interested in forging “a new way of doing things as a social enterprise,” becoming essentially a for-profit entity but without any interest in generating profit – rather as a tactical method through which to form useful partnerships yet maintain elasticity in complex public situations [7]. By no means are they alone in this tactical organizing – Gregory Sholette explains that artists today are expert at imitating “a product particular to the post-industrial economy of our time” – the institution – which bespeaks a skill-set “that provides an edge when dealing with the society of risk beyond the longstanding adaptation to structural precariousness.[8]” In the case of Public Matters, this aptitude can be extrapolated beyond the precarity of artists’ positions as cultural producers and applied to the broader situations in which they insert themselves. In response to the “failed states” and “derelict institutions” that perpetuate problems as large as food deserts in the middle of enormous urban centers, artists “take up pieces of a broken world, transforming them into an improved, second-order social reality…[9]”

This oppositional motivation is perhaps too strong in the case of Public Matters, which is an extremely positive, collaborative, and optimistic organization. Yet the specific propensities which run through artist-initiated organizations like this that Sholette identifies, like “a propensity for flexible work patterns, developing gift-sharing networks, and a capacity for non-linear problem solving” allows artists to uniquely “mimic, exaggerate, or otherwise reshape given reality.[10]” Yet the ability of Public Matters to take on, maintain, and implement innovative projects alongside enormous university partnerships over long periods of time cannot be attributed to a flexible structure alone – in fact, issues of capacity and staffing plagues their ambition, and the work can be all-consuming. Rather, the success of the Public Matters model is related to a distinction between artistic and organizational practices that Irit Rogoff discusses in her article “Turning,” quoting a series of essays by philosopher Gerald Raunig. These essays mark a deep difference between “constituent” practice, in which an organization or collective exists to produce a series of protocols for both the representation and governance of their work (either in opposition to an existing market, or in spite of it). The problem that Rogoff identifies with constituent practice is that it is too easily pre-occupied with the processes through which an assembly is legitimated, and thus sabotages its own innovation and flexibility, opting instead for a regulatory ossification [11]. Rather, Raunig reveals practices like Park Fiction in Hamburg (and I would add Public Matters), as “instituent” practices. These organizations create “instituting events” that bring together a diversity of constituent practices (as in community organizations, schools, governmental entities, universities, individuals), and this plurality counter the closure of the processes at work. As Raunig describes, “The various arrangements of self-organization promote broad participation in instituting, because they newly compose themselves as a constituent power again and again, always tying into new local and global struggles.[12]”

This replicative capacity, the ability to re-invent themselves through a shifting diversity of strategies and networks, is why Public Matters can take on the kinds of projects they do with such limited capacity, and why they can navigate that fine line between “indulging the need to push boundaries and take risks, and being responsible to what we are charged with.” According to Reanne Estrada, this becomes the most integral part of the work, its most interesting and challenging aspect [13]. Public Matters faces a new aspect of this challenge in working with the USC Center for Population Health and Health Disparities on their current round of East Los Angeles market makeovers. The Center is charged with researching and evaluating the work on a large scale with enough rigor and integrity to someday impact policy, and this kind of research agenda and resources were never before available to an organization like Public Matters (nor similarly scaled artist-run initiatives). The research context poses both an exciting possibility for affecting change and rigorously assessing impact, but also becomes an enormous challenge to the flexible, non-linear work patterns and instituent events that defines Public Matters as an organization. They are learning now to work around concerns about data contamination, defining control and intervention areas, and other such problematics from the research perspective. Yet perhaps it is their very nimbleness and the “license to explore” that they grant to themselves and all of their participants that will allow them to adapt to this new reality as well.

[1] “Where do I get my 5?” Public Matters, LLC, http://www.publicmattersgroup.com/?page_id=721.
[2] Reanne Estrada, interview with author, June 6, 2011.
[3] “What is Public Matters?” Public Matters, LLC, http://www.publicmattersgroup.com/?page_id=2
[4] Food deserts are manifested by a scarcity of mainstream grocery stores, and where they do exist, they have poor quality produce and high prices. The South Los Angeles food desert is one of the largest in the country, spanning 60 square miles and encompassing 800,000 people. “South Los Angeles,” Public Matters, LLC, http://www.publicmattersgroup.com/?page_id=719
[5] Reanne Estrada, interview with the author, June 6, 2011.
[6] Gregory Sholette, Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture (New York: Pluto Press, 2011), 5
[7] Reanne Estrada, interview with the author, June 6, 2011.
[8] Sholette, Dark Matter, 152.
[9] Sholette, Dark Matter, 153.
[10] Sholette, Dark Matter, 152-153.
[11] Irit Rogoff, “Turning,” in Curating and the Pedagogical Turn, eds. Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson (Amsterdam and London: De Appel and Open Editions, 2009), 44.
[12] Rogoff, “Turning,” 45.
[13] Reanne Estrada, interview with author, June 6, 2011

Thank you Twin Cities! We had an amazing time at Northern Spark on June 4. Lots of people did. About 25,000 people showed up in Saint Paul and Minneapolis to look at participate in and wonder about 100 projects at 34 different locations in collaboration with 50 organizations. Let us know if you have images to share and tag them with #NorthernSpark on flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and other sites.

This is just a small sample of some of the pictures from the event. Much more to come.

Artists’ + Partners’ documentation of Northern Spark

Art Institutes International Minnesota, Tim Armatto flickr set

Philip Blackburn, Car Horn Fanfare video

Philip Blackburn, Wind Harps and Wind Flutes, video

Chris Farstad and Alex Dyba,  video

Intermedia Arts, Northern Spark time lapse rough cut

John Kamp and James Rojas, Twin Cities Re-Imagined flickr set

mnorginal, Northern Spark

Ali Momeni and Jenny Schmid, Battle of Everyouth at MIA flickr set

Notion Collective Station Identification flickr stream

ROLU, A Simple Chair

Piotr Szyhalski, Empty Words, flickr set by Robert Luna; set up and rehearsal

UpTake, Panelectric Dreams

Walker Art Center, Field Report: Photos from Nightshift

Other Northern Spark flickr sets and video

Metromix, Photos: Northern Spark (Nuit Blanche)

Photosynthetique

Students of Nathaniel Freeman class on Experimental Video and Installation, Northern Spark

Tony Webster

NOW, THEREFORE, WE, R.T. RYBAK, Mayor of the City of Minneapolis and CHRIS COLEMAN, Mayor of the CIty of Saint Paul do hereby jointly proclaim June 4, 2011 as: NORTHERN SPARK NIGHT IN THE CITIES OF MINNEAPOLIS AND SAINT PAUL

Proclamation

WHEREAS, the Mississippi River is one of the natural marvels of the world; and

WHEREAS, the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul are two of the most marvelous cities of the world; and

WHEREAS,the inaugural Northern Spark “nuit blanche” Festival is a dusk-to-dawn participatory art event along the Mississippi River and in Minneapolis and Saint Paul; and

WHEREAS, more than 40 organizations from around Minneapolis-Saint Paul will participate in Northern Spark; and

WHEREAS, more than 60 public art projects will turn Minneapolis and Saint Paul into all night “cities of light”; and

WHEREAS, Northern Spark will include a wide diversity of art forms and projects including multi-story projections, audio environments with vistas, installations traveling down the Mississippi on barges, houseboats and paddleboats, headphone concerts, and the use of everything from bioluminescent alge and sewer pipes for organs to more traditional media such as banjos and puppets; and

WHEREAS, Northern Spark expands the boundaries of contemporary art by transforming the urban environment into a city-wide art gallery; and

WHEREAS, Northern Spark showcases the natural and urban splendors and the cultural magnificance of Minneapolis-Saint Paul;

NOW, THEREFORE, WE, R.T. RYBAK, Mayor of the City of Minneapolis and CHRIS COLEMAN, Mayor of Saint Paul do hereby jointly proclaim June 4, 2011 as:

NORTHERN SPARK NIGHT

IN THE CITIES OF

MINNEAPOLIS AND SAINT

PAUL

There is magic in the night, when the familiar, like the city skyline, becomes majestic, and a starry sky can transport the imagination. One’s senses are heightened, attuned to the slightest noise or even the smell of the nearby river in a way that seems not so common in daylight. One’s regular bus ride or walking over the threshold of a building visited hundreds of times before becomes exotic and otherworldly at 3 am.

Imagining Northern Spark. Maquette and photography by Rasun Mehringer. Design: Matthew Rezac

It is in this context that more than 200 artists are presenting 100 installations and performances for Northern Spark from the top of the Foshay Tower to boat rides along the Mississippi to light sculptures and projections to performances galore, including car horn and brass band fanfares, color guards, river dancing, sewer pipe organs, lullabies, and storytelling. Perusing the festival program (PDF) will introduce you to the rich variety of offerings that will bloom for one night only. It is not our goal to take over the night like some giant big top tent, but to join it. We meet the city halfway. As you walk or ride a bike or take the bus from one venue to another, see and appreciate your surroundings with new eyes and ears. Celebrate one of the great rivers of the world through two magnificent cities and enjoy the next artistic intervention you come across. It’s an adventure. You make your own journey.

Northern Spark is presented by Northern Lights.mn, but it would not be possible without the amazing work of the artists, the generous participation of more than 50 organizations, a talented staff, and the steadfast support of our sponsors, including the people of Minnesota through funding from the Legacy Amendment. Thank you.

Steve Dietz
Artistic Director, Northern Spark
President and Artistic Director, Northern Lights.mn

The print Northern Spark program guide – 32 pages of not-to-be-missed projects and scheduled events along with essential “getting around” information – is hot off the presses and will be available at the following sites beginning on Saturday. Check websites for open hours.

The Soap Factory
Le Meridien Chambers Minneapolis
W Minneapolis – The Foshay
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Intermedia Arts
Franklin Art Works
Walker Art Center
Saint Paul Central LIbrary
Landmark Center
Black Dog Cafe and Wine Bar

In the meantime, download a PDF of the program and start perusing your planned peregrinations.

Programs will be available at all Northern Spark venues the day and night of the Festival.

There’s nothing typical about the newest Twin Cities arts festival. From the time it takes place — sunset to sunrise — to the number of local arts organizations involved — more than 50 — Northern Spark has potential to be a monumental arts event. Inspired by the worldly ‘Nuit Blanche’ movement of nighttime arts festivals that originated in Europe, Northern Spark plans to turn the urban landscapes of St. Paul and Minneapolis into one giant art gallery early next month.

“I had always wanted to do an overnight event but had never been able to,” said Northern Spark artistic director Steve Dietz. “I think it’s an interesting way to get a different take on everything that seems normal to you. It started with an idea around the programming and, for me, it was the amazing richness of the art scene. And it was an opportunity to do something along the river corridor and with other organizations in the Twin Cities.”

Starting at 8:55 p.m. June 4 and continuing until 5:28 the following morning, the Twin Cities will be home to more than 100 public art projects, many of which are happening on or near the banks of the Mississippi River. Opportunities to check out work by more than 200 artists are seemingly endless during the event — here’s just a small sampling of what you can experience: select photographs for projection onto the Gold Medal Flour silos; singers performing lullabies if you want to snooze in a public space; ride on a houseboat and take in a dance performance; or listen to a sewer pipe organ installation that will be played back from speakers inserted at the storm drain outfalls by the Mississippi River.

“You think you know a view, a city, a building, a park — and then to see it at night, it’s a different experience,” Dietz said. “So to do that in a safe, fun, active environment where you’re more excited about what’s around the corner than nervous about it, it really changes how people can experience the city. And the flipside is our commitment to reaching a broa d audience and engaging them in really fine art. Part of the mission of the ‘Nuit Blanche’ is that it’s free culture for everyone.”

One of the event’s most anticipated pieces is “Scattered Light,” an LED light installation by San Francisco-based artist Jim Campbell (one of only a handful of non-locals participating in the festival). Located at Upper Landing Park in St. Paul near the Science Museum of Minnesota, the luminous three-dimensional piece — which was recently on view at Madison Square Park in Manhattan — will feature hundreds of hanging light bulbs that illuminate the night sky. Unlike other Northern Spark projects, “Scattered Light” will be on display through July 24.

For Minneapolis-based and internationally known artist Andrea Stanislav, Northern Spark presented a perfect opportunity to debut her new public video work, “Nightmare,” which creates the illusion of a white horse galloping on the Mississippi River. Led by a towboat, the 17′ x 25′ video screen carried on a barge will display the image of a horse with the river playing the part of a metaphorical racetrack. Viewers will be able to spot the unexpected image that Stanislav calls “ghostlike” from the banks of the Mississippi.

“I love the concept of the festival,” said Stanislav. “It’s so elegant within its simplicity, too, that it’s illuminating the city for one night. So many points in the Cities will be have video, light and sound installations. I think it’s literally going to be an electric experience. And I think the idea of staying up throughout the night will also bring the community together.”

Joe Spencer, director of arts and culture for the city of St. Paul, says the city has been working closely with the festival on logistical issues, including permits. He says he anticipates some people will be anxious about the all-night aspect of the event, but so far things have been going smoothly. One big question — will St. Paulites stay! up all night for the festival?

“Absolutely,” he said with confidence. “I’ve always had a hard time with all-nighters, though. I’m going to pick and choose my spots and I think that’s what most folks will do. I’m thrilled for folks who have it in their constitution to stay up all night. They’ll have plenty to do and see.

“The fact is this is very much a mission-driven festival that has a strong artistic curatorial element to it,” he said. “I don’t think success will be defined by how many people show up to a festival grounds, but rather by the artistic quality.”

To make sure folks have a chance to check out events in both cities, there will be free bus rides to select locations, volunteers to help people navigate festival events and security at various locales.

“The goal is that this will attract people to places — whether it’s going into a museum or down to the river or staying out past 10 p.m. at night — to a place they might not normally gather,” Dietz says. “They’ll congregate, they’ll have social interactions and it will really change how they think about their city and the relationship to it. That would be success for me if we have a lot of people out there enjoying themselves.”

Storytelling is a time-honored way to ward off the evil spirits at night – or just plain drowsiness. Laurie Hertzel has a nice blog post in On Books about the Bedtime Stories project, which is organized by the Rain Taxi Review of Books as part of the Walker Art Center’s Nightshift program for Northern Spark.

There are many other opportunities for storytelling at Northern Spark.

Piotr Szyhalski, Empty Words (so that we can do our living)

Piotr Szyhalski’s 9-hour performance is a participatory reading of John Cage’s “Empty Words” and is part of an ongoing series of works that examine the poetics and, particularly, the rhetoric of language. Empty Words attempts to “demilitarize language, by awakening its natural poetry and making it impossible for people to control one another through rhetoric. Hopefully some state government officials will be in attendance, but in any case come to Father Hennepin Bluffs Park on the east side of the Stone Arch Bridge and add your voice.

Skewed Visions, Please Remain Seated

Skewed Visions takes their storytelling on the free buses that will transport people from venue to venue in and between Saint Paul and Minneapolis. Sorry, no napping on the buses.

All My Relations Arts, Community Conversation

Hopefully no one will be sleep already at 5:30 pm – although this is Minnesota, so you never know for sure – but there will be a stimulating conversation between Rigo 23, Tom Poor Bear, Mona Smith, Bobby Wilson, Robert Two Bulls and Heid Erdrich about Rigo’s Oglala Oyate: Sister City for a Better Future, an 8-hour video, which he shot on the Pine Ridge Reservation last year.

Red76, Follow the Light, Let the Light be Your Guide.

On the steps of the Saint Paul Central Library, Red76 encourages you to bring a radical prophetic text, preferably of regional vintage, to declaim into the night. As more and more visions of the future are spoken aloud and shared, the darkened facade of the library will light, till there is a new dawn in the morning. At 5:28 am.

Works Progress, Mississippi Megalops – A Floating Chautauqua

While the free tickets are almost sold out for this river adventure orchestrated by Works Progress and Andy Sturdevant, there may be some left for the 5 am trip – the best time, in my opinion. Sparkling performances, illustrated presentations and other works of artistic and scientific expression will be presented aboard the Jonathan Padelford sternwheeler as it makes its way down the Mississippi River, illuminating the shores of Saint Paul. Featuring creative contributions from over a dozen artists, scientists and storytellers, who together will transform a common riverboat into a floating Chautauqua, a rollicking experience that will enrich the mind and delight the senses!

Springboard for the Arts, Two Story Love Story

Springboard presents a program of dialogue between staff, in their offices on the 2nd floor above Prince St., and visitors, on
street below.

Marcus Young and Grace Minnesota, The Lullaby Experiment

Ok, so you still can’t quite stay awake. Come back to the Walker and let Marcus Young and Grace Minnesota sing you gently to sleep.

All My Relations Arts, American Composer’s Forum, American Swedish Institute, Art Department at the University of Minnesota, Art Institutes International Minnesota, Art Shanty Projects, Beijing Film Academy, Black Dog Cafe + Wine Bar, Burnet Gallery at Le Meridien Chambers Minneapolis, City of Minneapolis, City of Saint Paul, CITYDESKSTUDIO, College of Visual Arts, Covanta Energy, Flint Hills International Children’s Festival, Forecast Public Art, Franklin Art Works, The Friends of Saint Paul Public Library, Great Water Brewing Company, Hennepin Energy Recovery Center, Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Intermedia Arts, Keys 4/4 Kids, Landmark Center, Le Meridien Chambers Minneapolis, Lorenz Bus Service, Macalester College, McNally Smith College of Music, McSweeney’s, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis Parks + Recreation, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minnesota Historical Society, Minnesota Museum of American Art, Minnesota State Arts Board, mnartists.org, Mpls Photo Center, Nice Ride Minnesota, Nomad World Pub, Northern Lights.mn, Northrop Concerts and Lectures, Public Art Saint Paul, Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, Rain Taxi Review of Books, Red Stag Supperclub, Regis Center for Art, St. Anthony Falls Laboratory at the University of Minnesota College of Science & Engineering, Saint Paul Central Libary, Saint Paul Cultural STAR Program, Schubert Club, The Saint Paul Hotel, Saint Paul River Centre, Science Museum of Minnesota, The Soap Factory, Soo Visual Arts Center, Springboard for the Arts, The UpTake, US Army Corps of Engineers, W Minneapolis-The Foshay, Walker Art Center

Performance opportunity on the Stone Arch Bridge

for dawn or dusk // homeward is a 10-15 minute sound work  for 100+ local musicians playing brass, percussion, piccolos and tiny whistles. The site specific performance will take place on the Stone Arch Bridge, stretching across the Mississippi playing overlapping melodies derived from the route of the river. The piece follows the route of the river south past St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans and into the Gulf of Mexico. The piece is written by Los Angeles based composer Chris Kallmyer who will come out to work with the group on June 3 + 4.

Participating Musicians

We are looking for musicians age 10 – 110 (amateur and professional) who love playing their instrument, are not afraid to play loud, and have an interest in engaging with their community via music. Folks need to be willing to participate in three rehearsals prior to the performance at the Northern Spark Festival on June 4 at 9:05. Participants will need to provide their own instruments, and percussionists are encouraged to bring two instruments from this list: marching snare drum, marching bass drum, glockenspiel, metal junk, and bells.

Time Commitment

Two rehearsals with your section leader prior to the June 4 concert.

• Friday, June 3. 6:00 – 8:00 pm // rehearsal at the Stone Arch Bridge
• Saturday, June 4. 9:05- 9:20 pm // Walk-through at 7pm // Performance at the Stone Arch Bridge

If you would like to participate, please contact the event coordinator, Phil Snyder.

Mobile Food at Northern Spark

Trolling the Twin Cities all night long to experience a spectacular array of artist projects requires some stamina. You can always stop into your favorite neighborhood joint to grab a bite, but we’ve rounded up some of the best food trucks in the Twin Cities to provide sustenance along the way. Stationed in each Zone, these mobile chefs will keep you happily fed, caffeinated and recharged. Eat your way through the festival starting with a sunset dinner and ending with breakfast at dawn!

Border Tacos truck. Photo by Aaron Fenster

In St. Paul Border Tacos will be planted in front of the St. Paul Central Library where you can take a break from watching films of light and darkness, or a “campfire” reading to load up on tasty Mexican fare. Border’s acclaimed tacos, burritos, tamales and quesadillas are piled with perfectly seasoned chicken, pork or steak and covered in fresh cilantro and onions.

Anna Dien's family is working the stand and crafting bubble tea pearl recipes. Photo Michelle Bruch

If cantaloupe is more your style than carnitas, head over to the Science Museum of Minnesota for a smoothie from Sophea Fresh Fruits. Choose from a long menu of fresh fruits such as avocado, watermelon, banana, papaya, and yes, cantaloupe, or recharge with a bubble tea. Sip your sweet treats while listening to Mike Hallenbeck’s Sound Spandrel or tricking out your bike with the Bicycle Synthesizer Ride.

If a caffeinated pick-up is what you need before or after getting down on the dance floor at McNally Smith College of Music, stop off at the Black Dog Café. Their doors and kitchen will be open all night, where you can order from a special “menu of dreams” constructed by the café and artist Peter McLarnan based on research into the effects that late-night cheese consumption has on our unconscious imaginations. And did we mention FREE COFFEE? Yes!

In Minneapolis four mobile vendors are reason enough to stay up all night. At the Soap Factory, Dandelion Kitchen serves up their fresh fare from a bright yellow truck. Locally-sourced meats and produce join forces in sandwiches like roast chicken with whole grain mustard, blue cheese and greens. Homemade sodas—lemon ginger! basil lime!—wash it all down.

Over at the Walker Art Center, where the festival’s eight hours are packed with activities under the moniker Nightshift, the Garden Grill by D’Amico serves snacks, light fare and local beer ‘til 1 am when the Barrio Truck rolls up to take us through until morning. Stop by for a Latin-inspired  boost of Compart Family Farms Pork Carnitas, Soft Shell Crab, and Meyers Natural Beef Barbacoa and a bottle of Jarritos.

On the campus of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, stationed somewhere between the Three-Story Drawing Machine and The Battle of Everyouth at the Minneapolis Institute of Art is the place to go for Ethiopian food. She Royal Coffee Company will be there to serve chicken curry, spicy gyros, veggie platters (lentils, collards, cabbage) and the ever-necessary cup of coffee.

At the south end of the Stone Arch bridge in the upper parking lot Cruzn Café will keep you on your toes with espresso drinks, pulled pork and chicken sandwiches, hot dogs, nachos and smoothies. Make it a plan to end your night on the bridge with one of Cruzn’s breakfast tacos and the sunrise.

Mero Cocinero Karimi - Photo courtesy of the artist.

And finally, when your night is complete and you’re still hungry, stop at a 24 hour grocery store and bring an ingredient to cook at Mero Cocinero Karimi’s Power of the People Community Breakfast at Intermedia Arts. The meal will be as good as YOU make it!

We hope your journey through Northern Spark is as delicious as it is awe-inspiring!

“IN 2006, NORTHERN LIGHTS.MN founder, president, and artistic director, Steve Dietz, helped organize the first Zer01 SJ biennial, a seven day festival of art highlighting the theme of “the interactive city,” which took place in San Jose, California. The event was a huge success, featuring the work of more than 250 artists representing over 40 different countries and drawing in excess of $9 million dollars in revenue for the city. The problem?  The activities ended at 2 a.m. every night, and like a whiskey-jonesing bar-goer just diving into his second wind, Dietz wanted still more.

“Four years of idea-percolating and 18 months of practical planning later, Dietz has turned his a.m. arts bender dream into reality. On June 4 and 5^, Northern Lights.mn, a “roving, collaborative, interactive media” nonprofit art agency, will host Northern Spark: A Nuit Blanche, the Twin Cities’ first ever all-night outdoor art festival.“

Read the rest of Regan Smith’s preview of Northern Lights’ all-night arts festival, Northern Spark: Nuit Blanche, featuring dusk-to-dawn interactive art happenings throughout the Twin Cities, with work by more than 100 artists and organizations, on June 4 & 5.

via mnartists.org

If you know others who would be interested in volunteering for Northern Spark, please spread the word!!!

Sign-up now: volunteer.northernspark.org, or email robin@northern.lights.mn

As an added bonus, you’ll be able to go directly downstairs to the Burnet Gallery and experience Alexa Horochowski’s, Cloud Cave at any point during the night or listen to the world premiere of Artifact Shore’s Living Cloud Cave at 5 am with no problem. And nearby is The Notion Collective’s Station Identification for a bracing, seldom-seen, wee hours view of the city from the top of the Foshay Tower.

Your call whether PJs are appropriate Festival attire.

Art X Detroit was a five-day multidisciplinary celebration that exclusively presented newly commissioned works created by the 2008-2010 Kresge Eminent Artists and Artists Fellows, from April 6-10, 2011 with an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit ( MOCAD) and public art continuing to April 24, 2011. An exciting program of dance and musical performances, literary readings, workshops, panel discussions, public art and special exhibitions, Art X Detroit was hosted at more than a dozen venues located throughout Midtown Detroit’s Cultural Center and was free to the public. Art X Detroit is supported by the Kresge Foundation.

For this first outing audiences were given the opportunity to cloud spot and shoe gaze. They could make and march wire cars in an inspired dream cruise. They could brixelate their city online and see their brixelations on buildings throughout midtown. They could view a new permanent work of public art from one of Detroit’s legendary artists and for 5 days they could pound the pavement of Detroit’s cultural corridor that encompasses Cass, Woodward and John R from Hendrie to Harper. Just the pedestrian activity that these 5 days generated made this car town feel like a different city. The festival attracted standing room only crowds for the majority of the events and a packed to capacity opening at MOCAD with live performances ensured a highly charged start to it all. While April 6 – 7 at Rust Belt to Artist Belt were devoted to discussing and showing the way that artists and creative practitioners can transform a region through a hybrid and socially engaged practice, Art X Detroit presented how artists can transform a region through – art.

This was ecstatic practice from the Kresge Eminent Artists and Artist Fellows. The public art included what will be a new permanent work by Charles McGee, Spirit Renewal.

Cloudspotting and Detroit Weather: 365 days video projection © Susan Goethel Campbell. Photo Cezanne Charles

Artist Susan Goethel Campbell offers us a guide to Cloudspotting Detroit, which focuses on the unique atmosphere of Detroit. The accordion-style brochure includes a key to identify cloud types and a map showing a bike route to interesting cloud spots in the city. Clouds in this case are manmade and often the result of industry, but there are also natural cloud formations included. Wheelhouse Detroit will be arranging guided tours of the suggested route later this season. This is a different point of view of Detroit – science meets art, meets phenomena and eventually meets bikes.

Wire Car Cruise, Video Projection: a Dance for Diego; Sculptural Object: me me me © Chido Johnson. Photo Cezanne Charles

Chido Johnson’s Wire Car Cruise is a public performance/action – a wire-car cruise on the historical Woodward Avenue was performed to the formation of Detroit’s version of Soul Train, The Scene. The participants made their dream car and chose their favorite cruising song for the performance. The cruising music and wire-cars made by diverse communities within Detroit, its vicinity and others as far as Zimbabwe, was exhibited in the lobby of the old Dalgleish Cadillac Dealership, now TechTown and a video, titled a Dance for Diego documenting the performance was shown at MOCAD. Chido, a native Zimbabwean, creates cross-cultural transpositions and transformations in his work making links between Detroit, the US and Africa. In this case the making of wire cars pushed with sticks is a cultural practice popular in the southern and central regions of Africa and Woodward Avenue is where the Highland Park Ford Plant became the first automobile production facility in the world to implement the assembly line. Woodward Avenue for years served as the home of the US auto industry and in the 50s spawned woodwarding or crusing the boulevard.

Brixels © Cedric Tai. Photo Cezanne Charles

Cedric Tai created the project Brixels, a web-based and physical mural project for midtown Detroit. Tai’s Brixel project is designed as a “generative piece of art, that evokes textiles and Razzle Dazzle Battleships from WWI by drawing parallels between the camouflaged ships that eluded their enemies and a city that avoids being reduced to an essentialized narrative.” Visitors were asked to join the process through creating their own tessellations at www.makebrixels.com.

Street Folk © Tyree Guyton. Photo Cezanne Charles

Finally, inestimable and inimitable Tyree Guyton created the public installation Street Folk, formed from 10,000 paired and unpaired discarded and donated shoes. This piece highlighted the plight of the homeless in Detroit and once again sees him using his abilities to engage critically into the social and environmental fabric of the city.

The public art that was part of Art X Detroit really didn’t deal with a broken city or its broken buildings, which perhaps is both compliment and critique in general to the public art that largely is created by artists that are located here. Much of the public depictions that come by way of the New York Times and recent photo books of the city follow the formula of ruin porn – and while some of the photography is beautiful, haunting and yes filled with promise and opportunity – it is harder perhaps to depict the illusive, ephemeral and transient. This is exactly what these artists have tried to capture. As exciting as these projects were, for me it was the public coming out in droves for a series of art events that will stay with me now that Art X Detroit has come to a close.

Cezanne Charles is an artist and curator who co-founded the hybrid art & design practice rootoftwo. She is Director of Creative Industries at ArtServe Michigan and directs the professional development program from the Kresge Artist Fellows.

Photo credits: Cezanne Charles

Chris Kallmyer testing the sound properties of the site.

Los Angeles based composer Chris Kallmyer has spent the last two days walking the Stone Arch bridge, testing survival whistles and sketching plans for new piece as part of the Northern Spark Festival on June 4th and 5th.  for dawn or dusk // homeward is a 10-15 minute sound work for 100+ local musicians playing brass, percussion, piccolos and tiny whistles.  The site specific performance will take place on the Stone Arch Bridge, stretching across the Mississippi playing overlapping melodies derived from the route of the river.  The score is based the route of the river south past St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans and into the Gulf of Mexico.

Map of Mississippi River over-layed as a guide for the composition.

Community involvement is integral to the piece.

In this spirit, amateurs will work side by side with professionals, as well as community leaders who will run rehearsals. Chris states “The intent of this project is to host a range of musicians involved, and create a unique opportunity for younger musicians to pair with more experienced performers outside of a classroom or traditional band setting.”  The score is written considering players of all levels and experience and will give the performers the unique experience of debuting an original piece created specifically for them.”

If you are curious if this project is right for you, please check out this PDF of the working score!

We are still seeking musicians for the piece.  What would that mean for you…

Participating musicians

Trumpet, Trombone/Baritone/Tuba/Sousaphone, Piccolo, Percussion.

We are looking for musicians age 10 – 110 (amateur and professional) who love playing their instrument, are not afraid to play loud, and have an interest in engaging with their community via music. Folks need to be willing to participate in three rehearsal prior to the performance at the Northern Spark Festival on June 4 at 9:05.  Participants will need to provide their own instruments, and percussionists are encouraged to bring two instruments from this list: marching snare drum, marching bass drum, glockenspiel, metal junk, and bells.

Time Commitment

two rehearsals with your section leader prior to the June 4 concert.

• Friday, June 3. 6:00 – 8:00 pm //  rehearsal at the Stone Arch Bridge.
• Saturday, June 4. 9:05- 9:20 pm // Walk-through at 7pm // Performance at the Stone Arch Bridge.

Section Leaders

We are looking for trumpet, trombone, and piccolo leaders who can organize and run two rehearsals with your section prior to June 3.  I’d like you to work on the piece but also general fundamentals and pedagogy.  Starting with a warm-up, playing some chorales, and finishing with the piece at hand.  We are able to have one leader for each section.  We are looking for candidates who have an interest in working with their community, pedagogy, new music, and a sense of humor.

Time Commitment

• phone meeting with Chris Kallmyer (artist) and Northern Spark on May 20 to look over score and parts.
• arrange two rehearsals with your section prior to the June 3.
• Friday, June 3. 6:00 – 8:00 pm //  rehearsal at the Stone Arch Bridge.
• Saturday, June 4. 8:55 – 9:15 pm // Call time at 6pm // Performance at the Stone Arch Bridge.

Chris is also the music curator for Machine Project, a LA based collective who will be in residence on the Walker Open Field this July.Check out video from their brief visit this winter, including Chris’s Tea Pot Igloo performances.

Pretty funny.

via Near Future Laboratory

From April 6 – 7, Rust Belt to Artist Belt explored how artists and creative practitioners are transforming the landscape in Detroit and in other de-industrialized cities. Topics explored DIY culture, social justice, land use, prosperity and neighborhood and community development. Opening Keynotes from Maria Rosario Jackson of The Urban Institute and Judilee Reed, Executive Director of Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC) set the stage for the conference, providing significant national analytics about the position and role of artists in society.

The context for the conference was Detroit and not just the urban center or the image of an American city in decline, which is the popular way this region is depicted. Instead this conference looked at the ways that artists and designers are rethinking and reimagining what is possible for a socially-engaged practice, especially practices that are situated in and suited particularly to the post-industrial context of the multi-centered city/region. The conference also added voices both national and international to the mix.

Creatives Making Their Mark – from left to right Karl Daubmann, Ply Architecture; MonicaBlaire, singer/songwiter; Osman Khan, interactive artist; Lynn Crawford, Author Literary Fiction; (not pictured) Natalie Jeremenjenko, environmental artist. Photo: Cezanne Charles

Detroit has artist community decided micro-funding project grants through Detroit Soup that both weirdly complements and contrasts to The Kresge Artist Fellowship program. The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) and the Heidelberg Project have been awarded funding through LINC’s Space for Change program, while the region also has artists Sarah Wagner and Jon Brumit of DFlux refurbishing their house and offering DIY artist residencies making a different kind of space for creativity. Detroit has an artist run fake guerilla branding agency Hygienic Dress League, the work of Steve and Dorota Coy and top-flight corporate creative agencies such as Skidmore Studios using guerilla tactics. Somewhere in this mix of top down and bottom up approaches artist-led initiatives have found a way to make the region fertile for themselves and other artists and share a connection to artists and creative entrepreneurs in other cities. Detroit has artists and curators working in the public realm making work that moves beyond beautification and cookie-cutter approaches to public art as a hallmark of gentrification and instead illuminates history and traditions such as the Black History 101 Mobile Museum founded by curator Khalid el-Hakim.

Artists in the region like many others have also stepped in to fill needs in the areas of agriculture and urban farming and design as a form of social and economic justice like Margarita Barry and Veronika Scott. They have embraced hacker and media fab labs, like OminiCorp Detroit as a means of addressing digital divide issues; and they are proposing ways to turn homes into environmental assets when property values will likely never provide a return on investment like PowerHouse Productions from Design 99 duo Gina Reichert & Mitch Cope. These were some of the artists’ projects and work that was presented at Rust Belt to Artist Belt as part of a larger context for understanding the full ecosystem or creative supply chain at work in post-industrial or de-industrialized cities.

Rust Belt also attempted to shed some light on what happens when a city becomes the next target for the “Berlin” effect. There are all new issues presented when the superstar curious, the recent transplant, and the native denizens from the core and the suburbs all want to have a say and a stake at the table when promoting or deciding about the future of places like Detroit as an artist/creative city. There are inevitable conflicts of opinions and interests – the panels included a mix of these to offer a portrait of what is happening now.

Foundations and other funders, advocacy and capacity building organizations and those providing professional development, artist space development and entrepreneurship training have forged partnerships to help support and in some cases intervene lightly in this ecosystem – their work was also highlighted as part of the conference.

The Closing Keynotes by Allee Willis, a one woman creative think tank, and Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates left attendees with a clear call to action. Both concurred that artists do have a role in the transformation of the city, and moreover it is their boundless agency that should be supported and encouraged. Over the two days, Rust Belt to Artist Belt started a dialogue about the creative industries, the post-industrial economy of cities and artists value in society.

Cezanne Charles is an artist and curator who co-founded the hybrid art & design practice rootoftwo. She is Director of Creative Industries at ArtServe Michigan and was the lead curriculum partner on the 2010 Rust Belt to Artist Belt.

Drew Anderson
Michael Hoyt
Caly McMorrow
Anthony Tran
Aaron Westre

Congratulations from the jury: Steve Dietz, Artistic Director, Northern Lights.mn; Ben Heywood, Executive Director, The Soap Factory; and Amanda McDonald Crowley, Eyebeam Art & Technology Center. And from AOV3 Co-Director Christopher Baker.

More information.

All My Relations Arts invites you to join us for a community conversation with local Native American artists Mona Smith, Bobby Wilson and Robert Two Bulls. They will be talking with guest artists Rigo 23, whose work Oglala Oyate will screen during the Northern Spark festival at AMRA. Joining them will be Tom Poor Bear from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Poor Bear worked with Rigo 23 and appears in the video. Curator and poet Heid Erdrich will moderate. Light refreshments will be served.

All My Relations Arts
1414 East Franklin Ave.
5:30 pm – 7:30 pm, Saturday, June 4, 2011

Rigo 23, Oglala Oyate, 2010 01SJ Biennial

Jonathan Padelford at night

Mississippi Megalops is a floating Chautauqua featuring performances & presentations of history, art & science aboard an authentic paddle steamer riverboat. Tickets are free, but limited! To pre-book a ticket visit bit.ly/megalopstickets.

Proposals for ReGeneration can be for gallery installations or public projects on the grounds of NYSCI or in surrounding areas for the duration of the exhibition or for one-week modules exploring a particular concept or idea. Six of the projects will be juried based on this open call, three for installations and three for workshop modules. Collaborations are encouraged but should be confirmed with a letter of support in the application. More information here.

Los Angeles based composer Chris Kallmyer has been invited curator Scott Stulen and  the Northern Spark Festival to create a gigantic brass and percussion piece for the Stone Arch Bridge.  Chris is also the music curator for Machine Project, a LA based collective who will be in residence on the Walker Open Field this July.  The performance for Northern Spark will serve as an opening “fanfare” to the nightlong festival and is sure to be a highlight of the event.

The piece itself is conceived specifically for the site of the Stone Arch Bridge, taking advantage of the space and its perch above the Mississippi. The instrumentation is for brass section, percussion battery and a small choir of piccolos.  Below is further information on the piece, and the potential time commitment. Click here for Northern Spark’s page on the project. The piece has the potential to be a cultural event for the local music community, and if this fits you,  we hope you consider participating.

1. Time Commitment:

- Friday, June 3. 6:00 – 8:00 pm //  rehearsal at the Stone Arch Bridge.

- Saturday, June 4. 8:55 – 9:15 pm // Call time at 6pm // Performance at the Stone Arch Bridge.

2. Open to musicians of all levels and abilities

3. We are looking for candidates who have an interest in working with their community, pedagogy, new music, and a sense of humor.

Full Description

Stone Arch Bridge

for dawn or dusk // homeward is a 10-15 minute sound work for 100+ local musicians playing brass, percussion, woodwinds and tiny whistles.  The site specific performance will take place on the Stone Arch Bridge, stretching across the Mississippi playing overlapping melodies derived from the route of the river.  The piece follows the route of the river south past St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans and into the Gulf of Mexico.  Community involvement is integral in this piece. I am interested in how we can create a forum of equal participation and creative input, much like the brass bands in Europe and community bands that used to populate the United States.  In this spirit, local amateurs will work side by side with professional musicians, and local community leaders.

Interested?

Please RSVP to curator Scott Stulen at scott.stulen@walkerart.org to sign-up and for full details or pass this information along to anyone you know.

For context, here is a short video of one of Chris past projects.

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A group of guest writers have been invited to contribute to Public Address throughout 2011. Our first “guest” post is written by Ulrika Andersson, an artist, designer and curator who splits her time between San Francisco and Berlin. Her work can be seen at The Exploratorium, The Fort Mason Center in San Francisco and at www.weststarland.com.

The opening of Terminal 2 at the San Francisco airport brings five new artworks to this site, which was accredited by the American Association of museums in 1999, a first among airports. Much has been written about the nature of airports and their place in contemporary culture and imagination: usually colored with great ambivalence towards these busy, commercially promiscuous and stylistically limited environments. While theorists have sometimes wrung their hands over the idea that these crass places can contain something as venerable and delicate as fine art; artists have let their imagination soar into the grand meeting places, parting places, cathedrals of rapidly evolving technology and finance, surrounded by a bazaar of bustling enterprise.

Airport-commissioned artworks have a certain role to play as celebrations of flight and the human longing to fly, to travel, to meet each other and to wax philosophical about it. In many ways they claim the position that a downtown would hold if passengers had the time to visit it, or that formerly was held by the grand railroad stations: inspiring pride in locals and confidence in visitors. It’s safe to say that airports in general have approached this task with mixed results, while the ever-expending expansions provides ongoing opportunities. At San Jose’s SJC there is a new series of data-driven works that are especially ambitious: blending input from weather reports, security cameras and passenger mood messages to surface in innovative places like the luggage carousel. The Hafermaas, Goods and Koblin piece eCloud (2010) uses switchable glass material to create a man-made cloud responsive to global weather reports. The Foreign Policy writer Walter Russell Mead called airports symbolic of “man’s triumph over the forces of nature” and claims that “not even farmers are as painfully exposed to the vagaries of weather as those who seek to travel by air”. It’s doubtful that this is literally true, but it’s a germinal statement and a nice accompaniment to a piece that considers both natural states and rapidly changing global human endeavors; the same factors that make airports and such potent sites for artists. It provides an impressive welcome hall to the Nation’s high-tech capital while leaving itself open to ambivalence, even fear of flying.

At SFO artworks have so far been of a more contained nature, and the new terminal offers no variation on that. Terminal 2, the new home of Virgin America is sure to be reasonably trendy and the terminal does offer a very representative welcoming hall; decked with local food and comfortable furniture (though the interior style would be more closely associated to Copenhagen than San Francisco). At the newly opened terminal there are five new artworks and twenty re-installed pieces from the existing collection: all selected by the San Francisco Art Commission. Also at at the Terminal 2 Community Open House on April 9th the art was joined by guest appearances by local musicians, seemingly as part of the ongoing You Are Hear program at SFO -a great idea that someone should get a raise for. From the entry hall visitors at the open house were first greeted with Janet Echelmans Every Beating Second, the swooping net construction in the ceiling that was most prominently featured in the press for the T2 project. Alongside the folk bands, local food and promises of sustainability it brought the mind to the macrame playgrounds of Bolinas from the seminal books on hippie aesthetic like Native Funk and Flash. This is as it should be in a trend-sensitive space: Native Flash and Funk is an increasingly hard-to-find book as it is being rediscovered along by a new generation of artists embracing the craft sensibilities of the early 70’s.

The cool of the terminal in contrast with the warmth of the artworks is enhanced in Walter Kitundu’s Bay Area Bird Encounters. This wall piece largely consists of images printed onto wood with the shading and grain of the wood panel outlining the rest of the shapes in this landscape piece. In front of the wall stands two low crescent shaped benches in the shape of birds’ wings. The wings feathers have been fashioned into blocks to be played by mallets like a xylophone, along with a corresponding instrument on the wings of one of the birds on the wall. Walter Kitundu is a devoted wildlife photographer and spends a great deal of his time studying these neighboring flying San Franciscans. So much so that he has tuned the instruments in the piece to mimic the birds’ calls when played on marked blocks left to right. At the T2 opening event he was watching delighted children pound the instruments, partially obscuring the devotion he has left at the lower right for his father: Dr. Peter Kitundu. This very much hand-made offering by an earthy, no-nonsense builder and musician is such a solid and dignified corner in the terminal, it made the familiar airport current of stress and alienation stand still.

Charles Sowers is emerging as an artist and designer of public art works; often involving elements of fluidity, materiality and currents. His work can be seen at The Exploratorium, The Randall Museum, The Fort Mason Center and the LIGO Science Education Center in Livingston Parish, LA. At T2 his Butterfly Wall makes an impressive presence: guarded as the butterflies are by thick, greenish plate glass and stainless steel footing. Like the massive time pieces at The Long Now Foundation, the ephemeral has a tendency of making itself known with the most solid of objects. Inside the glass tank twenty butterflies are hauled up on transparent cables as visitors to the piece crank the handles to propel them. As the cable stops spinning, the butterfly falls and glitters to the ground, its plastic wings casting blinding reflections around itself. The San Francisco Art Commission took some risk in commissioning this piece, as the rest of the artworks don’t contain moving parts. The piece delivers as it is the only piece in the airport collection that uses flight as an experience and as a medium, rather than as an abstract topic of inspiration.

SFO would do well in allowing for more interactivity and fluidity in the newly commissioned artworks, and it would have been nice to see more of the works embrace the data-driven and kinetic possibilities in exhibiting at an airport. While the craft-oriented artworks, Scandinavian furniture and wood paneling makes T2 is a significantly more fashionable terminal than your run-of-the-mill terminal, there is a lot of room for greater ambitions for the artworks at this site.

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Jasper Elings, _Default Landscape_

via Valentina Tanni

Blast Theory, A Machine to See With

Blast Theory is a UK-based artist group (led by Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr and Nick Tandavanitj) who use performance, gaming, and interactive media to create participatory experiences that explore the social and political aspects of technology. One of their better-known works is Ulrike and Eamon Compliant, which premiered at the Venice Biennale in 2009 and invited participants to take on the persona of Ulrike Meinhof or Eamon Collins as they walked through the city directed by calls to their cell phone.

Blast Theory, Ulrike and Eamon Compliant.

While less political in its premise, A Machine to See With is similar in that it’s a cell phone led experience that takes place outside on city streets. I experienced the work when it premiered in San Jose, CA at the 01SJ Biennial last September and was able to observe and participate throughout the concept and testing phases of development. I hesitate to reveal too many specific details about the work because I want to avoid spoilers. This is an artwork that you must experience yourself.

As opposed to a site-specific work that is crafted for one particular geographic location, A Machine to See With (AMTSW) is better classified as a site dependent work. The premise of the work is the same from city to city, but the work isn’t explicitly about responding to a particular location—the narrative is a stencil overlaying a place and the artists are location scouts who scour an area to unearth the characteristics and spaces that support their narrative to the desired effect.

According to Nick Tandavanitj, the artists feel a sense of jeopardy each time they stage the piece because the work is so dependent on geographical details and physical properties of a place. When the artists arrived in San Jose (a city they had never visited—all scouting was done via Google Earth) they knew the narrative would center around a bank, but were still determining how the work would resolve. In Park City, Utah they had to scale the experience to a smaller city and make accommodations for the snow and harsh weather. In Minneapolis (which they did visit in advance), Blast Theory looked at three different locations to serve as the anchor point of the work, and admit that they could have rewritten AMTSW as a different experience at each of the three locations.

The work relies on maintaining an air of intrigue and anonymity to what is going on. Playing yourself, you are challenged to imagine the previously unimaginable and question what and who is behind every corner. Blast Theory clearly designs the work to allow spaces for people to craft their own experience. When I participated, it was left up to me to decide when and how to follow the instructions delivered to my own personal cell phone and at times the work reminded me of the “choose your own adventure” stories I used to love as a child.

Blast Theory, A Machine to See With. Still from San Jose.

Blast Theory is highly adept at blurring genres and mediums. AMTSW connects to urban gaming in that it enables interaction, but the work does not have the structure or clearly outlined goals of a game. In the context of a film festival like Sundance, the work takes on a cinematic element where the city is cast as set and participants as live actors in a reality-based action thriller.

In the end, I left feeling like the work was about taking a risk—not knowing who is playing along, but following directions anyway. As impersonal as the mechanism of phone calls seems to be, AMTSW crafts a finishing point that becomes a starting point to a moment of real personal connection with someone.

A Machine To See With is a Locative Cinema Commission from ZER01 for the 01SJ Biennial, the New Frontier Initiative at Sundance, and the Banff New Media Institute. It is being presented in Minneapolis as part of the Walker Art Center‘s Expanding the Rules of Engagement with Artists and Audiences initiative.