“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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Bravo! Public Art Saint Paul.

Sorry I couldn't Be there, Project VII, via @Platea

“‘Sorry I Couldn’t Be There‘ is a crowd-created video series. Developed by members of @Platea, the social media art collective directed by An Xiao, the series features artists from around the world explaining briefly why they couldn’t attend #rank and swing by Miami. Ultimately, the video would highlight concerns around geographic access and about who’s left out during large art fairs. For too long, the influential art centers have been located in major metropolitan regions such as New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Paris, London, Beijing and Seoul. We want to highlight the parts of the world where artists are working.”–William Powhida via Hashtag Class.

“The Big Print” is comprised of art from 1180 kids and adults and an overall design inspired by historic Norwegian knitting patterns.

The Big Print is based on public art events around steamroller printing  during the 2008 “Thousand Print Summer,” including Northern Lights’ The UnConvention during the Republican National Convention. The resulting prints by 1180 kids and adults are now installed at St. Olaf in NorthField, MN. Congratulations ArtOrg! Join the celebrations at the Big Print Block Party 2 to 4 pm, Sunday, November 21, 2010, in Buntrock Commons, St. Olaf College.

Thousand Print Summer venues

“ArtOrg started printing for kids and adults with steamrollers in the fall of 2006. The first small steamroller event for kids was at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts that September, and that was followed by a large steamroller printing event in October for a Day of the Dead celebration in Northfield. Dave from ArtOrg then successfully applied for an artist grant from Forecast Public Art to build an ongoing public art event around steamroller printing which we call the “Thousand Print Summer”. The Big Print is comprised of 1180 works of art from the 2008 Thousand Print Summer. The art was created at during ten different events: Walker Art Center, Anderson Center in Red Wing (twice), Owatonna, Stillwater, St. Cloud, Rochester, Northfield Crazy Days, Northfield Just Food Co-op, and “The Unconvention” on Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis”

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty

Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty has an almost mythic status. Perhaps less so, now that is has been routinely visible for some years. According to Wikipedia

“At the time of its construction, the water level of the lake was unusually low because of a drought. Within a few years, the water level returned to normal and submerged the jetty for the next three decades. Due to a drought, the jetty re-emerged in 2004 and was completely exposed for almost a year. The lake level rose again during the spring of 2005 due to a near record-setting snowpack in the mountains and partially submerged the Jetty again. Lake levels receeded and, as of spring 2010, the Jetty is again walkable and visible.”

Spiral Jetty was completely exposed when I visited, and I walked around and along it easily. Nevertheless, it was “hard” to see. Like driving through Yosemite earlier in the week and feeling as if all I could see through the windshield were the views of Ansel Adams.

Ansel Adams, El Capitain, The Four Seasons in Yosemite National Park. via http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/four_seasons_in_yosemite/summer.html

I walked up close to Spiral Jetty. I walked out to the edge of the water, now far from the jetty. I climbed the hill overlooking. Sat still. Walked some more. In the end, I was not disappointed. It wasn’t the pictures of Spiral Jetty I was seeing. It wasn’t like the Mona Lisa, behind its bullet-proof glass, where the crowds were more “interesting” than the artwork. It was somehow, still, the thing itself.

"Hello world, goodbye San Jose," from Christopher Baker, offscript, 300 Santana Row, San Jose, CA Today's question - What is your dream for the future? Commissioned by ZER01 for the 01SJ Biennial

I’m heading home after an amazing 01SJ Biennial. What should I see on the way?

What should I see on the way?

“[Outpost for Contemporary Art] mounted a project titled “This Here and That There,” in which artist Vlatka Horvat continuously rearranged a series of 50 chairs in the [Los Angeles River] over the course of eight hours. The performance took place near Silver Lake, below the Fletcher Bridge in Elysian Valley.”
via Culture Monster

“In some arrangements, the stage seems to be set for many different scenarios: meetings, presentations, discussions, exams, interrogations, concerts, riots… Other chair configurations tends to defy altogether the everyday codes of chair-arrangement in public spaces, suggesting instead more intimate, abstract, or enigmatic encounters.”–Outpost for Contemporary Art

The Department of Urban Development, Taipei City Government (DUD) along with the Bureau of High Speed Rail, MOTC is holding an international competition that invites art consultation / advisory teams to submit artist proposals for a public art installation project, to correspond with the “Bureau of High Speed Rail, MOTC Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Access MRT System Construction Project.” The selected art installation project will be located somewhere along the new airport MRT route—the specific location to be determined by the artist. The project seeks a design that will be consistent with its surrounding site and that takes into consideration visual movement, public open space, and interaction between people and public art. The airport route serves as a unique platform for the artwork to be seen by a large range of people and the competition offers an amazing opportunity to truly express the meaning of public art.

More Information: Please refer to the DUD website (http://www.udd.taipei.gov.tw/) or the tendering notice on the Council for Cultural Affairs’ public art website (publicart.cca.gov.tw).
Contact: Miss Rou-lan Hung in the Urban Design Division
ruolan@udd.taipei.gov.tw
886-2-27258285 (Phone)
886-2-27593318 (Fax).

I just returned from San Jose working on the 2010 01SJ Biennial where, among other projects, I worked with Jaime Austin and Shona Kitchen to install “Small Wonders,” a cabinet exhibition based on the idea of the wunderkammer at the new expansion of the San Jose International Airport – which has some amazing public art, and you should definitely fly through there next time you come to the Bay Area.

“Small Wonders” includes work by Saul Becker, Jim Campbell, Center for PostNatural History, Peter Chilvers and Sandra O’Neill, Beatriz da Costa, Amy Franceschini, Ken Goldberg and Karl F. Böhringer, Tad Hirsch, Misako Inaoka, Natalie Jeremijenko, Eduardo Kac, Erik Klein, Robert J. Lang, Christopher Locke, Frank Oppenheimer, John F. Simon, Jr., SuttonBeresCuller, Stephanie Syjuco, Daina Taimina, and Gail Wight.

“Wunderkammer, also known as cabinets of curiosities, were diverse collections of objects popular during the Renaissance and considered an early form of the museum. Literally meaning “wonder room,” a wunderkammer was meant to invoke a sense of wonder and often included a wide range of objects from natural history specimens (such as taxidermy) to geological artifacts (such as precious stones) to cultural objects (such as handicrafts). Small Wonders presents a range of objects by mostly local artists.  The displays are meant to evoke the wonder of the early history of Silicon Valley, and computing in general, with projects making use of the early Minitel for animations or a hack of an Altair computer.  Other wonderful ‘curiosities’ that artists create employ various forms of technology from blogging pigeons, to spying coconuts, to a lifelike origami peregrine falcon.”

ZER01 also commissioned a project by SuttonBeresCullter, The Wunderkammer, which they are almost finished installing. Here is a video stream of a talk they gave about the project tonight.

Last night was the magnificent “culmination” of years of photographing University Avenue in Saint Paul, MN, by artist Wing Young Huie. Four years in the making, tenaciously midwifed by Public Art Saint Paul, The University Avenue Project is a major public art installation with hundreds of photographs posted in businesses along 6 miles of the Avenue. Hundreds of people came to the “Project(ion) Site,” at 1433 University Avenue, conceived and produced by Northern Lights.mn with MS&R Architects, where a nightly slide show of Wing’s work can be seen accompanied by a rotating soundtrack of MN-based musicians through October 31.

Anish Kapoor, "Orbit" viewing tower for the 2012 London Olympic Park (simulation). It will be the largest public art work in the UK. via Cultural Olympics.org

“Regardless of your aesthetic taste, the headline is that an artist and an architect have pulled this together, placing art at the centre of the Olympic park.”

via Culture @ the Olympics

Hard to argue with this, in one sense, and certainly better copy than this description of Siah Armajani’s Centennial Cauldron for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

“Mounted above a 132 foot tower and accessible by a 190 foot long bridge, the Centennial Olympic Cauldron has been likened to a McDonalds French fry package. It is essentially a piece of sheet steel rolled into a cone. Even though it is 21 feet, tall it appears dwarfed by the structure on which it stands.”

Siah Armajani, Centennial Olympic Cauldron (Atlanta), 1996

via Atlanta Public Art

And hopefully in London, they can avoid the “wardrobe malfunction” of the otherwise spectacular Vancouver Olympics torch lighting, which The Vancouverite mischievously described as

“Wayne Gretzky riding in the back of a pickup truck with the Torch, as drunken Vancouver Hillbillies chased him around the city. It was like we were doing the Torch relay in Arkansas or something. So awesome.”

Olympic torch lighting, opening night, 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

via The Vancouverite

One of the most well-known works of public “art” volcanoes is at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. And I suppose you could argue that the Bellagio Fountain is a kind of eruption as well, although it certainly lacks a certain … moltenness, which is how Designboom describes this untitled interior lighting by Anselm Reyle at Art Basel 2008.

Anselm Reyle, untitled

Untitled, Anselm Reyle, 2008, Art Basel.

Sir William Hamilton

Mount Vesuvius emitting a column of smoke after its eruption on 8 August 1779. Coloured etching by Pietro Fabris, 1779.

The art of the volcano has been around since at least the late 1700s when Sir William Hamilton studied the eruptions of Vesuvius and other volcanoes, commissioning many views such as this colored etching at left by Pietro Fabris from 1779, Mount Vesuvius emitting a column of smoke after its eruption on 8 August 1779. via Wellcome Library, London.

“His 1776 book Campi Flegrei: Observations on the volcanoes of the two Sicilies used stunning hand-coloured illustrations by Peter Fabris to demonstrate to the scientific world that volcanic processes can be beautifully creative as well as horribly destructive.” via MetaFilter

Hamilton was also the subject of Susan Sontag’s Volcano Lover.

Interestingly, especially in regard to the Mirage Hotel’s volcanic eruption entertainment, Hamilton created a multimedia “apparatus” to demonstrate the shock and awe of a volcanic eruption. Bent Sorenson’s 2004 article, “Sir William Hamilton’s Vesuvian Apparatus” goes into great detail about this device, which is based on the only extant drawing of it. I have been unable to locate any images of the drawing, but according to Sorenson,

“Hamilton’s Vesuvian apparatus was a work of art, reinforced with machinery, purposely designed to convey the tremendous force, the rapidly changing aspect, and the terrific noise of a volcanic eruption in a manner far more realistic then would have been possible with a conventional painting. It was composed of a large colourful painted transparency showing the eruption of Vesuvius, lit up from behind by a complex mechanical device activated by clockwork. Replete with special effects, it produced the striking impression of a continuous stream of lava and sporadic outbursts from the crater, accompanied by thunderous blasts of eruptions.”

Rock island "Stein" with an artificial volcano and Villa Hamilton, Desau-Wörlitz Garden Realm, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Photo Doris Antony.

A more recent predecessor to the Mirage Volcano may be at the the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm, created in the late 1800s by Duke Leopold III of Anhalt-Dessau upon returning from an inspirational Grand Tour. Within the 55 square mile grounds, Wörlitz Lake featured an island atop which was a model of Mount Vesuvius. The duke would stage fireworks that seemed to issue from an erupting volcano to entertain his guests. At the foot of the mountain on the island was a building intended to suggest William Hamilton’s home at Pompeii, where he did his famous archaeological work. The site was recently restored and staged a spectacular opening in 2005.

Theresa Himmer

One of the most interesting works I have come across is Theresa Himmer’s Volcano, which is situated on the façade of Kling&Bang Gallery, at Hverfisgata Street 42 in Reykjavik. Volcano is part of a trilogy that includes the Waterfall and the Glacier.

Theresa Himmer, Volcano, 2008

According to Himmer,

“These three installations constitute the Mountain Series as a loving tribute to Iceland, but also a general attempt to challenge our perception of urban space and the notion of man-made versus nature. If viewed with an open mind, the installations can transform the houses of downtown Reykjavik into geometric mountains and the whole city into a magical man-made landscape!”

via PingMag

James Turrell

I’d love, of course, to experience James Turrell’s famous secret Roden Crater, which according to Turrell is is on the western edge of Painted Desert in the San Francisco peaks volcanic field with over four hundred craters. Roden Crater is one of them, the easternmost crater, a new crater in this field, but it’s about 380,000 years old. Supposedly opening in 2012,  until then there is always gossip, stealth PR, and flickr.

flickr photos of Roden Crater

John Hoover

According to Philip Munger, in a 2008 article on Progressive Alaska published shortly after the Okmok Volcano on Unmak Island began erupting, “The most famous work of fine art about volcanoes, is wood sculptor John Hoover’s Volcano Woman.”

John Hoover, Volcano Woman, Egan Center, Anchorage, Alaska

John Hoover’s carved red cedar sculpture was commissioned in 1984, and is displayed in the main lobby’s East seating area. Born in Cordova, Alaska, Hoover said a spirit inspired the artwork and he described it on a plaque near the display.

‘Shamanism, spirit helpers, soul catchers, transformation from animal to human, human to animal, the spiritualism of Native American art, all of these things have influenced my work and I have tried to incorporate these many facets into my art as a sculptor and carver,” Hoover said. “Being able to choose an Aleut subject for the first time ever putting this word picture from the past into an actual visual concept has been most rewarding and meaningful to me.’

via Anchorage Convention Centers

Philip Munger, Robot Gagaku

Interestingly, Munger writes in his article, “After seeing John Hoover’s sculpture of Volcano Woman, I discovered the essence for the final scene of my yet unperformed robot ballet, Robot Gagaku. That final movement is itself named ‘Volcano Woman’.”

I found Munger’s Robot Gagaku on GarageBand.com, and I think the description is worth quoting in its entirety.

Robot Gagaku was conceived as an Electronic Ballet. It was written and engineered in 1992 and 1993. The four sections, played without pause, are: Outpost Markers – The Great Generator – Nasori – Volcano Woman. The scenario depicts the arrival of a robot space ship into Earth orbit some 130,000 years in the future. Earth has, by this time, become a dead planet, from biological, chemical and nuclear contamination by humans. Upon receiving a radio signal from Earth, the robotic crew is unknowingly reprogrammed. They land, and exit their ship on Kiska Island in the Aleutians. The Great Generator is about the search of an old labyrinth on Kiska by the robot crew. They decode the entry lock for a giant bunker. Upon arriving inside, they enter another labyrinth. As they solve the labyrinth’s pattern, they set off a sequence of events inside the bunker. Another giant door opens. The robots enter a huge ceremonial room. There are a set of tables with costumes and musical instruments laid upon them. A like number of robots approach the tables, don the costumes and seat themselves in a circle in the center of the room. Nasori is an old, old Gagaku melody, played by the Emperor’s own orchestra. It can bring the dead to life. The robots begin playing Nasori. Doors around the periphery of the room open, shelves slowly open and extend into the room. The earth begins to shake in a gigantic earthquake. The bunker begins to disintegrate as volcanic eruptions shake the island. Volcano Woman is an ancient Aleut myth. about the creation of new life. As the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions destroy Kiska and other islands, the items in the bunker – petri dishes full of the elements of life, are carried to the outside by the robots. Eventually, the quakes destroy the robots and their ship. But the materials from the petri dishes are carried by the waves to nearby shores, where they will re-start biological life on a dead planet.

Download Robot Gagaku.

Jack Goldstein, Untitled (Volcano)

Jack Goldstein (American, b. 1945; d. 2003) – “Untitled” (Volcano) 1983, Acrylic on canvas, 96 x 96 inches – Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas’ Tea Lounge

via Senatus
Acrylic on canvas, 96 x 96 inches
Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas’ Tea Lounge (on the wall on the right in this video still)

I suppose this is public art, depending on your wallet. I’ve probably helped produced projects in public space for about the cost of a meal at the Tea Lounge.

“An influential postmodern artists of the 1970s and 80s,  Goldstein is recognized for his pioneering work in sound, film and painting. His highly polished paintings are based on photos of natural phenomena, focused on capturing the “spectacular instant.” Untitled (Volcano), which measures 8 feet tall by 8 feet wide, hangs in the Mandarin Orietal’s Tea Lounge in the 23rd-floor sky lobby. The painting depicts an explosive and vibrant image of an erupting volcano.” – via CityCenter

Paul Wong, Led Down The Garden Path

Paul Wong, Led Down The Garden Path – Bloedel Conservatory, Vancouver, 5-10pm, Feb. 27, 2010

Bloedel Conservatory, Vancouver, 5-10pm, Feb. 27, 2010
During the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Wong produced a number of events. At the Bloedel Conservatory,

“The Buckminster Fuller inspired dome is at the highest point in the city. It will be the site for ‘LED Down The Garden Path’. Paradise will be transformed by sublime projections, evocative images and unexpected elements at Queen Elizabeth Park. Atop of a lava flowing volcano, rock quarry and now the city water reservoir, Wong creates an environment with imported nature and electronic media under one tropical roof.”

Monique Janssen Beliz, Albuquerque Volcano

Monique Janssen Beliz, Albuquerque Volcano, 2008

The City of Albuquerque Public Art’s photostream includes this watercolor.

Richard Goodwin, The Well

Richard Goodwin, The Well

The Well incorporates natural bluestone columns that are to be found in volcanic pipes of the extinct volcano Mt Canobolas near Orange in NSW Australia.

African Renaissance, 2010 (Senegal)

Senegal's African Renaissance monument. Photograph: Seyllou/AFP/Getty Images

In April, Senegal officially unveiled its 49-metre high, bronze African Renaissance monument, which depicts a man, woman and child emerging from a volcano. According to president, Abdoulaye Wade, the monument commemorates 50 years of independence and is for the entire continent by bringing “to life our common destiny.” – via The Guardian and Foreign Policy.

Georgia Gerber’s Tree Planter, 1991

Outside the Forest Learning Center, Mt. St. Helens, Washington, this brone sculpture depicts a Tree Planter, with his backpack full of seedlings and shovel in hand, leaning over to plant one of the 18 million seedlings which were replaced in the volcano’s blast zone.

Joanna Rajkowska, unrealized volcano project

(scroll about halfway down)

Art and Architecture in the Public Sphere of Cities. Joshua Decter, director of the Master of Public Art Studies Program at USC, organized and moderated this event exploring art and architecture in the public sphere, and unorthodox ways of engaging the public. The panel featured Anne Pasternak, president and artistic director of Creative Time, New York; Los Angeles based installation artist Doug Aitken; and Peter Zellner, Los Angeles-based architect and founding principal of ZELLNERPLUS. The event was presented as part of Visions and Voices, and was held on February 2, 2009, at the Davidson Conference Center.

Public Space, Public Art and Public Life. USC Norman Lear Center director Marty Kaplan moderates this incisive panel discussion that explores the interplay between art and architecture in urban spaces. Panelists: artists Christopher Janney & Anne Bray; USC School of Cinematic Arts’ Scott Fisher; Ted Tanner of AEG Real Estate & LA Live; Fox Music’s Robert Kraft; USC School of Architecture Dean Qingyun Ma.

Architecture, Design, Art: Strategies for Survival. USC — April 23, 2009 — “Architecture, Design, Art: Strategies for Survival” was a conversation among Teddy Cruz, Marjetica Potrc and Krzysztof Wodiczko that took place on April 6, 2009. The event was organized and moderated by Joshua Decter, director of the Master of Public Art Studies Program (Art in the Public Sphere) at the USC Roski School of Fine Arts, and was the second part of the “Participation and Friction: Rethinking Art and Architecture as Public Culture” series, sponsored by Visions and Voices: The USC Arts and Humanities Initiative.

See also the Roski School of Fine Arts Masters of Public Art Studies Guest Speakers / Lecture Archive for talks by a growing list of speakers, including Doug Aitken, Ute Meta Bauer, Teddy Cruz, Steve Dietz, Mark Dion, Sam Durant, Andrea Fraser, Rudolf Frieling, Hou Hanru, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Grant Kester, Norman Klein, Michael Krichman, Miwon Kwon, Rick Lowe, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Allan McCollum, Anne Pasternak, Patricia Phillips, Marjetica Potrč, Gregory Sholette, Rochelle Steiner, Gloria Sutton, Nato Thompson, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Peter Zellner, and Tirdad Zolghadr.

Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces, edited by Melanie Kloetzel and Carolyn Pavlik (University Press of Florida, 2009)

As the first anthology to specifically examine dance in non-traditional performance spaces, this title explores the work that choreographers create for alternative sites and examines the basis for their creative choices. Editors Melanie Kloetzel and Carolyn Pavlik (professors of dance at the University of Calgary and Western Michigan University, respectively) offer a combination of interviews with and essays by some of the most prominent and influential practitioners of site-specific dance, such as Meredith Monk, Joanna Haigood, Stephan Koplowitz, Heidi Duckler, Ann Carlson, Eiko Otake, and Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad of the BodyCartography Project. Site Dance is a significant and timely contribution to the public art canon–a must-read for dancers, choreographers, audiences, and public art administrators alike!

]]> http://northern.lights.mn/2010/02/at-last-a-book-on-site-specific-dance/feed/ 0 http://northern.lights.mn/2010/02/forecast-is-on-librarything/ http://northern.lights.mn/2010/02/forecast-is-on-librarything/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:33:34 +0000 kfrick http://northern.lights.mn/?p=2818 If you’ve never been to Forecast’s office in St. Paul, you probably don’t know that we house a public art resource library of around 1,500 books, catalogs, magazines, and DVDs!  Our library is growing so fast that soon it will outgrow its current digs and I guess will have to spill out into the street.  Although we definitely need more physical space for the library, virtual space is not lacking thanks to LibraryThing and Forecast interns Jaclyn + Pati!

Check out our library online and be in touch if you’d like to see some of these fabulous titles in person!

And stay tuned for more info on exciting new books (and a look back on older classics as well).

Fulton Favorites was funded by a grant from the Fulton Neighborhood Art Committee. (Fulton is my neighborhood in Minneapolis.) The purpose of the project was to build community by bringing neighbors of all ages together to make unique lawn signs that express their favorite aspects of our neighborhood. I held about 10 workshops this summer to teach residents how to make the signs. During the workshops, I guided the artists through the process of sketching, making a final design and translating their designs into a colorful image, simplified enough to make a good lawn sign. The settings ranged from childcare programs to block parties and park festivals. Some adults made theirs at home after picking up a packet of materials from me.

Residents made140 unique lawn signs. The materials were very user-friendly and weatherproof: 10 colors of self-adhesive vinyl on a vinyl board. The signs were installed at the park to be enjoyed as a group at the annual Fulton Fall Festival.

The best part of the event was watching people come browse through all the signs or look for their own and proudly take it home! Lastly, participants took home their signs to display on their own lawns, store over the winter and reuse year after year. (Some people are STILL exhibiting their lawn signs in the snow!)

Finally, pedestrians, bicyclists and observant drivers who see these signs on certain blocks may realize that they are passing through Fulton Neighborhood, or near it. (In the spirit of inclusivity, we did allow other neighborhood residents to participate, since many Linden Hills folks and other neighborhood residents come to our schools, parks and festivals).

Gail Katz James

“The ArtGeek oversees the largest concentration of technology-based public artwork in the country. Located in the San Jose International Airport’s brand new terminal, the collection includes a giant propeller-driven robotic sculpture, streaming networked cameras, a massive cloud of flickering glass, liquid-cooled projectors, twitter feeds, and a school of live fish with underwater surveillance cameras. Working from an underground Art+Tech workshop with electronics bench and state-of-the-art sound system, the ArtGeek keeps it all humming.” More info.

via City of San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs

Rome, Tiber Island, november 2009

Rome is finally giving proper space to contemporary art. Not only between the walls of galleries and other traditional venues, but also in the streets, hosting new buildings (Zaha Hadid’s new MAXXI museum and Odile Decq’s expansion for Macro, to open in spring 2010), performances and open-air installations.

Doug Aitken’s Frontier is the latest evidence of this new deal: a spectacular video work installed on the Isola Tiberina, a natural island located in the very heart of the city, emerging from the river. After the end of the show, the work will be donated to Rome’s contemporary art museum (Macro), where it will be visible next year.

The press releases that accompanied the launch of the event, part of the third edition of Enel Contemporanea curated by Francesco Bonami, emphasized a supposed similarity between Aitken’s video room (which has numerous small windows and no roof) and the Colosseum. But the work doesn’t seem to look for any historical reference; it owes most of its appeal, on the contrary, to the visual clash it engages with the surroundings.

Visitors first see Frontier from above, standing on top of the bridge, then walk down the marble stairs and approach a white, luminous room. The video is projected all over the inner walls, and the light – with its intensity and colour variations – leaks out of the rectangular windows that punctuate the structure. The whole architecture becomes a screen and a framework for the story: a narrative – and somehow circular – journey about memory and time. At the beginning we see the american painter Ed Ruscha sitting in a darkened movie theatre. Then he leaves for an – imaginary? – walkabout through different locations and atmospheres (the video was shot in Rome, Los Angeles, Israel and South Africa). The camera alternates wide, quiet panoramas with intense close-ups of faces and objects; the overall feeling is mystical and romantic. Sometimes the artist just relies on colours, flooding the walls with vibrant textures of pure, liquid light. At last, the protagonist finds himself once again in the same setting – the cinema – where the video began.

In the end, it seems like the story, and even the video itself, doesn’t count as much as the whole, immersive experience. The experience of spending half an hour inside a big screen-bulding, on the tip of an old island (it resembles the tip of a vessel) with only the sky as a roof. The main role of the video is that of being an emotional trigger, gently pushing the spectator towards a dreamlike, contemplative mood.

Valentina Tanni

Valentina Tanni (www.valentinatanni.com) is a contemporary art critic and curator based in Rome, Italy. Her research is mainly focused on new media art and internet culture. She is the founder of Random Magazine (www.random-magazine.net) a digital art bulletin, and co-founder of Exibart.com (www.exibart.com), the most popular online art magazine in Italy.

‘Dots for Love and Peace’ was designed specifically for the City Gallery by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who is renowned for her use of dots and repetitive patterns. The public artwork celebrates both her Mirrored Years exhibition and the re-opening of the City Art Gallery building. via StopPress.

Hometown manufacturer 3M supports new Yayoi Kusama Dots for Love and Peace in Wellington, NZ.

“3M and SignSquad recently joined forces to cover the the City Art Gallery in Wellington in a whole lot of dots. The team worked 10-hours a day, six days a week for three weeks and had to warm every dot and roll it on to the sandstone surface by hand.

“’3M has a history of producing innovative products,’ says Justin White, 3M sales specialist for commercial graphics. ‘When the City Gallery Wellington challenged us to apply that same level of innovation to the use of our products, we jumped at the chance.’”

via StopPress

“After visiting Chicago, and particularly Millenium Park, this past summer, I started thinking a lot about public art. I decided I have an opinion on the subject.”

via Nomadic Noesis

West of Rome Public Art and Los Angeles artist Sam Durant propose Scaffold: A Direct Appeal (Working Title). via West of Rome Public Art.

“West of Rome Public Art and Los Angeles artist Sam Durant propose Scaffold: A Direct Appeal (Working Title), an interactive, sculptural installation promoting public forum, to take place in the Spring and Summer of 2011 in three different cities—Houston, New York City and Los Angeles. Scaffold continues the artist’s long-standing practice of incorporating socio-political issues into large-scale installations.

“Building from previous works like Upside Down: Pastoral Scene (2002), Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monuments Transposition, Washington D.C (2005), and Scenes from the Pilgrim Story (2006), this new project takes themes from American history into the public realm. An architecturally scaled construction that will serve as a platform for public programming, performance, reading and theater, Scaffold will engage the public on multiple levels, questioning received wisdom and historical truths.”

via West of Rome Public Art

Gallows Composite A (Mankato Gallows, Haymarket Gallows, Rainey Bethea Gallows, Saddam Hussein Gallows), 2008 Exhibition: SAM DURANT. via PRAZ-DELAVALLADE

More gallows via PRAZ-DELAVALLADE

See also

• Stop (genocide)

2009 Forecast grantees Grace Davitt + Anna Metcalfe  collaborated with Redeemer Lutheran Church + Redeemer Center for Life to host weekly outdoor dinners with one of a kind handmade ceramic tableware. At the last dinner participants were invited to take the dinnerware home with them to keep memories of the warm summer nights alive through the winter. Karis Thompson shares impressions of the event.

“A perfect summer evening for a meal outdoors.  Tables draped with linen and set with handmade ceramic dishware, each uniquely designed and glazed.  A menu showcasing locally raised meats and the harvest of urban gardens prepared collaboratively by seasoned and emerging chefs.  Music inspiring conversation and movement.  Neighbors and friends from near and far eating together, talking together – the meal and conversation extending well past the typical 20-30 minutes usually allocated for dining and ending only when all the food has been eaten or the sun begins to set.

How does this happen? And how did this happen in the Harrison neighborhood of North Minneapolis, a community whose median income and lack of whole foods offerings too often force a diet of affordable, accessible processed and fast foods?

It happened through the power of people and their connections and collaboration.  Through Grace and Anna who wanted to explore the synergies of community and art and slow food and invested much in the conceiving and realization of this Thursday Nights Out venture.  Through the commitment of neighborhood community gardeners – organized by Harriet – who lent their particular gardening wisdom and hours of cultivation to produce a striking harvest from the garden in Redeemer’s backyard.  Through neighborhood and visiting chefs passionate about recipes and taste and nurturing family and friends.  Through local farmers who raised meat and produce for our table.  Through volunteers gathering to cook and set tables and host a meal and wash dishes and greet neighbors from early in the morning to late in the evening each Thursday.  And through a community’s openness to new recipes, new ways of cooking and eating, new conversations and relationships, and collaborating through different ways of perceiving, communicating, interacting.

Thursday Nights Out gave us a taste of being and becoming a community nurtured by inspired food and the power of relationships.”

-Reflection by Karis Thompson

Camera Rosetum, an animated projection by Sean Capone. Photo Juozas Cernius, Caslon Photography, via Art Fag City

Nice photo round up of Dumbo Arts Center, Art Under The Bridge Festival.

Including a performer for Andrea Stanislav’s Reflect, a wandering, multi-part, interactive performance.

Photo Juozas Cernius, Caslon Photography, via Art Fag City

via Art Fag City

Forecast Public Art is excited to announce its newest public art project on University Ave, Echoing Voices, a billboard installation by artist, Kao Lee Thao. With support from the Jerome Foundation, Forecast Public Art selected Thao from a pool of local applicants to create a design for a billboard at the intersection of University Avenue and Cleveland in St. Paul. Thao chose to use the public visibility of the project to create a visual dialog about a topic close to her life, the Hmong Secret War.

“I was one of the first Hmong children born in America, each year my birth is a constant reminder of those who were left behind and continue to fight for my freedom. My aspiration was to create a painted billboard that speaks out about the injustices of the remaining Hmong soldiers called Freedom Fighters from the “Secret War” during the Vietnam War.

Inspired by Hmong textiles and vibrant colors of my culture I divided the billboard representing the two worlds I live in. My spirit is still trapped in the Jungles of Laos and my soul is in America living out my dreams. I want to inspire young minds to pursue their passion, but remind us not to forget how we won our freedom to America. I hope someday we can end the “Secret War” and bring peace to those remaining in Laos still fighting…” – Kao Lee Thao,

The Echoing Voices and a companion website (www.echoingvoices.com) will be installed on Monday September 21, 2009 and will remain on view through November at the intersection of University Avenue and Cleveland in St. Paul, MN.

Last Sunday, ON SAN FERNANDO, Arcangel Constantini "activated" Brendan Rawson of 1stACT, DJ Tommy Aguilar, and artist Pilar Aguero-Esparza with his electro-shock art "icpiticayotl", which ZER01 presented at the Mariachi Festival. Propose your own activation project on San Fernando.

GENERAL INFORMATION

San Jose Public Art and ZER01 invite artists to submit qualifications and letters of interest to install temporary artworks on the San Fernando Street corridor in Downtown San Jose. These artworks will be installed in June 2010, be a feature of the 3rd 01SJ Biennial (September 15-19, 2010) and will continue their display through October 2010.

PROJECT BUDGET: Varies depending on site. See complete RFQ for details at http://www.sanjoseculture.org/?pid=4500

ARTIST ELIGIBILITY: U.S. residents are invited to apply, or those who have a US Social Security or Tax Identification Number by the application deadline.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: Submissions (described below) must be received as a complete application in CaFÉ™ by no later than 12 midnight Mountain Daylight Time (MDT) on Thursday, October 8, 2009.

APPLICATION PROCESS: All materials will be submitted online, via CaFÉ™ website (www.callforentry.org). There is no application fee to apply or to use the CaFÉ™ online application system. To view the application, go to www.callforentry.org, register a username and password, navigate to “Apply to Calls”, and search the list for “City of San Jose – San Fernando Corridor Project”.

Andréa Stanislav, Ghost Siege, 2009, 70 ft L x 70 ft W x 22 ft H, steel, nylon, sound. Socrates Sculpture Park, NYC, NY. Photo courtesy the artist.

Andréa Stanislav’s Ghost Siege opened Sunday, September, 13th at Socrates Sculpture Park, NYC, NY as part of the Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition.

A site specific installation/formation of ghost flags comprised of 50 strategically located flag sculptures, made from reflective silver fabric, and steel flag poles. The flags have no markings or signifiers of conquest or elements of communication.  Instead, the flags serve notice that the location has been conquered by time.

Opening Day Performance

Set within Ghost Siege, dancer/choreographer Leah Schrager will dance to music composed by Kenny Aronoff, preeminent drummer and percussionist.

Ghost Siege from Leah S on Vimeo.

Each year, EAF artists are awarded a grant and a residency in the Park’s outdoor studio and are also provided with technical support and access to tools, materials and equipment to facilitate the production of new sculptures and installations for exhibition in the Park.  The artists develop their projects throughout the summer in the open studio and on site in the landscape, offering visitors the opportunity to experience both the creation and presentation of their works.  Representing a broad range of materials, working methods and subject matter, the diverse sculptural works in this exhibition are presented against the Park’s spectacular waterfront view of the Manhattan skyline.

Adriene Jenik, SPECFLIC 2.0, part of the 1st 01SJ Biennial, 2006, San Jose Public Library, San Fernando and 4th St.

For Artists

San Fernando Corridor Project – Request for Qualifications
San Jose Public Art and ZER01 invite artists to submit qualifications and letters of interest to install temporary artworks on the San Fernando Street corridor in Downtown San Jose. These artworks will be installed in June 2010, be a feature of the 3rd 01SJ Biennial (September 15-19, 2010) and will be continue their display through October 2010.

Background: San Fernando Street
San Fernando Street is a significant east/west corridor through downtown San Jose that connects Diridon Station, the major train, light rail and bus center on the west side of downtown; continues through the sports, retail and cultural district; and defines the north side of San Jose State University at downtown’s east edge. The street passes from the station, beneath State Highway 87 and over the Guadalupe River before entering the downtown core. As such, the street offers a variety of opportunities for the creation of artworks in different media ranging from static to electronic, sound, projection, light-based, interactive and mobile or networked. The artworks will be accessible to anyone who works, lives or visits downtown San Jose.

Background: 2010 3rd 01SJ Biennial
The 3rd 01SJ Biennial will take place September 15-19, 2010, throughout San Jose and Silicon Valley. Its theme, “Build Your Own World,” is about how powerful ideas and innovative individuals from around the world can make a difference and come together to build a unique, city-wide platform for creative solutions and public engagement. It is about the inspiration needed to build a world we want to live in and are able to live with. The 2010 01SJ Biennial is predicated on the notion that as artists, designers, engineers, architects, marketers, corporations and citizens we have the tools to (re)build the world, conceptually and actually, virtually and physically, poorly and better, aesthetically and pragmatically, in both large and small ways.

PROJECT BUDGETS: Vary depending on site

ARTIST ELIGIBILITY: U.S. residents are invited to apply, or those who have a US Social Security or Tax Identification Number by the application deadline.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: Submissions (described below) must be received as a complete application in CaFÉ™ by no later than 12 midnight Mountain Daylight Time (MDT) on Thursday, October 8, 2009.

APPLICATION PROCESS: All materials will be submitted online, via CaFÉ™ website (www.callforentry.org). There is no application fee to apply or to use the CaFÉ™ online application system. To view the application, go to www.callforentry.org, register a username and password, navigate to “Apply to Calls”, and search the list for “City of San Jose – San Fernando Corridor Project”.

For full details and application process read the Request for Qualifications.

DOCUMENTS FOR REFERENCE IN APPLYING FOR PROJECTS WITH THE CITY OF SAN JOSE PUBLIC ART PROGRAM

Design Contract – Boilerplate (PDF)

Fabrication Contract – Boilerplate (PDF)

City of San Jose Standard Specifications (External)

Canal Street Getting Public Art Park No One Knew it Needed. Via Curbed

via Curbed.

It’s not entirely clear what will be happening here, but the basic idea is that while the property owner waits for the real estate market to revive, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council is working with architects Interboro Partners to create Lentspace, a temporary public park and exhibition with event programming. Excellent.

“LentSpace’s landscape design features a tree nursery that provides shade while incubating street trees to be planted throughout the downtown neighborhood at a later date. In addition, a custom operable fence opens the space to encourage a variety of social encounters, incorporating benches for seating and a display surface for a c ommissioned graphic design series. LentSpace is a free outdoor cultural space open to the public from 7am to dusk, made possible by LMCC.”

Who woulda thunk that Canal and Sixth would become the greenest intersection in town? Photo: Curbed.

The visual arts exhibition curated by LMCC’s curator Adam Kleinman includes work by artists: Olivier Babin, Olga Chernysheva, Eli Hansen & Oscar Tuazon, Graham Hudson, Tobias Putrih, Ryan Taber, and Corban Walker. Opening September 18.

Camille Utterback and Alan H. Davidson installing touch sensitive handrail for interactive light work.

Over the past week, Camille Utterback has been installing her as-yet-untitled (suggestions?) interactive sculptural artwork for the lobby of the Showplace Theaters in The West End, St. Louis Park, MN. It’s all working!

Camille Utterback, untitled interactive artwork, The West End, St. Louis Park, MN

There are 6 tubes with LED lights hanging over the staircase in the lobby of the theater. The LEDs react to people touching the handrails along the balcony. Each touch of a hand rail creates an upward “blip” in the corresponding LED light, which is the color of the rail at that moment. The length of the blip is determined by the duration of touching the rail. If all 6 rails are touched simultaneously, the lights rain down blips.

Camille Utterback, untitled interactive sculpture, The West End.

The balcony railing still needs to be stained, so the touch sensitive sections will not be permanently installed till next week, but it’s all working and ready of for the opening of The West End, which will begin in stages after September 15.

See Alan H. Davidson’s excellent documentation on flickr and previous posts on Public Address.

The Bridge Homeless Assistance Center with public art by Gordon Huether receives an American Institute Of Architects (AIA) 2009 Housing Award.

The Bridge Homeless Assistance Center in Dallas, Texas was developed from a reclaimed industrial warehouse opened in May 2008.

It is a multi-purpose facility dedicated to serving homeless men, women and children, with a primary focus on the chronically homeless. The artist worked with the homeless to create seven art glass windows incorporating brightly colored mouth-blown glass, etched and silk-screened with text from writings of the shelter’s clients. The text is superimposed over the glass panels.

Dry run installing Camille Utterback's new project at West End. Photo: Alan H. Davidson.

On Monday, Camille used some “funnoodles” to mock up final location of her interactive lighting installation in the theater at the new West End development.

Funnoodles to mock up hanging locations for interactive LED lights. Photo: Alan H. Davidson

More pictures here.

Today they install the real thing.

Camille Utterback, West End project (studio). "Studio before we sent out the lights. The lights are 'naked' as all but one test acrylic tube had already been shipped."

Camille Utterback begins installation of her West End project today. I’m excited to go visit and see the installation. They plan to hang some styrofoam pool “funnoodles” as a mockup to lock in the column heights/locations.

Prior site visit photos.

Here’s a link to a set of photos from a site visit last week checking out the wood railing by Utterback’s collaborator, Brett, who did the engineering on the project.

"A good shot of one of the Railing Sensor housings in place."

"Our clear test cable guard (will be stainless steel)."

Schuykill Center for environmental education presents functional woodland shelters made from recycled and reused industrial materials as well as sustainable harvested bamboo. This is a really cool environmental exhibition for anyone interested in the environmental sustainable architecture or industrial design concepts. The projects presented were chosen from over 80 designs submitted by 65 teams from across the US and internationally. Check out the winning designs at http://www.schuykillcenter.org/gimmeshelter/

Nancy Ann Coyne, Speaking of Home. IDS-Macy’s skyway over Nicollet Mall, between 7th and 8th Streets in downtown Minneapolis, MN. Co-presented by Forecast Public Art, Family Housing Fund and the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota. http://www.speakingofhome.org/

“Designed by public art team Harries/Heder, the installation consists of 15 flower-like solar photovoltaic panels located on a pedestrian and bike path between the village of Mueller and Austin’s highway I-35.”

via Inhabitat

“It’s called the GreenPix Zero Energy Media Wall, and with 2,292 individual color LEDs, comparable to a 24,000 sq. ft. monitor screen, it’s said to be the largest color LED display in the world. The wall is solar-powered too — photovoltaics are integrated into the wall’s glass curtain, and it harvests power during the day, to illuminate the display at night.”

via Metaefficient

Solar Collector by Gorbet Design

“In a collaboration between the community and the sun, Solar Collector gathers human expression and solar energy during the day, then brings them together each night in a performance of flowing light patterns.”

Ken Gregory’s Sun Sucker: Solaris consumis

“Sun Suckers are machines. They are classified in the order Real Artificial Life. Sun Suckers have stout flat bodies. The skin is a large photovoltaic cell and usually shiny although in a few species they are dull and opaque. Sun Suckers have one large compound eye (photoresistor) situated on the top of the body. This large eye can read how bright the sun is during the day and detect when night falls. Beside the eye is a thick whisker. This sensor (thermistor) measures the ambient temperature in close proximity of the Sun Sucker.”

via Parks & Wildlife

Pascal Glissmann & Martina Hoefflin, Elf

“elfs are small, analog creatures reacting to light, calling the attention of the observer with their delicate sounds and movements.”

via

Bjoern Schuelke, solar-kinetic object

“The Pearl Avenue Branch Library in San Jose, Calif., features a public art display that combines photovoltaic cells and art glass in an architectural application. Artist Lynn Goodpasture collaborated with Peters Glass Studios in Portland, Ore., in the creation of Solar Illumination I: Evolution of Language, an artwork that incorporates four art glass windows in the building’s southwest corner that convert sunlight to 24-Vdc electricity.”

via Solar Glazing

There must be something in the water in Dallas. According to Artinfo, Dallas Cowboys co-owner Jerry Jones philosophized about football and contemporary art and the public:

“Cowboys Stadium isn’t just a place to go and see a game or a concert, it’s an experience you share with your family and your community. That will include things that a lot of people wouldn’t anticipate seeing at a stadium — like contemporary art. Football is full of the unexpected and the spontaneous — it can make two strangers into friends. Art has the power to do that too, to get people talking, and looking, and interacting.”

Doug Aitken’s star (2008), which was acquired for the stadium, will be installed in the elevator lobby.

“The program kicks off with 14 commissioned works, including contributions by heavyweights Franz Ackermann, Annette Lawrence, Lawrence Weiner, and Olafur Eliasson, as well as acquisitions of existing pieces by Doug Aitken, Wayne Gonzales, Jacqueline Humphries, and another work by Eliasson. Pieces will mainly be installed in high-traffic locations, such as the four principal entries and the walls above the main concourse concession areas, which measure 15 by 114 feet. Some will wrap around stadium walls.”

Meanwhile, over at the American Airlines Arena, there are eleven large, high resolution LED “Super Screens.”

“Eight of these screens, 4 on each side of the plaza, move on horizontal tracks to allow for a myriad of configurations and motion possibilities. These screens can also be combined in sets of four to create 31’x53’ super screens with HD resolution. High fidelity sound and a theatrical lighting system heighten the experience to an immersive level.”

Originally, the screens solicited digital art submissions and commissioned work by the likes of Jennifer Steinkamp (below),

although the Victory Park website currently states:

“Victory Park is NOT currently accepting submissions for its Victory Arts Program: Stylized live-action, stunning visual storytelling, cutting-edge motion graphics, experimental animation or very short films.”

Let’s hope that the V-I-C-T-O-R-Y for art at the Cowboys Stadium is not quite so short-lived.

In June, Americans for the Arts presented their annual review, The Public Art Network Year in Review 2009 (from Arts Watch). Janet Echelman and Mildred Howard were the curators. 304 projects were reviewed from 2008 with 40 winning finalists. It is wonderful that two projects from the Twin Cities Metropolitan area were among the top 40 public art projects. The St. Cloud Library Project entitled “Natural Rhythm”,

by Chicago artist Lucy Slivinski and Minneapolis artist Nancy Ann Coyne’s“Speaking of Home”. Forecast Public Art.org was the public art project consultant for the Library project and consultant/co-funder of the “Speaking of Home” project. For the serious public art patron a CD of the projects can be acquired from the Americans for the Arts bookstore.

via examiner.com

Recently I had the good fortune to see the Buckminster Fuller exhibit while visiting Chicago. He was one of the first interdisciplinary thinkers and an early advocate of alternative energy. This is an excellent exhibit for those who want to be inspired by a true visionary. He was an architect, engineer, environmental scientist, mathematician, philosopher and visual artist. One can explore his quest to discover what one person can do to serve the needs of his fellow human beings. Olafur Eliasson’s work is concurrently showing until September 13, 2009.The Buckminster Fuller exhibit is showing at the Contemporary Museum of Art in Chicago, extended until July 5, 2009.

Forecast collaborated with NEMAA, Vesper College, and The Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota to host the evening to celebrate and promote the newest issue of Public Art Review which focuses on the same theme.

As is always the case with good dialog many more questions were raised than answers given. Forecast collected written questions from the audience and encourages you to continue the discussion online. Feel free to add your thoughts to the questions posed below! Or just read them as food for thought.

Does the future of sustainable art making lie in the manipulation of living organisms as a medium – moving away from the static?

How can (public) art inspire “mainstream” America to act?- Brad Baso

What change needs to occur within (public) art as a practice in order to be even more sustainable? What is holding the field back?  – Brad Baso

Where can one learn more about reusing water on one’s own property? Do you know of any city funded programs to encourage property owners to set up these types of projects? (related to a discussion on watershed art projects).

What are the negative & positive effects of the current economic downturn on sustainable public art & artists?  – Laurie Phillips

Sustainability demands scientific, technical knowledge of creative professionals. Will “Sustainability” in art eventually lead us to merge the studio with the laboratory (or field studies) in a seamless synthesis? Where might this lead?

Nick differentiated between his world before and after being involved in a community. Could everyone comment on their experience working as part of a greater community?  – Susannah

Please speak a bit more to how initiatives, community collaborations, and community history can become a part of sustainability.

How can public art be utilized better, especially concerning business as usual? Do you think art can help to change people value systems and help to work for social change?

How do beauty and emotion (of the work and process) help to build community and a better world?

When you envision a project that cuts across disciplines and public entities, is it best to approach them separately or together?

What skills, experiences, and insights do aritsts contribute to the sustainability community of scientists, government business, etc? Why should they be at the table? – Brad Baso

Does public art create change within or in spite of the system?  – Brad Baso

What is being sustained in sustainability? – Jon Spayde

“Sustainability” – overused indeed, so what buzz word should we start using instead?

How do you break into public art “creating sense of place” when pigeon-holed by commercial sense of place?

How do you get started in public art if your background is in commercial art but your heart is public?

via Cleveland Public Library

“Increasingly, people working in diverse aspects of contemporary urban society, from developers to park wardens, are turning to the arts for new ideas, regeneration, problem solving and community bridge building. The employment of artists in these (traditionally non-cultural) fields, where there are other non-art issues and agendas at stake, is becoming the norm. This manifesto is a chance for you to address the uncertainties of commissioning art in areas of urban change, discuss crucial concerns, and devise tangible solutions, knowing they will be presented to key decision makers.”

The manifesto includes thoughtfully pragmatic advice for all parties in the process of commissioning, creating, producing, and presenting art in and for the public sphere and is divided into six sections:

• The Commissioning Process
• The Artist
• The Curator
• The Community
• The Art
• The Evaluation

The wiki also incluses a list of resources and links to other manifestos, such as Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ 1969 “Maintenance Art—Proposal for an Exhibition. [pdf]

The introduction to the project and manifesto is here. Add your experiences and opinions to the wiki here (registration required).

via Marking Place

Lead by artist Krista Kelly Walsh with start up support from Forecast Public Art, the Gratitude Guerillas have taken 762.2 steps, given away 900 balloons, and hosted 64 walks in four cities!

I was lucky enough to participate in one of these walks last summer. It was dusk and it had been raining all day with the clouds clearing just long enough to form a striking sunset to reflecting the slick sidewalks. I will admit public performance art is not always something I am comfortable with but after a few moments if felt more like meditative practice than an attention grabbing gesture. It was truly amazing how just the tiniest bit of consciousness of gratitude for the world around you grows into an overabundant rush of appreciation for all that we take for granted in our everyday lives.

If you are in the twin Cities metro area I encourage you to take the time to walk with Krista. This will be the first of two actions that are planned for 2009. In the spring , a “thank-you” Balloon Give-a-Way on Como Lake in St. Paul and A Sunset Walk on Raspberry Island

MAY 24TH 4-7PM COMO LAKE ST. PAUL, MN
(Rain date MAY 25TH 4-7PM)
see the web site for further information and weather updates:  http://www.gratitudeguerilla.webs.com/

Jackrabbit Homestead is a web-based multimedia presentation featuring a downloadable car audio tour exploring the cultural legacy of the Small Tract Act in Southern California’s Morongo Basin region near Joshua Tree National Park. Stories from this underrepresented regional history are told through the voices of local residents, historians, and area artists—many of whom reside in reclaimed historic cabins and use the structures as inspiration for their creative work.

To experience the project, please visit http://www.jackrabbithomestead.com.

Funding for this project is made possible, in part, by a grant from the California Council for the Humanities as part of the Council’s statewide California Stories Initiative. The Council is an independent non-profit organization and a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more information on the Council and the California Stories Initiative, visit http://www.californiastories.org.

FOUR LETTER WORD MACHINE – 2009 Scottsdale

Forecast ran across this project while researching for its upcoming issue of Public Art Review on innovative technologies in public art.

A detailed description of the project can be found at D.A. Therrien’s web site beautifullight.org and here is a brief overview.

“FOUR LETTER WORD MACHINE displays either 4 letter words in standard Roman alphabet or up to 4 billion+ word combinations as a graphic digital display device. It is essentially an entropy machine – it is designed to break, a product of unnecessary complexity.

The display itself is designed as a 30 meter high x 150 meter wide array of linear quartz lamps, 3,500,000 watts total power. The first full installation will be on a cliff face in the Northern Arizona desert (a 10% scale model is currently under construction for use in smaller venues.)

The human body and mind are integral to the control system, essentially a 64 channel mechanical relay control that is both state of the art and archaic in design. A computer reads from a “book” and passes instructions to 4 bodies (performers) in rotating cages (actually large drum type
switches), who in turn pass information to 32 bodies via an eye tracking system.

Also on the Beautiful Light website Therrien talks about the piece.

Installations in the BEAUTIFUL LIGHT series are derived from ideas that I have been fascinated with since childhood, most specifically, the phenomema of light and electricity and the role of light in our belief systems, language, biology, natural world and cosmology – light as illumination, energy, information – and as a metaphor for good and evil. It is also one of our earliest technologies – fire to drive out the night.

The term “Beautiful Light” is double edged, describing both the observable physical nature of pure light and representations in various belief systems and cultures – Egyptian, Greek, Judaism, and later, Christianity. In Egyptian mythology, the god Taht (Apollo in Greek) was represented as a “beautiful light” and this light represented knowledge itself. In the Bible, angels are described as beings of light – messengers of light.

In addition to my interest in light and electricity, I have a fascination with language and the codes that represent it, both analog and digital. The 4 LETTER WORD MACHINE, the first installation in the BEAUTIFUL LIGHT series, explores the purity of white light, the mystery of language, the precision of digital codes and the magic of 4 letters – A, C, G, T – representing the DNA code, and consequently, all known life.”

via beautifullight.org

On April 1, Mary Louise Schmacher wrote an article in the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel titled “Why Milwaukee is ready for Zweig’s public art.” She begins the article:

“Here’s hoping Milwaukee has finally found a public art project that it can embrace. Janet Zweig’s proposal for E. Wisconsin Ave., which goes before the Common Council’s Public Works Committee this morning at 9 a.m. is a quiet, poetic work that will delight and surprise pedestrians.

“Zweig defines the term ‘public’ in ‘public art’ in entirely new and truly meaningful ways. Instead of creating committees that get nominal community “input”, that have token artists offer opinions before commissioning static works of forgettable art, as has been done repeatedly here, Zweig’s art engages Milwaukee in a thoughtful and genuine way.”

Read the full article.

Later that same day, Schumacher blogged: “Janet Zweig’s public art project in trouble.” In detailing what happened at the meeting of the Public Works Committee of the Common Council, Schumacher quoted some of the responses at the meeting.

“Ald. Robert G. Donovan left the room, saying, ‘I refuse to have my name attached to something as ridiculous as that.’

“Aldermen Joe Dudzik and Willie C. Wade also objected to the ‘old school’ technology, signs similar to those used in train stations until a few decades ago, which would be used to make animations.”

Prototype of Zweig’s proposed project.

Dudzik and Wade said, according to Schumacher in a related article:

“‘We are taking about a design that holds us back or indicates that we are stuck in the past,’ said vice chairman Ald. Joe Dudzik, referring to the old-fashioned signs that Zweig uses to create short animations.

“‘I am just not feeling it,’ said Ald. Willie Wade. ‘But then I wouldn’t pay 50 cents for the Mona Lisa.’”

I’m not familiar with the situation on the ground, and it’s hard to imagine why a 3-year, $300,000 project appears to have caught the Council by suprise with only one speaker in support of the proposal. Nevertheless, I’m a fan of both Zweig’s work and the “old-fashioned” technology she proposes to use – wonderfully, I think.

When I first saw Zweig’s Impersonator – not in person, unfortunately – I was captivated. The flip technology is best known for its use in transportation hubs, such as train stations and airports, and it is this association that makes it like a sign post for the imagination. What if I was going to Lille today? Where exactly is Strasbourg? How long would it take to get out of town to Chicago?

Janet Zweig, Professor Obsessive and His Two Compulsions from Steve Dietz on Vimeo.

In Milwaukee, Zweig is proposing a series of animations using the flip signs, as in the example above. I think it’s interesting that the council members apparently complained about the low tech nature of this proposal. For me, it is evocative of the invention of cinema with devices such as the zoetrope and conjures an entire cinema paradiso of imaginative pleasure. When ZER01 presented Peter Hudson’s Homouroboros zoetrope at the 2nd 01SJ Biennial, no one complained about how low tech it was. It was a magical experience.

The geneaology of Zweig’s Milwaukee proposal is from Impersonator (2002), through Carrying On (2004), a 1200 foot frieze at the Prince Street station of the New York subway, which celebrates the significance and individuality of the citizens of New York. In Milwaukee, she proposes to marry the graphic style of Carrying On, with the technology of Impersonator in a kind of homespun, so to speak, cel animation, similar to this unrealized proposal for an airport baggage claim area. Of course, I’d much rather be reading sponsored advertising on a “high tech” screen while I’m waiting for my luggage to not appear after a long flight home from Lille or Strausbourg. . . .

By the way, Zweig’s Impersonator made the top 5 “high tech” public artworks on CNET along with some other amazing projects.

And the internationally renowned artist duo, Thomson + Craighead use the same vendor – one of the few, if not the only remaining manufacturer of this technology anywhere in the world – to create a highly-praised work, Beacon, which has been shown at London’s prestigious British Film Institute and FACT: the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology.

But apparently it’s too low tech for Milwaukee. Or not?

“On the rare occasions I venture into Roppongi it always confirms what I think about the place: it’s full of rich people shopping and ayashii foreigners with girl(s) in tow. It’s a place of cold, pristine department stores, contrasted with glaring, depressing ‘gentlemen’s clubs’. Somewhere in this mess you get the Blue Man Group, the Mori building, a large spider sculpture…and Super Deluxe.

“So, I was a little cynical about Roppongi Art Night. Would it just be a cheesy corporate occasion? Would it just be ignored by folks heading to night clubs? Indeed, the critics would be quick to point out that the art works haphazardly on display were meaningless, that more thought had gone into how best to achieve a light effect than in creating an interesting art work. The whole thing was simply a series of keitai snap-shot opportunities for youngsters on dates.

“Well, perhaps they would be right. But for me it did not detract from the enormous, positive energy I felt navigating the Mori complex and stumbling upon weird goodies. All the works were exciting, visually arresting (and yes, achieved for the most part by light effects). The overall idea seemed to be to make as strange a playground as possible and to put things in unlikely spots, to do things you didn’t think possible.”

William Andrews via Tokyo Art Beat

Fujiko Nakaya’s “Fog Garden #47662″ was just that: the Mori garden was shrouded in a beguiling mist. Photo: WA

There was a matsuri-like atmosphere, with a plethora of stalls and eateries. Photo: WA

More.

via Artsblog

I don’t entirely trust Anthony Gormley’s rhetoric, but I admire his handler’s scripting:

• “It’s about the democratization of art.”
• “In the end it doesn’t really matter who gets up on that thing.”
• “I’ve got an idea. You can make it real.”

Is this the end of participation? As in the logical end. The end where “it doesn’t really matter who gets up on that thing?”

Ok, ok. I’d love to strut and fret my hour upon the stage of the 4th plinth.

Other projects I might have liked to have participated in:

• Almost any Janet Cardiff project, but my first love was her Telephone Call at SFMOMA
• Carsten Holler’s Revolving Hotel Room at the Guggenheim
• rtMark’s hijacking of the Whitney Biennial was brilliant and formative
• Paul Sermon’s telematic projects: remarkably embodied for such “primitive” technology
• To have my picture snapped on Monica Studer & Christoph van den Berg’s Package Holiday

What about you?

“Flash @ Hebburn by Charles Quick launched March 7, 2009. While the title is not the catchiest in the world, the image did catch my eye, and the backstory is interesting.

During the course of his research, Quick found out that during the heyday of the city of Hebburn, if you looked across the Tyne river, where the site is located, it would almost look like fireworks there was so much activity from arc welding at the shipyards to the Monkton Coke Works, which looked like it was on fire at night.

Quick’s final design evolved to consist of twelve 8.5 metre high columns arranged in a 3 x 4 grid with a distance of 8 metres between each column. Photovoltaic panels on the top power 1 meter high blue and white LED tubes mounted on the columns. The LEDs flash responsively to people waking by during the day and with a single 15-minute programmed sequence at night, which is evocative of Hebburn’s historical industries. 8 different flash sequences were designed with local Hebburn groups and are visible from across the river as far as Newcastle, Gateshead and Wallsend.

I haven’t been able to find any good video of the project, but there are photographs, background information, and an interview with the artist here.

Links

Photo gallery including historic photos of Hebburn and interview with artist Charles Quick via southyneside.info
flickr photoset
Curly’s Corner Shop, the blog!

Mike and Doug Starn’s See It Split, See It Change opened with the NYC South Ferry in January. From the entrance, a 20-foot wide, floor-to-ceiling marble mosaic map of the island of Manhattan extends down the stairs to the platform, inspired by an 1886 map of the tip of Manhattan from the United States Census Bureau. Curved floor-to-ceiling glass walls laced with silhouettes based on photographs of nearby Battery Park trees line the concourse. The installation is made from 425 glass panels that measure 14″ by 28″ each and includes many additional components.

Additional links

Caroline Cole, “See it Split, See it Change, and See it All for the Price of a Subway Ticket,” Metropolismag.com
Melena Ryzik, “Making Artistic Connections at a Subway Station,” NYT
Oliver Schwaner-Albright, “The New South Ferry Terminal: See It Split, See It Change,” Coolhunting
Miranda Siegel, “A Forest in the Subway,” New York Magazine
Starn Studio
Visualingual

See also

Behind Your Eye: Doug and Mike Starn via absolutearts

Sasson Soffer, "East Gate/West Gate,", 1973

via Indystar.com

Take from the 40th floor of the Wells Fargo Center in Minneapolis, facing east.

In the 1980s, Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau had an idea: why not think about democratic discussion as a competition, an “agonistic” activity, a game? Society is recognized as impossible, as a space of endless contingencies. Establishing precise distinctions between difference and conflict, they articulated a democracy based not on hostilities where parties are enemies to each other, but on “agonism,” where parties are constructively adversarial. This theory accepts that democracy cannot be organized in a well-mannered way without room for confrontations and a multiplicity of voices.

It is an appealing vision: neither chaos nor hive mind but agonism.

In a fascinating essay, Public Art? Activating the Agoratic Condition, presented at the 48 Degrees Celsius Public.Art.Ecology festival in Delhi, Nancy Adajania, challenges

“Mouffe’s much-cited model of the public sphere, in which, as she says, “the aim of democratic institutions is not to establish a national consensus in the public sphere but to defuse the potential of hostility that exists in human societies by providing the possibilities for antagonism to be transformed into ‘agonism’.”

Adajania argues that

Mouffe’s theoretical sleight of hand is remarkably unhelpful when it comes to addressing the crises, dilemmas and the often schismatic turbulences that attend transitional societies, such as India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Turkey, Nigeria, Indonesia, Thailand, and South Korea, to name only a few. In these situations, the public domain is a scene for the battle among forces whose agenda commits them to mutual exclusion and sometimes even mutual annihilation. There is often radical disagreement on how to interpret the national past and the national future, on how to distribute power and authority, and what the nature of the State should be. In some of these situations, also, positions are taken on the basis of tactical opportunity and short-term gain rather than on that of long-held principle or reasoned conviction; where vote-bank politics, illiteracy, famine and cultivated regional asymmetries prevail, the ground of politics resembles a quicksand more than it does the floor of a debating room. As applied to such complex predicaments, Mouffe’s theories are about as useful as a Lego set to the building of metropolis.

Watching Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Congress take remarkably antagonistic positions in the midst of a generational economic crisis, despite President Obama’s arguably agonistic vision of bipartisanship, one can’t help but think that agonism may not be Panglossian only in the “transitional societies” that Adajania cites.

Ravi Agarwal, Down and Out: Labouring Under Global Capitalism

In place of agonism, Adajania proposes the model of the agora:

the marketplace that is also a meeting place, a shifting weave of textures of thought, opinion, ideas and convictions; a non-hierarchical space of exchange where thought is multiplied and extended by distribution rather than imparted from a fixed source of authority. The agora of the classical Greek city-state was also, etymologically, the ‘open space’, where merchants, sailors, soldiers, artists, writers, priests, oracles, and madmen congregated and could voice themselves.

In “Public Art? Activating the Agoratic Condition,” Adajania sketches a nuanced idea of public art within an articulated notion of the public sphere and grounds her arguments in the specific artistic practice of two Indian artists, Navjot and Ravi Agarwal. Whether you buy Adajania’s agora or prefer to play agonisticly, Public Art? Activating the Agoratic Condition is a worthwhile read about experimenting wth art in public places.

Sometimes there may be only art, sometimes there may be only advertising, and sometimes one of each.

This game is inspired by the growing merger of aesthetics and commerce. As I realize that I am a targeted demographic for commercials using re-edited Roxy Music songs and Target ads that remind me of last years gallery shows, I begin to feel slightly uncomfortable. Is this is a mutually beneficial relationship for all involved? Is it bad to be inundated with higher level design and conceptual imagery on our billboards and buses even if its for corporate gain? What impact can public art projects have in taking over public spaces if their audiences can’t tell the difference between art and advertising? I can’t help but feel co-opted but maybe its just aesthetic evolution?

“Answers” will be listed in the comment section of this post next week.

Arlene Goldfarb eloquently expands on this idea in this article. Great weekend reading!!!

I’ve got a good start on my list dream projects, guest artists, and ideas! Now if I could only find the funding…

Acoording to the project website,

“The Tampa Public Mood Ring (TPMR) is a combined internet and spatial artwork installation which allows an online news community to display the emootional condition of public news stories as color hue. It is based on the wearable “mood ring” which chemically changes color according to body temperature. The online artwork responds to participants news concerns and accordingliy recallibrates the color intense LED lighting in a physical location. For the Lights on Tampa program, the ring draws on the ocal and national sports community proplled by NFL fanaticism leading to the mega event, Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa.”

Feeling great — or angry — about something you just read or heard about? Register your feelings at the Tampa Mood Ring project and watch as the giant football sculpture changes colors based on the collective mood of Tampa Bay.
via TampaBay.com

The Tampa Public Mood Ring is realized through Lights On Tampa and includes partnerships among the City of Tampa and Gerdau Ameristeel. Gerdau Ameristeel, an international company headquartered in Tampa is fabricating the temporary ring structure, designed by Pappenheimer, out of Orange Bowl steel. TampaBay.com provides the news context, while ESPN will periodically inlcude the work in its audience polls and newscasts.

Public Mood at the 2006 01SJ Biennial

In 2006, Pappenheimer presented a small-scale, indoor version of this work, Public Mood: Light Temperature, as part of the C4F3 Interactive Cafe at the 1st 01SJ Biennial and ISEA2006 Symposium.

D-Tower

In 2005, Lars Spuybroek of Nox with Q.S. Serafign completed a not dissimilar project, D-Tower, which illuminates a specially constructed tower in Doetinchem, Netherlands, according to the results of an ongoing poll related to emotions of hate, love, happinesss and fear. See:

• http://www.arcspace.com/architects/nox/d_tower/index.htm
• http://www.d-toren.nl/site/

Ai Weiwei, Web of Light, Liverpool Biennial, 2008

The International Curator will work with the Director to design and deliver the International exhibition, directly and through our partners. This involves the research, commissioning, production and delivery of the non-venue based commissions. The curator must have the vision to commission works from the best international artists, build real collaboration with our various partners, and manage project teams to deliver our mission.

Closing date for applications
http://www.biennial.com/content/Footer/Opportunities.aspx

Hi Steve,

First dispatch – setting up my piece outside the St Pete Times Forum. Serendipitously, the circus is performing during Lights On Tampa, right inside the building adjacent to the parking lot on which my piece is projected, a huge drive-in movie vibe.

Here are some set-up shots, and first tests of the projector. The opening is on Saturday.

marina

Slurb (2009)
18 minute loop, animation and sound
Concept/ direction/animation: Marina Zurkow
Music by Lem Jay Ignacio
Additional animation: Jen Kelly

Photo: Marina Zurkow

The animated, carnivalesque tailgate party of Slurb loops and stutters, like a vinyl record stuck in a groove. Slurb – a word that collapses “slum” and “suburb” – sounds like “slurp,” “slump,” “slumber;” it encapsulates the dreamy, melancholic ode to the rise of slime, a watery future of toxic seas. In Slurb, there is a sense that everyone is waiting – but a cataclysm already occurred. People have been forced to move onto the water, where the jellyfish now have dominion. There is a history of satirical illustration, epitomized by J.J.Grandville in the 19th century, in which animal-headed humans are deployed in the telling of troubling social narratives. Slurb is that kind of story. Facts of the ocean’s radical changes in acidity and oxygen levels form the backbone of the animation; overfishing, dumping, and climate change’s heating of ocean currents have already triggered a reversion toward a primordial sea in parts of the ocean larger than the state of Texas. Slurb’s surface is inspired by fictions, like J.G. Ballard’s prescient 1962 novel Drowned World, in which inhabitants of a flooded world feel the tug of the sun, and dream of a return to their amniotic past.

Chris Doyle, Ecstatic City

Day time shots for “Ecstatic City,” Chris’s project – this, the permanent part in the Tampa Convention Center.

marina

CONCEPT

“I employ animation in much of what I make. In fact, my interest in animation goes beyond technique, extending to the idea of animus, an energizing spirit, that extends to places as well as things. Ecstatic City (Tampa) is a project about animating a place, in this case, a district of the city that has as its hub, the Tampa Convention Center. For Ecstatic City, I am deploying seventy rotating mirror balls throughout the area. Brackets supporting the balls, as well as integrated spotlights are attached to palm trees and light poles surrounding the Convention Center and the Riverwalk. Beginning at dusk, pedestrian areas of the city will be bathed in a gentle wash of spinning light. By taking a conventional, off-the-shelf object typically used in the disco and re-contextualizing it in the city, I am attempting to amplify the sense of atmosphere, the mood of expectation and possibility that is so important to the life of a place and the experience of its people.”
– Chris Doyle

As part of the 4th Radiator festival, the Radiator Symposium, “Exploits in the Wireless City”, aims to instigate discussion, debate and new interdisciplinary research networks based on the understanding that the development of digital networks are transforming our notion of (public and private) space.

Bringing together artists with architects, urban theorists, computer scientists, sociologists and fellow citizens, the symposium will explore, question and play with this new urban topography where the re-conceptualizing of the public sphere in the regeneration developments of the East Midlands mirror those around Europe.

Radiator will host the symposium alongside a series of presentations, exhibitions and discussions where the audience will have the opportunity to explore, remodel and re-present space in its traditional and emergent forms.

In its critique, the Radiator symposium will question the opportunities, future strategies and implementations that artists and communities face when learning to act within these new hybrid city spaces.

Through its artistic interventions, Radiator will put theory into practice with projects and events that both position and challenge the dominant forces at work in the urban environment and explore the new territories opened up by hybrid space. The “Going Underground” project, investigates this infrastructure by placing 5 artists into the urban confines of British cities: Glenn Davidson (Artstation) (UK), Folke Köbberling&Martin Kaltwasser (DE), Ian Nesbitt (UK), Christian Nold (UK), N55 (DK). These artists will act as sleeper agents, observing and gathering information from a range of different sources including; architects, planning departments, city council offices, surveillance, monitoring centre’s and the Police to create new work in response to their research.

There are still places left to book for the Radiator Symposium. For
Bookings, ring ++44(0)115 840 9272 or email info@radiator-festival.org
More info on http://www.radiator-festival.org/radiator-symposium-2009

• Final speaker list online now. Keynote speeches by Saskia Sassen (USA),Richard Barbrook (England), Duncan Campbell (England), JODI (NL). Complete speaker list on http://www.radiator-festival.org/participants
• Symposium Panel details can be downloaded here: http://www.radiator-festival.org/files/Radiator_SymposiumPanels.pdf

The Bubble Project is one of my favorite ways to interact with the corporate monologue. This project makes great use of web 2.0 by providing a down loadable bubble template and allowing participants to upload their own creations! A variation on this theme is to use store bought sticker bubbles used for photos and alter the magazines in your dentist office, etc.

The Pixalator is another great advertising altering street art invention.

By constructing a simple filter, digital advertising becomes a beautiful abstraction! It would take a little work to do this in public but I am collecting toilet paper rolls as we speak to do the at home version thanks to our friends at Craftster.org

For more inspiration on DIY art projects check out the The Guerilla Art Kit by Keri Smith. It includes great projects like moss graffiti!

Hope this is enough to get you inspired to get going on all your art resolutions! Feel free to comment with your own project images or tell us about your plans to contribute to the greater good by subtly altering some public spaces!

Happy New Year!

Marina Zurkow, animation still of “Slurb”, the installation proposed for outdoor projection at the St. Pete Times Forum for Lights On Tampa. Image courtesy of the artist.

This symposium will explore various issues including:

• How does the work of each artist function in the public realm?
• What do these artworks, and programs such as Lights On Tampa, say about today’s cultural environment both nationally and in a mid-size postindustrial city such as Tampa?

2009 Lights on Tampa Artists are:

• Casa Magica
• Chris Doyle
• Marina Zurkow
• Will Pappenheimer & Chipp Jansen
• Carlton Ward Jr.

This article originally appeared in the catalog for the Greater Minneapolis 08 show at the Soap Factory this fall. Curated by Patty Healy McMeans and Christopher Dela Pole, the exhibit showcased the work of 22 Minneapolis-based artists. The six artists discussed here each practice a form of public and/or performative artmaking.

Public/Private

Theorist Sven Lutticken writes that the role of the contemporary artist is one of “permanent public self-performance.” This intimidating endgame isn’t reserved only for artists, though; Lutticken further argues that all of us, in one role or another, so long as it’s a role played in our service economy, exist under pressures of a “merciless economic drive to perform,” to bring our personalities into play in our every interaction, to “make it personal.” No matter what our role, no matter what we’re paid.

This fundamental invasion of privacy begs the question: who are our private selves? Where are they allowed to exist and develop, if in so many moments we are expected – and expect ourselves – to “act”? The self can get lost in its own publicity.

When we think about issues that crystallize contemporary dynamics between public and private life, we might first think of, say, surveillance of our private records and activities in semi-public realms like the Internet, your credit card company’s databases, or the halls of government. Perhaps most often, we think of the distinction between public and private in terms of the visible and the invisible. We think of the public self as the self seen by others, consciously shown to others, and of the private self as the one we might be able to hide – the self with bad habits, the self of the inner monologue, or the self who, rather than performing, can just “be.” The word “public” also calls to mind networks and structures, institutions, macro-level politics and “the big picture.” These concepts usually have their pairs in the private sphere – thus, we have public parks and private yards; institutional buildings and homes; religion and religious belief; parades and diaries. But people conduct their private lives in public parks – and at all times, everywhere. In fact, you can’t actually stop enacting you private self, anywhere, ever. Assembly and solitude each contain the one and the multitude. The conventional public/private dichotomy thus breaks down.

Many of the artists in Pay Attention: GM08 make work from a standpoint that acknowledges we cannot avoid this constant self-performance; at the same time, their work encourages us to consider that we are potential performers of ideas and selves we’ve yet to enact or imagine. These artists concern themselves with an examination of behavior via performance and the creation of performative circumstances. Many perform their own work, and some include accomplices; others do not perform their work but, instead, lay the foundation for work that’s only completed through the viewer’s witting or unwitting participation. Still others capture and comment on the kinds of performances enacted daily by all of us, producing not new behaviors but reflections on our current ones.

Performance and performative artworks often enact incursions of “private” behavior in the “public” realm. Seeing someone risk their reputation in public by doing something considered “private” can have profound effects on the viewer; we share a basic need to witness another’s life (so that we may affirm our own), to identify with another. But beyond addressing the requirements of catharsis and identification, contemporary performative artworks often showcase how things “public” and “private” are not locked in opposition to each other but, rather, exist on a continuum. A dynamic opposition can exist between public and private (ever stand next to your window, naked?), but the actions we assign to each of these categories can also be made to trade places, and to great effect.

The artists in GM08 engage us in the performative process, making public – and obvious – the quotidian habits, situations, and constructs of the life lived along this public/private continuum that often go unnoticed. Providing the context for thought, action, and interaction, these works often invite our co-authorship: we are instrumental in making this art be art at all.

Marcus Young

Marcus Young’s trio of public actions for this show, entitled collectively “This is Not Here,” takes place in real time and in public spaces that are not within the Soap Factory itself. These performances are made for those who happen to be there, witnessing as would people who hear trees falling in the woods; they are complicit in that experience, and so it happens.

Theater for the Ear, 2008

In one solo work, Young smiles continuously while walking very slowly in a public space – in this case, an art institution’s exhibition halls. This deceptively simple act tweaks our presumptions about what kinds of behavior are “appropriate” in public: slow walking can interrupt the flow of foot-traffic (bad), draw attention to you (also bad), and may indicate that you’re not feeling well (a plea for help?). But pairing it with smiling turns the walk into what appears to be a vivid expression of the “private” self – it reads as a spiritual exercise. We soon realize we want the smile to be an expression of an inner state, making this long walk (long in time, if not in space) meaningful, if still utterly inscrutable. Again, our desire makes us complicit in the performance. The artist may experience this as an act of endurance, but we want this to be a gesture of human freedom, a willful inscription of the private on public territory.

In another work, which he refers to as “Theater for the Ear,” Young and his cohorts approach unwitting strangers and whisper in their ears. The text whispered addresses the listener directly; the impropriety of being whispered to by a stranger in a public place only heightens the excitement inspired by this direct address. Whatever else is said, the form of address alone stuns the listener with its refusal to abide by social convention.

These acts transform their institutional sites from spaces of benign reception and contemplation into dynamic, interactive zones where questions can be leveled directly at the audience. Bodily participation is required by these pieces, as opposed to mere scopophilia; we comprehend that meanings are made between things, between ourselves and the work, rather than by the things themselves. This necessarily makes us aware of our co-production of meaning.

For Young’s piece “Don’t you feel it too?”, a dance happening recurrently in public spaces for GM08 and premiering during the Republican National Convention, the call for performers says, “the only qualification is a willingness to say hello to your personal awkwardness and accompanying happiness,” as well as promising the kind of joy that can only accompany “nonstandardized behavior.” The expectations of Young’s work may make us self-conscious to begin with, but also self-reflexive, more aware of our own thresholds, expectations – and options. His work produces a context for witnessing and acknowledgement that extends beyond the usual expectations of the spectacle – our internal, private monologues about the work and how we’re allowing ourselves to interact with it become part of the work itself.

Julia Kouneski

Julia Kouneski’s work also encourages unusual and delicate interactions between humans, often with a mechanized intermediary. Having worked with the breath using motion sensors in the past, she now engages collective breath with her two-person balloons. Altered to have two valves each, these balloons can and must be shared with others in order to inflate properly. She herself has asked strangers to share them with her, documenting the results, and throughout GM08, the balloons are being given away to visitors at the gallery entrance. These strange objects present the recipient with multiple questions and options: First, what is this? And what will I do with it? Am I brave enough to try it? Will I use it here, or somewhere else? With a friend? A stranger? Once you decide to try it, more options emerge for its specific use: to share one breath and allow it to deflate, a momentary communal lung? Or to share it to the point of inflating it completely and tying it off, saving the breath to fashion it semi-permanently? Either outcome is possible, but it’s the experience of vulnerability and shared effort that is most affecting. In making what could be called an “emergent object,” Kouneski has created an object that, as we fondle it, makes us nervous with possibility.

Shared Breath Situations, 2008

In performative works, there is often a call to join in – an expectation that you, too, will perform beyond your normal range. Kouneski’s requests for your participation put your private self on the spot in public – how will you react? Will you do what’s requested of you? And then what? Although overt performative expectations of the viewer – to participate in a work and make an artist’s plastic initiatives come alive – can be exhausting, and can create determined resistance in an audience who would rather keep its reactions to itself, full participants may be rewarded for their responsiveness and instrumentality; being asked, essentially, to come out and play, disarming as that is, is nothing if not exciting, and it’s not every day you get to blow a balloon with a stranger.

Tony Sunder

Tony Sunder for a time conducted free tours at the Walker Art Center for anyone who took him up on his offer. He had never been and was not at the time employed by or affiliated with the Walker. This performed standing-in for the institutional voice put his followers’ trust of the institution on the line, highlighting both their need to put their knowledge in the hands of an external voice and their willingness to play with other perspectives by allowing a man off the street to conduct them through the museum. For this show, he has hand-crafted gallery benches and placed them himself around the Soap Factory in relation to other artworks. Their placement in front of certain works (and not others) indicates what we are meant to contemplate most deeply. Will you take the familiar hint, sit down and spend time with what the bench angles your attention toward? Or will you notice the power play involved, and choose not to sit at all? By interacting bodily, even performatively, with these benches, you become accountable for your private experience of accepting – or not – the pre-conceived valuations their physical placement connotes.

Free Tours (Walker Art Center), 2007

The full intentions of Sunder’s works – performances and objects alike – fly beneath the radar, but sly as they are, they create an acute awareness in the observer that you must, in relation to these works (and, by extension, every work of art you see), choose either to refuse its invitation, or to submit to it. As interactive stratagems, they make you aware of the power inherent in where you choose to direct your attention.

Jonathan Gomez Whitney

Jonathan Gomez Whitney’s sleight-of-hand installations, in which he both performs and invites others to perform, are rarely what they first seem. Take, for instance, his weekly poker game set up in a Soap Factory storage room for the duration of the show. Word-of-mouth is the only publicity for the game and its enlistment of players, and this alone generates public interest. Poker playing is a normative behavior, but playing it in a semi-secretly released room in the public space of an art gallery takes the game that’s normally played in a home, bar, or casino, and makes of its behaviors something else. Are we no longer just playing poker? Are we now “performing” poker? The set-up allows for several observers, as well, so now there’s an audience to watch, to see the players’ hands. Perhaps nothing better defines the tension between public and private than the concept of an “open secret,” and an open secret is just what Gomez Whitney has created, functionally and experientially. It’s an engagement of the public, but one that’s stealthy, and privately accomplished.

hand-built poker table, 2008

Gomez Whitney further feigns a full invitation by setting up an altered, amplified organ in the space of the gallery. It looks inviting, but if you played it (and you’re not allowed to), the sounds that come out would not be standard ones. Jonathan engages in physics experiments on musical instruments that result more in poetic meaning than harmonic sound. He performs a song with the organ on opening night about broken-up friendships, and what remains afterward is, yes, the organ itself – but also, drawn out as long as is technically possible, its post-performance hum. The ongoing buzz of the instrument is a reminder of the object’s energetic performance potential, but more importantly of the energetic hum stemming from all the potential performances awaiting our enactment.

Ali Momeni

Ali Momeni produces much of his work in the public sphere, creating machines and interactive systems that allow for evanescent, experiential art making. His work often animates public space through large-scale projections that embrace elements of chance. He currently heads a team of artists called Minneapolis Art on Wheels, a mobile art project wherein bikes equipped with a high-powered projector, laptop, sound system, and power source can project art wherever the bikes can be ridden. The projected content, often created live and in real time by artist-built computer programs, is frequently co-created by the random audience accumulating around the bikes.

Wall Whisperer, 2008

Momeni’s interest in “emergent behaviors” – behaviors that arise from the entirety of a system that could not arise from its individual parts – leads him to experiment with system-building on both material and immaterial, even social levels. He has created projections in which tiny movements made by his fingers create and control the movements of large-scale visual phenomena; he also built a sculptural installation where the experimental movements made by a person encased in a giant joystick ultimately, through computer synthesis of the joystick’s movements, created club-worthy dance music. These works of translation from intuitive, self-directed physical movement to technically advanced aesthetic output are at the same time translating the performance of private-scale, individual acts into socially-participatory phenomena, enlarging the dynamic range of individual actions in the public sphere. In all of these projects, by setting up a system and seeing what it does – and what people do in response to it – Momeni makes space for new possibilities for social and aesthetic action, and for performances that surprise artist and audience alike.

Chris Baker

Much of Chris Baker’s work holds a mirror to our most mundane performative practices, and in it we contemplate their pathos. Most of his works for this show focus on the confessional, exhibitionistic habits of online bloggers and vloggers. In the piece entitled “It’s been awhile since I last wrote…,” a single LED traces the title sentence, in apparently handwritten script, across a photoluminescent wall, then fades – a process that repeats, again and again. For anyone writing this sentence online (and many have), there’s a technological pathetic fallacy at work; it requires imagining that there is a “community” beyond and because of the blog. Simply because we’ve trained a camera on ourselves or opened a public diary, we begin to imagine ourselves the subject of careful surveillance. The script’s fade to invisibility reinforces how little impact this level of private visibility makes on any larger public fact. But its endless return signals the inevitability of our basic need to be heard. Even those who’ve only written such a line in a private journal feel a twinge of recognition; as Baker points out, the sentence calls to mind both the need to be attended to by others and the estrangement (from the moment and from others) that’s inherent to writing and to communication in general.

Hello, World!, 2008

In his work “Hello World! or: How I Learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise,” one confronts a massive projection of thousands of youtube videos of people vlogging, alone, staring into the camera and externalizing their inner monologue. Its title refers to the utopic fantasy inherent to technological advancement (“Hello World!” is the name of the first program computer science students learn to build) as well as to the utopic desire inherent in posting one’s “self” on youtube. Baker aimed to choose first-timers – those with low production values who volunteer a lot of personal information (some of which can be made out in the 30-track audio for the piece). They seem lost, looking down from the camera every two or three seconds to see themselves on their own computer screen in a circular, self-referential gaze – and it takes them awhile to figure out how to present themselves; we literally watch them get their “act” together. These individuals seem both hyper-aware of themselves and totally un-self-conscious, fidgeting while releasing stream-of-consciousness narration. Taking it all in, we move from empathy to estrangement, because finally, there is an irresolvable vastness of content to this much-multiplied self-presentation. For vloggers, there is no interaction with an actual listener, only with an imagined receiver, and the seemingly infinite number of potential human connections to which the piece refers remain, at best, potential.

At first glance, Baker’s works seem to lampoon the narcissism and futility of contemporary technological gestures toward interconnection, deflating their apparent arrogance and naivete. But, as the owner of the hand that writes the fading, recurrent sentence, he too, he seems to admit, performs his “self” – as have any of us who’ve ever recorded our thoughts in first-person.

Much as the many and multiplying international art fairs serve to illustrate broader cultural trends at any given moment, the Olympic Games, occurring as they do every four years and produced as a televised spectacle, can act as a barometer of current cultural practices and norms. This year, there were the usual unscripted interactions between athletes and coaches, reporters grilling athletes post-competition, and pre-recorded bio videos between events to tell athletes’ personal stories. But the moment that seemed most indicative of our current collapse of private and public life was the moment we got to listen in on the US Womens’ gymnastics team huddling to talk strategy. They were surrounded not by reporters but by multiple cameras, all of which lingered on them, without voice-over or analysis from on-air commentators, for the length of their conversation. The gymnasts seemed not annoyed by but actually prepared for this, fully accepting of and ready for it. It was as if the cameras weren’t even there. Or, perhaps more startling, it was as if they were there.

Such performance of the self is nothing new in the era of “reality” television, youtube, Facebook, and all the other players in the genre of technological self-promotion. The task of the artist, in a world where such media incursions are the norm, may be to continue to sort out our options for participation and action beyond the spectacular.

Even in moments of public self-performance, there is a fundamental exchange between the performed self and the private self who monitors what gets said and what doesn’t, what’s shown and what isn’t. The performative artworks in GM08 challenge the private self; even when they request a more public response, they offer an opportunity for development – even for engaged argument – to the private self, the self whose existence no market can dictate but who all sorts of markets would like to exploit. Art that enacts unusual behaviors, asks unusual behaviors of us, or that recontextualizes our seemingly mundane behaviors makes room for us to consider that we may, in fact, want something more from ourselves than we’re presently accomplishing. And sometimes, the immediate rewards of opening ourselves to experience these behavioral works can open the door to that self-revision.

Sarah Petersen is a multidisciplinary artist living in Minneapolis

Suffargium. Still from the video by Jill Sebastian

Where did the presidential election and performance art cross paths? No, not LA or New York…try MILWAUKEE!!

For the first time in US history, voters were treated to performance art at polling places. Voters at 11 sites in Milwaukee experienced dance, video, recorded sound, sculpture, and more, all with the purpose of celebrating and encouraging discussion about citizenship. A non-profit, nonpartisan group called My Vote Performs (MVP) produced the project.

For Suffragium (above), Jill Sebastian used documentation from the Milwaukee Public Library, the site of her project, and images of sculptures that are in and in front of the voting area at the library to create an animated video about Wisconsin’s voting history. The video was presented on two TV monitors inside the library for voters to watch while waiting in line, and there was also a woman in period costume outside the library singing suffragist songs.

As part of his project, Amalgam (a portion of which is illustrated below), at Craig Montessori School, Steve Wetzel distributed a form to 4th-grade students requesting that they sketch their ideal voting booth. The sketches were incorporated into a two-dimensional amalgam, made by Wetzel, that was on display in the school lobby.

Co-producers Pegi Taylor and John Loscuito needed to get approval at multiple stages of the project from the state and local elections divisions, as well as from all the site managers. The delicate balance was making sure the art was nonpartisan and would not interfere with people voting, yet offer artists opportunities to do their best work.

MVP was a success. Hundreds of people were exposed to performance art. Voting site officials were cooperative. No one complained that the art was partisan. A complete list of participating performers and projects, along with key media coverage, can be viewed at
http://www.myvoteperforms.com/

MVP’s key sponsor, the Wisconsin Arts Board, gave funding hoping the project could serve as a model for other cities. If you are interested in learning more, My Vote Performs will present a documentary video at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, 273 E. Erie Street in Milwaukee, Nov. 25 at 7:00 p.m. Or feel free to contact co-producer Pegi Taylor at pegitay@sbcglobal.net

Watch video.

It’s a little hard to tell, but it looks like Jim Campbell’s “light bulb grid” was the version shown in New York, but we also commissioned a new version for the recent 01SJ Biennial, 1st and San Fernando.

More pix of the amazing Moveable Type by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin here.

More pix of The Fountain by David Small and Ben Tre here.

Also in the top 10 is Nuage Vert by HeHe (Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen), which won the 01SJ Green Prix for Environmental Art.

via weplaytech

Community members are needed for the Station Art Committee. Please read the Station Art Committee Charter (pdf) prior to applying. Applications must be submitted via email no later than November 14th, 2008. If you are having any problems submitting your application or have questions, please contact Jessica Hill at jessica.hill@metc.state.mn.us or (651) 602-1840.

Station Art Committees

• West Bank
• East Bank
• Stadium Village
• 29th Avenue
• Westgate/Raymond
• Fairview
• Snelling
• Lexington
• Dale
• Rice
• Capitol East/10th
• 4th and Cedar
• Union Depot

• Station Art Committe Charter (pdf)
• Station Art Committee Application Form (pdf)

via MinnPost

For the most part I stand by these beliefs, although a new thought process is beginning to take place in all of this. What about experimental public art? Art that is often being figured out as the the artists goes along (much like me with this blog). Art that sometimes is created as a testing of an artistic hypothesis on the part of the artist.

I do believe that the artist has every right to conduct these types of experiments but I sense some tension when the public becomes the petri dish. One can choose to partake in a concert of experimental music or improvised dance (which if not done well can border on the tenuous line of self indulgence on the part of the musician or dancer). But innocent bystanders in the public realm may not always have that choice. What if they are not in the mood to be accosted by a public performance piece in the name of art? Or try to negotiate the space around the Tilted Arch ?

I fully embrace artistic experimentation and love love love unanticipated artistic encounters for the unsuspecting public. The wackier the better as far as I am concerned and with the advent of new technologies the possibilities are endless. I believe these two methods of working in public can co-exist but I wonder if we should (and if so how?) apply a sort of artistic social code to artists working in public in order to address the difference of art for audience and art for the artists.

Perhaps I should hedge my bet on the notion that all artists drawn to work in public posses some kind of innate desire to share beauty and thought provoking experiences with the world.

Thoughts?

On October 29, 2008, the 79th anniversary of Black Tuesday, the stock market crash that caused the Great Depression in 1929, artists Ligorano/Reese will meltdown the “Economy.”

In a new, time-based event, called Main Street Meltdown the artists will install the word “Economy,” carved in ice, in Foley Square, using the New York Supreme Court as a back drop.

The event begins on Wednesday, October 29th at 9 AM and will last 24 hours.

Northern Lights co-presented ligorano/reese’s earlier frozen Cassandra warning, The State of Things, which spelled out the word Democracy, during the Republican National Convention as part of the UnConvention.

Interview with bystander at The State of Things from LigoranoReese on Vimeo.

“Animating the built environment through conversation”

is the great tagline for the project Memory Cloud by Minimaforms, which was just presented at Trafalgar Square in London.

According to the website

“Memory Cloud is based on smoke signals – one of the oldest forms of visual communication, for three nights the public will be invited to participate by sending text messages that will be grafted onto plumes of smoke. Fusing ancient and contemporary forms of communication, Memory Cloud creates a dynamic hybrid space that will project personal statements as part of an evolving text, animating the built environment through conversation.”

via Public Art Goes Up In Smoke

In 1999, Germaine Koh presented Prayers, an “ntervention with computer, electronic circuitry and fog machine,” at the Ottawa Art Gallery.

“Throughout the day, a computer interface captures all the keystrokes typed on another computer within the same building. In real time, it translates this raw data to Morse code and broadcasts into the surrounding atmosphere as Morse-encoded smoke signals (longer and shorter puffs of smoke from a standard fog machine) through a vent or other opening in the building. More and less active at various times of the day and its output more and less visible under varying conditions, the apparatus is a kind of exhaust system for the machine of daily industry. At the same time, it relates today’s electronic communications to previous revolutions in technology and communications: telegraph, binary languages, steam power, smoke signals. Everyday hopes and fleeting desires, channelled through the implements of daily work, are briefly given form as they are dispersed into the world at large, on the wing of a prayer.”

Also this past week, Ali Momeni and Robin Mandel presented Smoke and Hot Air at the Almost Cinema Festival in Vooruit, Gent.

“Smoke and hot air animates my response to the relentless threats against Iran by a myriad of more fortunate countries in recent years. Sentences that include ‘attack Iran’ are scavanged from Google News and spoken using a text-to-speech synthesizer. The voice is then picked up by a microphone, analyzed, and translated into rhythmically corresponding smoke rings from a quartet of smoke ring makers.”
Ali Momeni

video here