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other people's work
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other people's work
Mimi Smith
I had the incredible honor of being a studio assistant for Mimi Smith, one of the artists in P.S. 1’s WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution. P.S. 1 asked _gaia, the studio where I am currently doing the Wonder Women residency, to provide support while various curators and the public visited the artists’ studios, which have been in SoHo since the 1970’s. I was so lucky to be paired with Mimi — she was extremely gracious about having people in her home and studio, and her work is inspiring, complex and beautiful.
Given that much of my recent work is computer dependent, I really enjoyed these paintings from the 80’s. She was working doing computer graphics for error messages (it was all just pixels then) and used them in her art. Imagine if we could see the poetry in the blue screen of death!
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music, events, other people's work
my bro’s band @ pianos
My brother Daniel Wright’s band, The World Collective, is playing their first NY show! It’s this Saturday. I’m looking forward to finally being able to share his music with my peeps. Plus the set is 7-10p, so no rush-in-rush-out or hear-some-other-band-you-aren’t-interested-in. I love these guys & you will too. What’s not to love? Just look at them.
For those who haven’t heard it, check out the songs and videos here.
essential specs:
THE WORLD COLLECTIVE
SATURDAY // FEB 2 // 7-10p
Pianos (upstairs)
158 Ludlow // New York, NY
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EYEspeak, events, other people's work
Jackie Goss Screening
I organized a screening with my friend Benj Gerdes (for EYEspeak & 16 Beaver Group). It’ll be a great & inspiration evening. I hope to see some New York peeps there!
Jackie Goss
Animated Documentaries: “Stranger Comes To Town” & “How to Fix the World”
Thursday, December 13 // 7:30 PM @ 16 Beaver
Screening and Discussion // free and open to all16 Beaver Street, 4th/5th fl.
New York, NY 10004
212.480.2099for directions/subscriptions/info visit:
http://www.16beavergroup.orgTRAINS: 4,5 Bowling Green / R,W Whitehall / 2,3 Wall Street /J,M Broad Street / 1,9 South Ferry
Stranger Comes To Town
28 minutes 2007They say there’s only two stories in the world: man goes on a journey, and stranger comes to town.
Six people are interviewed anonymously about their experiences coming into the US. Each then designs a video game avatar who tells their story by proxy. Goss focuses on the questions and examinations used to establish identity at the border, and how these processes in turn affect one’s own sense of self and view of the world.
“Stranger Comes to Town” re-works animations from the Department of Homeland Security –combining them with stories from the border, impressions from the on-line game World of Warcraft, and journeys via Google Earth to tell a tale of bodies moving through lands familiar and strange.
How To Fix The World
28 minutes 2004Adapted from psychologist A.R. Luria’s research in Uzbekistan in the 1930s, “How to Fix the World” brings to life Luria’s conversations with Central Asian farmers learning how to read and write under the unfamiliar principles of Socialism.
Colorful digital animations play against a backdrop of images shot in Andijian (where Soviet-era President Karimov’s supression of Islam lead to violence in May 2005.) At once conflicting, humorous, and revelatory, these conversations between Luria and his “subjects” illustrate an attempt by one culture to transform another in the name of education and modernization.
The subtleties of this transformation, as well as the roots of current cultural conflicts, are found in words exchanged and documented seventy-five years ago.
Jacqueline Goss makes videos and web-based works exploring the rules, histories, and tools of language and mapmaking systems. Her projects take as their source specific acts of writing and cartography that bring about cultural change, technological innovation, or create social narrative ruptures.
For the last few years she has used 2D digital animation techniques to work within the genre of the animated documentary.
A native of New Hampshire, she attended Brown University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She teaches in the Film and Electronic Arts Department at Bard College in the Hudson Valley of New York.
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my work, EYEspeak, events, other people's work, ima mfa
[ ESC ] mixer recap
The event on Thursday was incredible. We estimate we had about 100 people come through to see socially engaged media projects by 25 graduate student artists from 8 programs. I showed my Comment Williamsburg website. All three of my IMA professors from this semester came, which I greatly appreciate, as well as some dear friends from outside the program. The room was filled with the many attendees from other schools & programs and of course wonderful IMA friends and classmates. More info on the IMA website, which I finally finished!
I was truly delighted that all our hard work paid off, and I’m deeply in gratitude to the wonderful people I organized the event with: Alana Kakoyiannis, Ariana Souzis, Francisca Caporali, James Wagstaff, Laura Chipley, Pilar Ortiz & Suyin Looui.
Suyin, Me & Ariana (pic by Fivel Rothberg) -
other people's work
public-ization of private space
I found some really interesting work by activist designers, artists & planners while researching for a presentation for Communication & the City.
We talk a lot about the privatization of public space, and these artists seem to work against that process in an innovative way: making work (which sometimes consists of just being) in formerly public space that is now privately owned. They’re both from California (I’m just sayin’).
Rebar: An SF-based collective. My two favorite projects are Park(ing) Day, where they create a temporary public part in a parking space, & COMMONspace, where they take stock of privately owned “public” spaces in downtown SF & test their limits with paraformances. Their site has GREAT documentation.
Heavy Trash: An LA-based collective. They made two projects, one in 1997 & one in 2005 and I can’t seem to find anything else. The projects are great: Viewing Platforms (where you can climb up and look into gated communities) & Stair to a Park (where they created a ladder in a fenced off city park). You’ve got to see them for yourself.
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other people's work, just thinking
dispatch from condoburg
A project by my friends and fellow IMAers Laura Chipley, Francisca Caporali, and Pilar Ortiz got me thinking about the changing meanings of public and private spaces in an urban setting. These psychogeographically inspired artists are planning to take up residence in a temporary dwelling in public space, constructed entirely from the wealth of the street economy, as part of their Urban Homesteading Project. The project will transgress traditional boundaries of private and public life.
These boundaries are, of course, crossed on a daily basis by the homeless, who are forced to live out their private lives in public spaces. Privacy can be a privilege afforded by wealth — or sometimes forfeited.
Living in Williamsburg during the rapid construction of large condo buildings, I’ve noticed that the unifying design element of all the new construction is floor to ceiling windows.
I like to walk on the McCarren Park track at night after sitting at my desk all day, to clear my mind and loosen up my body. Every time I wind around the track, I look up at the bank of tall condo buildings along the track. People inside are going about their business: walking around, fixing dinner, drinking, watching TV.
This is strange reversal. People are paying to have no privacy, choosing to allow others to watch their private lives from public space. I think there may be more behind this new architectural trend then simply the desires of the so-called noveau riche to display their means.
Two things strike me. Many people feel isolated in the city when they are not integrated into a community. Being seen validates our existence. This is why so many people (including myself) blog: if I didn’t care if anyone knew my thoughts, I wouldn’t bother to write them down and publish them. A fishbowl apartment could be a subconsciously comforting way to be seen.
The other thing is the contrast with the old model of wealthy living. The wealthy have traditionally had the option to shut the public out of their lives; to retreat to their homes and close the gate, literally or metaphorically.
Perhaps these new condo buyers are rejecting this old model. Instead, they will include the world, at least visually, into their home. I don’t see this as necessarily radical; just different and maybe more transparent. We don’t have to wonder what a wealthy home looks like. We can just take a look.
The income gap has never been so visible as when someone without the option for a private life picks through the trash in front of the living room of someone who paid for their private life to be public.
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other people's work, just thinking
army men project
10.03.07 | Permalink | 2 Comments
We had a guest artist today in Communication & The City with Prof. Mary Flanagan. Chris Vines is the head of Creative Arts Team, a group out of CUNY that practices theater for empowerment using techniques from Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. I found his work interesting, given my theater background, and I like the way he was able to use performance without it being about acting, in a way that could be useful for empowerment and interpersonal growth.The most exciting thing to me was a project he brought with him from Mouths Wide Open (www.mouthswideopen.org, website seems to be down right now), an NY-based activist group. Apparently since 2005 this group has been planting toy soldiers across the country. When you pick up the soldier, a sticker on the bottom reads, “Bring Me Home.”
I thought this was a great example of new activism. Inserting these army men into everyday life is a poignant way to keep the war present for everyone. I think a huge problem for American activists is that activism is somehow separated from everything else (and many socially-conscious people feel alienated from even the term “activist,” much in the way some women distance themselves form the word “feminist”).
I did wish that the group’s website was written even smaller compared with the “Bring Me Home” text, as it somehow seemed to take on a different agenda with the website. In some way, it would be better to leave the website off entirely, as if the soldier speaks for himself (though apparently the site has a photo gallery and tells people how they can get involved with distributing the army men).
The project very closely relates to the documentary I am making on the Crosses of Lafayette, a memorial in Lafayette, CA, that includes a cross to represent every American soldier who dies in Iraq. Behind the heart of both projects is a question of representation. Who can memorialize soldiers? Who should advocate on their behalf? Who gets to, literally, speak for them?
Both projects are important because they remind us that there are soldiers who are in harm’s ways and keep the war in the public eye. These projects are effective at these tasks, but there is another question for us young activists/ “folk who want to effect change without all the baggage of the Activist label.”
Most people do not want the war to continue and yet the war goes on. As media activists (or whatever we are) our primary tools have been educating, presenting criticism, stimulating awareness and debate, essentially changing people’s minds.
The question we were tossing around after class is how to affect real change when public opinion does not seem to have a big influence.
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other people's work, just thinking
tea for life
This is seriously yesterday’s news (April 2007’s news to be exact). I just read in Ode Magazine (a magazine geared towards new age retirees that I happen to like) about a public installation in London last spring. I found it delightful and thought-provoking, and thought I’d share in case anyone else missed it, too. Channel 4, to kick of it’s “Human Footprint” program, laid out exactly 74,802 cups of tea on Trafalgar Square, the average lifetime tea consumption for a British citizen. [photo by from the hip]Human Footprint is clearly about environmental impact, a favorite topic for me (and you and everyone we know). I don’t think the installation is highly effective at bringing home our personal environmental footprints, unless there’s some campaign against tea drinking that I don’t know about (hey, I did miss this installation entirely). They might have achieved a stronger environmental message if the cups were disposable, though then the installation itself would have been an environmental burden.
I don’t think it needs that message. To me, there is something so beautiful, even in the documentation, of seeing the sea of teacups that will make up a single person’s life. It’s striking, and bittersweet: that all the cups you will drink for your whole life fit in one public square; the shortness of life; and yet the multitude of moments.
Imagine the same installation for the number of cups of coffee an average American drinks in their lifetime… somehow, not the same effect. It conjures up stress and trying to stay awake through a day at the office (though maybe tea is like that for the Brits?). Something about tea is relaxing, ritualistic, nurturing, reflective and an opportunity to connect with yourself or another person.
There is something so simultaneously devastating and gorgeous in measuring a human life in these terms, and I think it’s why the one dead English poet’s work that ever stuck in my mind is TS Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”:For I have know them all already, know them all:–
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.[pigeon photo by Phil Hawker]
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events, other people's work
conflux / sarah cullen
Conflux included another project that, like Theft and Rescue, exceeded my expectations. Sarah Cullen (of Toronto?) brought a unique mapping project, and probably the project that most resonated with my current conception of psychogeography.The project is called The City as Written by the City. Sarah created wooden boxes with handles that a person could carry with them as they walked or biked through the neighborhood. Inside the box is a pendulum with a pencil on it. If you place a piece of paper at the bottom of the box, the pencil draws a “map” of your journey, varying with where and how you walk. It is a map created by a person’s interaction with their environment (and probably, to some extent, the slight variations in the boxes).
I liked the idea immediately, but the results blew my mind. Check out these two maps by my friends Omar and Julie, who took the same walk and ended up with these two totally different but equally beautiful results:
(Omar’s map)
(Julie’s Map)
The artists (in collaboration with The City):
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