Artist Organized Art Non-Profit Works With Artists & Institutions To Support Artist Organized Media, Events & Cultural Education By Strategic, Collaborative & Financial Means

The Arabbers – Gaia In Sandtown
Four Baltimore Generations, Oct 13, 2012

Gaia, 2012, Arabber Full Wall, Baltimore: The Arabbers on Fremont and Laurens in Sandtown
A portrait of four generations, from Manboy the great grandfather to Fruit’s son
Arabbers sell fruit and vegetables from horse drawn carriages city wide
The portraits are set with art from produce boxes

by Gaia

photo: M Holden Warren
Janessa Wells

Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2012 08:45:47 -0400
Subject: Gaia Arabber Wall
From: gaia art
To: gaia art

Just finished a very rewarding wall, here is a little background. Attached is a package of the finished documentation and process shots. http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaiastreetart/8023887450/in/photostream

“The Arabbers are a dying Baltimore tradition of horse-drawn fruit vendors that have long been a staple of this remarkable city. I was attracted to this particular stable in the Sandtown neighborhood preparing for a documentary. These men and women define hustle, trotting along both desolate and vibrant landscapes selling their goods and making ends meet. This mural depicts four generations starting with the great grandfather Manboy in the middle and to Fruit’s son on the top right. The arabber portraits are mixed with the logos on the containers in which their produce comes: a global economy meets a fading, tough tradition.”

Just finished a new wall in philadelphia will send shots soon.

Please credit M Holden Warren http://www.mholdenwarren.com/ and Janessa Wells for the photography.

very best
much love
G

Gaia, Arabbers, Horse-Drawn Fruit Vendors, Arabber Wall – Project Detail

Gaia, Junior, Arabber Wall – Detail

Gaia, Frog and Manboy, Arabber Wall – Detail

Gaia, Arabbers, Horse-Drawn Fruit Vendors, Arabber Wall – Project Detail

Gaia, Arabbers, Horse-Drawn Fruit Vendors, Arabber Wall – Project Detail

Gaia, Arabbers, Horse-Drawn Fruit Vendors, Arabber Wall – Project Detail

Gaia, Arabbers, Horse-Drawn Fruit Vendors, Arabber Wall – Project Detail

Gaia, Arabbers, Horse-Drawn Fruit Vendors, Arabber Wall – Project Detail

Gaia On Horse, Fruit and His Son, Right, Arabber Wall – Detail

Sandtown-Winchester is a neighborhood in the West District of Baltimore, Maryland. Known locally as “Sandtown”, the community’s name was derived from the trails of sand that dropped from wagons leaving town after filling up at the local sand and gravel quarry back in the days of horse-drawn wagons. It is located North of West Lafayette Street, West of North Fremont Avenue, South of West North Avenue, and East of North Monroe Street, covering an area of 72 square blocks, patrolled by the Baltimore Police Department’s Western District. Noteable Residents: Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, Thurgood Marshall, Little Melvin

Gaia, a Baltimore-based street artist, whose name stands for Earth Goddess, is known for using animal imagery to convey nature’s voice in urban landscapes, often evoking a sense of mythical feedback as an omen from global warming. Other subjects include portraits of urban developers Nelson Rockefeller, Robert Moses, Henry Flagler, James Rouse, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. Gaia recently curated the multi-site mural project Open Walls Baltimore (OWB) which was scheduled to include fellow artists Maya Hayuk, Swoon, Chris Stain, MOMO, Freddy Sam, Jaz, Jetsonorama, Overunder, Vhils, Nanook, Mata Ruda, Specter, Interesni Kaski, Ever, Doodles, John Ahearn and Sten & Lex. “The carrier pigeon perched within a hand is an image that I have revisited many times in the past year. Much like the hybridized creatures I have produced in the past, this gesture displays a moment of domination and submission but also of steward and nature. Pigeons are beautiful creatures and one of the few that can tolerate the city. This print is a celebration of a dying urban sport and of an unsung animal.” – Gaia

http://posterchildprints.com/Carrier-Pigeon/
Purchase Gaia’s limited edition print “Carrier Pigeon.”
Size 22 x 28 inches, Edition Limited Edition of 135, Materials: Three Color Hand Pulled Silk Screen on Coventry Rag, 100% Cotton Archival Paper

http://www.artbma.org/press/documents/Nov_Dec.pdf
Gaia was recently commissioned by the Baltimore Museum Of Art

Open Walls Baltimore is an unparalleled street art project managed by and located in the Station North Arts & Entertainment District and curated by Gaia. The finest and most widely recognized street artists from around the world mounted an outdoor exhibition of extraordinary murals that enliven public spaces, stimulates community revitalization and national dialogue, and attracts visitors and investors to Station North with the installation of over twenty murals.

Map Of Mural Locations
Artists include: Gaia (Baltimore) – 1 W North Ave, Momo (New Orleans) – CIty Arts, 440 E Oliver St, Doodles (Port Townsend, WA) – 1539 N Calvert, Maya Hayuk (New York City) – 1715 N Charles Street, Ever (Buenos Aires, Argentina) – 10 E North Avenue, Overunder (Reno, NV) – 329 E Lafayette Street, John Ahearn (New York City) – Installation at Station North Arts Cafe, Specter (Montreal) – Joe Squared (North Avenue and Howard), Mata Ruda (Baltimore) – 1700 Latrobe, Josh Van Horn (Baltimore) – Guilford and North Avenue, Jessie Unterhalter & Katey Truhn (Baltimore) – St Paul St at Lafayette Ave, Freddy Sam (Capetown, South Africa) – Lafayette Ave at Charles St, Intersni Kazki (Kiev, Ukraine) – Complete (Maryland Ave at North Ave), Gary Kachadourian (Baltimore) – Barclay St at Lanvale Street, St Paul and North Avenue, Chris Stain (New York City) – 1701 Latrobe, Jetsonorama (New York City) – Barclay and Bowen Alley, Swoon (New York City) – Pittman Place, Sten and Lex (Italy) – Barclay and McAllister, Nanook (Baltimore) – Barclay and Lanvale, Jaz (Buenos Aires, Argentina) – Barclay St at E Oliver St, Vhils (Portugal) – 1539 N Calvert St

Céleste Boursier‐Mougenot
at UMCA Oct 4 – Dec 2 2012
To Suspend The Question of Meaning
Christoph Cox in Conversation
with Céleste Boursier‐Mougenot
The University Museum of Contemporary Art
(UMCA) at UMass Amherst

Artist Organized Art

The University Museum of Contemporary Art (UMCA) at UMass Amherst is pleased to present a site-specific sound and video installation by Céleste Boursier‐Mougenot, the internationally acclaimed French artist, from October 4 – December 2, 2012. In conjunction with this exhibition, a catalogue containing an interview conducted between the artist and Christoph Cox, Professor of Philosophy at Hampshire College and a critic and theorist of art and music, will soon be published. The interview is reproduced here with the permission of the UMCA, Céleste Boursier‐Mougenot, and Christoph Cox. https://fac.umass.edu/UMCA/Online/ Acknowledgements: This exhibition has been made possible through generous support from Etant donnés: The French-American Fund for Contemporary Art. Additional support and coordination comes from the Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

The Entire Interview: (Read It Here)

EXCERPTS:

Christoph Cox: You began your career as a musician and composer. What prompted your move into sound installation and the context of the visual arts?

Céleste Boursier‐Mougenot: I’ve always been immersed in the visual arts and aesthetic considerations because my family is very connected to the arts. My great grandfather was a passionate landscape photographer who worked with daguerreotypes. His son, my grandfather, was a painter and illustrator who made some animated films. My father made stained glass for churches, made sculpture and mosaics for public art projects, and later became a sort of garden historian. My parents considered all forms of art and literature to be really important. Their artist and writer friends often visited and stayed with us.

The concept of space (broadly considered) was also a recurrent interest for all of us. One of my brothers, who was interested in mapping, studied engineering and topographical geography. Another brother is a landscape architect. My mother worked as a sociological urbanist. So it’s also quite natural that I’ve considered the notion of space and integrated it into my musical practice.

At home, we listened to all kinds of music (classical, ethnic, rock and pop, experimental, free jazz etc.) and went to musical performances, art exhibitions, and movies every week. I grew up without a TV. When I was about twenty years old and got my own apartment, I bought my first TV. Instead of working on my music projects, I spent so much time watching it at night that I finally threw it away. I kept in the back of my mind that some day I would do a project that would reverse the passivity of TV watching and pull viewers somewhere else, into a space where they have to identify what they are watching. (This eventually resulted in zombiedrones. Many of my works have roots in questions, thoughts, or ideas I had a long time ago. It took me more than 15 years to get the means to start my index piano project.)

CC: When you transpose or transduce one form or media into another, the two forms have to be linked closely enough that the transposition doesn’t seem arbitrary; but they also have to be distant enough so that something surprising or enigmatic is revealed in the process. How do you balance between these two constraints?

CBM: Yes, you’re right, constraint is the master word of my practice. Usually I restrict myself to one material and one process to extract the sound or musical field of the work. The architecture of the presentation space is also an effective constraint by which works can be transformed. The Amherst exhibition is the first to present a set of my works in the same space.

CC: Many of your works are generative structures that establish a situation and then leave it to operate on its own. This makes me think of experimental composers such as Steve Reich (e.g., Come Out) and Alvin Lucier (e.g., I Am Sitting in a Room) who, in the 1960s and 70s, developed an interest in generative music. Are those figures influences for you?

CBM: I’ve been influenced by so many artists’ works that to speak about these ones instead of others seems to me unfair. I think that the domain of influences can remain private. Research into causality or paternity doesn’t really interest me. (I have my own father and am myself the father of four kids!) The feedback effect in my practice in a way tries to disrupt this line of thinking. It seems to me that concrete stories or memories about the works are often more interesting than theoretical references. It’s also that I’ve been disappointed by certain artists who constantly refer to established works, but whose own work is not as interesting as their talk about it. If an art critic or historian sees a correlation, that does not disturb me. But I like it when people can havean aesthetic experience without reference to art history.

CC: The idea that there is music waiting to be revealed everywhere seems to me to connect with a recent artistic and curatorial interest in animism and the life of things.

CBM: I often say that I’m a techno-animist, and that my work is dedicated to the “living.”

Céleste Boursier‐Mougenot, index, v.4, 2005/2009,
Pleyel piano P190 with PianoDisc system,
computer and software,
74.5 x 59.5 x 40.5

Céleste Boursier‐Mougenot is an internationally acclaimed French artist whose innovative work merges the realms of the musical and the visual. A native of Nice, Céleste Boursier‐Mougenot was born in 1961 and currently lives and works in Sète, France. His work has been exhibited in venues such as the capcMusée, Bordeaux, France (1997); the ITT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo (2000); the Herzliya Museum of Art, Israel (2001); Pinacoteca Sao Paulo, Brazil (2009); Musée Chagall, Nice (2009); and the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2010);and in the group exhibition Notations: The Cage Effect Today at Hunter College Art Gallery in NYC (2012); Boursier‐Mougenot presented solo exhibitions at the Barbican Center in London, the Queensland Art Gallery in Australia, PS1 (MoMA), NYC, and FRAC Champagne- Ardenne in Reims, France. He recently took part in the 3rd Moscow Biennaleand and was a nominee of the Marcel Duchamp Prize (2010). His work is in major public and private collections around the world, including the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris; MONA (Hobart, Tasmania); the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia; and La Maison Rouge, Paris.

Christoph Cox is a critic, theorist, and curator of art and music. He is Professor of Philosophy at Hampshire College where he teaches and writes on contemporary European philosophy and contemporary art and music. He is also on the faculty at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College and is currently at work on a philosophical and historical book about sound art and experimental music.

List of Works Discussed: (Full Interview)

untitled (1997 – ): In an inflatable pool half-filled with water float several dozen pieces of everyday crockery: different sorts of bowls, plates, china, and stemmed glasses. An immersed water pump produces a gentle current that causes the objects to bump into one another, producing sound on contact. To favor the resonance of the objects, the temperature of the water is maintained at around 30 degrees Celsius.

from here to ear (1999 – ): The exhibition space is turned into an aviary filled with live finches. Several electric guitars plugged into amplifiers and placed horizontally on chrome stands serve as perches for the birds, whose movements excite the guitar strings. Viewers are invited to walk through the space amidst the birds, guitars, and guitar cases filled with birdseed and water.

videodrones (2000-2002): Several video cameras placed outside the exhibition space monitor passing vehicles and pedestrians, producing a real-time stream of images projected inside the gallery. The video output of these cameras is fed into an audio amplifier to produce a continuous hum that is modulated by the luminosity of the camera images and the speed and size of the objects that cross their frames.

harmonichaos (2000-2006): Various small diatonic harmonicas are inserted into the nozzles of thirteen vacuum cleaners, which produce sound via suction. Each vacuum cleaner is fitted with a microphone, a guitar tuner, and an on-off switch governed by the tuner. The multiple sound sources confuse the tuners, which turn the vacuum cleaners on and off in unpredictable ways.

flamByframe (2006): This video loop presents a blowtorch flame altered by the camera filming it. To construct the piece, the video image of the flame was converted into an audio signal that was then sent through a subwoofer that excited the air and eventually blew out the flame. The silent video presents the slowed movement of the flame during the minute before it is extinguished.

index and indexes (2006 – ): A piano is played by a software system that, in real time, translates text (or other information) into a musical score. In earlier iterations of the project, the text was supplied by computer keyboards in the vicinity: the typing of museum staff, patrons at an internet café, etc. For the exhibition at UMCA, the piano score will be a translation of stock market data from business news and financial information websites.

recycle (2006): Cameras focused on a tree outside the exhibition space detect the subtle movements of leaves that rustle in the wind. A modulator registers this movement and uses it to direct the action of nine air fans affixed to a wall inside the gallery. A video image of the exterior foliage is visible on a small surveillance monitor placed near the fans.

scanner (2006): Directed by air flowing from a fan placed on the floor, a helium balloon drifts around a gallery space encircled with loudspeakers. Attached to the balloon is a wireless microphone that generates feedback when it approaches one of the speakers. This feedback is transformed in real time by a sound processor that eliminates its stridency and translates it into a form of aleatoric music.

virus (2006): This video loop consists of a continuously morphing image produced by a video feedback system: a video camera placed facing a monitor that reproduces the images filmed by the camera. The largely white image is projected onto a white wall and adjusted to the limit of visibility.

zombiedrones (2008): A plasma screen is placed in front of a leather sofa, encouraging audience members to sit down, watch TV, and change the channels as they like. But this TV encrypts the images, editing them so that only the moving elements of each frame appear on screen, while the non-moving elements disappear. The image is thus emptied of its message, leaving only ghostly figures. The humming soundtrack is the result of a translation of the images into sound.

fisheyedrones (2011): Hundreds of goldfish are placed in a tank in the gallery space. Their movements are filmed and projected onto a screen; and these same movements are registered by a computer program that translates them into sound.

JULY In The City Of Seoul
A Piece of Lived History and
the Korean Contemporary Art Scene
in Seoul in JULY 2012

by Mina Cheon

When my father Hoseon Cheon was the Cultural Attaché of the South Korean Embassy in New York in the late 70s and early 80s, he was a pioneering culturalist to promote South Korean artists who had just arrived to the landscape of the New York art scene. I remember a lot of parties and a lot of artwork hung on the walls of our Bronx apartment by these Korean artists who are now the prominent leaders of contemporary Korean art. When sharing a bit of my lived history with African-American artist Joyce Scott, she tells me that I have stripes on my shoulder that I should share proudly. This forum is one where I am rethinking back momentarily about my childhood, and embracing how I’ve witnessed a piece of lived history in New York that formed the Korean art scene there that may have jump-started a piece of global art history that includes Korean artists.

I say this, since returning to Korea in July 2012, as I would every summer, I notice a splurged of Korean-American exhibitions all around Seoul. The stage was set with Doho Suh’s mammoth exhibition “Home Within Home” at Leeum Samsung Museum of Art (March 22 – June 3) followed by a series of exhibition by Won Sook Kim, Tchah Sup Kim, Myong Hi Kim, and Il Lee, at the spaces of Gallery Hyundai. It is hard to miss the growing population of Korean-American artists in the contemporary art scene not only in Seoul, but how they stage a global art scene in the world. Certainly the rise of Asia, Chinese contemporary art, and the history Japanese experimental artists in the Western art world sets a strong precedence of Asian artists being active in the art world, yet Korean artists offer adistinctive perspective of neither being Chinese nor Japanese yet influenced by these cultures. Korea’s uniqueness is in the in-between spaces of these other countries, its own split between North and South, and the constantly challenged relation to the West. The history and geo-politics shapes the ambiguity and anguish, lush and popularity of Korean postwar contemporary life, culture and art. Certainly Kangnam Style, danced by Ellen DeGeneres and Britney Spears with K-pop singer Psy wasn’t long in coming.

I left the United States in June with a stark image of what today’s Korean-American identity looks like. I had just attended the sixth annual Korean-American Film Festival in New York (KAFFNY) at the Anthology Film Archives (June 5-10). Invited by Susie Lim, co-director of the film fest, as well as the daughter of Korean artist Choong-Sup Lim who is having his retrospective at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea (December 2012 – February 2013), our interest in the theme of Korean-American global awareness marks a generational milestone, for our parents hung out and did the art talk decades ago, and now we watch films together and roam around the NY art scene, and talk about issues of diaspora and national identity. We can say that we both identify with the dark comedies that surround our lives as being Korean-Americans, situated within the impossibilities and entanglement of opposing Eastern and Western cultures.

Accompanied by my children Gerson and Sasha,the next generation dual-citizen, bi-racial, Korean-Americans, I got to show them intercultural complications through the various experimental and cinematic narratives of Korean-American films for the very first time.The two films “Magic and Loss” by Lim Kah Wai and Kiki Sugino, and “Faces of Seoul” by Gina Kim, Jae-Ho Change, and Tara Autovino clearly marks the queerness of our nation, somewhere between lost and found, original and reproduction, and between genders and nations. I’m beginning to believe that today’s media culture is one not about the best original, rather about the better reproduction; these were great examples about that momentum, and certainly Kangnam Style done in Thailand is funnier than the original.

Then, comes JULY. I’m teaching a course called “Art in Seoul: Research and Publishing for Artists and Culturalists” at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea and joined by nine students from Ewha, Maryland Institute College of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, and Tunghai University of Taiwan. The course was offered through the global affairs office’s international school and through the painting major of the fine art department, where I am an alumni. As a research-based artist practicum course for national and international students of Ewha, the ten of us traversed the Seoul art scene and documented our responses on a blog. Mid-way through the course, a student who was the assistant, Sujung Chang, titles JULY as the on-line PDF magazine that would collect their writings from the blog more formalized, and JULY named as a spoof on the infamous OCTOBER art criticism journal. Obviously, the challenge of English being most students’ second language and for some, the first contact to the art scene, the writings came in everyday as short thought pieces and journal entries that later accumulated into more formal short essays. This was a huge feat for those non-English speaking students and the course had its many Konglish-Chinglishmoments. But, the students tried to make sense of the art scene in Seoul during July, and they bravely produced this on-line publication JULY for Artist Organized Art.

Jennifer Byun, Sujung Chang, Yeeun Chung, Julia (Ju Young) Han, Chen-Chih Huang, Iuan-Ping Jau, Joowon Jeon, Yeojin Kim, and Hana Lee individually gravitated towards writing about one exhibition over another or focused on one artist versus another, and highlighted their own values as artists and non-artists, and included their cultural critique as a way to further their insight about the contemporary art scene of Seoul that reflects the staging of Seoul to the world.

The major works we see in this month and that the students write about range from blockbuster international shows such as the first Asian exhibition “Double” by Felix Gonzalez-Torres at Plateau (June 21 – September 28) and the Nam June Paik’s 80th Anniversary exhibition “Nam June Paik Spectrum” at the Seoul Olympic Museum of Art (July 6 – September 16) to a more local and intimate Korean shows such as “Hidden Track” curated by Sung Won Kim at the Seoul Museum of Art and interactive art installation group show “Doing” at the Kumho Art Museum. As overarching themes that surrounded July’s art in Seoul, there seemed to be a great interest in the possibility of interactivity in art, curators working as the new artists of our time, and democratization of thought processes in art and culture. Certainly, the larger framing was that Seoul is at its height for being contemporaneous and leading in the global art scene, and that the general public likes art. Many people are attending exhibitions in Seoul.

Here is JULY 2012. PDF Magazine: DOWNLOAD

Art in Seoul Blog: http://artinseoul.wordpress.com/

Created by the students of Art in Seoul, with Professor Mina Cheon and assistant Sujung Chang.
Ewha Woman’s University, Seoul, Korea
Global Affairs and Painting, Fine Art
Published by the AOA Press, Artist Organized Art

Art in Seoul (http://artinseoul.wordpress.com/): Research and Publishing for Artists and Culturalists is a research-based artist practicum course for national and international students of Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul, Korea, offered through the departments of Fine Art and Global Affairs Office at Ewha. Led by professor Mina Cheon, students join her by traversing the Seoul art scene and documenting their sight responses through cross-genre writing on the Internet, publishing something along the lines of art journalism, criticism, and blog entry. Students from Ewha, Maryland Institute College of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, and Tunghai University of Taiwan look eagerly at art presentations in Seoul, questioning the criteria and institution of art, and instigating how local art sites relate to the world and the global art scene. We, the cyber-feminist punk group of Art in Seoul with Mina Cheon are: Jennifer Byun, Sujung Chang, Julia Han, Vera Huang, Kelly Jau, Joowon Jun, Yae Eun Jung, Yozeene Kim, and Hana Lee. The writings here are at times a hybrid between Korean, English, and Chinese. We emphasize the spirit of experimentation in thought processes and documentation in all its possible forms, prior to the rigidity of proper writing. These informal blog entries however will culminate in a more formalized PDF magazine format at the end of July 2012, near the end of the Art in Seoul course.

Ewha Womans University (Korean: 이화여자대학교, Hanja: 梨花女子大學校, history) is a private women’s university in central Seoul, South Korea and is one of its largest institutions of higher learning. It is currently the world’s largest female educational institute and among the best-known top universities in South Korea. The Division of International Studies (DIS) was first established in March 2001 as an undergraduate program where English is the language of instruction. Over 170,000 women have graduated.

“Gangnam Style” aka Kangnam Style (Korean: 강남스타일, IPA: [kaŋnam sɯtʰail]) is a single by the South Korean pop artist PSY. The song was released on July 15, 2012. “Gangnam Style” is a Korean neologism that refers to a lifestyle associated with the Gangnam district of Seoul. PSY is quoted saying “People who are actually from Gangnam never proclaim that they are—it’s only the posers and wannabes that put on these airs and say that they are “Gangnam Style”—so this song is actually poking fun at those kinds of people who are trying so hard to be something that they’re not” The song’s refrain “오빤 강남 스타일 (Oppan Gangnam style)” has been translated as “Big brother is Gangnam style”, “Oppa”, a Korean expression used by females to refer to an older male friend or older brother. The “Gangnam Style” dance is the horse trot, which involves pretending to ride a horse, alternately holding the reins and spinning a lasso, and moving into a legs-shuffling side gallop.

Mina Cheon (PhD, MFA) (http://minacheon.com) is a Korean new media artist, scholar, and educator who divides her time between Seoul, Korea, Baltimore, and New York. Cheon received her PhD in Philosophy of Media and Communications from the European Graduate School, European University for Interdisciplinary Studies, Switzerland, under the guidance of critical theorist Avital Ronell in 2008, and published her book  Shamanism + Cyberspace (Atropos Press, NY and Dresden) in 2009. As an artist, Cheon has exhibited internationally what she calls her “Polipop” (Political Pop Art), work that includes digital paintings, installation, performance, video, and interactive media. Cheon’s art addresses the relationship between media and political conflicts within Asia and Asia’s relationship with the Western world. Her projects have been shown in solo exhibitions at the Lance Fung Gallery, New York (2002), Insa Art Space, Art Council, Seoul, S. Korea (2005), and C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore (2008), and featured in 2012 exhibitions including solo exhibition at The Sungkok Art Museum in Seoul and solo exhibit at Maryland Art Place in Baltimore, Maryland. Her artworks are in the permanent collections and/or archives of the Sungkok Art Museum in Seoul, contemporary art center Maryland Art Place in Baltimore, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C., the SSamzie Art Museum of Korea, and EVR (eflux video rental). Cheon was awarded the 2010 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Unity Week Award at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) for her efforts to promote cultural diversity within and beyond MICA, where she is a full-time professor, teaching in fine art studio, new media, and liberal arts. In 2011, she was chosen as “One to Watch” by Dr. Leslie King-Hammond, who was honored by the Art Table organization, recognizing women’s leadership in the visual arts. Cheon also has two other terminal degrees: an MFA in painting from the Hoffberger School of Painting (1999), MICA and another MFA in Imaging Digital Arts from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (2002). Her BFA is in painting from Ewha Woman’s University (1996), Seoul, Korea where she was a visiting professor in 2011.

Ben Patterson At Museum Wiesbaden
Fluxus Turns 50 With Historic Concert

Ben Patterson is a founding member of Fluxus and has organized the
2012 Celebration, Fluxus 50, in collaboration with Museum Wiesbaden

The city of Wiesbaden, Germany is considered the birthplace of a revolutionary art form which began with the 1962 Fluxus concert in its Festspiele Neuester Musik in the Museum lecture theater. One of the founding Fluxus artists, Dick Higgins, observed that its characteristics are: “Internationalism, experimentalism, iconoclasm, intermedia, impact, playfulness and wit, transience and uniqueness.” Since 1962, Fluxus has made a radical impact on world culture, music, the visual arts, film and theater. From June 2 to September 23, 2012 the Museum Wiesbaden is organizing a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the world’s first Fluxus concert, in collaboration with founding Fluxus artist, and still resident of Wiesbaden, Ben Patterson. While attending the festival as an invited performer I had a chance to meet up with Ben for a brief, but illuminating, interview:

Jessica Higgins

Jessica Higgins: Hello! I’m with Ben Patterson here at Fluxus 50 Wiesbaden (http://fluxus50wiesbaden.de/), at the Museum Wiesbaden, and he is going to answer some questions about Fluxus. We’re so happy that he’s willing to do this interview for us for Artist Organized Art.

JH: Ben, In 1962 Fluxus presented itself in an historic concert, here in Wiesbaden, Germany, as a form of “New Music.” We are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the concert with this festival, which you have organized with Dr. Klar and the Museum Wiesbaden. As such, and as one of the participants in the original 1962 concert, what are your thoughts of this originating categorization of Fluxus as “New Music” looking back on 50 years of Fluxus?

Ben Patterson: It’s clearly become something other than what we thought of as new music then. But the core of what I still consider Fluxus is performative, time based, immaterial, so that it’s still.. “music expanded” I guess you could call it?

JH: Yes. That is an excellent way of putting it.

JH: How do you feel about Mary Bauermeister’s salon in Köln as an alternate to the Darmstadt Festival.

BP: That’s slightly “bending” a bit of history, because the material which was presented there, the artists and so forth, except for Cage, were primarily from the Darmstadt School. Younger composers and so forth.. of course her eventual relationship with Karlheinz Stockhausen comes all from there.

BP: I’ve known Mary many years, I like her and all, but I think that to now suggest that, Mary’s.. even though it was listed as a counter festival to the original International Society Of Contemporary Music Festival .. it was closer to that than to a Fluxus festival. Mary’s boyfriend, at the time that I met her and when she was producing this “counter festival” .. eventually broke up .. and Haro Lauhus moved down the street and opened his own gallery .. which was exactly the opposite of Mary’s .. which was pristine .. pure white. Haro’s was an old building which hadn’t been cleaned since the war and was still black and dusty .. and for my taste that’s where the material that began to look like Fluxus developed .. and so he made the first exhibition with Spoerri .. and the first exhibition with Christo, Mimmo Rotella and Vostell and so forth .. so he was actually I think .. more revolutionary there than Mary.

Founding Fluxus Artist, Alison Knowles (right) performs her work “Loose Pages”
with Jessica Higgins at Museum Wiesbaden’s Fluxus 50,
organized with Ben Patterson

JH: Very interesting.. thank you! The last question is, in terms of your work with the New York Department of Cultural Affairs do you find any points of comparison between New York City and  the experience organizing in Wiesbaden?

BP: Yes and no, there’s bureaucracy to deal with .. but the German bureaucracy is much more detailed and specific than the New York bureaucracy at that point .. but the experience of working there .. of course you learn things which can be used in many places.

JH: Do you see similarities?

BP: No, not really, I mean yes and no. Organizations are organizations, they have to have somebody to talk .. and lots of workers, but that’s the same practically everywhere. This experience here is perhaps somewhat different than other situations in Germany because the director, Alexander (Alexander Klar), has moved around a lot. He’s worked in New York and in Venice and so forth .. London. So he’s a more open person than a typical born-raised-never-left-Germany-person.

JH: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to answer these questions and I hope that you’ll go to Artist Organized Art to see this interview.

BP: Okay, thank you.

George Maciunas (8 November 1931- 9 May 1978) a Lithuanian-born American artist. He was a founding member and the central coordinator of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers, and designers. Other leading members brought together by this movement included Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, George Brecht, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, and Dick Higgins. He is most famous for organising and performing in early Fluxus projects and for assembling a series of highly influential artists’ multiples. To avoid debt collectors, Maciunas took a job as a civilian graphic designer at a U.S. Air Force base in Wiesbaden, Germany in late 1961. It was there that he organized the first Fluxus Festival in September 1962. The festival then travelled to Cologne, Paris, Düsseldorf, Amsterdam, The Hague and Nice. These concerts and events were to become integral to the legacy of Fluxus.

Dr. Alexander Klar, Director of the Museum Wiesbaden, brings to the Museum, years of experience in exhibition design and organization culminating in the anarchic and successful celebration of 50 years of Fluxus. With a thesis on the life and work of the architect Friedrich Bürklein (1813-1872), he received his doctorate in 2000 in Erlangen. His museum career includes posts with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Institute in Braubach on the Rhine, Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the Kunsthalle in Emden, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Emil Schumacher Museum in Hagen and finally the Museum Wiesbaden in Germany.

Eric Andersen Born in Antwerp 1940 is an artist associated with the Fluxus art movement. He lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1962 Andersen first took part in one of the early concerts given by Fluxus held during the Festum Fluxorum in the Nikolai Kirke (Nicolas Church) in Copenhagen. He soon took an early interest in intermedial art. In his Opus works from the early 1960s, Andersen explored the open interaction between performer and public, developing open self-transforming works, such as arte strumentale. In 1996, the year in which Copenhagen was Europe’s cultural capital, Andersen arranged a three-day inter-media event involving parachute-jumping, helicopters, mountaineering, live sheep and 500 singers walking on water.

Philip Lionel Corner (born April 10, 1933; name sometimes given as Phil Corner) is an American Composer, Trombonist, Alphornist, Vocalist, Pianist, Music Theorist, Music Educator, and Visual Artist. He was a founding participant of Fluxus since 1961, was a resident composer and musician with the Judson Dance Theatre from 1962-1964 and later with the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. He co-founded with Malcolm Goldstein and James Tenney the Tone Roads Chamber Ensemble in 1963, with Julie Winter Sounds Out of Silent Spaces in 1972 and with Barbara Benary and Daniel Goode, Gamelan Son of Lion in 1976. His principle gallery is UnimediaModern in Genova, whose director Caterina Gualco maintains a large collection. Other important collectors are Hermann Braun in Germany (deceased 2009) and Luigi Bonotto in Bassano who maintains an extensive documentation.

Geoffrey Hendricks (born in 1931 in Littleton, New Hampshire) is an American artist associated with Fluxus since the mid 1960s, and has styled himself as “cloudsmith” for his extensive work with sky imagery in paintings, on objects, in installations and performances. He is professor emeritus of art at Rutgers University, where he taught from 1956 to 2003, and where he was associated with Allan Kaprow, Roy Lichtenstein, and Lucas Samaras during their time there in the 1960s. In 2002, he edited Critical Mass: Happenings, Fluxus, Performance, Intermedia and Rutgers University, 1958-1972 documenting seminal creative activity and experimental work developed by university faculty members of the 1960s such as Bob Watts, Allan Kaprow, George Brecht, Hendricks, and others. He recently performed “Headstands for Peace,” in Washington Square Park, an event organized by Julie Evanoff

Alison Knowles (born 1933) in New York City is an American visual artist known for her soundworks, installations, performances, and publications. Knowles was very active in the Fluxus movement, and continues to create work inspired by her Fluxus experience. In the early 1960s, published by Something Else Press, Knowles composed the Notations book of experimental composition with John Cage and Coeurs Volants and a print with Marcel Duchamp. She also traveled and performed throughout Europe, Asia and North America. In 1963, Knowles produced one of the earliest book objects, a can of texts and beans called the Bean Rolls. In 1967, Knowles and James Tenney produced the computerized poem The House of Dust. A sound installation for a House of Dust public sculpture was produced by Max Neuhaus. The 1983 book Loose Pages, originally produced in collaboration with Coco Gordon, consisted of pages made for each part of the body.

Benjamin Patterson was born in Pittsburgh on May 29, 1934. From 1956 to 1960, he worked as a double bassist at the Halifax Symphony Orchestra (1956–57), the US Army 7th Army Symphony Orchestra (1957–59) and the Ottawa Philharmonic Orchestra (1959–60). In 1960 he moved to Cologne, Germany where he became active on the contemporary music scene of the most radical, focusing its activities at the studio of Mary Bauermeister and “against the festival.” Between 1960 and 1962 he played in Cologne, Paris, Venice, Vienna and other places still participating in the first Fluxus Festival in Wiesbaden (1962). He worked as General Manager in the Symphony of the New World (1970–72) as Assistant Director of the Department of Cultural Affairs for New York City (1972–74) as director of development for the Negro Ensemble Company (1982–84) and as National Director for Pro Musica Foundation Inc. (1984–86). In 1988 he had a solo exhibition of new assemblages and installations at Emily Harvey Gallery in New York and participated in several Fluxus Festivals and exhibitions of the group. Most recently he is the organizer of Fluxus 50 Wiesbaden 2012.

Willem Cornelius de Ridder (14 October 1939 ) is a Dutch radio maker, storyteller, magazine maker, and internationally known Fluxus artist. George Maciunas appointed him chairman of Fluxus (Department of Northern Europe ). In this capacity he organized several concerts and Fluxus Festivals. In the 60s he had a Fluxus mail order company in Amsterdam. Willem de Ridder stands at the cradle of numerous developments in the field of art, culture and recreation. He was closely involved in the creation of alternative youth clubs like Paradiso, Fantasio and the Milky Way. He collaborated with Nam June Paik and Paik presented “Piano For All Senses” in his gallery, Amstel 47, in Amsterdam. Willem de Ridder achieved national fame with famous radio broadcasts in which listeners were invited to participate, taking guided instructions over the radio. Every first Tuesday of the month he tells ancient stories in the auditorium of the Melkweg in Amsterdam.

Dick Higgins (March 15, 1938 – October 25, 1998) was a founding member of Fluxus. He studied composition with John Cage at the New School of Social Research in New York and took part in the Wiesbaden, Germany Fluxus festival in 1962. He founded Something Else Press in 1963, which published many important texts including Gertrude Stein, Marshall McLuhan, artists John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Claes Oldenburg, Ray Johnson, Bern Porter, leading Fluxus members George Brecht, Wolf Vostell, Daniel Spoerri, Emmett Williams, Ken Friedman, and others. He coined the word intermedia to describe his artistic activities, defining it in a 1965 essay by the same name, published in the first number of the Something Else Newsletter.

John Cage (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments. In October 1960, Mary Bauermeister’s Cologne studio hosted a joint concert by Cage and the video artist Nam June Paik, who in the course of his Etude for Piano cut off Cage’s tie. Cage’s “Experimental Composition” classes at The New School have become legendary as an American source of Fluxus, an international network of artists, composers, and designers. The majority of his students had little or no background in music. Most were artists. They included Jackson Mac Low, Allan Kaprow, Al Hansen, George Brecht, and Dick Higgins.

Haro Lauhus, gallerist, Cologne, specializing in Pre-Fluxus. According to one Cologne newspaper in 1961 the Gallery Haro Lauhus had the most controversial exhibition Cologne had ever seen. The reference is to the first solo show by now famous art duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude. In 1961 it was also the site of Wolf Vostell’s Dé-coll/age Solo and a group show: Der Koffer, Organized by Daniel Spoerri. Other artists: Arman, César, Gérard Deschamps, François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Robert Rauschenberg, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, and Jacques de la Villeglé. Haro Lauhus was an early organizer of performances at the studio of Mary Bauermeister.

Mary Hilde Ruth Bauermeister (7 September 1934) German artist: Circa 1960, she hosted gatherings with future members of Fluxus in her Cologne studio. She invited artists such as Hans G Helms, David Tudor, John Cage, Christo, Wolf Vostell, George Brecht, and Nam June Paik to concerts of “the newest music,” readings, exhibits, and actions in which non-hierarchical exchanges of information across national, disciplinary and age boundaries contributed to the character of the Fluxus movement. In 1961, she took part in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s composition course at the Internationalen Ferienkursen für Neue Musik in Darmstadt. Later that same year she collaborated with Stockhausen in a theatre piece titled Originale.

Karlheinz Stockhausen (2 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important and controversial of the 20th and early 21st centuries. After lecturing at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik at Darmstadt (1953 -) Stockhausen gave lectures and concerts in Europe, North America, and Asia. He founded and directed the Cologne Courses for New Music from 1963 to 1968, and was appointed Professor of Composition at the Hochschule für Musik Köln in 1971, where he taught until 1977. In 1998, he founded the Stockhausen Courses, which are held annually in Kürten. In the early 1990s, Stockhausen reacquired the licenses to most of the recordings of his music and started his own record company to make this music permanently available on Compact Disc.

Nam June Paik (July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the first video artist. In the late 1950’s he contacted Dr. Steinecke of the International Music Institute, Darmstadt with two attempts at presenting his “action music” in the context of the yearly summer courses. Though unsuccessful at placing his compositions in the context of the The Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt, in October 1960, Mary Bauermeister’s Cologne studio hosted a joint concert presenting his works with performances by John Cage and Paik himself. While in Germany, he met the composers Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage and contemporary artists Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell. He then permanently entered the field of electronic art.

Christo (born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, June 13, 1935) and Jeanne-Claude (born Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, June 13, 1935 – November 18, 2009) were a married couple who created environmental works of art. Their works include the wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont-Neuf bridge in Paris, the 24-mile (39 km)-long artwork called Running Fence in Sonoma and Marin counties in California, and The Gates in New York City’s Central Park. Christo is quoted saying “I am an artist, and I have to have courage … Do you know that I don’t have any artworks that exist? They all go away when they’re finished. Only the preparatory drawings, and collages are left, giving my works an almost legendary character. I think it takes much greater courage to create things to be gone than to create things that will remain. The first Solo Exhibition of Christo and Jean-Claude was at gallery Haro Lauhus in Cologne, 1961″

Daniel Spoerri (born 27 March 1930) is a Swiss artist and writer known for his “snare-pictures,” a type of assemblage in which he captures a group of objects, such as the remains of meals eaten by individuals, including the plates, silverware and glasses, all of which are fixed to the table or board, which is then displayed on a wall. In the 1950s he he met a number of Surrealist artists, including Jean Tinguely, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, and also a number of artists associated with the Fluxus movement, including Robert Filliou, Dieter Roth and Emmett Williams. Spoerri is closely associated with Fluxus whose sensibility is based in spontaneity and humor. It has been said that his Anecdoted Topography of Chance embodies aspects of this spirit.

Domenico “Mimmo” Rotella, (7 October 1918 – 8 January 2006), was an Italian artist and poet best known for his works of décollage and psychogeographics, made from torn advertising posters. He was associated to the Ultra-Lettrists an offshoot of Lettrism and later was a member of the Nouveau Réalisme group, founded by Pierre Restany in 1960, whose other members included Yves Klein, Arman and Jean Tinguely. He exhibited at the I.C.A., London 1957 and at Gallery Haro Lauhus in the early 1960’s. 1961 actions at the gallery Haro Lauhus included Rotella, Cardew, Wewerka, Ben Patterson, Nam June Paik and Vostell.

Wolf Vostell (14 October 1932 – 3 April 1998) was a German painter and sculptor of the second half of the 20th century. He is considered one of the early adopters of Video art, Environment, Installation, Happening and the Fluxus Movement. Techniques such as blurring and Dé-collage are characteristic of his work, as is embedding objects in concrete. He was behind Happenings, in New York, Berlin, Cologne, Wuppertal and Ulm among others. In 1962, he participated in the planning of the Festum Fluxorum, an international event in Wiesbaden together with Nam June Paik, and George Maciunas.

Fluxus is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. It can be conceived as a school within intermedia. The origins of Fluxus lie in John Cage’s series of Experimental Composition classes, run between 1957 and 1959 at the New School for Social Research in New York City which explored notions of indeterminacy in art. Origins also are found in the work of, Marcel Duchamp, orginally active within Dada, and a resident in New York at the time. Also, a number of other contemporary happenings are credited as either anticipating Fluxus, or as proto-fluxus events. The most commonly cited include a series of concerts held in Mary Bauermeister’s studio, Cologne, 1960-61 featuring Nam June Paik and John Cage among others.

The Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, initiated in 1946 by Wolfgang Steinecke, held annually in Darmstadt, Germany, until 1970 and subsequently every two years, encompass both the teaching of composition and interpretation and include premières of new works in Darmstadt, itself a major centre of modern music for German composers. Many distinguished lecturers appeared at Darmstadt including: Theodor W. Adorno, Milton Babbitt, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Hans Werner Henze, Lejaren Hiller, Ernst Krenek, György Ligeti, Bruno Maderna, Olivier Messiaen, Luigi Nono, Henri Pousseur, Karlheinz Stockhausen, David Tudor, Edgard Varèse and Iannis Xenakis. During the late 1950s and early 1960s the courses only followed music matching the views of Pierre Boulez in a clique of orthodoxy. This led to the use of the phrase ‘Darmstadt School’ to describe the serial music being written at that time.

The International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) festival includes cutting edge productions of contemporary classical music. The World Music Days include a congress that serves as a meeting place between members of the organization. Membership in the ISCM is organized through national sections that promote contemporary music in each country. These sections are usually organizations independent from the ISCM that send delegates to the ISCM General Assembly. Each member of the national section is also a member of ISCM. National organizations that promote contemporary music, but have not been designated as the nation section of ISCM, are sometimes given an associate membership status. This status also applies to the members of these organizations. Some individual music professionals receive the “honorary membership” status. ISCM publishes the World New Music Magazine.

Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 280,000 inhabitants. It has long been famous for its thermal springs and spa. Famous visitors to the springs included Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Wagner, and Johannes Brahms. At one time there were more millionaires living in Wiesbaden than in any other city in Germany. In late 1961, while working there, George Maciunas organized the original Wiesbaden 1962 Fluxus Festival.

Darmstadt is a city in the federal state of Hesse in Germany, it was chartered as a city by the Holy Roman Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian in 1330. Darmstadt’s old city centre was largely destroyed in a British bombing raid on 11 September 1944. The ‘Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt,’ Initiated in 1946, harboring one of the world’s largest collections of post-war sheet music, also hosts the biennial Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, a summer school in contemporary classical music founded by Wolfgang Steinecke.

A Rare Fish In A Sea of Art
Lucio Pozzi Remembers Herbert Vogel 1922-2012

by Lucio Pozzi

For a few years I lived under a giant skylight in a windowless, basement level, Nineteenth Century Police truck repair garage in Mulberry Street. There, the city was far away.  I slept on a convertible couch or, during my daughter’s visiting nights, she on the bed and I on a futon on the floor.

Certain summer afternoons Herbie would ring my bell, unannounced. He was wearing checkered shorts, an old pair of sandals and a light non-descript shirt. Despite his having undergone skin cancer surgery a few times on his face, he never wore a hat. With his left hand he would carry a translucent plastic bag full of water in which swam a few rare fishes picked up in the store a block away from me. With his right he held a large paper shopping bag containing a couple of wrapped rectangular works of art. The subway stop to Uptown was around the corner.

He knew he had to wait for me to run up the ramp to open the door. The familiarity of our greetings was as precious as the years of our friendship and collaboration. No hugs, shouts or laughter, just a glass of water, and the tangible pleasure of sitting around the worktable, plain talk about family and then words about the art of other artists and mine. When theoretical considerations would arise, Herbie was very quick in situating them in simple words in the history of contemporary discourse. Nothing escaped his passionate attention.

It was hopeless on my part to ask whom the works in the bag were by or to see them. Only once he showed me a half-dozen drawings by Joseph Beuys he was particularly proud of having secured.

On my walls he could see the many ventures I was engaged in – perhaps on the left a large oil painting containing human figures, in the center some plywood geometric polychrome acrylic cutouts, to the right a photograph mounted on tinted canvas. On a nearby table there could have been a landscape watercolor and a dotted gouache texture on paper.

His quick eye wandered in the space while chatting, like a fox exploring the night. He would then have me open the flat files of recent works on paper. When a group attracted his attention he took it all. Occasionally he also chose a small piece on canvas or on wood.

Sometimes I disagreed about the relevance or quality of what he chose. His respect for the artist had him listen with grace, but we often ended up by his taking what he wanted and me adding what I preferred. Now that the works he had selected are shown to me by the Museums, which acquired them, I am stunned by how his eye and mind saw beyond my perception of my own work. I would say he was always right. As evening approached he would exit wearing a faint smile, that of a cat who had just savored a good fish meal. And I was left energized.

The art would have to fit the shopping bag or if too large I would deliver it at home. On those occasions Dorothy and he either offered me an Entenmann’s cake and tea or, especially after walking had become difficult for Herbie, I would be invited at the diner across the street. He was very particular as to food. Never salad, no wine, yes chopped chicken liver and ice cream.

Often also Dorothy came to the studio, but on those occasions the visit would be arranged ahead of time. We would dine in my neighborhood. Dorothy shared with her husband a fastidious concern for the correct handling of the artworks. She also is extremely thorough in cataloguing the collection. While looking at art, her comments would be drier than his, always very pragmatic, to the point, no flattery, few words being better than many. The discussions preceding their final agreement on what was being seen enhanced the conversations.

Herbert Vogel (August 16, 1922 – July 22, 2012) and Dorothy Vogel (born 1935), once described as “proletarian art collectors,” worked as civil servants in New York City for more than a half-century while amassing what has been called one of the most important post-1960s art collections in the United States, mostly of minimalist and conceptual art. Herbert Vogel passed away on July 22, 2012 in Manhattan.

Lucio Pozzi (born 1935) is a Milanese painter and performance artist. His work is in the collections of the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center; the Museum of Modern Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Art Gallery of Ontario; the New York Public Library; the Detroit Institute of Arts; Giuseppe Panza; the Fogg Art Museum; and the Whitney Museum of American Art. His awards include the National Endowment for the Arts. Lucio Pozzi Founded New Observations Magazine with collaborators Herbert & Dorothy Vogel.

Holding the Paradox
7^th edition of the Berlin Biennale
curator: Artur Żmijewski
associated curator: Joanna Warsza and Voina, Art Collective

by Emilio Fantin

I found these words of Artur Żmijewski in an interesting press kit:

“The concept of the 7^th Berlin Biennal is quite straightforward and can be condensed into a single sentence: we present art that actually works, makes its mark on reality and opens a space where politics can be performed. These works create political events regardless of whether they deal with urgent problems in society or the long-term politics of memory. The “key areas” of our interest are: the political effectiveness of art, the activity of the engaged “intelligentsia” and the creative class (artists in particular), their reactions to the important social issues, as well as the way art is employed to construct historical narratives. We have also worked with artists whose views are radically different from our own and who support political forces that some of us might even consider dangerous. What is at stake here is to present these positions and, if possible to even influence their ideological agendas and goals, rather than keeping a safe and dignified distance.”

Occupy Biennale photos: ©Massimo Marchetti

The Berlin Biennale, like some other exhibitions I have seen in the last few years, proposes a very strong topic: how art can contribute, support and act politically on social issues. In the KW Institute of Contemporary Art it is not possible to find a single object of art. On the contrary, the various rooms are set up with installations made for practicing politics and actions of antagonism against the State and the institutions. But as we are inside the KW Institute of Contemporary Art, an ambiguity arises between the attitude of political antagonism and the fact that the installations are hosted inside an institution. The curators are pleased to be the artificers of this ambiguous situation where, in good faith, they have tried to transform an art context into a political arena, but the most interesting things cannot be attributed to the idea of their curator, but to the ability of the single visitor (the observer) to discover some unexpected situations that arise casually from this situation; some anomalies unknown to the curators and out of their control. This is a great merit of the curators, whether they are aware or not. And I am not sarcastic in stating that!

The biggest statue of Jesus Christ. Mirosław Patecki

The dialectic conflict between the idea of art as production of values, which celebrate an individual and egocentric expression, and the idea of art as a production of social and political values and their pragmatic actuation, through a process of sharing ideas and relationships, does not have a solution. The strict capitalistic rule of the celebration of the subject as the individual development of the being on one side, and the political and social investigations about a plural subject on the other side, divides people in two different parties. Those who are convinced that art has to follow a linear and progressive development of the idea of individual profit (defining an art work as an immaterial commodity) and those who think that art has to be an instrument for social and political change (even without the production of any good) must be conceived together.  It is not possible to support only one option, because one needs the other. Something is defined as an art work, when it is part of a precise system of reference (the art system): it doesn’t matter if it is a political presidium as “occupy Berlin” or a series of documentaries about demonstrations and actions for human rights or political claims. The art system that reflects the rules and the goals of a capitalistic approach needs a single project, or artist, to reward. It is superfluous if this artist acts for denouncing a lack of human right, or a need of a social transformation. The system feeds on the anti capitalistic and democratic issues too, to consolidate its hierarchic and vertical order based on the celebration of the idea of value as an individual profit. But at the same time, the diffusion of new models and icons (which are the primary matter for creating economic values) allows the communication of democratic ideas that freely circulate among media, galleries, museums and institutions.

Joas Staal’s “New World Summit” represents an alternative parliamentary forum
for terroristic organizations photo: ©Massimo Marchetti

Who is determined to support only one point, forgetting about the other one, doesn’t understand that this dichotomy is producing a new approach to reality. It is not only about art, but also about culture in general. We have to hold the paradox mentally, to accept the contradictions, because only by behaving like that, some undefined and unexpected ideas, communications and visions, will come out. They are information, sensations, perceptions that have not been preventively studied, but they are originated from the contradictions provoked by the terms of the paradox. The funny thing about that is that these anomalies are not objective facts, they do not depend completely on a curatorial approach or on a theoretic affirmation, but they depend also on the relationship between the observed (the object of our consideration) and the observer (ourselves). Inside an art space, (or a cultural space in general) each one of us can have a deep encounter with an object, a situation or an image that becomes significant to him, only because it is happening exactly in that moment, and it creates a short circuit between our inner state and something which belongs to the exterior world. Of course, the artists and the curator have a great responsibility in keeping their proposal opened, (what Umberto Eco calls “Opera Aperta” – open work) to the intellectual or/and physical intervention of the observer.

The responsibility of the “observer” of finding the sense of the encounter with an art work of an artist, an activist or a group of common people, helps the creation of a free space where art invention, inspiration and vision can arise. As it often happens to me when, you go and visit exhibitions, included the Berlin Biennal, you get personal and free gain, discovering and elaborating some unknown and unexpected anomalies, due to the contradiction that arises by facing the two extreme poles of a paradigmatic paradox.

Joanna Rajkowska – “Born in Berlin” (2012),
film still ©Joanna Rajkowska and Andrew Dixon

Escaping the order of a determined preposition that imposes a model, a role, a political behavior and expressing ourselves from a political social and intellectual point of view, means taking into account the limits of the existential paradox, and through it, discovering our inwardness and putting it in relation with the state of things.

ARTUR ŻMIJEWSKI, The Curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale Born in Warsaw in 1966, Artur Żmijewski mainly works with photography and film. In 2005 he represented Poland at the 51st Venice Biennale. In his manifesto The Applied Social Arts he developed his distinct positition on social activism, which also forms the point of departure for the 7th Berlin Biennale.

Joanna Warsza, Associate curator born in 1976, is a curator on the cusp of the performing and visual arts. She graduated from the Warsaw Theater Academy and completed a postgraduate course at the University of Paris 8 dance department. She is a founder of the independent platform Laura Palmer Foundation (www.laura-palmer.pl). Joanna Warsza has worked mostly in the public realm, curating projects that examine social and political agendas, such as the invisibility of the Vietnamese community in Warsaw, the phenomenon of Israeli Youth Delegations to Poland, or the legacy of post-Soviet architecture in the Caucasus.

Voina, Art Collective, Associate curators from Russia, was founded in 2005 by Oleg Vorotnikov and Natalya Sokol. Voina engages in street action art that is directed against the Russian authorities. Their actions are regularly joined by a large group of anonymous activists. Numerous lawsuits have been filed against the group and its activists. Most recently Natalya Sokol and her son Kasper have been arrested for several hours in mid-October 2011. Oleg Vorotnikov, Natalya Sokol, Leonid Nikolajew and Kasper decline the use of money and live in St. Petersburg without a permanent home. Their creed is, as Natalya Sokol declares: “The artist who denies political awareness is just a designer.”

Berlin Biennale (www.berlinbiennale.de) Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, KW held the first Berlin Biennale in 1998 to help the city of Berlin become recognized as a contemporary art capital. Klaus Biesenbach took the artistic helm of the first Berlin Biennale in cooperation with Nancy Spector and Hans Ulrich Obrist. For the second Berlin Biennale in 2001, the baton was passed to Saskia Bos, who is in turn followed by Ute Meta Bauer for the 2004 exhibition. The 4th Berlin Biennale in 2006 was curated by Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick. Adam Szymczyk was chosen for the 5th Berlin Biennale in 2008 who then appointed Elena Filipovic as co-curator. The 6th Berlin Biennale in 2010 was curated by Kathrin Rhomberg. The Biennale is held at various locations in the city, which in the past have included the Neue Nationalgalerie. Artists have included: 3 de luxe, Adolph Menzel, Adrian Lohmüller, Aernout Mik, Ahmet Öğüt, Aida Flüchtlingslager, Aleana Egan, Alexa Hennig von Lange, Alexander Baumgardt / Jan Rikens Hillmann, Alicia Framis, Anatolij Shuravlev, Andrea Zittel, Andreas Kaernbach, Andreas Slominski, Andrée Korpys & Markus Löffler, Andrey Kuzkin, Ania Molska, Anna Baranowski / Luise Schröder, Anna Witt, Ann-Sofi Sidén, Antanas Mockus, Apolonija Sustersic, Aris Fioretos, Armin Linke, Artur Żmijewski, Arturas Raila, Avi Mograbi, Ayse Erkmen, Babette Mangolte, Beatrice Wrobel, Bernard Bazile, Bernd Langer, Bless, Brimboria Institut, Burak Arikan, BUREAU Mario Lombardo, Cameron Jamie, Caner Aslan, Carlos Amorales, Carsten Höller, Cezary Bodzianowski, Charlotte Bank, Christian Jankowski, Christine Hill, Christine und Irene Hohenbüchler, Christoph Keller, Christoph Schlingensief, Claude Lévêque, Cyprien Gaillard, Dan Peterman, Danai Anesiadou, Danh Vo, Daniel Guzmán, Daniel Knorr, Daniel Pflumm, Daniel Roth, Darren Almond, David Claerbout, David Maljković, David Reeb, David Rych, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Eike Becker, Elisabetta Benassi, Ettore Sottsass, F.R.E.d. RUBIN, Fabrice Hybert, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Femen, Ferhat Özgür, Filmpiraten, Fiona Banner, Fiona Tan, Franz Ackermann, Fred Kelemen, Fred Tomaselli, Friedl vom Gröller (Kubelka), Gabriel Kuri, Gabriel Orozco, Gedi Sibony, George Kuchar, Georges Tony Stoll, Giu Shi-hua, Giulia Piscitelli, Gob Squad, Goshka Macuga, Grüntuch / Ernst, Hajnal Németh, Hans Schabus, Haris Epaminonda, Heike Baranofsky, Henrik Håkansson, Henrik Olesen, Hermann Joachim Pagels, Honey Suckle Company, Inka Essenhigh, Institute for Human Activities, Ion Grigorescu, Jacob Mishori, Jan Liesegang, Janette Laverrière, Jiri Ceiver, Joanna Rajkowska, Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan, João Penalva, Johannes Kahrs, John Bock, John de Maya, John Smith, Jonas Staal, Jonathan Meese, Jonathan Monk, Jörg Stollmann, Jos De Gruyter & Harald Thys, Joseph Beuys Theater & Teatr.Doc, Joseph Grigely & Amy Vogel, Jürgen Frisch, Karina Dzieweczyńska, Kartenrecht, Katarzyna Józefowicz, Keith Tyson, Kendell Geers, Khaled Jarrar, Kilian Rüthemann, Kohei Yoshiyuki, Krétakör, Kristina Solomoukha, Krytyka Polityczna, Kutlug Ataman, Larry Sultan & Mike Mandel, Lars Laumann, Liam Gillick, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Little Warsaw, Lou Cantor, LSD, Luciana Lamothe, Ludwig Peter Kowalski, Łukasz Konopa, Łukasz Surowiec, Maciej Mielecki, Manfred Pernice, Manon de Boer, Manuel Ocampo, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Marcus Geiger, Margaret Salmon, Marie Voignier, Marijke van Warmerdam, Marina Naprushkina, Marion von Osten, Mark Boulos, Markus Muntean / Adi Rosenblum, Marlene Haring, Martin Zet, Masist Gül, Mathieu Mercier, Melvin Moti, Michael Elmgreen / Ingar Dragset, Michael Schmidt, Michael Stevenson, Michał Górczyński, Michel Auder, Minerva Cuevas, Mirosław Patecki, Mobinil, Mohamed Bourouissa, Mona Vătămanu / Florin Tudor, Monica Bonvicini, Mosireen, MVRDV, Nada Prlja, Nairy Baghramian, Nashashibi / Skaer, Navin Rawanchaikul, Nilbar Güreş, Nir Evron, Octavian Trauttmansdorff, Olaf Nicolai, Olafur Eliasson, Oleksiy Radynski, Olga Chernysheva, Our House, Pamela Rosenkranz, Paola Pivi, Parastou Forouhar, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Patricia Esquivias, Patricia Piccinini, Paul Sietsema, Paulina Olowska, Paweł Althamer, Pedro Barateiro, Petrit Halilaj, Phil Collins, Philipp Oswalt, Piotr Uklański, Pipilotti Rist, Pit Schultz, Pixadores, Pleurad Xhafa / Sokol Peçi, Public Movement, Pushwagner, Renée Green, Renzo Martens, Rineke Dijkstra, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Roman Ondák, Ron Tran, Rosângela Rennó, Ruti Sela & Maayan Amir, Sarah Sze, Sean Snyder, Sebastian Stumpf, Shannon Ebner, Simryn Gill & Liisa Roberts, Stan Douglas, Stefan Rusu, Stefan Thater, Steven Pippin, Stiftung Flucht, Vertreibung, Versöhnung, SubREAL, Sung Hwan Kim, Superflex, Surasi Kusolwong, Susan Hiller, Susanne Kriemann, Susanne M. Winterling, Sven-Åke Johansson, Swetlana Heger & Plamen Dejanov, Teresa Margolles, Thatchers, Thea Djordjadze, Thomas Demand, Thomas Hirschhorn, Thomas Judin, Thomas Locher, Thomas Zipp, Till Müller-Klug, Tim Staffel, Tobias Rehberger, Tomáš Rafa, Tris Vonna-Michell, Tsuyoshi Ozawa, Ugo Rondinone, Ulrike Mohr, Vibeke Tandberg, Vincent Vulsma, Vogt + Weizenegger, Walter Musacchi, Wolfgang Tillmans, Xavier Le Roy, Xu Tan, Yael Bartana, Zafeiris Haitidis, Zhao Liang, Zofia Stryjeńska

Lu Cafausu
Emilio Fantin, Luigi Negro,
Giancarlo Norese and Cesare Pietroiusti

by artist/correspondent Emilio Fantin

Four Italian artists often meet for collaborative projects. Each artist has his own artistic path, but sometimes they play together, like the musicians of a band do, if you want to use a musical metaphor. Most of the time they make projects in public spaces by involving a certain number of people. Projects are made both in old villages and in towns, both in Italy and abroad. They have strengthened our collaboration around Lu Cafausu, a gazebo made of stone and cement, that was a part of a big property built at the beginning of the 20^th century. Later the property was sold and the villa was separated from the gazebo. At the present time new houses surround Lu Cafausu.

Emilio Fantin

Lu Cafausu, an old coffee house located in a small town in the southern Italy, has become the inspiration for stories, exhibitions, performances and actions in Lecce, Rotterdam and New York. We identified Lu Cafausu as a metaphorical place, so meaningful to become a symbol of our time.

Lu Cafausu is a mysterious small building, an architectural remnant that the artists have elected as a source of metaphors and narratives. It is “an imaginary place that really exists” around which the presence of death is floating. It is an architectural and existential anomaly, a place full of potentialities that gives to the artists the inspiration to invent metaphors and narratives, because it cannot be defined without having nonsense as a result. It is in fact quite evident the bearer of a story and meanings of it, but no one knows exactly what they are. A place where death hovers around and is easily discernible: any day, the small building can in fact be demolished to accommodate more parking space for cars, or can also fall apart as a consequence of its precariousness. It could also be turned and frozen into a monument. Because of the presence of death, Lu Cafausu is an ideal place for a new celebration, “La Festa dei Vivi”, where, in order to give sense to life, one reflects his own death, first and foremost.

Two years ago, on November 2, 2010, ANDANDAND^[1], a collaborative project, part of Documenta 13, by Rene Gabri and Ayreen Anastas, invited Emilio Fantin, Luigi Negro, Giancarlo Norese, Cesare Pietroiusti and Luigi Presicce to turn the November the 2^nd traditional celebration of the Dead into a new holiday: “La Festa dei Vivi (che riflettono sulla morte)”, “The Celebration of the Living Ones (who reflect upon death)”. For this celebration, the artists invited everyone to take part in a pilgrimage, probably the shortest and slowest in the world, having  a departing point as its destination, Lu Cafausu in San Cesario di Lecce. The celebration and the pilgrimage wanted to represent a reflection upon death as transformation, threshold, mystery, but also as a necessary perspective of meaning. The pilgrimage was also an occasion for a visit to the “Sanctuary of Patience” and homage to the figure of Ezechiele Leandro, a local artist who worked around the theme of death.

The four artists, helped by some local people, pushed a boat through the village.
This was done not only for slowing down the pace, but also because
the boat is a symbol of life (all these people live near the sea)
and death (fishermen who never come back.)

Sometimes they stopped and read texts about death and dead people.
Some Eraclito’s aphorisms, some excerpts from The Socrate’s apology
and other excerpts from texts by Jankelevitch and Feuerbach.

The pilgrimage was also an occasion for a visit to the “Sanctuary of Patience”
and homage to its author, Ezechiele Leandro.

The Sanctuary of Patience by Ezechiele Leandro (1905-1981) is a unique
and extraordinary example of a mystical garden, a forest of sculptures,
a temple or a cemetery, a site that can’t be described,
created by an artistic expression of a self-taught man,
an artist whose position was beyond
the division of low and high culture.

Since 2010 the artists have continued to propose the pilgrimage in occasion of November the 2^nd. Every year they propose a different place and way for the celebration of November the 2^nd.            .

The four artists were invited to participate in an artist residency through the ASU Art Museum^[2] International Visiting Artist Residency Program from the fall of 2012 through the fall of 2013.

For 2013 they will propose The Celebration of the Living (who reflect upon death)” 4th edition. Last February, Emilio Fantin and Giancarlo Norese spent 10 days studying the environment and the social context of Phoenix. On November 2, 2013, the artists will invite everyone to participate in “The Celebration of the living  (who reflect upon death), that will take place in Phoenix. Information and announcements will be published on the website early January 2013. (http://lucafausu.tk).

The 3^rd edition will take place on the web. Everyone all over the world will simultaneously be invited to take part in the action “Islands”, on occasion of this new edition of “The Celebration of the living people.”  At the beginning of November in many parts of the world people celebrate the cult of the dead people. This year we are going to evocate the relationship between the living and the dead through a powerful symbol of death: the Island.

Participants are asked to connect with someone who has died, (praying, talking, evocating parents, friends or other people they love). Later they will email us, a thought, a short phrase about this particular experience and a scan of a drawing, photograph, paintings or small sculpture of an island: a particular idea of island, which reflects and expresses their personal relationship with someone who has died.

After printing all the scans, they will be installed outdoors in Rome, on occasion of a meeting you are all invited to take part in. Passersby will be invited to freely take away the pictures.

Information about the collective performance “Island,” will be available soon in http://lucafausu.tk.

1.  ANDANDAND is an artist run initiative, which used the time between 2010 and dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012, to consider with individuals and groups across the world the role that art and culture can play today and the constituent publics or communities which  could be addressed.

2.  ASU Art Museum,Tempe, AZ