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Experimental Curator Lance Fung To Transform Atlantic City In A 5 Year Public Art Campaign

Lance Fung is hired by the Atlantic City Alliance To Lead A 5 year
Public Art Campaign to transform Atlantic City

by Joshua Selman

We all know public art effects culture in ways far greater than the purse, but suddenly Atlantic City’s community stakeholders, both public and private are sending a message. Art and culture can expose the elusive quality of place by positively influencing a neighborhood and a city. Earlier today I was at an exciting and inspiring event at Lance Fung’s SOHO loft. There I learned the Atlantic City Alliance (ACA) a newly formed non profit, has hired Lance and his group, Fung Collaboratives, to transform Atlantic City. They will collaborate to turn many entire vacant lots into commissioned works of art or as Lance describes them, magical green spaces. I find it amazing that in this economy the ACA holds, that for this country’s cities, right now art and culture are key. As daring a collaborationist as ever, Lance will triangulate Atlantic City with an exquisite 5 year long public art exhibition that will complete this message.

Predictably, Lance brings together international artists and architects to take on Atlantic City’s challenging sites. Yet, complimenting these large scale attractions, he’s planning programs to engage and benefit local community at even the smallest scale, encouraging local input and further energizing community and it’s artists. The project is designed to enrich the community through its own participation by engaging local residents, new visitors and art lovers alike to experience large scale contemporary art outside of the gallery, to come out and play together, to have a stake in the improving physical landscape and to enjoy new, free and interactive experiences catered to people rather than cars and trucks.

The Atlantic City Boardwalk is among the first Boardwalks ever built
It’s length has ranged between 3.5 and seven miles

What Lance described at his gathering sounded sweeping and visionary, yet community-driven and inclusive. The commissions have a sense of destination, but are culturally aware. He’s calling for works that become places which foster social interaction and balance physical, social and spiritual qualities. Yet, while he’s working through an overarching idea and commissioning large scale transformations, these are complimented by a community invested, bottom-up approach, which identifies community talents and assets that provide valuable insights as to what is meaningful to Atlantic City residents.

San Francisco and New York-based curator Lance Fung founded his company in 1999 as an arts organization without borders. His exhibitions have been featured at the Torino and Beijing Olympics, the city of San Francisco, and in Egypt. He was the curator of the 2008 Site Santa Fe Biennial, Lucky Number 7. Lance Fung is best known for the 2004 “The Snow Show” exhibition in Finland, having presented the collaborative works of thirty internationally recognized artists and architects, including Yoko Ono, Sir Norman Foster, Kiki Smith and Tadao Ando.

“..moving art outside to the blank canvas of the sky, the ocean and the historic Boardwalk
can be a catalyst to evolve how people think about our city,”
– Liza Cartmell, president of the Atlantic City Alliance.

“While the world’s great museums showcase art for appreciation as well as scholarship, moving art outside to the blank canvas of the sky, the ocean and the historic Boardwalk here in Atlantic City can be a catalyst to evolve how people think about our city,” – Liza Cartmell, president of the Atlantic City Alliance. “We know that the greater Atlantic City community will also benefit from these distinctly unique public art projects,” – CRDA Executive Director John Palmieri.

Montreal-based new media and entertainment studio, Moment Factory has also teamed up with the ACA to develop a highly sophisticated, 3D projection show celebrating the façade of Boardwalk Hall. Set to open this summer, the permanent installation offers a free show every night, all year long. Moment Factory has created extraordinary multimedia environments and groundbreaking interactive experiences for live shows, public spaces, events, brands and cultural institutions since 2001, for clients like Cirque du Soleil, Jay-Z, Disney, Céline Dion, Microsoft and for Madonna’s new MDNA world tour.

The ACA is a recently established New Jersey not-for-profit corporation whose primary mission is to develop and implement a full-scale, broad-based, multi-year marketing program for Atlantic City. The ACA works with the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) to market and promote the Tourism District via a public/private partnership. The ACA also works with local and state government, the private sector and other organizations to further enhance the marketing program.

POLIPOP, Mina Cheon at
Maryland Art Place, May 3 ‘12
Technology, Politics and Desire: A Mental Dialogue with Mina Cheon

“Polipop & Paintings” Mina Cheon’s representative artwork for the “Polipop & Paintings”
exhibition at the Maryland Art Place in 2012.

Irina Aristarkhova
Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Visual Art at Pennsylvania State University

I fully surrender to Mina Cheon’s ability to control the “poster aesthetic,” with its beautiful clarity and shamelessness of propaganda. Writing here, therefore, is not a form of resistance, but rather, of surrender. From Cheon one can learn the attraction of contemporary art, with its strategic use of materials (one uses what is necessary, rather than a default medium) and therefore, its puzzle. As an artist who employs a variety of resources at her disposal, from research and performance to new media and painting, Cheon complicates for me the idea of “good”: good ideology, good aesthetic, good technology, and good sexuality. By not representing too neatly the divisions between “evil ideology” and “evil technology” versus “good community” and “good humanity,” Cheon refuses the latent or obvious technophobia. The artist mixes women and machines with a precision of a surgeon. This nexus is not a simple embrace of technology, however. It is a strategy of joining forces between those who have been denied full humanity – women and machines. Once again, flipping the stereotypical images through spotlighting them, Cheon draws on their power to reinforce her own message. The two-three color background is identifiably militaristic and fetishistic, but at the same time, archaic in its appeal to an ethnic tradition and spirituality (fully red, fully green, etc.). The artist spices up her aesthetic with a healthy dose of gender politics, making her images almost unbearable in how closely they follow the canon of gender stereotypes. Women, flowers, tanks, missiles, dragons, larger than life faces of political leaders, gadgets, – this is the imagery of the new generation. The question that comes to mind, looking at these incredible works: “Do these images mean anything anymore?” Maybe, we are in a virtual reality game?

***

This work, seemingly loud and clear, requires silence and contemplation. Looking at them longer, I start feeling for Cheon’s characters. The empathy that her work evokes deconstructs the notions of simulacra and digital delirium. Empathizing with these works made me recollect how I observed Jean Baudrillard, the famous author of Simulacra and Simulation, and his wife on their visit to Seoul almost ten years ago. He was giving a talk at Ewha Woman’s University (part of the Media_City_Seoul Biennial, 2002, also where Cheon did her visiting professorship in 2011 as well as it being her alma mater). A high-tech country, as developed as France, but still feeling and being treated like an underdeveloped, as Cheon’s images demonstrate. The thinker seemed totally absorbed in himself, sitting alone on stage, reading his lecture on the topic of media and technology, without raising his head. A spotlight was on him, as if we were in a theatre, where one actor, the only actor, was reading his lines. A somber, dark, picture, of media and technology, which Baudrillard painted till the end. His wife sat in the front row, wearing high heels, elegant, tall (compared to those around her),and took many photographs with her small camera, directly shooting at our faces, pointing her camera into our faces, and looking as if being in wonder where she was. After the lecture ‘Korean girls’ (just like in Cheon’s posters? As well as those she is familiar with having gone to school in Seoul during various grades growing up whether they are actual girls or those who are imagined or projected) were screaming and asking for autographs as the Baudrillards passed by. They were photographing him at a close range, while his wife was photographing them photographing him. Baudrillard was performing ‘Pamela Anderson’ that evening, a star on a global circuit. Is there a difference, as far as the underlying aesthetic is concerned? This was, after all, the question raised in his own writings. Baudrillard looked intimidated, and probably, tired from the jetlag, shocked at the amount of technology and gadgets that people did not feel shy to use openly and a lot. Did he feel empathy? Cheon’s work, despite of being so direct and in my face, like those cameras, makes me co-feel, makes me feel compassion for her characters, who also often happen to be pop- or political stars. One can only wonder, what Baudrillard knew about South Korea before making that trip, and what kind of research he did about the country, the University, and those ‘Korean girls’ he came to speak to. As Cheon’s work also demonstrates, however, all those taken images could become one huge mess  -a pile of representation, information, a confirmation of the evils of our mediated, twenty-four-seven, global simulacrum. And it is empathy for and politics of sexual, racial, and cultural differences, and not only technology of or desire for these differences that is so remarkable about Cheon’s representational choices.

***

Mina Cheon is also your typical superwoman: scholar, professor, mother, wife, artist, friend… Should I say more? Her contributions to the general area of new media art and theory are unique, evidenced by the book Shamanism + Cyberspace (2009). Cheon’s art is spellbinding. These art works are an injection of the most irresistible blend: ideology, aesthetics, technology, and sexuality. Born in the USSR, I am particularly susceptible to this blend, and I am not going to resist it. After all, I did assemble my toy MIGs (plastic models of Soviet supersonic jets) and proudly displayed them on my piano as a teenager. This global quality of “superwomanness” that Cheon represents for us here is, however, not what we usually think. As we grow out of our teenage years, we realize that the superwomanness is not about flying faster than the speed of light, or spinning ourselves to turn into cyborgs. With the full power and confidence of a superwoman, Cheon flips the technological into political. Or, as she demonstrates through an image of the existing sisterhood between a North Korean woman and a South Korean woman, the technological has never been a part of the superwomanness for a woman. Apparently, for a woman, to qualify as a superwoman in the 21st century, she has to spin, spin, spin, and then (one, two, three…), turn into being: “1. beautiful; 2. smart; 3. modest; 4. devoted wife; 5. bring income; 6. make babies; 7. educate self & children; 8. keep household; 9. book keeping; 10. good to in-laws; 11. take care of elders; 12. faithful to country and people; 13. know how to make kimchi from scratch; 14. good in bed while being a virgin” (as stated in Cheon’s Polipop digital painting Superwoman Complex). Nowhere here does it say “restoring justice around the world,” “inventing a time machine” or, at the very least, “assembling supersonic jets.” This image of sisterhood, between an icon of the communist state, portrayed in her stereotypical pop cultural fashion (the green “sexy” military uniform), and a middle class woman of capitalism, portrayed in a supposedly positive stereotypical image of the professional suit (of a flight attendant, or some other kind of business assistant, perhaps?), is laughable. This is where I salute Cheon’s ability to make me laugh, rather than become angry or sad. I cannot make kimchi from scratch, but surely, I can make a “real” Russian salad! What is our alternative, after all? Not to be modest (like “Pamela Anderson”?), not to be good to in-laws (like “Desperate Housewives”?), not to educate ourselves and our children (pick your own alternative to good education)? What Cheon is making us understand through this sisterly laughter, is that this list is so seductive because some parts of it are what we often want. As any good lie, it has elements of truth. This list is also powerful because becoming a ‘bad girl,’ the alter ego of the superwoman, is about following the same list, just in a reversed fashion: do not be this or that. Between a virgin and a prostitute: where is the space for my desire? Transnational dialogue here is necessary, where we can put our national flags aside and carefully examine what is at stake for us in all these lists. Mina Cheon’s work is a huge step in this direction. Cheon and Obama: We Can Do It. I LOVE IT.

Irina Aristarkhova writes and lectures on comparative feminist theory, new media aesthetics, and contemporary art. She is Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Visual Art at Pennsylvania State University, and Visiting Professor of Gender Studies at the department of Media Art History, Danube University at Krems (Austria). Her articles have been published in Body & Society; Theory, Culture & Society; Leonardo: Journal of Arts, Sciences and Technology; Performance Research Journal; Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, and Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. Her book Hospitality of the Matrix: Philosophy, Biomedicine, and Culture is forthcoming from Columbia University Press in 2012.

Links: Maryland Art Place

“Superwoman Complex” The superwoman complex for both South and North Korean woman follows
the Confucian law of the obedient Korean woman. Both are very common in that
they are brought up to please the nation, be subservient to the larger
patriarchal order, bear sons, and know how to cook kimchi from scratch – Mina Cheon

“How the USA Fell Off” The hourglass is turned on its side and what is falling
off the map is the land of the United States. This is how the U.S.A. fell off the planet,
indicating the new Asian (Chinese) century following the “American century.” – Mina Cheon

“Yes, We Can! Obama & Me” Standing back to back, this is a portrait of
Obama with his campaign slogan “Yes, We Can,” and the artist Mina Cheon with
“We Can Do It.” It appropriates the famous J. Howard Miller’s poster of Rosie the Riveter,
the icon of American women in factories during WWII

“Polipop & Paintings” Mina Cheon created this piece as the representative artwork for the
“Polipop & Paintings” exhibition at the Maryland Art Place in 2012. The background is an assemblage of
Tootsie lollipops wrapped in red and blue colors to signify the colors of the United States flag.
The one made for “Polipop” exhibition at the Sungkok Art Museum included yellow to portray
the Korean five colors of ohaeng. That piece is in the Sungkok Art Museum art collection.
“Polipop and Paintings” is in the Maryland Art Place art collection.

THE LANGUAGE OF PAINTING FINDS IT’S VOICE
April 2012 in New York

Mira Schor:  VOICE AND SPEECH
at Marvelli Gallery in New York.

Mira Schor, Voice, 2010, Ink, oil, and gesso on linen, 12 x 16 inches  Speech, 2010, Ink, oil
and gesso on linen, 12 x 16 inches

by Erika Knerr

The exhibition of Mira Schor’s new paintings Voice and Speech at Marvelli Gallery in New York is inspired by an idea in Michel de Certeau’s book of theory, The Practice of Everyday Life of pre-theoretical knowledge, the knowledge of the “folkloric, the body and of craft.” Schor is a painter with an ongoing relationship between theory and art practice. It is disorienting and sometimes places the user/viewer in an uncomfortable position of expecting one or the other, not both existing simultaneously.  The discourse of hybrid art practice has attained acclaim, taking place where artists are working “in between” specializations especially where attention is paid to process, creating and organizing outside of the artist’s studio while engaging in a socio-political field.

Mira Schor, Silence, Noise, Speech, Voice, 2010, Ink, oil, and gesso on white linen, 18 x 30 inches

In her talk the week following her opening, at the “Conference: Art Practice, Activism, and Pedagogy: Some Feminist Views” at Parsons The New School for Design, Schor said, “The voice appears in the process of making the paintings. I am trying to speed up the relationship between reading, thinking, drawing and painting, very literally sketching myself in the act of reading and thinking….Voice and Speech are what I do …. bridging the gap between the voice of painting and the speech of Art Theory.” She spoke about her given ability to do both practices (painting and writing) and the impossibility of doing only one, because one informs the other. She sees herself “as a painter of language bridging the gap between two systems of knowledge.”

Mira Schor, Voice and Speech, 2010, Ink, oil, and gesso on white linen, 14 x 18 inches

The press text says the paintings are “philosophical meditations on the place of painting in contemporary culture, on the visual artist as a thinker, on painting as a uniquely sensual space for the visualization of thought itself.” The painting surface is intimate and sensually hand-made. There is a tension between the mark of the hand in a lush painterly space and the speech or words that are also painted. While viewing the paintings at the opening, I kept thinking about brainteasers I saw recently in a magazine, with experimentation showing the left and right hemispheres of the brain being responsible for different manners of thinking. There was some of this reconciliation going on here where the right brain was trying to view the color and seductiveness of “the touch” while the left brain was busy readying the words. There is an overt and intentional play between content and form, public and private.

They are thought portraits of the artist in the studio and in the world. An image of the figure/artist relating to herself and watching herself see the world. The artist is consciously viewing the world through the fabric of the self and then we see the thought coming out of the brain of the figure. During the feminism conference Schor spoke about Voice and Speech in relation to the Occupy Movement. While our freedoms of speech are gradually being stripped away, the Occupy movement is giving voice to the people waking up from a long paralysis. The metaphor of sleep and the collective dreaming of the protestors are used to engage with the idea of the dream of social change.

Mira Schor, The Dreams of All of Us, 2012, Ink, rabbit skin glue, oil, and gesso on linen, 24 x 28 inches

Mira Schor, Installation view, 2012

In 1996 Susan Bee and Mira Schor guest edited an issue of New Observations magazine titled, “Ripple Effects:  Painting and Language.  In this issue they invited some of the artists who were involved in M/E/A/N/I/N/G (an art journal they co-edited from 1986-1996) as well as others “whose art practice involves language and writing as either subject or image of their artwork or as a parallel practice, or significant source of inspiration”.  There are contributions by Christian Schumann, Amy Sillman, David Reed, Jane Hammond, Rochelle Feinstein, Mira Schor, Julia Jacquette, Kay Rosen, Pamela Wye, Susan Bee, David Humphrey, Kenneth Goldsmith, Faith Wilding, Lucio Pozzi, Richard Tuttle, Tom Knechtel.

At the opening Emily Cheng introduced me to Roger Denson who wrote an in depth review of the work for the Huffington Post here.  There is also a great interview with Mira Schor in two parts by Bradley Rubenstein. (Part One),  (Part Two).

~Erika Knerr

Mira Schor is an American artist, writer, editor, and educator, known for her contributions to the critical discourse on the status of painting in contemporary art and culture as well as to feminist art history and criticism.

New Observations Magazine (http://newobs.org/backissues) was launched in New York City 1984 by the visual artist, Lucio Pozzi, with collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel. It was subsequently Trademarked under then President, Diane Karp, currently Executive Director – Santa Fe Art Institute, who has re-joined the Board of New Observations LTD. The magazine includes 128 back issues featuring many renowned visual artists speaking out as they emerged. The relaunch of the magazine was announced at the 2011 MoMA PS1 Art Book Fair and further announced at venues of PERFORMA11 in NYC through participating visual artists.

***

The Artist Curators, Weinberg (left) and Hackett (right)

Little Languages/Coded Pictures

Organized by artists Theresa Hackett and Michelle Weinberg

From Mira Schor’s opening I accompanied the artist/writer/palm reader Shelley Marlow to an open studio upstairs. Here among the rich painterly layers talking to me in Mary Jones Studio I learned of another exhibition exploring painting’s discourse called Little Languages/Coded Pictures. This is a two-gallery group exhibition organized by artists Theresa Hackett and Michelle Weinberg at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts in Chelsea and Lesley Heller Workspace on the Lower East Side. I asked the artists about the use of the two spaces and their experience organizing the shows.

Installation of Little Languages/Coded Pictures at Kathryn Markel Fine Art

In this era of mediated socializing, air kissing and other detached modes of interacting, it has been a real pleasure to connect with the artists in Little Languages/Coded Pictures. Each of them make profound, solitary investigations into the viscera and materia of painting, layering this work with meaning on many levels. Bringing their works together – and bringing them together in the openings – was very rewarding. Some of them are friends and colleagues for a long time, others I met at the opening for the first time! The beauty of collaborating with Theresa Hackett is that we were synchronized with each other, in an effortless, intuitive way. Our selections of artists and works was copesetic, and still the final product of their collective works caused a chemical reaction that surprised and delighted.

~Michelle Weinberg

Installation of Little Languages/Coded Pictures at Lesley Heller Workspce

The two differences in the shows is that at Kathy Markel there is more diverse work, such as works on paper, sculptural and 3 dimensional works. The work at Lesley Heller tends towards a tighter painting format. These shows are an extension of each other and we wanted a connection to Chelsea as well, so that the work was not all in one place. My interest and I think Michelle’s, is that there is some really good painting out there and over the years many of the artists in these shows have inspired or have connected with my (our) work in some way, it is like putting together your “Dream Team” of ideas.

~ Theresa Hackett

Theresa Hackett, Summer Trouble, 2011

Little Languages/Coded Pictures at Lesley Heller Workspace includes painters Mike Carroll, Alan Crockett, Julie Evans, Ron Gorchov, Theresa Hackett, Sharon Horvath, David Humphrey, Margrit Lewczuk, Laura Newman, Jennifer Reeves, David Storey and Michelle Weinberg.

Installation of Little Languages/Coded Pictures at Lesley Heller Workspce

Statement from both shows:  A painter creates a lexicon. A glossolalia of marks, swerves of the brush, scrapes, dabs, drips. An anthology of the painter’s experience is translated into pigmented pastes of varying transparencies and densities. Application of these little languages to the surface of a painting, builds a story, intimate or epic. Of space and time, of the weight of gravity and slipping free from gravity. Pictorial space and logic is built of hermetic symbols created by the painter. One thing stands in for another. One gesture is surrogate for a single thing, or an entire range of experience. Learning to de-code the painting’s surface is part of the pleasure for the viewer. The curators selected works from artists in New York, Miami, Ohio, and from as far-flung as Helsinki. Their criteria was painterly abstractions that courted narrative, pictures that vibrated on the edge of being and representing, constructed of idiosyncratic painting languages.

Ron Gorchov, Thief of Bagdad, 2009

Theresa Hackett and Ron Gorchov at the opening of Little Languages/Coded Pictures
at Lesley Heller Workspce

And at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts the artists include Diane Ayott, Julie Davidow, Nancy Friedemann, Felice Grodin, Julie Gross, Theresa Hackett, Mary Jones, Sophy Naess, Marilla Palmer, Jennifer Sanchez, Yolanda Sanchez, Hal Saulson, Suzanne Ulrich, Kristiina Uusitalo, Chuck Webster, Michelle Weinberg, Charles Yuen.

Installation of Little Languages/Coded Pictures at Kathryn Markel Fine Art

~Erika Knerr

Michelle Weinberg creates works in painting and collage, designs rugs, tiles, mosaic and paint murals, and other surfaces for interiors, architecture and public spaces. She is the recipient of many awards and grants including MacDowell Colony, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship in Visual & Media Art, and a FIVA Fellowship from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. She has exhibited work in Miami, New York, Provincetown and internationally. She is currently Adjunct Faculty and Miami International University of Art & Design. Weinberg has a BFA from School of Visual Arts and an MFA from Tyler School of Art and works in Miami Beach and New York City.

Theresa Hackett is a painter who was born in Los Angeles CA.  She has had numerous one person and group exhibitions.   Hackett is a recipient of a Pollock Krasner Grant, NYFA and various other grants, awards and residencies, including the Venice Printmaking Studio in 2011.  She has a BFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara, College of Creative Studies, and an MFA from Hunter College NY. Hackett lives and work in New York City.

The Otherwise Art Festival
Exit Festival spring 2012
MAC (Maisons des Arts de Créteil), France
March 8-18, 2012

Bernie Lubell, Left: ‘Aphasiogram/Making a point of Inflection’. Right: ‘Fur’s Facebox’

by Angie Eng

Sensory perception and audience participation were reoccurring themes in this year’s Exit art festival in Créteil France on March 8^th-18^th, 2012. Exit is one of the first spring contemporary art festivals I’m sure to not miss in or around Paris.

Left: Place Salvador Allende, Créteil. Right: Left Fronters at Bastille, March 2012 photo by Stuart Krusee

Exit’s welcome mat, Place Salvador Allende already gives MAC Creteil (Maison des Arts et de la Culture/ House of Arts and Culture) an advantage over most art centers.  Sitting beside a lake and at the far end of a Vasarely swirling marbled XXX-large plaza it is surrounded by futuristic buildings designed by architect, Pierre Dufau in the 1960’s.  In a category with Oscar Niemeyer, at Allende square, which also includes city hall, we imagine to be in former communist Eastern Europe. The 6^th largest populated area of metropolitan Paris, Créteil has consistently been politically far left since Mitterand.  Also note, in 1823 a tramline was built from Créteil directly to place de Bastille once the prison/chateau taken down by the people in 1789 and presently the most frequented place to spot a protest.

Once you traverse the immense, empty square save for the four skateboarders, a surprise awaits.  Unpredictability is what I like most of this festival that focuses on hybrid and new media art and performance. Such risk-taking (a rarity in proximity of institutionalized Paris and its deep-rooted tradition) can be hit or miss.  This year’s exhibition veered less toward innovation as witnessed in past shows and closer to an accessible whimsy with one foot in today and one in yesterday.

Artistic Director, Didier Fusiller has a knack for organizing diverse contemporary art for an inclusive audience. This is a rare occurrence in the age of the digital art festival geared for academics, scientists, researchers and the educated art elite. How many urban contemporary art institutions receive a public that equally represents their diverse demographics? Stress is made on the Republic’s motto of egalité. The MAC team has managed to find a solution to engage/welcome a public, which resembles a Benetton portrait over the group shot Vanity Fair cover.

This year, Exit festival took a break from the algorithmic, sensor-based, DIY, 3D interactive installation/net art scene. Discovery is much less exciting the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th time around. Thus, MAC’s artistic head curator, Charles Carcopino, similar to their Berlin counterpart- Transmediale, threw a curveball in 2012 by mixing the digital with analogue, new with nostalgia. Its good to break your own rules once in a while.

Left: Diane Landry, ‘Chevalier de la resignation infinie’
Right: Bernie Lubell, ‘Aphasiogram/Making a point of Inflection’

For the exhibition, ‘play’ replaced the trendy term ‘interactivity’. Bernie Lubell’s mechanized pine wood contraptions visualized our information processing as a cooperative experience. In ‘Aphasiogram/Making a point of inflection’ a participant circled from a list of words to define ‘heaven’.  Around the corner an attached machine created a visual map of the words you selected.  Your train of thought and the personalized definition of heaven resulted in your ‘path’ around the corner. A poetic hit!

Pierre-Laurent Cassièreùs ‘Schizophone’ Center: Wim Janssen, Static  
Right: Zylvinas Kempina ‘White Noise’

Some projects focused on the hyper sensory, such as: Pierre-Laurent Cassièreùs ‘Schizophone’ or his ‘Vent Tendu’ and even Diane Landry’s plastic bottle filled with sand installation, ‘Chevalier de la Resignation Infinie’.  Like eating oysters, which gives the pleasure of a dip in the ocean, Landry’s audio effect felt like a walk on an empty autumn beach. If you enjoy listening to the nostalgic sounds of the film projector, Zylvinas Kempinas’ ‘White Noise’ allowed one to reminisce of the pre-digital recording age with a running videotape wall.

Left: Ryota Kuwakubo, ‘The Tenth Sentiment’  
Right: Verdensteatret’s ‘And all the Questionmarks started…’

Optical wow was also a leitmotiv. Wim Janssen visualized light waves with a polarization filter.  If you wondered what it felt like to be inside a pixel or if your vision has morphed into your screen, Janssen described such a sentiment in ‘Static’.  Ryota Kuwakubo’s poetic shadow puppet installation transported us back to child development where simplicity and the micro fascinate. A toy train with a bright high beam threw light and dramatic shadow from quotidian object: salad spinner, screws and rolls of duct tape.  It challenged the high tech interactive installation driven by computers and hours of custom code (absent in this year’s fest). However, one should be careful not to over-indulge in child humor that may fit the tourist plaza rather than the museum. Nicky Assmann’s giant soap bubble mural or Zimoun’s motorized ping-pong balls attached to cardboard boxes could be much better placed in a street festival.

In the center of the space and also one of the highlights of the festival sat or rather constantly transformed a performance and kinetic video installation by Verdensteatret. Looking down one fell into the crack between Brothers Quay and Jean Tinguely. Somber, mysterious giant pigeons and ominous storm clouds paralleled bizarre sound-movement synchronization reminiscent of a Richard Foreman play. Performers interacted like machine with machine. At times they steered dangling wires, microscopes and bicycle gears and then methodically they walked away to leave the mechanized to drive us through a surreal happening.

As Festival Exit wound down to a close in mid March, 100000 supporters of the Left Front met down the invisible tramline from Créteil to Bastille. To the southwest, art lovers decided to lighten up like a Hollywood derision from the seriousness of the current grim political and economic climate neck deep in crisis. Like a Fred Astaire tap dance that begins and opens a film, MAC Exit welcomed and left us with Facebox.  A 3D joke on social networking allowed one participant to see another through an emptied-out computer monitor where one could also physically poke their friend with a stick.

Alley rally up: Feed the world, Band Aid, Occupy Wall Street, another Bastille manifestation, the art festival, etc. Lighten up and unite, it’s the end of the world only according to the Mayan calendar. Let’s think otherwise, the way Exit comments on hybrid new media art of today.

Festival EXIT (http://www.maccreteil.com/fr/exit)
Témoin de la création contemporaine, la Maison des Arts et 
de la Culture de Créteil est un lieu de production et de diffusion 
pluridisciplinaire et généraliste. Elle présente largement 
les oeuvres de référence, soutient et favorise les formes exploratoires 
en art, particulièrement les collaborations artistiques 
hybrides. À ce titre, à Créteil, une troisième salle, le Satellite, 
permet d’accompagner de jeunes artistes dans leur travail 
d’exploration sur des formes artistiques largement diffusées 
lors du festival EXIT.

Angie Eng (http://angieeng.com) is a media artist who works in video, installation and time-based performance.  Her work has been performed and exhibited at established venues such as, Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, Lincoln Center Video Festival, The Kitchen, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, Roulette Intermedium , Bronx Museum, Artists Space, Art in General , Anthology Film Archives, Experimental Intermedia and Cité de la Musique. Her videos have been included in digital art festivals in local and international venues in Cuba, France, Greece, Japan, Holland, Germany, Former Yugoslavia and Canada. For her multimedia and new media projects she has received grants and commissions : New Radio and Performing Arts, Harvestworks, Art In General, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York State Council on the Arts, Jerome Foundation, Alternative Museum, and Experimental TV Center Finishing Funds and Foundation for Contemporary Arts. She has worked with composers, dancers, theatre, sound and video artists including: Ron Anderson (Molecules), Rhys Chatham, Audrey Chen, Luke DuBois, Vincent Epplay, Yuko Fujiyama, Jon Giles, Andy Grayton, Sofi Hémon, Jason Kao Hwang, Simon Hostettler, Jessica Higgins, Hoppy Kamiyama, Zach Layton, Okkyung Lee, David Linton, Jarryd Lowder, Shoko Nagai, Matthew Ostrowski, Jean Jacques Palix, Zeena Parkins, Ludovic Poulet, Rémi Préchac, Liminal Projects, Kyoko Kitamura, David Linton, Thierry Madiot, Geoff Matters, Ikue Mori, Pauline Oliveros, Jane Scarpantoni, Peter Scherer, Kevin Shea (Talibam), David Simms (Jesus Lizards), Jim Staley, Satoshi Takeishi, Yumiko Tanaka,Keiko Uenishi, Elisabeth Valletti, Vire Volte Theatre, Nancy Meli Walker and David Weinstein. She is also a European correspondent for AOA (Artist Organized Art) to support a critical dialogue between artists, art practice and dissemination via public events. She lives between New York City and Paris.

All the world’s a …or it’s easy as …

Jeremy Fernando

The warnings of Plato resound in my ears as I walk through the halls of the Marina Bay Sands Convention & Exhibition Center. Heeding his advice that art is potentially threatening, and might lead one away from being a good person, I attempt to raise my defenses against the alleged onslaught of pathos that might reduce me. After all, one learns mimetically, and only the very best can shield oneself from the craft of an artisan—where representations are so close to reality that one is no longer able to distinguish what is real from mere imitations. In fact, at the highest level, the artisan’s craft potentially invokes the whispers of daemon—which momentarily affect, and infect, us with the seductions of their simulacra.

Imagine my disappointment when, an hour into Art Stage Singapore (12-15 January, 2012), I remained unscathed.

Jeremy Fernando documents the hallways of Marina Bay Sands Convention & Exhibition Center

The only danger I faced was drowning in nothingness. And not the ironic nothingness of Warhol where the multiplication of images is a seductive challenge to the reader: an I dare you to make meaning of this.

But a nothingness in its most banal form: where all work was flattened through the abstraction of exchange value. Where everything became everything, and anything else—utter and complete exchangeability. With each step I took, Jean Baudrillard’s provocative declaration in The Conspiracy of Art rang truer and truer: “[the majority of contemporary art] claims to be null—‘I am null! I am null!’—and it truly is null. Therein lies the duplicity of contemporary art: asserting nullity, insignificance, meaninglessness, striving for nullity when already null and void. Striving for emptiness when already empty. Claiming superficiality in superficial terms.” (27) All that the assertions, the claims, to foregrounding ideas over everything else accentuated was—craft was dead.

The irony is: the nomenclature of the gathering—Art Stage—is a calling for craft. For, it is craft that creates the possibility of the arrival of art: the skill of the artisan—in its endless repetition in the quest for (perhaps an impossible) perfection—is precisely the ritual that opens the possibility for art. It is the foregrounding of the said craft that also seduces the viewer—to the point where the one that sees only looks at the work—such that one is potentially affected by art itself. In other words, it is only when the artisan isn’t attempting to create a work of art (whatever that even means) that there is the possibility of art.

Which is why the only gesture of art at Art Stage Singapore was found in the unlikeliest of sources. At a corner of the cavernous exhibition space, I stumbled upon a small shop constructed out of plywood. Clearly hand assembled—beautifully. A collaboration between The Secret Little Agency and Basheer Books named The ABC Shop.

Jeremy Fernando stumbles upon a small shop
constructed out of plywood named The ABC Shop

What was initially baffling—as I found out later in a conversation with one of the artisans, Michelle Andrea Wan—was that the booth opposite had complained about facing, what they termed, a ‘mom & pop’ shop.

According to Michelle Andrea Wan, The ABC Shop has poor relations with a neighboring booth

Until I saw their provocation.

A small sign, by the side, declaring: “Yes. We’re a real shop, not art. All items for sale.”

The ABC Shop service pledge conveys the vendor’s unique selling point.

An open challenge to every other booth.

To Art Stage itself.

By foregrounding exchangeability, exposing the secret that ‘contemporary art’ and ‘sale’ are synonyms; that something was only considered ‘art’ when sold. The complaint from the other booth was not about the aesthetics of the ABC Shop, but was due to the fact that the shop itself had shattered the illusion of Art Stage; the illusion that it was an exhibition of aesthetics, or even of ideas, thought.

Not that anyone didn’t already know this. But, just because something is known does not mean it can be openly mentioned. This is, after all, the lesson of Stalinism. Just because everyone knows that Stalin is always right doesn’t mean you can point out the fact that you cannot challenge him—if you do so, your fate would have been worse than the one who actually confronted him. The latter would be shot, but you first. For, your crime is far more serious: you have challenged the illusion of communism itself, the illusion that everyone is equal; the very illusion that is required for the entire state mechanism to operate. It is not so much that illusions shield us from reality, but that reality itself requires illusions to function.

By nullifying its own status as art, The ABC Shop opens the space for the viewer to catch a glimpse of art. By not claiming to be anything but a “real shop,” there is room for an imaginative gesture; there is silence such that whispers might be heard. This is not the performative nullity that is seen throughout the rest of the fair; this is complete nullity. And here, we should not forget that true “nullity, however, is a secret quality that cannot be claimed by just anyone. Insignificance—real insignificance, the victorious challenge to meaning, the shedding of sense, the art of disappearance of meaning—is the rare quality of a few exceptional works that never strive for it.” (28) Where art potentially lies; precisely in the space left for it.

The ABC Shop opens the space for the viewer to catch a glimpse of art
by not claiming to be anything but a “real shop” – Jeremy Fernando

By being precisely nothing more than a well crafted ‘mom & pop’ shop.

***

Jeremy Fernando is the Jean Baudrillard Fellow at The European Graduate School. He works in the intersections of literature, philosophy, and the media; and is the author of five books—most recently Writing Death. Exploring other media has led him to film, art, and music; and his work has been exhibited in Seoul, Vienna, Hong Kong, and Singapore. He is the editor of both Delere Press, and the thematic magazine One Imperative; and is a Fellow of Tembusu College at the National University of Singapore.

OCCUPY WALL STREET
MK AVERILL + ELLIOT TARRY AT THE WORLD-WIDE DAY OF PROTEST
OCTOBER 15, 2011, ZUCOTTI PARK AND TIMES SQUARE IN NEW YORK CITY

Occupy Wall Street At Times Square, New York City
World Wide Day Of Protest, October 15, 2011

On October 15th Occupy Wall Street went world wide. Young activists decrying corporate greed and malfeasance had occupied Zuccotti Park near Wall Street for several weeks by then and were exhilarated by their success at warding off eviction by the Bloomberg Administration. The simple, yet sacrificial act of holding a piece of turf galvanized a movement and garnered support from all quarters of the globe. Taking their lead and strategic inspiration from the Arab Spring activists in Tunisia and Egypt the Occupy Wall Street Movement supplied the missing ingredient to the formula for social and economic justice that has evaded activists of the prior generation. Artist Organized Art’s MK Averill and activist and radio talk show host Elliot Tarry arrived in Zuccotti Park renamed Liberty Park by Occupy Wall Street (OWS) just after 1PM on Saturday October 15th to take part in the world wide day of protest and dialogue. Artist Organized Art (AOA) interviewed MK and Elliot upon their return.

interview by Artist Organized Art, Mary Averill and Elliot Tarry
photo/video coverage: Mary Averill

AOA: MK or Elliot or both, what made you go down to New York, to Wall Street, to join in the protest?

MK: I felt a strong pull to set my feet firmly on the ground alongside the folks that had started this movement in solidarity with them, and I felt it was really important to stand there with them in their cause to right the imbalance of economic injustice in this country. At the same time I felt a little bit like a tourist going down for the day and I struggled with that. Taking the day off and moving myself to New York is not an easy feat for all kinds of reasons, family reasons and I wasn’t feeling very well that day, but it soon became clear that I did need to go and I really needed to be even a small part of the movement, at least for a day. I felt strongly that I needed to plant my feet on the same ground where these folks were fighting for economic justice in a country where things have really gone awry.

Elliot:  I have been an activist for years against the war and for social justice. I do a radio show that deals with those issues and I had been pulling back from demonstrations since years ago because it was clear that they were ignored and ineffective, but this particular movement and this occupation clearly had the ingredients that were necessary to create an awareness and to actually get something accomplished. So, I felt that I needed to be in solidarity with that movement and put my feet where my mouth has been in order to supply what they said they needed more than anything else, which was people and bodies. That’s why I went. It was the only chance I had to go down and it turned out to be the right day.

Occupy Wall Street At Zuccotti Park, New York City
World Wide Day Of Protest, October 15, 2011

MK:  Something really striking about this movement is that unlike other protests, which set up a time and date, they’ve just placed themselves there and are using time on their side, there’s no rush, no urgency, it’s just a powerful statement. When I got down to Zuccotti Park I was expecting to see a lot of people there, and there were a lot of people there, but I quickly got a lay of the land, it’s a really small park and there weren’t that many people in charge running the place unless they were taking big shifts.

The park was divided in two, the organizers, by and large young folks who had been sleeping there for a long time, opposite people that had kind of jumped onto the cause who didn’t seem as interested in it as they did in the free food and the scene. So, the park is quite small, yet there’s a lot of power coming out of that small space.

Occupy Wall Street At Times Square, New York City
World Wide Day Of Protest, October 15, 2011

AOA: I heard you were contacted by Nationalize Wall Street. What does nationalize Wall Street mean?

Some time in the middle of the night I received an email from the Nationalize Wall Street Organization, asking people to print up a flyer which said Nationalize Wall Street and bring it down to Liberty Park (aka Zuccotti Park) for October 15th. So, on the way that morning, I stopped at the print shop and had about 500 copies made. It speaks to the reallocation of corporate proceeds for the benefit of all of the society. It was interesting to pass them out. I put a stack of them under a rock in a place in Liberty Park, some people thought it was an interesting idea, some people looked quizzically at it and asked what it was about. Later a friend listening to media coverage of OWS, following our visit there, heard a young women report on many people’s signs say “I even saw a Nationalize Wall Street sign.”

AOA: Is there a connection between the action at OWS, your presence and art making?

MK: Just as Wall Street and corporate America have hijacked all the decisions around the distribution of wealth in this country and hijacked all the natural resources in the country and around the world for their profits, they’ve hijacked art in terms of drawing art into an economy of currency where it is only respected if it’s worth an amount a museum or a collector puts on it as a value. So I feel a strong tie, because artists, too, are feeling the drain of resources and the inequity.

Occupy Wall Street At Zuccotti Park, New York City
World Wide Day Of Protest, October 15, 2011

Elliot: I was impressed by MK’s photo. A man at the park, sitting reading the OWS paper. The publication is called OWS journal. He was wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and the photo seemed to capture exactly some unconscious connection between art mythos and the campaign for social justice. It captured the relevancy of political activism, without being didactic or ideological in form. The picture and his form captured the message. To me, part of the message was the importance of art and mythos, not just in the creation of an effective movement, but just as MK was saying, the corporations have captured or appropriated the art world and culture for their own purposes, for profit making purposes, and what the young people down at Zuccotti Park are saying, the energy they carry, is the energy of liberation from those shackles. That very same message is the message I believe Artist Organized Art (AOA) is carrying and that all artists should feel deep within their being to release themselves from the capture of the corporate monolith.

AOA: Both of you took part in the demonstrations at Times Square later in the day. What were your impressions?

MK: It was pretty awesome. We took a train up from the park because we were running late. The marchers were coming up Broadway from Washington Square Park to Times Square. At Times Square there were thousands and thousands of people. I didn’t really expect that number of them. I don’t think the police really expected that number of people. They seemed pretty organized in terms of the number of barricades, but it was mad, high energy, a kind of caffeine high of people chanting and yelling slogans, holding signs cheering sporadically and the solidarity was very strong. What was really impressive about that crowd was the diversity of ages and ethnicity. It was really powerful to be part of that and stand there with a group of people who all felt the same. Down at Liberty Park you get the sense that the movement is small, but being in Times Square it just grew a thousand fold. I’m not sure how many people were there, maybe ten thousand people. The police seemed agitated, yet some were kind. There were a number of arrests not far from where we were standing. Some police on horse back came in a threatening way and kind of riled up a group of people. When the crowd got riled I saw people sit down instead of getting into a frenzy with the police.

Occupy Wall Street At Times Square, New York City
World Wide Day Of Protest, October 15, 2011

Elliot: I’ve been to demonstrations in New York, much larger demonstrations, but there was a familiar flavor. All ages, all economic levels, all joined together with the drum beats and the street chants. The chant that dominated was “Banks got bailed out we got sold out. Banks got bailed out we got sold out.” Everybody resonated with that chant. When we finally were able to move into one of the areas that they allowed people to stand in, they had it all fenced off into different groups so the cross streets and the traffic could flow and we just happened to zip right into the area right in front of the ABC News ticker on the marquis of the ABC News building. The ABC camera unit was set up in the side street taking photos of the crowds. In large blue block letters on the ticker came the headline “Occupy Wall Street Goes World Wide” and a cheer just let out. A roar from the entire crowd spread like wild fire. It was really exhilarating and everybody could feel it and that the world was with us. That is a transcendent moment. My other impression was there were ten thousand people there. It was a being, a sort of a creature with twenty thousand eyes. Everywhere you looked somebody was holding up some kind of a camera taking pictures of other people taking pictures. Every angle, every square inch of its own being was photographed by some device or other whether it was video or photo. I found that to be a curiosity that I had never seen before at demonstrations.

MK: Just to segue I would say there was a lot of art going on there in terms of people taking photographs and videos of there impressions. The creative signs were great. I think the most creative sign I saw was a woman who had an iPad. By hand she had drawn about 20 different slogans. She would periodically put up one of the slogans, then pull it down, go through her list and pick out another one, hold up her iPad. There was a lot of creativity going on there. People voicing and making a point.

Elliot: The white and black Guy Fawkes mask connects not just to the idea of mime, but to the ancient art of masking and drama that, in this case, is symbolic. Its symbolism comes from a movie, an art form that, itself, was taken from comic books. The movie V For Vendetta was derived from a comic book series. The comic book author chose the Guy Fawkes mask as a symbol of resistance and of a resistance fighter, in the movie. That was in the comics and then in the movie, resistance against the Fascist State. So here we have art in the form of masking. Art in the form of comic book serial art. Art in the form of film. All directly impacting the mythos and the inspiration of a generation. A Movement. That is one of my key impressions that will last.

Afterthought:

MK: One really striking thing about being in times square is this movement that is railing against corporate America and the way business has been conducted in this country. People railing about the division between the 1% and the 99% in the middle of times square where the entire crowd is surrounded by huge, tall, giant, flashing billboards that just reek of corporate America and social control. The media that fills our brains with how we should be, or look, or act, or respond, or what we should like. Here was this movement that ended, up after a march, in the center of this and the juxtaposition of the crowd against these billboards was striking.

Elliot: There is no question, Times Square, in and of itself, is a symbol of the excesses of consumerism to the point where “Giant-ism” is experienced. You walk in to an environment of video screens that tower over you from every angle and sky scrapers bombard you with images of consumerism in a way that demands your obeisance. Yet, here thousands of people were putting there wills and their spirits in opposition to that very energy of consumerism and conquest by corporate media. It was quite an impression to make on the media itself and on everyone there.

Occupy Wall Street At Zuccotti Park, New York City
World Wide Day Of Protest, October 15, 2011

Mary Averill (MK Averill) (maryaverillphotography.com) is a mother, artist and social worker based in Western, MA. She worked as photo editor for Christo and Jeanne-Claude ’s installation The Gates, Central Park, and won 1st place for the Lucie IPA Awards in 2005. Selected activities in 2010 are participation FestiwalStzuka 1 Documentacja, Lodz Poland, intermedia performance works at LAB in Western Mass, Emily Harvey Foundation NYC and Scandinavian Performance Festival, Live Action NYC. Appearances throughout 2011 on SWITCH, intermedia for public television out of Holyoke MA syndicated throughout Massachusetts. She is also the organizer of several international photographic workshops.

Elliot Tarry is an anti-war and social justice activist and an inde-media radio producer with the Bread and Roses Show on WXOJ-lp 103.3 in Northampton, Massachusetts (BreadandRosesRadio.wordpress.com). Elliot is also a pagan ceremonialist and a proponent or what he calls the Sacred Earth Paradigm shift in consciousness. His essays on this and other subjects can be found on his website www.SacredEarthZone.com.

Jessica Higgins & Denis Luzuriaga
Intermedia Television, Holyoke Massachusetts

From a full page advertisement in newsprint, depicting the Holyoke studio space
and some of the artists involved with LAB, the experimental
performance gathering behind SWITCH

by Joshua Selman

An interview with the Creative Director, Jessica Higgins and Producer, Denis Luzuriaga, of SWITCH,  a new art for television project being syndicated throughout Massachusetts. The discussion examines global participation in a local media market:

Joshua Selman: Are you returning to public television as a resource for artists?

Jessica Higgins: Yes, it’s a form of art making. On switch I’m trying to bring intermedia together with all the different modalities. Definitely influenced from the event score and intermedia to just allow an open, experimental place. I would say many people doing the performances there have taken the event score and the happening into the twenty first century using technology, producing video art, photography, painting, dance, poetry, conceptual sound, music…

A 7 minute documentary clip on making SWITCH in Holyoke Massachusetts.
The interviews with Jessica Higgins and Denis Luzuriaga
discuss global participation in a local media market.
Video: Artist Organized Art

Joshua Selman: Do you think television is to video as cinema is to film? How is the viewing experience unique to the form? Is Holyoke a public television kind of city?

Denis Luzuriaga: Holyoke doesn’t have a public access channel so it would be great if we could show SWITCH in Holyoke as well, which is where it was created. The viewing experience is different just by the mere knowledge that there’s a chance that someone’s watching the exact same programming at the exact same second. When we do our once a month gathering in the studio to produce the show that we call SWITCH we definitely benefit from being a group and we work off of each other’s energy. There is a very strong collaborative feeling. Everybody gains inspiration from what other people are doing. To document it properly I have to put myself in the mindset of being an audience member.

Jessica Higgins: What’s interesting to me is the element of surprise. To see what happens. It doesn’t always work, but most of the time it hopefully does. I mean I think of so many artists who have been pushed out of their spaces. There’s like this whole air space that’s now becoming available it’s got a lot of potential for artists to do work and put it out there. The production is just a wonderful tool that artists are using.

Joshua Selman: Since you make these episodes for public television, but you also release them on a web channel (www.vimeo.com/channels/switchtv) are you encouraging global participation in a local media event? I heard you have also done intercontinental video chat sessions for local shows?

Denis Luzuriaga: Starting with your local public access television station is the way to go. People tend to overlook more traditional outlets such as public access and jump immediately to Youtube or Vimeo, but it’s a little difficult to try to present material that is relevant to your community in a forum that is designed for billions of people to have access to. The phrase think globally act locally would be very much apropos.

Joshua Selman: I know, Jessica, that you performed with Elaine Summers’ intermedia dance company at Lincoln Center and at Anthology Film Archives. The performances on SWITCH have a bit of a painterly quality as works on video, how did that aesthetic develop?

Jessica Higgins: Switch was such a natural unfolding. I mean we got together and basically experimented with creative ideas and many of the small Fluxus pieces that I grew up doing in the Fluxus Festivals that happened at the Anthology Film Archives and the Judson Church, doing very experimental, improvisational dance in Lincoln Center..

Denis Luzuriaga: Aside from doing the live performances once a month I paint here occasionally. This building is probably at least 150 years old. This space here originally apparently use to be a grocery store. Often during the performances we do, which we call lab we have video projections going on and so the performers may be performing in front of the video projections some people like to have the projection on them.

Joshua Selman: When I go to youtube the interaction is what I would term “webby.” But with, public television, the webby experience is replaced by a different type of focus. In a way the web experience is lonelier. One person focusing on an interface, it lacks the camaraderie of living space. I like to imagine ancient Greek theater with everyone texting and searching for stuff, passing links, commenting on boards and leaving ratings… but, of course, on stone, wood or parchment and by calling out.

Jessica Higgins: Artists being in everyone’s living room. You could switch on the television and have artists doing a short performance piece and have something that’s refreshing and different. I would love to see intermedia and Nam June Paik’s vision of having art in everyday life.. being able to turn on the television and see a short performance piece refresh people’s everyday life in a way that’s special and mysterious and experimental.

Joshua Selman: Denis, do you also have a background in experimental art and television?

Denis Luzuriaga: I used to live in New Jersey and in New Jersey I had a group. We were kind of experimental. We would show up on rehearsal nights, but we didn’t really rehearse because there was nothing to rehearse. We would all show up with outlandish instruments that were prepared or just in whichever way they were modified with effects and we would always try to out do each other with just craziness. So that’s kind of continued up here since I’ve moved up here to Western Massachusetts, we’re in Holyoke right now.

Denis Luzuriaga: The kind of work I do that pays my bills is in the advertising industry. And it is specifically pre production artwork. They call it also storyboards and comps and animatics. When I started out doing it, it was all done by hand marker illustrations on paper and then that slowly transitioned to all digital. It’s still drawn by hand, but it’s drawn on, in this case, a tablet that also doubles as a monitor.

Joshua Selman: What else would you say are aims or goals of making SWITCH?

Jessica Higgins: My father’s intermedia ideas and theories, which he struggled so hard to put out there, I think there was a reason that this culture wanted that.

Denis Luzuriaga: We would love for artists from other parts of the country and artists from all parts of the world not only to collaborate online with SWITCH but also to come to LAB, to come right here to Holyoke and get involved. We want to make connections with other people who have similar sensibilities.

Jessica Higgins: We decided we were going to do this LAB, which became SWITCH down in Holyoke.

Denis Luzuriaga: I mean take a look down this canal here, there are just some beautiful, beautiful scenes. It would lend itself very well to location shooting be it film or still photography or even just subject material for painters or photographers.

Joshua Selman: LAB is your actual performance laboratory? How is it different from SWITCH?

Jessica Higgins: LAB is more of this place that is so wide open that really anything can happen. But when you deal with switch which is something that’s broadcasted you are dealing with a few very loose constraints such a time. I mean we have a 30 minute segment that we need to perform these pieces in, and we want everyone to get a chance to do their piece. Of course this isn’t written in stone and sometimes if vintage Fluxus artists have come along or we’ve had a few guest artists to SWITCH that are very well known and structures vary a little bit in that case.

Joshua Selman: Holyoke is a very unique place to be doing this isn’t it?

Denis Luzuriaga: When I moved up here I didn’t really know much about this area. I didn’t know about Holyoke at all. Physically it’s a very interesting city. There’s a new building that’s being built here in Holyoke and they call it this High Performance Computing Center. It’s going to house some of the most powerful computers in the world. One of the reasons they’re building a center here in Holyoke is because of the fact that the electricity that’s available to them is green electricity. It’s all hydro-electric. It’s just one block in that direction.

Joshua Selman: Jessica, your father, Dick Higgins, was not only a founder of Fluxus, but he coined the term intermedia as it applies to contemporary art. You also worked with Elaine Summers who is considered preeminent for intermedia as applied to dance and movement. Are you working with your those theories at LAB?

Jessica Higgins: Yes I’m trying to bring together an open space to experiment with intermedia.

Joshua Selman: How does Holyoke measure up as an enclave?

Denis Luzuriaga: Holyoke is definitely the most exciting environment, that people could come to, to collaborate in projects. For example, there’s Bring Your Own Restaurant that happens here in Holyoke. People show up here on the canals and they bring tables and tablecloths and linens and real plates and some people even dress up and of course there’s no money exchanged and that is another community driven event as an outdoor restaurant. The people who attend are artists, they’re business people, they’re politicians. That is an artist organized event.

Joshua Selman: Who thought of going back to television in the age of the streaming media server?

Jessica Higgins: When I saw Denis working it reminded me that Nam June wanted to put intermedia on TV in everyone’s living room. It was a natural leap to ask Denis to put LAB on TV as a show called SWITCH.

www.vimeo.com/channels/switchtv
Public television episodes of SWITCH are available on demand

www.vimeo.com/​groups/​switchtvextra
Extra SWITCH content only available online

Jessica Higgins, Creative Director of SWITCH: American artist, lives and works in New York and Massachusetts. Formative dance studies at Juilliard and Joffrey. Daughter of Fluxus Founders Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles. She has direct experiential knowledge of Fluxus, having early formation in that culture by way of the original members and by participation in historic Fluxus events. She is a regular correspondent for Artist Organized Art and the Creative Director of ‘Switch’ a local access television series of performance and intermedia out of Western Massachusetts. Her works and performances have exhibited in numerous countries.

Denis Luzuriaga, Producer of SWITCH: visual artist working in Western Massachusetts. He combines video, painting, and sound in what can be termed “sense-scapes.” His latest work “Temporis” is a two channel video and sculptural installation. Temporis is installed in a 150 year old mill building along the Connecticut River. Denis exhibits his work in galleries, exhibition spaces, and works with outsider artists performing irreverent versions of yester-year avant-garde such as Kurt Schwitters’ “Ursonata” electrified.

Nam June Paik: A seminal pioneer of video art, closely associated with Fluxus and intermedia, during the New Year’s Day celebration on January 1, 1984, he aired Good Morning, Mr. Orwell, a live link between WNET New York, Centre Pompidou Paris, and South Korea. With the participation of John Cage, Salvador Dalí, Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Merce Cunningham, Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, George Plimpton, and other artists, Paik showed that George Orwell’s Big Brother hadn’t arrived. In 1974 Nam June Paik used the term “super highway” in application to telecommunications, which gave rise to the opinion that he may have been the author of the phrase “Information Superhighway”. “The building of new electronic super highways will become an even huger enterprise. Assuming we connect New York with Los Angeles by means of an electronic telecommunication network that operates in strong transmission ranges, as well as with continental satellites, wave guides, bundled coaxial cable, and later also via laser beam fiber optics: the expenditure would be about the same as for a Moon landing, except that the benefits in term of by-products would be greater.”

Dick Higgins: A composer, poet, printer, and early Fluxus artist. Higgins was raised in Worcester, Massachusetts. His daughter, Hannah Higgins is the author of Fluxus Experience, an authoritative volume about the Fluxus movement. Her twin sister, Jessica Higgins, a New York based intermedia artist closely associated with seminal curator Lance Fung, late Fluxus gallerist Emily Harvey and The Artists Museum’s and Construction In Process, performed and collaborated as a youth in original Fluxus related events. Dick Higgins 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. His most notable contributions include Danger Music scores and the Intermedia concept to describe the ineffable inter-disciplinary activities that became prevalent in the 1960s. He was an early and ardent proponent and user of computers as a tool for art making, dating back to the mid 1960s, when Alison Knowles and he created the first computer generated literary textes.

Elaine Summers: A founding member of the workshop-group that would form the Judson Dance Theater and significantly contributed to the interaction of film and dance, as well as the expansion of dance into other related disciplines, such as visual art, film, and theater. She furthermore fostered the expansion of performing dance in new, often outdoor locations. Her movement approach Kinetic Awareness offers a comprehensive perspective on human movement and dance. Summers worked intensively with film and its inclusion in live performance. Her learning of filmmaking and her experiments at Judson finally led to her own intermedia presentation Fantastic Gardens in 1964. In 1971 the Elaine Summers Dance & Film Company premiered Energy Changes. The piece went into full premiere in 1973 at the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, including an early use of video showing dancers located in other parts of the garden, in collaboration with Davidson Gigliotti, composers Philipp Corner and Carman Moore, recorded on video by Nam June Paik.

LAB: A monthly gathering in Holyoke, Massachusetts or alternative locations where experiments with action and intermedia are shared by a local community of artists with guests from around the world. The LAB sessions are used as the basis for the creation of the show SWITCH.

Holyoke is a city in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States, on the banks of the Connecticut River. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city was named after Elizur Holyoke, who explored the area in 1660. One of the first planned industrial communities, Holyoke bears the nickname “Paper City”

Bring Your Own Restaurant (BYOR): Do it yourself fine dining on the streets of Holyoke. A plein air potluck held every other Friday, 7pm start, rain or shine and from Spring until late Fall. All are welcome. If you would like to join us, bring a dish of something edible to share, your own plate, chair, utensils, etc. and we will enjoy the lovely view in downtown Holyoke with good company. Bringing your own table is recommended, but if you are solo there is always space at someone else’s table. We will have a couple of chairs on hand for those without access to cars. We would like this to be a trash-free event, so please do not bring disposable plates or other items that will end up in the landfill! Dress to impress or dress to de-stress. No reservations