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Rhys Chatham & Angie Eng
At The Kitchen, NYC
Guitar Trio At Flywheel, Easthampton MA

Angie Eng and Rhys Chatham: Echodes is an audio visual performance with noise guitar
by minimal composer Rhys Chatham and experimental video artist, Angie Eng
October 15 and 16, 2010 at The Kitchen, New York City

By Jessica Higgins

From her time in the early 1990’s as an organizer and driving creative voice behind The Poool, known for performances in New York City’s Knitting Factory, Roulette, Clocktower Gallery, Postmasters Gallery, Artists Space, internationally in Tokyo and culminating in performances at diverse venues such as CBGB’s, The Kitchen, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rutgers University, Angie Eng’s multi-media works have contained a curiosity of symbols, processes and intermixed layers flowing between conceptual and aesthetic combinations that have finally caught my full attention.

Left: CBGB’s, a club at 315 Bowery, NYC became a forum for The Ramones, Misfits,
Television, the Patti Smith Group, Mink DeVille, The Dead Boys, The Dictators,
The Fleshtones, The Voidoids, The Cramps, Blondie, The Shirts, and Talking Heads
Right: The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC)
is a multi-venue arts center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York

After seeing her recent performance with Rhys Chatham at The Kitchen, I’ve been convinced of her original seriousness regarding her position as a feminist media artist in a manly media world leaning towards artists like Matthew Barney, Gary Hill, Bill Viola or Nam Jun Paik. Since the outset Angie has seen herself as a beneficiary of feminist media pioneers such as Joan Jonas, Steina Vasulka, Laurie Anderson, Charlotte Moorman and others, …take Mary Lucier. Also, though we only worked together more recently, Angie has been a personal friend who I met through strong links well over a decade ago.

Angie Eng peforming Echodes with Rhys Chatham
at The Kitchen, October 15, 2010, New York City

In 2007, I had the pleasure of working with Angie on her project at EyeBeam in Chelsea, a few blocks from The Kitchen. Eyebeam is an organization focusing on supporting research & development, production, education and public programs for artists, hackers, designers, engineers, graffiti artists, creative technologists and the general public. Because Angie also has a deep background in pedagogy, art therapy and social work, Eyebeam saw fit to Grant her a teaching program. Her project extended intervening public and private spaces to young people disinterested in school, giving them a chance to structure works for the streets. It also introduced the youth to pre-existing models of event based art, such as those by Fluxus Artists of the early 60’s and 70’s, as this is a specialty, this was mainly where I came in.

Rhys Chatham (trumpet) performs Echodes at The Kitchen, Oct. 15, 2010, New York City

In 2008, having survived Tompkins Square Riots, 9/11, the local plutocracy, mono-industry, mass migration to Williamsburg and other recent NYC annoyances, Angie bailed and became an ex-pat with a move to Paris, a city, which by comparison is devoted to the legacy of its communities, selling her furniture on the street and preparing herself with French classes. I was sorry to see this wonderful artist leave, but realized many artists were migrating during this time. I hoped I’d see more of Angie’s work down the line, or maybe in Europe one day, but for now it was our loss.

UAPD Street Eat, by Angie Eng collaborating with NYC artist, Jessica Higgins and students
Vietnamese artist, Rich Streitmatter-Tran led RMIT University students in Ho Chi Minh City
The groups conducted actions on themes related to private behavior in public space and
the filters prompted by mobile technologies and their impact on privacy in public urban sites

So it was to my pleasant surprise when I heard from Angie that she would return from Paris to New York’s’ premier performance space, The Kitchen, performing a major media work with none other than a founding curator of The Kitchen and an archetype of Downtown New York, Rhys Chatham. By leaving the city, miraculously Angie was now collaborating at its core.

Photo: Vintage Rhys Chatam, Video: Guitar Trio Performed with Thurston Moore,
Lee Renaldo, David Daniell, Kim Gordon, Colin Langenus, Alan Licht, Robert Longo,
Byron Westbrook, Adam Wills, Electric Guitars – Ernst Brooks III, Electric Bass
Jonathan Kane, Drums, Recorded live Jan-27, 2007. Taken from “Guitar Trio Is My Life!”

Briefly, Rhys Chatham began his musical career as a piano tuner for La Monte Young and harpsichord tuner for Glenn Gould. He studied with Morton Subotnick and was a member of Young’s group, The Theater of Eternal Music, during the early 70’s. He also played with Tony Conrad in The Dream Syndicate. In 1971 Rhys became the first music director at The Kitchen. He produced concerts of Maryanne Amacher, Robert Ashley, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Fred Frith, Robert Fripp, Arto Lindsay and John Lurie, and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth later played in his ensemble. He also worked closely with Robert Longo and Joseph Nechvatal.

Angie Eng peforming Echodes with Rhys Chatham
at The Kitchen, October 15, 2010, New York City

Rhys Chatham’s serious music brought in influences by The Ramones in a wider sensibility known as No Wave. The sensibility emerged in 1978 along with one of his most famous works, Guitar Trio, performed around downtown Manhattan with an ensemble that included Glenn Branca and Nina Canal. Band of Susans began their careers in his ensembles and later performed a cover of “Guitar Trio.” In 1983 he began performing with the trumpet and his more recent works explore improvisatory amplified and circuit bending trumpet solos to which we were amply treated at The Kitchen.

Rhys Chatham (trumpet) rehearsing Echodes at The Kitchen, October 15, 2010, New York City

The oddest coincidence took place a week before Angie’s appearance. I was out and about on a Saturday night in Easthampton Massachusetts with Erika Knerr who runs New Observations Magazine. We went over to Flywheel, “the” collective experimental performance venue of Western Mass. At Flywheel, Erika ran into an ex-neighbor from Greenpoint Brooklyn, none other than Thomas Lail of soundBarn & Albany Sonic Arts Collective, who had moved to Troy N.Y., home of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and EMPAC. Tom said he had moved up there to teach experimental music and that he was in Easthampton to perform, of all works, Guitar Trio by Rhys Chatham. The ensemble was going on in about 20 minutes.

Left: The Kitchen Today (1985-Present) The Kitchen moved uptown to 512 West 19th Street
to begin the spring 1986 season and subsequetly purchased the space in 1987
Right: Flywheel, a collectively run, not-for-profit space, aims to build community and give
artists of all types the opportunity to craft, practice, and perform their work
located at historic Old Town Hall, Easthampton MA

I decided to stay to hear them and it turned out that Tom was also attending Rhys Chatham and Angie Eng at The Kitchen in NYC the next weekend. It was a very rich evening at Flywheel, not only was Guitar Trio a great performance of a vintage No Wave work by The G3 Ensemble with Thomas Lail, Tara Fracalossi, Patrick Weklar, Matt Ernst, Holland Hopson, Ray Hare, guitars; Eric Hardiman, bass and Matt Weston, drums, but it was complete with the original projections for music by Robert Longo. Opening for this, we were treated to a rare performance by Christoph Heemann of his impressive ear-movie-esque performance in drones, musique concrete and surrealist sound. I wondered what Angie would be bringing to The Kitchen, next week, with her own work in projected media for sound, music and a performance by Rhys Chatham himself.

Albany Sonic Arts Collective (ASAC) + SoundBarn 10.9.10 FLYWHEEL EASTHAMPTON, MA
performing Guitar Trio, by Rhys Chatham, Musical Direction by Thomas Lail

Guitar Trio is a challenging piece using high amplitude to push the envelope of what one can endure sonically, of where hearing becomes tactile and of how we can literally be pierced by sound waves. It seemed very appropriate at Flywheel, as a venue in Massachusetts, because it has the energy of some of the most important raw early venues such as those I associated with Angie’s early years in The Poool and probably the early years for Rhys Chatham as well. Now at The Kitchen, which itself has gone from being a raw venue (it was literally the kitchen of the Mercer Arts Center when it started) to the polished upscale venue it is today, I am wondering about the evolution of No Wave and Downtown culture surviving and growing in Chelsea.

Angie Eng peforming Echodes with Rhys Chatham
at The Kitchen, October 15, 2010, New York City

Finally, later that week at The Kitchen in New York City, I attended the evening of music by Rhys Chatham with performed visuals by Angie Eng. Personally, I found that Angie’s work had gone far beyond anything I had seen her do before and certainly beyond her work with The Poool. I could also see more immersive and purposeful use of symbols and concept in the work, which achieved a stunning quality while remaining thought provoking, going all the way and beyond as picture for today’s music by Rhys Chatham. Would it have worked for Guitar Trio, probably Angie would have done something else and I would love to see that, but Robert Longo’s imagery is still very riveting and fits Guitar Trio like a tailored business suit. However, the new approach that Rhys Chatham is taking, involving more artists, syndicating his works and going beyond his own hit recipes, made for an evening with plenty of edge to it. For me it was a rare and surprising week filled with the music of an artist who has quietly been organizing conditions of art making for many years and making a permanent impression doing so. At the end of the concert I was quite stunned and found it difficult to prepare myself to go.

An early version of Echodes: Rhys Chatham and Angie Eng, Paris 2009

The Kitchen today has modernized and has a polished appeal associated with the times. It still offers a valuable slice of our postmodern culture. I remember the old Kitchen when it was in SoHo. In those days I was a youngster, lucky to be stomping around the place. The Fluxus concerts held there resembled a chaotic whirl, but I still see the black bowler hats of Olivetti and a floor covered in foam pillows up front for a crowded space.

Rhys Chatham began his musical career as a piano tuner for avant-garde pioneer La Monte Young as well as harpsichord tuner for Gustav Leonhard, Rosalyn Turek and Glenn Gould. He soon studied under electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick and minimalist icon La Monte Young and was a member of Young’s group, The Theater of Eternal Music, during the early seventies; Chatham also played with Tony Conrad in an early version of Conrad’s group, The Dream Syndicate. In 1971, while still in his teens, Chatham became the first music director at the experimental art space The Kitchen in lower Manhattan. His early works, such as Two Gongs (1971) owed a significant debt to Young and other minimalists. His concert productions included experimenters Maryanne Amacher, Robert Ashley, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, and early alternative rockers such as Fred Frith, Robert Fripp, Arto Lindsay, and John Lurie. He has worked closely with visual artist/musician Robert Longo, particularly in the 1980s, and on an experimental opera called XS: The Opera Opus (1984-6) with the visual artist Joseph Nechvatal. Compositions from the late 1970s and early 1980s By 1977, Chatham’s music was heavily influenced by punk rock, having seen an early Ramones concert. He was particularly intrigued by and influential upon the group of artists music critics would label No Wave in 1978. That year, he began performing Guitar Trio around downtown Manhattan with an ensemble that included Glenn Branca, as well as Nina Canal of Ut. During this period, he wrote several works for large guitar ensembles, including Drastic Classicism, a collaboration with dancer Karole Armitage. Drastic Classicism was first released in 1982 on the compilation New Music from Antarctica, put together by Kit Fitzgerald, John Sanborn and Peter Laurence Gordon. It was also included on the 1987 album that also included his 1982 composition Die Donnergötter (German for “The Thundergods”). Members of the New York City noise rock band Band of Susans began their careers in Chatham’s ensembles; they later performed a cover of Chatham’s “Guitar Trio” on their 1991 album, The Word And The Flesh. (This parallels the way that members of fellow NYC noise rockers Sonic Youth began their careers in Branca’s ensembles; Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth did play with Chatham as well.) Chatham began playing trumpet in 1983, and his more recent works explore improvisatory trumpet solos; these are performed by Chatham himself, employing much of the same amplification and effects that he acquired with the guitar, over synthesized dance rhythms by the composer Martin Wheeler. His 1990s recordings in this style saw release on Ninja Tune Records as the compilation Neon.

Angie Eng is a media artist who works in video, installation and time-based performance. Eng was born in 1969 in San Francisco California. She was trained as a painter (UC Santa Barbara) in the post-classical tradition. She moved to New York City in 1993 and felt disconnected with the painting medium and soon discovered time based arts. During this time she became involved in the downtown electronic arts scene where she experimented with video sculptures, installation and with live video. (SoundLab, Fakeshop, Unity Gain,Pseudo Projects, PS 1 Clocktower Gallery) She collaborated on numerous video performance projects, including The Poool a live video performance group she co-founded and co-directed with Nancy Meli Walker and Benton Bainbridge in 1996-1999. She currently has a few video/music performance collaborations with Rhys Chatham (Echodes), Pascal Battus (Tremorrag) and a new women’s guitar video band (in the works!) 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 and Experimental Intermedia. 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. 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. She has worked with composers, dancers, theatre, sound and video artists including: Ron Anderson, Rhys Chatham, Vincent Epplay, Yuko Fujiyama, Jon Giles, Andy Grayton, Jason Kao Hwang, Simon Hostettler, Jessica Higgins, Hoppy Kamiyama, Gabriel Latessa, Zach Layton, Okkyung Lee, Jarryd Lowder, Matthew Ostrowski, Jean Jacques Palix, Zeena Parkins, Ludovic Poulet, Liminal Projects, Kyoko Kitamura, David Linton, Thierry Madiot, Geoff Matters, Ikue Mori, Pauline Oliveros, Jane Scarpantoni, Peter Scherer, Jim Staley, Satoshi Takeshi, 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 and works in New York and Paris.

Thomas Lail, Associate Professor of Art at Hudson Valley Community College is a visual artist and musician. He has exhibited drawings, collages and installations at: ArtCologne, Germany; Galeria Jan Koniarka, Trnava, Slovakia; now&then, London, U.K.; Smack Mellon Gallery, Brooklyn and numerous locations in the Capital District. He has been an artist in residence at NO.W.HERE studios in London, UK and has performed music with Lukomski/Majer/Lail and solo in New York City and the Capital District.

The Poool: Striving to form an all female video performance group, Nancy Meli Walker approached Angie Eng in the summer of 1995. Days later, a phone call from Benton Bainbridge who Meli Walker collaborated with in 77 Hz (a live video ensemble) prompted them to eliminate the sex criteria and start The Poool. Their first gig was the day after Benton escaped San Francisco and they “jammed” at Sound Lab, Chinatown. During the time The Poool was formerly known as The Pool with 2 o’s they performed at The Knitting Factory, Roulette, The Clocktower Gallery, Postmasters Gallery and Artists Space. As The Poool with 3 o’s, they went international to Tokyo, Japan as well as performing at local venues: The Kitchen, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rutgers University.

soundBarn is the experimental music duet of Thomas Lail and Patrick Weklar.

The soundBarn is a project of artist/musician Thomas Lail and artist/gallerist Tara Fracalossi and is located on what was once Heald Orchards in Valatie, New York.

Albany Sonic Arts Collective is a grassroots organization located in and around Albany, NY dedicated to building a thriving community of listeners and performers of music that exists outside of traditional boundaries with a special emphasis on forms that stress freedom and exploration of new ideas.

The Kitchen: Looking for a way to present their work to a public audience, Steina and Woody Vasulka rented the kitchen of the Mercer Arts Center (1971-1973,) in the former Broadway Central Hotel. The Vasulka’s, with help from Andy Mannik, opened The Kitchen as a presentation space for video artists on June 15, 1971. Later that year, the Vasulka’s added music to their programming and named Rhys Chatham the first music director. The Kitchen continued their eclectic programming at the Mercer Arts Center until the summer of 1973 when they began planning to move to 59 Wooster Street. In August 1973 the building that housed the Mercer Arts Center collapsed, making this decision final. The Kitchen moves to SoHo (1973-1986) The 1973-1974 season started in The Kitchen’s new location at the corner of Wooster and Broome streets in the former LoGiudice Gallery Building. During its time on 59 Wooster Street The Kitchen emerged as New York’s premiere avant-garde and experimental arts center. In addition to a performance space, a gallery and video viewing room were established at this location. The Kitchen Today (1985-Present) The Kitchen moved uptown to 512 West 19th Street to begin the spring 1986 season and subsequetly purchased the space in 1987.

Flywheel, a collectively run, not-for-profit space, aims to build community and give artists of all types the opportunity to craft, practice, and perform their work in an environment where creativity is valued over profit. Volunteer-run and governed by consensus, Flywheel believes that art and information should be equally accessible and affordable to all people. In the spring of 1998, Cindy Bow and Helen Harrison founded Valley Arts and Music Alliance (VAMA), a grassroots collective in which artists would help each other produce free, all- ages shows that reflected the their own creative visions rather than the values of the music industry establishment. VAMA attracted like-minded people, most of whom were already doing similar things in their own homes, church and dorm basements, record stores, VFW halls, and any other place they could find. Together the group produced over two-dozen shows through December of 1998, when a friend and supporter found a permanent space in Easthampton – a long-vacant cabinet store owned by a local doctor. As word of the space spread, more people joined, and Flywheel was born. Our doors opened in March of 1999. Since then, the unique expressions of countless artists continue to transform the space from day to day. In 2007, we decided to leave our home of 8 years at 2 Holyoke St. and relocate to Easthampton’s historic Old Town Hall. Over the years, some old friends have moved on while new ones have joined us, but the vision remains the same.

EMPAC: The Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) is a multi-venue arts center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, which opened on October 3, 2008. The director of EMPAC is Johannes Goebel. He was previously the director of the Institute for Music and Acoustics, which he founded at the Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany. EMPAC’s curators are Helene Lesterlin (Dance), Kathleen Forde (Visual Arts), and Micah Silver (Music and Sound Art). The building is named after Curtis Priem, co-founder of NVIDIA and graduate of the RPI Class of 1982, who donated $40 million to the Institute in 2004.

Jessica Higgins is an American artist, who 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. B.A. from Suny, New York. Attended Art Students League and Parsons School of Design. “My work is primarily conceptual intermedia using action, dance, installation and visuals.”

Nuit Blanche, Toronto, 2010
Reunion 2010 @ Reyerson Theatre

A prepared  chessboard positioned under a film and rigged with
electronic sensors to project  play-by-play live interaction on the screen itself.
photo: Jessica Higgins

Jessica Higgins
Alison Knowles

“Nuit Blanche was originally conceived in Paris, France in 2002, in an attempt to bring contemporary art to the masses in public spaces. Now universally translated as ‘Sleepless Night’, Nuit Blanche brings more than a million people to the streets of Paris every year. In 2005, Paris organizers contacted the City of Toronto’s Special Events office with an invitation to join the ranks of approximately six other European cities producing similar all-night events. The international success of Nuit Blanche continues to build each year and has expanded its reach beyond Paris to Brussels, Rome, Bucharest, Riga, Madrid, La Valette, Portugal, Tokyo, Montreal and Leeds – each offering its own version of the all-night art extravaganza.”

Takako Saito’s chess game.
32 glasses of different wines each representing a chess piece.
photo: Jessica Higgins

The organizers of our all-nighter in Zone B at the Ryerson Theatre were very good to us, arranging limousines, planes, hotels, tours and gala evenings. Our all night event, Reunion 2010, joined in the 5th Annual, which, this year, took place in Toronto on October 2nd, from 6:57 PM until sunrise. Reunion was one of many events that took place in different zones of Toronto, but this one had its unique twist. “Reunion with Marcel Duchamp, John Cage and Teeny Duchamp had previously been done at Toronto’s Ryerson Theatre, Gerrard St. East, in 1968. This year was to be a site-specific comment on the original for the Nuit Blanche 2010 nocturnal marathon.

David Behrman and Gordon Mumma, wove flute, violin and electronic sounds
to accompany every move of a chess game.
photo: Jessica Higgins

Toronto was the first North American city to fully replicate the Paris model, and has inspired similar celebrations throughout North America, including San Francisco, New York, Miami and Chicago.

However, using adaptation rather than replication, Reunion 2010, the all night event at the Ryerson Theatre, re-framed the classic film of Duchamp and Cage playing chess, with real time encounters viewed on a huge screen by the Ryerson Theatre audience. Prepared  chessboards were positioned under the film and rigged with electronic sensors to project  play-by-play live interaction on the screen itself. The art historical genre was bent into participation cinema, blending  the paradigms  high-art meets turn-based-strategy with paradigms normally associated with pop, such as from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, to the utilitarian, like extreme fat burning videos, audience participations included actions, invectives and frequent prize fight chants such as “take it with the queen!”

Takako Saito and Larry List sit on an on stage couch watching
the participation cinema of interactive electronic chess.
photo: Jessica Higgins

It was unusual to structure a return to experimental art in the context of a 12-hour city-wide event with a mandate to make contemporary art accessible to large audiences. While the festival inspires dialogue and engages the public to examine its significance and impact on public space, Reunion 2010 required an installed base of connoisseurs, and, with little surprise, Toronto did not let us down. Along a certain curatorial tradition, Nuit Blanche is both a “high art” event and a free populous event that encourages celebration and community engagement. Though usually in forms more easily assimilated by today’s metro-tourist.

By contrast to the “free concert of contemporary music” two long-standing composers who had worked with John Cage, namely David Behrman and Gordon Mumma, wove flute, violin and electronic sounds to accompany every move of a chess game. Without the game dynamics there were few contours to shape the event.  However, even this became predictable, therefore chess masters, one from the U.S. and the other from Canada, paused in their game for the passionate intervention of Malcolm Goldstein sounding his iconoclastic violin (nearly in half) for more than an hour.

William Anastasia and Dove Bradshaw, Reunion 2010 at the Ryerson Theatre re-framed the
classic film of Marcel Duchamp and John Cage playing chess,
with real time encounters viewed on a huge screen.
photo: Jessica Higgins

Other intervening performances included ours, of “Loose Pages”.  This performance features different types of handmade paper positioned on the body for sounding by each motion. The garment by Alison Knowles, made entirely out of paper, is in seven parts corresponding to leaves “torn from the pages of…” going from hat to slippers to leg covers and wings as arms.  Artist, Jessica Higgins, is dressed by Fluxus Founder Alison Knowles in the paper garment and becomes a living sculpture, dancing slowly on a low platform under a floodlight. She is sounded and guided by Alison Knowles. Because of the real relationship between Mother and Daughter which exists when we two artists meet to perform the work, our presence touches on very primary aspects of cultural adaptation, such as dressing rituals between mothers and daughters in ancient and contemporary societies.

Takako Saito brings art into everday life using a wearable chess set.
photo: Jessica Higgins

Toronto’s Scotiabank Nuit Blanche has wholeheartedly embraced principals of art into everyday life, though the reverse was still at its best in Takako Saito’s process work as chess game. Her approach was to cross euro-centric categories of sophistication by activating 32 glasses of different wines each representing a chess piece. This work was performed by high end pro-chess masters, who found temptation a new opponent as the game wore on. Alternatively, William Anastasi and Dove Bradshaw’s game design used hors d’ouevres as chess pieces. The edible artifacts were consumed as the game proceeded.

Jessica Higgins performing Loose Pages with Alison Knowles
photo: Jessica Higgins

The ambitious, if somewhat iconoclastic, red-eye art-shift was successfully curated by Sarah Robayo Sheridan who arranged the grand proscenium stage into a gracious interplay of events over a long night.  As energy flowed from infinite supply, David Behrman wrapped things up with a long Cage performance that began at 5:30 am, leaving all of us sleepless.

In And Out The Window
Fluxus-Plus Museum, Potsdam 2010

Alison Knowles, In And Out The Window, Fluxus-Plus Museum, Potsdam, 2010

Alison Knowles

From:  “Alison Knowles”
To:  “Joshua Selman”
Subject: Potsdam to Lodz
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2010 22:05:34 -0400

Even though these events took place back to back in June and in another country Artist Organized Art was in full flower. AOA was present first of all in Potsdam where I had a two person exhibit with my friend Ann Noel who was for years partner to Emmett Williams. Our show was titled ‘In And Out The Window.’ I provided the windows, 4X8 foot open frames to walk through that had hangings of found objects on strings to be examined and sounded as one passed through in an leparello or accordion style installation that diagonaled through the huge factory space under vaulted ceiling with skylights.

Alison Knowles “Illiad Oddities” found object panel with Greek text concerning voyages,
cyanotype and Homer’s text by hand, 135×280 cm. In And Out The Window, Potsdam 2010

Ann’s work is straightforward art, framed and hanging on the wall. You could just stand there and admire beautifully organized diary panels in full color, really large. The painting consisted of what people were saying to each other on a given day. Each speaker had a different color strip with letters in english in black. It was intermedia and very fine, to read a painting. A key listed the speakers and the works covered three walls. She also did a performance cooking up something totally inedible but fun to see and smell. Some ate it but the museum (the Fluxus+ Museum in Potsdam) was very crowded at the opening. The director Heinrich Liman seemed very pleased with the transformation of his cement manufacturing company factories into one huge museum on the outskirts of Berlin. It had been his dream that he would do this when he retired. One could sit outside the cafeteria of the museum and feel fresh spring air over cold wine. I wanted to see more of him.

Alison Knowles, In And Out The Window exhibition detail,
diagonal walkthrough environment with xerox and film on laid paper,
Fluxus-Plus Museum, Potsdam 2010

Ann and I trained over to Lodz in Poland to be part of the Lodz Biennale. This was a terrific event titled ‘The Mad Hatters Tea Party’ which she curated with Ryszard Wasko. I have known him for some years as we all have and knew this would be quite a cup of tea! Fluxus regulars had gathered, including from Europe, Eric Andersen and Ben Patterson. At each serving someone stood up from the table of twelve and did something. There were ten surrounding tables in the huge church hall clustered around our main dining table. I remember Geoff Hendricks changed the color of potatoes to green, Eric passed out quizzical cards, Ben Patterson did some strange actions with ice cream. When my turn came I pulled a bag of red lentils from my bag and threw them in the air aiming at the adjacent tables. We drank wine, enjoyed Ryszard and the show he had up and wished again, I wished I could have seen more of him.

Heinrich Liman, Director in his Fluxus+ t-shirt,
with Fluxus Experience Author, Hannah Higgins and her daughter Nathalie,
In And Out The Window, Potsdam, 2010

Heinrich Liman and Ryszard Wasko survive because they are great people who have made themselves happy by throwing their identity with Fluxus which is today as always a dedicated avant garde if somewhat diminished in numbers.

Please sign up for The Identical Lunch at the MoMA Thursday and Friday of January. That’s my tuna sandwich made to order in the cafeteria at noon. I’ll be there to greet you and take you to the show around the corner one flight up. There will be a formal invite on the internet airing (I like streaming) on Jan. 3 2011.

Alison

–

Ausstellung IN AND OUT THE WINDOW
Alison Knowles, Ann Noël
Ausstellung vom 25.06.- 29.08.2010
Performances Vernissage Freitag, 25. Juni 2010,  19.00 Uhr

IN AND OUT THE WINDOW, der Titel der Ausstellung erinnert an ein Kinderlied, einen Reigentanz. Die Tanzenden reichen sich die Hände, öffnen mit den Armen “Fenster”, nehmen den Nächsten mit. Das Lied endet mit “And see what you can see!” – genau diese Forderung stellt sich in der Ausstellung.

Die amerikanische Künstlerin Alison Knowles zählt zu den Gründungsmitgliedern der Fluxus-Bewegung und erarbeitete zahlreiche Fluxus-Performances wie “The Identical Lunch” (1969) oder “Make a Salad” (1962). Andere ihrer Arbeiten gehören zur Klangkunst oder wurden als Hörspiele konzipiert. In ihrem Werk sucht Alison Knowles die Verbindung zur Natur und deren Wandel. In der jetzigen Ausstellung werden begehbare Rahmen ihre Arbeiten tragen und den Besucher zum Durchschreiten einladen. In der Nachbarschaft gefundene Objekte hängen an Schnüren im Raum. Der ursprüngliche Sinn bleibt wie ein Traum in der Erinnerung. Drei Meter Tuch spannt sich über eine Wand und zeigt  Kuriositäten, ganz im Sinne von Fluxus, als das Leben zur Kunst erklärt wurde.

Ann Noël ist eine vielseitige bildende Künstlerin, die sich mehrmals an Performances und Ausstellungen mit Fluxus-Künstlern beteiligt hat. Sie wird in Berlin von der Emerson Galerie und in Zürich von der Galerie & Edition Marlene Frei vertreten. Für die jetzige Ausstellung lässt sie farbige Foto-Collagen mit ausgewählten Papierfundstücken und Texten (Kinderreimen) lebendige Geschichten erzählen. Die Künstlerin präsentiert neue Mix-Media-Arbeiten und farblich übermalte Namenstafeln aus den Texten ihrer Tagebücher 1989-2001 unter dem Titel “CONFLUX II”. Während der Performance am Freitag, 25. Juni 2010 werden 12 kleine Leinwände als “FLUXUS HORS_D´OEUVRES D´ART” fertig gestellt.

In mehr als 40 Jahren kreuzten und trafen sich die Wege der beiden Künstlerinnen immer wieder. Nun zeigen Sie in ihrer gemeinsamen Ausstellung, wie aus künstlerisch verarbeiteten Fundstücken Collagen und Assemblagen werden. Zahlreiche Werke der Beiden sind Teil der Sammlung des museum FLUXUS+ in Potsdam.

Zur Ausstellungseröffnung am Freitag, dem 25.06. um 19.00 Uhr sind die Künstlerinnen anwesend und performen “Fluxus hors d’oeuvres” und “Fluxus with tools”. Für diese Eröffnungsveranstaltung bittet das Museum um einen Kostenbeitrag von 10,- / ermäßigt 6,- Euro. Ein Besuch der Dauerausstellung bis 22.00 Uhr ist in diesem Eintritt enthalten.

Das Museum enthüllt um 21.00 Uhr anlässlich dieser Vernissage die “Hommage à Emmett Williams”; eine beleuchtete Außenwandinstallation. Die “Little Men” vom Fluxus-Künstler Emmett Williams werden von nun an auf der Havelseite des Museums farbenfroh die Besucher der Schiffbauergasse grüßen und in das Museum bitten.
Weitere Informationen unter www.fluxus-plus.de
Wenn Sie keine Newsletter-Informationen des museum FLUXUS+ mehr haben möchten, senden Sie uns bitte ein “abmelden” an info@fluxus-plus.de. Danke
museum FLUXUS+
Schiffbauergasse 4f, 14467 Potsdam
Fon: (0331) 60 10 89 – 22
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info@fluxus-plus.de / www.fluxus-plus.de

On art;
or the law, blindness, and possible gestures of virginity

Kenny Png, Writer, Director, Soundscape & Visual Designer of ‘The Boxes’

by Artist Jeremy Fernando

The spectre that haunts every work of art, every attempt at a work of art, is that of originality; of whether what one is attempting to do has already been attempted, or even worse, accomplished.  After all, no one wants to be deemed a mere reproducer.

Here, one can hear a trace of an obsession with beginnings, and the fantasy of the original; along with a longing for the aura that surrounds the first, the beginning, and the power it brings with it—of credibility, of authority, of being the source.  Perhaps this is why correction fluid has become indispensable in our stationary drawers: as if by writing over a word, a line, a smudge, putting a layer over it, we can cover it up, erase it completely; as if banishing it from sight will equate to banishing its memory, banishing it from memory.  The underlying logic is that in order for anything to be important, one has to be the first to do it; more importantly, traces of all others have to be wiped away.  In other words, one has to produce; not reproduce.

In some way, this is a hangover of the Enlightenment; specifically with regards to the belief in transcendental Truth(s) and origins.  It is this hang-up over the power that comes with being the first—the author—that lends itself to the societal obsession with virginity, with virgins; a desire to be a virginal experience, the virginal experience.  Along with this fixation of being a primordial experience comes the notion of absolute knowledge; as if being the first means a mastery of the situation.

At the tail end of March 2009, we heard rumbles of this in the controversy surrounding the Wild Rice—a highly-regarded Singaporean theatre company—production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.  The show was given “an advisory rating of ‘16 years and above’ to avoid confusion ‘about its content and underlying messages’ among younger audiences and those who are unfamiliar with the play” by the Media Development Authority of Singapore,¹ ostensibly for having an all-male cast.  Most people presumed that the MDA rating was due to the foregrounding of gender; which either unveiled the performativity of gender, or even highlighted the alleged homosexual undertones of Wilde’s work.  Of course, they completely missed the point.  What was at stake was far higher: the primacy of the author.  By having an all-male cast, Wild Rice was staking a claim for reading—where the text comes into being in and through its reading.

Brendon Fernandez in staged reading of ‘The Boxes’

For, it is not difficult to hear an echo of author in authority; as if the writer of the situation can play at being God—all-seeing, and in full control.  The trouble with authority is that it is always already illegitimate.  For, if something is legitimate, access to it would be open to everyone—governed by the Law.  It is only when something is illegitimate that the authority of a person is required to enact it.  For instance, a death-sentence can only be pardoned by the authority of the sovereign.  In doing so (s)he is going against the legal system which sentenced that person to death; the same legal system that upholds her/ his very sovereignty.  In other words, authority is the very undoing of the Law.  To compound matters, any enactment of the law requires an executor of that law; in other words, a figure of authority.  Hence, authority is both authored by the law, and its very author at the same moment—the hinge on which it operates, and also its very finitude.  However, a foregrounding of its illegitimacy would not only shatter the illusion, but also bring about the collapse of the entire system.  The very source of that authority though—of why someone has authority, and more than that why we grant authority to someone which necessitates our subjectification to that figure who only has the authority due to our self-subjectification—remains outside of reason, remains unknown; remains a secret.

In some way, the question that remains sounds paradoxical: if we posit the importance of protecting the secret (lest everything comes crumbling down), how can it be a secret if everyone already knows what the secret is?

Jo Tan & Rebecca Lee in staged reading of ‘The Boxes’

Here perhaps, we need to turn to the very notion of secrets themselves.  And to do so, let us momentarily draw upon an old tale.  When Isis poisoned Ra, she promised him the antidote in exchange for his secret name, which was the source of all his power.  And when he whispered it into her heart, she felt herself filled with all the knowledge and wisdom of Ra; all the power that came with his name—Amen-Ra.  However, it was not as if no one else knew it; one would have been hard-pressed to find someone who didn’t know the fact that he is Ra.  What this shows is that secrets rarely lie in the content (after all, Amen is merely an affirmation), but in knowing that something is secret, in the gesture of acknowledging that the secret is a secret, that he is indeed Ra.

Perhaps this is the lesson of Andy Warhol.  It was not so much the reproduction itself that is the art, but the very gesture of recognizing the objects to be reproduced.  There is nothing to an old pair of shoes lying around; it was van Gogh’s realization of the possibilities in the singularity of the situation—those very shoes in that moment—that momentarily elevates it to the realm of art.  In this sense, one can posit that both Warhol and van Gogh were authors at that moment of recognition: through their respective media, both of them create a singularity by arresting a particular moment in time.  And since it is a singular moment, it is in some sense always also an original gesture; one that has never happened before, one that is also potentially non-repeatable.  In this manner, one can posit that the artistic gesture is the reification of time itself: the concretization of a moment through a media, as if that moment was real; in other words, the authoring of a moment.

Audience peering through Png’s Plugs

The irony though, is that every gesture is always already a reproduced gesture.  After all, regardless of media, one is capturing a moment, and more precisely, a moment that has passed.  In this sense, all art is a reconstitution of memory.  This is not to say that every act of memory is art; or that every attempt to capture memory is art.  Far from it.

Perhaps here, one might consider the status of forgetting.  Since forgetting happens to one, it is both strictly speaking exterior to one’s cognition, and also beyond one’s control.  Hence, there is absolutely no reason to believe that each act of memory might not bring with it forgetting.  By extension, there is no possibility of knowing if each act of remembering recalls the same memory.  And it is precisely the impossibility of knowing—this unknowability that haunts all knowledge—that gives each situation the possibility of singularity.  Hence, singularity is always already external to the subject; it is the very finitude of subjectivity.

This suggests that singularity, originality—or dare one say the artistic gesture—is found not in a completed, accomplished, work, but rather in the potential forgetting in that work.  In this sense, art is the foregrounding of the possibility of forgetting.  And since it is impossible to foreground what one cannot know, this suggests that art is always already in its praxis, and more than that, it is always already only to come.

Poster for Operation Automaton
Night and Day Gallery: Singapore (19-21 March, 2009)

From 19 till 21 March 2009—about the same time as the controversy over Earnest—Isabel Löfgren, Kenneth Feinstein, Kenny Png, and Jeremy Fernando attempted to think the notion of art as praxis, think the relationality of art and the artist, through different media—sketchings (Löfgren), video (Feinstein), photography (Png), and painting (Fernando)—in an exhibition at Night & Day Gallery entitled ‘Operation Automaton.‘  Löfgren’s work involved the repeated drawing of a Möbius strip, until such point where the body automatically takes over, and cognition fades into the background.  Feinstein’s repeated showing of train-tracks and public housing allowed the viewer to open the relationality between the two seemingly related, but yet unrelated, objects of everyday life.  The individual photographs in Png’s piece were minute, and situated within electric-plugs: whomever wanted to catch a glimpse of them had to squint through the plug; calling into question the notion of seeing, and shifting the position of the viewer from neutral onlooker to active witness.  And in Fernando’s piece, three blank canvasses were left next to headphones: people were free to paint whilst listening to the vastly different genres of music playing on the respective headphones.  In various ways, not only did the exhibition foreground the viewer and the work in relation to art, it calls attention to the gap between the artist and the art itself.

This is an approach to art that acknowledges that part of art always lies outside the person; that at best can only be glimpsed momentarily.  This is art in the precise sense of a craft at its highest level; where it consumes the practitioner, often in ways which are exterior to one’s cognitive ability.  In this sense, art remains invisible to one; at best, it expresses itself through one.

If one can never be sure of the status of one’s act—whether it is reproduced through memory, or whether it is a new act due to a forgetting—every act is then both (n)either a first (n)or a reproduction.  By extension, each time one performs an act, one is both neither a virgin and always already virginal.  This is also a foregrounding of the illegitimacy of authority; one cannot legitimately say whether something is art or not.  In other words, any judgement is based on nothing except the praxis of judging itself; where one cannot have any metaphysical comfort, or certainly, that one is correct (or wrong).  Hence, art lies in its praxis, in each attempt at making something, doing something, practicing one’s craft; at best, all that can be said is that art is a gesture towards the possibility of art.  More than that, whether something ever reaches the realm of art—a reproduction that is not just a reproduction—or remains just another reproduction—not that there is any logical difference between the two—always already remains a secret from us, perhaps until it happens.  And when it does, its reason might still remain unknown to us; which means that all attempts to reproduce the gesture might always only remain a reproduction.

Kenny Png, ‘Plugs’ 
Mixed Media, Operation Automation

And on 23 July, 2010, it was this risk that Brendon Fernandez—who played Algernon Moncrieff in the Wild Rice production—along with Rebecca Lee and Jo Tan ran when they put on a staged reading of Png’s play ‘The Boxes’ at Books Actually.² Even though every performance of a play is also its re-reading, and potential re-writing, what was unique about this occasion was not the absolute absence of the author from the rehearsal process (that is more than common), but the fact that Png was absent even as he was credited as the director of the said reading.  To complicate matters, Png crafted both the soundtrack and video backdrop in a divorced setting from his actors (all of whom rehearsed separately as well).  On 23 July, at 7.30pm—completely blind to the preparations of the others—they began.  What was foregrounded was the primacy of the text, and the reading of the text: in the improvisation that was needed for the actors, music, and video, to speak to and with each other, Png, Lee, Tan, and Fernandez, had to be negotiating not only with the others, but also the text.  Hence, it was a performance not just of ‘The Boxes’ but of reading itself; one that could never be sure of its status as reading, of whether it was a unique performance, or merely the re-uttering of the words that were printed in the book; one that highlighted the lack of grund in all reading, all performance, all attempts at art.

In other words, art is nothing more than a gesture.  And more than that, since art always already remains potentially exterior to the person, there are no artists; there is only the possibility of the gesture.

One that is made in blindness to everything but the possibility of art itself.

Isabel Löfgren, ‘Mobius’
from Automated Sketchings, Operation Automaton

_____

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 Reflections on (T)error, Reading Blindly, and The Suicide Bomber; and her gift of death.  Exploring different media has led him to film, music, and installation art; and his work has been exhibited in Vienna, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Singapore.  He is the editor of the thematic magazine One Imperative, and is also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University.

¹ http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/entertainmentfeatures/view/414049/1/.html

² Kenny Png. ‘The Boxes’ in Jeremy Fernando & Kenny Png. On Happiness. Singapore: Math Paper Press, 14-35.

Books Actually is an independent book store which can be found at 86A Club St, Singapore.  The owners, Karen Wai and Kenny Leck, are renown both for supporting the local arts scene and, more importantly, for having impeccable taste when it comes to literature.  (For more information please see http://booksactually.com/)

Creative Sparks – Brooklyn
Inside The Artist’s Studio

Ted Partin, San Francisco I, 2004

by Eva Mantell

Seeking creative sparks to flick at the doldrums. As always, I want to overdeliver the art goods as I’m defensive about the subject, particularly in front of a general audience. I start from the idea that you, at your core, suspect that most contemporary art is a con. Correct me if I’m wrong. I put in another idea — that you think the very best art is unattainable, practiced by only a few anointed ones, probably long dead, off limits to mortals. A secret practice whose essence can’t be cracked by the clumsy viewer. Whose talent is God-given. Somewhere in between the con and the holy is where I see the best contemporary art and I want to share it with you as directly as possible, and gather some creative sparks for myself in the process. If I bring you inside the artist’s studio you can observe this all firsthand. You’ll be able to see work informally, pinned to the walls, under consideration, unframed, in a jumble. You will be able to ask the artists anything you want. You’ll be able to get up close to art and see what, if anything, happens to you in the process.

Ted Partin, Bushwick I, 2006

The Creative Sparks tour, another in the depARTures series, takes off from the Arts Council of Princeton.  I must say Route 1, the Turnpike and the Verrazano are looking good this morning. Free, clear and almost picturesque, the highways draw us straight to Gowanus, Brooklyn into the courtyard of the Old American Can Factory, and into a really choice parking spot, which frankly makes all seem right with the world. This could be a fine day. Our first meeting is with Diana Cooper, maker of improvised, energetic installations, and she greets us at the door to her studio in her personalized denim work apron. She gets right down to business and shares her project at Jerome Parker High School in Staten Island with us. Cooper remains open, amused and confident as she lets us in on the paradoxically bureaucratic process behind her loose and improvised installation piece: the paperwork, the budget, the haggling, the hours, the travel, including trips to Germany to work with the glass manufacturer, the stories about the teasing workman and the offhand comments made by the students themselves. The piece itself is decentralized, geometrically lumpy, made mostly from zigs and zags bisecting an almost chapel-like series of blue glass windows. Looking around the studio I see a line, in this project and in others: a line that is an energetic, protean little bugger. It can be two or three dimensional. It can turn, wrap around, radiate, droop, about face, streak. The line can mass, reproduce and in increments it builds systems, cities and odd worlds. Cooper has written about playing with that line: “doodling is, I think, an expression of the unconscious, it sometimes captures inner connections and becomes, in its way, a system. Conversely, we might think of some of the graphic systems we are familiar with as society’s unconscious doodling.”

Diana Cooper “Out of the Corner of My Eye,” 2009, 11 ft x 110 ft x 6 in
Wood, MDF, glass, acrylic, epoxy and Nida-Core
Permanent Installation, Jerome Parker Campus, Staten Island, NY

Cooper is a conscientious about her unconscious, and doodles her way into some lovely art situations. Materials like bits of plastic, tubes, pompoms and other stuff that seems just barely dimensional join the parade, accreting into installations that come to look almost like a kind of chunky expanded painting…as much as things project they remain hovering over the walls and floor, relating to the surface planes of paintings. Her colors are very stark and very organized: the high school installation is mainly blues; here in the studio is a wall of photography and ephemera that is mostly orange. Another project is pink and green. It’s a system where all elements are knowable, all colors are knowable. It’s like seeing the ingredients and what comes out of the oven simultaneously. I get the energy, play, connections, and the continuous act of keeping going.

Ellen Driscoll “The Loophole of Retreat,” 1991

We walk upstairs and meet Ellen Driscoll, a ridiculously accomplished woman who chairs the sculpture department at RISD, and has permanent installations up and down the country, including one in the subway at Grand Central. I first saw her work in the ’80’s as a student, so I come to her as a fan, with great curiosity about how it all happens. She greets us with a curiosity about us too, how we live, what we teach, how our lives are put together. Her early works had a hand-made, hand-hewn, historic and literary feel that I have always loved. A linear quality with silhouettes as shadows in stereoscopic projections, with some chunky wooden parts, simple machines. 19th Century literature and history and tragedy. She connected through her process to another time, through piecework, through women’s work, through laborer’s work, to bring out narratives that might have been lost.

Ellen Driscoll “FastForwardFossil; Part 2,” 2009,
installation view, gathered water bottles, glue

In her studio today her realm is now the future, looking back on the present.  The material is found plastic, discomforting and piquing. At ankle height are sections of a miniature dystopian landscape made entirely from those clouded plastic water jugs that Driscoll has collected in a kind of daily penitent’s tour of neighborhood garbage cans. The jugs, now transformed into surprisingly hard-edged geometric shapes, become child-like tableaus of the oil industry and a ravaged environment, with miniature derricks, scaffolds, fallen trees and toppled houses. The reclaimed plastic looks milky and translucent, appealing but perilously so as we know it embodies the story of fossil fuel pollution. The appealing playfulness of the piece combined with its finite message roils me.

Stuart Elster “White Head,” 2009, oil on canvas, 24” X 90”

On the walls are drawings, in blue and black ink, with spills and stains, structures of industry, steel, stairways, memories of certain kinds of dead ends. She unrolls and unfolds walnut oil paintings, with spills and reactions, architectural and sweeping horizontal views of tortured landscapes. There’s a feeling of Romantic ruins, awkward, as I don’t know where to put the beauty and longing I feel in the overall picture of human failure. What to do? Document our failures? Find our place in it? Find our reason to keep going? Our meeting with Driscoll is surprisingly intimate, and it seems the larger questions raised are not going away any time soon.

Stuart Elster “White Head,” Detail, 2009, oil on canvas, 24” X 90”

Things can begin to look a little stark when the blood sugar drops, so maybe we better grab lunch. We go to Ici, on Dekalb, and the small restaurant we step down into, through the felt curtain, is organic, tasty, and seems to hit the spot (except I’m still hungry). As we drive to Long Island City to see Stuart Elster, I ought to eat the take-out muffins I ordered, but I get distracted, so they stay on the floor of the van in a white paper bag. Best to be a bit on edge.

Ted Partin, Bushwick I, 2009

Elster is devoted, intense, pleasantly on edge himself. His paintings are almost excruciatingly conceptual, to the point where I think they must be unphotographable, that’s how specific they are, how untranslatable from themselves they are.  He has taken the humble copper penny as his subject, but his paintings depart quickly from coins, symbols or signs, though if directed by Elster I can see Abe Lincoln’s profile if I squint just right here or there. The paintings are about a painter painting paintings with paint. Think of Seurat, Ad Reinhardt and Jasper Johns with their eyes closed, their minds not being able to shut off making a painting. The practice of painting is offered up as microscopic moments of application, brushstrokes dissected, the rainbow stripped and exposed. Before us is paint, are colors, optics and a physicality so that each brushstroke’s highlights and shadows are scrutinizable too. A strange bonus, these works can be viewed with the lights on or with the lights off and they will perform for you either way. So naked are these canvasses in their conceptuality I think they are in need of an art critic to dress them in language and in theory! I look forward to a show of these works, and here’s hoping I’ll be able to understand the essay that goes with it.

Ted Partin, San Francisco II, 2004

Down the hall we come to Ted Partin’s photography studio. Partin is earnest and open with us, spreading out the photos he has been printing. It’s rare to be near unframed, classic photographs, and to see their scale and sheen. Nothing digital here. In the quiet space of this kind of art (no surveillance cameras, no music, no soundtrack, no interaction) we can stare. Partin stages his large-format black and white portraits knowing that we expect them not to be staged, but as voyeurs, we’re happy to look either way. Here’s an anthropology museum of people and things to look at and then keep looking at. Ambiguity rules the day, as place, gender and ethnicities seem unknowable; as if, if we knew, we’d possess these people, these situations, fully. Their beauty and longing seems real enough. Their sense of themselves seems real enough. Stare away. In the meantime the world has changed. And changed again.

Eva Mantell

originated June 21, 2010

Mark Bloch at Emily Harvey Foundation
New York’s SoHo, 03-25-10

The Art of Storàge
by Mark Bloch

More on The Art of Storage (.pdf)

The Art of Storage was recently seen as part of Mark Bloch’s one man show “Secrets of the Ancient 20th Century Gamers” at Emily Harvey Foundation in NYC March 18 through April 2.