Artist Organized Art Non-Profit Works With Artists & Institutions To Support Artist Organized Media, Events & Cultural Education By Strategic, Collaborative & Financial Means
NEW WORKS • NEW VIEWS • NEW MINDS: Stage One: KATYLAND live at Artist Organized Art Benefit Launch
by Jessica Higgins and Erika Knerr
photography: Denis Luzuriaga
Participating artists: Aimee Xenou, Alicia Renadette, Andy Laties, Andrew Greto, Ann Lewis, Barbara Neulinger, Beth Lawrence, Carl Caivano, Christin Couture, Christine Tarantino, Christopher Blair, Dave Gloman, Dean Nimmer, John Landino, Denis Luzuriaga, Dwight Pogue, Erika Knerr, Fletcher Smith, Jessica Higgins, John Romanski, Joshua Selman, Kathleen Trestka, Katie Richardson, Katy Schneider, Laurie Goddard, Maggie Nowinski, Matt Anderson, Matt Anderson, Nancy Natale, Ninette Rothmüller, Pablo Yglesias, Rosa Guerra, Sarah Valeri, Sue Katz, Susannah Auferoth, Tracey Physioc Brockett, William Hosie, Luzuriaga video includes Ursonate Urchestra
February 20th was an auspicious date for the arts community! That Saturday night, was the first of three parties to benefit Artist Organized Art in which A.O.A. threw a community outreach event, arts network builder, exhibition, performance…did I forget to say fundraiser?
Northampton’s Katy Schneider, a guitarist, singer, songwriter and painter, accompanied by Julie Starr and Caitlin Bosco on back up vocals, Jason Smith on drums andBruce Mandaroon guitar and mandolin. http://www.myspace.com/katyschneider. Also see Katy’s work at www.katyschneider.com
The event featured large projected images by local artists of the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts and hard and soft indie music by Katyland along with some great cover songs, a regional progressive music favorite.
Denis Luzuriaga, a painter and video artist, compiled the projected images: in the dead of winter the crowd was treated to a colorful array of visual artworks, documents and pleasantly dated black and white photos of beach scenes.
le=”text-align: justify;”>The overall effect; “a swirling sound stretched out on the night with projections of art interfacing the viewers” Jessica Higgins
Each element of the event reflected a key component of the AOA mission to support creative independence in the form of self-supporting and self-generating exhibitions through artist organized media, events and cultural education.
The festivities took place at Eastworks a converted warehouse on the river at 116 Pleasant Street in Easthampton. Artists of all kinds and their allies came from neighboring towns as well as the studio and residential community of Eastworks, a loft building community founded by Will Bundy.
The social and experimental quality of the event recalled important artist communities associated with the avant-garde: Black Mountain College during the 1940s and 1950s, the Village and SoHo in the 1960s and 1970s, and California in the 1970s and 1980s. Why not Massachusetts as an internet hub brought together by AOA in the 2010s?
The event represents a significant group effort organized by artists: Susannah Auferoth, Jessica Higgins, Erika Knerr (also representing New Observations, the seminal New York arts magazine that was recently acquired by AOA), Denis Luzuriaga and Joshua Selman. Artist Organized Art is working to improve the quality of life through community culture.
The event isn’t over yet. If you were there and have pictures of the event, send them in to be a part of the record! If the event sounds like fun and you’re bummed you missed it, keep your eyes out for more. AOA is ever eventful.
The success of A.O.A. comes from community support (cultural, logistical and financial), which means everyone is invited to be apart of it, enriching our world by organizing its culture as artists. Benefit parties for Stage Two and Stage Three will be forthcoming.
If you’d like to contribute to Artist Organized Art visit: http://giveback.artistorganizedart.org
Or print out the form below and mail it to us with your kind donation.
#permalink posted by Erika Knerr: 3/10/10 08:16:00 PM
FREESPACE IN THE CITY OF LIGHTS Freespace Exhibition and Performances 59 Rivoli Aftersquat, Paris, December ‘09
‘Do you have a square penis?’ By Swiss-Morrocan
Paris correspondent, participant artist, Angie Eng
The romantic vision of the artist in his solitude, poverty-stricken, hyper-intelligent delusional world, the tabloid reader may even imagine him living and working in a graffitied, Lower East Side 80’s freezing cold moldy squat next to the crack queue. Those were the days, they say… before the real estate boom and diamond skulls. Don’t panic, there are still freezing cold, stinky albeit renovated spaces to produce art for little or no rent (in Paris, that is.) Last December (In the aftermath I refer to as my ‘temporary creative masochistic state’) I plunged myself into heading two weeks of artist organized art in a former squat in Paris.
To rebel against the Christmas consumer rush on Rue de Rivoli, I recruited my most faithful to help run Freespace a series of free concerts, performances, readings and an exhibition based on the theme of public space.
Even though this is rumoured to be the 3rd most visited cultural venue in Paris, I stumbled upon it during an artist tour, 2 weeks after its re-opening as an official, legal space for artists to work and play. This 6-story building sandwiched between the Louvre and Hotel de Ville, includes a dazzling storefront gallery space, 30 open artist studios and a micromuseum. I have to admit my original intent was not to organize a series of art events, but to do a site specific window installation of a faux travel agency selling public space. My arm was twisted and it had been a while since I organized some art events. Et voilà…
Freespace Exhibition and Performances December 8-20, 2009, 59 Rivoli Aftersquat, Paris
Participating artists: A-li-ce, Cecile Babiole, Luc Barrovecchio, Christiane Blanc, Nina Canal, Steve Dalachinsky, Angie Eng, Elizabeth Gilly, HeHe (Helen Evans, Heiko Hansen), Kentaro, Stuart Krusee, Cecile Le Combe, Les hautsdeplafond (Pierre Lutic & Philippe Gautier), Thierry Madiot, Agathe Max, Mectoob, Yuko Otomo, Margarita Papazoglou, Plectrum, Claude Parle, Atau Tanaka
Grace à the city of Paris, the former Bank of Lyon known as Chez Robert on 59 Rivoli was ‘regulated’ and renovated after years of squatter status. Listen to the interview with Swiss-Morrocan one of the head chiefs of the ‘Aftersquat’.
After my eye-opening experience with 59 Rivoli Aftersquat, I decided I would write this article and do a Q/A with 2 other artist run spaces where I had presented work in the last year: La Générale en Manufacture, Sèvres and Les Voutes (affiliated with Les Frigos). I found it would be impossible and almost suicidal to make my own art and even fathom running an artist run place all year round. These artist/organizers are definitely a special breed, a rare species in a time when the collective body decomposed decades ago.
All three spaces are artist collective run, currently government owned, legalized spaces for artists to work and organize events and artists’ residencies. All of them pay for electricity, insurance, water. (In some cases, ‘rent’ and also former collective debts from either unpaid utility bills or renovations) Although they share a similar paradigm of alternative art space, each is unique in their intent and vision of being on the periphery or even outside the inside art world.
I consider Les Voutes to be one of the more beautiful places to make art in Paris, 59 Rivoli to be run by the most friendly and unpretentious artists I’ve ever met and La Générale en Manufacture at Sèvres too new to say NO.
On the side, France still has one of the largest cultural art budgets in the world (2.8 billion in 2009 or $622 per person per year). By the way, the 2009 NEA cultural arts budget in America was 265 million or 86 cents per person per year. However, politics and administration goes hand in hand with government funding. In France, wanting a piece of that pie, artists are suggested to create associations or mini-non profit organizations, sign contracts abiding by city legislation and regulations in order to plan their artistic activities around ‘festivals.’ Count the logos at the bottom of the invites to get an idea of the size of each slice. With these fig
ures, doing independent events 100% artist run in government owned buildings, is to put it frankly, an illusion. Be that as it may, I’m grateful that these spaces exist grace à the Ville de Paris and have not been burned down or sold to luxury housing developments like the City of New York. I’m still not sure if larger cultural budgets change the quality of art, but we can all agree its better to have more than less in the diffusion of cultural practice.
“In my opinion, the art market is a dead donkey covered with flies. It’s made for a bunch of rich happy few.
We always see the same ridiculous official artists promoted through these kind of private circles with no hope of seeing something new…
We do not want to be a part of this private joke.
We expect nothing from others (governement, official organizations, etc.)
We do what we have to and want to do.”
-Pierre Wayser, Les Voutes
Les Voutes, photo by Pierre Wayser
Les Voutes, photo by Pierre Wayser
Les Voutes
Building: 19 rue des Frigos 4 underground train tunnels approximately 1000 sq feet each and a garden Established: 1998 Owner: former owner was SNCF then, le Réseau Ferré and then City of Paris since 2003 Regulated: 2000 Purpose: ‘We decide to create a cultural association (and a garden) to rule the place. First to show our work, then the one from friends…’ Website:http://lesvoutes.orghttp://les-frigos.com Les Voutes Artistic directors: Bruno Herlin and Pierre Wayser Contract terms: We do not receive any kind of funds or money ! We do not ask for money ! We do not want their money ! We do not have to say “thanks”!! We just use some differents networks of international artists and share the expenses.’ Information provided byPierre Wayser
59 Rivoli Aftersquat
59 Rivoli Aftersquat
59 Rivioli Aftersquat
Building: 59 rivoli, 6 stories, plus storefront gallery Squat established: 1999 Owner: Bank of Lyon and then bought by the City of Paris Expulsion by court of law: 2000 Regulated: 2001 (renovated and closed during 2006-2009) Purpose: open studios to public everyday (except Monday) exibition space, artist studios, temporary residencies Association: 15 core members, around 30 artists working in building Website:http://www.59rivoli.org Contract terms: all artists are door greeters for 1 hour /week, each artist pays $160 for utility bills, building closes at 8pm Information provided by:Swiss Morrocan
La Générale en Manufacture, Sèvres
La Générale en Manufacture, Sèvres
Building: original building on rue du Général Lasalle Paris Belleville new location: 60,000 square foot Squat: established in 2005 Owner: National Education Ministry Expulsion by court of law: 2006 Regulated: 2007 relocation to Sèvres Purpose: exibition spaces, wood and metal workshops, photographic studios, temporary residencies Association: 15 official members Website:http://www.la-g.org Art Residency directors: Sylvain Gelinotte and Jérôme Guigue La Générale en Manufacture profile: Painters,VJs, scupltors, conceptual artists, performers, photographers, musicians, video artists, poets, drawers, young or older (mostly in the 30s), french and foreigner nationals (mostly are french speakers), somewhat famous and also perfectly unknown. Contract terms: With the Regional Minister of Cultural Affairs (DRAC): ‘they pay the rent and we run the space for the benefit of our work and visiting artists. Using the space to run a company or renting it forbidden’ Association Rules: $70 per month membership fee to pay for power, internet connection and the insurance that covers everyone Information provided by:Jérôme Guigue
Angie Eng, Paris, January 26, 2010
#permalink posted by Angie Eng: 1/26/10 02:15:00 PM
Bonnie Marranca of PAJ Publications PAJ Founder interviewed in Germantown, New York
Artist Organized Art Interviews Bonnie Marranca, Founder, Publisher and Editor of PAJ Publications/PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. The interview occurred in August of 2008 in Germantown, N.Y.
Bonnie Marranca, with Robert Wilson drawing behind her, Berlin, 2009
interview by Joshua Selman
JS: How did you start PAJ logistically and why did you start it?
BM: PAJ (www.mitpressjournals.org/paj) was conceived in 1975 by Gautam Dasgupta and me while we were studying in the doctoral program at CUNY-the Graduate Center, in New York. We were also critics for the SoHo Weekly News at that time. We had the academic background, but this very lively time in the 70s was a great period for video art, the beginnings of performance art, experimental theatre—such as the work of Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman, Mabou Mines. There were many so things going on . . . Meredith Monk’s work, Philip Glass, new playwrights. We were seeing all of this work, while at the same time having a very traditional theatre background in graduate school. In effect, we had both the traditional grounding and the new aesthetics that we were grappling with as critics. So you could say that we were studying the history of theatre and the repertoire at the same time that the new work was offering its critique.
It also gave us the possibility of having, at our fingertips, the scholars and translators who were really knowledgeable about the dramatic repertoire and the history of theatre. At the same time we came to be friends with several generations of artists in so many different fields. We were not happy with the criticism that was in the major theatre journal of the time, The Drama Review, because it was very descriptive and not analytical. The coverage in The New York Times and comparable magazines and newspapers wasn’t very challenging. There were new art forms, and new ways of making theatre that were really not sufficiently understood or addressed.
left: Drawing of his play Maria del Bosco, by Richard Foreman from PAJ’s Performance Drawings portfolio series. right: PAJ publisher with the playwright Maria Irene Fornes, 2009
We had a different vision of theatre and of criticism at that time. We thought we could make a journal that could become involved with new forms of writing and could deal with the new performance aesthetics as well as having the commitment to dramatic literature. Between the two of us, Gautam and I found a printer, learned editing, production, and worked on marketing, sales, and distribution. We quickly had our own typesetting equipment and did everything in-house. So, from the start we were pretty self-sufficient. We began to hand out flyers at theatres, and worked on getting mailing lists and subscriptions in the universities and in libraries. That’s essentially how we started. The publishing house was never part of any university or organization that provided money or staff.
JS: Can you describe the development of PAJ, and its later involvement with Johns Hopkins University Press and MIT Press?
BM: We began to publish the journal and set up a non-profit 501(c)3, by the time we had published the first issue, in May 1976. Then, three years later, we began publishing books, and called the publishing house PAJ Publications. The journal was then known as Performing Arts Journal (the name was changed in 1998 to PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art) We went along this way for quite a while and continued to publish books of plays and books of essays; the journal featured international coverage in essays, interviews and dialogues, new writing, performance reviews and festival reports. There was simply so much material and so many interesting things to cover that we felt we couldn’t contain it in a journal three times a year. So, we started on books and we had many of the same authors move from the journal to books as well.
left: At JFK Airport with German playwright Heiner Müller. right: In London, 2009, at a PAJ event featuring Meredith Monk.
About ten years later, in the late-eighties, we made an agreement with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, the very highly regarded literary publishers, to distribute our books. That lasted for three years. One of the reasons we went to them was that we wanted to start publishing fiction. We tended to do fiction of the playwrights we knew, like Ken Bernard and Harry Kondoleon. The late-eighties was a period of great difficulty, with the so called “culture wars” and funding controversies. The tide
had turned against heavy support for experimental theatre and the downtown scene, so we knew we had to figure out a way to safeguard the press.
Eventually we made an agreement with The Johns Hopkins University Press, around 1991, and PAJ became an imprint of Johns Hopkins. They distributed our backlist as well, which was about eighty-five titles by this time. PAJ Books became a series under this imprint, and JHUP financed the new titles. We commissioned forty books, including the Art+Performance series for performance and new media (with volumes on Yvonne Rainer, Meredith Monk, Bruce Nauman, Gary Hill and others. The journal was published in their journals division, but we always maintained control of our name and always owned the journal. That agreement lasted for about ten years. Then we went to MIT Press, around 2001. That’s where we remain, though MIT Press has no involvement with the books. PAJ went back into financing and publishing its own books in 2006. We have about sixty titles now in print, distributed by Theatre Communications Group (www.tcg.org)
JS: What is the editorial premise of PAJ?
BM: PAJ Publications was founded to publish, promote, and support new work, lost or forgotten works of the past, and to develop a very rigorous idea of criticism. By that I don’t mean theory, but criticism and fine critical writing—that’s what I think PAJ has been known for. In addition, there is the publication of new American drama and works of translation.
left: Living Theatre artistic directors, Judith Malina and Hanon Resnikov with the PAJ publisher at her New York City apartment. right: PAJ publishers, Bonnie Marranca and Gautam Dasgupta, visiting French author Marguerite Yourcenar at her home in Maine, a few years before her death in 1987.
Looking back over three decades of books and journals, by now we’ve published over one thousand plays and performance texts, translated from twenty languages. We’ve published about one hundred and forty books and ninety journals so far. PAJ Publications is one of the major play publishers in the English-speaking world. We’ve always held the line when so much of academia and the world of the arts moved strongly toward theory. I believe very much in the primacy of the artwork, and the experience of the writer or critic, so I am not interested in applied theory. I don’t consider PAJ an academic journal. I believe it should be a kind of fine literary writing grounded in knowledge of the field and the experience of individual works. That’s been true for most of the history of the journal. Our format has been a combination of essays, interviews and dialogues, plays or performance texts, festival reports, reviews of performance.
When Performing Arts Journal changed its name a decade ago to PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, it was because I wanted to have theatre and visual arts move closer together in the journal. The art world was continuing to do more performance, there were installations, video, media, photography, and all kinds of things that could be looked at in terms of performance and spectatorship. We were already covering, theatre, dance, and music.
left: Cover of Performance Histories (2008), featuring Alison Knowles performance sculpture, Book Jacket. right: Cover of New Europe: plays form the continent (2009), featuring artwork by German artist Bernd Trasberger.
When we started the journal, what constituted theatre or performance was rather a small world considering where the notion of performance went in thirty years. Dramatic literature is no longer the center of study in theatre. People don’t have the same interest in playwriting, but are more interested in performance. In the twentieth century, there are two histories of performance, one from the theatre world, and one from the art world, so that if you are in an art department, you study a history of performance that’s entirely different from what you would study in a theatre department. I’m trying to bring them closer together within the journal. A larger, more comprehensive history of performance ideas, that’s my main goal, and it has been for the last ten years.
Bonnie Marranca standing in a Richard Serra sculpture.
Bonnie Marranca (www.bonniemarranca.com) is publisher and editor of the Obie Award-winning PAJ Publications and PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art (originally called Performing Arts Journal), which she co-founded in 1976. She has written three collections of criticism: Performance Histories, Ecologies of Theatre, and Theatrewritings, the recipient of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. Among the many anthologies she has edited are: Plays for the End of the Century; American Dreams: The Imagination of Sam Shepard; and The Theatre of Images, one of the seminal books of contemporary theatre. Her writings have been translated into fifteen languages.She is a Guggenheim Fellow and Fulbright Senior Scholar who has taught in many universities here and abroad, including Columbia University, Princeton University, NYU, Duke University, the University of California-San Diego, Free University (Berlin), and Autonomous University/Institute for Theatre (Barcelona). She is Professor of Theatre at The New School/Eugene Lang College for Liberal Arts. PAJ(www.mitpressjournals.org/paj)is admired internationally for its independent critical thought and cutting-edge explorations. PAJ charts new directions in performance, video, drama, dance, installations, media, film, and music, integrating theater and the visual arts. Artists’ writings, critical commentary, interviews, and a special review section for performances and gallery shows are highlighted along with plays and performance texts from around the world. New features include Performance Drawings portfolios and the Art, Spirituality, and Religion ongoing series. In 2009, the journal celebrates its 33rd year of publishing.
#permalink posted by Artist Organized Art: 12/24/09 08:04:00 AM
As a participating artist in the Wonderland Exhibition, I’m asking myself why a large scale contemporary art exhibit opening in The Tenderloin in San Francisco and curated by one of today’s most respected and publicized curators, Lance Fung, is titled, of all possible titles, “WONDERLAND?” The Tenderloin is a neighborhood marginalized to the point of reputation. Yet surprisingly, the title “Wonderland” correctly identifies and responds to a hidden cultural dilemma facing any group of artists approaching this historic community.
City of San Francisco, streets of The Tenderloin
Our cultural institutions often rejuvenate themselves at the expense of the disempowered. The avant garde often exploits fringe neighborhoods, brokering between corporate and vernacular cultures. This opens the door to gentrification. Yet, we find ourselves sympathetic to the impact of local material conditions. In The Tenderloin these include homelessness, joblessness, illiteracy, crime, disease and epidemics such as AIDS, hunger, poverty, drug addiction, alcoholism, lack of health care and environmental decay. In short, the untidy social effects of the “advancement” we call globalization. Locals are explained away.
Site of Wonderland Neighborhood Association(WNA) “Block Party” event, October 17th, 11 – 5 pm
Wonderland seems to take on a particular challenge, namely how to take local culture seriously when the dominant culture precludes difference, cultural, racial and sexual as an insidious evil. The challenge for Wonderland is to be locally inclusive and to negate the attraction/repulsion process of the global art market. Using the title “Wonderland” the dominant strategies, such as exploiting minority artists by insisting they source local street violence as their unique selling point or that they themselves signify misery remarketed, are surprisingly countered.
“Fear Head” by Roman Cesario and Mitsu Overstreet Wonderland Exhibition in The Tenderloin, City of San Francisco
The Wonderland Exhibition also speaks to the need to reform dominant culture institutions, such as the Museum of Modern Art or Lincoln Center, to artist spaces and organizations based in ethnic communities that alone address a lack of multiculturalism and tolerance. A lack which has grown since Ronald Reagan left the office of Governor of California to become President of the USA and allowed a twenty year surge of neo-conservative intolerance, which in the past eight years has become extreme in the dominant culture. Wonderland is an attempt to signal the way back to a positive progressive footing, to organize beyond the survival tactics of the past twenty years and to pick up where others left off before the heterogeneous world was cast in gray.
A resident follows the exhbition “Wonderland” in The Tenderloin, City of San Francisco
Instinctively, the artists, organizers and partners of Wonderland Exhibition, all volunteers, follow early signs of change in the air. They are taking to the streets of The Tenderloin, to engage local community, to make work which is a synthesis by artist and community. The opportunity is to finally truly turn outward, to engage with the larger society, to work with social creativity and invent new forms of organizations that suit ongoing needs of creative synthesis. They are picking up where we left off before the blight of the NEA led to the cancerous growth of the commercial gallery and auction houses. The exhibition is to push the boundaries of local culture as far as it can.
Perhaps it’s time for Wonderland. The growing weight of the nation’s social problems were paid for by independent local communities, while the nation’s prosperity accrued to the establishment arts and the military. As artists, we’ve played along with a prestige game and lost. We’ve been robbed of our social imagination, served as an inoculation against awareness and have done the hard work of self censorship to the point of obscurity. Count the projects left unproduced, the low birth rate of institutions and a general lack of experimentation as the cost of the Reagan/Bush/Helmes/Bush era. This shadow over what was once our cultural community chills us even now. But, the Wonderland Exhibition funnels volunteerism with multiculturalism allowing artists back into local community culture.
in performance: Night At The Blackhawk Wonderland Exhibition in The Tenderloin, City of San Francisco
Wonderland celebrates the recent gains made at the NEA with a new attitude, an attempt to live, work and make art in a flamboyant and joyful Tenderloin community. During the twenty year neo-conservative era, the NEA used the Chair’s veto to publicize censorship. Neo-conservatives condemned the Endowment for its attention to public impact, social need, tolerance, experimentation and a support of “public service” concepts. By contrast Wonderland celebrates the evolution of new and existing organizations, such as the Wonderland Neighborhood Association, as necessary to a fuller cultural life. The volunteer Exhibition remains nimble rather than being bogged down attracting funders.
Wonderland Symposium, with Lance Fung at the Warfield Theater, Oct 18, 2 – 4 pm Wonderland Exhibition in The Tenderloin, City of San Francisco
Artists have an unusual potential to exercise social imagination. From Fluxus of the 1960’s to The International Artists Museum and its connection to the Solidarity Movement of 1980’s Poland, the Artists Space movement in the USA from the 1960’s to the 1980’s, the ability of artists to impact and innovate the organization structure itself has been remarkable. Wonderland celebrates a return to this type of artist collaboration in the structure of organization and is turning away from an era where the drive of existing corporations to perpetuate themselves has choked off all creative options.
Visitors at the “Block Party” event by WNA Site of Wonderland Neighborhood Association(WNA) October 17th, 11 – 5 pm
The project is coming out of the closet creatively, socially and culturally. In the past eight years a majority of Americans were forced to give up their own liberties even if they were willing to risk allowing those liberties to others described as terrorists, dangerous people of color, people with aids, homosexuals, illegal aliens, foreigners, feminists, community organizers and those criminals, the artists. Disempowered communities have found themselves profiled and marginalized, excluded, undercounted, prosecuted, silenced, bashed, spied on, controlled, unemployed, underemployed, defunded, put out of business and run out of town by a growing corporate elite. Yet, Wonderland’s agility lets it by-pass corporatism’s attack on community content and public funding using volunteerism and public service.
Visitors at the “Block Party” event by WNA Site of Wonderland Neighborhood Association(WNA) October 17th, 11 – 5 pm
Despite an era of intolerance, racism, greed, religious fundamentalism, homophobia, rabid patriotism and media based brain washing we are picking up where we left off. Wonderland is a signal from the Tenderloin community to the established art world to return to supporting difficult and challenging art and to enlarge art audiences and art concerns by engaging wider publics through their collaboration. Ahead of the curve, the exhibition calls out directly to multicultural reality.
Thomas Kosbau interaction for “Stake” Wonderland Exhibition in The Tenderloin, City of San Francisco Photo: Wonderland Exhibition
As artists we know we have to earn public recognition of our significance. Communities are still untrusting of what we do. The stigma that artists are fooling the public persists. For a change, this effort includes transparency, sharing power and information with The Tenderloin community.
Visitors at the “Block Party” event by WNA Site of Wonderland Neighborhood Association(WNA) October 17th, 11 – 5 pm
Wonderland is happening at a time of great chaos inside our corporations. As our infrastructure sustains shock after shock, many corporations, such as banks, insurance companies, governments and educational institutions are manipulating facts, ignoring inquiries, blaming, scandalizing and creating the false impression that things are fine while hoping they don’t get worse. For this reason the artists have chosen a new path of reliance and affiliation based on volunteerism, truthfulness about capacity and relevance to the Tenderloin community. We know we will be doing without the resources available to established art institutions, what is amazing is how much we’ve been able to do without those resources and how little compromise we’ve had to make to cultural conservatism because of it.
Chris Burch, Niki Shapiro, and Lance Fung at Boeddeker Park Site of Wonderland Neighborhood Association(WNA) “Block Party” event, October 17th, 11 – 5 pm
It is not the support that makes art and art making itself is not a business. This opportunity is for nurturing young artists and for engaging works that champion those who have been discounted in their communities: the culturally diverse, feminists, gay men and lesbians, the disabled, the upstarts and those with ideas that challenge the social fabric. We simply must put an end to the corporate ice age in the art of our communities. It’s an experiment that asks the public to revalidate the relationship between creativity and social change.
Lars Chellberg interaction for “Stake” Wonderland Exhibition in The Tenderloin, City of San Francisco Photo: Wonderland Exhibition
I’ve known Lance Fung for a long time. As a curator Lance is dedicated to ideas and ideals far outside the mainstream, possibly dangerous to the well being of the institution and possibly to the artist community as a whole. While the NEA was backing away from its once strong commitment to challenging work, Lance crossed sides from commercial dealing to the non-profit world of art out of a need to put experimentation ahead of survival. It is interesting that with Wonderland he has proceeded with a nearly wholesale disengagement from support funding in an effort to rekindle a call to social change at the earliest moment possible.
Layman Lee interaction for “Stake” Wonderland Exhibition in The Tenderloin, City of San Francisco Photo: Wonderland Exhibition
One of the benefits we hope to achieve is a mechanism to keep community support of art close to its makers of art. Because Wonderland’s projects vary specifically by the community served, by the type of art presented and by the in-kind/volunteerism pledged, they are not as easily spotted as say a “museum” or “theater,” but perhaps their impact will be far greater.
Participating Artists at the “Block Party” event by WNA Site of Wonderland Neighborhood Association(WNA) October 17th, 11 – 5 pm
The exhibition is free and open to the public from October 17th, with a symposium on the 18th, and will close November 15th. www.wonderlandshow.org
The exhibition Wonderland is a large, multi-sited event born of, and responding to the rich diversities of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. The tenor of this project is truly unique, and will call upon the collaborative efforts of the neighborhood’s residents, city organizations like the North of Market Community Benefit District the exhibition’s sponsor, and a large number of cutting edge artist teams from the Bay Area and around the world. As in his previous internationally recognized projects, the exhibition’s curator, Lance Fung is dedicated to the ideas of collaboration, community and social engagement as a means of bringing the highest level of contemporary art to audiences from all walks of life.
Participating Artists: Per Åhlund, Barry Beach, Ken Beasley, Alex Beckman, Brian Bixby, Charles Blackwell, Alex Braubach, Britteny, Christopher Burch (WNA,) Roman Cesario, Lars Chelberg, Colby Claycomb, Sydney Cooper, Rick Darnell, Jaine Dickens, Christian Kurt Ebert, Jonathan Fung, Kaif Ghaznvi, Geoffrey Grier, Doug Hall, Melkorka Helgadottir, Malak Helmy, Jessica Higgins (WNA,) Noritoshi Hirakawa, Monika Jones, Mathias Josefson, Erika Knerr (WNA,) Thomas Kosbau, Layman Lee, Mark Lee, Agustin Fernandez Mallo, Lauren Marsden, Jeff Marshall, Mike Maurillo, Lynne McCabe, Andrew McClintock, John K Melvin (Project Director), Regina Miranda, Ranu Mukherjee, Patricia Niedermeier, Erik Otto, Mitsu Overstreet, Kara Pajewski, Txutxo Perez, George Pfau, Leif Percifield, Christophe Piallat, Rex Resa, Brandon Robinson, John Roloff, Kit Rosenberg, Jeff Roysdan, Jorge Satorre, Niki Savage, Joshua Selman (WNA,) Stix, Owen Takabayashi, Kristin Timken, Brandon T Truscott, Thomas Watkiss, Wilton Woods, Izumi Yokoyama, Steven Zettler, and others…
#permalink posted by Artist Organized Art: 11/01/09 08:14:00 PM
Shake Out – End of Summer Art/Music in Rockaway Curated by Shaun Kessler, Patrick Walsh and Olivia Wyatt Saturday August 22, 2009 192 Beach 96th street, Rockaway Beach, NY
by Taketo Shimada
During the weekend of epic waves courtesy of Hurricane Bill, surfers weren’t the only ones in the part of Rockaway Beach I’ve come to call MoSh FroP (Middle of Shore Front Parkway – a patch of Rockaway shorefront between Beach 90th and 96th street.) Shaun Kessler, Patrick Walsh and Olivia Wyatt organized the second of their art/music shows this summer in the part of Rockaway Peninsula that is experiencing an influx of surf/hippie/art/music culture hybrid; an endearing work in progress that I love to see mature to its full potential. The show occupied a building that is going through a gut renovation adjacent to Rockaway Taco. All through the day people went back and forth from the show to the beach, which is less than a block away.
the Rockaway surfing beach is just steps away…
you can surf or swim
then get back to eat some tacos
and see art and listen to bands
The work of 11 artists were spread throughout the second floor, while 6 bands played through the evening in a small room on the first floor.
partial view of the 2nd floor, What a Feeling,
a hanging chain motif by Cat Chow in the middle
polaroid grid by Grant Worth
collage by Alex Miller
black abstract canvas by Wyatt Kahn
a Dana Bell painting Broken Leg (from a photo of Paris Hilton)
a painting by downtown music staple MV Carbon
candy wrapper Rockaway landscape by Taketo Shimada
floor installation by Robbie McDonald
a pair of twig constructions Stick Chart by Bridget Donahue
an Olivia Wyatt video Seeking the Spirit
shows little known facts about Rockaway all through the day Blain Vandenberg and friends
took pictures of visitors in her custom photo booth photos from the booth
It is easy to file this show away as another DIY art/music show that evokes such words as Noise or Institutional Critique, but it was much too disparate and instinctive to be pigeonholed into a curatorial schtick. For Shake Out – while also escaping the fuzzy New Age togetherness – contents were secondary to the phenomena of the series of collective action it generated, from curating to participating to spectating. This serial Summer group art shows with post-dusk performances by the ragtag lineup of NYC bands drew an astounding amount of spectators to the point where some had to wait to get inside. Considering the location and stigma attached to the Rockaway (it’s faraway, has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the U.S., high crime rate) this is quite a feat.
Amidst this context, What a Feeling by Cat Chow, and Stick Chart by Bridget Donahue seemed at home and uniquely site-specific. Both employed semi-discarded material to construct loose geometry and presented casual sophistication that resisted being wall display (a la the artist-alchemist Arte Povera experiments of the 60s). Together, the artworks created an out-of-focus portrait of a future tenant.
Lazaro Valiente and his toys. He might still be playing there.
messages starting their set,
while SKINT get ready outside.
SKINT followed right after messages
As we are all aware, the fabric of NYC commercial art activity reaches far beyond Chelsea – new annexes come and go in a dizzying pace because infusions of capital come faster nowadays than the speed in which culture can grow. This pattern of gentrification known as the SoHo Effect is getting shorter and shorter. While gentrification of most of the neighborhoods in short distances from NYC is inevitable, the compression of time negates a kind of collective unfolding which SoHo of the early 60s was able to afford. It is important to note that the curators are year round residents there, and that all summer long they also organized and helped out at the organic vegetable stand that’s open every Sunday.
Next morning, Shaun was busy at the organic vegetable stand run by Elizabeth Gilchrist of Blooming Hills Farm.
Elizabeth Gilchrist and Taka
The stigma attached to Rockaway, with its proximity to the surfing beach, is what gives MoSh FroP its potential – and what differentiated the Shake Outs. They weren’t statements, but more like snapshots capturing enormous cultural potential from the neighborhood.
Sudden Fluxus Summer ( Soudain l’été Fluxus) Passage de Retz
by Angie Eng
Curated by Valerie Maffioletti, Vincent Normand and Jacqueline Frydman July 13-September 20, 2009 Passage de Retz 9 rue Charlot du Calvaire, Paris www.passagederetz.com
It’s been a while since I contributed to AOA. I waited until I found the right event that would correspond with a video letter. What better project than a Fluxus exhibition. Moreover, the first historical Fluxus show in France, ever. The organizers embarrassed to admit such a fact, explained in the press release, the reason lie in the fact that the two main French Fluxus artists, Ben Vautier and Robert Filliou were little exhibited and therefore, why showcase a movement which excluded the French? Hmmm, I’m waiting for my Carte de Sejour (or ‘green card’) so I will not publicly comment on their reasoning.
‘Soudain l’été Fluxus’ (A Sudden Fluxus Summer) on display at Passage de Retz in Paris until September 20, highlights a great movement in art making and another boat I missed.
The many exhibiting Artists include Eric Andersen, Ay-O, George Brecht, Philip Corner, Jean Dupuy, Robert Filliou, Henry Flynt, Ken Friedman, Al Hansen, Geoffrey Hendricks, Dick Higgins, Ray Johnson, Joe Jones, Bengt af Klintberg, Milan Knizak, Alison Knowles, Takehisa Kosugi, Shigeko Kubota, Jackson Mac Low, George Maciunas, Richard Maxfield, Charlotte Moorman, Yoko Ono, Robin Page, Nam June Paik, Dieter Roth, Takako Saito, Carolee Schneemann, Daniel Spoerri, James Tenney, Yasunao Tone, Ben Vautier, Wolf Vostell, Yoshi Wada, Robert Watts, Emmett Williams, La Monte Young and many others such as John Cage, Allen Kaprow, Joseph Beuys and Henning Christiansen
#permalink posted by Angie Eng: 8/17/09 02:27:00 PM
Andy Laties on Kurt Schwitters & Dada Interpreting Ursonate
Lynn Book, Andy Laties and Jeff Beer interpreting Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters at Cabaret Voltaire, Chicago 1988
by artist: Andy Laties
“In 2002 I was once again in crisis. I started writing a memoir to try figure out what had gotten me into such trouble, and I guess I was looking for an escape hatch too. This essay is an excerpt from the manuscript that was finally whittled down to my book, “Rebel Bookseller: How To Improvise Your Own Indie Store And Beat Back The Chains.” The essay was written rapidly, and I didn’t do proper fact-checking–I certainly wouldn’t trust it on art-historical issues. At the time I didn’t know about Nam June Paik’s performances of “Ursonate” in the early 60s, or the influence of 19th century Romanian-Jewish culture on Tristan Tzara’s invention of dada. But, for what it’s worth, here’s a slice.”
– Andy Laties, 2009, for Artist Organized Art
The following is excerpted from the Essay “Interpreting Ursonate” by Andy Laties:
…Theatrical performance demands a willingness and capacity to abandon personal identity: to place oneself at the service of the script. But every performer, in practice, produces a unique performance. Authors sometimes revolt against these arbitrary outcomes. Most authors do not attempt to rein in the performers and directors who decide to produce their scripts: it’s impractical, at best, and counterproductive as well, leading generally to simple non-presentation of the work. Some, though, like Samuel Beckett, are fanatically precise and performances are strictly regulated and prescriptive…
Andy Laties interpreting Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters Chicago, 1988
…Schwitters was an oddball even for a Dada. He wasn’t actually admitted to the Club Dada. As I found out later, he showed up in Berlin in 1918 to demand admittance to the Club, and George Grosz opened his door to find Schwitters standing there. Schwitters said, “I am Kurt Schwitters and I’ve come to join the Club Dada.” Grosz said “This is not the Club Dada,” and slammed the door. Schwitters knocked on the door again. Grosz opened. Schwitters said, “I am not Schwitters,” turned around and left.
Schwitters then formed his own art movement, which he called Merz. He was the only member…
…I learned afterward that Schwitters had developed Ursonate over a period of 10 years, between 1922 and 1932, and then spent the rest of his life performing it throughout Europe. The Peter Froelich show exactly followed a program Schwitters had presented in London in 1945. Schwitters had published extremely exacting specifications for how the Ursonate was to be performed. The rights to all performance were strictly controlled by his son, who generally refused permission to anyone requesting to perform the piece, on the basis of these strict performance specifications. That is: the piece had really been written for sole, solo performance by its author. A performance like the Peter Froelich one, which essentially channeled Kurt Schwitters, was acceptable, but only this approach would be permitted by the family.
A year after the Froelich performance, when I was living in Chicago, I received a letter from my high school newspaper editor friend, Laura Kelsey. She was spending the year in Munich. I wrote back, asking her if she could check in the library there for any copies of Kurt Schwitters’ poetry. I didn’t know if Ursonate was in print, but I did know it wasn’t available in the United States; nothing by him was.
She sent me a complete xeroxed text of Ursonate” she’d found Schwitters’ collected works in three volumes in a public library.
It wasn’t until four years later, in 1984, that I actually did anything with Ursonate. Working as a children’s theatre actor and improvisor–and as a jazz musician with several bands and under a number of teachers–had helped me learn how to inject my own ideas into any text, even ones like Ursonate with no coherent linguistic meaning. That is, I was interested in using Ursonate for my own purposes: as a framework for expressing my own ideas; as a templ
ate for the integration of jazz improvisation and theatre improvisation.
My friend and musical partner Rob Metrick was running a Time Arts performance series at Chicago Filmmakers. I asked him if he could put me on his schedule to do a performance of Ursonate, and he finagled this.
Lynn Book and Andy Laties interpreting Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters Chicago, 1988
Ursonate was written as a solo performance piece. But I developed an arrangement for five performers: three voices and two musicians. Art Institute of Chicago instructor Lynn Book, Chicago Chamber Orchestra cellist (and classically trained vocalist) Philip Hart Helzer, and I handled vocals. Professional jazz musicians Johnsee Holt and Jeff Beer played guitar, percussion and trumpet. We arranged for Rob to rent three Dada Films: Anemic Cinema by Marcel Duchamp, Ghosts Before Breakfast by Hans Richter, and Emak Bakia by Man Ray. We planned to extend the Ursonate evening by interspersing free-jazz improvisations accompanying these films.
Brenda Webb, the founder of Chicago Filmmakers, decided to call the program “Evening of the Bearded Heart,” after a famous program at the original Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in 1916…
…The show was a huge success. We had a standing room only crowd, and we repeated the program a month later with similar overflowing attendance. The most exciting thing was that after the first show, a distinguished gentleman emerged from the audience and introduced himself as Dr. Hans-Jurgen Kienast – a friend of Richard Huelsenbeck, who was one of the founders of the Dada movement.
Dr. Kienast asked me a provocative question: Why had Dada become popular, now, in America? I wrote him this letter a week later (looking back of I understand there was a lot I didn’t know about Dada’s history in America; still I present this letter unedited to show my thinking in 1984, at age 25):
