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Our former residency artists!
Clandestine Construction Company (CLANCCO) is a new virtual and web project on art and law, with a specific focus on lawbreaking and outlaw status as a means of cultural production.
Through projects and writings by artists and writers, legal scholars and law practitioners, this website/blog addresses the interrelation between contemporary art, visual culture and law. The discursive effects of intellectual property, freedom of expression and property law are a main focus.
Currently found on CLANCCO.COM are an interview with Cornell Law professor, Eduardo Peñalver, art and property; critical essay on Okwui Enwezor, Susan Buck-Morss and their views on the avant-garde; book review of Giorgio Agamben’s State of Exception; how to register a copyright; and links to valuable news for visual artists.
Upcoming are an interview with CalArts School of Art Dean Thomas Lawson; selections of films on law; and review of film, Divorce Iranian Style; and CLANCCO’s 2006 Rose Bowl Flea Market Biennale, which will help fund Blue Print, an artist grant for the study of visual culture and law.
CLANCCO is a project initiated by Sergio Muñoz-Sarmiento, former LMCC Studio Resident (2000) and recent Cornell and Harvard Law graduate.
For more information on CLANCCO, visit http://www.clancco.com
Tai Dang’s dance-theater performance debuts in Financial District
NEW YORK—The Elevated Acre, a park hovering 30 feet above the East River, will play host to TANGLE on September 14 and 15. The original dance-theater work, conceived and directed by Tai Dang, was planned specifically for the elevated getaway hidden behind the skyscrapers of 55 Water Street, in the heart of the Financial District. The free performances depict the daily commute, overheard restaurant conversations and the ghostly passage of time with a mélange of live music, dance, poetry, and theater.
A native of Vietnam, Dang was inspired by the immigrant history at the tip of the island, as well as downtown’s density. “There are so many social and psychological barriers that exist in an urban environment teeming with people. People constantly interact when navigating the city or even retreating to a green space. Under what conditions does this unavoidable proximity allow contact between strangers, poetically or literally?” Through loose narratives and dramatic sound and light design, TANGLE evokes a dreamlike vision of reality with suspense and beauty. Dang, based in New York since 1988, favors site-specific productions for the challenge it presents, the more active experience for the audience, and the attention it draws to little-known urban spaces.
Defying easy categorization, his prior multimedia performances have transformed unusual venues such as a Lower East Side synagogue (Angel Orensanz Foundation) and Columbus Park in Chinatown (sponsored by Dancing in the Streets), for which a neglected, fenced off historic pavilion became the evening’s centerpiece. The three-night performance of "Have Red Ever Green" drew over 900 people. Ten years later, the NYC Parks & Recreation Department has restored the pavilion for performances this summer.
A lunchtime dance series and film festival are just some of the events that took place at The Elevated Acre this summer. The park was redesigned by Roger Marvel Architects and Ken Smith Landscape Architecture, who won a competition sponsored by the Municipal Art Society of New York. Some of the elements of surprise they’ve brought to the urban jungle: a garden of native plants, a river-view boardwalk, a 50-foot LED glass beacon, and an artificial “lawn” bordered by a modern amphitheater.
TANGLE is made possible through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, with the generous support of The September 11th Fund. Speaking about TANGLE, Tom Healy, President of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, said, “Tai Dang has developed a piece that is not only artistically compelling, but also interacts with the rich history of Lower Manhattan.”
TANGLE, a Tai Dang dance-theater performance.
September 14 and 15, 2006 at 8pm. FREE.
The Elevated Acre at 55 Water St., between Coenties and Old Slip
R,W to Whitehall; 2,3 to Wall St.; 4,5 to Bowling Green or Wall St.; JMZ to Broad St. Buses M9 and M15 stop directly across from 55 Water St.
Inquiries and images, contact: Christina Knight, Production Manager. knight.ck@gmail.com. 718/622-9313. Cell. 212/991-8200. Website www.taidang.com
Awash, a sculptural installation by Matthew Geller, invites the public to sit and swing beneath a cooling, offbeat “portable fountain” in historic Collect Pond Park, on Leonard Street between Centre and Lafayette in lower Manhattan. The work will be on view from September 14, 2006 to November 25, 2006, 7AM – 8PM.
Combining the archaic and the modern with an absurdist twist, Geller’s steel-and- Plexiglas structure provides shelter from its own inclement weather. A water tank sprays water onto a skylight incongruously mounted on a "sidewalk bridge," much like the ones that protect pedestrians at construction sites. Inside the bridge hang several seats recalling both old-fashioned porch swings and traditional park benches, allowing up to eight people to sit and talk while rain splashes romantically on the skylight overhead.
Geller’s previous work includes Foggy Day, an artificial fog bank that turned Chinatown's noir-picturesque Cortlandt Alley into a movie set for people who aren't in pictures, while emphasizing less noticed aspects of the locale such as puddles, plants growing in crevices, and the steam jets from adjacent garment factories. His pieces have been described as "urban earthworks."
Like Foggy Day, Awash is a hybrid, or "recombinant" art work that fuses the history of a region with its overlooked present. While sidewalk bridges still dot the Manhattan cityscape, the swings and spraying water hark back to an earlier time, when Collect Pond Park was known as "The Collect," a fishing and recreation lake. After suffering the effects of too-dense urbanization, the Collect was drained by the City and became the home of the notorious "Five Points" district, immortalized in the book and film Gangs of New York.
No longer the scene of battles between gangs such as the Bowery Boys and the Dead Rabbits, Collect Pond Park now sits sedately surrounded by government buildings: the Criminal Court, Civil Court, and Family Court are all visible from the park. Lunchgoers and passersby are invited to sit beneath the fountain while contemplating the past and present of this resonant area.
Awash has been made possible, in part, by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council with the generous support of The September 11th Fund. Additional support received from The City of New York Department of Parks & Recreation Temporary Public Art Program. Color photographs are available. For further information please contact: 917-804-0118 or publicart@ix.netcom.com
Collect Pond Park (Leonard Street between Centre and Lafayette Streets in lower Manhattan) is a short walk from:
J, M, N, Q, W, Z, 6 to Canal Street; 1 to Franklin Street; R, W to City Hall;
A, C, J, M, Z to Chambers Street; 4, 5, 6 to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall
Tom Moody's review of Awash:
http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/?37746
Go to this website for a listing and picture in Downtown Express:
http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_177/thelisting.html
The Museum of Chinese in the Americas is a museum dedicated to reclaiming, preserving, and interpreting the history and culture of Chinese and their descendants in the Western Hemisphere. Funded in part by LMCC's 2005 Production Grant, Virtual Salon is a photography exhibit of works by the Chinese Artist Network (CAN), an innovative organization that connects and promotes emerging Chinese artists based in the United States and China through the faculties of the internet. CAN became a phenomenon for the unique way it was formed and for how it has positioned transnational artists of Chinese backgrounds into the mainstream contemporary art world. Through an examination of CAN's work, Virtual Salon shows how the digital revolution has affected today's artists and challenges the available discourse surrounding contemporary art.
For more information on The Virtual Salon, visit http://www.moca-nyc.org
The Virtual Salon: Chinese Transnational Photographers in the Digital Age runs through December 30, 2006.
A gaggle of women burning up Wall Street? Yeah. There's video. Fire on Wall St. by Ellis Wood Dance. Part of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's free summer performance series, Sitelines.
The Golden Hour, curated by Susanna Cole and Erin Donnelly, opens with a reception on Wednesday, September 13, 6-8pm at Gigantic ArtSpace [GAS], and remains on view through October 28, 2006.
This exhibition is inspired by the term “golden hour,” which denotes the ephemeral moment of perfect cinematic twilight. From stereoscopes to soundtracks, contemporary artists in this show draw upon early film techniques to imagine new possibilities for the motion picture. The contemporary artist's relationship to film, perhaps the most important medium of the last century, is that of fan, critic and creator. From summer trailers and online reviews to the 19th century study of hysteria and the war in Iraq, these works entertain the politics and the poetry of the moving image in the information age and popular culture.
Participating artists: Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, Matthew Bakkom, Zoe Beloff, Matthew Buckingham, Melissa Dubbin & Aaron S. Davidson (with collaborating artists Katja Aglert, Marc Ganzglass, David Gray, Pierre Huyghe, Christine Rebet, and Christopher Seguine), Rebecca Hackemann, Scott Hug, Jon Kessler, Joe McKay, Kambui Olujimi, Lisa Oppenheim, and Jenny Perlin.
Borrowing a suspenseful soundtrack and the cinematic language of the Italian “New Wave,” the narrative in Karina Aguilera Skvirsky’s video, shifts between the constructed, the real and the banal.
Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock’s project A Triangulation, features sound recordings made en route to the Aeolian Islands, north of Sicily, in search of “Anna” who disappeared from Antonioni's film L'Avventura.
Statically remixing archival footage, Une Historie de Sange (Story of the Monkey), an installation by Matthew Bakkom, harks back to analog editing, each loop in the chain is a one-second clip of found film.
Charming Augustine, a 40-minute stereoscopic film by Zoe Beloff, links the prehistory of film with the study of hysteria, will be screened at GAS on Tuesday, October 24, show times: 7:30 and 8:30pm.
Matthew Buckingham’s book One Side of Broadway transforms a photographic survey into a mythic journey along 84 blocks, noting along the way such motion picture firsts as the window from which New York City was given its first close-up as well as locations of the early movie houses.
In Sound Design for Future Films, Melissa Dubbin & Aaron S. Davidson focus on sound as primary source material, supplying 6 other collaborating filmmakers and video artists with a two-and-a-half-minute sound design, in which sonic events, Foley effects and aural narratives become principal players in new moving images.
Rebecca Hackemann’s optical sculptures revive the stereoscope as an early form of popular entertainment and prompt viewers to "peek, "look" and "see" her political and philosophical imagery in 3-D.
Scott Hug’s composite movie trailers lay bare the artifice and allure of “coming attractions” for summer blockbusters giving viewers access to the disturbing recurring themes both visual and narrative that underpins so many of them collectively.
Jon Kessler’s installation elaborates upon his recent hi-tech/ low-tech mechanical sculptures, which present the viewer with a dystopic reality where life is compromised by a feeling of anxiety, fragility and ironic self consciousness.
Joe McKay’s Prereview playfully takes a stab at the industry of movie reviews by asking the audience to review unseen movies.
Kambui Olujimi’s How to Climax/ His and How to Climax/ Hers use the photographic technique of Muybridge to dissect a performed orgasm in a series of consecutive frames. By focusing each shot on the face of the performer one oscillates from looking at these photographs as erotically charged film stills, scientific observation and “how to” manuals.
Lisa Oppenheim uses documents from The Library of Congress visual archives. By reusing and manipulating historical documents she explores the relationship between image, idiom and time.
Jenny Perlin’s Review combines headlines about the war in Iraq with interjections speech from major classical operas, and receipts from movie tickets and film rentals, connecting the daily experience of news with the subsequent escape into cinematic entertainment.
Gigantic ArtSpace [GAS] is located at 59 Franklin Street (between Broadway and Lafayette), gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday 11am to 7pm and directions by subway:1/9 to Franklin Street, A/C/E/N/Q/R/W/6/J/M/Z to Canal Street, www.giganticartspace.com.
Related Events:
Exhibition
Moving Pictures: American Art and Early Film, 1880-1910, Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 100 Washington Square East (between Waverly Place and Washington Place) on view from September 13 through December 9, 2006
Moving Pictures explores links between American art and film at the turn of the 20th century. The first exhibition to integrate cinema into the history of American art, revealing how technological advances affected both representation and visual perception.
Panel
Mit Out Sound: Moving Image Visual Culture and Technology, Wednesday, October 18, 6:30-9 pm, New York University, 19 University Place (between East 8th St. and Waverly Place), co-sponsored by NYU's Deutsches Haus and Grey Art Gallery.
With Zoe Beloff, artist, filmmaker, and Assistant Professor, Queens College; Jonathan Crary, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory, Columbia University; and Jon Kessler, artist and Associate Professor, Columbia University, this panel discussion will explore relationships among art, theory, film, science, and technology.
Film
Charming Augustine by Zoe Beloff (in magnificent 3-D!)
Tuesday, October 24, 7:30pm and 8:30pm show times, Gigantic ArtSpace 59 Franklin Street (between Broadway and Lafayette)
Inspired by series of photographs and texts on hysteria published by a well-known insane asylum in Paris in the 1880's Beloff’s stereoscopic film explores connections between early psychology and the prehistory of narrative film. Space is limited.
Gigantic ArtSpace [GAS], 59 Franklin St, NY
Media Contact: Dylan Gauthier, Associate Director
Tel: 212-226-6762, info@giganticartspace.com
