REBECCA UCHILL RANDOM EXHIBITION TITLE GENERATOR

REBECCA UCHILL's RANDOM EXHIBITION TITLE GENERATOR Click HERE

BRIAN ENO OBLIQUE STRATEGIES

BRIAN ENO OBLIQUE STRATEGIES WEBSITE HERE AND VIDEO INTERVIEW HERE

GEORGE BRECHT/YOKO ONO FLUXUS SCORES

FLUXUS WORKBOOK HERE

Free online .pdf great resource for Fluxus scores and events!!! Please view scores by Brecht and Ono

IRWIN WURM ONE MINUTE SCULPTURES

Watch Erwin Wurm at Stadel Museum video here

Städel Museum

7 MAY TO 13 JULY 2014

Doing press-ups on coffee cups, balancing on oranges, flying on a broom, everything is possible – for one minute. The Städel Museum presented the exhibition “Erwin Wurm: One Minute Sculptures”. Within this context, the Austrian artist Erwin Wurm (*1954) placed works from his series “One Minute Sculptures” – older ones as well as some developed especially for the Städel collection – in the Städel Garden, the Metzler Hall, and the Old Masters and Modern Art exhibition galleries. These interactive works called upon the viewers to do more than merely look at the museum artworks surrounding them, but to experience the artworks and themselves in new ways. In the form of drawings or brief written directions, the visitor was instructed and encouraged to become an artwork – a “One Minute Sculpture” – for the duration of sixty seconds. In addition to the living sculptures with which the visitors became a temporary part of the Städel collection, some twenty selected photographs and films from this series were on view in the Metzler Foyer. The presentation was opened with a public lecture by the artist in the Metzler Hall at 7 pm on 6 May 2014.

CURATORS: 
Dr. Martin Engler and Franziska Leuthäußer, Städel Museum
SPONSORED BY: Städel Gartengesellschaft

YOKO ONO - GRAPEFRUIT

Listen to six minutes of Yoko Ono reading from Grapefruit click here

Yoko Ono is a seminal figure in the development of Conceptual art, performance and Fluxus, as well as film and new music. Her artist's book Grapefruit, first published in 1964 in Tokyo by Wunternaum Press in an edition of 500 copies, contains more than 150 works divided into five sections: MUSIC, PAINTING, EVENT, POETRY, OBJECT. These works--conceptual instructions--are the culmination of a process that dispensed with the physical and arrived at the idea.

The Museum of Modern Art has now produced a facsimile of that first edition, making it available again in its original form. This slipcased paperback is produced from the copy of the 1964 book in The Museum of Modern Art Library. It is an exacting replica of Grapefruit as Ono first envisioned it.

Born in Tokyo in 1933, Yoko Ono moved to New York in the mid-1950s and became a critical link between the American and Japanese avant-gardes. Ono's groundbreaking work greatly influenced the international development of Conceptual art, performance art and experimental film and music. In celebration of Ono's 80th birthday in 2013, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt organized a major traveling retrospective.

HYPERALLERGIC: Bringing Back a Lost Museum

ARTICLES

Bringing Back a Lost Museum

• by Laura C. Mallonee on July 7, 2014

In 1945, workers at Brown University’s biology department were clearing out storage space when they stumbled on a giant trove of natural and ethnographic specimens and artifacts. The collection had belonged to the Jenks Museum of Natural History and Anthropology, founded at the school in 1871 and dismantled in 1915 to make way for new classrooms. Inexplicably, the workers drove 92 truckloads worth of the carefully curated objects to the banks of the Seekonk River, where they unloaded them into a common dump.

Click and continue article

Interview with Brandon Ballengée

S: So, I guess we can start with how do you describe you work?  

B:  It’s a little tricky.  So my work is I’m an artist, biologist, environmental educator activist. As an artist [I’m] inspired by scientific field work that I do. And as a biologist I study clinical bio-indicator species, so amphibians, and now I’m working in a fish lab. But as an educator and activist I’m really interested in the way that you can use the tools of citizen science and participatory science with combining those with the idea of like community-engaged art and the way you can bring people like locals into an environment or into a situation where they are asking questions and also telling you the story of what they already know about local environments and then hopefully inspiring people to care more about species that are there and then work towards like stewardship and “remediation.”

S:  I guess a good follow-up question is that you seem to be really into the community aspect of everything, so how would you compare your work like the Eco-Actions to your less community-driven pieces, more personal works?

B: Well, that’s just it. You said personal, so individual friends are often they almost artefactual in that way, they are derived from the complex sensations of finding these animals that are severely deformed or declining and then thinking that through and then I make this reliquaries often, like I really like the idea of making individual art work which ends up being like a memorial for those species that’s gone or disappearing and hopefully that, it’s my individual expression, but it resonates when people see it and gets them asking questions and emotionally responding and having often hopefully responsive empathy.

S: What do you think is the most important thing you gain from education? I know you have an education in both arts and sciences, so do you think there’s an affect of having both subjects together, and do you think that they should always be used together?

B:  Yeah, to me they are completely complimentary. You know, science we are taught to use kind of a skill set where we are trying to be objective and just analyze the situation and use a particularly very like narrow parameter for understanding a situation and then art is really great because on the flip side of that you can try to look at all the nuances and subtleties and everything from a greater perspective than a narrow end to create art work so to me it’s like you  naturally could do both and from an educational standpoint individuals, as what we were talking about before, we are not right-brained and we are not left-brained, we are always in between.  So if we can have integrated education it’s just another way to reach people. And also I think experiential education, like different types of relaying information to, especially young people, through, you know, very straight-forward objective lessons but also through experiences like through sound, taste and color and different senses.

S:  Do you find that there’s a difference in the way you work on your scientific projects vs. your artistic projects?

B:  Yeah, it’s a totally different kind of methodology so the parameters are really different. What’s great for me and I think one of reasons why art and science for individuals that choose this path it works really well, is if you are using science, again, you have to use these very specific parameters and then reduce it down. So try to figure out a method that is straight-forward enough so that other people can repeat it but the nice side to the art is that it allows you to explore other sides and to express yourself and all of this different, a totally different skill set. And for me as an artist, I’m really interested in the way that you can constantly be using different mediums to tell a story and so the mediums are governed by the story, not the story being governed by the medium if that makes sense.  So to me it’s like really a great innovative way to approach the world.

S:  Right. Do you think that you prefer working in one way or the other?

B:  No, actually I couldn’t do one without the other.

S:  So, it’s completely combined for you?

B:  Yeah, I need to look at that data set to kind of understand what’s happening in an area, but the experience of generating that data set and the experience of working with animals and community inspires the art, and when I’m making the art it makes me think, well, maybe I need to look at the science from this perspective too, like I need to also do the follow up studies and see where it takes me, and the nice thing about that is it keeps me curious and asking questions from both directions. And then working with community, like people have all this indigenous knowledge of their locations and the animals that are in their backyards and that is inspiring because then I learn from then and hopefully I can share some of what I know and it’s like this whole other kind of open-ended dialogue that can happen which is also very inspirational.

S: Has there ever been a challenge for you, as far as approaching something in the scientific field that you think is related to people identifying you as an artist when you come in?

B:  Just the opposite.  

S:  The opposite?

B:  The scientific community like right from the beginning even as an undergrad art student were totally open to communication and collaboration.  In general, I mean there were some people that just didn’t want to respond, they were too busy or whatever, and when I started contacting biologists about deformed amphibians and population declines there were really like encouraging. In fact, one of the guys one of the first people I spoke to really pushed me to go back for a science degree, and so he ended up being one of my PhD advisors and has been a good friend for twenty years now.  What I say the flip side is, the arts community I find is a lot more conservative than the science community. And that was an early criticism when showing my work in New York. Critics were saying his work is too, it’s science, it’s not art. Or his work is activism, it’s not art, and I found that really absurd, and it pushed me, it fueled me to push harder and to keep showing it. But, I find that yes, the arts community tends to much more concerned with titles like scientist or artist which is unusual because some of the artists that I’m hearing are so much more open-ended and talk about how we can move beyond disciplines but in practice, at least in the beginning, at least decades ago, I think it was really closed off.  Though I think it’s changing.  I think it’s really opening up and the arts community is really getting more interested in integrative learning and multidisciplinary or transdisciplinary practice, especially in the last five to ten years.  

S:  How do you see your work progressing? Do you want to follow that Beuys-ian theory of art-making that you mentioned earlier, or do you see it as expanding off that into something new?

B:  I think that the Beuys-ian framework was really about individuals developing their own frameworks, and it’s very like community-specified in that regard, so communities will develop their own framework. So in that way it’s like a guideline but it’s a guideline that he derived from other theorists or ideologies like Rudolf Steiner and its like he gave it a voice for the arts community and I think the important thing is that as living artists, as living human beings, that we creatively come up with our own framework and explore that and see where it takes us. So, for me it’s always changing. I’m always trying to push and develop new ways to approach the world and work with communities and approach ecosystems and learn from those ecosystems.

S:  Do you have something that you collect, or something that you find is really significant that you keep coming back to?

B: Oh yeah, I remember this question, thinking like ‘huh’. Well as a biologist there are a lot of artifacts that I collect from the environment whether those are specimens or data, so I mean,   it depends on what you mean by collection.

S:   I guess I mean like a personal collection, something that you just keep acquiring and you’re not really, maybe it’s not part of a specific work.

B:  So non-work related.. all my collections are related to work. So, now like I’m working with my wife and partner on an heirloom seed collection, but we’re doing it as part of a longer term project called Averte where we’re trying to figure out like how we can obtain about 120 acres of land and set this up as a nature preserve, but then develop about 1% of that land for growing food and inviting residents to come and do residency things, artists and scientists, but also feed them and do everything as we can as sustainably as possible to have very little footprint on the area. But that’s a collection, we are collecting heirloom seeds but we are growing them and recollecting the seeds and doing all of this. But, it is work-related, so I think all of my collections somehow are work-related. I have built up like a nice art collection just from friends and trades and things like that but I guess that’s more of a personal collection that doesn’t relate to work but it’s more about just, you know, really appreciating what other artists do and it’s great to live with those pieces. So, maybe an art collection!

S:  So I guess you just have so many collections you don’t feel a need to have another one on top of that, or is that just not how you like to work?

B:  Yeah, I don’t really like accumulation necessarily unless it’s kind of related to something that relates to an idea or project. So it’s like what I have, even my specimen collection, it’s just all research-related which I make art from or use for science. So I don’t really have any collections outside of that, I try not to have too much extra stuff just from the perspective of having less of an environmental impact. I try not to buy too many new things unless it’s really something that’s required. I like the idea of trading a lot, trading seeds with other people, or specimens. Like we trade specimens, other biologists and I like when we have things that are helpful for one another.  And in art.  Most of the artists from that collection is done through trades and I love that idea. It’s like sharing intimately. Not countercultural, but at least like kind of alternative means of economics where it’s a shared community it’s just like this idea of a wealth community where we’re just acquiring wealth to buy material and 99% of the time we don’t need that material.  Do you have a T-shirt collection? So, it’s like “I’ve had that since  I was a kid”, so yeah. So I don’t know, it’s a little different because I’ll have a t-shirt for like 30 years.  T-shirts from when I was a 12-year old or something.

S:  That makes sense. I want to ask about your Studio Practice. What is your work process like from start to finish or is that not relevant to how you like to work?

B:  No, it’s like totally relevant, like the work progress. But it’s a little different since it’s like it’s not always studio-based, it’s idea-based. I think that’s it. It’s like an idea or concern starts to develop. Often the ideas are about my concerns for an ecosystem or a group of animals or organisms and how those relate to communities. And then from that I start to develop ideas for how you can study that phenomenon from the scientific perspective and then I get a vague idea of like art projects that might come from that. So I have kind of this work list for the next 200 years of my life for projects that I need to get done or whatever. But it’s like this ongoing giant list of concerns and how you address those from a science standpoint, from a community standpoint, but also how I imagine like what the art would be after that or as part of that. Then it changes, when you’re actually in the situation, methodology starts to change for the science. Obviously meeting people from the community  has an impact and some of the projects are community-driven so it’s like I try to be very open and try to listen to what these communities feels are their environmental concerns and what kind of art they would like to see made. So it’s really a whole degree from very straightforward where I have an idea in mind that evolves into something that reaches fruition and is done or finished to ones that are totally open-ended to like you do the open work and the way it’s going to change as soon as the parameters of working with that community and working in that site change what’s going to happen and I try to stay open to that process.

S:  So you don’t really work in the studio as much, you are kind of more about traveling and visiting certain sites?

B:  Mostly I do that, like I do the field work during field seasons, typically in summers, spring, summer and part of the fall but then in the winter months I spend a lot of the time in the studio and in the lab looking at after-processing like looking at the data, chemical, like laboratory work, like doing clearing and staining and imaging and creating art after the fact. But then I also create art along the way like in the field, like during  those experiences, so I do need a space to work in like a studio space but I would say  70% of the work or at least 60% of the work takes place actually outside, outside of the studio and then I set up studios in different places like laboratories and museums or art centers where I can be doing science and art in practice and I like to leave those open to the public because then people can come in and we can have a dialogue about what’s going on and to make it totally transparent too.  So it’s a bit relational in that way, like it really is,  the studio aspect or the laboratory aspect, is really governed again by the project and the project is really governed by the concept or the idea. So yes, it’s always changing.

S:  Do you find that you have a lot of people seeing a project unfolding and then giving you feedback during that time?

B:  Yes, or at least asking questions and then offering ideas. And then what inevitably happens is sometimes people give feedback and I encourage them to make their own art, like in a shared studio situation. I like that  idea a lot, like you have an open laboratory or you have an open studio and people feel like comfortable enough to come in and be doing projects there themselves. When I have set up these open laboratories or studios I have like a library and an area with sofas and books and snacks and coffee and tea and people can kind of come in and  hang out and ask their own questions and feel comfortable enough to keep coming back and then often volunteer working in the lab and then make art themselves along the way and that whole thing is  like it becomes this short term community  experience or a temporal studio-like community-shared studio-laboratory experience.

S:  Yeah, that’s really cool! Awesome, I think that’s it, thank you for talking with me.

B:  Yeah, thank you.

Robert Wysocki Interview

1.     Can you describe your practice?

·      I grew up on a farm in the shadow of Sierra Nevadas always interested in landscape but in the grandeur here is this dormant volcano that erupted 100 years ago this last year actually and there are a lot of pictures in school they talk about this little volcano these old black and white pictures and here I was in the farm which was this manipulated landscape and I didn’t know it at the time and I had a sense of the landscape Im not telling you im some prodigy I was aware of it remember being aware of it and all of my work even architecture and then graduate school sculpture and it always involved the landscape but it was a very open idea of landscape because it could even be a psychological landscape seeing the whole of things and rebuilding my idea of the world as some parallel world.

·      Current practice is this lava thing which has gotten a lot of play on the internet and on television and science channels and stuff. But that is the simplests way I can tell you, give the same version to my mother I don’t dumb it down to people who don’t know anything about art I love the big landscape paintings and painters from the 19^th century who were all trying to paint the sublime, literally trying to paint God and I was fascinated with those because those were these big paintings in museums and people just standing there in front of them like what are they looking at. I know I see it as an artist and I can’t paint to save my life I’ve never really tried so I can’t really say that but I cant paint to save my life 

·      I just decided to make my own landscape and make it as accurate as possible. I started that in 2007 when I made a sand dune in a gallery in LA its an accurate sand dune and it’s a shape you rarely find in nature it’s a hard to find shape in a field of sand dunes because it requires the wind to be a constant direction it can’t change, it forms these crescent like shapes seen in mars anywhere that is an atmosphere, but they are rare and they are a pure form, the only form a pile of sand can take and that interested me because now it is absolute, its just physics on its best day. That’s where it started and I think of those as landscape paintings and I think of the lava as ultimately a lava field as landscape painting it just happens to be as real a volcanic eruption in Hawaii Iceland wherever happens to be a hotspot and I see them as landscape paintings. I could give the whole rap on Schopenhower and Hegel that define the sublime its really at the end of the day I want to make geomorphically accurate landform. I feel like a landscape painter, I just don’t paint. I love the idea behind painting and everything but I cant think of me in a room with a canvas

2.     How did you feel working with National Geographic?

·      It was the best shot thing I have ever been in. I wasn’t supposed to be in it as much as I was, I got very good on camera, talking in partial sentences and being very emphatic about the color and the physicality of the color. Actually, they didn’t even show what they were there for. A glass tea kettle that had water in it, wanted to set lava in it and then it would boil. We told them before hand that it dumps so much heat out of the furnace, so pre-heated the water before and it was supposed to show that the connection between what’s going on in Iceland and when water hits that lava. Then it became about how much we know about lava and how we work with it. Originally was supposed to be a science demonstration and not about me. The camera just followed me around in the meantime and saw something on discovery channel with me, and was interested in that.

·      They have recorded me many times and I say I am a landscape painter, but they never include that in the final shot. What they are interested in is that an artist thought of this and artist is doing it, and not a scientist.

·      I don’t even consider myself an artist anymore, a sculptor, I consider myself just this its engineering, its fluid dynamics , is science, its geology, its art and I don’t know the name of that person is, I’m just doing stuff and lucky to get paid for it.

·      When you’re doing these types of interviews with National Geographic you don’t have much control, you have to watch what you say. 

·      It’s only after a video goes viral online do they come around, and discovery channel is different wants me to be a chimp who dances around, for them and I pushed back and said you want me to do a new experiment and I said you are going to have to pay me because that’s what I do for scientists and I charge them.

3.     With the lava, is it more about the process than the product and the experience of lava as a material? Is there an endpoint to the process where you prioritize the lava as a finished piece for display? Or is it an ongoing process?

a.     It used to be up until Toronto is used to be about the end result, the process jumped up and got up on its hind legs in Toronto. For a while it was spectacle and process and performance, but I was always interested in this end result of this lava field and then it changed in October and I didn’t’ expect it to change and be what it became. First it was about the end and now it’s about the whole thing.

4.     What is it like working with various disciplines and kinds of people?

a.     I am not afraid to ask anybody, now that I’m known people will talk to me, but before as an artist I was just the crazy artist. Now I am the crazy artist who has really done something. You can’t be afraid to ask.

5.     Who might discover one of your lava flows in a place with no volcanic activity, for example how broadly do you define your audience?

a.     I want my mother to come to it and say “Oh what a lovely lava field” and I want a geologist to come and say this doesn’t belong here but it is exactly what it looks like.

6.     What is the biggest lava form you have ever done?

a.     Toronto.