o corpo na cidade, Brasil

Exhibition on the theme of urban interventionist practices, taking place in multiple venues around the city of Curitiba, and curated by Paulo Reis.
http://www.ocorponacidade.com.br/

Urban Landscapes, Lisbon

Walking through Lisbon, I came upon these temporary bench-plant structures strewn along the waterfront. Their colorful and modular appearance stood out as a rather dynamic solution to urban furniture. Allowing flexibility, the structures give way to possibilities for immediate transformation, reconfiguration, and interaction - one might imagine these blobs being moved around now and again, creating a sort of mobile urban landscape (if only they were on wheels...).

7th Bienal do Mercosul, Brasil

http://www.bienalmercosul.art.br/
Public Text:

The exhibition has gathered together artists that require an active dialogue with the city, reconfigured in a manner of a public text:
The curating approach here is a plan.
A plan of occupation and of forces and pulses existing in the urban space.
In this curating approach, the artists work the symbolic and material elements of the public space.
We are interested in artists working the city as material for their projects.
We are interested in artists producing poetic forms out of urban phenomena.
We are interested in visible and invisible works, which can occupy subtle physical ties like the air and the sound space, urban space and the media.
We are interested in giving back to the city, its spaces as they were, without adding materials, so that the waste will consist of memories and meanings.
The exhibition will mainly take place in the public spaces of Porto Alegre, basing itself on several lines of investigation:
i. Illumination: Works that render visible strategic points of the city.
ii. Wavelengths: Open radio transmissions to all the artists that are taking part in the Biennial (see below).
iii. Transitory and Ambulant: Works about the flux and dynamic of the time and of the urban space.
iv. Points on the Map: A net of projects at the Biennial and at the city, have together given expression to a new and amplified text. In addition, the exhibition will be held in one of the warehouses of the Quayside. Here, the Biennial looks at the creation of a radio installation - Radiovisual - the radio commissioned especially for the Biennial.

I participated in A Day in LA: Washington Boulevard Art Concert on Sunday, October 11. This was a project organized by Stephen Van Dyck that involved 60 artists reinterpreting public unused outdoor space along all 27 miles of Wash Blvd.
The installation I constructed is titled Referential system designed to mimic the structures of symbolic capital and was located Northwest corner of Perrino Place and Washington Blvd.
More information about the project can be found here.

The Space Hijackers prosecuted

The decision has been made to prosecute peaceful activist artists the Space Hijackers for impersonating police on 1st April 2009 at the G20 Summit demonstrations.

It is alleged that the group entered the City of London wearing police uniforms in an armoured personnel carrier with the intent to deceive the public into believing that they were members of the Police force. The Space Hijackers vehemently deny any intent to deceive or that they had any sinister motives.

The Space Hijackers describe themselves as ‘Anarchitects’ and that their aim is to challenge and provoke discussion through peaceful public performance. A spokesperson for Space Hijackers, said "We are shocked and appalled by the behaviour of the Police on the day both towards us and others. We don’t feel that we were arrested because the officers honestly believed that we were impersonating the Police but because we were becoming a thorn in their side.”

Raj Chada of Hodge Jones Allen said "The Space Hijackers were protesting entirely peacefully. In light of the numerous allegations of violence and misconduct against the police that have marred the event, perhaps the biggest joke is the decision to prosecute those peaceful protestors playing loud music and wearing fancy dress."

The Space Hijackers have every confidence in their case and welcome the opportunity to encourage further scrutiny of the policing of the event itself. The Space Hijackers will vigourously contest the charges laid against them and their legal team invites all assistance from any witnesses who saw the defendants on 1 April 2009.
For more information, please visit their website.

Manual, Oslo

Manual for the construction of a sound as a device to elaborate social connection

September 14 – 20, 2009
process, project, interaction
held at
Deichman library, Grunerløkka, Oslo
&
The Storefront, Thorvald Meyersgt 61, Oslo

with
å+k (Åsa Ståhl & Kristina Lindström) (Sweden)
Siri Austeen (Norway)
Brandon LaBelle (USA)
Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec (Slovenia/Holland)
Jana Winderen (Norway)

The Manual project explores sound and auditory experience as platforms for social cooperation and environmental investigation. Bringing together a working group of artists, the project uses sound as a tool for considering public space, and functions as a site-specific field study of Oslo, involving locational research, artistic presentation, performative actions and public discussion.

The Manual project highlights sound and listening as important locational and social material, to question how sounds of everyday life generate forms of commonality and how the dynamics of listening inform unique types of artistic intervention. Exploring such themes, the Manual project is based on process-oriented actions and events using specific locations in Oslo. During the course of one-week the artists will bring forward amplifications of city life, giving expression to sound and listening as social energy.

Including the Swedish collaborative duo Kristina Lindström and Åsa Ståhl (aka å+k), whose projects are based on forms of story-telling and sharing, the American artist Brandon LaBelle, working with urban networks and distributed sonic narratives, Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec from Holland/Slovenia, investigating questions of architectural space and forms of transmission, and Norwegian artists Jana Winderen, uncovering hidden sources of sound through blind field recording, and Siri Austeen, exploring concrete sounds and the act of listening.

Organized by Brandon LaBelle and Jana Winderen
Producer: Hjørdis Kurås, Norway

Manual for the construction of a sound as a device to elaborate social connection
is a cooperation with Ultima 09, Oslo Contemporary Music Festival (www.ultima.no),
Atelier Nord and Deichman libary, Grünerlølkka

The project is supported by Norsk Kulturråd
www.kulturrad.no

Book Launch at Machine Project

Thursday, July 30 at Machine Project – What remains of a building divided into equal parts and distributed for reconfiguration is the second volume in the Surface Tension Supplement series dedicated to publishing documentation and critical writing on site-based practices in art, architecture and performance. This volume investigates the social and political dimensions of buildings and urban spaces, including critical reflections on recent urban planning policies in China, histories of participatory architecture, and proposals for urban farming. What remains of a building divided into equal parts and distributed for reconfiguration offers multiple perspectives on the limits and creative possibilities of the built environment.
With contributions by Rachel Allen, Ava Bromberg, Ken Ehrlich, Jesko Fezer and Mathias Heyden, Nis Rømer, Carl Michael von Hausswolff and The Land Foundation.

Lowrider as cultural machine

Attending the 17th Annual Pharaoh's Car Show in Wilmington yesterday, Ken and I marveled at the aesthetics and community of car customization. From Classic Chevrolet to stripped down Ford to souped-up trucks, the car functions as a dynamic space for cultural expression and agitation carrying across the LA streets the legacy of lowrider history, Chicano identity, and the politics of having wheels. The car literally becomes a signifying machine for the production of various meaningful codes, which galvanize specific communities around the pin-stripe, the hydraulic lift, the car stereo, each a syntax within an expansive language seeking to take it low (to duck the law). Heading back to our own car, a rather dull Ford, and turning the ignition I couldn't help but feel the textured mythology running through the car, as a site for the making of particular freedoms (imagined, fantastical, real). The car already promises the open road - modifying its body, customizing its shape, appropriating the built-in class politics running from the Chevy to the Lincoln, seems to supplement through a magnifying zeal all the potentiality found in being behind the wheel, as well as taking to the road.

Austrian Pavilion

Dorit Margreiter's contribution to the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale was a poetic exploration of the pavilion itself in the form of a 35mm film. Lasting only eight minutes, the black and white film consists mostly of slow panning shots, exploring the architecture of the (mostly) empty building. Occasionally, the viewer glimpses a fleeting moment of what looks like women rehearsing for a mannered performance. It's a quiet piece with a forceful presence. Follow the link for more information.

Krakersmonument by Jeremiah Day

A subtle monument to the squatter movement in Holland, this "talk box" in the harbor outside of Amsterdam narrates the story of a local politician who resigns over tensions regarding his past involvement with the squatter movement.

The project is on view through September 6. For more info, click here.

HALFWAY TOWARDS A BEGINNING / HALFWAY TOWARDS AN END

Imagined Spaces / Imagined Lives

Imagined Spaces/ Imagined Lives is a series of collaborations between architects and puppet theater artists. Ephemeral citizens inhabit impossible and impractical inventions. Building codes and zoning laws are dispensed with. Spacial hallucinations are investigated and architectural archeology is unearthed. These collaborations take the form of topographical maps, walking tours, puppet shows, installations and animated architectural models.

June 5-7 at 8pm


EXHIBIT A by Tom Pejic, Monica Oller, Katie Shook and Susan Simpson
NAME/HERE: a guided walking tour by DanRae Wilson and Julia Hiser
AN EXCITED PLASMA EVENT, ONE DAY ON TALAPIA ISLAND; THE END by Yelena Zhelezov, Oliver Hess

___________________

June 26-28 at 8pm

GRIFFITH PARK INFERNO by Barbara Bestor and Janie Geiser
THE BRIDGE THAT DENIED ITS BOTTOM by Ana Henton and Caitlin Lainoff
HALFWAY TOWARDS A BEGINNING / HALFWAY TOWARDS AN END by Ken Ehrlich and Darius Manino
*All three performances will be presented each evening. All shows at The Manual Archives*

More information

INTERSECTION 2009

In collaboration with Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock, Outpost for Contemporary Art is excited to present Intersection 2009; a multi-sited public installation project that brings artistic interventions into the heart of Eagle Rock's business community at the intersection of Eagle Rock and Colorado Boulevard in Northeast Los Angeles.

Participating artists include: Edith Abeyta, Carolyn Castaño, Terry Chatkupt, Ken Ehrlich, Christopher Genik & Christopher Michlig, Taft Green, Michael Gullberg & Jennifer Rowland, David Jones & Kelly Marie Martin, Jared Nielsen, and Edward Pine Stevens.


INTERSECTION 2009

OPENING RECEPTION: June 6, 2009, 1-5 pm at Colorado Wine Company, 2114 Colorado Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90041.

SELF-GUIDED WALKING TOUR: June 6, 2009, 1-5 pm. Project maps will be available on the corners of the intersection.

For more information, please contact Julie Deamer, Director, Outpost for Contemporary Art, at julie@outpost-art.org

Outpost for Contemporary Art
www.outpost-art.org
6375 North Figueroa Street Get map.
Los Angeles, CA 90042
Office: 323 982 9461 Cellular: 323 899 3533

Sharks in NYC

The chair waits for me.
A block of stone that calls forward a memory: summer afternoons at my grandmother's, eating hot dogs and playing frisbee.
Humdrum, softness.
Days of long happiness, flowers and swing sets.
My uncle comes over. He brings soft drinks, penny candies. A comic book for my brother.
There are fireworks in the evening.
Summer pools, and sunshine every day.
And evenings, inside, with my grandparents, and my great-grandmother.
She is slow, quiet, mysterious. Italian.
With long white hair pulled in a bun, she sits a lot.
She sits in her favorite armchair, in the evenings, when we gather around the television.
Watching Lawrence Welk.
She sits, that chair.
And one evening, I realize, she is sitting on a toy car I left there from the afternoon.
It is my favorite car, a red one.
She doesn't move. I wait.
The TV, the snoring of my grandmother, happiness.
I wait, and then, later, she gets up, for a moment, and I sneak over, to find my car on the chair, pushed into the cushion, a little crushed, a little out of shape.
I think of this, in this afternoon in Bergen, with the spring sun, the long walk, and the happiness of a new summer, coming.
Coming upon this chair, a block of stone resembling my great-grandmother's chair, in Pittsburgh, way back when.
A chair by the artist Magnhild Øen Nordahl placed in a park in Bergen, to collect the sun, the shadows, the seasons and the occasional glance from a passer-by, who might come to discover a memory not recalled for so long, and which gathers now in the corner of the city, in my wandering thoughts.

O Corpo da Voz / The Body of the Voice

In celebration of the new publication, The Body of the Voice, an event was held at the Livraria Odeon in Rio de Janeiro, including performances by Alex Hamburger, Rubens Pileggi and Brandon LaBelle, along with a presentation by Annette Stahmer, the editor of the publication, along with Octavio Camargo. The publication brings together essays, documents, and artist projects investigating the materiality of language, histories of voice media, and the ways in which voice comes to circulate in and between bodies. With Alex Hamburger playing back his answering machine messages while making spoken poetical voice-overs related to the subject of sound art, and Rubens Pileggi presenting a discourse on the history of Brazil's military dictatorship while holding his head underwater, and LaBelle circulating through the crowd silently passing questions to visitors (what do you fear most?) and asking them to write their responses directly onto his shirt, the event came to make a series of manifestations of the body of the voice.

Postopolis

I'm participating in a five day long series this week:

On the occasion of Los Angeles Art Weekend, Storefront for Art and Architecture and ForYourArt are pleased to announce Postopolis! LA, a live five-day event of near-continuous conversation about architecture, art, urbanism, landscape, and design to be held in Los Angeles from 31 March to 4 April 2009. Six bloggers, from five different cities around the world, will host a series of discussions, interviews, slideshows, panels, talks, and presentations, fusing the informal energy and interdisciplinary approach of the architectural blogosphere with the immediacy of face-to-face interaction.

Over the course of five days, the six host bloggers will invite 40+ participants from a multitude of fields including architecture, urban planning, geology, defense, publishing, game design, artistic practice, oceanography, music, politics and many others to give brief presentations, each followed by a public discussion.

For more information, follow this link.

Publication announcement

We're pleased to announce the third volume in our Surface Tension Supplement series, documenting projects originally based on the Surface Tension exhibition from 2006 held in Curitiba, Brazil. The exhibition led to a further series of urban activities and research, resulting in a number of collaborations and investigations taking place in Brazil and documented in the publication.
A book launch will be held in Curitiba on April 16th at the Ybakatu Gallery.

"Manual for the construction of a cart as a device to elaborate social connection"
Edited by Octávio Camargo and Brandon LaBelle
Errant Bodies Press: Surface Tension Supplement No. 3
ISBN: 978-0-9772594-7-2
19, euro (72 page, color & b/w; English/Portuguese)

Extending artistic research and work taking place since 2006 in Curitiba, Brazil, the publication brings together documentation and related texts that aim to elaborate on the question of finding common space. At its core is an engagement with communities from the local favelas that subsist by traversing the city in search of recyclable materials. Occupying this economic margin, a number of informal expressions arise, from the making of hand-built carts to the circulation of urban myths. Originally as an exhibition developed between international and local artists held at Ybakatu Gallery in Curitiba, the publication raises pertinent questions, such as, what are the consequences of an artistic practice aimed at developing commonality, and how might difference and disparity find productive manifestation in built form?
With contributions by Ricardo Basbaum, Alex Cabral, Octávio Camargo, Ken Ehrlich, Jennifer Gabrys, Brandon LaBelle, Margit Leisner, Josina Melo, Rubens Pileggi, and Ines Schaber.

Charlemagne Palestine in Los Angeles

Performing Schlingen-Blängen on what was described as the world's largest church organ. March 16, 2009.

Jeff Perkins slide performance

On Sunday night a small L.A. audience encountered a performance of light by pioneering artist Jeff Perkins. Associated loosely with Fluxus and known for producing hallucinatory light shows for rock concerts since the 1960's, New York based Perkins was in town screening his documentary film about the painter Sam Francis in conjunction with the CAA conference. Artist Jon Pestoni organized a low key event at the studio of Evan Holloway where Perkins performed a two hour improvised collaboration with musicians Greg Lenczycki and Ted Byrnes. Beginning with a minimal black and white grid like pattern, Perkins produced a mesmerizing, flickering light show with the relatively simple use of four slide projectors and two spinning disks. The musicians performed relatively well but at times it felt like they were attempting to compete with the masterful hand of someone who's been playing with shadows to astonishing effect for all these years.

Bruce Sterling, novelist and tech writer, has an interesting take on what referred to web 2.0 over at wired. Beware of the techno-philia but there are certainly some interesting ideas in the piece.

Gallery 727 announces Soundscapes

Soundscapes
curated by Tiffany Barber
March 7 – April 25, 2009

Soundscapes is the first in g727’s efforts to support the incubation and development of site-specific projects through its pilot community resource initiative called the Map and Model Shop located in the upstairs loft of g727. Soundscapes features new and existing work by Camilo Ontiveros, Felipe Zuñiga, Giacomo Castagnola, and Nina Waisman as CUBO; Ari Kletzky with Sarah Roberts and Gerhard Schultz; Elana Mann; Carla Herrera-Prats; and Christina Ulke with Sara Harris.

Soundscapes invites eleven Los Angeles and Tijuana-based artists to demonstrate the various ways of listening to place and the overlaps of history and personal memory. If sight is our primary sense, then through what other registers do we come to know things? The artists in Soundscapes respond to this question by investigating how information about our surroundings is received and understood. Through field recordings, experimental music, archived oral histories and site-generated public projects, the work featured in Soundscapes considers how urban situations are experienced and remembered through sound.

Camilo Ontiveros, Felipe Zuñiga, Giacomo Castagñola, and Nina Waisman (CUBO) present an interactive architectural and sound installation that responds to the rise in violence in Tijuana and the sensational media representation around it. Ari Kletzky extends his Islands of LA National Park project and collaborates with artist Sarah Roberts and composer Gerhard Schultz to produce a series of sound-based public projects. Carla Herrera-Prats presents Como Un Cerillo, a mural and sound installation that juxtaposes a text written by historian Alfonso Hernández with four songs that refer to the life of Tepito, a neighborhood in Mexico City that has served as a site of contention. Elana Mann’s Shifting highlights the shifting spaces between and across places, temporalities, and cultures with testimonies from twelve commuters living in both Los Angeles and Iraq. Christina Ulke with Sara Harris presents a multi-layered sonic cartography of the effects of displacement and eviction.

Soundscapes is a place-specific project centered on urban issues, and includes a series of sonorous interventions that serve as a sonic mapping of urban nodes. Conceptually, the nodes and interventions represented in Soundscapes link to regional and global concerns and mirror the overall phenomenon of urbanization. Soundscapes examines sound work as an aesthetic response to urbanization and its potential as a transgressive medium within place and geography.

About the Curator
Tiffany Barber is a Los Angeles-based curator, critic and consultant. Most recently, she has worked as a project consultant for Outpost for Contemporary Art, Santa Monica Museum of Art, and the Watts House Project. Tiffany received her Master’s degree in Public Art Studies from USC in 2008. She has been published in Beautiful/Decay, THE Magazine Los Angeles, Public Art Review and has contributed to online publications for ForYourArt and Evil Monito Magazine.

g727
727 South Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90014
213 627 9563

UCIRA/UCR Palm Desert Luminous Green Open Space retreat

I recently participated in a joint residency between The University of California Institute for Research in the Arts and the U.C. Riverside Palm Desert Graduate Center at the The Philip L. Boyd Deep Canyon Research Center. This reserve is one of 36 within the U.C. system mostly used for science research. The retreat brought faculty and graduate students from various campuses within the U.C. system to consider future desert ecologies, native desert knowledge systems, sustainable design strategies for a world without water, desert soundscapes, desert navigation, the new desert social order, desert food and waste cycles and all that connects them, including building and operating strategies for extreme and non-infrastructural environments.
Following from past Luminous Green events, the weekend was structured around Open Space principles which essentially rely on a self organizing model. It was a weekend full of productive conversations and I was especially grateful to learn more about the work of regional office, Marko Peljhan, Tapio Makela, Larry Bogad and Matt Biederman.
The end of the retreat was marked by a dash to the Salton Sea where Sierra Brown performed rather extremely!

this is the future before it happened

silent disco radio action

from headphones to room speakers to radio transmissions - silent disco as generative spatiality for the production of ethereal bodies

(ralph)
this gets plugged in here,
turn up the volume,
hit the switch,
we're going live,
you place your foot here,
pull the cable,
place the speaker there,
and another there,
then move over there, into the center,
throw your sound into the air,
hit the floor,
it goes up,
to a satellite 50,000 kilometers in the sky,
to come back down again,
hitting the earth,
everyone's listening,
to your skin

(victoria)
where is my foot?
who is that body?
how does this work?
the leg is connected to a microphone connected to a network of electronics
and connected to the broadcasting system,
the grid of national security,
the fluids of national listening,
this foot is in the nation's ear,
your body is on-air
your body is only air
sweat on-air
you are sweaty radio

(cellos)
take your hand and search for the wall,
find the wall,
there is no exit,
only rooms within a room,
a building within the city,
a city under the sky,
all this blackness and stars,
going up and going down,
spinning,
making circles in the room,
making circles in the sky,
dancing as a transmission,
dancing in your neighbor's living room,
dancing in the mayor's office,

(vicki)
give me your leg,
give me your thigh,
give me your hip,
give me your shoulder,
give me your lips,
give me your hand,
your finger,
your knee,
your foot,
throw it around and around,
throw it across the city
it rises up as a sonic action
a dream dance

the warmth inside
the coldness outside
the wetness
down the back
sweat sweat sweat
body heat filling the room
filling the broadcast
filling the listener's bedroom
filling the national grid
back up now, don't look
just back up and bump into someone
bump into the broadcast
bump into the room

(bells)
the walls disappear
the ground rises up
the roof blows away
there's a storm outside, coming in
it blows you around
the room is a pressure zone
of electricity
of body-energy
of radio control
of no control

the room is turned inside out
the body is turned inside out
sound on the skin
sound in the hair
transmissions going in
transmissions going out
the skin is a radio