Site of Sound #2

Since the publication of the first volume of Site of Sound in 1999 the issues and activities pertaining to sound and architecture have expanded to circulate more dynamically within the fields of sound art, sound design, and spatial practices. From acoustical technologies and urban planning to public art, concerns for auditory structures and the experiences of listening are finding deeper footing within both artistic and environmental contexts. Recent noise mappings across Europe, along with new possibilities for acoustical implementation, as well as the ongoing emergence of sound art and design educational programs, point toward sound as a crucial subject for thinking through contemporary culture and politics.

Site of Sound Vol. 2 aims to address contemporary work being done in the cross-over between sound and architecture. The anthology brings together new research and writing that charts out the theoretical implications and consequences for artistic and spatial discourses, while documenting contemporary projects that come to occupy and define a sonic-spatial territory.

With contributions by Justin Bennett, Usman Haque, David Schafer, James Webb, Edwin van der Heide, Raviv Ganchrow, Jodi Rose, Nigel Helyer, Michael Gendreau, Jean-Paul Thibaud, Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec, Oliver Laric, David Stalling & Anthony Kelly, Romano, Natasha Barrett & Birger Sevaldson, Scott Arford & Randy Yau, Riccardo Benassi, Carrie Bodle, Jenny Picket & Julien Ottavi, Joaquín Gutiérrez Hadid, Pascal Broccolichi, Jacob Kreutzfeldt, & Björn Quiring

For an art against the cartography of everyday life by Ryan Griffis

The title of this essay is a remix of the title of an essay by artist Martha Rosler originally published in 1979, “For an Art Against the Mythology of Everyday Life”. Rosler’s text is an engagement with what was then the emerging context now often referred to as “post-industrial globalization.” More specifically, it is an engagement from the perspective of someone attempting to make things – art works – that can “address these banally profound issues of everyday life, thereby revealing the public and political in the personal”. She was particularly interested in both the oppressive and potentially liberating aspects of “mass media.” Here, I want to take up where Rosler left off, discussing the potential of art, and technology, to “step toward reasonably and humanely changing the world” using the example of what is commonly referred to as “locative media.”

For the full essay, follow the link.

Designing Geo-politics conference to stream live

This weekend the Designing Geo-politics conference at UCSD will be available as an HD stream. Also, this weekend is the Art and Politics conference at The Hammer Museum.

Digital Rubbish - new book, Jennifer Gabrys

This is a study of the material life of information and its devices; of electronic waste in its physical and electronic incarnations; a cultural and material mapping of the spaces where electronics in the form of both hardware and information accumulate, break down, or are stowed away. Electronic waste occurs not just in the form of discarded computers but also as a scatter of information devices, software, and systems that are rendered obsolete and fail. Where other studies have addressed "digital" technology through a focus on its immateriality or virtual qualities, Gabrys traces the material, spatial, cultural, and political infrastructures that enable the emergence and dissolution of these technologies. In the course of her book, she explores five interrelated "spaces" where electronics fall apart: from Silicon Valley to Nasdaq, from containers bound for China to museums and archives that preserve obsolete electronics as cultural artifacts, to the landfill as material repository. All together, these sites stack up into a sedimentary record that forms the "natural history" of this study.

Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics describes the materiality of electronics from a unique perspective, examining the multiple forms of waste that electronics create as evidence of the resources, labor, and imaginaries that are bundled into these machines. By drawing on the material analysis developed by Walter Benjamin, this natural history method allows for an inquiry into electronics that focuses neither on technological progression nor on great inventors but rather considers the ways in which electronic technologies fail and decay. Ranging across studies of media and technology, as well as environments, geography, and design, Jennifer Gabrys pulls together the far-reaching material and cultural processes that enable the making and breaking of these technologies.

Jennifer Gabrys is Senior Lecturer in Design and Convener of the Masters in Design and Environment in the Department of Design, Goldsmiths, University of London.

e+l at the office

Perpetual Present

A series of new photographs related to the question of "habitation" is featured at the L.A. Forum website.

DRUGSTORE BEETLE (Sitodrepa Paniceum) at RAID projects

DRUGSTORE KIOSK
Organized by David Horvitz
April 3-8, 2010

Opening Reception April 3, 7-10 pm

DRUGSTORE BEETLE (Sitodrepa Paniceum) aims to infiltrate into a closed circulatory system: the library. Using the process of the library donation, 30 exhibitions-in-a-box were donated by artist David Horvitz to various art libraries around the world. From Los Angeles to New York to Tehran to Shanghai to Denver. Before these exhibitions were gifted, Horvitz purchased an ISBN and coordinated the meta-data for the exhibition to be uploaded into Worldcat, the database librarians use to input and receive a publication’s information. Since the information will exist in two digital databases, the hope is that this exhibition can slip with ease, like a sly fox, into collections around the world (the title refers to the most notorious of book-worms, burrowing into books and shelves).

RAID Projects
602 Moulton Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90031
raidprojects@yahoo.com

Academic freedom in question at UCSD

In the past few weeks, a number of developments have occurred in relation to the art/research practices of b.a.n.g. lab at UCSD and Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT). Follow the link to learn more about the harassment of Ricardo Dominguez and the troubling situation that artists and researchers are facing in the UC system.

Strings in Tokyo

Each participant chooses a length of string.
Holding one end, the participant gives the other end to another participant next to them.
The participants form a chain, a circle, a collective.
Walking through the streets of the city, they stay attached, negotiating the built environment, strangers, trying to work together.
To be a social sculpture.



Working with students at the Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo.

Textiles in Newcastle

Walking through Newcastle, on a sunny spring day, my attention was grabbed by this textile addition: a hand-sewn cloth sleeve slipped over a signpost. The knitted intervention softly interrupted the hard-edged geometry of the urban, inviting my touch onto the surrounding surfaces: I couldn't help but fondle the cloth, following its weave and wondering as to its origin, its catalyst, its design. Such sensual tactilities bring to the fore a consideration of all the surfaces and materials lining the streets, the buildings, the steps and benches through which we come to know the city. A moment of domestic softness seemed to fall from the sky and wrap itself around the signpost, to texture my own meandering thoughts with warmth.

Resonator, AV Festival, Newcastle

Resonator is a procedural performance-workshop and idea exchange which investigates diverse artistic, materialist and spiritualist practices that converge around the importance of vibration as a means of making sense of the universe. Vibration is a phenomenon that affects all matter yet is also understood as passing beyond matter, affecting the soul. Resonator aims to investigate the points of contact, convergence and dissonance surrounding the scope of vibrations in different thought and belief structures through working with sound and related practices.
Participants:

Nurit Bar-Shai
James D'Angelo
Yolande Harris
Martin Howse
Brandon LaBelle
Kanta Horio
John Stuart Reid
Ann Rosén
Ryu Hankil
Will Schrimshaw
Jamie Allen

http://largervibrationalcontinuum.org/

Continental Drift comes to L.A.

Control Society/Metamorphosis with Brian Holmes
at the Public School in Los Angeles February 27 and 28th
http://occupyeverything.com/events/continental-drift/
Come down and participate in a two-day theory convergence, a “Continental Drift” seminar with the Paris and Chicago based theorist, Brian Holmes.
Though this Drift is situated on the West Coast in a time of University of California occupations and walkouts, it is connected to the budget cuts and "crisis" brought on by changing economies around the world and the emergence of a neoliberal control society over the past few decades. This drift aims to trace these situation and find ways for liberatory culture to supercede the moment.
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1. The Continental Drift; Control Society/Metamorphosis
2. On Brian Holmes and the Drift
3. UC Strikes and Beyond
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1. The Continental Drift; Control Society/Metamorphosis
Saturday, February 27 –Sunday, Feb. 28
@The Public School 951 Chung King Rd., Chinatown, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Join us for a mostly horizontal seminar conversation with Brian Holmes, UC strike Organizers and Academics and independent intellectuals.
day 1. 2/27- control society
12 pm: disassociation (psychological effects/desire)
facilitators: Liz Glynn and Marc Herbst
2 pm: financialization & the UC crisis
facilitators: Aaron Benanav and Zen Dochterman
4 pm occupation/ collective speech
facilitators: Cara Baldwin, Nathan Brown, Maya Gonzalez, Evan Calder Williams
7 pm: discussion day one
facilitators: Brian Holmes, Solomon Bothwell
day 2. 2/28- metamorphosis
12pm: Autonomous Space
facilitators: Hector Gallegos, Robby Herbst
2 pm:. Precarity
facilitators: Christina Ulke, Sean Dockray
4 pm: Brian Holmes Lecture
7pm: Sharable Territories/ Bifurcation
facilitators: Jason Smith, Ava Bromberg
occupyeverything.com/events/continental-drift
Note: This is a collaboratively organized event. Organizers include Zen Doctherman, Cara Baldwin, Jason Smith, Sean Dockray, Liz Glynn, Solomon Bothwell, Christina Ulke, Marc Herbst, Robby Herbst.
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2. On Brian Holmes and the Drift
Brian Holmes is an art critic, cultural theorist and activist, particularly involved with the mapping of contemporary capitalism.
An article Brian wrote that he asked to read in preparation for the drift:
http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/guattaris-schizoanalytic-cartographies/#sdfootnote10sym
Holmes on the UC Strikes:
http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/the-u-c-strike/
Journal interview we did with him from issue 4:
http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/4/holmes.html
Some publications by or with Brian Holmes:
http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?S=R&wauth=Brian+Holmes&siteID=1JSk6CbYEf0-bBxS9UMaaFGtIjUV42joJA
The Drift has taken a variety of forms in its manifestations at 16 Beaver (2004-2006) in New York, through the Midwest’s Radical Culture Corridor (2008) and in Zagreb Croatia (2008)
Here is An interview with Brian Holmes from the first continental drift in NYC in 2004.
http://www.16beavergroup.org/journalisms/archives/001168.php
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3. UC Strikes and Beyond
The Drift was independently organized though occurs in coordination with the
Beyond the UC Strikes working group.
The working group occured when folks who were participating in the strikes and talking about them
decided to meet up the the Los Angeles Public School to see what could be done.
We are promoting these linked events.
http://joaap.org/other/drift/BeyondtheUCStrikes.html
http://occupyeverything.com/
These are not specifically Journal events. The working group includes Organizers include Cara Baldwin, Solomon Bothwell, Micha Cardenas/Adzel Slade, Zen Dochterman, Sean Dockray, Ben Ehrenreich, Ken Ehrlich, Liz Glynn, Marc Herbst, Robby Herbst, Elle Mehrmand, Marko Peljhan, Kenneth Rogers, Jason Smith, Cybelle Tondu, Christina Ulke, Caleb Waldorf, Michael Wilson and Kim Yasuda.

What remains of a building... ST_LA

What Remains of a Building...
Surface Tension_Los Angeles

Carmen Argote
Cindy Santos Bravo
Ken Ehrlich
Brandon LaBelle

Exhibition Duration: February 12 – March 28, 2009

Opening Reception: Friday, February 12th, 6:00 – 9:00 pm

g727 is pleased to announce What Remains of a Building... an exhibition organized by Ken Ehrlich and Brandon LaBelle. The exhibition is an extension of the Surface Tension series which generates collaborative projects and publications addressing site-based art practices and questions around the built environment. This exhibition will be the third in the Surface Tension series following previous installments in Curitiba, Brazil (2006) and Copenhagen, Denmark (2007).

For the exhibition, each artist focuses on a specific built space, including the recent new headquarters of the LAPD, a domestic space in downtown, Hollywood motels, and the legendary jazz club, the Cadillac Café. Each site provides a generative platform for examining particular histories, cultures, and politics intertwined within the city of LA. Spatial interventions and inquiry, memory tracing and re-enactments, performative gestures and stagings feature as strategies to query what a building is and what it may become.

Public Culture in the Visual Sphere

The UC San Diego Visual Arts Department is hosting a series of lectures and panels investigating contemporary theories, practices and debates in the making and reception of public culture as they move through the visual sphere.

http://visarts.ucsd.edu/html/splash.html

Curated by John C. Welchman
In collaboration with the Visiting Artist Lecture Series committee 2009-10 (Anya Gallaccio, Teddy Cruz, Kyong Park, Suzanne Wright); the Public Culture graduate committee (Edward Sterrett, Orianna Cacchione, Cara Baldwin, Katrin Pesch, Sara Mameni, Tara Zepel), and Jordan Crandall.

Supported by the Visual Arts Department, UCSD; Dean of Arts and Humanities, UCSD; SoCCAS [Southern California Consortium of Art Schools]

Collaborations with the Master of Public Art Studies Program, USC Roski School of Fine Arts; English and Comparative Literature, UCLA; the graduate MFA program at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena; Calit2 [California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology]; and the Athenaeum, La Jolla.

Schedule of Events: All events take place at the UC San Diego Visual Arts Facility, Performance Space Thursdays @ 6:30 pm unless otherwise noted

Jan. 7 Take off: What is Public Culture? [panel]

Anya Gallaccio "What is Public Culture?"

Kyong Park "Anyang Public Art Project 2010: constructing a research-based, multi-disciplinary, community participation and process-oriented urban project in Korea"

Cauleen Smith "When Documentary Seems Like a Lie"

Teddy Cruz "Practices of Encroachment"

Jordan Crandall "New Media and Public Culture"

Moderated by John C. Welchman

Jan 14 Pros and Cons: Graduate Research in Public Culture [panel]
pros* Issue Zero Launch

Nicole Holland "Private as Public in the USSR"

David Mather "Mass Forms, Mass Agency in the Early 20th Century"

Sheryl Oring "I Wish to Say: Free Speech and Democracy"

David White "'Network' as a Tool for Neighborhood Engagement"

Rayanne Tabet "After the Flood: Reversing the Trans-Arabian Pipeline"

Cara Baldwin "We are the ones we've been waiting for"

Moderated by Edward Sterrett

Jan. 21 Public Culture and Democracy [panel]

Cynthia Truant [UCSD, History]
"Citizenship: constructions and contestation in France, 1700-1900"

Grant Kester [UCSD, Visual Arts]
"Democracy, Virtuality and Public Culture"

Marcel Henaff [UCSD, Literature and Political Science]
"Grace, the work of art, and public space"

Jan. 28 Claire Bishop [City University, New York]
"How do you bring a work of art to life?: Contemporary Art and/as Pedagogy"

Feb. 4 Steven Graham [University of Durham, UK; co-sponsored with Art Center, Pasadena]
"Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism"

Feb. 18 Boris Groys [New York University; co-sponsored with USC]
"Visiting Time: Contemporary Time-based Art"

WEDS Feb. 24 Vito Acconci
"From Words to Actions to Architecture"

Feb. 25 Brian Holmes
"Intellectuals and Social Movements: Doctrine - Debate - Defense - Invention"

March 4 Where is the Public Option? [panel]
[co-sponsored with and hosted by the Athenaeum, 1008 Wall Street La Jolla, CA 92037]

Rebecca Solnit
[writer and essayist, San Francisco]

Rick Lowe
[Project Row House, Houston]

Matt Coolidge
[Founder and Director, Center for Land Use Interpretation]

Suzanne Lacy
[Otis College of Art, Los Angeles]

Moderated by Teddy Cruz

March 11 Town Hall/Manifestos/Open Mic.
Moderated by Kyong Park and John C. Welchman

Modifying LA

Staying in Echo Park in Los Angeles recently, each day passing by this church fitted with some surprising elements, the forms start to supplement the conditions of the building. Nestled into the existing form and shape of the building, the elements function as additional seating, table structures, planting pots, and potential stairs, modifying the existing arrangement.


The insertion of these additional elements unfold a poignant suggestion for acts of modification that append additional forms, stage new configurations, and allow other movements into and around buildings. Urban furniture then may function as means for such elaborations, figuring possible itineraries for what it means to take a seat.

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.