muzukashiihito

Dah Di-dah-dah Dah-dah-dah, Di-dah-di-dit Dah-dah-dah Di-di-di-dah Dit Di-dah-dit Di-di-dit

2011-01-01T00:02:00.001+09:00

Dah Di-dah-dah Dah-dah-dah, Di-dah-di-dit Dah-dah-dah Di-di-di-dah Dit Di-dah-dit Di-di-dit, 1985 (approx.) – 2011, h 20 cm x w 13 cm (h 8” x w 5”), 82 page pocket book, black and white text pages printed on 60-pound (90g/m2) cream-colored paper, 4-color front and back cover. Project for Markers 8, International Artists’ Museum Artura/Projective, ArtLife for the World Contemporary Art Space, Venice, Italy.

Translate the long and short signals of Morse code contained in this pocket book into English and you will have detailed walking directions generated by Google Maps from the Venice, Italy gallery in which you are standing to a specific location.

The Google Maps algorithm will bring you on some rather mysterious and seemingly pointless detours along the way, including two segments of the journey by ship; nevertheless, the instructions will eventually get you from point A to point B. Follow this walking route for approximately three days and eleven hours – 2,180 km – and you will arrive at a corner where two lovers used to meet in a black and white film from 1962.

On top of a pedestrian handrail at the intersection you will find a yellow key for a small locker in the Ueno train station in Tokyo, Japan. When you try to use this key to open locker number 6107 it will no longer work because by now the three hundred Yen locker fee has long since ran out, the contents have been taken to the lost and found, and the lock has been changed. So, present the key to the station’s lost and found department and they will hand you a Maxell UR 90 Tinted Oval Window Cassette Shell / POSITION•NORMAL / JAPAN•JAPON cassette.

There are no labels or distinguishing features on the cassette itself. Nor is there any label, or information on the cassette case, save for the fact that the cassette case spine is completely blacked out with marker pen. This is your prize. It is the most valuable thing that I can give to you. You hold my future in your hands.

This cassette tape was fabricated in Japan sometime during the mid-80s, exported to the United States, and purchased in the New York region. The tape was subsequently used to record a conversation between a family member and a psychic. It was, amongst other things, about the possible directions that my life would take. However, after the family member’s death in 2005, and prior to having the opportunity to listen to the tape, the cassette was erased.

In 2009 the erased cassette was brought back to Japan from the United States and presented to a diminutive Japanese psychic who can consistently be found at the corner of Kuyakusho Dōri and Yasukuni Dōri in Shinjuku, Tokyo. After a careful investigation of the tape, the Japanese psychic stated that since the erased recording was originally in English, a language that she didn’t understand, she was not able to decipher it, whereas had the erased recording been in Japanese she would have been able to.

After an improvised ceremony, I quietly placed the cassette in locker 6107, locked it, and walked away with the locker's yellow key. The Maxell UR 90 Tinted Oval Window Cassette Shell / POSITION•NORMAL / JAPAN•JAPON cassette sat in the darkness of the locker until my three hundred Yen ran out and a station attendant took the locker’s solitary object to the lost and found. It now waits for you there, our futures interlocked as the erased tape predicted.

As You Wish

2010-01-01T00:07:00.027+09:00

As You Wish (Project for KUNSTrePUBLIK's Angst hat grosse Augen, [Fear has Big Eyes] Angst in Form/Art in Public Space), 2010, four one-color, offset printed posters wheat paste glued in varying configurations throughout Halle, Germany, individual poster dimensions h 84.1 centimeters (33.1 inches) x w 59.4 centimeters (23.4 inches). Installation and installation images by Daniel Seiple, 2010

Poster #1 translation: 10,000 Marks Reward. Who is the murderer? Since Monday, 11th June this year, the following have disappeared: the school-children Klaus Klawitsky and his sister Klara, who live at 470 Müller Street. Various evidence leads us to believe that the children were victims of a similar crime to that committed last autumn against the Doering sisters.

Poster #2 translation: particularly serious case of theft, theft from kindergarten, theft from parking meter, unknown perpetrators broke violently into a gazebo, a tv was stolen and probably drinks, theft of potting soil, theft of camping furniture, chainsaws stolen, screwdriver stolen, wallet stolen, two trees, two peonies and several carnations plants stolen, two trees stolen, two peonies stolen, several carnations stolen, kitchen appliances stolen, unknown perpetrators stole a chopper and solar lamps, photographic technology stolen, car headlight stolen, drinks were stolen, drill stolen, a hair-cutting machine was stolen, garden equipment stolen, chain saws and cordless screwdrivers stolen, diesel drained, unknown perpetrators broke violently into a gazebo and a tool shed and stole a drill, a screwdriver, a saw, a brush cutter, five solar lights, a tent, a fountain pump, and a garden gnome, saw stolen, brush cutter stolen, five solar lights stolen, tent stolen, garden gnome stolen, fountain pump stolen, fish dead, mailbox destroyed, a gazebo on fire.

Poster #3 translation: Puzzle title: ...but the foreigner didn't want to commit crimes, use your welfare system, ask difficult questions, cause anxiety, bring disease, crowd your cities, be insensitive to cultural differences, steal your jobs, dilute ethnic purity, contaminate the homeland, murder Klaus Klawitsky, his sister Klara and the Doering sisters, or steal your plants and potting soil.
Please try to understand and fill in the blanks! Answer: On Tuesday a foreigner came to Germany from New York through Madrid and made posters about angst.

Poster #4 translation: Then I can't remember anything. And afterwards I see those posters and read what I've done. And read and read. Did I do that?

The following essay was written by Daniel Seiple in 2010 for the Angst hat grosse Augen exhibition catalog:

Upon looking at the art of Stephan Apicella Hitchcock, one walks into a contortion of time between real and fictional narratives in which the artist interweaves his own travels with the history and structure of films, art history, people, and places. In the last year alone he has tick tacked around the globe from New York to Cairo, Beirut, Tokyo, Madrid, Berlin, and Italy. At each location a work has been created, an image shot, or souvenir taken. I am a detective retracing his steps, picking up the static images in order to recompose time, and piling into his writings that were left behind as if by a criminal teasing his pursuers.

In June of this year a cryptic advertisement was distributed in Halle, Germany which became the impetus for my writing. A text on the top half is littered with blank spaces like a MadLib, and on the bottom half answers are provided: “Warning! Very soon a person will be coming to Germany/The Czech Republic from a foreign country through Madrid.” Months earlier, Hitchcock had submitted a proposal to KUNSTrePUBLIK to make a series of posters for the Angst exhibition that played upon fears caused by the welfare crisis, local unemployment, and the outsourcing of jobs. The advertisement continued: “Foreign _________ are often blamed for ________ during difficult economic times. (…) On that note does it help to ________ another _________ artist?” The blanks appear to lead to a personal reflection: When this foreigner, presumably Hitchcock himself, visits Halle for the first time, what angst will he find? Will he experience xenophobic suspicions at the shop that prints his posters? Is his proposal already complicated by his identity as a foreign worker, a tourist, or an imported artist? What business does he have trying to voice local concerns for a place he’s never been to, anyway?

Several years ago a series of photos surfaces that document every step from the pitcher’s mound to the dugout of the Encino Little League Baseball Field, in Encino California – where the character Stacy from the movie, Fast Times in Ridgemont High (1982), loses her virginity. In 2009, the photos are presented at a gallery in Berlin as the artwork of Stephan Apicella Hitchcock. Although the photographer never reveals himself in the photos, his presence is eerily felt as the viewer is invited to step into his shoes. Furthermore, the visitors are invited to take one of the photos home, until no more remain. Over the course of the opening the work transforms from unified to fragmented to gone. The evidence of Hitchcock’s walk to the dugout is now dispersed as a series of clues, creating an invisible line forever connecting those who took the photos.

Three years after the first appearance of the Encino photos, I watch a short film by Hitchcock, which focuses on the grave of moviemaker, Yasujiro Ozu, in Kita-Kamakura, Japan. The image jitters and colors undulate, betraying the construction as a contrived, not-so-singular moment. Fleetingly, the images do come together and perhaps the untrained eye might suspect faulty playback equipment or improperly exposed film. But upon traveling to Japan myself, I realize it would be next to impossible for crows, which are generally heard in autumn, to sing with cicadas that only chirp in summer – as it is recorded on the soundtrack. As I deconstruct the work, it becomes evident that Hitchcock shot the grave three times with each take filtered in a different primary color. In what becomes Nonsynchronous Five Times (2007-08), Hitchcock superimposes each sequence in order to create the impression of one singular, color take. As I ponder the potential reasons for this elaborate construction, I recall Ozu’s own methodical nature and use of a fixed camera.

And then, just as I have the feeling of coming closer to Hitchcock’s world, of which I only describe but a few artworks, a profile for the man appears on Facebook which announces the sale of all of the artist’s works that are “still in his possession, as well as the ownership rights to works that were generated, but destroyed.” The various lots reflect a prolific production. They are offered free of charge, first come first serve. At the conclusion of the auction, all descriptions, negotiations, transactions, correspondences as well as the artist’s friends are deleted leaving little evidence to substantiate any exchange (Part Tool, Part Trap, 2009) or artwork at all. Although I would imagine that with a little bit of digging, one could find evidence of the auction on the buyers’ profiles, or deep in Facebook’s servers. Everything leaves a trace.

In summer 2010 in Halle, four posters are spotted around town, conspicuously written in an old German script. The first is a poster of a poster, a screen grab of a film still from Fritz Lang’s dramatic thriller, M, when Hans Bekert (played by Peter Lorre), a murdering pedophile, steps into the frame and casts a shadow over a his own wanted poster. If the poster is by Hitchcock, it is a trademark move of setting his personal and artistic process within a cinematic narrative. Not quite an attempt of Wellsian (non)fictional drama, he dangles a bit of his own cultural research and presents a typographic parallel with the street signs in Halle.

The next poster to catch my eye is a crossword puzzle. I scribble it down in my notebook and take it to the coffee shop to decipher. The answers confirm my hunch and Hitchcock’s message in the advertisement: A foreigner has indeed arrived and made posters about Angst! On the poster next to this, a word search presents the local police blotter concurrent to the week that Hitchcock has visited Halle. In contrast to the serial murders by Bekert, the crimes in Halle portray a more or less blue-collar town with either desperate or juvenile criminals thieving items like potting soil and brush cutters as well as smashing mailboxes. But rather than finding the criminals, the poster sets up the game of finding the crimes, and with a spirit similar to Bekert’s letter announcing his deeds to the newspaper.

On the fourth poster, again in the old script, I read what appears to be a self-referential and cryptic admission. I follow up the first poster later that night by watching M. The movie is haunting, not just because of the convincing story, but because of the ease at which the populace is moved to mob rule after the wanted poster stirs up public angst, paranoia, and vigilantism. Beckert eludes the authorities, but is eventually captured and tried by the local mafia. In front of this kangaroo court, as a wide-eyed and crazed Beckert gives his impassioned plea to the criminals who will have his head, I hear the words written on that final poster: Then I can't remember anything. And afterwards I see those posters and read what I've done. And read and read. Did I do that?

35minutesmen

2010-01-01T00:05:00.012+09:00

35minutesmen

大同朋子 Tomoko Daido, 福村順平 Junpey Fukumura, ペイ PAI,

酒航太 Sake Kota, 長広恵美子 Emiko Nagahiro, 真田敬介 Keisuke Sanada,

塩田正幸 Masayuki Shioda

Curated by Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock & Anibal Pella-Woo
Essay by Taro Nettleton
Translations by Akiko Nakamura

35minutesmen book, 71 pages, color with essays in English and Japanese

Fordham University Center Gallery
Lincoln Center Campus
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023

On view: November 6 – December 19, 2010

Opening reception: Friday, November 12, 6 – 8 pm
The Center Gallery is open everyday from 8 am – 8 pm

“35minutesmen” brings together a sampling of work from a Tokyo based collective of photographers in the format of a gallery exhibition and accompanying book with essay. The collective existed for just one year, yet they created a tremendous volume of work that was displayed in a series of monthly exhibitions held in their gallery – a now defunct Fuji film 35 minute processing lab.

While I was living in Tokyo in the fall of 2009, Taro Nettleton, a former student from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, introduced me to a small group of photographers that he knew – the “35minutesmen.” I went to a number of monthly openings at their gallery; however, the exhibition space was so small and the crowd was so large that I rarely got into the space to actually see the photographs. Regardless, I knew that the community that these seven photographers were generating was exciting and would be inspirational for students as a model for maintaining production and fostering connections after undergraduate school.

It seemed appropriate in light of the communal nature of their endeavor that the material would need to be organized by more than one person, so Anibal Pella-Woo and I decided to work on this project as co-curators. Our working method of putting this exhibition together was very organic, low fidelity, and do-it-yourself, not unlike the manner that things get accomplished in a collective – which is to say, slowly and on the smallest of budgets. First, a year’s worth of images were sent from the seven photographers in Tokyo via email and edited in New York down to a working group of 60. Then the continuation of the curatorial process took place in emails sent over the course of three months between New York, Italy, and Japan.

Anibal printed out a set of small test prints in New York on an ink jet printer and I printed out the same set at a drugstore while traveling in the south of Japan. Interesting image pairings were arranged on tabletops in New York, taped to hotel walls while teaching in Rome, shuffled, examined, photographed, and exchanged by email once again. Ideas and opinions were discussed and clarified thanks to Gmail. Even the exhibition postcard image of the “35minutesmen” gallery space was acquired by traveling to Japan via Google Earth and utilizing its “street level view.”

In light of Taro Nettleton’s closeness to the “35minutesmen” scene (he grew up in Japan with one of the collective’s members) we decided that he would be best suited to provide a detailed look into the history and working nature of the group. His insightful essay found in the exhibition catalog also bounced its way between Japan, New York, and Rome numerous times before arriving at its present state.

Faced with the challenge of organizing images made over the course of one year by different people with different concerns, an appropriate selection criteria and organizational schema was a necessity. Initially this entailed looking at the photographs with basic formal concerns in mind and centered on creating visual connections within the group of images. We then branched out into looking at the possibilities of contrasting photographic meanings, context, and pacing. To take a year of work from a disparate group of people and distill it into a singular statement seems to go against the grain of the “35minutesmen” spirit, which was what drew us to them in the first place. In fact, the variety of black and white photographs, color photographs, traditional film based photographs, digital photographs, Polaroid photographs, and sizes all testify to the range of styles within this group of "like-minded" individuals. Consequently, the photographs and sequencing of photographs in this show represent but one of the many ways that they could have been organized.

Duplicating the raucous energy of their openings is an impossibility, as is the inclusion of every image generated by the group; nevertheless, the images on display will serve to give some idea of the variety of photographic strategies and interests that are currently in play in a small collective, in a small area of Tokyo called Araiyakushi. The do-it-yourself nature of the “35minutesmen” project, their communal spirit, and energy will hopefully serve as encouragement for young photographers and emerging artists to create their own peer support structure and exhibition opportunities regardless of their divergent interests – in fact, perhaps all the more so because of them.

Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock and Anibal Pella-Woo, 2010

For additional information please see the 35minutesmen website Alternately, email Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock apicellahit@fordham.edu or Anibal Pella-Woo pella@fordham.edu

本「35minutesmen」展は、東京在住の写真家グループによる作品を、展覧会と併せてエッセイを収録したカタログを通して紹介するものである。１年間限定で集まったこのグループは、短期間で膨大な量の作品を制作、そしてそれを月に一度、廃業した35分仕上げのDPEショップで展示していたのだった。

僕が東京に住んでいた2009年秋、ボストンのミュージアム・スクール出身のネトルトン・タロウが紹介してくれた写真家達、それが「35minutesmen」だった。オープニングの日が来るたびに、僕は何度となく彼らのギャラリーへと足を運んだ。ただし、ものすごく狭い展示スペースに訪れる観客はかなりの人数にのぼったため、実際に中に入って写真を見られることは滅多になかった。それでも僕は、この７人の写真家によって生み出されたコミュニティを面白いと思ったし、また学生達にとっては、卒業後いかに制作を継続して繋がっていけるかということの、ひとつの手本になるんじゃないかという気がしていた。

彼らの試みのコミューン的性質を踏まえると、今回の写真展も複数の人間でオーガナイズするのがふさわしいと思い、アニバル・ペラ＝ウーと僕は共同キュレーターとしてこのプロジェクトを進めることにした。展覧会開催にこぎつけるまでの過程はかなり有機的かつローファイかつDIY、これはつまりチームで何かを成し遂げる時の作法とも言えるもので、最小予算内でゆっくりと進んでいった。まず東京にいる７人の写真家達からeメールでニューヨークに送られてきた１年分の写真を、60枚にまで絞った。それからさらに３ヶ月間、eメールによるニューヨーク、イタリア、日本間でのキュレーションに関するやり取りが続いた。

ニューヨークにいるアニバルが、選んだ写真の縮小版をインクジェット・プリンタでプリントアウトし、日本南部を旅行中だった僕も同じものをコンビニでプリントした。ニューヨークでは、それらが興味深いペアの組み写真として机の上に並べられ、僕が講師として滞在したローマのホテルの部屋でも壁にテープで貼られたりしながら、さらにシャッフルされ、吟味され、並べた写真が再度撮影されてeメールで交換された。アイデアや意見を交わしながら整理していく際には、Gメールが役立った。ちなみにこの写真展のDMに使われている35minutesmenの拠点となったギャラリーの画像も、グーグルアースのストリートビューを利用して手に入れたものだ。

ネトルトン・タロウは「35minutesmen」シーンとごく近しい関係にあり（彼は日本育ちでメンバーのひとりとは幼なじみである）、このグループの歴史と本質を洞察するのには、彼が最も適役であるということで僕達の意見は一致した。写真展のカタログに収録された彼の見識あるエッセイもまた、完成までに何度も日本、ニューヨーク、ローマを飛び交ったのだった。

様々な関心を持つ様々な人間が１年間かけて撮った写真をまとめるという難題を抱えた本展覧会には、何らかの選択基準と体系化が必要だった。そういうわけで僕達はまず、ごく基本的なスタイルの問題を念頭に写真を吟味し、そこに視覚的な関係性を見出すという作業を重点的に行なった。そしてそれをさらに発展させて、写真的な意味、文脈、緩急をふまえた対置の可能性を探っていった。それぞれに全く異なる写真家達が撮った１年分の作品をひとつのステイトメントとして提示することは、そもそも僕達が惹かれた本来のもの、つまり「35minutesmen」精神の本質に反するようにも思えた。実際ここに見られる、白黒、カラー、昔ながらのフィルム写真、デジタル写真、ポラロイド、そして大小織り交ぜた様々なサイズといった多様性が、このグループ内のスタイルの幅広さを物語っている。よって最終的に選んだ写真とその配置も、あり得た多くの可能性のうちの、ひとつの見せ方にすぎない。

彼らのオープニングでの喧しいエネルギーをここで再現することは、彼らが生み出した写真を全て見せることと同様に、不可能だ。それでもなお、今回展示された写真からは、東京にある新井薬師という小さな町に集った小さなグループが実践した数々の写真手法とその多様さの、一旦を窺い知ることが出来るだろう。そして僕達は、「35minutesmen」のDIY精神、共同体的性質、そしてそのエネルギーが刺激となって、若手写真家やアーティスト達が、関心は異なれども——いやむしろ異なるからこそ——仲間同士で支え合う仕組みを作り、自ら発表の機会を作り出すようになることを、心から願っている。

スティーブン・アピチェラ＝ヒッチコック／アニバル・ペラ＝ウー, 2010

35minutesmen 2009 – 2010: On the Passage of a Few People Through A Defunct Photo Lab in One Year, by Taro Nettleton, 2010, translation by Akiko Nakamura

Between April 2009 and March 2010, seven photographers organized a monthly photography exhibition series called “35minutesmen” in a small, long inoperative photo-processing lab in Araiyakushi, a fairly ordinary and slightly inconveniently located neighborhood in Tokyo. Formed around a mall-like street with convenience stores and izakayas [bars offering food] leading from the train station, Araiyakushi is much like many other neighborhoods in Tokyo – a quiet and unlikely home for an alternative exhibition space.

Above the awning of the exhibition space still hangs a sign reading “35mins,” after which the exhibition series took its name. Despite the masculine title, which pays homage in equal parts to the previous life of the space and to San Pedro, California’s finest D.I.Y. band the Minutemen, the series comprised the works of three women and four men who called themselves “Araiyakushi Photographers’ Society,” or “A.P.S.” – an acronym appropriated from the now obsolete alternative film system.

The images that A.P.S. produced were extremely varied. Sake Kota, whose schizophrenic work looks as if it were made by several different conceptual artists, provided the exhibition space. Masayuki Shioda brought the other artists – Junpey Fukumura, Emiko Nagahiro, Tomoko Daido, PAI, and Keisuke Sanada – into the Society. Shioda, who showed two 11x14 images of flora and smaller “scene” shots from the 35minutesmen openings in every show, has also photographed for such magazines as Esquire Japan and Studio Voice (both now defunct), and made a name for himself with his enigmatic “photo brut” images frequently associated with fringe music culture.

For Shioda, who is also the show’s most articulate spokesperson, “35minutesmen” was akin to a Fluxus event. Most known for its work of the 1960s, Fluxus was an international group of artists whose works aimed to blur the boundaries between art and everyday life, privileging ephemeral works such as multiples and “events,” i.e. performances based on instructional texts, over traditional fine art pieces such as painting and sculpture. Likewise, “35minutesmen” was not simply about the prints displayed on the walls. As Shioda understood it, the entire exhibition process, including the interpersonal relations and circumstances it generated, was the work. In this respect, it may be more accurate to say that “35minutesmen” was like “relational art,” a term Nicolas Bourriand coined to describe work from the 1990s, which instead of offering private experiences, provided situations and encouraged viewers to socially interact with one another and, ideally, even form a community. “35minutesmen” certainly privileged human interactions; it even helped forge new social relations. Before every opening, the local police station had to be informed of the event and subsequently bribed to keep the show from being closed down. On one night, a newly opened Okinawan noodle shop next door (which has since closed) extemporaneously fed gallery visitors. From the last Saturday to Monday of each month, 35minutesmen was a bender, forum for discussing photography, culinary experience, a place for New Zealanders to get together, and others to make new friends, or skateboarding plans.

While relational art emphasizes the production of small and temporary, but nonetheless utopian, communities, “35minutesmen” was much less grandiose; it embraced the contradictions and antagonisms that are necessarily a part of any democratic endeavor. As one might guess from looking at the disparity between the photographs included here, both aesthetic and personal connections between the photographers were, in many cases, tenuous. Oddly for an independently organized and alternative exhibition series, the main thread that tied the photographers together was that all of them except Daido and PAI worked at different times at the same rental photography studio. Of the seven photographers, Fukumura, who now shoots stills on adult video sets, has remained closest to this context of commercial studio photography. In contrast, Daido, a New York resident, shoots expressive, high contrast black-and-white images rooted in the tradition of 1970s street photography. PAI, on the other hand, is a prolific zine publisher, who primarily shoots confrontationally-posed portraits of subjects associated with “street culture.”

Not organized by theme, “35minutesmen” was hardly a group show in the normal sense of the word. The fact that a group of people who have little in common would place arbitrary constraints on themselves to put up a monthly show is what made “35minutesmen” intriguing and remarkable. One story regarding the genesis of the project is that Shioda wanted to motivate his acquaintances, who were not actively showing their work. Another story is that the photographers, who are all roughly in their mid-30s, felt it was one of the last chances before middle age – which they feared would mean “settling down” – to participate in such a project (in fact, one of the photographers is having a baby soon). While the show was very open in terms of the people it drew and variety of works displayed, it was also very controlled, even school-like. As if for a critique, each of the seven photographers had to produce, without fail, a group of prints at the end of each month. On some months they had to put up photos they were unsatisfied with. Some of the photographers had recurring nightmares about the end of the month deadline catching them unprepared. As a frequent visitor to the show, even I felt the guilt of an unproductive month having passed when I was invited to a 35minutesmen opening.

Keisuke Sanada, who once had to return early from a trip to New York to attend “35minutesmen,” cooked on most of the opening nights. He confessed to me recently that cooking was, for him, the most important aspect of the show. In his view, there was no reason to pretend that art openings are about anything other than the drinking, eating, and socializing, particularly in Tokyo where few artworks sell even in more commercial galleries. In this light, it makes sense that 35minutesmen would promote social gatherings rather than private aesthetic experiences, if only for pragmatic reasons. For Emiko Nagahiro, who showed a group of quietly emotive and warmly lit images, the most rewarding aspect of “35minutesmen” was cleaning up the gallery space after the openings. Significantly, Nagahiro and Sanada’s views focus on the catalysts and aftermath of fleeting interpersonal relations produced by the event.

For a show held in an out-of-the-way neighborhood, its biggest achievement may have been its assembling of a truly diverse group of people, among whom were artists, English teachers, photographers, graffiti writers, graphic designers, musicians, art critics, painters, a local bar owner, a street cleaner, a chef, a doctoral candidate, a popular magazine columnist, and an acclaimed fashion designer. To claim that photography is a democratic medium may be commonplace in 2010. “35minutesmen’s” use of photography as a catalyst for fostering democratic social relations, however, was a breath of fresh air, particularly in Tokyo’s contemporary art environment, where do-it-yourself projects too often feel regrettably self-involved.

2009年４月から2010年３月にかけて、７人の写真家達が、いささか交通の便が悪い東京の一角に位置する新井薬師という町の、長らく使われていなかったDPE店において、「35minutesmen」と呼ばれる写真展を毎月開いていた。コンビニや居酒屋が軒を連ねる駅前の商店街を中心に住宅地が広がる新井薬師は、東京の他の町とよく似た静かな地域であって、「オルタナティヴ展示スペース」というイメージからは大分かけ離れた空間だった。

この元店舗の看板には今も「35分」の文字が残されていて、写真展の名前の由来となっている。女性の写真家をも含むにも関わらず、この展覧会は、カリフォルニア州サンペドロが生んだ最高のDIYバンド・ミニットメンにオマージュを捧げる為「minutesmen」と題されていた。実際には、このシリーズ展では３人の女性と４人の男性による作品が展示され、彼らは自らを「新井薬師フォトグラファーズ・ソサエティ」もしくは「A.P.S.」と名乗っていた。ちなみに「A.P.S.」は、今や時代遅れとなった代替写真システム「Advanced Photo System」の略語を拝借したものだ。

A.P.S.メンバー達による写真は多様性を極めていた。まず、複数のコンセプチュアル・アーティストが制作したかに思えるほどスキゾフレニックな作風の酒航太が、この展示スペースの提供者である。そして毎回大四つ切りの植物写真２枚と、「35minutesmen」展のオープニングで撮影した小さな“シーン”写真数枚を展示した塩田正幸が、福村順平、長広恵美子、大同朋子、ペイ、真田敬介といった他の参加者達をソサエティに引き入れた。塩田は、『Esquire Japan』や『Studio Voice』（両誌とも今は廃刊）などの雑誌でも活躍し、マイナーなミュージック・カルチャーに縁が深く、「フォト・ブリュ的」とでも言えそうな作品で名を馳せた写真家である。

このシリーズ展の最も雄弁なスポークスマンでもある塩田にとって、「35minutesmen」はフルクサスのイベントに近いものだ。1960年代の活動が最もよく知られているフルクサスは、多国籍のアーティスト集団で、その作品はアートと日常の境界線を曖昧にすることを目的とし、絵画や彫刻といった伝統的なメディアではなく、マルティプルや“イベント”、つまりインストラクションに基づいたパフォーマンスなどの、短命な作品を重視していた。「35minutesmen」もまた、単に写真を壁に展示しただけのものではなく、塩田が考えていたように、そこで生まれる人間関係や状況も含め、その全過程を作品の一部として提示したものだった。この意味において「35minutesmen」は、「relational aesthetics（関係性の美学）」に近いものと言えるかもしれない。「関係性の美学」とはニコラス・ブリオーが1990年代の芸術を説明する際に使った言葉で、それは、私的な鑑賞体験を提供する代わりに様々な状況を与えて、そこに参加した者同士が互いに影響を与え合い、理想的にはそれがコミュニティにまで発展する、というものである。「35minutesmen」は明らかに人と人との交流を重視していたし、実際新たな社会的関係を築くきっかけともなった。例えば、毎回オープニング前には近くの交番にイベント開催を知らせなければならなかった彼らは、のちに、イベントを中断させられないように賄賂を贈るようになったのだった。ある晩には、隣に新しく出来た（今は閉店してしまった）沖縄そば屋が、その場の勢いでギャラリー訪問者達にふるまってくれたこともあった。毎月の最終土曜日から月曜日にかけて、「35minutesmen」は酒場であり写真談義のフォーラムであり台所であり、なぜかニュージーランド人の社交場にもなっていたのだった。

「関係性の美学」が、小さく一時的でもユートピア的な共同体を作ることを重視しているのに対し、「35minutesmen」はもっと捌けたもので、民主的な試みにはつきものの矛盾や対立も受け入れていた。ここに含まれた作品相互の不均衡を見れば察しがつくかもしれないが、多くの場合において、彼らの間には美的もしくは個人的な関係性といったものが希薄だった。インディペンデントに組織されたオルタナティヴな展覧会としてはそれも妙な話なのだが、これらの写真家達を繋げていた横糸は、大同朋子とペイ以外の全員が、時期は違えど同じ撮影スタジオで働いていたということだけだった。７人の写真家のうち、AVの撮影現場でスチル撮影等をしている福村が、その商業写真の文脈に現在も一番近いところにいると言えるだろうか。それと対照的なのがニューヨーク在住の大同で、彼女は1970年代ストリート・フォトグラフィーの伝統を受け継ぐ、表現主義的かつハイコントラストな白黒写真を撮っている。一方ペイは精力的な“ジン”の発行者であり、主に“ストリート・カルチャー”界隈の人々を被写体としたポートレイトを撮っている。始めにテーマありきで集まったわけではない「35minutesmen」は、厳密にはグループ展と呼べるものではなかった。ほとんど共通点のない人間同士が集まり、任意の制約を自らに課して、月イチで写真展を開くという事実こそが、「35minutesmen」の魅力であり注目すべき点だったのだ。

このプロジェクトの発端に関してひとつ言うと、塩田は、それまで積極的に作品を見せていなかった知り合いにモチベーションを与えたかったのだという。さらにもうひとつ付け加えると、ほぼ全員が30代半ばであるこの写真家達は、中年——つまりこれは彼らにとって“落ち着く”ことを意味するのだが——に差し掛かり、こういったプロジェクトに参加するのもこれが最後のチャンスだと感じていたらしい（実際作家のひとりにはじきに子どもが生まれる）。この写真展は、招かれた人々の雑多さという意味でも展示された作品の幅広さという意味でもきわめて解放的だったけれども、一方ではかなり束縛的で、ある意味学校のようでもあった。クラスでの批評会のように、７人の作家達それぞれが月末ごとに必ず何点かの写真を制作してこなければならなかったのだ。月によっては、自分では納得出来ていない写真を展示しなければならないこともあったはずだ。そして、気づいたら月末の締切りが迫っていたという悪夢に何度もうなされた者もひとりではなかった。ただの鑑賞者である僕でさえ、「35minutesmen」のオープニングの招待が来る頃になると、今月は無駄に過ごしてしまったという罪悪感に襲われることがあった。

一度「35minutesmen」に参加するためニューヨーク滞在を早めに切り上げて帰国したこともあった真田敬介は、ほぼ毎回オープニングで料理を作っていた。最近彼が僕に打ち明けてくれたところによると、彼にとっては料理をすることこそがこの写真展で最も重要だったのだという。彼にとって、展覧会のオープニングはただの社交場以外であり、それ以上であるふりをする必要は全くないのだった。アート作品がほとんど売れない東京では、なおさらである。そういった実質的な理由からしても、「35minutesmen」が個人の美的経験ではなく社交という側面を押し出したのには納得がいく。柔らかな光の、静謐かつ叙情的な写真を見せていた長広恵美子が「35minutesmen」で最もやりがいを感じたのは、オープニング後の掃除だったという。ここで特筆すべきは、長広と真田が、このイベントにおいて生まれた儚い人間関係の、きっかけと余波を重要視していたという点だろう。

ひっそりとした町で開かれたこの写真展にあって、その最大の達成は、本当に多彩な人々を呼び寄せたことにあると言えるかもしれない。そこにはアーティスト、英語教師、写真家、グラフィティ・アーティスト、グラフィック・デザイナー、ミュージシャン、美術評論家、画家、近所のバー経営者、清掃員、料理人、博士号志願者、人気雑誌のコラムニスト、一流ファッション・デザイナーなどが集まっていた。2010年にもなって、写真は民主的なメディアであると殊更に主張するのは、当たり前すぎるかもしれない。しかし「35minutesmen」が民主的な人間関係を育むための触媒として写真を利用したそのやり方は、新鮮なものだった。特に、残念ながら多くのDIYプロジェクトが自己陶酔に終わりがちな東京の現状においてそれは、新風を吹き込むものだったと言えるだろう。

Landscape Film (Tottori, Japan)

2009-01-01T12:10:00.007+09:00

Landscape Film (Tottori, Japan), 2009, video, color, sound, total running time 1 minute and 52 seconds.

Landscape Film is partially constructed from material extracted from Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1964 film Woman in the Dunes. The scenes utilized from Teshigahara’s film have been sequenced so that they show the protagonist walking through an empty landscape, then suddenly, without reason, breaking into a sprint and running out of the film. The screen in Landscape Film is divided between Teshigahara’s B&W footage and color footage shot in April 2009 in Tottori, Japan where Teshigahara made his film 45 years earlier.

I walked and filmed 199 steps in the Tottori sand dunes corresponding to each of the main character’s paces from the film. Once brought together side by side with Teshigahara’s footage, each of my steps was meticulously slowed down, or sped up to match the shifting gait of the central character.

The soundtrack is comprised of live sounds recorded during my walk and portions of the film’s ominous score. The synchronized footsteps on sand and powerful wind overloading the microphone function as additional sound effects duplicating the protagonist’s movements and environment.

The left channel's figure moving on screen serves as a document of a dubbing process, a point of view shot from Teshigahara’s actor, or potentially even someone pursuing the main character. Beyond the precise matching of the footsteps, the relationship between the footage, like the principal's behavior, is left ambiguous.

Black & White Video

2009-01-01T12:10:00.000+09:00

Black & White Video, 2009, found balloon, three cubic yard dumpster, video, black and white, sound, total running time 1 minute and thirty seconds (balloon missing/destroyed). Project for Last Day of Magic, International Artists’ Museum Artura/Projective for Détournement, 2009 Venise, a collateral event of the 53rd Venice Biennale presented at ScalaMata Exhibition Space, Venice, Italy

In the fall of 2008 a black balloon blew down Kent Street in Brooklyn, New York and into my leg. I picked it up, took it to my studio, and bounced it between the studio wall and the front of a video camera. The balloon appears as a black shape on a white field, alternately decreasing in size, or occupying a progressively larger portion of the video camera frame, eventually hitting the front of the lens and blocking all light.

After I filmed the balloon, it sat on a shelf in my studio for five months, gradually shrinking, until I discarded it into the three cubic yard dumpster outside my door. Almost immediately after disposing of the deflated balloon, a friend asked if they could have it, so I climbed into the dumpster and with the assistance of a different friend I methodically emptied its contents into a number of large garbage bags.

Although we sifted through the refuse like meticulous archaeologists, we failed to locate the missing balloon. I checked each piece of trash as I returned it back into the dumpster; nevertheless, the absent balloon did not materialize. The black balloon drifted up to me, stayed for some months, and then vanished. Black & White Video and several images are all the remaining proof of the balloon.

My parents went to Venice and all I got was this lousy...

2009-01-01T12:08:00.000+09:00

My parents went to Venice and all I got was this lousy youth sized Brazilian t-shirt of a dead man in a beach chair from a 1971 movie based on a German novella featuring an aristocratic Polish adolescent conceptualized by a third generation Italian from New York who had to sleep with the obsessed South Korean immigrant to get it made on May 5, 2009, 2009, silkscreen and heat transfer on youth t-shirt. Project for Culture Kiosk/Souvenir Art/Markers 7, International Artists’ Museum Artura/Projective for Détournement, 2009 Venise, a collateral event of the 53rd Venice Biennale presented at ScalaMata Exhibition Space, Venice, Italy

If a souvenir is a catalyst for a memory of a past experience, then what better way to remember Venice than by considering a corpse? This collaboration utilizes a classic “joke” t-shirt design from the seventies in which a number of different locations are inserted into the sentence formula “My parents went to (someplace) and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.” Regardless of the place referenced in the shirts, they all emphasize the simple disappointment with the shirt received over the experience enjoyed by the parents. In this instance, the specific information and history printed on the shirt is stretched to an unusual level.

Luchino Viconti’s 1971 film Death in Venice, a story of a famous author’s increasing fixation with a young boy, forms the starting point for a self-reflexive, run-on sentence that incorporates a number of additional details not normally found on souvenir t-shirts. This shirt integrates some of the complexities of its own history, from the origins of its manufacture, to the “labor negotiations” required for its production.

The shirt is printed on the front in English and in multiple languages on the inside of the shirt according to the nationalities referenced in the text. This provides a level of specificity; nevertheless, due to the utilization of online translation programs, numerous mistakes occur. The inaccuracies in translation mirror the loss of clarity often found in the bootlegging process as copies move further away from the original source material towards an international audience.

Moreover, the dead man referenced in the shirt’s text – actor Dirk Bogarde from the final scene of Visconti’s film – is not the image on the shirt, rather an image of a different dead man on a beach chair is utilized from the 1989 comedy film Weekend at Bernie's. The substitution of imagery from an entirely different film genre, made in a different country, from a different era, further emphasizes the inauthentic nature of this souvenir. This project is a collaboration with Jennie Jeun Lee.

Nonsynchronous Five Times

2009-01-01T12:06:00.000+09:00

Nonsynchronous Five Times, 2007 – 2008, three RGB filtered black and white Super-8 reels transferred to DVD, color, sound, total running time 6 minutes and 16 seconds

Nonsynchronous Five Times investigates the difficulties of making something straightforward. Three black and white Super-8 film cassettes were shot in single takes from a fixed position looking onto the top of filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu's grave marker In Kita-Kamakura, Japan. Each of the three takes was shot at high speed and with a filter for one of the three additive primary colors (red, green, and blue). Superimposed atop one another and colorized accordingly, the three elements should combine to create a singular color take; however, any deviations between the three pieces of footage caused improper registration and undulating color shifts. The objective of creating one color take was complicated by numerous factors: wind moving the tripod and camera, wind causing ripples on the water atop the grave marker, wind causing movement of the trees and their reflections in the water, as well as changes in light conditions from shifting cloud cover.

The soundtrack is the narrative backbone of the work, providing a real-time documentation of the process of shooting three film cassettes. We hear one cycle of Ozu’s gravestone being washed, the camera running at high speed, the camera being reloaded, and the camera filters being changed. This cycle occurs in the fall (note crows) and in succession three times, once for each of the film cassettes and its associated additive primary filter (RGB). The second sound element was recorded at Ozu's grave marker, yet half a year later in the summer season (note cicadas). Attempts to get clean recordings were often thwarted in both situations by sounds drifting into Engakuji Temple – ambulance sirens, trains, or people walking and talking.

At times, the three pieces of film footage come together briefly in proper registration and work in creating a singular image. As well, at times the sound of cicadas is indistinguishable from the sound of the camera filming. However, most of the time, the five elements that make up this film are in various states, ultimately calling attention to the film's constructed nature. The RGB composite image track is present only for the first three minutes of the film, after which the film proceeds as a soundtrack only - filming three cassettes took six minutes; however, the cassettes are superimposed, not shown consecutively and accordingly take up less than the actual filming time.

12.9 miles, 24 minutes; 25.2 miles, 42 minutes; 18.8 miles, 54 minutes; 11.4 miles, 40 minutes

2009-01-01T00:04:00.000+09:00

12.9 miles, 24 minutes; 25.2 miles, 42 minutes; 18.8 miles, 54 minutes; 11.4 miles, 40 minutes, 2009, video, color, silent, total running time 3 minutes and 5 seconds. Book: 2009, bound 162 page hardcover book, h 8" x w 10"

12.9 miles, 24 minutes; 25.2 miles, 42 minutes; 18.8 miles, 54 minutes; 11.4 miles, 40 minutes is a 3 minute and 5 second video comprised of one hundred sixty photographs taken consecutively on Friday, February 20, 2009. The images were shot from a fixed position in the back of a car with a digital camera on full automatic mode. All images were made at one-second intervals by means of a timer and the images are displayed in the order in which they were shot with no editing, or retouching. The information at the beginning of the video denotes the distances and times between three different IKEA locations and the information at the conclusion of the video refers to the exact times at which the three IKEA images were made. The book version of this project was conceptualized, executed, and bound within the same day. This project is a collaboration with Anibal J. Pella-Woo.

Part Tool, Part Trap

2009-01-01T00:02:00.001+09:00

Part Tool, Part Trap, 2009, Facebook, assorted artworks

Part Tool, Part Trap was an auction that took place on Facebook over three weeks during which I divested of all art works that I had produced that were still in my possession, as well as the ownership rights to works that were generated, but destroyed. All lots were free, open to the first person that claimed them, and shipped without charge to the new owners in Berlin, London, Cairo, and the United States. There were absolutely no terms to the exchange. All postings of object descriptions, images, negotiations, and correspondence by potential owners were systematically deleted at the conclusion of the project from oldest to newest postings, after which all information and friends were deleted.

The Plot is Very Bare (Berlin)

2009-01-01T00:00:00.000+09:00

The Plot is Very Bare (Berlin), 2005/2009, fifty LightJet prints mounted to Sintra and Plexiglas, h 12.3825 centimeters (4.875 inches) x w 16.51 centimeters (6.5 inches)

Bereznitsky Gallery

The Plot is Very Bare represents a walk across a baseball field to the bench in the dugout of the Encino Little League field in Encino, California in the United States. Each photograph is taken from a position one step closer than the previous and the photographs are installed exactly one pace apart from one another.

Visitors to the 2009 Berlin installation of The Plot is Very Bare at Bereznitsky Gallery are invited to pick one of the fifty images, remove it from the wall during the opening, and take it home at the end of the night. As the evening progresses, the work will transition from being cohesive, to fragmentary, to absent. The image you decide on is yours with no attached conditions whatsoever.

Your choice will join you to the individuals who claimed the images to the left and right of your selection. You will become a part of an invisible line of people that are connected despite geographic distance. Additionally, this dugout is where the character Stacy from the 1982 film Fast Times at Ridgemont High loses her virginity to Ron Johnson, the audio consultant from the mall.

Excursions

2008-01-01T14:07:00.003+09:00

Excursions, 2008–2009, written text, image with caption, offset printed publication. Image caption: Outdoor movie theater across from Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman’s house on Via Vittorio Emanuele, Stromboli, 2006

Excursions is a written text that attempts to understand a sudden reversal of my compass’ polarity while traveling in Japan in 2008. Although the piece almost arrives at a conclusion employing the filmic backdrops of Yasujiro’s Tokyo Story, Roberto Rossellinis’s Stromboli, and Henry Levin’s Journey to the Center of the Earth for support, the piece is ultimately unsuccessful in providing a satisfactory answer for the strange geomagnetic occurrence.

“At last I saw the figure of Hans as if enveloped in the huge halo of burning blaze, and no other sense remained to me but that sinister dread which the condemned victim may be supposed to feel when led to the mouth of a cannon, at the supreme moment when the shot is fired and his limbs are dispersed into empty space.” 1

The following thoughts, like limbs dispersed into space then reassembled, form a loose body – rudimentary, transformed, and not entirely unified, but something with the promise of a body nevertheless.

On Thursday, March 13, 2008, I used my small pocket compass to orient my map and myself when I emerged from the Shinjuku rail station in Tokyo, Japan. There are hundreds of exits from Shinjuku station and one can easily wind up walking in the wrong direction, becoming increasingly lost and bewildered if they are not initially pointing the right way towards their destination. As in the past, my compass allowed me to fix my bearings and quickly set me on the correct course. Two days later, while traveling south from Tokyo, I stopped in the city of Osaka to see the grand sumo tournaments. Again, I utilized my compass to adjust the relationship between my map of Osaka and the city itself; however, despite the alignment of the compass rose on the map and the compass held in my palm, I was significantly off course and getting no closer to the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium. Having become quite desperate after repeating the same, wrong route numerous times, I decided to walk in the opposite direction, concluding that my map of Osaka had somehow been printed in reverse. As I walked on this new course, the Osaka landmarks on the map quickly began to emerge in their appropriate places. I arrived at the Gymnasium and the entire matter disappeared from my thoughts as soon as the sumo bouts began.

Several days after my stay in Osaka, I arrived further south at my intended destination of Onomichi on the Inland Sea. Yet again, I encountered the problem of being significantly off course as in Osaka. I was investigating the city of Onomichi, looking for the different locations where the filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu shot portions of his 1953 film Tokyo Story and I repeatedly found myself getting terribly lost despite the use of my pocket compass. After retracing my steps back to the Onomichi rail station, I carefully compared my map with the station’s map. My map seemed to be exactly the same, so I aligned it properly according to the station map’s compass rose, and set out once again. Now, I navigated with ease to my desired sites and it gradually dawned on me that my maps had not been the source of the problem at all, but that there was something terribly wrong with my compass. Somehow, my compass had suddenly and enigmatically reversed its polarity during the previous days – north was precisely south, and south was precisely north. From my perspective, the world was now entirely upside down.

I sat for a long time in Onomichi at one of Ozu’s filming locations thinking about the implications of the world being unstable enough to abruptly invert. It was both odd, as well as comforting to be considering an enormous change such as a polarity reversal in Ozu’s own backyard, he being a filmmaker whose works are known for their fixed camera positions and methodical, steady nature. What event would be significant enough to cause a compass to rearrange its orientation? Would not such an event have enormous effects on transportation in the world and at the least merit a brief mention in the news? Additionally, what would the repercussions be for my personal life? While thinking loosely around these matters, I recollected that a compass reversing its polarity also featured in a book I had read a long time ago as a boy – towards the end of Jules Verne’s 1864 novel, Journey to the Center of the Earth.

The main characters from Jules Verne’s novel attempt to reach the planet’s core, entering the Earth via an opening in a volcano crater in Iceland. Then, at the end of the story after numerous adventures, they are ejected from the core on a wave of hot lava into a warm climate considerably different from Iceland. The chief protagonist puzzles over the changed environment and eventually concludes (after hearing Italian) that their previous proximity to the magnetized core of the planet affected the functionality of his compass, which had reversed, and that they were on the other side of the world. In fact, it turns out that that they had been expelled from the earth from a volcano on the Aeolian island of Stromboli, in the Tyrrhenian Sea north of Sicily, not back onto the volcano in Iceland. It was not precisely the other side of the world, but close enough in my book.

So far, I have not been to Iceland in my travels, or even remotely close to transiting through the inside of a volcano; however, I actually have spent time on the island of Stromboli where Roberto Rossellini made his film Stromboli in 1949. A few years earlier I stood on the island near the active volcano and considered the possibility of the explorers from the 1959 film version of Journey to the Center of the Earth – actors James Mason, Pat Boone, and Gertrude the Duck – being shot out from the volcano, out of their movie, and directly into Rossellini’s film alongside the heroine Ingrid Bergman. The science fiction of Journey to the Center of the Earth, in some ways a polar opposite of Rossellini’s hard edge realism, would form a bizarre amalgam; further, they even shared a legitimate geographic feature in the volcano. However, sitting in Onomichi, I could not piece together, cinematically at least, what the connections were to Japan and what this had to do with my compass shifting so radically.

Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story was made in 1953, Roberto Rossellini’s Stromboli was made in 1949, and Henry Levin’s Journey to the Center of the Earth was made in 1959, so there was no commonality of production year to bring the works securely together, or even legitimately into the same mental conversation. Still, I thought, if only I could arrange for a screening of Tokyo Story at the library’s outdoor theater on Stromboli, at the base of the volcano and directly across the street from where Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman lived while filming, that would be a neat suturing and provide the third side of this filmic triangle.

Upon returning home to New York from Japan, I looked further into the mysteries of magnetism and was quite surprised with the answer from the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Geomagnetism Program when they posed the following question on their website, “Is it true that the magnetic field occasionally reverses polarity?” The website then went on to say with great enthusiasm, “Yes, incredible as it may seem, the magnetic field occasionally flips over! Occasionally, however, the secular variation becomes sufficiently large such that the magnetic poles end up being located rather distantly from the geographic poles; we say that the poles have undergone an ‘excursion’ from their preferred state. During a reversal, between polarities, the geometry of the magnetic field is much more complicated than it is now, and a compass could point in almost any direction depending on one’s location on the Earth.” 2

This new information made me consider my situation quite differently. Who knows what would have happened when my compass flipped over if I had been seeking out film locations for Ozu’s Late Spring, made in 1949, or for his 1959 film Good Morning. Perhaps I would have encountered less complications, smaller variations, and found significant connections with Stromboli, or with Journey to the Center of the Earth. Nevertheless, I had been in Onomichi, Tokyo Story was made in 1953, and consequently the reassembling of dispersed limbs is not as straight as it could be, or, more truthfully, is not at all. Two lines have been joined, with the promise of a potential triangle in a distant, missing leg.

After Verne’s character emerged from the volcano’s halo of burning blaze and spotted the guide, he likened his feelings to the sinister dread of a condemned man just before “his limbs are dispersed into empty space.” If this character were to collect their senses and overcome their anxieties of the unknown, then ask the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Geomagnetism Program “What causes the magnetic field to reverse polarity?” They would be confronted with the following answers:

First, “Nothing.”

Followed by, “The fact that the magnetic field occasionally reverses is simply a property of the continuous, on-going behavior of the Earth's dynamo.”

Then, lastly and most lovely, “There is no ‘cause’ per se.”

Notes:
1 Verne, Jules. Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Trans. William Butcher. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
2 "National Geomagnetism Program Frequently Asked Questions." (April 16, 2007): U.S. Department of the Interior/U.S. Geological Survey. .

日本から来ました。日本に行ったことがありません。上記のどちらでもありません。

2008-01-01T14:06:00.004+09:00

日本から来ました。
日本に行ったことがありません。
上記のどちらでもありません。
I came from Japan.
I have not been to Japan.
I am neither of the above.

Curated by Stephan Apicella–Hitchcock
November 15 – December 19, 2008
Reception: Tuesday, November 18, 6 – 8 PM
Fordham University’s Center Gallery
Lincoln Center Campus
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023-7414

Including:
有川滋男 Shigeo Arikawa, 康雅筑 Ya-chu Kang, 西村明也 Akinali Nishimula, 志甫和美 Kazumi Shiho, Eric Van Hove, Ben Washington

I came from Japan. I have not been to Japan. I am neither of the above. brings together contemporary artworks from six international artists that display differing relationships with Japan; however, this exhibition makes no singular statement about Japan, or implies that there might even be a cohesive Japan that the artists could speak about. The connections between Japan and this exhibition border on incidental – hence the title, which simply describes the varying levels of association between the artists and the country.

The works in this show are part of a larger exploration into finding a balance between the poles of stating and describing something overtly and leaving something implied, or unsaid. For example, a Scottish computer engineer working for the Toyota company explained to me in a doctor's waiting room in Tokyo that communication between the East and the West is not unlike an iceberg, where what is discernible, what is above water, only represents a small portion of the iceberg's actual structure.

Whether this analogy has any relevance to the dynamic of understanding between different cultures is a lengthy and problematic debate. Still, this concept is an excellent framing mechanism to consider the sculptures, films, and photography by Shigeo Arikawa, Ya-chu Kang, Akinali Nishimula, Kazumi Shiho, Eric Van Hove, and Ben Washington. Each artist demonstrates a superb understanding of their craft in realizing their pieces as discreet objects in front of you, while the conceptual aspects of the works are sufficiently receptive to support a number of interpretations. Maintaining a curious spirit while engaging with the works will allow the emergence of numerous formal connections, overlapping historical concerns, and latent conceptual associations between the pieces.

For additional information please email Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock at: apicellahit@fordham.edu
http://fordhamvisualarts.blogspot.com/
http://www.fordham.edu/visualarts/

北風は明らかに氷山から吹き出す。
A north wind blows, obviously off the icebergs.

Landscape Film (Shatana, Jordan)

2008-01-01T14:05:00.002+09:00

Landscape Film (Shatana, Jordan), 2008, video, color, silent, total running time 1 minute and 14 seconds

Landscape Film is comprised of numerous short films made with a digital point and shoot camera as it is repeatedly thrown into the air and caught by the artist. The terrain of Shatana, Jordan is transformed from a static state through a series of pans and frenetic dives.

Untitled (with Kite)

2008-01-01T14:04:00.006+09:00

Untitled (with Kite), 2008, video, color, sound, total running time 1 minute and 54 seconds

Collaboration is about having conversations and finding common interests. What better example than flying a kite with a friend and having a couple of beers on a sunny afternoon. However, the piece culminates with the kite’s camera filming a disaster. This project is a collaboration with Ben Washington.

Um Naji, Um Dani

2008-01-01T14:03:00.003+09:00

Um Naji, Um Dani, 2008, fabric, thread, buttons

This project was a discreet, almost invisible collaboration with Um Naji and Um Dani (mother Naji and mother Dani), the two women who prepared the meals during my stay at a residency in Shatana, Jordan. I wanted to express my gratitude for their delicious cooking, so I commissioned them to design and sew a new set of clothes that they would wear to the open day of the residency. Despite the fact that we could not communicate linguistically, we spent a pleasant afternoon shopping for fabric, thread, and buttons. After purchasing the materials, I paid them 150% of their stated labor costs to ensure that they would make their garments with extra special care. I was not to be disappointed. When I saw them at the opening in their beautiful new outfits, I was enthralled – they looked like movie stars.

Yalla ya Bascot (Go Biscuits)

2008-01-01T14:02:00.002+09:00

Yalla ya Bascot (Go Biscuits), 2008, written text in English and Arabic

In July of 2008, Toleen Touq and I participated in an artist residency in the small town of Shatana in Jordan. While we were being given the initial tour of the town, we heard and briefly saw a car go by in the distance with a speaker attached to its side. The car roamed through the hilly terrain, the speaker repeatedly broadcasting in Arabic the following phrase, "Yalla ya bascot!” (Go biscuits). We decided that this could be the basis for a suitable collaboration, so we started looking for the "biscuit man." Each day we set out and asked anybody that we encountered if they knew anything about the biscuit man. After our daily walks we would sit down and try to recount the people that we met, what they said to us, as well as the visual details of the scene. Gradually, he became a larger than life figure. After much searching, we eventually found him. The text of this piece is a recording of our pursuit, as well as an inadvertent portrait of the town of Shatana. This project is a collaboration with Toleen Touq.

http://www.itch.co.za/

On Tuesday, we started looking for the biscuit man.
We met three children on the road near the church.
One girl had a pink shirt.
One girl had a long neck.
The boy had a deep voice.
We asked them if they had seen the biscuit man.
They said that they had not seen the biscuit man.
They said that there is a shop nearby that sells biscuits.
They said that there was a truck selling watermelon.
They said that they do not know who the biscuit man is.
They said that they do not know when the biscuit man comes.
We walked further into town.

We met a man standing near his pickup truck.
He had a nice face.
He had a nice smile.
He had a gold tooth.
His hair was parted on the side.
We asked him if he had seen the biscuit man.
He said that he had not seen the biscuit man.
He said the biscuit man was from Neimeh.
He said the biscuit man comes every few days.
He said the biscuit man comes at noon, or sunset.
We walked further into town.

We met a man with a keffiyeh.
He had curly gray hair.
We asked him if he had seen the biscuit man.
He said that he had not seen the biscuit man.
We walked further into town.
We met a woman wearing a dark blue dress.
The dress had light blue and white embroidery.
She held Toleen’s hands.
She stroked Toleen’s hands.
She held Toleen’s face in both her hands.
She smiled sweetly to Toleen.
We asked her if she had seen the biscuit man.
She said that she had not seen the biscuit man.
She said that there are biscuits at a shop nearby.
She took us to the shop while holding Toleen’s hand.
She talked about Jesus.
She said that Jesus is in heaven.
She said that Jesus is our savior.
She took us to the shop.
The shopkeeper let us in.
We bought four chocolate bars.
We bought toffee caramel, cream wafer, vanilla wafer, and coconut.
We asked the shopkeeper if she had seen the biscuit man.
She said that she had not seen the biscuit man.
We bought two ice creams from her store.
We walked further into town.

We met a man at the end of a dead end road.
He wore a white djelabiyah.
He rested his left foot on the edge of the balcony.
He held a stick in his hand.
We asked him if he had seen the biscuit man.
He said that he had not seen the biscuit man.
He said that the biscuit man comes every few days.
He asked us to come into his home.
We walked further into town.

We met a woman with a dog.
She was standing in her yard.
She was hanging plastic bags onto her laundry line.
She spoke to us and said, “Come in my loves.”
We asked her if she had seen the biscuit man.
She said that she had not seen the biscuit man.
She said that the biscuit man could be here in one hour.
We walked further into town.

We met a man who was standing in his yard.
He was eating watermelon ice cream.
We asked him if he had seen the biscuit man.
He said that he had not seen the biscuit man.
He said the biscuit man comes every two weeks.
He said the biscuit man comes just once per month.
We walked further into town.

We met two boys who were sitting in a van.
We asked them if they had seen the biscuit man.
They said that they had not seen the biscuit man.
We said, “If you see the biscuit man tell him that we are looking for him.”
We walked further into town.
On the next day, we continued looking for the biscuit man.
We met an older man who was sitting on his porch.
He had long eyebrows.
We asked him if he had seen the biscuit man.
He said to wait while he went and got his son.
We asked his son if he had seen the biscuit man.
He said that he had not seen the biscuit man.
We walked further into town.

We met a boy with a red t-shirt on.
He was standing in his yard.
We asked him if he had seen the biscuit man.
He said that he had not seen the biscuit man.
His mom came out into the yard.
We asked her if she had seen the biscuit man.
She said that she had not seen the biscuit man.
We said, “If you see the biscuit man tell him that we are looking for him.”
We walked further into town.

We met two women sitting on the steps of a house.
There were three children playing nearby.
The woman on the right was wearing black jalabiya.
She was wearing a gold necklace with gold earrings.
The woman on the left was wearing a blue jalabiya.
The little boy wanted to play and fight.
The two women completed each other’s sentences as they talked.
We asked them if they had seen the biscuit man.
They said that they had not seen the biscuit man.
They said that the man with the gold tooth knew the biscuit man.
They said that the biscuit man only comes on Fridays.
We said, “If you see the biscuit man tell him that we are looking for him.”
She offered us some biscuits that she bought from the biscuit man.
She gave us a pink slip of paper from inside the biscuit box.
The slip of paper had the phone number for the biscuit factory.
Then man with the gold tooth drove by and stopped to talk.
The man with the gold tooth said that today he went to Neimeh.
He said that he did not see the biscuit man.
We walked further into town.

On the next day, we continued looking for the biscuit man.
We sat in the center of town with three children.
We waited for the biscuit man.
The man with the gold tooth drove by and stopped in front of us.
He said, “Goddamn this biscuit man – he never shows up!”
The little boy said that the biscuit man looks like a huge tree with branches coming out of his head.
The little boy said that the biscuit man is as tall as the street lamp pole.
The little boy said that the biscuit man’s car is as big as from the church to the red car.
The little boy said that the biscuit man’s biscuits are “this big,” while stretching his arms out wide.
The little girl said that today is Friday and the biscuit man should be coming.
The little girl asked her mom’s aunt about the biscuit man.
The aunt said that the biscuit man only comes once per week.
The little girl ran up to the house with the big picture of the king.
The little girl asked them if they had seen the biscuit man.
They said that they had not seen the biscuit man.
The little girl asked the woman near the red car if she had seen the biscuit man.
She said that she had not seen the biscuit man.
She said that the biscuit man used to come here every day.
She said that the biscuit man had not been coming since we started looking for him.
We walked further into town.
On the next day, we continued looking for the biscuit man.
It was afternoon when we heard the biscuit man.
It was afternoon when we heard his sound.
We heard his speakers in the distance.
The sound was getting louder.
We ran across the parking lot.
We ran further up the road.
We ran to find the biscuit man.
Then we found the biscuit man.
We found the biscuit man.
The biscuit man’s car was colored dark gray.
The biscuit man’s car had four doors.
The biscuit man’s car had a speaker outside the window.
The speaker was playing a song about his biscuits.
The biscuit man’s hair was black.
The biscuit man’s hair was pushed back from his face.
The biscuit man was wearing sandals.
The biscuit man was wearing pants.
The biscuit man was wearing a shirt.
The biscuit man’s shirt was the color of his car.
The biscuit man’s car was filled with boxes of biscuits.
There were boxes of biscuits and Turkish delight.
The biscuit man’s friend was with him in the car.
The biscuit man’s friend had on a purple shirt.
He sang the song about the biscuits that was playing from the car.
The biscuit man’s friend sang a song for the both of us.
We had found the biscuit man.
We had found him and his friend.
We had found the biscuit man.
We walked back to our home.

On the next day, we heard from the biscuit man.
Now the biscuit man was looking for us.

Ragged Right

2008-01-01T14:01:00.019+09:00

Ragged Right, 2008, archival ink on acid free 74 pound polypropylene, h 12" x w 9"

Plot keywords from the Internet Movie Database for a 1979 film were carefully transcribed by hand; however, the writing became increasingly compacted and illegible as the transcription process proceeded, mirroring the increasing strangeness of the movie’s storyline.

Untitled (with Kite)

2008-01-01T14:00:00.014+09:00

Untitled (with Kite), 2008, video, color, sound, total running time 1 minute and 54 seconds

After two weeks of unsuccessful attempts to fly home built kites made from garbage bags and sticks, we finally gave up and purchased an imported Chinese kite from a nearby store in Irbid, Jordan. The first flight was a tremendous success; however, the small video camera attached to the kite was mistakenly turned off just at launch and turned back on upon landing. There after followed four kites, all of which would fall apart in a relatively short span of time. This process of continued foundering was interspersed with days marked by a total absence of wind, which is highly unusual for the town of Shatana in the North of Jordan. The second successful flight was to be the last, as the kite string broke and the kite flew off on its own according to the wind. The video camera recorded the snapping of the kite string, the collaborators in pursuit of the renegade kite, and the kites’ journey across the landscape to its final resting spot. This project is a collaboration with Ben Washington.

A Very Slow Rhythm

2008-01-01T14:00:00.011+09:00

A Very Slow Rhythm, December 8, 2007, 12:02 PM – January 12, 2008, 12:13 PM, printed balloons (watte kudasai - pop, sutte kudasai - inhale, atarashii fuusen ni iki wo haite kudasai - exhale into a new balloon), pin, locker, Tokyo Shimbashi Station Karasumori exit 4, underground level B1F

Off the Record, curated by Eric Van Hove, hijacks the X-CUBE© locker system which allows multiple users to exchange packages by using a touch screen and their cell phone numbers as digital keys. The curator places the artwork, invites the first person to the exhibition by registering their cell phone number, then the invited viewer uses their cell phone to unlock the locker and view the work. The next person is invited by registering a new cell phone and in this manner the exhibition travels out into the world.

For A Very Slow Rhythm a balloon was blown up with a single breath of air in New York City, mailed to Tokyo, and placed in a locker in Shimbashi Station along with 25 empty balloons and a pin. Once the international journey was complete, the focus of the project became the transference of the single breath of air from visitor to visitor. After popping the balloon, participants breathed in the previous donor’s breath, then filled a new balloon with their own exhalation. Used balloons slowly accumulated in the locker forming a record of the communal breathing – a simultaneously anonymous, yet intimate exchange. At the conclusion of this project, the last balloon was returned to New York and the original breath of air was reclaimed after being shared by numerous individuals.

Looking Southwest towards Midal al-Ataba from the Northeast corner of Shari Khulud and Shari al-Azhar...

2007-01-01T14:01:00.010+09:00

Looking Southwest towards Midal al-Ataba from the Northeast corner of Shari Khulud and Shari al-Azhar, Seventy consecutive 30-second takes with a Cannon S70 point and shoot camera, 2007, video, color, sound, total running time 34 minutes and 55 seconds

Part performance, part traditional street photography, and part objective surveillance film – a domestic point and shoot digital camera was utilized to shoot seventy consecutive short films from a stationary position on a Cairo street corner. The camera was held at chest level pointed in the same southwest direction for each of the 70 takes with no regard to compositional framing, or subject. The camera focus and exposure were set before each take according to the distance and light on the artist’s feet. The camera’s maximum shooting time of 30 seconds and the size of the memory card dictated the length of individual takes, as well as the length of the film.

Anna – Léa Massari – Anna Maria Massetani

2007-01-01T14:01:00.009+09:00

Anna – Léa Massari – Anna Maria Massetani, 2007, audio, total running time 4 minutes and 35 seconds, accessed through "On Call Audio" playback on demand at Bloomberg Headquarters, 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY. Presented as part of Art in General and Bloomberg L.P.'s Horizon, curated by Jan Van Woensel

Find Léa Massari, the actor who played the disappearing character Anna in Michelangelo Antonioni' s 1960 film L'Avventura, and almost have a conversation.

Extensions on the Dial HORIZON card:

Ext 01: Dialogue 1 by Eric Van Hove
Ext 02: Dialogue 2 by Eric Van Hove
Ext 03: Dialogue 3 by Eric Van Hove
Ext 04: Music by Sufjan Stevens: Flint (3:45)
Ext 05: Music by Sufjan Stevens: Tahquamenon Falls (2:20)
Ext 06: Music by Sufjan Stevens: Holland (3:28)
Ext 07: Music by Sufjan Stevens: Romulus (4:43)
Ext 08: Music by Sufjan Stevens: Vito's Ordination Song (7:06)
Ext 09: Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island, 2003–2005 by Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock (2:29)
Ext 10: Ritorno a Lisca Bianca, 2003–2005 by Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock (3:29)
Ext 11: A Triangulation (Italy), 2003 – 2006 Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock (3:06)
Ext 12: An Island, 2006 Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock (1:57)
Ext 13: Anna – Léa Massari – Anna Maria Massetani, 2007 Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock (4:35)

Untitled-17: “Epson Perfection 2580 Photo” B by A, “Epson Perfection 2580 Photo” A by B, September 28, 2007, 3:48 PM

2007-01-01T14:01:00.005+09:00

Untitled-17: “Epson Perfection 2580 Photo” B by A, “Epson Perfection 2580 Photo” A by B, September 28, 2007, 3:48 PM, 2007, C-print mounted to Plexiglas, h 11 1/2” x w 17”

Two “Epson Perfection 2580 Photo” flatbed scanners were placed with their glass scanning surfaces facing each other, oriented so that the recording mechanisms passed in opposite directions as they made their scans. The resultant left and right images that form this diptych are the raw scans generated according to the devices’ factory presets and are printed at one hundred percent original size with no retouching, adjustments of image density, color correction, or cropping. Although the settings were identical for both units and the scans initiated simultaneously, the two images have numerous distinct, if subtle, variations from one another.

A Triangulation (Japan)

2006-01-01T14:04:00.006+09:00

A Triangulation (Japan), 2006, MDF, paint, c-print mounted to aluminum, video, written text, Queens Museum of Art, southeast ramp, Flushing, NY. Sculpture: h 91.5” x w 46.125” x d 46.125,” destroyed, image: h 6.57” x w 9.1,” video: color, sound, total running time 30 seconds, looped. Writing: tri-fold printed handout.

Special thanks to Eric Zeszotarski of Solid Studio.

(Foreword and first entry from ten field reports)

Subject: Foreword
Date: June 19, 2005 9:32:03 PM Japan Standard Time

I was initially pleased upon seeing Cinderella Castle in Tokyo Disneyland at the Tokyo Disney Resort in Japan. Its duplication of Cinderella Castle in The Magic Kingdom at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida was precise to the smallest detail and seeing it was like reuniting with a long-standing friend. Still, in short order the comforting familiarity was replaced by mounting anxiety and a vague sense of dread. Yes, there was an abundance of grey stone, gold trim and royal blue in the rooftop shingles. Yes, the trickery of forced architecture operated in the same manner as its companion in the United States, yet something far more powerful and inexplicable was at work than simple perspective deception. Seeing this building replicated accurately in another country had the consequence of destabilizing my sense of orientation. Somehow this doppelgänger, because of its stubborn, insistent sameness, operated effectively in inverting everything that surrounded it. This baffles me.

I understand how Cinderella Castle’s combination of architectural styles taken from various castles and chateaus in Europe is not terribly odd in and of itself, since the Disney “Imagineers” wanted their castle to be as genuine as possible; all the same, seeing this building exported from France, to Florida, then on to Japan creates a double displacement of an uncanny nature and merits closer investigation. I intend on exploring this predicament of authenticity further during a fact-finding mission to Florida that will be unified with my explorations from Japan. Understanding how the Castle compromised my sense of grounding is of primary importance, particularly as I am a simultaneous critic and fan of “The Happiest Place on Earth.”

442 days later…

Subject: The Happiest Place on Earth 1
Date: September 4, 2006 11:30:21 AM Eastern Daylight Time

So, I am 100 feet inside the park sitting on the steps of City Hall looking around. The train at the Walt Disney World Railway just gave several quick toots and an "all aboard," another group is off on a circumnavigation of the park. The familiar smells of popcorn and vanilla float on the breeze and the Main Street Transportation Company just pulled up, its clip clopping barely audible above the sound of the band bouncing through a homecoming march; even so, I must say that I am a bit on edge because in addition to presenting my ticket at the gate only moments ago, I was also asked to present my index finger for a fingerprint scan. This is the beginning.

Seeking to understand the disorienting effect of the Cinderella Castle at the Tokyo Disney Resort in Japan, Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock subjects its image (and those of its twin at the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, FL) to some forms of displacement reciprocity. In a spare installation, a looping video captures the Tokyo Disney Castle on a cloudy day spinning around the edge of the screen. Near the video, a simplified silhouette of the castle, bisected by its copy, hangs upside down from the ceiling like a stalactite. A third element, a photograph from Orlando’s Disney Resort, further complicates the entertainment franchise’s aggressive innocence and its disorienting duplications. – Herb Tam, Associate Curator, Queens Museum of Art.

A Triangulation (Italy)/An Island

2006-01-01T14:03:00.008+09:00

A Triangulation (Italy), 2003–2006, 45 rpm silver master plates, h 12 3/8" x w 22 3/4" (framed) An Island, 2006, C-print (from a Super-8 film frame) mounted to aluminum, h 6 1/2” x w 9” (image) h 9 1/16” x w 11 5/8” (framed)

Have you ever seen Buster Keaton going out a doorway? He turns right, then he suddenly turns left, then, spinning on his heels, he abruptly reverses direction and heads off to the right as he initially started. It is impressive to see his original intention, his deviation, his realization, and his modification occur in the space of a few short moments. As well as the physical agility demonstrated in this comedic instant, one also might detect a compressed set of emotions in the scene that range from desire, to failure, to subsequent redemption – the fundamentals of a classic narrative. In a sense, the improvisations that occur when actuality tempers our wishes are a skeletal array of touchstones for this project; nevertheless, they are points transposed from the period of a few moments in the space of a doorway and stretched out into several years on the Tyrrhenian Sea.

In 2003, I set off for the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily, the island of Lisca Bianca specifically, to find the character Anna who disappeared from Michelangelo Antonioni's 1960 film L'Avventura; however, I accidentally went to the wrong island. I returned a year later to the right island and swam ashore, but I found nothing. Sound recordings were made during both voyages of my boat’s small outboard engine as it labored in transit to the wrong and right islands and my grand journey eventually assumed the diminutive and archaic format of a 45 rpm record, Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island. The unique, silver master plates for the A and B sides of the record are presented in A Triangulation, their encoded sounds and story clearly visible, yet ultimately inaccessible, as the master plates cannot be played.

Working alongside the two reflective plates of A Triangulation is the third component of the project, An Island. A single reel of Super-8 film was shot in a continuous take during a 2006 return to the Aeolian Islands, yet the objective was not to travel once again to Lisca Bianca, but to navigate accurately to the wrong island. Although the film itself was never intended for presentation, the very last frame of the film, the end, was selected for enlargement. This singular frame is the trophy from a return trip to an island that formerly represented a colossal blunder on my part. As well, the last frame of the footage is a bookend, providing finality and closure.

The title, A Triangulation, refers to a navigation technique whereby the properties of triangles are used to precisely determine a location by means of compass bearings from two points a known distance apart. Within the context of this project, one might consider the technique of triangulation in relation to positions in time, as well as in regards to physical location; conversely, the numerous ambiguities, deviations, as well as the mysterious disappearance of Anna at the core of this series of expeditions, operate in stark contrast to the exactitude of the triangulating process. Along these lines, the vaguely titled, An Island, also plays with notions of accuracy by utilizing an indefinite article to describe the island that is neither clear, nor precisely defined. Although we know that An Island is not the right island of Lisca Bianca, it becomes questionable whether the original name wrong island is entirely useful, particularly given that the island was traveled to intentionally and successfully on the most recent trip. As with many different types of adventures, transformations have emerged en route: objectives have changed, techniques altered accordingly, and original presumptions questioned.

Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island

2006-01-01T14:02:00.015+09:00

Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island, 2003–2006, 45 rpm white vinyl record, total running time 3 minutes and 30 seconds (each side), 1 color offset printed label, die-cut white paper sleeve, 4 color offset printed cardboard jacket with 1 color offset printed message inside, w 7” x h 7”. Edition of 500 for North Drive Press' NDP#3, co-edited by Sara Greenberger Rafferty and Matt Keegan, edition of 100 for The Golden Hour, curated by Susanna Cole and Erin Donnelly for Gigantic ArtSpace in New York City, and 2 artist's proofs.

Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island features sound recordings made en route to the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily in search of "Anna" who disappeared from Michelangelo Antonioni's film L'Avventura. Recordings made of the outboard engine in 2003 (traveling to the "Wrong" island – Bottaro) and 2004 (traveling to the "Right" island – Lisca Bianca) were pressed at United Record Pressing (URP) in Nashville, Tennessee, via Tokyo, Japan. Cover image of Anna (Lea Massari) only comes into focus at distances further than 3 feet.

Landscape Film

2006-01-01T14:01:00.001+09:00

Landscape Film, 2006, video, color, sound, total running time two minutes and 25 seconds

After initial screenings of Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner, Warner Brothers studios felt that the movie needed a happy conclusion, so the finale was re-cut and utilized second unit out-takes from Stanley Kubrick's opening montage in The Shining. In Landscape Film, Kubrick's opening montage is coupled with the alternate “happy ending” for Blade Runner, reuniting footage separated for many years and compressing the two films’ narratives into one. The reunited footage is presented as a projected film loop. Image caption left to right: Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, 1980; Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, 1982.

Place Marker

2006-01-01T14:00:00.017+09:00

Place Marker

Curated by Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock
December 2, 2006 – January 20, 2007
Reception: Saturday, December 2, 2006, 4 to 6 PM
CUCHIFRITOS art gallery/project space

Including:
Peter Eide, Nina Katchadourian , Brian McClave , Douglas Ross, Elizabeth Valdez

The objectives, mediums, and strategies of the artists included in Place Marker are undoubtedly disparate upon first inspection. Temperaments and approaches to problem solving differ significantly; nevertheless, the small group of participants are united by certain criteria regardless of disposition – they were all asked to develop their ideas based on what could be found within the one block radius surrounding 120 Essex Street, the address of Cuchifritos Art Gallery/Project Space. This task has been literal for some, while a more metaphoric endeavor for others. Accordingly, contrasting approaches coexist and contextualize one another in the gallery space forming linkages tenuous, yet genuine.

Peter Eide has cast objects found while walking a focused line towards the Essex Street Market from his home in Brooklyn. The transitory nature of the material used for his sculptures highlights the objects themselves, as well as the larger changing environment of the Lower East Side neighborhood.

Nina Katchadourian has written, performed, and recorded short jingles for several vendors in the market. The vendors in the market represent an amazing demographic in and of themselves, with businesses that have been around a very long time alongside newer arrivals. Her tunes, written in a variety of musical styles, are based on conversations with vendors and observations about their businesses.

Brian McClave, based out of London, has drawn parallels between the mysterious nature of an ant colony and his perceptions of a place to which he has never been. His 3-D video focuses on community, change, and on not knowing.

Douglas Ross has provided a nearly formless work on the gallery’s glass storefront facade, washing the windows with the substance of commercial exchange suspended in a liquid medium commonly used for soothing the eyes. Looking into the gallery or out to the market, over time one will see the materials of coinage oxidizing towards the colors of cash.

Elizabeth Valdez has focused on preexisting drip marks on the Essex Street Market ceiling and continued them onto the Cuchifritos rear gallery wall creating an improvisational wall drawing.

The criteria for this exhibition has yielded individual results that are discreet and satisfying, while simultaneously signaling impermanence. Artist’s projects indicate solutions and manage to do so without delineating them too directly. Ultimately, this exhibition should be considered as a platform for gestural solutions and possibilities, not for permanent endings. Along these lines, the contributors to Place Marker have undertaken explorations that share a small facet with Robert Smithson’s infamous and mythologized 1967 A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, N.J., in that their goals were as open ended as the “tour.” Participants explored, collected, and developed in awareness that their projects would combine with other elements in creating a larger, complex whole. All works, even if unlike, relate delicately to a single point of convergence, 120 Essex Street.

This exhibit is sponsored, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and through the generous support of the following: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The New York City Economic Development Corporation, The Puffin Foundation, the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, and the members of the Artists Alliance Incorporated. CUCHIFRITOS is a project of Artists Alliance Inc.

A Drawn-out Conflict

2005-01-01T14:01:00.049+09:00

A Drawn-out Conflict, 2005, video, color, sound, total running time 86 minutes

A Drawn-out Conflict merges the movies Wild Style and Fast Times at Ridgemont High to create a feature-length amalgam of two distinct forms of youth culture from 1982. The films were selected for their oppositional nature and averaged together to a median length and equal opacity. Audio tracks for each film were isolated and panned hard right and hard left respectively.

“The viewer of A Drawn-out Conflict is confronted with a visual and auditory battle of east coast Wild Style versus west coast Fast Times, the South Bronx versus the Valley. Locations, budgets, filmmaking style, stereotypes, and racial composition of the cast could not be more divergent; nevertheless, from love scenes to credits, the plots of the two films overlap at major benchmarks revealing a surprising formulaic style embedded in each movie.” – L.L. Pendersen

Record

2005-01-01T14:01:00.048+09:00

Record, 2005, LightJet print mounted to Sintra and Plexiglas, h 36” x w 36” (top image: installation for Palimpsests at Gigantic ArtSpace, New York, NY; bottom image: Record and enlarged detail)

Record is the spine of my favorite record made in 1983. Although the record spine has been scanned and enlarged for closer inspection, it is so thoroughly worn down from use that little information can be deciphered. Record is a relic.

Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island

2005-01-01T14:01:00.047+09:00

Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island, 2003–2005, LightJet print mounted to aluminum, h 4 3/4” x w 12 2/3” (image) h 7 3/16” x w 15 5/16” (framed)

Travel to the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily, the island of Lisca Bianca specifically, to find the character Anna who disappeared from Michelangelo Antonioni's film L'Avventura and accidentally go to the wrong island (Bottaro). Return a year later to the correct island.

2.35: 1

2005-01-01T14:01:00.046+09:00

2.35: 1, 2005, Marine fir plywood, PVC, h 48” x w 30” x d 70.5”, destroyed (image: installation for Palimpsests at Gigantic ArtSpace, New York, NY)

The title 2.35: 1 refers to the proportions of a motion picture screen's width as compared to its height. The aspect ratio of 2.35:1, or widescreen, allows for extraordinary formal dynamism and is the ratio often used for epic films. One might then say that despite its modest size, this is in fact a grand sculpture, as its footprint is precisely 2.35:1. The sculpture transitions from floor, to ramp, to stairs, to ladder, to the vertical portion of a skateboard ramp, continually increasing tension and mirroring the dramatic progression of events in epic films.

Special thanks to Eric Zeszotarski of Solid Studio

Phantom/Fountain

2005-01-01T14:01:00.038+09:00

Phantom/Fountain, 2004, video, black and white, sound, total running time 1 minute and 49 seconds, Sculpture Center basement hallway, LIC, NY (four video stills)

Phantom/Fountain is a 1 minute 49 second film of mouthfuls of water being repeatedly spat at a video camera held at arm’s length in a morgue. Although the video is noticeably dark and empty, the space was active during the day. The video was made during the time in-between numerous autopsies. Phantom/Fountain records the raw sound of the incessant discharge; furthermore, it is a record of the gradual breakdown of the video camera itself, first with the failure of the microphone, then the auto-focus, and eventually the entire camera.

“Picking up where Bruce Nauman’s Self Portrait as a Fountain (1966) left off and following its art historical concerns and references, Apicella-Hitchcock creates a formal abstraction of shape, trajectory, and framing that also accentuates a psychological discomfort with a physical proximity to death.” – Anthony Huberman, Sculpture Center

Desire Lines

2005-01-01T14:01:00.037+09:00

Desire Lines, 2005, video, sound, total running time 6 minutes and 17 seconds, (image: installation for Palimpsests at Gigantic ArtSpace, New York, NY), special thanks to Tom Kehn

Desire Lines is comprised of the scrolling end credits from films in the artist’s collection. The footage is sped up tremendously, diminishing legibility and highlighting the fact that despite the various movie genres, the films all adhere to a specific structural logic. The title of this piece refers to the landscape architecture term "desire lines" where the placement of concrete sidewalks is established by the organic paths worn into the landscape by foot traffic.

Ritorno a Lisca Bianca

2005-01-01T14:01:00.036+09:00

Ritorno a Lisca Bianca, 2003–2005, video, black and white, sound, total running time 2 minutes and 30 seconds, looped

Travel to the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily, the island of Lisca Bianca specifically, to find the character Anna who disappeared from Michelangelo Antonioni's film L'Avventura and accidentally go to the wrong island (Bottaro). Return a year later to the correct island and swim ashore with a video camera in a plastic garbage bag, only to find nothing of interest except for red ants attacking black, shiny beetles. The film is comprised of five simultaneously running vignettes detailing the stages of the journey; however, synchronized audio is only available for each vignette for 30 seconds out of the film’s 2 minute and 30 second total. The film's audio shifts one vignette to the right every 30 seconds, traveling across the film and mirroring the journey itself. The soundtrack is in part constructed from video camera recordings while accidentally left on inside of the garbage bag.

Tracking

2005-01-01T14:00:00.011+09:00

Tracking, 2005, film, black and white, silent, total running time 18 seconds (left film) and 11 seconds (right film), presented as two nonsynchronous DVDs, looped

Two black and white Super-8 films are presented side by side in Tracking, the left film looking down, the right film looking up. The footage was shot on two consecutive passes while walking a long hallway in a Medical Examiners office. The films are slightly different in both length and speed, consequently allowing the top and bottom portion of the human body to fall in and out of step with one another. The title Tracking potentially refers to the process of following someone’s trail and/or the leaking of current between two insulated points.

Desire Line

2005-01-01T14:00:00.006+09:00

Desire Line, 2005, C-print mounted to Sintra and Plexiglas, h 70.5” x w 3” (right image: detailed enlargement)

Desire Line presents the entire cast and crew of a single movie on one vertical support the precise height of the artist. As with the companion video Desire Lines, the title of this piece refers to the landscape architecture term of the same name where the placement of concrete sidewalks is established by the organic paths worn into the landscape by foot traffic.

Unmoving

2004-01-01T14:03:00.003+09:00

Unmoving, 2004, gelatin silver prints mounted to Plexiglas and Sintra, h 10” x w 32”

Unmoving is a panorama comprised of four photographs made in the morgue over the course of a day. Although the panorama is noticeably empty and still, the space was active during the day. The photographs were made during the time in-between numerous autopsies. Alignment discrepancies present in the four images draw attention to the repeated breakdown and setup of the large 8” x 10” camera and consequential repositioning errors – human qualities in an otherwise lifeless environment.

Headrest

2004-01-01T14:02:00.003+09:00

Headrest, 2001, gelatin silver print, h 20” x w 16”

The simple curves and surprisingly elegant design of an autopsy headrest disguise the purpose of the device – to hold the cadaver head secure and allow drainage during autopsies. Additionally, the imposing scale of the work contributes in generating tension between the work and the viewer.

In twighlight, general outlines of ground objects may be distinguishable, but the horizon is indistinct

2004-01-01T14:01:00.030+09:00

In twighlight, general outlines of ground objects may be distinguishable, but the horizon is indistinct, 2004, Marine Plywood, CD player, 2 speakers, audio: total running time 32 seconds, looped, h 5’6” x w 32’ x d 4’9”

In twighlight, general outlines of ground objects may be distinguishable, but the horizon is indistinct, 2004, is a 32-foot wide staircase that has been truncated at its third step. The staircase would connect to the upper level of Smack Mellon gallery, were it to continue. It is constructed of Marine Plywood in homage to the minimalist objects that in part inspired it. Speakers hidden beneath the two endpoints faintly play in continuous loop the first few bars of a rendition of Perry Como's Sunrise, Sunset. This project is a collaboration with Christopher Ho.

Special thanks to Eric Zeszotarski of Solid Studio

A Response to a Set of Conditions

2004-01-01T14:01:00.026+09:00

A Response to a Set of Conditions, 2004, Super-8 film diptych transferred to DVD, color, silent, total running time 2 minutes and 49 seconds (top: 9 film stills from left half of diptych, c-print mounted to Plexiglas and Sintra, h 9 1/2” x w 14”; middle: 25 film stills from right half of diptych; bottom: 2 film stills from right half of diptych)

A Response to a Set of Conditions is a silent film diptych comprised of Super-8 films shot in a morgue. The patterns of behavior depicted in the film intuitively utilize the morgue as a studio for developing awareness of motor skills (left film) and the real-time linguistic game presented in the right half of the diptych demonstrates cognition through the process of discerning new word combinations from labels on two pathology sample containers.

The following routines presented in the left film each run for the length of the camera’s manual wind: circumnavigate the morgue with a pencil balanced on the end of a ruler; hold raised, extended legs in front of the Wastemaster sink disposal grinder; grasp a bucket of pathology samples and maintain arm in horizontal position; negotiate figure eights around floor drains with a luggage cart loaded with an empty cardboard box; twirl a bone chisel with one hand; spin to the point of dizziness on a swivel chair; turn a radio dial rapidly back and forth from one end of the spectrum to the other; keep a roll of surgical tape moving constantly; walk figure eights around floor drains with fingers; repeatedly unbutton and button top two buttons of shirt.

The following word combinations are presented in the right film: no ear; no hear; he no hear; no heart; no art; he no art; heart art; normal art; normal ear, normal ear art; no ear muse; use no muse; he use a heart muse; mal muse; normal hearts museum.

The Plot is Very Bare

2004-01-01T14:01:00.025+09:00

The Plot is Very Bare, 2005, 50 LightJet prints mounted to Sintra and Plexiglas, h 4.875” x w 6.5”

The Plot is Very Bare represents an uncomplicated walk across a baseball field to the bench in the dugout. Each photograph is taken from a position one step closer than the previous and the photographs are installed exactly one pace apart from one another. Additionally, this is the Encino Little League field in Encino, CA where the character Stacy from the 1982 film Fast Times at Ridgemont High loses her virginity to Ron Johnson the lecherous audio consultant from the mall.

Head and Headrest

2004-01-01T14:01:00.013+09:00

(image intentionally not shown)
Head and Headrest, 2000, c-print (from 16 Polaroid prints), h 8 1/2” x w 28”

Head and Headrest is a sober and methodical examination of an atypical situation.

Phantom/Fountain

2004-01-01T14:00:00.015+09:00

Phantom/Fountain, 2004, c-print mounted to Plexiglas and Sintra, h 54" x w 36 1/2”

Phantom/Fountain is a mouthful of water spat at a camera held at arms length in a morgue. The liquid is suspended midair on a dark field, taking on a glowing and ambiguous form. The large scale and highly reflective surface of the piece generates a merger of viewer reflection and image, harkening back in a playful way to the double-exposure trick photographs of ghosts, auras, and ectoplasm found in the mid-19th century genre of spirit photography.

The Mummy Project

2004-01-01T14:00:00.011+09:00

The Mummy Project, 2004, offset printed magazine, h 4” x w 6”
Images: 3 pages published in the April issue of Flyer

Unspecified Non-Bizarre Delusion

2003-01-01T14:01:00.020+09:00

Unspecified Non-Bizarre Delusion (249 Facts), 2003, LightJet print mounted to Sintra and Plexiglas, h 24” x w 36”, destroyed. Image: double page spread in Flyer, magazine, h 4” x w 6”

In Unspecified Non-Bizarre Delusion, the artist traveled 2,790 miles from NJ to CA as part of a fictional fact-finding mission called “The Redondo Beach Fact Finding Mission” (RBFFM). In late December of 2002, the RBFFM representative began at his childhood home in Maplewood, NJ and traveled approximately 11 miles on skateboard to Newark Airport. An aircraft was boarded and the representative was transported to Long Beach Airport in Long Beach, CA, whereupon he traveled on skateboard approximately 25 miles to Redondo Beach, CA and delivered a vintage copy of Black Flag’s 1983 release My War. Total distance traveled: 2790.96 miles. All 249 images made are presented, unedited, and in chronological order. The entire project with images, maps, and notes was published in Flyer, a miniature magazine measuring only h 4” x w 6”.

The RBFFM examined a number of East Coast teenage projections of an idealized punk rock/skateboarding utopia onto the ordinary location of Redondo Beach, CA. The RBFFM studied the ability of an individual to retrieve information of past events and experiences learned from secondhand sources and contrast it with the present reality. Essentially, a thorough autopsy of a dream was performed.

Outdoor Area

2003-01-01T14:01:00.019+09:00

Outdoor Area, 2003, 2 humidifiers, seawater, 1 CD player, audio: total running time 4 minutes and 33 second, looped (installation views)

Outdoor Area consists of two humidifiers filled with seawater from an inlet immediately outside and visible through the gallery windows. Additionally, a CD player on a continuous loops an audio recording of the exhibition curators – a Norwegian collective – standing as silently as possible in the gallery for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. This project is a collaboration with Christopher Ho.

Fresh Meat

2003-01-01T14:00:00.009+09:00

Fresh Meat curated by Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock
September 19 – December 20, 2003
Opening reception September 19 from 5:30 – midnight
CEPA Gallery
617 Main Street, Suite 201
Buffalo, NY 14203

Including:
Matt Bakkom, Michael Bell-Smith, Beth Campbell, Dylan Chandler, Irvin Coffee, Jennifer Dalton, Peter Eide, Michelle Elzay, Eteam, Christopher Frederick, Mattias Geiger, Susan Graham, Kira Lynn Harris, Tina Hejtmanek, Adam Henry, Christopher Ho, Sigrid Jakob, Tom Kehn, Kaitlin Kehnemuyi, Dina Kelberman, Megan Lang, Daniel Lefcourt, Kristin Lucas, Dora Malech, Alicia Marin, Felicia McCoy, Glynnis McDaris, Joe McKay, Saul Metnick, Mario M. Muller, Laurel Nakadate, Christian Nugyen, Danica Phelps, Eileen Quinlan, Walid Ra'ad, Douglas Ross, Casey Ruble, Adina Segal, Shelter Serra, James Sheehan, Penelope Umbrico, Elizabeth Valdez, Sue Wrbican, Brennen Wysong

CEPA Gallery is pleased to present Fresh Meat, featuring 44 New York City based artists that were invited to participate in an exhibition with no overt theme or preset guidelines. As a result, each artist simultaneously constructed the exhibition context as well as contributed the content itself. Artists were selected for their ability to develop a solution to this Rorschach-like problem. Rather than compiling passive objects under a fixed curatorial vision, Fresh Meat emphasizes that artworks can actively imply their own context of display.

The exhibition highlights the fluid nature of the curatorial process in that the curator occupies the same position as the prospective audience. Neither are privileged with prior knowledge of the final form of the exhibition; both are asked to perform a function similar to a forensic pathologist, retroactively constructing a narrative cause (the exhibition’s parameters) from a set of given clues (the artwork).

As the coupled words in the show title hint, the exhibition stands at the end of one arc – with a sense of finality – and at the beginning of a new one that remains open. By bringing together artists in an adaptable and investigational manner, Fresh Meat affirms CEPA’s long-standing commitment to the promise of the photographic arts.

Suggestions: some samplers come with a sensible guide printed on the reverse of the closure, while other assortments incorporate an elaborate brochure into their informational scheme. Whether you are given one as a token of appreciation for your virtuous deeds, slipped one by a clandestine admirer, or you formulate a bold resolution to procure one for yourself, boxes of chocolates, although enchanting, remain a mystery to the majority of people.

Randomly choose a piece, or rely upon your memory of your last experience in guiding your decision (I recall that round or oblong shapes are soft-centered creams; square or rectilinear shapes are chewy caramel or nougat; and bumps indicate nuts of some sort, perhaps even coconut). Sniff it first and then deftly nibble the bottom off to peek inside. Is it butter crème? Yellowish, milky, cloyingly sweet, and so stinging the teeth so that you can’t even swallow it? Take a handkerchief and wipe your tongue clean of the gummy sweetness. It might not be the one for you. It might leave a slick glaze that would continue to objectionably loiter in your mouth for the remainder of the day. Take the upper portion of the chocolate – the uneaten section – and drop it back into the fancy box, chewed side down. Start again with another until you are satisfied.

Live Act

2003-01-01T14:00:00.001+09:00

Live Act, 2003, fog machine, industrial lamp, dimensions variable, location: Tou Scene, Stavanger, Norway

In Live Act, a fog machine in a recess of a factory’s wall intermittently produces a dense fog. The fog gradually dissipates and is dramatically lit from within at night. Part of NuArt, an annual arts and music festival in Stavanger, Norway, Live Act references the site’s history as a factory, as well as the theatrically of the bands performing inside. This project is a collaboration with Christopher Ho.

As the World Turns (Brutally)

2002-01-02T02:00:00.002+09:00

As the World Turns (Brutally), 2001, audio, total running time 2 minutes and 41 seconds, installed as part of Art in General’s Audio in the Elevator program

As the World Turns (Brutally) is an audio piece constructed for Art in General’s elevator in which all sounds point to the fact that humanity, despite being able to harness various elements of technology, will ultimately fall prey to its own viciousness. The soundtrack calls into question the human need for excessive brutality by isolating certain horrific moments in the Steven Spielberg film Saving Private Ryan. Screaming, crying, grunting, struggling, punching, explosions, and every gunshot in the movie are layered upon each other to a point of emotional excess and preposterousness. This frenzied and vicious collection is complimented with an amalgam of whimsical, although emotionally saccharine John Williams’ scores from earlier Spielberg films Close Encounters and E.T., thereby propelling the absurdity component even further.

Falling Between Positions

2002-01-01T14:01:00.037+09:00

Falling Between Positions, 2002, stereoscopic 3-d video projection, color, silent, total running time 7 seconds, looped

In Falling Between Positions, the seemingly simple action of walking is broken down into a series of small, planned increments for examination. Three paces were executed over the period of one hour. Each pace was broken down into 25 stages of body movement, where each of the 25 phases making up a single pace had to be held for 60 seconds. In the final stereoscopic 3D projection, the three paces are sped up approximately 4000% so that they appear at normal speed. This project is a collaboration with Brian McClave.

Microviews

2002-01-01T14:01:00.036+09:00

Microviews, 2002, 600 photographic images each in tabbed hanging files, 5 modified file cabinets, 6 chairs, monitor, video, color, silent, total running time 30 minutes, looped, l 24’ x w 1’6” x h 3’. Installed at: The Municipal Art Society, Urban Center Galleries, New York NY and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, One Wall Street Court, Second Floor, New York, NY

Microviews collects photographs and other documentation of the World Trade Center made by over 70 artists participating from 1997 – 2001 in a studio residency program located in Tower number one. The materials are individually filed, systematically categorized by formal characteristics, and cross-referenced. The file drawers rest on a base of five vertical file cabinets that lie on their sides. Additionally, a wall-mounted video silently flips through the images in the cabinets, which remain on screen for approximately 3 seconds each. Microviews provides no single way to navigate the archive. Rather, its system of cross references allows for an infinite number of approaches to each image, which in turn acquire different shades of significance depending on the particular sequence of images leading up to and following it. This project is a curatorial collaboration with Erin Donnelly, Christopher Ho, and Moukhtar Kocache.

Part Trap

2002-01-01T14:01:00.035+09:00

Part Trap, 2002, cedar, stainless steel screws, h 20’ x w 15' x d 20’, destroyed (recycled). Installed at: Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY.

The design of Part Trap, an open-air pavilion, is based on a 2” x 2” roach trap. The structure serves as a resting spot for visitors to Socrates Sculpture Park, as well as a framing device for viewing nearby Roosevelt Island and the island of Manhattan from Queens. Part Trap is positioned so as to utilize the view of the two islands as a borrowed landscape, creating a linkage between the near and distant and extending the border of Socrates Sculpture Park westward beyond its actual margins. Aromatic cedar slats replace the roach trap’s industrial black plastic creating an airy, multi-purpose environment marked by shifting qualities of light and shadow throughout the day. Additionally, Part Trap has a low table integrated into its design, encouraging sitting, relaxing, and the formation of a temporary community by visitors.

Special thanks to Eric Zeszotarski of Solid Studio.

Towards a Low End Theory

2002-01-01T14:00:00.025+09:00

Towards a Low End Theory: New York City 2002 – Emerging Photographic Practice

Curated by Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock and Matthew Bakkom
January 25 – March 2, 2002
The Minnesota Center for Photography
711 West Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408

Including:
Irvin Coffee, Ejlat Feuer, Lilah Freedland, Mattias Geiger, Adam Henry, Sigrid Jakob, Tom Kehn, Daniel Lefcourt, Kristin Lucas, Felicia McCoy, Evie Mckenna, Saul Metnick, Adia Millet, Laurel Nakadate, Panoptic, Craig Smith, Wherebouts

It is the belief of many that the cataclysmic events of the recent past have altered our cultural, physical, and emotional landscape. Whether it is a shift in human consciousness sparked by the psychological, a change in human conditions created by the economic, or a reconsideration of architectural assumptions as a result of new physical threats, the current situation is extremely fluid and rich with the possibility of change.

Frequently in the past, extraordinary events have served as the catalyst for the emergence of new cultural paradigms, styles of tool use, and shifting of societal attitudes; nevertheless, it is important to consider that these archetypal moments and attitudes, as well as our ability to perceive them, come into view only gradually. In an attempt to identify these currents, their complex expression and simultaneous, or even competitive existence, we propose Towards a Low End Theory, a selection of new work by emerging artists from New York City representing a snapshot from within.

The concept of “Low End Theory” is marked most significantly by localized, individually oriented points of emergence. This “theory” may be also be considered as the descriptive term for a time period during the initial stages of a building arc, a qualifier for describing a method of do-it-yourself fabrication, as well as the ripple effect of an event or work of art beyond its immediate or surface meaning. The resultant shock waves from 9/11 traveled from the mass societal level to reach each constituent point of this metaphorical spectrum, quickly becoming concrete in the form of discrete thought and the productions presented.

Architecture, both in the strictest sense of the definition, as well as including architecture as the design, structure, and behavior of systems, is the predominant theme in this exhibition. The photographs and films included in Towards a Low End Theory often relate to this subject tentatively and tangentially, as the aforementioned varied points of emergence have the tendency to avoid cohesion and quietly navigate their way into existence rather than boldly proclaim themselves with certainty and a false sense of bravado.

The artists in Towards a Low End Theory present a variety of calculated and intuitive responses to buildings and spaces – from Kristin Lucas’ video Five Minute Break considering the subterranean basements of the World Trade Center by means of an animated tour guide, to Felicia McCoy’s concentration on framing subway conductors within the claustrophobic immediacy of their underground workplace, to Saul Metnick’s taxonomic approach to documenting the fixed spaces of (previously mobile) burned out cars found in his surrounding Brooklyn neighborhood. 2002 is the period represented in Towards a Low End Theory in which we begin to see the initial effects that alterations of our landscape have had on the artistic concerns and work of seventeen artists.

Allez Cusine (Go Kitchen)

2002-01-01T14:00:00.024+09:00

Allez Cusine (Go Kitchen), 2002, video, color, sound, total running time 2 minutes and 31 seconds, (image: 16 video stills)

Allez Cusine is a hallucinatory montage of fifty commercials in which artfully arranged portions of dog food are endlessly presented on spotless porcelain dishes and elegant crystal plates with decorative trim. For 2 minutes and 31 seconds various combinations of commercial strategies attempt to seduce the viewer with their pitch of visual plentitude.

Manicured hands courteously present and slide fine china across the screen, plates slowly revolve cutlets, silver forks rotate juicy morsels, wooden cooking utensils tumble nuggets and mix in slow motion, and spoons dance modest servings up towards your mouth. Gleaming knives abound – slow pans across luminous knives cutting and displaying, as if pâté, close-up shots of glowing chef’s knives precisely cutting, as if fine fillet mignon. Medallions are delicately divided, then glistening portions are gently slid apart to reveal their perfectly cooked and tender insides. The gliding camera dollies closer towards and across the immaculately plated food – harmonious in color scheme, formally arranged, and attractively garnished with hints of color. One dish is even served with a rice pilaf.

The emotionally soaring soundtrack for Allez Cusine is Fighting 17th, part of Hans Zimmer’s score for the 1991 Ron Howard film Backdraft, and later used as the introductory theme music for the Japanese television cooking show Iron Chef. The music, described as “driving,” “heroic,” “brassy,” and “triumphant,” serves as a proper counterpart to the visual imagery, both sophisticated and complimentary; yet always informed by the knowledge that the culinary delicacies presented are for the eventual consumption by animals, not humans. This project is a collaboration with Tom Kehn.

White Almond

2001-01-01T14:02:00.005+09:00

White Almond (3 views), 2001. Wood, melamine, Plexiglas, handles, hinges, wheels, w 35” x d 35” x h 86”, destroyed

White Almond is a framing device not unlike a camera. It is a catalyst, an exploratory probe, a gauge, and, at times, something akin to Ikea furniture. Upon first inspection, it may lack a certain immediate specificity of function, yet indistinctness is in fact one of its engineered traits. It is approachable at its core, having intentionally absolved its fixed command of space and strict clinical nature to become a non-threatening, mobile, and simultaneously stylish addition to a space. The primary usage is, but not limited to, the formation of a dialog between an individual and the space of a wall or closet. It has less in common with a litmus test, in which a single factor determines the outcome, than the projective Rorschach test and its stress on series and cumulative interpretations.

Special thanks to Eric Zeszotarski of Solid Studio

Tools

2001-01-01T14:01:00.008+09:00

Tools, 2001, c-print, h 10” x w 24”

I have been photographing in a Medical Examiner office and a morgue over the past ten years. After witnessing my first autopsy, I realized that nothing in these places was going to help prepare me for the inevitability of death. Nevertheless, from that first moment on, every time I went to the morgue I found new and compelling reasons to keep returning.

The scholar Philippe Aries said “...death has become unnameable. Everything henceforth goes on as if neither I nor those who are dear to me are any longer mortal. Technically we admit we might die... but really at heart we feel we are non–mortals. And surprise! Our life is not as a result gladdened!” In a way my inoculation has worked. Through direct experience I have introduced something into my life that will not make anyone exempt from death, yet it has made the prospect of its occurrence incredibly more natural and acceptable.

Device

2001-01-01T14:01:00.005+09:00

Device (Mütter Museum), 2001, gelatin silver print, h 20” x w 16”

This device was found in a back storage room of the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, PA. It was most likely utilized to measure skull sizes in support of 19th century theories regarding skull shape and intelligence; however, at some point it became divorced from its informative labeling. Accordingly, it cannot be identified with absolute certainty.

The Swimmer

2001-01-01T14:00:00.018+09:00

The Swimmer, 2001, video, color, sound, total running time 24 minutes and 37 seconds (three stills from film comprised of 401 images)

The Swimmer is a layering of inaccessible performance, automatically formatted video, and exceptionally thorough documentation. Ten Hours from now I will begin a seventy-five mile, three day, walking expedition from my apartment in Brooklyn to upstate New York to participate in an event called the Brewster Project. This will be my very own hallucinatory trip upriver into the heart of darkness, during which I will be continually broadcasting to the world – at maximum volume from speakers attached to my body – the entirety of Martin Sheen's hypnotic interior monologue extracted from Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now. Digital images will be produced systematically throughout the trip. Then, upon completion of the journey, these stills will be coupled with Sheen’s monologue to serve as a new and unexpected accompaniment for a well-worn audio track.

The piece is called The Swimmer, in honor of Burt Lancaster's itinerant character in the 1968 film of the same title. The Swimmer is one of the most effectively appalling of all quest films, perhaps even more so than Apocalypse Now, because its calamities are sited in an innocuous suburban landscape during the height of the Vietnam War.

Heroes

2001-01-01T14:00:00.017+09:00

Heroes, 2001, video, color, sound, total running time 7 minutes and 11 seconds

In 1989 the film Mac and Me was released to absolutely no critical acclaim, without doubt because it is an exercise in patent fakery. Mac and Me is a scene-by-scene rip-off of Steven Spielberg’s film E.T. the Extraterrestrial. Mac and Me is not a very good film by any standard, which makes it a perfect candidate for filmic resuscitation and shock therapy. The goal: to exhaustively look through the film to find and subsequently celebrate one small kernel of possibility from within a seemingly endless progression of commonplace scenes.

Heroes extracts and contextually modifies a generic sequence in which FBI agents are engaged in a frenetic foot chase up to and through a mall. By slowing down the sequence to 12% of the original speed the awkward and exaggerated actions of these hack actors are transformed into motions ethereal and balletic. Aside from slowing the speed of the footage, a significant liberty has been taken with the original narrative flow of Mac and Me. The chase sequence has been re-cut so that what the FBI agents are pursuing is conspicuously absent. Viewed unaltered the plot is turgid and the action predictable, yet edited and slowed the significance of their quest becomes cryptic and their movements are marked by unusual delicacy and refinement. Furthermore, the audio component of Heroes assists in transmuting the original footage into something remarkable. The soundtrack, once slowed down to 12% of the original speed, has more in common with ambient experimental music than maudlin film scores. Time elongation converts the music from something stale to something unusually changing and airy.

Ultimately, a heroic action is something done in response to a desperate situation. The purpose of Heroes is to scrounge through another filmmaker’s cinematic detritus until something worth honoring is found. This project is a collaboration with Tom Kehn.

Orphan

2001-01-01T14:00:00.016+09:00

Orphan, 2001, total running time 44 minutes and 17 seconds

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless. – Thomas Edison

Orphan is a 44 minute, 17 second sound piece that took one year to create. For the first six months of the project, every week samples were randomly extracted from the New York region airwaves. The material gathered, which ran the gamut from rash cream commercials to "blazin’ hip hop," was the raw material upon which a series of experiments were to be conducted. The intention of the research was to ascertain if the authoritative language and tone of voice utilized on commercial radio could be broken down and distilled into an essence. Once the soon to be obsolete products were edited out and the remaining absences filled, it only remained to organize the residue into a presentable form.

Could the new hybrid function in an assertive manner like the parental source promotions, however with the end goal of selling absolutely nothing? The answer we have found, after much trial and error, is a swaggering and secure yes – the poised language of marketing can be mined and forced to function on new terms, yet with a certain number new and unpleasant side effects coming to the forefront.

Genetic tampering, even with seemingly simple Am/Fm radio source material, is messy business with unpredictable results. Your engineered product may look fine now, only to dissolve before your eyes moments later. Instability becomes the norm and that’s the risk of advancing evolution. It might seem difficult at first listening to our alpha voice die – it’s always hard to loose a leader – however, there are few pleasures greater for a victim of commercial over–saturation than witnessing power itself stuttering and spurting, untethered by sales objectives, eventually degenerating into nonsensical tongues. Think of Orphan as something reclaiming territory by generating a waste of time. This project is a collaboration with Tom Kehn.

The Swimmer

2001-01-01T14:00:00.013+09:00

The Swimmer, 2001, c-print mounted to Sintra and Plexiglas, h 48.403” x w 36.4” (bottom image: film still of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz from Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now)

Core Samples (for Smack Mellon Gallery, Brooklyn, NY)

2000-01-01T14:01:00.019+09:00

Core Samples, 2000, C-print mounted to wood, melamine edging, h 16’ x w .5", destroyed, bottom image: detailed enlargement. Installed at Smack Mellon Gallery, Brooklyn, NY for White Hot curated by Regine Basha and Moukhtar Kocache.

Core Samples catalogs the entirety of my high school cassette collection in miniature and presents it, in the spirit of the sixteenth and seventeenth century Wunderkammer, with less an emphasis on categorization and a greater focus on unexpected juxtapositions.1 Similar cassette collections of several key high school era friends are included to indicate the collective musical findings of a time period. I am interested in paying homage to obsolete technology and taste.

For this sculptural manifestation of Core Samples, verticality, as well as references to archaeological measuring devices, and geologic stratification, are enhanced by compressing the piece to the width of one cassette stack (from the width of fourteen in Core Samples for Cabinet Magazine), proportionally yielding a slender, sixteen foot tall sculpture. The piece is installed discretely amongst the gallery plumbing and electrical conduits in Smack Mellon Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.

1 Adalgisa Lugli, a contemporary Italian art historian, writing on Inquiry as Collection notes wryly how the seventeenth century museum “was still conceived as a place where... one could move about without having to solve or face the problem of continuity.” – Lawrence Weschler, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology, New York: Vintage Books, 1995; p. 83

Training: the Basic Question

2000-01-01T14:00:00.024+09:00

Training: the Basic Question, 2000, video, color, sound, total running time 1 minutes and 46 seconds

Training: the Basic Question is a distillation of an entire informational video series created by the McDonald's corporation to regiment proper workplace etiquette and maximize production. The series has been edited, compressed, and restructured so that the logical points and authority from the original message have been transformed into an incoherent, rambling series of half completed sentences and uncomfortable silences. The video, whose purpose was to describe efficient communication techniques, is now ultimately incapable of following through on its own suggestions. Directives have been meticulously excised from the video leaving behind a pervading sense of confusion, including a number of workers who seem to have developed an uneasy relationship with their primary product, meat. Numerous images of individuals obsessively attending to and handling meat in Training: the Basic Question generate a connection between employee and product that borders on fetishistic. This project is a collaboration with Tom Kehn.

An Anchor

2000-01-01T14:00:00.022+09:00

An Anchor, 2000, 16 drawings, ink & white-out on paper, hardbound book with newspaper cover, h 8.5 x w 5.5

I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is. – Vladimir Nabokov

At some point in 2000 I accidentally came across a copy of The New York Times dated Wednesday, April 21, 1999 that lodged itself in my memory for months to come. This particular copy of the Times was remarkable for the reason that it contained an article about a man named Terrance Johnson, a reporter with a camera hidden in his eyeglasses. Although a licensed social worker, he took a low paying job at a mental hospital in order to expose rampant patient mistreatment. I felt that Terrance’s humanitarian actions needed to be observed; nevertheless, I must admit that my interest in Terrance was not entirely benign. Being an image-maker myself, I felt an intense envy of his omnivorous recording.

It seems that Terrance was also aware of the awesome power that his camera eyeglasses endowed him with – just look at his expression, or more accurately, his lack of expression. I find the quirky blankness of his stare compelling because it subtly hints at a confidence imparted by the righteousness of his cause, and perhaps more significantly, by the fact that nothing can elude his observations. The fixity of his stare, as well as his emptiness, became a fascination for me.

It stood to reason that a method mirroring the intensity of Terrance’s techniques would be an appropriate starting point for an experiment. I might begin to get at something beyond the surface of the cryptic, half–toned image by staring intensely at the newspaper clipping for approximately one minute, then recreating the image from recollection. This extended method would allow a complex portrait to emerge that would both describe my subject and honor him through repetition. This would be my tribute to Terrance the undercover reporter.

The framework of serial repetition seemed simple enough; however, in short order comprehensiveness and verisimilitude gave way to an interest in scrutinizing emerging peculiarities and following their tangents. The focus became less about accumulating details into a whole than a decoding of a preexisting and surprisingly complete portrait. By increasingly relying on my recollections rather than my one-minute of actual observation, the image unlocked and allowed something unfamiliar, yet compelling to emerge.

16 drawings later I still don’t know any more about Terrance Johnson the reporter with a camera hidden in his eyeglasses, but I am very familiar with the way that his right lapel almost touches the edge of the frame, the similarity of the inverted angle of the bridge of his glasses and the open collar of his shirt, as well as the way that his eyes seem to be looking at two slightly different points. Lastly, and inexplicably, an anchor began to feature prominently in the drawings.

Core Samples (project for Cabinet Magazine, issue #2, Spring 2001)

2000-01-01T14:00:00.020+09:00

Core Samples (project for Cabinet Magazine, issue #2, Spring 2001), 2000, c-print, h 9.75” x w 15.75”

Core Samples catalogs the entirety of my high school cassette collection in miniature and presents it, in the spirit of the sixteenth and seventeenth century Wunderkammer, with less an emphasis on categorization and a greater focus on unexpected juxtapositions. Similar cassette collections of several high school era friends are included to indicate the collective musical findings of a time period. I am interested in paying homage to obsolete technology and taste. This form of Core Samples was presented as a double page spread, or “sexy centerfold” for Cabinet magazine’s second issue.

Somewhat Corrupt = Computer Art Show

2000-01-01T00:01:00.010+09:00

Somewhat Corrupt = Computer Art Show

Curated by Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock
Poster and card design by Dan Ellis

Including: Inez Van Lamsweerde, Sarah Sweeney, Carol Selter, Jason Salavon, Olivia Parker, Panoptic, Brian McClave, Daniel Lefcourt, Shannon Kennedy, Keith Cottingham, Amy Carr, Bill Burke, Bob Bowen, Chris Bailey, Aziz & Cucher, Romeo Alaeff

Fordham University’s Plaza Gallery
Lincoln Center Campus
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
On view December 7, 2000 – January 31, 2001
Opening Reception: Thursday, December 7, 2000, 6 – 8 pm
The Plaza Gallery is open from 8 am – 8 pm

Hi (Human Matter)

1999-01-01T14:01:00.009+09:00

Hi (Human Matter), 1999, Iris print, h 30” x w 23”, destroyed

One of my responsibilities while interning at a morgue was to open specimen containers and separate the pathology samples from the reusable formalin preservative. Before incinerating the samples, I would often arrange the various parts into encouraging messages. The ambiguous characteristics of the samples, along with the color, cheerful greeting, and familiarity of the Polaroid format serve to camouflage the underlying nature of the image.

Air Bud: Golden Receiver

1999-01-01T14:00:00.064+09:00

Air Bud: Golden Receiver, 1999, video, color, sound, total running time 4 minutes and 43 seconds

Air Bud: Golden Receiver is a series of short, absurd video loops generated from footage mined from a Disney film about a golden retriever who can play football. After a shocking first viewing it seemed that the film was 100% generically commercial and devoid of any notable footage whatsoever; nevertheless, after numerous additional and more painstaking examinations a substantial number of salvageable 1–2 second fragments were located scattered throughout the 90 minute cliche. One would not imagine that a Disney project with a G rating would contain such disturbing and lewd imagery, yet exceptionally distressing scenes are all latent in the formulaic original if the film is carefully scrutinized. This project is a collaboration with Tom Kehn.

Geegaw + Scientifikk = Logikkal Trifle?

1999-01-01T14:00:00.063+09:00

Geegaw + Scientifikk = Logikkal Trifle?, 1999, video, black & white, silent, total running time 4 seconds, looped, assorted materials, l 20’ x w 80’ (top image: 8 photographs in sequence utilized for pinhole video. bottom image: installation view of Geegaw + Scientifikk = Logikkal Trifle? for Ruins in Reverse, CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, NY)

In this show the photographic act is paired down to its bare minimum with the entire show functioning as an exploded view of all the factors that come into play to make a single photographically generated, animated image. In December 1998, the two artists began a three-day trip to make a simple, animated loop of a yet unknown object in the State of New York Medical Examiners office in Buffalo. Over the next three days, the artists traveled from New York City’s Pennsylvania Station to Buffalo, NY, researched within the medical examiners office, and made the eight pinhole photographs that would comprise the final animation. The animation is comprised of 8 black & white images circling a ceiling mounted video camera in the room where autopsies take place. The video camera sends a live feed of the deceased from the autopsy room to a separate room where body identification takes place.

All objects that were utilized in the preparation and production of the animation were collected and stored into an ever-increasing number of trash bags. Weeks after the initial production of the images the bags were brought into the clinical workspace of the gallery, whereupon, employing subjective memory and pseudo-scientific cataloging practices, the artifacts – ranging from ticket stubs and food wrappers, to duct tape and clothing worn during production – were organized with the goal of reconstructing the original narrative. The resultant display takes on the logical form of a timeline, or wake of a ship leading up to the creation of the animation; however, branching out from this sequence are the tangents, digressions, and embellishments that occur when theory, memory, and history merge. This project is a collaboration with Brian McClave.

In the Jaws 3 of Poltergeist III

1999-01-01T14:00:00.049+09:00

In the Jaws 3 of Poltergeist III, 1999, video, color, sound, total running time 2 minutes and 11 seconds

In the Jaws 3 of Poltergeist III collapses formulaic sequels from two lucrative movie franchises (Jaws 3 and Poltergeist III) into one hybrid creation containing all salvageable elements from the trivial originals. What was once bloated and collectively three hours and 17 minutes long becomes synopsized into a lean 2 minute and 11 second story concerning a young girl’s purging of a traumatic and watery past. A psychologist claustrophobically covers the child’s face with his large hand, repeatedly massaging out distressing memories – surveillance cameras panning across Florida lagoons and Chicago high rise lobbies, terrified people running through underwater tunnels and high rise hallways, as well as circumstantially more bizarre moments – a man dramatically tumbling out of an uncontrollable golf cart. Likewise, secondary characters continually cover their faces, as if in sympathy for the girl, or in desperation for the films in which they are acting to miraculously transform into cohesive and less ludicrous productions. The hypnotic repetition of the mumbled word “breathe,” by the psychologist seems to be equally applicable advice to the remainder of the B-list actors frantically scrambling about in the convoluted plots so typical for the third film of a dying series. Additionally, explosions of acrylic glass feature prominently in both movies, but were not utilized in In the Jaws 3 of Poltergeist III. This project is a collaboration with Tom Kehn.

The Pathos of JFKurosawa

1999-01-01T14:00:00.048+09:00

The Pathos of JFKurosawa, 1999, video, color, sound, total running time 38 seconds

The Pathos of JFKurosawa merges together audio from the climactic finale of Akira Kurosawa’s 1949 film Stray Dog with a three second video clip from Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK; yet the result formed by the new combination is certainly at variance with the intention of either director. Through live recording of manually “scrubbing the time line” (rapidly scrolling forwards and backwards through the video footage) a pathologist is made to continuously and excitedly inspect one of John F. Kennedy’s bullet exit wounds with the tip of his gloved finger. Coupled with Stray Dog’s crescendo of uncontrolled sobbing – the apprehension of the killer after 122 minutes – the originally brief and clinical procedure is altered into something emotionally cathartic, torturously extended, and darkly erotic.

Sixteen Candles

1998-01-01T14:00:00.035+09:00

Sixteen Candles, 1998, video, color, sound, total running time 36 seconds

Sixteen Candles is a surgical substitution of one character for another in the 1984 John Hughes film Sixteen Candles. The character of Samantha Baker (played by Molly Ringwald) is replaced with “The Geek” (played by Anthony Michael Hall) in a fantasy sequence between Ringwald and the handsome boy of her dreams, Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling). What was once a stock romantic scene for a mid-80’s teen movie becomes slightly less stock as a result of the new dynamic, as well as explicitly sexual due to the addition of new overdubbed dialogue. This project is a collaboration with Tom Kehn.

Based on the True Story of Rocky Dennis

1998-01-01T00:03:00.002+09:00

Based on the True Story of Rocky Dennis, 1999, video, color, sound, total running time 2 minutes and 9 seconds

Based on the True Story of Rocky Dennis extracts, rearranges, and loops scenes from the 1985 Peter Bogdanovich film Mask in order to highlight the acutely manipulative aspects of the film. What becomes evident after successive viewings of Mask and the second filmic ingredient, Deliverance, directed by John Boorman in 1972, is that tender stories and appalling stories are equally as brutal in exploiting audience emotions. Saccharine moments from Mask – an excessively heartfelt story about the struggles of a highly intelligent boy with serious disfiguring cranial enlargements to overcome prejudice – are juxtaposed with the most disturbing scene of depravity from Deliverance – the notoriously violent sodomy of Bobby (Ned Beatty).

Contrasting the endless scenes from Mask that illustrate the noblest aspects of humanity with Deliverance’s wanton violation might seem extremely crude and provoke hasty reactions of disapproval; nevertheless, this deliberate poisoning of the well effectively brings into sharp relief the manner in which audience emotions have been manipulated by maudlin characters and implausible actions from the very beginning. The film equation presented in Based on the True Story of Rocky Dennis might not be liked, but it demands acknowledgement as simply a different product of the same language utilized in the source films. This project is a collaboration with Tom Kehn.

The Pathos of Richard Dreyfus

1998-01-01T00:01:00.002+09:00

The Pathos of Richard Dreyfus, 1998, video, color, sound, total running time 8 minutes and 50 seconds

The Pathos of Richard Dreyfus collects and strings together in chronological order every scene from Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind in which the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming appears. Regardless of the duration of the scene, if the Devil’s Tower appeared on screen in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it was included in The Pathos of Richard Dreyfus. From glimpses of the Devil’s Tower in pencil sketches, to zooms into maps, to tracking shots around mashed potato sculptures of the tower, to the actual tower itself – the obsessive collecting of imagery in The Pathos of Richard Dreyfus mirrors the fanatical qualities that mark the movie’s misunderstood protagonists.

The soundtrack for the piece is a repeated five second sample of a rising string buildup with an agitated Richard Dreyfus gutturally barking “not right, not right – not right,” while failing to give sculptural form to his mysterious vision of the yet unseen Devil’s Tower. The audio loops for the duration of the piece and briefly synchronizes when it reaches the video source from which it was extracted. This project is a collaboration with Tom Kehn.

The Pathos of Anthony Michael Hall

1998-01-01T00:00:00.000+09:00

The Pathos of Anthony Michael Hall, 1998, video, color, sound, total running time 2 minutes and 56 seconds

The Pathos of Anthony Michael Hall is a 2 minute and 56 second investigation of a 5 second clip from the John Hughes film Sixteen Candles. The scene has been so savaged through live video scratching that the narrative flow of the original message has been entirely obliterated. All remaining signs point to the fact that the character of Jake (flannel shirt), despite being the object of many a straightforward romantic fantasy, is ultimately involved in a sadomasochistic relationship as evidenced by his brutal treatment of the young Anthony Michael Hall (trapped under table).

Sitings

1996-01-01T00:02:00.000+09:00

A Methodical Elimination of Drudgery; Crude, but Adequate

1996-01-01T00:01:00.001+09:00

A Methodical Elimination of Drudgery; Crude, but Adequate, 1996, room 1: washing machine, shelf, fluorescent light, audio #1 total running time 3 minutes and 38 seconds, looped; room 2: distillation system, 2 buckets, dirty clothes, shelf, Polaroids, specimen containers, forms, audio #2 total running time 3 minutes and 25 seconds, looped, w 25’ x d 15’ (installation detail)

This exhibition examines a procedure in its entirety. The first room of A Methodical Elimination of Drudgery; Crude, but Adequate contains an abandoned washing machine that has been clinically dismantled piece by piece. The machine is displayed in its sum; each fragment carefully arranged on a shelf running the perimeter of the room. Accompanying each element from the washer is an identifying time-coded placard indicating the moment at which that individual piece was removed from the whole machine. The room is cold and empty, aside from the disassembled parts and a fluorescent light. A poignant country song repeats endlessly at a low volume (Making Plans, from Trio, 1987, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt, written by Johnny Russell/Voni Morrison).

The second room contains an elaborate and theatrical distillation system that extracts dirt from the artist’s clothes worn during the production and upkeep of the exhibition. The results are recorded and cataloged each day. Shelves hold sample jars containing dirty laundry water, the clean water that was generated, residual dirt, and Polaroids of the clothing worn. An exaggerated soundtrack of boiling and bubbling (blowing through a straw into a cup of water) pervades the room. This project is a collaboration with Brian McClave.

Making Plans, total running time 3 minutes and 38 seconds, from Trio, 1987, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt, written by Johnny Russell/Voni Morrison:

You say tomorrow you're going
It's so hard for me to believe
I'm making plans for the heartaches
'Cause you're making plans to leave
The tears for me will be falling
Like a tree shedding its leaves
I'm making plans for the teardrops
'Cause you're making plans to leave
You're making plans to forget me
I'm making plans to miss you
I'm getting ready to grieve
I'm making plans to be lonesome
'Cause you're making plans to leave
I'm making plans to be lonesome
'Cause you're making plans to leave

A Home

1994-01-01T00:01:00.003+09:00

Four Women in a Nursing Home, 1994, gelatin silver print, h 4” x w 5”

Middleschool

1991-01-01T00:00:00.005+09:00

Middleschool, 1990–1991, twenty gelatin silver prints, h 16” x w 20”

Hampshire College Main Gallery, Amherst, MA

Hospital

1989-01-01T00:01:00.002+09:00

Hospital, 1988–1989, twenty gelatin silver prints, h 20” x w 16”

muzukashiihito

Dah Di-dah-dah Dah-dah-dah, Di-dah-di-dit Dah-dah-dah Di-di-di-dah Dit Di-dah-dit Di-di-dit

As You Wish

35minutesmen

Landscape Film (Tottori, Japan)

Black & White Video

My parents went to Venice and all I got was this lousy...

Nonsynchronous Five Times

12.9 miles, 24 minutes; 25.2 miles, 42 minutes; 18.8 miles, 54 minutes; 11.4 miles, 40 minutes

Part Tool, Part Trap

The Plot is Very Bare (Berlin)

Excursions

日本から来ました。 日本に行ったことがありません。 上記のどちらでもありません。

Landscape Film (Shatana, Jordan)

Untitled (with Kite)

Um Naji, Um Dani

Yalla ya Bascot (Go Biscuits)

Ragged Right

Untitled (with Kite)

A Very Slow Rhythm

Looking Southwest towards Midal al-Ataba from the Northeast corner of Shari Khulud and Shari al-Azhar...

Anna – Léa Massari – Anna Maria Massetani

Untitled-17: “Epson Perfection 2580 Photo” B by A, “Epson Perfection 2580 Photo” A by B, September 28, 2007, 3:48 PM

A Triangulation (Japan)

A Triangulation (Italy)/An Island

Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island

Landscape Film

Place Marker

A Drawn-out Conflict

Record

Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island

2.35: 1

Phantom/Fountain

Desire Lines

Ritorno a Lisca Bianca

Tracking

Desire Line

Unmoving

Headrest

In twighlight, general outlines of ground objects may be distinguishable, but the horizon is indistinct

A Response to a Set of Conditions

The Plot is Very Bare

Head and Headrest

Phantom/Fountain

The Mummy Project

Unspecified Non-Bizarre Delusion

Outdoor Area

Fresh Meat

Live Act

As the World Turns (Brutally)

Falling Between Positions

Microviews

Part Trap

Towards a Low End Theory

Allez Cusine (Go Kitchen)

White Almond

Tools

Device

The Swimmer

Heroes

Orphan

The Swimmer

Core Samples (for Smack Mellon Gallery, Brooklyn, NY)

Training: the Basic Question

An Anchor

Core Samples (project for Cabinet Magazine, issue #2, Spring 2001)

Somewhat Corrupt = Computer Art Show

Hi (Human Matter)

Air Bud: Golden Receiver

Geegaw + Scientifikk = Logikkal Trifle?

In the Jaws 3 of Poltergeist III

The Pathos of JFKurosawa

Sixteen Candles

Based on the True Story of Rocky Dennis

The Pathos of Richard Dreyfus

The Pathos of Anthony Michael Hall

Sitings

A Methodical Elimination of Drudgery; Crude, but Adequate

A Home

Middleschool

日本から来ました。日本に行ったことがありません。上記のどちらでもありません。