Tracking

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

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.

New Crop: Exactly Two Hundred Fifty Images from the Rhode Island School of Design Archive (Room B03, 20 Washington Street), Volume Three of Eight...

New Crop: Exactly Two Hundred Fifty Images from the Rhode Island School of Design Archive (Room B03, 20 Washington Street), Volume Three of Eight from "Buildings and Open Spaces," Presented in its Entirety and in the Order that Each Was Removed from the Archival Storage Box.

October 15, 2004 – November 15, 2004
Rhode Island School of Design
Red Eye Gallery
30 North Main Street, 4th Floor
Providence, RI 02903

Essay by Ben Carlson: Photographers have been photographing architecture almost since the medium’s invention. The history of modern photography can be traced from Eugene Atget’s photographic albums of turn-of-the-century Paris through August Sander’s photographic catalogue of Cologne. Yet it wasn’t until Ed Ruscha’s snapshots of every building on Sunset Strip and Dan Graham’s banal photographs of suburban New Jersey homes that photography was valued at the price of the other fine arts[1]. As Conceptual Art ushered in what Benjamin Buchloh has called the aesthetic of administration, photography turned towards the archive as a model.

“New Crop,” the current Red Eye Gallery show, is rooted in this shift from individual image to larger archive. In “The Body and the Archive,” Allan Sekula writes, “the archive exists not simply as a material network of territorialized realms of knowledge. The archive also casts its ‘shadow’ as a unifying principle lending coherence across these segregated domains” (October, no. 39: 10).” The archive, as Sekula argues, is not just the sum of the individual images. The archive’s organizational logic has a normative function where each individual image is standardized through its inclusion in the collection. The creation of typologies, such as the Water Towers photographed by the Bechers, or Los Angeles real estate as photographed by Ruscha, is the method by which the archive controls deviance. Any minor variation takes on the greatest significance and becomes the center of the viewer’s attention. With so much the repetitiveness, small variations are that much more apparent. Why is that water tower so different? The archive’s structure sets the limits of what may be included – anything outside its parameters is impermissible, anything else just doesn’t make sense.

In The Archaeology of Knowledge, Michel Foucault defines the archive as “the systems that governs the appearance of statements” (129), meaning that the archive is what determines the terms and limits of what may or may not be said. For an individual image to make sense in the archive it must conform to these typologies. Ed Ruscha’s Various Small Fires and Milk can be read as a test of these limits. Photograph after photograph takes the same, boring studio approach to a variety of small fires. Finally, on the last page we find a startling photograph of a puddle of milk. Why is this photograph so different? Why is this photograph so nonsensical?

The book is an exaggerated example of the archive’s normative function. This normative function is as apparent in the RISD Archive as it is anywhere. The RISD Archive is a way to preserve the memory of the schools buildings and open spaces, but it is also a public relations tool through which the school creates an idealized self-image. In a sense the archive is RISD’s official memory, yet also a construction. The photographs in the archive are taken by professional photographers and are carefully edited to create a particular impression of this institution. Within its precisely controlled structure there are only certain permissible things that may be said. As we can see by looking at New Crop, there are only certain ways that the buildings and open spaces may be photographed if they are to be included in the official memory. How recognizable are the spaces we occupy day after day? What this new crop makes most evident is the divergence between official memory and personal experience.

Essay by Ben Carlson, exhibition organized by J.P. Biondi and Miranda Burch and installed by Dan Noyola and Richard Saunders.

[1] See Jeff Wall’s “Marks of Indifference: Aspects of Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art” for an in depth account of the shift.

Unmoving

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

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

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

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

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

(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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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)

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.