Events this Friday and Saturday

Panel discussion today: Women Artists in Muslim Society

5:15-6:45

1104 S Wabash 2nd Floor

Tomorrow May 1st Performances:
3:30-5:00

Iraqimemorial.org - Joseph DeLappe

Thanks to Victoria B. for showing me Joseph DeLappe's  iraqimemorial.org.
This is an online open proposal site for memorials to civilian casualties in Iraq. They are just proposals, the way NYC solicited proposals for a 9/11 memorial.


There is a great list of charities to donate to.  How come there is still no way to give to widows?  They just seem to be forgotten.

Election Day - Holocaust

Our voting place was moved recently to the Temple nearby, and as I was leaving the voting for the Primary, I saw this impressive, haunting artist's book by Ruth Weiner.  It is made of porcelain, documenting the names of some families lost in the holocaust. 

Francis Alys: When Faith Moves Mountains 2002

Just ran across Francis Alys, whose work When Faith Moves Mountains in 2002 involved five hundred people living in a shanty town outside Lima, Peru using shovels, one step at a time, to move a dune 4 inches.  They live in these dunes along with about 75,000 people without running water or electricity.

His words: attempts to translate social tensions into narratives that in turn intervene in the imaginal landscape of a place. The action is meant to infiltrate the local history and mythology... 
 art operates precisely within the space of myth....
In this sense, myth is not about the veneration of ideals--of pagan gods or political ideology--but rather an active interpretive practice performed by the audience, who must give the work its meaning and its social value.

Busy, Busy

Too busy to blog right now.  Since last:

• still have to review critique tape 
• Went to MCA and talked with Esam Pasha, a student named Majd, and Allen Turner
• Met with Jabur on Monday and talked about projects and life for both of us
• Met with Paul about registration
• Thesis class Critique
• Planned collaborative performance with Core Project and Body Rewired for Saturday
  
• Created Emily Jacir homage, installed during Art as Spiritual Pracice
• Met with Laurie N. about work, not-for-profit, and catch-up
  

Second meeting with Mel P.

We talked about the threshold between rooms.   Mel recommended Terance Koh's work (a Whitney installation) Brimming from a Ray of Light for its lighting design.  Mel was mainly concerned with the design of the first room which takes up most of the space, but says less than it might.

She rightly advised me to activate the imagery in the doorway.  It will be extremely important as it is the threshold between the two rooms - the two states of mind.  What should its shape/size/texture reference?

Mel suggests that the doorway, if not an arch referring to Islamic architecture, be a direct reference to tombs.  Should there be one, or three openings the size of caskets?

Meeting with Doug Stapleton

I met with Doug S. at the State of Illinois Gallery about my thesis show.

He also saw that it is an architectural environment. that I am trying to create a passage to a liminal space: that the chalk room is referential to the Kabaa in Mecca: that the intention is transformative in nature - moving from death to life, accounting for the deaths, and tallying the living.

We talked about the cleansing fountain idea as a metaphor - not as an actual fountain. What can I use to symbolize the cleansing?

We talked about the use of an invitation to go home and make 3 million lines to commemorate the widows.  A take away if you will.

We discussed the duality.

He questioned weather it was a type of momento mori

Deborah Boardman visits Art as a Spiritual Practice

Deborah Boardman visited our Art as a Spiritual Practice class, with ideas about her rituals, practices and themes in creating work.  She mentioned that when in doubt or uncomfortable with what she is doing, she likes to sweep her floor, for long periods.  Sweeping is task oriented and gets her out of her knots. 

This is akin to what I am achieving with my chalk and more strongly with my sand drawings.  It's a way to clear ones mind of distractions leaving space for a meditative attitude in which one can find new inspiration.

Meeting with Cliff M.

Met with Cliff on Tuesday Oct. 6th.  He referenced a number of architectural sites, both historical and contemporary.  The Temple at Karnak in Egypt, and the Jewish Museum in Berlin by Libeskind in particular.  We talked about the ceremonial aspect, the transformative aspect of the architecture, the structure of the pillars referencing a processional.

We also talked about the Monument Against Fascism by Jochen Gerz, a column that lowers into the ground and disappears as its surface gets the signatures of witnesses to the monument.

I need to pay more attention to the reasons for creating the space.  I know that I want it not to be a blatant referance to a mosque, an Iraqi graveyard or a Western funeral parlor.  It needs to be a metaphoric space which creates a transformation from the gloom and sadness of the entryway of rememberance (of the dead) to the affimative, healing, comfort of the memorial to the Widows who have survived.  That is the point of the two rooms - it's not just the aesthetic, but the spiritual passage from grief to hope that I wish to capture in the final installation and performance.

 

Die-In

On Wednesday, Oct 7th I went down to the 31st St. Beach and drew 800 lines in the sand on the 8th anniversary of the Afghan War.  (see birddenoftruth videos on youtube or in sidebar)

Then I went to Columbia, to the park on 11th and Wabash to join in the Die-In sponsered by the Artists Activists (now Art Activists) at Columbia along with Critical Encounters.
A dozen or more students wrapped themselves in sheets an lay down around the park and on the sidewalk. four of us read names, ages and dates of one hundred selected names from a list of war casualties in Afghanistan. The red carnations symbolized the bloodshed.

Later in Art as a Spiritual Practice class, I showed one of my Night Vision cabinets, I sang and played Kind of Pressure and we all drew lines on chalkboards to commemorate the widows in Iraq.

Meeting with Annette B. 9/16

We talked about the Interactive Department, and I explained my piece, showing some images and some of the video on the blogs.  I told her that I was thinking on not having any technology in my exhibit, which she said was very brave.

I then of course by dinner drew an exhibit (now changed again) that incorporated a video screen in the wall.  She said (as did Mel) that she would be interested in working with me even if I didn't pick her for the "committee", which is very generous.

Meeting with Mel P. 9/16

We talked about strategies to continue working, like grant writing and positioning work to get it shown after graduation. I explained some of my new ideas to her about the room and we discussed simplicity and a clear vision.

References:

Eduardo Kac Telepresence kac.org
Genelle Baxor: Generative & Algorithmic art?
Ars Electronica
Indira Freitas Johnson: Evanston artist
Wafaa Bilal: at SAIC www.wafaabilal.com

Meeting with Paul

Paul talked about the inherent futility in the drawing of lines in the sand.  We talked about how drawing the lines in public incorporates and element of risk - one never knows how the public will react.  Paul loved the fact that the guard on the beach just came up and drove over the lines at Oxbow.

We talked about what the exhibit will be: monument, ritual.

Think about:
What is show?
What does show?

Make a funtionality list from potential functions of the room.  I can change what I do.  I can schedule what I do.

• Change how I work on the lines - gesture
• Panel discussions
• rituals
• cermonies
• headquarters for fundraising
• switch up objecthood and performativity and participation

References:
Sara Schnadt
"What We Want is Free" Ted Purves, ed.
"Unmonumental" show - rhisome: (newmuseum.org) Nina Katchadourian
"America's Army" - Joseph DeLappe goes into game and starts reciting till he gets blown away.
New Media Caucus

War Panel at CAA 2009

New Media Caucus' page on works related to the war in Iraq: Mail Away: War Correspondence at Home and Online.
Artists create/ hack video games to comment on the human and political costs of the War. Check out Joseph DeLappe's piece which uses the America's Army recruiting on-line war game to Memorialize American troops lost in Iraq.

Cross-Cultural Art: IRUS

An exciting art work/collective between artists in Iran and American artists from Denver has a representative in a new Interarts and Media program graduate student, Morehshin.  The work is entitled IRUS for Iran and US.  I will talk to her about the work more this week when I see her. 

Research Unrecorded

I've been remiss in not talking about theory of late.  Relational Aesthetics (Bourriaud)  has lots of points I want to discuss soon, as well as some things I've begun reading in two other books: Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art by Grant Kester and Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination After 1945, Blake Stimson and Gregory Sholette, Ed.  All three books deal with art which involves the audience in completing the pieces, art which can only be understood as it effects an environmental or group dynamic, not as individual art objects.

Hopefully I will get to writing some of this down this week.

800,000 pages for Rwanda

 Acknowledge.Remember.Renew
William Snyder III manages an art project to commemorate the 800,000 Rwandan's killed in 100 days in 1994.  One page for each person, bearing the muddy prints of participants around the world, are sown into 250 books displayed in 100 crates, one for each day of the war. The participants also have raised milions for the Rwandan The Kayinamura Foundation.  

This bears great resemblance to what I am trying to achieve with my thesis work on Iraq.  It's a wonderful actualization of such a horrific and inconceivable number.

Iraq Veterans Swap Weapons for Art/BBC News

American Veterans turning uniforms into sculptural paper works with poetry. Weapons for Art

Can't Miss This!

Great news of a new show regarding Iraq coming to
 Chicago's MCA in October.  I can't wait!
Jeremy Deller invites experts and concerned parties to inhabit the gallery and discuss issues pertaining to Iraq.


http://www.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/exh_detail.php?id=219

Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing No. 63, 1971

I was looking at Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing No. 63, 1971, again yesterday in the Modern wing at the Art Institute of Chicago.  It was executed by four artists from his instructions.  This is something I will consider for my sand drawings or chalkboard performances if I cannot be in enough places to meet my goal of three million lines.