Amir Baradaran, "FutARism Performance," 2011. Benrimon Contemporary (NYC). Courtesy the artist.

This entry takes up where I left off last December, when I documented my encounter with electronics artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer who lectured at the High Museum of Art (Atlanta) about art that engages in “the realm of social interaction and content.”  Since then, I successfully completed my first year in a digital media Ph.D program and I continue to cover emerging contemporary artistic practices in the social realm.  Writing posts about socially-engaged and paradoxical art in popular culture led me into the topic of mobile augmented reality (defined below). The AR movement at first may seem like a novelty, but a closer look reveals interdisciplinary perspectives that involve aesthetic explorations of blended realities as a new kind of artistic practice and cultural space.

"Augmented Reality: Rogue Art Exhibition" at MoMA. Photo: http://www.mobilebehavior.com.

Augmented reality is becoming more accessible and new uses continue to emerge as tools for creating and customizing applications become easier to use.  The layering of information over 3D space produces new ways to experience content that is fueling the broader migration of computing from the desktop to the mobile device, bringing with it opportunities for broader user dynamic engagement with social media.  Artists and other users are being encouraged to view their smart phones, iPods ,and tablet computers as tools for production and display.  Augmented Reality tools can be used to explore concepts in ways that are ‘user led’ and increasingly participatory.  Last year, a rogue augmented reality art show made its debut at MoMA (NYC).  The physical show was visible to regular visitors, but those who were using a mobile phone application called Layar on their smart phones could see additional works on each of the floors, merging form and content in a non-didactic way.

Here, I return to Relational Aesthetics, Nicholas Bourriaud’s approach to examining contemporary art by getting as close as possible to artists’ works in order to reveal interlocking social structures that link curators, artists, and audiences together.  Beyond designing or re-designing amenities within existing cultural spaces, new media artists have their own motives.  They are using alternative platforms for the production and experiencing of art within social contexts, presenting interactive environments within cultural frameworks and, as stated by curator Claire Bishop in her essay, “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” creating a “buzz of creativity and the aura of being at the vanguard of contemporary production.”  In exploring mobile augmented reality (AR), Amir Baradaran offers his own declaration as a “provocation and proposition.” Regarding a movement he calls FutARism, Baradaran writes,

Under the auspices of FutARism, Augmented Reality (AR) is employed as a new artistic medium, as it adds virtual content to a given space that is experienced in real-time and in semantic context with the real-world environment. Canonical artworks and sites will be appropriated and augmented. These virtual installations will be viewable with a smartphone application.

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Xu Bing, "The Living Word," 2001 (partial installation view). Cut and painted acrylic. Courtesy The Morgan Library & Museum.

Perhaps the most seminal and certainly the most seismic moment in the history of Chinese contemporary art transpired at the National Gallery in Beijing in early February 1989.  On the eve of the Chinese New Year and mere months before the tragic events in and around Tiananmen Square would begin to unfold, a group of curators organized an exhibition consisting of almost three hundred works by more than one hundred artists—an unprecedented and audacious aggregation of contemporary painting, sculpture, installations, and performances taking place in China’s most important and staid art institution.  Officially titled China Avant-Garde Art Exhibition, it was also popularly known as the No U-Turn exhibition for the iconic red symbol typically found on street signage that organizers emblazoned on banners and carpets all around the National Gallery.

The National Art Gallery, Beijing, on the opening day of the "China Avant-Garde Exhibition," February 5, 1989. Courtesy University of Chicago Library.

Among the artists participating in the 1989 exhibition was Xu Bing, now widely regarded as one of the most important artists of his generation, and whose sculpture The Living Word—one of his most important works—is currently on view at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.  The Living Word, Xu’s third version of the piece but the first to be exhibited in New York, consists of 400 pieces of colored acrylic sheeting, each laser-cut into the form of the Chinese character for “bird,” and arranged in an undulating wave that rises from the ground to a height of about fifty feet.  Viewing the work from bottom to top, the acrylic forms slowly metamorphose from the modern Chinese character for “bird” at ground level to more traditional calligraphic forms of the character, and finally take the shape of ancient pictograms based on natural bird forms at the top of the piece.

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Laurel Nakadate's "Only the Lonely"- installation view. Image: ps1.org

Summer offers fantastic opportunities for educators of all kinds to catch interesting group shows and special exhibitions that are happening before we start up the engines again in the fall. This summer, Mark Bradford’s gorgeous exhibit is at MCA Chicago, “Art in the Streets” continues to roll at MoCA Los Angeles (at least for a few more days) along with the traveling Lynda Benglis show, “Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera Since 1870” is showing at the Walker Art Center, Katharina Grosse’s recent installation (as well as an excellent group show titled “The Workers”) is featured at Mass MoCA, “Silence and Time” is on view at the Dallas Museum of Art, “Charles Atlas: Joints Array” is showing in the lobby of the New Museum, and PS1 has shows by Laurel Nakadate, Francis Alÿs and Nancy Grossman. Also right here in NYC, three more group shows of interest include “Perfectly Damaged” at Derek Eller, “Flowers for Summer” at Michael Werner, and “The Women in Our Life” at Cheim and Read.

But how do we begin to choose shows to see? Many of us have a small number of opportunities to get out and fuel our own planning with exhibition visits. Sometimes, depending on your location, there are many choices… and group shows in particular can be as hit-or-miss as a Bob Dylan concert.

When deciding which shows I will see, I often go with my gut but also take a look at my curriculum and the units I will be teaching in order to decide if any of the current shows align with what’s coming up. If I have the opportunity to see firsthand an exhibit that will enhance an introduction, or provide me with a variety of examples I may share with students, I’m all over it (unfortunately, I may also find myself wanting the exhibition catalogue if it’s a particularly good show, which can be an expensive habit). Other questions I ask myself include:

• Is this an artist(s) I want to learn more about?
• Is this a theme I am interested in exploring?
• Has this exhibit been recommended by someone I trust?
• Am I safe to assume that the work I see will not land on a coffee mug any time soon?

While visiting different venues I also check out the upcoming shows for fall and winter, and use this time to begin planning any school visits I may take with my own classes (for example, Sherrie Levine’s “Mayhem”opens at the Whitney Museum this November).

As we slowly move through the dog days of August, it makes sense to take some time, grab your sketchbook or journal and visit a few shows to inspire your own work and planning. Please also share any shows of interest in your neck of the woods!

Crossbow of Ulrich V, Count of Württemberg, 1460. Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In homage to the recently-opened summer indie movie Horrible Bosses, I thought I’d dedicate this, my first column since the close of the spring semester, to that annual rite of passage: the summer internship. I’m currently undertaking the second internship placement of my academic career, this time in the Arms & Armor department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In direct contrast to the three protagonists of said movie, I have absolutely zero interest in felling my awesome boss Dirk Breiding (or any of my co-workers for that matter). In a department where there are more sharp objects within hand reach than you could shake a pole axe at, and given the fact that I’m helping my supervisor research crossbows (fascinating, and very deadly), it’s a very good thing for everyone’s lives and limbs that there is a great deal of congeniality amongst these colleagues.

On a Gugg outing to Dia: Beacon with the awesome Fall '06 interns. I'm front row, third from right.

My first and only other internship was summer ’05, which was also the first time I set foot in New York. I stayed at the YMCA on 92^nd and Lexington (aka a prison dorm) and wore a suit in 100-degree weather to look smart on my first day (I’m British and didn’t understand ‘’heat index”). I had applied to fourteen internship programs in New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston and, unsurprisingly, my target institutions weren’t as enthusiastic as I was and only one responded: the Guggenheim. Thank you, Ryan Hill, for taking a chance on me when all I had to offer was a last-minute phone interview conducted on a windy hill in Scotland, and a lot of waitressing experience (“good people skills!”). I ended up being an intern in Adult Interpretive Programs that summer, falling in love with museum education, and then Ryan hired me, waiting nine months so I could get my visa sorted out. Ryan, you even introduced me to five or six of my best friends out here, and my boyfriend. I’m pretty sure I owe you my first born child, which will, of course, be called Ryan Hill. You taught me a lot about what it is to be a kind and patient boss – the opposite of horrible – and so when I went on to run the internship program as part of my job over the next three years at the Gugg, I tried to remember what it was like to be on both ends of the spectrum: desperately crossing fingers to work somewhere amazing for free; and being the finger who picks people to hemorrhage their hard-earned cash on supporting themselves in one of the world’s most expensive cities during unpaid summer work experience. (Hey, it’s summer. You can survive on ice pops).

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Thea Liberty Nichols: On my first trip to Houston several years ago, I was able to visit Aurora Picture Show in its previous converted-church location. There was a palpable sense of community amongst the viewers gathered in the room that night, and I know since then your microcinema’s appeal has only grown. Can you tell us a little more about how Aurora Picture Show has embraced its present nomad-ism and translated it into the opportunity for successful collaborations with a number of host sites around Houston and beyond?

"Aurora Picture Show was originally based out of a former church building in the Heights, but now programs in unique settings all over Houston."

Delicia Harvey: Yes, as you may remember, our original location was also the home of our founder, Andrea Grover, and when she decided to retire and move her family to the East Coast, there was a mutual decision by the Board and staff to embrace our new library location (which is located across the street from the Menil Collection) and begin to program nomadically around the city.  Taking programming out of the church and into the community allowed us to reach audiences we had not before, create unmatched events at locations that were completely site-specific to a performance or screening (such as Luke Savisky’s E/X), and improve and expand our collaborations with all the other arts organizations in the city.  It has really improved our attendance and we have found that audiences seek out and enjoy the events that match a site to the screening content.

Screening from the backyard of Aurora Picture Show's library location, 1524 Sul Ross, Houston, TX.

TLN: Since its inception, Aurora Picture Show has focused on screening documentaries, shorts, and avant-garde artist-made films. As artists’ usage of available technology has expanded, so has your programming, which now encompasses other moving image technologies and multimedia events. Can you tell us more about the impact of this media on your programming and how you use tools like the Internet and streaming video to further Aurora Picture Show’s mission?

DH: For the past eight years, Aurora has presented a festival entitled Media Archeology, which focuses on artists using electronic media of the past and present in live performance.  Past artists have included Cory Archangel, Yacht, My Robot Friend, Shana Moulton, Tara Mateik, Brent Green, Negativland, and many others.  Recent versions of the festival include a number of live cinema performances, which we would like to do more of year-round, however, costs are usually prohibitive so we find ways to partner with other organizations to bring in artists we would like to work with.  For instance, we are working with a Houston Cinema Arts Society to bring in Braden King’s performance of Here this November.  In terms of how we use the Internet, we have just begun live streaming of our video salon discussions and recording workshops so we reach people who cannot attend. We hope to exhibit/distribute more work online in the future and this year have applied for funding for two projects in 2012 that use audience participation through the Internet as a large part of their project. So, we hope to use it more that way should funding allow.

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Selina Trepp, "The Painter," 2011. Archival inkjet print, 19.5" x 27.7".

Thea Liberty Nichols: I left your studio, which you were kind enough to have me visit the other day, inspired to make new work because hearing about the “instructions” you give yourself really resonated with me. Rather then functioning as rules or restrictions, it sounded like they seeded your impulse to experiment and improvise, and, as you noted, the outcome of your work could still surprise you in the end. Can you recount a series of instructions for us and tell us how they’ve shaped this new body of work alongside the other mysteries and happy coincidences that come along with innovating and problem solving?

Selina Trepp: In the past year, I have been focusing on my relationship to painting. Focusing on painting in my case means addressing my relationship to my mother and grandmother. They are both painters.

Grandmother = Artist – Painter
Mother = Artist – Painter
Me = Artist avoiding painting

Thinking about the above I realized that the most challenging thing I could do within my own practice, was to paint.

To help me in that endeavor I came up with a framework, a physical construction consisting of a crude one-way mirror and a camera, as well as a set of instructions to work with.

Instructions to myself:

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Thanks to Francesca Wilmott for her take on the St. Louis art scene. Up next is Thea Liberty Nichols, who is returning to the guest blog after a stint earlier this spring. Thea is a Chicago-based arts administrator, independent curator, and freelance writer. Formerly, she served as Director of 65GRAND gallery and she now works with The School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Visiting Artists Program. She’ll be posting a series of interviews she’s conducted with artists and art spaces from around the country.

Stan Chisholm, "WaitingForAMountain," 2010. Installation at Art Dimensions Gallery, St. Louis. Chisholm is a graduate of the CAT Institute.

During my time as a guest blogger for Art21, I’ve examined various initiatives that have transformed the cultural landscape of St. Louis. Despite the city’s dwindling population, the arts are prospering in St. Louis, as evidenced by the ever-increasing number of contemporary art organizations, the abundance of creative activity on Cherokee Street, in Grand Center, Old North, and Hyde Park, and the social commitment of artists like Juan William Chávez and Theaster Gates. As I was thinking about how I’d like to wrap up my examination of the St. Louis art scene, I felt the need to more precisely pinpoint the catalyst for cultural activism within the city.

I began this formidable task by arranging meetings with culturally engaged social workers. Social work, like art, is constantly re-defining itself and expanding its perimeters. Over the past year, I’ve become increasingly aware of the growing number of Master of Social Work (MSW) graduates who, coming out of Washington University’s Brown School of Social Work, have pursued careers in the arts. The marriage of social work and contemporary art forms a crucial partnership in arts-based community development. Equipped with macro-level analysis and evaluation skills, the social workers I met with helped me better understand our current artistic movement within the broader social context of St. Louis.

First I met with Lisa Harper Chang, the Community Projects Director at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. In 2007, Chang established the initial partnership between the Pulitzer and the Brown School and her contributions have since paved the way for future MSW students—such as Emily Augsburger and Megan Johnson—to fulfill their social work practicums at the Pulitzer. Next I met with Regina Martinez, an artist and social worker, who, as I mentioned in my previous post, is working with Theaster Gates and the Rebuild Foundation to start a community arts center in Pagedale, St. Louis. After that, I interviewed Claire Wolff, founder of Urban Studio Café, a non-profit coffee shop in Old North that used its proceeds for arts programming. Lastly, I met with Amanda Moore McBride, Associate Dean for Social Work at the Brown School, who explained to me that the program’s recent emphasis on cultural activism evolved from a movement from within the student body. Each of these meetings demonstrated how social workers are increasingly helping to refine the goals of community art initiatives in our city.

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Theaster Gates leading a tour of a once-abandoned home that is now central to his creative rehab efforts in Hyde Park, St. Louis. Image courtesy of the Rebuild Foundation.

Artist Theaster Gates likes systems. And what he likes more than a system itself is knowing how to leverage it. Though formally trained in handling clay, Gates also uses the structure of neighborhoods, cultural institutions, and universities as his artistic medium.

Over the past few years, Gates has earned a reputation for his social-based practice, in which he intertwines art, urban planning, and community activism. In a recent conversation, he expressed frustration with the accepted scope of what it means to be an artist. He particularly dislikes the phrases “artist as change agent,” “artist as social worker,” or “artist as entrepreneur.” Gates explained that “the word ‘as’…shifts the possibility that an artist could be entrepreneurial, or have interest in the social, or have interest in architecture. It says you have to be ‘both this and this.’ It separates a person into these compartments. Versus: ‘I’m an artist and my skill set includes these things.’” With degrees in Ceramics, Urban Planning, and Religious Studies – and a brief stint in Pre-Pharmacy – Gates embodies the myriad identities that can be folded into being an artist.

Though Theaster Gates is nearly a household name in Chicago and is widely recognized throughout the art world – he was included in the 2010 Whitney Biennial – he recently has garnered attention in St. Louis for his cultural revitalization initiatives. Last year, Gates founded the Rebuild Foundation, combining the various facets of his practice within a single non-profit organization. The Rebuild Foundation brings together artists, architects, developers, educators, and community activists to help revitalize under-resourced neighborhoods. It currently manages projects in Detroit, Omaha, Chicago, and St. Louis. In just one year alone, the Rebuild Foundation, with the energetic on-site commitment of Dayna Kriz, has become a major force in St. Louis’s Hyde Park neighborhood. Located in north St. Louis, Hyde Park is a historic neighborhood that has fallen upon hard times as a result of post-war deindustrialization and the ensuing population decline.

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Collier Schorr, "Anonymous Cowboy," 2008. Courtesy the artist and 303 Gallery.

In this week’s roundup, Collier Schorr’s and Matthew Barney’s mixed signals, Carrie Mae Weems and Rashid Johnson bridge divides, several upcoming events, and more.

• Collier Schorr and Matthew Barney have work featured in Mixed Signals: Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports at the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh).  The exhibition deals with the subject of the male athlete and features 17 artists, including Schorr and Barney.  Featured works emphasize the many ways masculinity is performed and socially constructed.  This show closes August 7.

• Carrie Mae Weems brings Slow Fade to Black to DownStreet Art (North Adams, MA).  The show takes a critical look at the historical drama by staging and presenting several narratives works that play across the historical divide. The work consists of two new video projections and rarely seen photographs, including stills, paintings, and projections with sound designed with the assistance of composer Gregory Wanamaker.  The show will run through September 25.

• Rashid Johnson is featured in the New York Observer.  After Post-Black: Rashid Johnson’s Baadasssss Song examines the artist’s practice, style and representation of contemporary Black life in America.  This October, Johnson’s work will be on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), as part of 30 Americans that will run October 1 – February 12, 2012.

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