Art21 and Mel Chin’s “Fundred” team in overdrive at NAEA
Last month, Art21 and Mel Chin (Season 1) took arts educators from around the world by storm as they presented two of the most dynamic sessions the National Arts Education Association’s annual convention had to offer.The professional development session, presented by Kelly Shindler and Mel Chin, was standing-room only. Teachers were treated to a special presentation about Mel Chin’s Fundred Dollar Bill Project by Mel Chin himself. The following day, the Art21 Super Session was also packed with educators. After creating their own works of “Fundred Dollar Bill” art, teachers headed out to the street for a dramatic suprise entrance of the Fundred Project’s armored truck (pictured above), which runs on cooking oil supplied by school cafeterias.
Here on the left coast, plans to present the Fundred Dollar Bill Project to California’s educators are already underway through partnerships with local museums, KQED’s Spark program, and the Fundred Project’s national director.
Be sure to check out Art:21’s video of students who have already participated in the Fundred Dollar Bill Project and, if you’re an educator, help your students create their own Fundreds for donation to a neccessary and worthy cause. More information can be found on the project’s Web site, www.fundred.org. Password = Paydirt.
Juliana Snapper’s Vocal Hysteria
Juliana Snapper is a trained opera singer who uses her voice to ululate at the edge of music, creating visually stunning, highly theatrical performance pieces, combining the sex appeal of 50’s burlesque with futuristic imprisonment scenarios. I recently had the pleasure of seeing one of her performances, Watermouth Coda, at PS1, as a part of Ridykeulous: The Odds Are Against Us:, an “over-animated panel discussion with special performances that subverts, sabotages and overturns the language commonly used to define feminism and lesbian art.” This panel was in conjunction with the current exhibition at PS1 that runs from February 14 through May 12 WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution.
Snapper’s performance involved her total submersion in a black tank filled with water. Outside on a chilly day on the steps of PS1, she was visible through a large window in the tank that framed her like a picture, as she floated ethereally in a kind of anti-space, dressed in fishnets, furs, a blonde wig and bright red lipstick. Snapper sang underwater for almost an hour, gurgling and shrieking in dissheveled but glamorous distress, into a microphone suspended in the water. She managed to fuse intense discpline, self-inflicted trauma and the desire to communicate through the even the most compromised means, evoking a palpable power and rawness.
Check out one of her videos, Cavatina Crumpletta (2006):
Currently Snapper is writing her doctoral dissertation on hysteria in the 20th century, in the Department of Critical Studies and Experimental Music Practices at UCSD.
Reminder: Charles Atlas with Lia Gangitano at NYPL tonight
Art21, BOMB, & the Mid-Manhattan Library
present
a film screening and conversation
Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 4 episode Paradox
After the screening Lia Gangitano, Director of Participant Inc., will join consulting director and video artist Charles Atlas for a conversation and Q&A session.
TONIGHT Monday, April 7, 2008 at 6:30pm
Mid-Manhattan Library
The New York Public Library
40th Street and 5th Avenue, 6th floor
New York, NY 10016
212-340-0871
Elevators to access the 6th floor.
All events are FREE and open to the public.
Update: Oliver Herring | TASK
As announced earlier this week, Art21 artist Oliver Herring (Season 3) concluded his residency at the University of Maryland on April 2nd with a Task performance. Videos such as the one above, titled “Dance Fight,” were created by UMD students and can be viewed on the UMD Task Force blog. Photos from Wednesday’s performance are available on Facebook.
More Task in 2008: In conjunction with the Luminato Festival, Herring will transform an empty outdoor public swimming pool in Regent Park, Toronto into a stage for a Task-party on June 14; Herring will perform Task at the Seattle Public Library on June 28; and on September 6, the artist, in conjunction with FLUXSPACE, will perform Task in Philadelphia for the second time.
Catherine Sullivan | Empathy
EXCLUSIVE: Excerpts from Catherine Sullivan’s film installations Big Hunt (2002), Ice Floes of Franz Joseph Land (2003), and The Chittendens (2006).
Catherine Sullivan’s anxiety-inducing films and live performances reveal the degree to which everyday gestures and emotional states are scripted and performed, probing the border between innate and learned behavior. Sullivan’s appropriation of classic Hollywood filming styles, period costumes, and contemporary spaces such as corporate offices draws the viewer’s attention away from traditional narratives and towards an examination of performance itself.
SEE: More images, videos, and news for Catherine Sullivan.
LEARN: Catherine Sullivan is featured in the Season 4 (2007) episode Paradox of the Art:21–Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.
DISCUSS: What do you think about this video? Leave a comment!
PHOTO | Catherine Sullivan, production stills from (Left) Baby Jane/Birdie Jo Infusion, from Big Hunt, 2002; (Right) Chittenden Office (The Virtuous Woman) from The Chittendens, 2005. © Catherine Sullivan.
VIDEO | Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Mark Falstad. Sound: Heidi Hesse. Editor: Monte Matteotti. Artwork courtesy: Catherine Sullivan.
Save the date: Charles Atlas with Lia Gangitano at New York Public Library April 7
Art21, BOMB, & the Mid-Manhattan Library
present
a film screening and conversation
Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 4 episode Paradox
After the screening Lia Gangitano, Director of Participant Inc., will join consulting director and video artist Charles Atlas for a conversation and Q&A session.
Monday, April 7, 2008 at 6:30pm
Mid-Manhattan Library
The New York Public Library
40th Street and 5th Avenue, 6th floor
New York, NY 10016
212-340-0871
Elevators to access the 6th floor.
All events are FREE and open to the public.
Last chance to apply for Oliver Herring | Task
Tuesday, April 1, 2008, is the last day to apply for participation in Task, a recurrent performance by Season 3 artist Oliver Herring. This iteration is organized by the Frye Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, On the Boards, and the Seattle Public Central Library where the performance will be held on Saturday, June 28, 2008. Herring will select 35 applicants of various ages, professions and backgrounds for this day-long interactive. Visit the Frye Museum website to download an application. Selected applicants will be notified by the Frye no later than May 1.
Herring has staged Task at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2006); Plaza de Toros in Santa Cruz de Tenerife (2003), the Former Federal Security Bank in Lake Worth, Fla. (2003); L’Ecole Supérieur National des Beaux Arts, Paris (2002); and the Masonic Temple at the Great Eastern Hotel, London (2003). The Seattle Public Library performance will be the first staged indoors, and involving multiple organizations. The Hirshhorn Museum continues to offer a podcast of their 60 participants discussing the experience.
Herring recently performed Task at the University of Maryland where he is the Spring 2008 Artist-in-Residence in the Department of Art. His residency will conclude on Wednesday, April 2nd with a public performance that coincides with the opening of a video installation titled Basic, a new component of an ongoing series by the same title. A series of playful videos that are the product of collaborations between the artist and strangers, Basic is on display at the University Art Gallery from April 2-26, 2008.
Laurie Simmons | Dancer Greg Sinacori
EXCLUSIVE: Dancer Greg Sinacori during the making of Laurie Simmons’s The Music of Regret (2006) at the Alvin Ailey Dance Studio, New York.
Laurie Simmons stages photographs and films with paper dolls, finger puppets, ventriloquist dummies, and costumed dancers as ‘living objects’, animating a dollhouse world suffused with nostalgia and colored by an adult’s memories, longings, and regrets. Her work blends psychological, political and conceptual approaches to art making, transforming photography’s propensity to objectify people, especially women, into a sustained critique of the medium.
SEE: More images, videos, and news for Laurie Simmons.
LEARN: Laurie Simmons is featured in the Season 4 (2007) episode Romance of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.
DISCUSS: What do you think about this video? Leave a comment!
PHOTO | Laurie Simmons, production stills from The Music of Regret - Act III, 2006. © Laurie Simmons, courtesy the artist, Salon 94, and Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York.
VIDEO | Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Joel Shapiro. Sound: Roger Phenix. Editor: Mark Sutton. Artwork courtesy: Laurie Simmons. Thanks: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
Art21 and Mel Chin at NAEA in New Orleans this week
We’re heading down to New Orleans tomorrow to present a few sessions at this week’s National Art Education Association conference at the Morial Convention Center. In addition, Season 1 artist Mel Chin will be joining us to unveil more details on the Fundred Dollar Bill project and the bills themselves. Those educators in New Orleans for the conference can find Mel and Art21 at the following presentations. For those of you who can’t make it, our friend at KQED’s Spark and co-presenter of the Contemporary Art Film Salon, Kristin Farr, and I will be blogging both the onsite conference activities and offsite investigations with Mel and his team.
NAEA Convention, New Orleans, LA - March 26-29, 2008
Thursday, March 27 2:00pm - 2:50pm
Art:21 and the Educator Workshop Model
This session shares findings from Art21’s professional development work with teachers to support the integration of contemporary art and artists into curriculum using inquiry-based learning strategies and connections to thematic strands.
(Convention Center Room 201)
Friday, March 28 1:00pm - 2:50pm
Super Session with Mel Chin | For Your Eyes Only: An Operation
Mel Chin is a conceptual visual artist motivated largely by political, cultural, and social circumstances. He works in a variety of art mediums to calculate meaning in modern life, placing art in landscapes, in public spaces, and in gallery and museum exhibitions, and more. Chin says, “Making objects and marks is also about making possibilities, making choices—and that is one of the last freedoms we have. To provide that is one of the functions of art.”
(La Louisiane Room)
Saturday, March 29 10:00am - 6:00pm
Art21 and Spark Present the Contemporary Art Film Salon
The Contemporary Art Film Salon is back! Take a break from the workshops to view films from the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century and SPARK* television series, as well as other acclaimed documentaries on contemporary art and artists. Produced by Art21, KQED’s Spark, SFMoMA, ICA Boston, and Illuminations, these films are accessible and valuable resources for exploring the artists of today and their sources of inspiration. Films are 10-30 minutes each, grouped in 1-hour thematic programs.
(Convention Center Room R09)
Look forward to performance, activities, and special guests. If you are in town, be sure to join us. If not, we’ll be posting lots of video and photos when we get back.
Laurie Anderson takes “Homeland” on tour
Multimedia artist Laurie Anderson (Season 1) will be taking her new politico-musical on global tour starting March 26th with a kick-off at Carnegie Hall. As previously mentioned by Art21 guest blogger Seth Curcio, Homeland is composed of a series of narratives and songs that harvest everything from Greek drama to global warming, surveillance culture, the machinations of corporate America, Tuvan throat singing, technology, the Patriot Act, and even prostitution in Beverly Hills.
The full-length piece marks a return to subject matter than Anderson explored 25 years ago with United States: Parts I-IV, a work that established the artist as an innovator with a penchant for analyzing the collective psyche. Focused through the lens of technology, Anderson’s early vision of America intersected music, film, performance, electronics, and gesture-driven movement using images of telephone answering machines, televisions, and gadgetry that unmasked the human condition and ultimately heralded the age of the Internet.
Homeland ‚Äúcomes full circle with her perpetual analysis of America’s rarely talked-about inner psyche‚ĶTo watch Anderson perform is to revel in her honesty. She imparts natural truths encoded in our DNA, whether soliloquizing a narrative based on folklore or reminiscing about a trip to the laundromat in a dream. Anderson’s music and monologues are rapturous temples dedicated to our everyday existence, revealing our own insecurities‚Äù (Randy Nordschow, Playbill Arts).
An accompanying album to Homeland will be released in early 2009 on Nonesuch. For a complete listing of cities and dates for Homeland, please visit Pitchfork Media’s website.
