Franklin Furnace’s Goings On
July 1, 2005
CONTENTS:
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1. Pamela Sneed, FF Alumn, at Joe’s Pub, July 3, 7 pm
2. Susana Cook, FF Alumn, at Dixon Place, Fri. & Sat., July 8-30, 10 pm
3. Deborah Garwood, FF Alumn, at Adler Planetarium, Chicago
4. John Fleck, FF Alumn, at Bowery Poetry Club, TOMORROW, July 2, 8 pm
5. Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga, FF Alumn, announces “Fallout,” now online
6. Jay Critchley, FF Alumn, Annual P-town Swim for Life, honored in Boston, and more
7. Cornelia Street Café readings, July 14, 6-8 pm
8. David Medalla, FF Alumn, summer news 2005
9. Alex Burke, FF Alumn, appointed Interim Managing Director, The LAB, SF
10. Natalie Bookchin, Tehching Hsieh, Mouchette, Prema Murthy, FF Alumns, in the NY Times, June 28
11. Glenda Hydler, FF Alumn, at Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Inst., and more
12. Max Gimblett, FF Member, at Gow Langsford Gallery, New Zealand, opens July 5
13. Karen Finley, Tim Miller, FF Alumns, at Navigate Fest, UK, June 29-July 3
14. Jonathan Berger, FF Alumn, at Grimm Rosenfeld, NY, opening July 7, 6 pm sharp
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1. Pamela Sneed, FF Alumn, at Joe’s Pub, July 3, 7 pm
A one woman tour de force on the eve of independence day:
America Ain’t Ready
July 3rd, 7pm at Joe’s Pub, The Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. Ny Ny
Telecharge 212.239-6200 or buy tickets from Public
Theater Box office
212.539.8777
$20
Thanks
Pamela Sneed, FF Alumn
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2. Susana Cook, FF Alumn, at Dixon Place, Fri. & Sat., July 8-30, 10 pm
The Values Horror Show
Written and Directed By Susana Cook
War is bringing us together. Paranoia makes life all the more exciting.Have you been seeing things? Did you say something? Do you find yourself singing Christmas Carols in the shower? Do you masturbate afterwards? Do you believe in sanctity and global heterosexuality?
Featuring: Migdalia Jimenez, Mistah, Simba Yangala, Lucy Mackinnon, Soraya Odishoo, Sandra Garcia and Susana Cook
Music: Julian Mesri
Video: Lucy Mackinnon
This is not a show. Do not bring any suspicious packages.
Fridays and Saturdays July 8-30 @ 10pm
Dixon Place, 258 Bowery (Half block below Houston) New York, NY 10012
Information and reservations: 212-219-0736
http://www.dixonplace.org
http://www.susanacook.com
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3. Deborah Garwood, FF Alumn, at Adler Planetarium, Chicago
Greetings!
I’m off to a conference at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, where I’ll present the paper referenced below. I also made a poster for my presentation; it’s on my website, http://home.earthlink.net/~dagarwood. If anyone would like to read the full essay, please let me know.
Best Regards,
Deborah
Astronomy and Existentialism in Albert Camus’s short story, The Adulterous Woman from his book, Exile and The Kingdom [La Femme Adultère from L’Exile et le Royaume]
by Deborah Garwood, 2005
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4. John Fleck, FF Alumn, at Bowery Poetry Club, TOMORROW, July 2, 8 pm
John Fleck performs for one night @ the Bowery Poetry Club, Saturday, July 2nd @ 8pm
Fleck workshops his new piece JOHNNY’S GOT A GUN @ the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery (Bleecker-Houston) on Saturday, July 2nd @ 8pm – Tickets: $9.99 (holiday special) info/reservations: (212) 614-0505
(a fog roles in) Can you remember what it was like only 5 years ago? It’s all a blur-it doesn’t seem real-its changing so fast. Winner takes all. Finders keepers-Losers weepers. (a trumpet blares in the distance) Emerging from the fog, a stunted middle aged man dressed as a 9 year old appears, dressed in red white & blue spangled Leiderhosen, atop his prize stick Pony. Johnny’s got a gun and he’s traveling back in time to save the Motherland from attack, a bi polar Mother addled with alzheimers & crippled with rheumatoid arthritis fighting to hold on to the ideals of a past she or he can barely remember.
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5. Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga, FF Alumn, announces “Fallout,” now online
Turbulence Commission: “Fallout, Part I: An Open Repository”
by Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga
http://turbulence.org/works/fallout
“Eleven of us shared beds, floor, and one tiny bathroom as the Somoza dynasty came to an end in 1979.
When I returned to Masaya, the town was terribly damaged. The streets and the Spanish stucco facades of homes were bullet ridden and marked with the silhouette of Sandino. Although the popular revolution succeeded, the economic and political rebuilding of the republic never has. Why is this so?”
Today, Nicaragua is once again on the brink of political and economic disaster.
“Fallout” is a two part project: the first–an open database of personal accounts–will later inform part 2, an online game. Initiated by requesting personal commentary from individuals representing several generations of a single family, “Fallout, Part I: An Open Repository” is now open for submissions by anyone concerned with Nicaragua or other similarly imperiled nations. The site presents a written and graphical history for those not familiar with Nicaragua and utilizes collaborative software to investigate the enigma of the Nicaraguan national character. “Fallout” potentially serves as a case study of the lasting effects of globalization and U.S. interventionist policies upon developing nations.
“Fallout” is a 2005 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (aka Ether-Ore). It was made possible with funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
BIOGRAPHY
Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga grew up between Nicaragua, and San Francisco. Although his formal education has been within the borders of the United States, his personal perspectives and ideology have been molded by a bicultural reality, consisting of such polar elements as Disneyland and the Nicaraguan Leftist Revolutionary movement. A bicultural upbringing tied to a multidisciplinary education has lead to work that attempts to cultivate interaction with the viewer and includes performance, sculpture, video and audio, the Internet or a combination of all. The principle behind the work is communication as a creative process.
Project Credits:
Conceptualization, Development, and Programming: Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga
Written History: Reynaldo Miranda Zuñiga
Conceptualization and Development Assistance: Karen, Mauricio, and Oscar Padilla
Web Programming Assistance: John Kuiphoff
For more Turbulence Commissions, please visit http://turbulence.org/
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6. Jay Critchley, FF Alumn, Annual P-town Swim for Life, honored in Boston, and more
State House Concerts on Beacon Hill, Boston on July 7 Honor The Provincetown Swim For Life & Paddler Flotilla; Donna Roll’s Summer Songfest Featured; The 18th Annual Provincetown Swim For Life & Paddler Flotilla Set For September 10, 2005.
Contact: Jay Critchley
508 487-1930
thecompact@comcast.net
www.swim4life.org
The Provincetown Harbor Swim for Life & Paddler Flotilla will be honored at two noontime concerts at the State House on Beacon Hill in Boston on Thursday, July 7 at noon and 1:00 pm at the Grand Staircase. Donna Roll’s Summer Songfest will present arias, operatic ensemble, American musical theater and American Spirituals for the second year in a row, sponsored by Senator Robert O’Leary. The concerts are free and open to the public. Ms Roll is Director of Opera at Longy School of Music in Cambridge and a longtime supporter of the Swim for Life.
The 18th Annual Provincetown Harbor Swim for Life & Paddler Flotilla, a fundraiser for AIDS, women’s health and youth, is scheduled for September 10, 2005. At last year’s 1.4 mile open water swim and paddle across magnificent Provincetown Harbor 300 plus swimmers and kayakers participated, along with 200 volunteers and safety boaters, raising $148,000. This year’s event will include the traditional Friday night Celebration of Life Concert at the Meeting House, and the post-swim Mermaid Brunch at the Boatslip Resort. The Pool Splash will run concurrently for those who choose to swim in a pool or are “harborly-challenged.” The second annual Provincetown Harbor Lights, planned for dusk, will conclude the weekend.
Beneficiaries of the event include Helping Our Women, the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod, Outer Cape Health Services, Cape and Islands Gay Straight Youth Alliance and the Provincetown AIDS History Project. Business sponsors to date include the Provincetown Banner, Mike’s Movies/Boston, Paul Mitchell, the Boatslip Resort and Far Land Provisions.
Top fundraisers last year were: the father/daughter team of Shawn and Nicole McNulty of Provincetown at $10,000; Kathryn Rafter of Provincetown and Dallas, Texas at $8,450; Paul Mast of Waldwick, New Jersey at $4,242; Raymond Johnson of Truro at $2,885 (who was selected for the annual David Asher Volunteer Award); Christie Snow of Woolwich, Maine at $3,718, and perennial top fundraiser Daryel Duhaime of Wakefield, MA at $2,640. The team of Rafter and Francey Beall, and Paul Mast joined the Circle of Honor, an award given to those who either have swum ten years or raised $10,000. Swimmers came from across the country and from Canada, Czech Republic and Spain.
The event is produced by the Provincetown Community Compact, Inc., directed by Jay Critchley. Registration on September 10 for kayakers and safety boaters begins at 8:30 am at the Boatslip Resort beach, 161 Commercial Street, with swimmer registration on the deck at 9:30 am. Swimmers will be transported to Long Point for the 11:00 am start. The public is invited to cheer swimmers at the finish line beginning at 11:30 am, followed by the Mermaid Brunch at noon on the Boatslip deck. For pledge forms and volunteer, Pool Splash, or Provincetown Harbor Lights information, or to make a contribution, contact: thecompact@comcast.net, 508 487-1930, www.swim4life.org, or write, Swim for Life & Paddler Flotilla, P.O. Box 819, Provincetown, MA 02657.
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7. Cornelia Street Café readings, July 14, 6-8 pm
The Quetzal Quill
@ The Cornelia Street Café
Thursday, July 14, 6-8 pm
(admission $6, includes drink)
Gabrielle Calvocoressi, The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart
Peter Covino, Cut Off the Ears of Winter
Matthew Thorburn, Subject to Change
Michelle Yasmine Valladares, Nortada, The North Wind
Gabrielle Calvocoressi has received a 2002 Rona Jaffe Woman Writer’s Award, a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, where she was also a Jones Lecturer in poetry, and The Paris Review’s Bernard F. Connors Prize for her poem “Circus Fire, 1944.” Her work has recently appeared in Literary Imagination.
Peter Covino was born in Italy and educated there and in the States, where he earned an M.S. degree from the Columbia School of Social Work and a PhD in English from the University of Utah. He received the 2001 Frank O’Hara Chapbook Prize and is a founding editor of Barrow Street and Barrow Street Press.
Matthew Thorburn’s first book Subject to Change was selected by Brenda Hillman for the New Issues Poetry Prize. His other honors include the Mississippi Review Prize and a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His website is www.matthewthorburn.com. He lives and works in New York City.
Michelle Yasmine Valladares was born in India and grew up in Kuwait and Arizona. She has produced award-winning films in Brazil, Mexico and on Native American Reservations. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches writing and literature at The City College of New York. Nortada, The North Wind Poems by Michelle Yasmine Valladares Global City Press www.webdelsol.com/globalcityreview
Your Host: Rigoberto González
THE QUETZAL QUILL @ CORNELIA
Cornelia Street Cafe, 29 Cornelia St between Bleecker and W 4th Sts (212-989-9319). Subway: A, C, E, B, D, F, V to W 4th St. 7pm, $6 includes one drink. Host Rigoberto Gonzalez welcomes poets Gabrielle Calvocoressi (The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart), Peter Covino (Cut Off the Ears of Winter), Matthew Thorburn (Subject to Change), and Michelle Yasmine Valladares (Nortada, the North Wind).
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8. David Medalla, FF Alumn, summer news 2005
Dear Artists-Friends,
Warm greetings! Come to the next London Biennale meeting this coming Sunday, 3 July 2005, 7 – 9 p.m., at the Angel Pub, next to St. Giles Church, at the bottom of Denmark street, behind the tall Centre Point Building on Tottenham Court Road, in Central London. This coming Saturday, 2 July 2005, Jill Rock will open the exhibition in honour of Kurt Schwitters and John Ruskin at Brantwood, East of the Lake at Coniston in Cumbria. For that show I have sent my “Micro-MerzBau fur Kurt Schwitters”, a small sculpture which also serves as a maquette for a monumental fountain. I just got back from Dunkerque in France, where I performed yesterday at the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Dunkerque, as part of the beautiful exhibition curated by English artist Peter Fillingham, entitled “Les Merveilles du Monde”. Among the inspiring art works in that show are Charlotte Moth’s floating spherical sculptures on the lake of the musee; Adam Nankervis’s “Flotsom Jetsam” assemblage which formed part of his installation at the Metropole Gallery in Folkestone during “The Greatest Show on Earth”, where Adam performed with Shoe Taylor Guinness; and a pair of etchings on the glass doors of the museum, based on Durer drawings, by young Irish artist Seamus Farrell.
I had a wonderful time in Dunkerque. I was glad to see again Patrick Le Bellec, the director of Plat-Forme, and Doumio Said, film-maker, who works for the Maison de la Jeune Culture de Dunkerque.I hope to tell you more about my stay in Dunkerque in detail in a future E mail message.
From Dunkerque, Charlotte Moth and Peter Fillingham drove Rachel Daniels (facilitator of the “Merveilles du Monde” exhibition) and me to their home in Ramsgate where Rachel and I stayed the night. This morning, I had breakfast with Peter and Rachel in the Belgian cafe run by Andy Barrett on the Ramsgate seafront. Andy took beautiful photos of the artists’ picnic at Hondshotte (a village just outside Dunkerque). He also took beautiful photos of our London Biennale impromptu in homage to Frida Kahlo at Tate Modern a fortnight ago. I am including one of the Kahlo-Tate photos in my solo show at the ICA this September. My show at the ICA is being curated by Guy Brett.
Speaking of that show, I am inviting London Biennale artists to make life-size portraits of themselves in any material they wish. I will include the LBA self-portraits in one of the two installations in my ICA show, which will be a virtual recreation by means of projected images of LBA meetings inside the Angel Pub. Yosha Imamura is taking fish-eye photos of our meetings, and he will project them on the walls of the Angel Pub virtual-reality installation. The other installation will consist of a selection of photographs of some of my impromptus and a full-scale wrestling arena which Tiago Slewinski will make to my design. Adam Nankervis and I will have a Cosmic Wrestling Match inside that arena (Adam as “Der Geist von Joseph Beuys” and me as “L’Esprit de Marcel Duchamp aka RRose Selavy”). Guy Brett will be the Referee. Marko Stepanov will be the Gong Master. James Moores will be the Bets Collector. The Cosmic Wrestling Match will take place on Saturday, 10 September 2005, at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) on the Mall in London. I’ll send you further details in a future E mail.
Best wishes from David M.
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9. Alex Burke, FF Alumn, appointed Interim Managing Director, The LAB, SF
Alex Burke, former FF archive intern and “The History of the Future” program assistant, has been hired as the Interim Managing Director of The LAB in San Francisco for three months to lead fundraising initiatives and a strategic planning process. The LAB is a 22-year-old interdisciplinary artists’ organization located in San Francisco’s Mission District that supports the development and presentation of new visual, performing, media and literary art. For more information, visit http://thelab.org.
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10. Natalie Bookchin, Tehching Hsieh, Mouchette, Prema Murthy, FF Alumns, in the NY Times, June 28
Web Works That Insist on Your Full Attention
By Sarah Boxer
Rhizome, one of the premier platforms for Internet art, is taking stock of the last 10 years by selecting 40 of the 1,500 works from its online archive and exhibiting them in one small room at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, in its temporary quarters in Chelsea. The show, organized by Rhizome’s new executive director, Lauren Cornell, and its outgoing one, Rachel Greene, is called “Rhizome ArtBase 101.” You can also see much of it at rhizome.org/artbase101.
Putting on a summary show of Web art is an ambitious and risky thing to do. And indeed, one of the pieces in the exhibition serves as a kind of warning bell for such a project.
“Every Icon,” by John F. Simon Jr., is a grid made up of 1,024 teeny squares that can be either white or black. Watch it run and you will see every pattern that this grid could contain. Neat. “How long until recognizable images appear?” the artist asks helpfully. “Try several hundred trillion years.”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have that kind of time. Which raises the question: what kind of art do you have time for? It’s a question that comes up over and over with art on the Web.
The 40 works in the show have been divided into 10 sections: Dirt Style, Net Cinema, Games, E-Commerce, Data Visualization and Databases, Online Celebrity, Public Space, Software, Cyberfeminism and Early Net Art. And for the museumgoer, some pieces have also been turned into eye-catching, but not all interactive, installations.
Each piece calls for a different kind of attention. Some wow you with their data crunching. Some try to make you politically aware, or at least wary. Others are just entertainments. Still, you’ll probably spend more time on any one piece here than most people would ever dream of spending in front of a Cézanne.
Certain works come right out and demand great gobs of your time. Overreaching is part of their charm.
“1 Year Performance Video,” by M. River and T. Whid Art Associates, asks that you “please watch for 1 year.” You will see “two artists living out 365 days in identical white rooms,” the site says; it’s an updating of “Sam Hsieh’s notorious ‘One Year Performance 1978-79,’ in which the artist isolated himself in a cage-like room for a year’s time.” In the new piece, you’re asked to put in as much time as the artists did.
That doesn’t mean you have to. Lots of pieces of online art loosen their grip on you once you get the point. And by the way, nearly every piece of online art does have a point.
Once you understand that “Nike Ground,” a proposed Swoosh monument in Vienna, is a hoax put on by the international art team 0100101110101101.org, you can move on. (You don’t have to watch the video of the duped, outraged Viennese.) You can browse Damali Ayo’s “rent-a-negro.com” site until you get the gist of the jest (corporate rate, $350/hour; calling someone “sister,” “sista,” “girlfriend” or “girl,” $150 a pop). And once you experience the online seductions of Prema Murthy’s “Bindigirl,” pressing little bindi dots to explore the goddess/whore duality, you’re free to leave.
Not all sites are so easy to exit. Some make you feel guilty about all the time and data that have gone into them. Others make you fear that you’ll miss something if you leave.
Amy Alexander’s work, “theBot,” which likes to complain about how hard it works – it keeps saying, “It’s not easy being a bot” – takes any search term you give it and robotically reads out quotes from its search, including a whole lot of http, slash-slash and www. You feel you should hear it out.
The same goes for Susan Collins’s “Fenlandia,” a site that tracks (at a rate of 60 pixels a minute) how one landscape in the Berkshires changes its appearance in real time. Don’t you think you should stick around until you see something, anything, move on the screen?
Thank goodness some online artists actually care about keeping things lively.
“The Secret Lives of Numbers,” by Golan Levin, has a compulsive pull. Feed it any number from 1 through 100,000, and it will tell you how popular that number is on the Internet and why. The number 900 is ranked 136, in large part because of 900 telephone numbers, the Saab 900 and the Ducati Monster 900 (a motorcycle). It easily beats 1650, which happens to be part of the name of a French ski resort and a laser printer, as well as the year Descartes died. One is the No. 1 number.
One of the big surprises of the show is that plot is still a great lure, even for online entertainments.
“The Intruder,” a game by Natalie Bookchin, uses plot as bait. To hear a short story by Jorge Luis Borges read out loud, you must progress through 10 levels of an arcade game. As soon as you master one level, you’re doled out a bit of plot while you play. Is it worth it? I don’t know. I was too busy shooting people and catching objects in a bucket to pay attention. The cognitive dissonance was memorable though.
“Super Smile,” created by a Korean duo, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, is easily the most propulsive object in the show. After a yellow and black smiley face swells to fill nearly the whole computer screen, a fast drumbeat drags you into a story told in all capital letters that crawl, nay, sprint, across the screen. Never mind that the story is a shaggy dog about a man who goes to work half naked. I dare you to leave before it’s over.
The most effective online works are at opposite ends of a time-grabbing spectrum. At one extreme are the big eaters. They won’t let go of you, and you don’t mind anyhow. At the other extreme are the quickies. You like them simply because they’re fast. You see the whole work, you get the whole point and you move on.
That is the appeal of “Flesh & Blood,” by the Internet persona Mouchette. You see a face smashed up against your computer screen. The tongue is out. The words on the screen inquire, “You want to know what my tongue tastes like?” Unless you’re up for licking your screen, you’re done here. It’s gross, but it’s fast.
Cory Archangel’s “Data Diaries” lets you quickly see what it looks and sounds like when your QuickTime player is tricked into reading the junk off your computer as a media file.
A flashing, buzzing graveyard of primitive, low-resolution animated animals, “extreme animalz: the movie: part 1,” created by the collective Paper Rad and Matt Barton, is instantaneously dazzling and nauseating. (By the way, the museum installation of this work, which includes real stuffed animals thrashing wildly and turning on spits once you approach, is fabulous, the hit of the show.) And no one will blame you for turning away from it after a few seconds.
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11. Glenda Hydler, FF Alumn, at Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Inst., and more
The Schlesinger Library/ Radcliffe Institute in Cambridge, Mass has recently acquired Glenda Hydler’s artist’s books. Ms. Hydler has produced approximately 130 books from 1972-1989. These books contain text on one side and photographs of the artist on the other (actually the photographs are taken by Hydler’s friends) The artist books are in loose-leaf binders and are color coded according to the year. The books were originally shown at 112 Greene Street Gallery and Franklin Furnance. This is the first collection of artist’s books to be acquired by the Schlesinger Library.
The books can be seen at Hydler’s studio up until July 22, 2005. Studio visits can be arranged by appointment only, after which time, the books will be housed at the Schlesinger Library. The books may then be loaned with the permission of the library and Ms Hydler for gallery showing and publication. The artist will also be available as a guest speaker.
Information about Hydler’s artist’s books will be accessible on the web through the Schlesinger Library.
Please feel free to contact Glenda Hydler to
schedule a viewing of the books @ 718-388-1087
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12. Max Gimblett, FF Member, at Gow Langsford Gallery, New Zealand, opens July 5
Max Gimblett, “MGM – Robert Motherwell, Max Gimblett, Colin McCahon” at Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand. July 5-30th, Opening Reception July 5th, 5-7PM.
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13. Karen Finley, Tim Miller, FF Alumns, at Navigate Fest, UK, June 29-July 3
TIM MILLER PERFORMS IN ENGLAND- NAVIGATE FEST JULY 1-3!
Hi Folks,
I had such a fab time last month doing my show US at the Drill Hall in London. I head this week back to the UK to the NAVIGATE festival in Newcastle June 29-July 3.
http://navigatelive.org/
This festival looks like it will be really interesting. It’s happening at the Baltic Contemporary Arts Centre and on this big ship the MS Stubnitz. Should be fun. Lots of pals from around the UK will be there. I will be performing my show GLORY BOX at Baltic in Newcastle on July 3 at 5:30pm. Send folks near Newcastle to my show. Doing a panel with Karen Finley July 2.
Happy first days of summer!
best, Tim Miller
http://hometown.aol.com/millertale/timmiller.html
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14. Jonathan Berger, FF Alumn, at Grimm Rosenfeld, NY, opening July 7, 6 pm sharp
Hello Everyone,
I am writing to let you know that I am curating an exhibit based on the legacy of Jack Smith, including many rarely seen pieces by a truly special group of artists. Details at the end of this message.
Because hope is real, Kiki and Herb have come out of retirement to give a live and free concert in conjunction with the exhibits opening on the evening of July 7th. The concert location will be announced on July 5, so if you and your people want to come please tell everyone to email jack@grimmrosenfeld.com to receive all the info.
Also, please come to the opening ceremony for the exhibit, including Special Guests, July 7th at 6pm sharp.
Please spread the word. Hope to see everyone there!
Best,
Jonathan
Grimm Rosenfeld NY Presents
Founders Day
Jack Smith and the Work of Reinvention
Curated by Jonathan Berger
July 7 – August 24 2005
Grimm Rosenfeld Gallery
530 West 25th Street, 3rd floor
Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11am-6pm
Opening Ceremony July 7, 6pm Sharp
Kiki and Herb Live, July 7, 8pm location tba
“At least in America Maria Montez could believe she was the cobra woman, the siren of Atlantis, the scheherazade, etc. She believed and thereby made the people who went to see her movies believe. Those who could believe did. Those who saw the world’s worst actress just couldn’t and they missed the magic. Too bad-their loss. Their magic comes from the most inevitable execution of the most conventional pattern of acting. What they can appreciate is what most people agree upon. Good Perfs. Therefore you can have Good Perfs. and no real belief. Good Perfs. That give you no magic-oh, I guess a sort of magic, a magic of sustained efficient operation (like the wonder the car motor held out so well after a long trip)”.
-Jack Smith
Founders Day is based on the themes of possibility, belief, and transformation as they exist in the work of Jack Smith. Most of Jack Smith’s work is centered around the creation of new worlds from discarded junk. Also key to Smiths work is the power of belief, and the notion that within a creative context of your own making, you can transform the world in which we live through the creation of your work. Accordingly, all of the artists included in Founders Day, some of whom pre-date Smith, are in some way engaged with a re-invention of the ordinary world. Founders Day is not primarily about Jack smith’s influence or relevance, both of which are undeniably huge, but rather the incredible sense of promise which it is evident that he found in the making of his work.
While Smith’s impact on contemporary art is profound, having influenced artists like Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, John Waters, Robert Wilson, and Andy Warhol directly and generations of younger artists indirectly, he is widely unknown and often overlooked. Smith pioneered a unique interdisciplinary visionary art practice combining film, performance, photography, drawing, installation, writing, and costuming in the 1960’s and 70’s which is most evident in the group of artists to emerge from the east village scene in the 1980’s. Despite being aware of and some what peripherally involved in the the formal art world, Smith chose to remain in the margins, critiquing the constraints which commerce placed on creativity and pursuing the most pure and often extreme manifestations of his vision.
Founders Day seeks to make the present accountable to the past, and at the same time acknowledge artists who are continuing a legacy of uncompromising visionary practice,taking the discard, underside, and overflow of culture and regurgitating it
into gold.
Including work by:
Reza Abdoh
Franko B
Paula Court
Dr. Vaginal Cream Davis
Ethyl Eichelberger
James Hampton
Peter Hujar
Kiki and Herb
Athenasius Kircher
Lewis Klahr
Klaus Mettig
Matt Saunders
Katharina Seiverding
Dasha Shishkin
Jack Smith
Unknown Photographer
“where there is no vision the people perish” v-James Hampton
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~~end~~
Goings On are compiled weekly by Harley Spiller
Click http://www.franklinfurnace.org/goings_on.html
to visit ‘This Month’s World Wide Events’.
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