Performing Public Space

Performing Public Space

La Casa del Tunél
Calle Chapo Márquez 133
Colonia Federal, Tijuana BC Mexico

Saturday, March 20
Closing Party

2:00 pm: Fallen Fruit: Acción Fruta Urbana
4:30 pm: Lauren Bon: Tia Juana Day
7:00 pm: Portable City Projects: People's Café Dance Party
7:30 pm: John Geary: A Touch of Evil

"As towns and cities are increasingly overwritten by the needs and desires of globalized capital, so public spaces and the behaviors they support are becoming evermore shrunken and controlled. At the same time however, everyday examples of common usage – a skate boarder curving past a crowd, a girl chopping and bagging melon on the sidewalk, a child dancing up a mountain of steps – counterpoint homogenization and regulation.

Curated by Owen Driggs, Performing Public Space (PPS) is both a celebration of artists who consciously adopt such tactics and instrumentalize their bodies in an effort to bend, expand, or puncture dominant spatial narratives, and an inquiry into the ways in which public space is articulated through real use.

Like tumbleweed, the inquiry is designed to pick up more material as it roams. Understanding that, despite the strategies of corporate commerce, local spatial conditions vary, at each place it visits PPS will work with local citizens to create a city-specific archive. Documenting both quotidian uses of public space and witting artist interventions the archives will be included in the exhibition and become part of a growing website that considers local, national, and international interpretations of 'public space' and approaches to its preservation, generation, and augmentation."

Lauren BON
FALLEN FRUIT
FINISHING SCHOOL
John GEARY
Anne HARS & Bill
WHEELOCK
Ari KLETZKY
Paul PESCADOR
Nancy POPP
PORTABLE CITY PROJECTS
Jane TSONG
L.A. URBAN RANGERS

[Text and graphic from organization. Caption: "'Ryan, Freerunner, 2009.' Owen Driggs." Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Security

Root Division Gallery
3175 17th Street (at S. Van Ness)
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.863.766

Security

Marisa Aragona | Andrea Chung | Gary Duehr | Oasa duVerney | Benjamin Echeverria | Stephanie Ellis | Pete Hickok | Glenn Hirsch | Yu-Hang Huang | iiiahh Collective | Jeremiah Jenkins | Suzanne Kehr | JP Kelly | Lee Lee | Alma Leiva | Paula Levine | Lesley Louden | Lisa Martin | Masako Miki | Randall Miller | Robert Minervini | Nancy Popp | Renée Rhodes | Paulina Velazquez | Serena Wellen | Doug Williams | Kathryn Williamson

Guest Curators: Stephanie Ellis & Serena Wellen

"Security means simply, the provision of safety. Security is related to the oldest meaning of curate: to care for souls. Today, the business of security is a global and corporate phenomenon. Its primary agenda is the production of fear; its ideal consumer is immobilized by dread.

Security (the exhibition) seeks to address this pivot between asylum and alarm. We are painfully aware of the brutality that so-called professional security may engender. Unspeakable ugliness appears when protector and protected warp into perpetrator and victim, but the curators of the exhibition seek to upturn rather than reproduce the fear, uncertainty, and mistrust already so pervasive in our everyday. To that end, they looked for humor, gentleness, and a light touch as well as acuity, provocation, and gravity in the works selected.

The artists chosen for the exhibition touch on the care or solicitude necessary for collective wellbeing as well as artists who tackle the charms or fetishes necessary for security's sell. How we define security for our communities and our world will determine how we get there and where we arrive."

Reception: Saturday, March 13, 7 to 10 pm

Through March 27

[Text and graphic courtesy of the gallery and curators. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Virtuoso Illusion

MIT List Visual Arts Center
20 Ames Street, Bldg. E15
Atrium level
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
617-253-4680

Virtuoso Illusion: Cross-Dressing and the New Media Avant-Garde

"... explores what has traditionally been called gender crossing or cross-dressing (drag) as a tactic for media artists that has been central to the development of the current avant-garde. The show explores how experimental art has been invigorated and advanced by artists who cross dress for many different reasons as part of their conceptual process. It is not intended as an exploration of identity issues specifically, but more as an in depth look at current and historical strategies of cross dressing as an art of the irrational, the unexpected."

Through April 4.

more

[Text from List website. Graphic from Google image search for "Claude Cahun." Caption: "Claude Cahun (Lucy Renée Mathilde Schwob), French (Nantes, France, 1894 - 1954, Saint Hélier, Jersey.) 'Le Mystère d'Adam (The Mystery of Adam).' 1929. photograph | gelatin silver print.]

Umpiring Under the Amateur Code of Rules

Outpost for Contemporary Art
1268 N. Ave 50
Los Angeles, CA

Saturday, March 13, 2010 7 - 10pm

"T-shirt Revival Night" with Kiki Johnson

"For a minimal charge ($3 for one, $5 for two), Kiki will "revive" your old T-shirt, canvas bag or whatever other clothing you bring in by silk-screening one of five designs onto it.

Titled "Umpiring Under the Amateur Code of Rules" Kiki Johnson will use drawings inspired by spring training and the approaching baseball season for the silk-screening event.

Johnson redraws historical images, not as duplications or copies, but as reenactments of the images. Subjects such as sailors and witches are placed side by side, revealing how these two apparently dissimilar subjects are in fact treated as equals within historical discourse. By collecting images from history books, rather than history itself, Johnson creates delicate and eerie images that collapse the languages of maritime history and superstition. As Johnson's drawings are more performative then representational, her work also expands into performances in which she reenacts historical rituals such as baking a Great Depression era recipe or burning a Christmas tree to fry pancakes over the fire on Shrove Tuesday. Whether images or performances, her work confronts viewers with the results of history, stripped of its supporting context. The viewer must justify these images and actions as they exist now, and also question the meaning of the word “yesteryear.” Replacing the authoritative voice of history with her own voice brings cause to question the accuracy, authenticity, and truth of history as it is presented.

In conjunction with NELAart Second Saturday Gallery Night."

More

[Text from Outpost FB invitation. Graphic from Kiki Johnson's website. Caption: "Baseball Crest, ink on paper, 8.5”x11”, 2010." Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Listening Party

Thursday, March 11 | 7-8:30 pm

The Holland Project
Holland Project Headquarters
30 Cheney Street

March Listening Party

"Come let your hair down, or whatever? You know the deal. Person + album + more people +rock talking = Holland monthly listening party.

Brad Nelson of RN&R, Reno Noise, and other sundry publication fame will be here to play a record of his choice (maybe a double LP - so bring a pillow)!

Certainly, it's going to be a great night. Hope you can join us!"

[Text from Holland FB invite. Graphic from Google image search for 'listening to 45's.' Caption from Life Magazine: "Group of teenagers listening to 45 rpm. records as they shop for the latest hits at a record store. Photo: Nina Leen/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images. Dec 01, 1944."]

free size

March 13 - April 17, 2010
apexart

Sinudom Silk Screen Factory
35/21 Moo 1, Sakaegnam Road
Samaedam, Bang Khun Thian
Thailand

Franchise Two: "free size" **
Curated by Logan Bay

Participating artists: Alvaro Ilizarbe, Jen Stark, Juan Angel Chavez, and P7

"In a mass produced world of global goods, the act of creation is often lost or forgotten. Hidden machinery cranks and sweats out elements of our everyday life, yet we rarely glimpse the environment where ideas are physically forged. To produce the exhibition free size artists Alvaro Ilizarbe, Jen Stark, Juan Angel Chavez, and P7 will work directly in the Sinudom Silk Screen factory along side employees creating works of art. By bringing these contemporary artists into a global manufacturing hub the realms of production and creation will exist in a simultaneous space, transforming this modest factory into an active generator of creative capital. The Sinudom Silk Screen factory is located on the edge of Samut Sakhon a province that houses many factories. Over the past few decades Thailand has worked to become a producer of exportable goods and inexpensive items for domestic use. While the manufacturing machinery is abundant, many of the products are designed elsewhere. free size will encourage viewers to see that industrial spaces can also be incubators for creative thought and social evolution.

** For Franchise Two we excluded submissions for exhibitions to take place in large cities like New York, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, to focus on locations with less than 500,000 people — places such as Moshupa or Priboj, Baton Rouge or Lübeck, Cadiz or Az-Zawiyah, Heidelberg or Zinder. In response we received 243 exhibition proposals from 63 countries, and jurors submitted over 5,000 votes to identify a winner."

Opening reception: March 13, 2-6 pm

[Text and graphic from apexart. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Worms at work for the environment

Wednesday, March 3 - 11am

Public Space 1
Iowa City, Iowa

F@S Session 4: Worm Composting

"Don't know what to do with your banana peel? What about those coffee grounds? And that moldy takeout?

Why not compost?

Don't have enough space? Come to 827 E. Market St. #2 to learn how to build a worm compost bin that fits under your sink! If you would like to build your own, please bring two large, plastic bins with lids and some newspaper."

More:
Worm Composting
Composting With Red Wiggler Worms

[Information and graphic from organization mailing. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]