Mira Schor's "The Self, The Work, The World" (2012) (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic) (click to enlarge)

Painter, author and critic Mira Schor’s current show at Marvelli Gallery delves into the world of language. The works on linen and paper chart a world where the individual appears in a form of stasis, holding a book or laptop, looking at things — windows, paintings, screens — and generating rectangles (and the occasional oval) which seem to speak, label, think and even dream.

Mira Schor, "Self-Portrait" (2005)

All the works are rather small — the drawings are often larger than the paintings — and they appear to meditate on the state of the artist and intellectual, both labels that fittingly describe Schor.

The show is titled Voice and Speech, but there’s an erie silence to these works. The artist’s hand is alway present and the paint is often treated like ink, flowing with a dark contrast across washes of paint, defining space and and giving each rectangle it’s own character.

What fascinated me about the show was her drive to collide language with imagery to create something new. Her cursive text tells a story but so do her characters. It’s a word of solitary contemplation, with words, with pictures, all coming together and making something new.

I had some questions for Schor about this body of work.

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An installation view of the secondary gallery with over a dozen drawings (click to enlarge)

Hrag Vartanian: Screens, speech bubbles, book pages and canvases all have a rectangular character in your current show. What is it about the rectangle that intrigues you?

A view of the front gallery (click to enlarge)

Mira Schor: Your question goes right to the heart of painting and the terms of your question answer it. The originary matrixes for text and images that have mattered to me since childhood have been rectangles: my parents Ilya and Resia Schor were both artists who painted, and close family friends were painters, I saw paintings all around me, paintings in museums, most often rectangles, whether horizontal or vertical; movie screens were rectangles with pictures and language on them; the TV screen was a rounded rectangle (the shape of a thought balloon); since early childhood I read books and I drew in sketch books, each page was a rectangle and the page spread formed a rectangle. The single page and the page spread of the book are very important—in the mid-70s I did a work called Book of Pages whose dimensions and meaning still influences or underlies most of what I do, the shape of the canvases I chose, and as it happens the images in the current paintings.

The rectangle is a dynamic visual space, it is a dynamic compositional space, it is architectural, you have room to put something in and then something else in. I often work on a 12”x16” canvas, and some of the paintings in the show are a more exaggerated rectangle, 18”x30”, that I think allows for narrativity, which is also very important to me. Each painting is a short story, and the paintings together suggest a narrative though not necessarily an obvious one, but at the same time, the rectangle is an interesting abstract object. That being said I’ve done a very few square paintings that worked, and the Occupy quartet in the show, The Dreams of All of Us series, are rectangles just off the square, 24”x28”, but that four inch deviation liberates the space.

Mira Schor, "The Space Where Painting Was" (2010) (click to enlarge)

HV: And how about your figures? They fascinate me since most appear to float in space, like fetuses in a womb, in a state of pre-language. They look safe and comforted in the way they’re drawn. Yet they don’t directly engage the viewer, particularly since they have no eyes. There’s something medieval about them in that they resemble figures in a manuscript illumination. Are they all “self-portraits” or perhaps allegories?

MS: The figure is me, I think of it as an avatar of self, rather than a self-portrait. So although it’s true that the figures have no eyes — they also have no nose, no mouth, no hair, no features as such — they all have eyeglasses so they see, they received vision, they project vision, to and from the world, to and from the books they often hold. In some recent ones I just turn the whole head into a projector and receptacle of rays of vision and thought.

Various drawings (click to enlarge)

It’s interesting that you see them as medieval: in my earliest work, I placed more recognizable self-portraits in landscape or the city, often alone or in relation to a few other figures, the style of my self-portraiture and autobiographical narrative painting was similar to Florine Stettheimer in a way, though I didn’t learn of her until I had already started working in that way, but the work I loved in those days included Medieval illuminations, as well as Gothic architectural figures, Flemish painting, both with elongated deeply serious figures, Rajput painting, early Renaissance painting, Surrealist painting, any kind of figuration and space except the mainstream lineage from High Renaissance to 19th century. It’s not that I didn’t love many of those representations, but as an artist I related more to the space of the other work, and with the engagement with the world of the figures in them.

Another thing that you may notice that is that the figure’s head is also usually a rectangle, a floating page if you like, with eyeglasses on, and the eyeglasses become other pages and rectangles!

HV: In your Afterword to Wet you mentioned that you felt the necessity to write for your parents. Why? Was it an attempt to bridge? Translate? Paraphrase?

MS: I think when you are a first generation American, when English is your parents’ second, or, as in the case of my parents, third or fourth major language, and when their situation in their new country is affected by the time and difficulty it took to make a second start in life, you feel a responsibility to speak for them, to step out into the life of the country, in my case the cultural and political life of the country, in a way they could not, to express some of their ideas and views in a way they could not and were not positioned to do. They went to the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts and arrived in New York when they were in their 30s, having escaped Paris ahead of German troops, and having fled to Vichy France, my sister Naomi got her PhD at Yale, I went to grad school at CalArts, we began our life ahead of the game in terms of a basic grounding in this country.

It’s not a question of literally translating or paraphrasing, both my parents spoke English well, though with strong accents, they were even very cultured and literate — my father loved the English language, I still have his copy of Roget’s Thesaurus, which he used to cheat at Scrabble with another refugee friend of his, and at one point he was trying to read Finnegan’s Wake, and finding it hard going, and that summer he befriended Zero Mostel, who was still suffering under the blacklist; Zero came over to read Finnegan’s Wake out loud to him, I was only 9 or 10 so unfortunately I remember that it happened but not what it sounded like! My mother read The New Yorker and the [New York] Times from cover to cover, had an incredible memory and a good vocabulary, but neither of them could really write well in the way that I am able to use writing to promote my ideas.

Both my sister and I became scholars and writers, and I think we both felt we were speaking for them, as I said, meaning that metaphorically. And perhaps our experience of their experience, and our experience of going to a French school in New York while being surrounded by a refugee community, made English more special to me, or more accurately left me with a sense of otherness about my native tongue, which has left its mark in my painting language as image.

Mira Schor, "The Dreams of All of Us" (2012)

HV: We’ve talked about the rectangles in your work (the screens, the books, the canvases … ) but I’m curious if you think language is more similar or different in each space. Does a word on a screen or in a painting change all that much from one printed in a book?

MS: I think language as image operates slightly differently in each space, printed language in a book is different from a single word or letter embedded into the material and visual language of oil paint. But influences cross-pollinate, for instance I worked for a number of years in the mid-2000s on a work called “War Crawl” that translated the language of the speeding TV news crawl into handwritten ink and gouache scrawl on narrow strips of tracing paper in a way that slowed the manic stream of news down and I think activated the sensual presence and the physical movement of the viewer in a different way. Language on screen, language on moving LED signs in Times Square, move at a different speed and probably affect the body of the viewer/reader in a different way than language in a book or than in a painting.

HV: You’ve been a blogger now for a few years, which I think you’ll agree is a different relationship to language and images (because of its speed, ease of publishing, etc.) but I’m particularly curious to ask what the world of blogging may have taught you about text and image. Did anything come as a surprise to you?

MS: One of the things that has been fun about blogging is the ability to put lots of color pictures as illustrations, particularly the fact that I don’t feel I need to get permission for most images: if I were to try to publish the blog as a book, something I’d like to do, I would have to drop many of the images because the cost of reproduction rights would be prohibitive. I find that in my blog posts, which are really occasional short essays, I work the old way and the new way: I still use descriptive writing in the way that Susan Bee and I nurtured in our journal M/E/A/N/I/N/G, in the hard copy version, when at the outset we decided not to publish images because when we started out we couldn’t afford good enough quality paper for nice reproduction. This made it necessary for our writers, including me, to really develop the description of artworks with language if we wanted to anchor and substantiate our critical views. But at the same time in the blog I enjoy using images in a photo essay kind of way, sometimes without comment, or using my own photography to accompany my writing so that both elements are equally important. I felt that particularly with one post from last year, “Orbis Mundi,” in which I described the effects and meaning of a major move and I combined my own photographs of family art and ephemera with writing in a way that I felt was not just text and illustration, but an art work on its own. It’s not so much a surprise, but it is a pleasure!

Our latest experiment at Hyperallergic — a 360 view of the main gallery for "Mira Schor: Voice and Speech" (click for a panoramic view)

The secondary gallery with a wall of drawings (click for panoramic view)

Mira Schor: Voice and Speech continues at Marvelli Gallery (526 West 26th Street, 2nd Floor, Chelsea, Manhattan) until Saturday, May 12.

Neal Medlyn's "Wicked Clown Love" at The Kitchen (photo by Paula Court, all images courtesy the artist unless otherwise noted)

Neal Medlyn has been channeling pop stars in New York galleries and theaters since the early aughts, and has built a repertoire of performances that run heavy on exhibitionism and intellectualism. His most recent show, Wicked Clown Love, which premiered at The Kitchen in February, is based on a trip to the Gathering of the Juggalos, the annual hardcore rap festival organized by the group Insane Clown Posse. Medlyn and I met at a bar in Chelsea, where he told me about how he made Kanye West cry, among other juicy tales.

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Performance artist Neal Medlyn (photo by Allison Michael Oresnstein)

Liz Filardi: Insane Clown Posse became popular with a broader public in 2010 because of the ironic caricature that emerged after the video for “Miracles” came out. Is irony a muse for you?

Neal Medlyn: I have a complicated relationship with that idea, because I don’t want to make a parody. Part of the reason I wanted to use pop as material is that it’s very culturally important, and it was very personally important to me growing up. When I was kid, I didn’t have access to weird art things, so I had to imagine them based on what I was hearing on the radio. Because it was before the internet, I imagined it being much crazier. There was this Salt-n-Pepa song, “Push It,” and I thought they said, “Pick up those dicks” instead of “Pick up on this.” I was like, “Wow, what does that even mean? It’s so crazy.”

There’s some obvious irony to my work. I do a Hannah Montana show, and I’m a man in my 30s — there’s a literal irony there. But irony means so many things now. It’s almost freighted with more than it deserves. There are inherit ironies, but I’m trying to meld those with what’s happening. The thing that I reject about irony is how it gets used as a distancing technique. I don’t want to be distanced from the audience. I spend a lot of time trying to be as immediate and “in the room” as I can be with the people and the material.

LF: How did you hook up with Kathleen Hannah, who designed the set for Wicked Clown Love?

NM: I’ve been friends with her for a long time. She had wanted to work together on something for a while, so we had various meetings early on. She turned me on to Robert Bly, who was a writer and head of the Mythopoetic Men’s Movement from the ’90s. I had forgotten about that whole thing, and that sent me on a tangent of just looking at men’s groups in general.

The first thing I noticed about Insane Clown Posse was this man thing. And then I started reading the Robert Bly book, Iron John. The imagery in a lot of the stuff I got into was kind of the same — wolves, swords, wrestling, men talking and being together. It became really easy to just start pulling things, unlike with the Hannah Montana show, where the elements felt very disparate.

Carmine Covelli, Ben Demarest and Neal Medlyn in costume for "Wicked Clown Love" (photo by Allison Michael Orenstein)

LF: I had a hard time trying to reconcile that men’s group therapy or disenfranchisement angle with the misogyny of Insane Clown Posse’s lyrics. I know that you dealt with that a little bit. You had women in the show post blog entries about it. How did you reconcile in the end?

NM: Well, for one thing, the number of women that were at the Gatherings or concerts was really fascinating. I basically decided to deal with that by having female characters. And then I would say to them, “Here’s all the material, and it’s really open ended for you guys to figure out how you want to interact with this material, and how you want to deal with it.”

The women in the show are part of the “in” group, sort of like, “Well, I’m not the woman that they’re killing in the song because I’m a Juggalo, too. It’s okay, because I’m not the bad person.” Part of being a Juggalo is that there’s this total acceptance. No matter what you’re going to say, no matter how fucked up it is, it’s okay. The Gatherings are safe places for the darkest parts of your mind. There is no point in which Juggalos can be like, “You just crossed the line. That is too dark or weird. That doesn’t go here.” So that’s part of what binds it, too — the idea that there’s total permission to just go way out and say crazy, dark shit.

I didn’t really want to pull any punches or act like the misogyny wasn’t really fucked up. I wasn’t going to change the word “bitch” out of the show or anything. I felt we just had to own what we were doing. When I was at the Gathering, I thought, “I wish there was some feminist scholar who would come here and write a fucking paper about this.”

Casey Bartolucci, Bridie Coughlan, Michelle Dean and Shawn McLaughlin in "Wicked Clown Love" (photo by Michelle Dean)

LF: In Wicked Clown Love, you tell some personal, Juggalo-esque stories about writing hot checks and making mischief. Was this portion of the show influenced by the stage antics of Insane Clown Posse?

NM: No, I mean Violent Jay tells those stories in his autobiography, but not on stage. On stage there is almost no banter. It is funny, though — there is usually that part in the set list where you are going to do the ballad. In their concerts, everyone leaves the stage, there’s a blue light on Violent Jay, and he does the song “I Stab People.”

LF: Oh, you did that so well. There is one visually arresting moment leading up to that song, where there is only a red light and you and Carmine Covelli are wrestling in the background. Farris Craddock is in the foreground, dipping a slab of meat in the wash bucket of Faygo soda. It’s a surreal kind of foreshadowing.

NM: That actually happened at the Gathering. Farris and I went to this afternoon event, which was a Michael Jackson impersonator battling a Prince impersonator. We left the little structure, and in this weird, late-afternoon light, at a nearby pond they call Lake Hepatitis, there was a guy crouching and looking in the water. He was actually washing meat.

Then, after we left, someone asked me, “Oh! Did you see that somebody died at the Gathering?” Someone had washed up in the Ohio River, and he had face paint on and the necklace. Nobody had noticed that he was gone. So I just conflated those two people in my mind. I wanted Farris to play that guy.

LF: Do you think of yourself as an ethnographer at all? Did you study ethnography?

NM: I hadn’t actually thought about that aspect of things for years. Recently, it just dawned on me — my college degree is in sociology. There was a lot of ethnography, because I also majored in anthropology and cultural anthropology.

Performance still from "Wicked Clown Love" (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

The way I ended up doing this performance series was such a weird path that I guess I just never really put it together. It always seemed like a reaction or an idea based on something that had just happened rather than, “Oh, okay, this is all one continuous development.”

I was in this experimental band that had broken up, and then I quit my job. I was listening to a Julie Ruin record and this Sinead O’Connor album, Universal Mother, and watching all of these weird, obscure videos. I really wanted to put all of those things together. I subsequently became friends with Lisa Carver, who was touring with this group called SuckDog, doing what I also assumed Karen Finley was up to. I wanted to figure out a place where all those things could coexist, and I wanted to do it with pop music. I just started doing it at an open mic in downtown Austin at Movements Gallery.

LF: When you’re working on the show, what kind of things come out that surprise you, or that maybe you feel a little worried about? In the moment in the show, are you ever like, “I don’t know if this is going to work,” because it’s so vulnerable?

Oh, yeah. Pretty much every time I decide on what I’m going to do next, I spend most of the time that I’m working on it being like, “Wow, this is probably a horrible idea.” I had done this Beyonce show, and then I did this Britney Spears show, and then this Hannah Montana show. Then all of a sudden, I was going to do Insane Clown Posse. That’s a room clearer. It’s like, “If you enjoyed blah blah blah, then you’re going to hate the next thing!”

It seems like a horrible idea, and then I’m working on something and I just have to have a certain amount of swagger or intuition that somehow it is going to work out. It’s not logistically possible to pick a person, work on it for a year and then decide, “Yeah, that’s going to work.” You have to book things so far in advance that I have to put it out there and just believe that it will somehow wind itself into a thing.

Performance still from "Wicked Clown Love" at The Kitchen (photo by Paula Court)

LF: What have you learned about yourself or your work after doing these super flamboyant, really feminine roles? And what perspective did that give you as you hopped over the fence and went into this hypermasculine environment with Wicked Clown Love?

NM: In some ways, Insane Clown Posse was like a corrective to what I had been doing in this dreamy, misty place. Particularly with Britney Spears and Hannah Montana, I was really getting into a lot of personal and artistic places that were very ambiguous and romantic and sad and small and vulnerable and weird.

Particularly by the time I got to Hannah Montana, I got into this weird, trapped place. One thing that is maybe a bit troubling or weird sometimes is that I feel like, “Wow, I am exactly like this, and this is exactly where I am at this particular moment in my life or emotionally. I’m making a show that is deeply, weirdly, oddly biographical.” Since the Prince show, everybody that I’ve done has resonated with me almost too much. When I picked them, I felt like, “Did I just determine the next year of my own emotional life by picking this person? Or, did I pick them because somehow I feel myself coming into this particular place?”

LF: Your pop series feels informed by the content that pop fans are posting on YouTube — you know, dancing in their bedrooms and whatnot. You obviously tap into a different community performing live in these New York City downtown spaces, and you produce surprisingly little video content. Are you interested in pursuing your pop series on video or capturing the series for DVD at all?

NM: I’ve thought about doing a DVD retrospective of the series. Part of the problem with making a DVD is that there are rights issues.

LF: Don’t you think rights issues are sort of a thing of the past?

NM: It was definitely a bigger worry when I first started doing this thing. The last four or five people I’ve done, the artists had known about it. Kanye West came to this Kanye West thing that I did.

LF: What was it like to perform for Kanye West?

NM: He was really nice. It was a 110‑seat house, and he wanted 10 tickets or something. I mean, the show was sold out. But he came and brought a bunch of people with him, and they saw our show and then they went to see Grace Jones.

He got there early, before the show started, sat in the third row or whatever. After the show was over, I thought I should be available in case Kanye wanted to say anything. I was definitely prepared to be like, “I’m sorry you feel that way … ”

He was like, “Hey, yeah, that was really great, you really made me cry at the end.” Then he started telling me this personal story about where he was when he recorded that part of that album I had done. All this bad stuff had happened, and he wanted to quit show business. He was like, “I haven’t really listened to it at all. This was the first time I’ve heard it since it happened on stage. It just brought back all that stuff and made me think about how I feel about performing.” It was really crazy.

Ground zero of Williamsburg's Bedford Avenue, Bedford and N7th Street, c. 2010. (via marylandinjapland.blogspot.com)

On a chilly march morning I took to the streets of Bedford in an attempt to get a sense of what people thought about Contemporary Art. Randomly I asked those walking up and down Williamsburg’s Bedford Avenue what they thought about the current state of contemporary art, who their favorite artists were and then took their picture.

At first it was really hard to get anyone to stop and talk to me, most people were in a rush to get somewhere. But as the day went on, and the weather got warmer, so did the people.

Some of people opted out of the impromptu photo shoot, but still gave interesting answers. Kate, who is a 25-year-old graphic designer, said that she felt that a lot of art these days is simply using shock value to make a statement. She talked about Damien Hirst’s animal pieces saying that she “just didn’t know where he was coming from.” Rodger, 56 year-old freelance construction worker, said that he thinks that all art has something to say and that he loves it. 24 year-old photographer Matt said that art now “is a reflection of what’s going on, but also it mirrors past art. Art now is spread to a broad group of people, which makes it easier to promote yourself.” Another artist, Bob, explained that it is important for people to make art, but wondered if there was enough people to buy all the art made.

Name: Julie
From: Australia
Occupation: Teacher

What do you think about Contemporary Art?
Contemporary Art challenges you to think outside of what you’re used to. Growing up you are used to a lot of fine art, traditional painting and such. Contemporary Art is fun, but it can be serious too, containing social messages.

Who are your favorite artists?
I love all art and artists. There are too many to just have one favorite.

Name: Hussain
Age: 16
From: Brooklyn
Occupation: High School Student

What do you think about Contemporary Art?
Contemporary Art is new art. It is a little bit different than what it was in the 17th or 18th century. Art now has evolved, with things like shadow art.

Who are your favorite artists?
I don’t have any.

Name: Nicola
Age: 35
From: Williamsburg
Occupation: Journalist

What do you think about Contemporary Art?
I like it. The fact is that it is thought provocative and takes effort to understand it. There is a lot of bullshit but the process of getting through that to understanding it is worth it. Contemporary art is a whole phenomenon, a societal phenomenon. In the last 20 years it has impacted every day life more so than art work has ever before.

Who are your favorite artists?
Luc Tuymans.

Name: Nancy (and her dog)
From: Williamsburg
Occupation: Mixed Media Artist

What do you think about Contemporary Art?
It is great. It tries to be different, although sometimes it is derivative of other art.

Who are your favorite artists?
Jessica Stockholder.

Name: Ian
From: Williamsburg
Occupation: None

What do you think about Contemporary Art?
It’s good. It helps people tell their emotions and feelings. Especially here in Bedford.

Who are your favorite artists?
Andy Warhol and Lisa Marie Presley.

Name: Leonora Russo
From: Born in Manhattan
Occupation: The Queen of Williamsburg

What do you think about Contemporary Art?
Artists are beautiful people. They are humble and beautiful. I see them and I tell them where they can go to sell their work. They show me stuff and I like what I see. I have been here for 65 years, I am the Queen of Williamsburg.

Who are your favorite artists?
What? I am on the cover of the [New York] Post today!

Name: Eleanor
From: Greenpoint
Occupation: Physician Assistant

What do you think about Contemporary Art?
All of the different media now has changed art. Even something as simple as a camera changed. In the last 20 years photography has really influenced art. I don’t know if it adds or takes away from it, though.

Who are your favorite artists?
Goya and Gustav Klimt.

Name: Samson
From: Williamsburg
Occupation: Artist’s Model

What do you think about Contemporary Art?
The competition is tremendous. There is room for young artists if they work hard enough. They really shouldn’t get discouraged.

Who are your favorite artists?
Michelangelo.

Name: Elizabeth
From: Queens
Occupation: Student

What do you think about Contemporary Art?
What is that? I don’t know what that is.

Who are your favorite artists?
Picasso? I don’t know much about his work.

Name: Milica and Vesna
From: Serbia
Occupation: Structural Engineer and Architect

What do you think about Contemporary Art?
M: Sometimes I don’t get it.
V: It is without limits. Everybody could be an artist, everything can be art.
M: It is much easier now to express yourself.

Who are your favorite artists?
M: Banksy.
V: Yeah, Banksy.

OurGoods' installation at "Living as Form" (all photos courtesy OurGoods)

We’ve all heard the complaints about income inequality. And although how to actually solve the economic crisis is up for debate, we all agree that it’s a hard time to make a living. This is true for everyone, not just artists, but perhaps artists can lead the way in offering real alternatives to our flawed economic system. Artists, as creative people already faced with an extremely competitive market where success is hard won, are in a unique position to confront the issues of income distribution.

Kickstarter, IndieGoGo and Sunday Soup are among the popular programs offering alternative markets for the arts. These organizations are nothing to scoff at: Sunday Soup has 61 groups nationally that have raised $57,355 to date, and in 2012 Kickstarter is expected to help raise more money for projects than the National Endowment for the Arts (more on that here).

A lesser known yet equally exciting group, OurGoods has similar goals of working outside and around the usual capitalist funding system — except it leaves money out of the mix altogether. I met one of the founders, Caroline Woolard, at Creative Time’s Living as Form exhibition last year, and again at Eyebeam’s Activist Technology Demo Day. I decided to talk with her about what OurGoods has been up to.

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Caroline Woolard

Ben Valentine: What is OurGoods?

Caroline Woolard: OurGoods is a barter network for creative people, connecting artists, designers and craftspeople in order to trade skills, spaces and objects with each other. It was started in 2009 by Carl Tashian, Jen Abrams, Louise Ma, Rich Watts and myself. We connected to a wide range of creative practices: choreography, computer engineering, design, sculpture, drawing, furniture-making and writing. We work on the site together and produce in-person events like Barter 101 workshops and Trade School, an alternative learning space that runs on barter (at Cuchifritos).

BV: Why did you start OurGoods?

CW: When the economy collapsed in 2009, arts organizations closed programs and fired staff. We all had less cash to work with, but that didn’t mean we had fewer skills or ideas. Barter is a way to get work done no matter what the global economy is doing. It’s a way to see the ideas, skills and resources available in the creative community, and to actively engage one another in making new projects happen. We see OurGoods as a resilient model for cultural production, building relationships of trust and shared resources from the ground up.

BV: I first ran into you at Creative Time’s show Living as Form. What were you doing there?

CW: We made “How Much Is Our Work Worth To Each Other?” to encourage action-oriented discussion about value and mutual aid in the arts. Flyers with “HAVES” and “NEEDS” were hung on a giant community notice board. This notice board served as both an analog version of the “HAVES” and “NEEDS” listed online at OurGoods.org, as well as a gathering place for personal messages and informal exchanges. Each weekend during the run of the exhibition, OurGoods hosted workshops about barter, value, cooperation and the solidarity economy.

A poster from OurGoods's installation at "Living as Form"

BV: How do you contextualize OurGoods? Is it a social-practice artwork, a project or what?

CW: OurGoods asks participants to involve themselves fully in exchange. If this kind of deep thinking–doing is social practice, then OurGoods is a social-practice project. At Creative Time, we often found people reluctant to fully engage. This could be because art is often experienced as an abstract idea or proposal to discuss, not a plausible reality to fully involve oneself in — both in body and mind. People might say “good idea” rather than “how can I get involved?”

I’m interested in work that balances theory and practice, making its intentions known and holding space for participation in alignment with those intentions. These works often exist both in and outside art contexts, activating communities in disparate fields with real issues at stake. For example, Trade School is not just about the content education (practical skills), it’s about the format of education (barter and self-organization). Higher education in the US is both about information hoarding and debt burdens. By participating in an expensive MFA program, participants reproduce the value and social acceptance of expensive MFAs. By participating in Trade School, participants reproduce the value and social acceptance of mutual aid and self-organized learning systems.

BV: What brought you to Activist Technology Demo Day?

CW: I wanted to share OurGoods with activists, because right now we have many people with art degrees on OurGoods, but there’s so much potential for collaborations and barters to support both kinds of projects. For example, an activist could help an artist think through a long-term political vision and how an artwork works towards that vision, and an artist could help an activist use aesthetics to affect the public. Of course, many artists are activists. More artists are opening up to the power of collective decision making through Occupy Wall Street. The OWS Art and Labor group has been talking about self-organization and working on actions in solidarity with non-arts groups.

BV: Many projects at Activist Technology Demo Day displayed were using technology to capture and amplify dissent instead of working to resolve the problems, which has been a critique of the Occupy movement and is probably why I appreciate OurGoods so much. Can you talk about this difference?

CW: OurGoods asks people to have action-oriented conversations about value and exchange. This is why we called the installation at Creative Time “How Much Is Our Work Worth To Each Other?” Rather than complain about our collective lack of funding or opportunities, let’s create support systems for ourselves.

BV: What other projects are you currently working on?

CW: I’m part of three long-term collectives/ongoing projects: OurGoods, Trade School, and SolidarityNYC. I’m not interested in short-term projects because I want to build community. I also teach at the New School (a class called “Barter: The Social Practice of Non-Monetary Exchange”) and co-organize an 8,000 square foot studio space where 30 artists live and work. This makes for a very busy life!

Altoon Sultan, "2011 #2," hand dyed wool and egg tempera on linen (all images courtesy the artist unless otherwise noted)

Gone are the days of fussy ideologies separating representational painting and abstraction. In past decades, of course, a divide was deep and intense, yet a handful of artists and critics, especially those interested in landscape painting, saw a productive union or practical non-differentiation in methods. One was Willem de Kooning, who in 1941 claimed that although European abstractions derived from the still life, his referred to the landscape. Edwin Dickinson, Fairfield Porter, Neil Welliver and Nell Blaine are among the other artists who saw no tall fences.

The Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects booth at Scope (via Joanne Mattera Art Blog, click to enlarge)

This is a helpful context in which to appreciate the work of Altoon Sultan. Over the course of her 35-year career, Sultan has gone completely end-to-end across the landscape-abstraction continuum. Widely known for her finely detailed panoramas of farms shown at Marlborough Gallery for two decades, then at Tibor de Nagy, she has, in more recent years, taken to small-scale abstractions in the form of egg tempera paintings and hooked wool textiles.

In March, Sultan’s textiles made their New York debut at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects‘ optically charged booth at Scope. This coming out, as it were, along with the significant interest being given to abstraction right now, made it seem like a good time to ask Sultan a few questions about what’s been happening in her studio.

*   *   *

Rob Colvin: How would you describe your transition and shift of interest from landscape painting to textiles?

Artist Altoon Sultan

Altoon Sultan: I haven’t been a landscape painter for many years, ten to fifteen depending on how narrowly we define “landscape.” In the late 1990s I began to focus on agricultural implements in large oil paintings; previously I had been doing more conventional sweeping landscapes of farming. As time went on I focused more on the objects, while the landscape surrounding them began to disappear.

In 2002 I bought my first digital camera, and in learning how to use it, I took a lot of still-life photos. These made me see differently when I went out to farms to gather images for my paintings: I moved closer to the subjects, which were mainly farm machines, and saw them much more abstractly, as compositions of color and shape closer to still life than landscape. The heavy duty content in the earlier paintings — issues of land use and abuse and the cultural meanings of landscape — began to take a back seat to my love of 20th-century abstraction. This distillation of image has continued today, as I paint small egg temperas that might be said to be a realist/abstract hybrid.

I had moved to an old farm house in Vermont in 1994. In 2006 I thought it would be fun to make some rugs for it, so I learned the traditional technique of rug hooking. It’s a very simple process that grew out of 19th-century women using discarded scraps of cloth hooked through a backing; old burlap sacks were used in the later part of the century. It’s become a widely practiced craft throughout the U.S. So I made three rugs for the house. Then I began to think of the great show of Tantric painting that I’d seen at the Drawing Center in 2005, and it inspired me to make a small, 12-by-10-inch hooked rug for the wall, a simple composition of triangle and circle. A giant lightbulb moment! Here was a way for me to engage with my beloved minimalist abstraction.

I had made some attempts at nonobjective painting, but they were failures; I continue to be very tied to the resonance and depth of depicting things of this world in my painting and to the frisson of pleasure that comes from the illusion of the tangible. My textile work has certainly influenced my paintings, as they have become more and more abstract over the past couple of years.

Altoon Sultan, "Black Cylinder" (2012), egg tempera on calfskin parchment

RC: Your process with materials is quite extensive, especially in dyeing your own fabrics to achieve very specific colors. What is your studio process like, and how do you see color functioning in your work?

AS: I seem to be an artist who loves process; I’ve worked exclusively in egg tempera paint since around 2000, making my paint using pigment and egg yolk and preparing grounds with true gesso. For the past two years, inspired by a manuscript exhibition at the Morgan Library, I’ve worked on calfskin parchment, stretching it over panels, preparing my paint with glair, which is beaten egg white. So the the task of dyeing wool is not very daunting to me. Rug hookers tend to use exacting formulas to get the color just how they want it — 1/8 of a teaspoon of this plus a 1/32 of a teaspoon of that dye color — but I just mix colors like the painter I am, eyeballing it in the mixing jar, dropping a bit onto a white coffee filter to test it, until it looks right. But it rarely comes out exactly as I had expected, which is fine, because I like the element of surprise. It reminds me of printmaking, where the print is usually different from what you thought you were making on the plate.

After dyeing the wool in enamel pots, I dry it and cut it into strips for hooking, using a hand-cranked stripper machine. I copy the design onto the backing linen, which I stretch over a frame and pull the strips of wool through it. The design work and dyeing takes thought and concentration, so I work on these during the day, while the handwork of hooking the wool is repetitious activity not demanding much presence of mind, a very relaxing pastime for evenings in front of the TV.

Color is a delightful plaything in my textile work; I can be much freer and wackier with it than with my painting, using very saturated colors at times. It has an expressive quality, though my work is mainly formal: How does this color interact with that? How do I make or deny spatial effects by using color and value? Thinking of the emotional impact of color is sometimes a part of my planning process; I occasionally want to change the mood through color or value. I grab color ideas from everywhere: nature, art — from Indian miniatures to contemporary painting, and the brilliant piles of leftover wool from previous projects.

Altoon Sultan, "Triangles and Diamond" (2012), hand dyed wool on linen

RC: The hooked-wool drawings take on a lighter, looser improvisational character next to the textile pieces, with their all-over compositions and push-pull relations of space. How do you view the two bodies of work?

AS: The “drawings” may look improvisational, but they are not any more so than the fully hooked works. Both start with thumbnail sketches, which I enlarge to actual size in a working pencil drawing, which I then transfer to the backing linen. Here’s how the drawings came about: I am an active blogger and get lots of very helpful feedback from my readers. At times I showed the textiles in progress, and a couple of valued observers commented on how much they liked the simple line work on the linen before it was filled in completely. This response encouraged me to try something different, to create a body of work that is more lighthearted in feel, that combined wool and egg tempera paint.

The drawings are more unique in their approach to the materials; I think of Richard Tuttle a great deal, and for me there’s a relationship to his funky minimalism in my drawings. The fully hooked textiles are closer to a traditional approach and have a more complex use of color and structure.

The artist's studio

RC: Both bodies of work display a rich interaction with the history of abstract painting — sometimes it’s by quotation and homage, other times by extending formal projects from various historical periods. Yet more often, the work leaps into entirely new visual territory that is uniquely your own. How do you relate to abstraction’s history in the work?

AS: I think of all my textile work as an homage to 20th-century minimalist abstraction, into the 21st. Russian constructivism is very important to me in its search for essential form: I’ve done works that quote or are based on Malevich, Popova, Rozanova, Rodchenko. Then there are Mondrian, Brancusi, Reinhardt, Helio Oiticica and, more contemporaneously, Blinky Palermo, Richard Tuttle, Joel Shapiro, Mary Heilman, Ellsworth Kelly and Tantric painting. Making these works has enabled me to absorb their ideas, to soak them into my hands and heart.

The great thing about working with hooked wool is that I can get away with all this quoting, all this wandering about in different imagery; it would be harder to make it work in painting. The medium, with which very few artists are familiar, holds it all together. My compositions and color sense are my own, and I’m doing fewer homage works, but the medium, as I mentioned above, is not my own. It is widely used by craftspeople and artists, but my long career as a painter places my textiles within an art world rather than one of craft. But I am very aware of my debt to the world of rug hooking and its traditions, just as I am to the history of medieval painting and to that of reductive art.

Altoon Sultan, "Pale Pair (for Malevich)" (2007), hand dyed wool on linen

RC: Do you have any last thoughts?

AS: In recent years I’ve begun to think of all my various endeavors — painting, textiles, photography, blogging — as part of a whole artistic life, broader and more ordinary than my New York art-world life. I want to make art out of the overlooked, whether in photographs, in paintings of farm machines or in using a common craft technique. I am interested in “being rapt with satisfied attention,” as William James wrote, and I agree with the filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami when he said, “Even daily life should ultimately reach an essence that is akin to poetry.”

Last week, Hyperallergic publisher Veken Gueyikian received an email from someone who asked to purchase an ad square on Nectar Ads, the online ad network Hyperallergic uses. The request seems simple enough and within a few emails the transaction was made and we received the “ad,” which turned out to be an art project by artist Jesus Benavente. When you clicked on the image — which many of you may have already discovered — it leads to a webpage, www.ohheywhatsgoingon.com, that — I later learned — is simply the title of the piece, “Oh Hey. Whats Going On?” (2012).

Jesus Benavente in his studio (image courtesy the artist) (click to enlarge)

Since the project debuted on April 1, I have found myself laughing at the absurdity and wondering who this person was and why he chose to do this. I reached out to discuss the project and why he chose this medium.

“It’s about wanting to be something greater, but the realities of life preventing it from happening,” Benavente told me over email. “My character, BENAVENTE, allows me to make these big gestures and funny attempts at overcoming my socio-economic realities. In this case, BENAVENTE wanted to be a part of the important art conversations without really knowing what he could say.”

The project, he says, was inspired by seeing Lynda Benglis’s infamous 1974 Artforum advertisement at the New Museum retrospective last year. The two-page ad, which was her attempt to stake her territory nude, with a double-headed dildo inserting into her vagina, in the straight male dominated art world is still the stuff of art world lore. The concept for Benavente’s ad is entirely different, even it was influenced by Benglis’s show of advertising chutzpah.

“It was such an awesome and impactful gesture, while also having an awkward presence in a gallery/museum setting. It made sense to me that my character would attempt to do a version of his own,” Benavente says. “The internet obviously presents an opportunity to explore what this kind of gesture can now be today. Internet ads and art blogs/websites also behave very differently from traditional advertising and art media. Online advertising tends to ask more of the viewer. You have to click the ad to go to a website which in itself is typically an ad for some product. I like the idea of subverting that by giving the audience an ad for someone who is incapable of giving further information or a reason to care. Plus the idea of an online ad being shown inside a gallery type set up would make my action seem all the more stupid.”

The infamous Benglis "Artforum" ad on display (via artsince1945.tumblr.com)

He says the reaction from the audience is what he’s most curious about and he likes that he has little control over its reception. “What if no one clicks the ad? What if someone hates it and by extension me? What if the audience decides to manipulate the ads (adblocks, photoshop, etc.)? I also like the idea of this performative act spilling out into the real world when people pass me on the streets and make the visual connection,” he says.

The project relates to his other work in that it deals with humor and socio-economic issues. A series from last year, “Failure to Maintain Financial Responsibility” (2011), blew up his mugshots from “poverty based arrests” as an absurd indictment for his lack of money savvy.

“I like the idea that comedy is tragedy happening to someone else. It makes the most sense to me that the someone else should be me,” he says. “This project like in my other projects allows people to laugh at my face, while also questioning what it means to be on the outside of where we want to be. In one work, I built a life-size monument of myself that was then covered with birdshit.”

“I’m also interested in the modes of exchange and how art can effect what that means,” he says. The issue of power comes up again and again in his work. In one project, he’s hired a fantasy phone operator to enact a power fantasy where his character plays a bank manager and she is asked to play someone having trouble with her mortgage. “I’m currently working on a project in which I have hired a accent reduction specialist who helps people with accents (immigrants) become more American and have better access to jobs.”

“I feel the best work has got to leave you feeling stupid and unsure when you’re making it. That is something I try to strive for in all my work,” he explains.

A few pages from an artist book created by Wyl Villacres (photo courtesy the artist)

CHICAGO — Wyl Villacres is a writer and book artist who, in 2011, took a class that I taught at Columbia College Chicago. At the end of last year, Wyl became involved with Occupy Chicago, an off-shoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in New York City in the fall of last year.

The aims and principles of OWS are applicable to everyone in the USA (and some would say the rest of the world), whether they are 8, 18 or 88 years old. But after learning about Wyl’s experience with Occupy Chicago, I thought it might be valuable to hear the voice of this 23 year old, for two reasons:  it’s interesting to hear how art and activism overlap; and because change is always most effective when it comes not from my older generation, but from young people like Wyl.

*   *   *

Philip Hartigan: When and why did you become involved with Occupy Chicago?

Wyl Villacres (photo courtesy the author)

Wyl Villacres: From the first day of Occupy Chicago, I had watched from afar via Twitter and Livestream. One night, maybe the 30th or so of September, 2011, I was able to make it down to the General Assembly and was disillusioned by seeing a bunch of white kids in Nikes and North Faces hanging around talking about how awful the economy is. (NOTE: Wyl Villacres comes from a Puerto Rican family.) I went home and kind of forgot about them.

On the 15th of October, they tried to set up camp in Grant Park in downtown Chicago. I woke up the next day, jumped on the computer and saw that 175 people were arrested , and I was confused. There is a constitutional right to peaceable assembly and speech and petitioning your government for a redress of grievances, all things that they were doing while in the park.

I got mad, frantically asking a friend over Facebook if anyone was doing anything about it. She didn’t know, so I started an online petition that asked the mayor to allow them to stay in the park, posted it on my Facebook page and tweeted it at @occupychicago and figured I had done all I could. I figured I’d get maybe a hundred or so signatures, and ended up collecting about 10,000, which I delivered by hand to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office (he was out). That was the 21st.

On the 22nd, Occupy Chicago tried to take Grant Park again, and I figured I had to see my petition through to the end. I was arrested and spent 12 hours talking to the other arrestees on why they were there, what they were trying to accomplish and saw it as more than just some rich kids complaining.

PH: Describe your own experience with Chicago’s legal system.

WV: I was zip-tied and put into a sheriff’s bus for sitting in a park too late, so there’s my first grievance. Then, it took about two hours from when the arrests started until I actually got to jail, another four hours to get called up for finger printing and another six inside a jail cell, all then to spend months running in circles trying to find out if I’m even actually having charges brought.

Our motion to dismiss the charges made it all the way to a hearing, before both the city and our lawyers made paperwork errors and had to get extensions to re-file all of their papers. I just found out today that they waived the travel restrictions on my bond, so I can travel out of state legally (my parents live in a border town, so I’m used to crossing state lines to go to lunch). I’ve never been in trouble with the law before, so this has all been sort of strange and aggravating.

My first court date I had to go to criminal court where I got to sit next to some cool guys who were being charged with possession of a firearm, breaking and entering and assault, respectively. So, that was all really great.

PH:  How do your particular concerns as a student correspond with the general aims of the OWS movement?

WV:  I think that Occupy is brilliant in its lack of a clearly defined set of goals. Yes, there are the basics like campaign finance reform and the broad umbrella of “income disparity,” but they never excluded anyone from voicing an opinion on anything. So, when we at Columbia College Chicago start fighting back against academic prioritization, tuition hikes or other administrative slights and use things like protests or mic checks to get our voices heard, I think we fulfill the main component of Occupy in that we are standing up for ourselves.

If the occupations can come back, if the camps rise up again, it won’t signify a success, and if they never return it doesn’t mean it was a failure. The fact that people now believe that they have a voice, that they have the right to be heard, and that they try damn hard to make those voiced heard at any level, is proof enough that OWS meant something and created a positive change.

PH: How do manage to find your way back to your art and writing after all this?

WV: It was hard while I was still in the throes of it. I stopped writing fiction for a while, started freelancing and getting work published pretty regularly, stopped making art all together and got kind of lost in politics, talking about politics, etc. It took a couple months when I finally had the drive to get back to work.

But then I think the fire from Occupy Chicago rubbed off and got me back into writing. My fiction started getting a lot more political, from the totally apolitical writing it had been. I started up an online zine, called I Feel Pretty, pushed because I didn’t think that the publishing world remember why they publish, to get good work out to as many people without charging an arm and a leg.

I started making plans for another hand-pressed book about rebellion (god only knows when that will ever be finished,) and generally found a new passion and drive in any and everything I do.

PH: What do you think the OWS movement has: a) accomplished so far? b) will accomplish in the next year?

WV: I think they have accomplished something beyond any measurable goal. They may not have had any demands met, they may have been kicked out, violently or otherwise. But they did get a new spirit of dissent in America riled up. They got the youth to break free from the shackles of the disinterested 1990s and tech-addicted 2000s and start working for something again.

I’m always struck when I talk to someone about doing anything Occupy-related, as the vast majority of the time they seem totally on board and excited for someone to be standing up and doing something. And days or weeks later, talking to them again, they have gotten involved. It’s just been a chain reaction of people listening and it’s trickled up to the news media with the term “income disparity” becoming something to talk about, even up to the politicians, with student loan forgiveness acts being introduced into Congress. It has accomplished getting people connected at a human level again.

What will it accomplish? That depends. Will there be a giant uprising, peaceful of course, like there is when any nation starts ignoring the people and welcoming corruption? Who knows.

In Chicago, we have Chicago Spring planned out for April 7th, then big actions for May Day with Adbusters calling for people to come early for the (now just) NATO summit, which brings us to that. How will the rest of the country react? I think that will all depend on what happens here in May.

"Camp Pocket Utopia with site specific art work by Lars Kremer titled 'Echo.'" L to R (top row): Adam Simon, Ellen Letcher, Mary Jane Ward, Claire McKeveny, Norman Jabaut, Andrew Hurst, Jennifer Dalton, Wellington Fan, William Powhida, Kristen Jensen, Brece Honeycutt, Keven Regan. L to R (bottom row): Jason Andrew, Fern Dog, Austin Thomas, Matthew Miller, Julia K. Gleich, Lars Kremer, Chloe Bass, Paul D'Agostino. (all images via Norte Maar) (click to enlarge)

A week ago, on the night of Friday, February 17th, two incongruently mirrored exhibitions opened on either side of the East River: Charles Atlas’ The Illusion of Democracy at Luhring Augustine’s new Bushwick outpost; and What I Know, a large group show of Bushwick artists, curated by Jason Andrew, at the New York Center for Art & Media Studies (NYCAMS) in Chelsea.

A view from the NYCAM installation of "What I Know." (click to enlarge)

The exchange between these two events, which witnessed scores of Bushwick denizens heading to Manhattan for What I Know and then back again to attend the red carpet Luhring Augustine affair (joining such bold-face names as Marina Abramović, Klaus Biesenbach, Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith), demonstrated the complexity of the Bushwick community’s ambitions, its heady possibilities and inevitable perils.

It used to be simple: an alternative art scene would spring up in a scruffy neighborhood, and — in a scenario replicating the domination of the Neanderthals by the Cro-Magnons — the laidback outsiders either interbred with or were vanquished by the more aggressive high-end gallery elite. In the case of Bushwick, the levers are in place, but the outcome is not so certain.

Jason Andrew has been a longtime activist in the Bushwick artists’ community, which burst into unanticipated coherence and visibility last April at the Center for Performance Research, Brooklyn, with the three-evening run of In The Use of Others for the Change, produced by Andrew’s nonprofit organization, Norte Maar. A ballet in three movements, In the Use of Others wedded the choreography of Julia K. Gleich and her troupe of dancers with the talents of artists Audra Wolowiec, Austin Thomas, Kevin Regan, Andrew Hurst, Shona Masarin and Amery Kessler.

Writing in The New Criterion, James Panero had this to say about the production:

One thought was that I was seeing the reincarnation of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Maybe that idea won’t excite everyone as much as it excited me. For a while I have harbored a belief that the groves of Bushwick grow the same special fruit and enjoy the same artistic climate that gave rise to Montparnasse a century ago. The reappearance of the ballet troupe of the Parisian avant-garde would seem to support my theory.

The special nature of the Bushwick scene, which has been fostered in no small part by social spaces such as the now-closed Pocket Utopia of Austin Thomas, Andrew’s Norte Maar and Paul D’Agostino’s Centotto, is a rich subject for speculation, as Panero suggests, especially now that this particular juncture in its development has arrived.

Luhring Augustine’s star-studded opening signified a recognition of the neighborhood’s vitality by the art world’s oligarchy (or, in the minds of many, its targeting by the Death Star), and Andrew’s What I Know has countered that move by presenting the handmade and often improvisational Bushwick aesthetic at the threshold of the moneyed vaults of Manhattan. An uneasy dance, to say the least.

I thought it would be productive to discuss these events with Andrew, and perhaps to pinpoint the origin of the Montparnasse moment that the audiences of In the Use of Others experienced last April.

A view of "What I Know" at NYCAM.

Thomas Micchelli: Did you plan to open What I Know on the same date as Luhring Augustine’s Charles Atlas exhibition?

Jason Andrew: I’ll leave that up to you. But I can add that staking out independence for me and my artists is kinda my thing. That both openings could coincide and open with equal fanfare is only a credit to how diverse the New York art world is today. Living autonomously from the machines that drive the mainstream certainly offers an experience of the intimate kind.

I disagree with your statement that LA’s opening signified a recognition of the neighborhood’s vitality. Their presence doesn’t legitimize what Paul D’Agostino has been doing for years out of his apartment or what Small Black Door or Airplane are doing in their basement. The only thing it signified is there are cheaper warehouses in East Williamsburg than there are in Long Island City. Hell, we all came here for the same reason. Cheap space. To think that their presence somehow legitimizes the neighborhood is kinda silly. I am happy they have joined the conversation, but personally, their decisions have no influence over my programming just as my programming will not have any influence on theirs. There is certainly enough love to go around. I think we saw the workings of the fully operational “Death Star” and our world still seems quite intact.

At NYCAMS, What I Know is a curatorial tour de force and represents the work of 49 artists. I’ve juxtaposed historic figures like Jack Tworkov and Robert Moskowitz with that of young artists. It’s important to see the exhibition not as a collective, but as a collection of individuals. I see it as a bellwether reminiscent of the many independent and alternative salon exhibitions that history has witnessed. The exhibit is free from institutional constraints and societal influences.

These are all artists I have come to know and love. It’s a show with its guts in beauty not satire. It’s a straight-up painting and sculpture show. It’s not mired in conceptual pits. I take curatorial cues from the likes of Henry Geldzahler, Richard Armstrong and Rob Storr. The show is simply what I know. Thinking big is what I do best.

But because the show is my personal reflections (it includes many works from my own collection) that doesn’t mean that the show should be immune to criticism. In fact I’m bracing for the onslaught. It’s one of the main ambitions in What I Know, to offer up the work of 49 artists for review. And to flex my curatorial muscle!

"In the Use of Others for the Change," a new ballet in three movements directed and choreographed by Julia K. Gleich and featuring collaborations with artists: Audra Wolowiec (sound), Austin Thomas (set), Kevin Regan (text), Shona Masarin (film), Amery Kessler (sound), Andrew Hurst (video/projections/sound). Premiere: April 14, 2011 at Center for Performance Research.

TM: I’m interested in what you said about What I Know not being a collective, but a collection of individuals. I can see the importance of making that distinction clear in this case, but you have certainly been involved in collective efforts, notably the ballet, In the Use of Others for the Change. You have also collaborated with Austin Thomas and others on Camp Pocket Utopia, a summer residency in Rouses Point, New York, near the Canadian border, which offered classes for children as well as salon-style discussions among the artists during the off hours.

The published materials about Camp Pocket Utopia made an explicit connection to the ideals of Black Mountain College. Would you like to explain a little about what Black Mountain was, and what you see as its relevance today?

A view of "What I Know" at NYCAM. (click to enlarge)

JA: When I first arrived in Rouses Point in early 2004 with my partner at the time Norman Jabaut, I was struck by the potential. Together with the choreographer Julia K. Gleich, I started Norte Maar for Collaborative Projects in the Arts. By the summer, we had converted the local ice rink into a stage and the entire village into ballet lovers. We organized a summer conservatory of dance and mounted a full summer of art exhibitions out of my house on Pratt Street. We brought in artists from all over the region. I spent what little savings I had. Parties were held under a tent which I pitched in front of the house. Discussions about art and life took place on the porch.

Black Mountain College was an experiment in education that lasted from 1933 until 1957. It operated as a communal experience in living and learning, and it fostered freely interdisciplinary thinking among its faculty and students, who included John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg and many, many others.

My enthusiasm to create a Black Mountain-inspired summer school came when I met the artist Austin Thomas. Together and with the help of a few supporters, we made an away camp for our Bushwick friends. And then I had to rent the Elementary School to accommodate us all!

TM: Do you see the informal discussions that take place in Bushwick today — at openings, salons, studios, bars and cafes — as the equivalent of the type of unconventional mentoring and peer interaction that took place at Black Mountain? In other words, should we continue to idealize Black Mountain’s memory, or do we have our own version of it right here, right now?

JA: Oh artists constantly create new versions. Look at William Powhida and Jennifer Dalton’s #class. Look at Bruce High Quality. It’s the historians, kind of like me, that link it back to “the good old days.” The place I think we all should source is the place where conversations are spun. Dialogues are insighted. I can’t help but see a parallel between the artist community in Bushwick and that of Eighth Street. It began a few years ago. Perhaps due to the economy. Suddenly everyone stopped being interested in Chelsea and became interested in one another. Just like the artists of Eighth Street. They began talking to one another, and not about Picasso or Braque. Does that make sense? I trace it back to Austin Thomas and her little Pocket Utopia gallery on Flushing where we all used to gather for an afternoon beer. In most cases there wasn’t anything that drew us all there except each other. We were seeking out our own kind of audience, mostly among ourselves.

A view of "What I Know" at NYCAM (click to enlarge)

TM: Do you see your activities, from the salon to the ballet to art classes, as part of an overall program, or as ad hoc gatherings for a particular purpose?

JA: My projects never serve a particular purpose beyond the making and the showing of art. Whether it be an exhibition or a performance. I may father the idea, but my artists, they are the geniuses. They take it to the next place. It is a challenge to keep one’s ego away from manipulating the process. I just want to offer the creative platform. Then find the money to produce the final result. That’s the essence of Norte Maar.

TM: What has surprised you about the artists’ involvement? Did you expect they would willingly leave the secure confines of their studios to risk the possible conflicts and frustrations of collaboration?

JA: Not every artist can be a collaborator.

TM: Perfectly understandable, but even if some, or most, artists prefer to be left to their solitary endeavors, the neighborhood’s collaborative spirit is the first among its distinguishing characteristics.

I wouldn’t call this a lack of competitiveness, exactly, because I can’t see how an artist can get around the impulse to excel. But there is a genuine appreciation of one another’s work, which is motivational in different way.

Do you see this as philosophical or generational? Are the artists in Bushwick more community-oriented because they’ve seen how “the machine,” as you’ve called the mainstream system, can brand artists and trivialize the conversation?

JA: It’s got to be philosophical. Again, I am constantly drawing parallels to the position of the artists of the New York School to that of the artists I surround myself with today. With only a handful of galleries in the early 1950s, artists back then weren’t thinking about their next show or jockeying to get a curator into their studio. They were making work and discussing it amongst themselves. It was an amazing time, a real and complete struggle. But it produced some of our great American classic figures. Gorky was the first painter’s painter. Meaning, he was a hero among the artists, but experienced little commercial success during his lifetime.

I imagine Bushwick has the air and the pace of the early 1950s. Out here we’ve been able to make work, exhibit it, discuss it, dish on it, without any pretense. Out here we’re all individuals. To quote the sculptor David Hare, “The artist is a man who functions beyond or ahead of his society. In any case, seldom within it.” It’s the collective individuality that makes up Bushwick’s community. And the diversity among us is our strength. There is a trust and an honesty that God I wish I could preserve. There is a fluidity of discourse. Out here we all want to be the painter’s painter. Then we all hit the bar.

TM: “Collective individuality” sounds like the perfectly paradoxical term to describe the community.

A view of "What I Know" at NYCAM (click to enlarge)

JA: Totally. But many people have asked me if there is a defining characteristic among the artists in Bushwick. My answer is the one Hans Hofmann offered when asked what exactly constitutes the basis of the artist community at a round table discussion among artists at Studio 35: “Everyone should be as different as possible. There is nothing that is common to all of us except our creative urge. It just means one thing to me; to discover myself as well as I can. But every one of us has the urge to be creative in relation to our time — the time to which we belong may work out to be our thing in common.”

The blessing, as Richard Pousette-Dart once said, is that the establishment can, at any moment, bless any one of us. “The disaster is that they can cause disparity among us, too.”

TM: The ideal, then, would be to retain the messiness of the dialogue and avoid codification at all costs.

JA: Exactly. And as long as Ben Godward is making sculpture, they’ll be enough messiness to go around.

TM: Does the neighborhood act as its own critic? Do conversations tend toward analysis or encouragement?

JA: Many may disagree, but the neighborhood does act as its own critic. Take a look at the NYCAMS show. Every work in that show is exquisite all unto itself. That kind of quality cannot exist without pressure, without awareness. I know for a fact that there are conversations that tend toward both criticism and encouragement. It’s almost like the artists dare each other to think big or beyond. I visit studios as often as I’m invited. What I think the neighborhood is missing is a forum where artists can gather and talk about the last museum show they saw or the next painting they are making.

Public discussions of late have been centered around issues of gentrification. Which I think we are all bored with. Fuck, be a good neighbor, pick up some trash on the way to the subway, volunteer. Now let’s just make some serious fucking art while we can. There is no stopping progress. Let’s think big. Make some crazy ass art while we have the opportunity. Nothing is certain. This is the reason I push myself: to take advantage of the moment. It’s why for two years, not only was I mounting exhibitions at Storefront but continued the exhibition program at Norte Maar. Somebody’s got to give these artists a platform to spring from.

TM: The Village Voice took note of that when it voted you “Best Exhibitionist” of 2011.

JA: I’m thinking as big as I can while I can.

TM: Thinking big has its dangers. The ballet, for one, took big risks. Fundraising was involved, the rental of rehearsal and performance space, insurance, transportation, publicity, media — an enormous undertaking that, if successful, would be — and was — a galvanizing event. If not, it could have left a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth.

JA: There is a level of risk in all that we do. One thing I don’t do well is think about the risk! Yes, there is a lot that goes into a ballet. But there is so much that comes out of one too. I’m manic when it comes to mounting projects. But somehow, someway, the artists bring out their best and the quality is superb.

TM: Do you agree with Panero that this was a “reincarnation” of Diaghilev, that “the groves of Bushwick grow the same special fruit and enjoy the same artistic climate that gave rise to Montparnasse a century ago”?

JA: For those who know me, thinking big is just what I do. These ideas come with great sacrifice. And come too often! It’s extremely challenging for someone with my economic position. Often, these projects are self-produced. I function in such a spontaneous way that there is little time to think about having a fundraiser. I seize the opportunity to produce, whether it be a ballet, an exhibition, or poetry reading. I’m manic about it even if the funds aren’t there. Perhaps this is what I have in common with Diaghilev! I’ll be bankrupt silly. But this is what defines me. I believe that my big ideas have cost me my relationships. I rarely have time for anything, or anyone else. I’m now in the middle of organizing the next ballet which will open in April. I am constantly aware that you are only as good as your last project.

I’d like to blame the artists. They keep me thinking big. I’ll stop by a studio and see a huge new painting like I did this past summer with the painter Brooke Moyse. Then I’ll stay awake at night thinking about how I can get that painting seen. I’ll watch a section of choreography and can’t help but think how amazing it would be if it were set to the new score of the composer I met last week. I see painting as costume and sets as sculpture and my world just gets bigger and bigger.

It just so happens that I landed in Bushwick in 2006 and so did a ton of amazing artists. Slowly I came to know them one by one and they got to know me.

TM: And so the groves of Bushwick arose from an accident of timing?

JA: I’ll have to quote Jackson Pollock on this one: “I don’t use the accident. I deny the accident.”

*    *    *

What I Know, curated by Jason Andrew, continues at the New York Center for Art & Media Studies (NYCAMS, 44 West 28th Street, 7th Floor, Chelsea, Manhattan) through March 16.

The current show at Norte Maar (83 Wyckoff Avenue, #1B, Bushwick, Brooklyn), Paul D’Agostino: Appearance Adrift in the Garden, is on view at until March 4.

A new ballet produced by Jason Andrew and Norte Maar will feature new choreography by Julia K. Gleich with several new artistic collaborators, and will premiere April 12 at Center for Performance Research.

Garnet Hertz's graphic that started the meme this month.

Some time early last week, I began to notice the “What People Think I Do/What I Really Do” graphics on my Facebook news feed. The first time I clicked on one, I had a quick laugh — I thought it was witty. A few days later it seemed like my news feed had been converted into a focused, peer-curated online gallery devoted to the latest, most clever “What People Think I Do/What I Really Do” graphics.

Then my Mom started posting them too. The speed at which this new internet sensation spread grabbed my attention. A quick Google search led me to www.knowyourmeme.com. The website credited artist Garnet Hertz with starting the meme, so I emailed Hertz to see if I could get the scoop on his original graphic. Hertz was kind enough to give an interview about the history of the graphic he first posted on February 9th and the subsequent birth of a meme.

*   *   *

Garnet Hertz with an insect from his Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot project (photo by Karen Marcelo, via conceptlab.com/roachbot)

Don Edler: What is a meme to you?

Garnet Hertz: I think memes are part of participatory culture that have an important home-brewed or DIY aspect to them in that individuals can create them and distribute them on their own. Because of this DIY aspect, a meme can be emulated easily and is able to change and spread rapidly.

DE: What caused you to make the original image/text collage that started the “What people think I do/What I really do” meme?

GH: I had seen one other graphic like it on Role Playing Games that was laid out a little bit differently, with the same sort of plain Helvetica headings, but with four panels. When I saw it, I thought it was a clever way to visually explain how things are perceived differently by different people. A few hours after I saw the RPG graphic; I opened Photoshop and laid out something similar with five images and captions, and posted it to my Facebook wall.

I hadn’t given it much thought, and I had no idea it would go viral — it was just something that I slapped together with the hope that some of my academic and artist friends would enjoy the one-liner.

As soon as I posted it, I immediately realized the potential to adapt it into a lot of other different topic. In fact, I was considering making a few more but for different subjects, but then my wife talked me out of that idea.

The original image that inspired Hertz. (click to enlarge)

DE: So you created this thing for yourself and your friends and you posted it to your Facebook wall. Then what happened?

GH: Almost immediately, this image started generating a huge amount of traffic. I have about one thousand Facebook friends and it started getting shared and shared and shared. After the first four hours, it had had over 400 shares and was averaging about 100 shares per hour. It kept that up until it had been shared about 4,000 times and the last time I checked it was over 5,000 shares.

DE: You have been credited with starting this meme. How do you think that came about?

GH: I should say that when I first posted my graphic, I had made it a point to say that “I made this,” while the original RPG graphic was made anonymously, or at least I never found an author.  So I think I was attributed to starting the meme because my image was the first of this kind to go viral, I was a clear and attributable author of the image, and that most of the subsequent meme images that people made directly followed my layout.

DE: I really enjoyed the images you used in your graphic. Where did you find those images?

GH: All the images were just found through Google image search. For the first one, I searched for “Weed.” At first I was going to put an image of Cheech and Chong there, but that wasn’t really that descriptive, so I just found the close-up image you see now. Then I searched for “Crayons” for the second image. The third image is of Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” which should be instantly recognizable to artists as one of the most famous pieces of modern art history. For the fourth panel, I searched for “misunderstood performance art” and found this great image of this public performance. I was drawn to the image because of the over-sized toothbrush and amazing high heeled shoes, and I thought it represented the risk that a lot of people feel when doing their work. Finally, for the fifth image, I just searched “Exhibition contract.”

One of the funniest versions of the meme discovered on Facebook by the editor.

DE: How do you think memes fit into popular culture? Does the term “meme-ification” of culture speak to you in any way?

GH: In my own art practice, I try to create projects that have a popular appeal to them;  I build my studio projects in a way that can be communicated through a viral-like structure. However, I don’t really make studio projects that can be quickly emulated — they tend to be time-intensive and laborious.

In terms of “meme-ification,” I think that memes function as an insider language for different cultural groups on Facebook. Memes are small treasures that people find on the internet that they take pride in sharing — or modifying and sharing — with their friends. Memes play a role in forming a communication format that people can riff-off of, and expand on in order to include themselves in the cultural group. In comparison to earlier forms of communication, I think memes operate like Fan Fiction or Zines, where people can modify and circulate media within a group and thereby participate in that culture.

DE: What is the difference between something that is viral and something that is meme?

GH: I think something is viral if it gets popular and spreads tremendously fast: a good example would be a highly popular YouTube video. I think in addition to this a meme is something that people can copy or emulate easily: “LOL Cats” are a great example of a meme because all you really need are an image editing application, an image of a cat and the ability to lay text over an image.  You generate an image, upload it somewhere and you’re part of the language of the meme.

DE: When I was doing the research for this interview, I noticed that the history of the “What People think I do/What I Really Do” meme was evolving rapidly, with new versions showing up every few hours. How do you think the rapid evolution of a meme reflects the nature of the internet?

GH: For something to be a meme, it needs to be malleable and spreadable. I think it’s important to note that there is never a singular, absolute originator for most ideas or inventions and especially not for memes.

In fact, if you went back to the original RPG graphic that I found, I am sure you could also find precursors to that graphic and keep digging back further and further into history. Speaking to the changing history of this meme, I think any history — whether it’s the history of film or photography or electric light — anything that is invented like that has a very complicated history. For example, Edison didn’t invent most of the things common history attributes to him; these things have very complicated histories, and the more you research something, the more you find out that histories of origins spiral continually backwards. I think the way histories change is part of what makes historiography an interesting topic.

DE: Can you tell me a little more about your current research or projects?

GH: I am currently an Artist in Residence and Research Scientist in the Department of Informatics at UC Irvine, where I work on studio projects and do work related to physical computing. A recent project I did was called OutRun which is a drivable arcade game with a 1980s style augmented reality system. I was able to take the project to Denmark last summer and it’s featured in this month’s Popular Science magazine.

I am also working on a new book on electronic DIY culture in the context of contemporary art making, its kind of the maker/Arduino world meets contemporary art. I am also working on a diesel-powered iPad that runs on fossil fuel and belches out smoke, its kind of a hot-rod iPad charger dock.

I have a lot of other projects as well, and I try to stay busy — but I should get rolling — I need to get back to writing that exhibition proposal.

*   *   *

Garnet Hertz is a Fulbright Scholar and contemporary artist whose work explores themes of technological progress, creativity, innovation and interdisciplinarity. Hertz is Artist in Residence and Research Scientist in Informatics at UC Irvine and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design.

He has shown his work at several notable international venues in thirteen countries including SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica and DEAF and was awarded the prestigious 2008 Oscar Signorini Award in robotic art. He is founder and director of Dorkbot SoCal, a monthly Los Angeles-based lecture series on DIY culture, electronic art and design. His research is widely cited in academic publications, and popular press on his work has disseminated through 25 countries including The New York Times, Wired, The Washington Post, NPR, USA Today, NBC, CBS, TV Tokyo and CNN Headline News.

Gran Fury, "Art is Not Enough" (1988), printed in the Village Voice

In their first step into an institutional setting, the pivotal AIDS activist art collective Gran Fury’s exhibition Gran Fury: Read My Lips at NYU’s 80WSE Galleries answers the question raised by a reprinted poster of an ad that ran in the Village Voice in 1988: is art enough?

Beginning in tandem with ACT-UP during the mid-1980s, Gran Fury, whose name came from the NYPD’s unmarked Plymouth cars, provided the artistic thrust to the AIDS activist movements during a time when AIDS was barely mentioned by the media or the president. Taking tips from the Situationists, Gran Fury combined the techniques of advertising with information and outrage over the AIDS crisis to educate and motivate the general public with slogans such as “Women Don’t Get AIDS” and “Kissing Doesn’t Kill”.

With galleries filled with reproductions of posters, flyers, takeaways and other ephemera rather than torn and yellowed scraps of archival materials, the Gran Fury exhibition displays an essential and possibly terrifyingly forgotten archive not just for the history of AIDS in America but how art and activism can intersect.

I spoke with Gran Fury member and artist Marlene McCarty and 80 Washington Square East Gallery assistant director and curator Michael Cohen. They both gave me an illuminating walk-through of the exhibition and answered my questions from the history of Gran Fury to its connection with subsequent protest movements, including Occupy Wall Street, to the importance of archiving the history of AIDS activism and AIDS losses.

One of the most striking and perhaps timely pieces in the exhibition appears all over the floor in the first room: Xeroxed dollar bills with powerful and shocking slogans on the back. A part of ACT-UP’s Wall Street protest in 1987, Gran Fury created these fake dollar bills in response to the pharmaceutical companies monopolizing AIDS drugs, making it impossible for a generic version of the drugs. I began by asking Marlene about the Wall Street protests:

Gran Fury, "Wall Street Money (backs)" (1987), printed paper

Marlene McCarty: All these ACT-UP boys got dressed up in nice suits, nice shoes and fancy leather briefcases. They stuffed the briefcases with the Gran Fury Money. In those days there wasn’t any security so they could go in the Mezzanine. So they went on the Mezzanine and when they clanged the bell, to start trading, they dumped all the briefcases on money on the trading floor. It was kind of fabulous because it stopped trading. The New York Times picked up the story not because of the messages but because it stopped trading. But they had to report on why. Within six to eight weeks, the AZT was lowered the price. It had a real effect on people.

Emily Colucci: How do you see Gran Fury’s work in relation to Occupy Wall Street? When I first walked through the show, I couldn’t help but think about the aesthetics of Occupy Wall Street in relation to Gran Fury, particularly with their Art and Culture Committee.

MM: We organized the show before Occupy Wall Street but as the opening got nearer, we were like this is kind of crazy.

Michael Cohen: We organized this show for two years and in that time all these events were happening: the unrest in Europe and the Arab Spring. All these synchronistic events were happening independently from each other. I think there is a relationship in the emotional tone. Both pretty fed up and angry. I think the difference is the generational relationship to the counter-culture. Gran Fury comes out of the hippie era, revolutionary committee meeting mentality. You also had a different imperative.

MM: Death!

Gran Fury, "Kissing Doesn't Kill bus poster" (1989)

EC: Tell me a little about the “Art Is Not Enough” poster, which is positioned hilariously right over the main reception desk in the space.

MM: This was a very small piece that was in the Village Voice. It was one we had done a number of pieces around this time saying “Art is not enough.” We spent years and years saying, “We’ll never exhibit in an art gallery. We aren’t doing that.”

MC: It took quite a bit of convincing to get them in an institutional gallery. They were like we’ve never had our work historicized or institutionalized we don’t want to do it. But I came up with the educational idea. It’s an educational place where there is a continuity between the past and the present. You can make an artwork out of making a historical reuse of your art.

MM: It’s not a commercial gallery and is located within an educational institution was reassuring. Everything is reproduced at billboard size which is the strategy we used in the one institutional thing we did in the Venice Biennale. One of the drives to reproduce rather than display decaying posters under Plexiglas boxes is we wanted the work to still live [and] not be historical artifacts. The work doesn’t have any copyrights on it and in the early days we were like “take it, change the language of it put it into French. We don’t care.”

MC: I think one thing that’s exciting about the project is we’ve got the work 20 years into the future where there are digital permanent versions that won’t crumble under somebody’s bed.

Gran Fury, "The Four Questions" (1994), printed flyer

EC: That’s one of the aspects of the exhibition that really excited me. At the opening, I realized that all the pieces were reproduced, which brought the works into the present. Rather than a strictly historical exhibition about a closed period of time, the work still lives on, which is fitting since AIDS is still a problem.

MM: At the opening I was touched and surprised. People would come up to me with tears in their eyes. Students aged 20-21 came up to me weeping and saying, “thank you so much for making this work.”

MC: The exhibition fills an emotional gap and a gap to history.

EC: I see it as a very important archive that has a risk of being lost. I’ve noticed that some people my age in their mid-20s who weren’t personally affected by a loss from AIDS feel as if they grew up in a time after AIDS. There is a real separation between those who have been affected by it and those who haven’t.

MM: I took a course of freshman year students through the exhibition and they had no idea about the AIDS crisis. They didn’t even know what Sarcoma lesions were.

EC: Why did Gran Fury end?

MM: We were acting during a really specific time. We fought for people have to say the words AIDS on television, people have to see a same sex couple kissing. From 1988 to 1994, things changed radically. It became whole different kind of conversation. The demographics of AIDS changed, the pharmaceuticals of AIDS changed. This is not what Gran Fury does. We decided it was time to stop.

MC: I recently taught a course between NYU and the Sorbonne on Situationism. The Situationists believed that the collective should never last longer than the needs of the mission. And should always be interrogating itself whether the mission is accomplished. So it seems antithetical to your mission to last forever.

Gran Fury, "Men Use Condoms or Beat It" (1988), sticker

EC: Is art enough?

MM: Art has again become so mute in a way. It’s so elite and monied and rarified. But it’s really the idea that art practice can have a different kind of vibrancy around it and can speak back. That art can be active rather than passive is really important.

Gran Fury: Read My Lips is on view at the 80WSE (NYU, 80 Washington Square East Galleries, Greenwich Village, Manhattan) until March 17.