Either the birds are chirping this fine morning or my ears are still ringing. Really, I’m buzzing still from a combination of sights and sounds of my yesterday. My morning started with a viewing of short films/videos by Juan Recamán and evening ended with the loudness that is Brooklyn metal band Goes Cube. Yeah, no one would peg me as the type to listen to metal but I was out to support a friend and loved the show just the same.*

I’m not going to pretend I’m qualified to write about any sort of music but I can’t compare the videos with the show, an unseemly pair, even if you ask me, without writing about both. I’d also like to be clear that I’m not comparing the work of the artists, of Recamán and the members of Goes Cube, but rather the cumulative experience of the videos and the listener’s experience of the show (if that doesn’t make sense now, hopefully it will soon). So here goes…

(This is a still photograph from Recamán’s website as I don’t yet have the capacity to post a video, so please go to his website to watch the clips.)

The Recamán videos I am so enamored with are “portraits,” mostly, with one exception that I know of, of Americans who are relative strangers to Colombian Recamán. The lack of an established relationship coupled with the obtrusive black box that is a hand held camera remarkably yields sincere and elegant videos. In particular, the Reading Room series in which Recamán, “while wondering around… use[s] video as a tool to dig inside into [people in the library’s] minds, at least for a short time;” and Brigitte, in which Recamán is “concerned about finding a structure that mirrors Brigitte’s feelings, so viewers can hold, confront and reflect on Brigitte’s persona,” offer an understanding of humanity that borders Greek tragic/comic greatness. Pay attention to the moment, in the opening of the web excerpt of Brigitte, when a rose vine attacks Brigitte and she pushes on leaving the branch trembling after her. Recamán has the good sense to keep filming the branch rather than following his subject and I promise, this small decision will knock your socks off.

(sticker designed by Sarah Pedry)

As Recamán is required to work as a “slipping glimpser,” (I am fearful already that I will overuse that reference) listeners at a Goes Cube show are likewise obliged to stay with the moment; in all the chaos, the “stomping… and booming,” the smashing and destroying, (like I said, I’m SO not qualified to write about music, relying on the good words of others) that is Goes Cube, it’s possible to find a little peace, if you give it a chance. Willing departures from recognizable rhythms into absolute distortion are rewarded by comforting returns to familiar territory, even if you were just introduced to that territory by Goes Cube. It requires the listener to leap (though not necessarily off the stage as David is apt to do).

But the leap is similar to the one that Recamán and his participants are making in the videos. Their leap is so great, however, that we could compare the resulting works to Robert Frank’s seminal book, The Americans.**

Recamán is capturing the current, post 9-11, state of America, also as an outsider, as Frank recorded the past, post-WWII America. Jack Kerouac’s words about The Americans, “The humor, the sadness, the EVERYTHING-ness and American-ness of these pictures!!” apply, I think, to Recamán’s videos. Kerouac further rejoices:

Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.***

Substitute Juan Recamán for “Robert Frank”, and Colombian for “Swiss,” if you will.

Are you smiling at the stretch here? Is it a stretch? I guess we will see as Recamán keeps working… and I keep smiling. Funny thing, you know, people smile at a heavy metal show.

*Minor confession: this was my second Goes Cube experience.

**I’m pretty sure Recamán mentioned Frank as an influence when speaking to our class at Pratt… He was a lovely and charming visitor. We were graced!

***Kerouac + deKooning = acquaintances/friends, no? I think this relationship may be fodder for future reading, researching, writing…

Despite being a proud, native Coloradoan, I am occasionally guilty of believing that New York City is the center of the universe. I don’t even know how it happens - I’ve only been here for two years! I suppose it is a self-sustaining myth of sorts. So, I was relieved when a New York Times article today gave me cause to rejoice and remember: (insert self-mocking sarcasm) people are making art across the country! And it turns out that Boulder, Colorado is number 6 (!) in the top 10 metropolitan areas ranked by percentage of artists in the labor force and ranks number five in the list of states with the most artists per capita.

Frame for a Tract House, Colorado Springs, CO, 1969 gelatin silver print, Robert Adams

Sitting in a gallery space with my own work has proved to be a far more engaging experience than I had imagined. Two interesting references include:

The work of Bing Wright, below, and

Fly Disaster II, 1997, silver print, 29 1/4 x 37 inches

and this quote from Willem deKooning:

“I’m in my element when I am a little bit out of this world: then I’m in the real world — I’m on the beam. Because when I’m falling, I’m doing all right; when I’m slipping, I say, hey, this is interesting! It’s when I’m standing upright that bothers me: I’m not doing so good: I’m stiff. As a matter of fact, I’m really slipping, most of the time, into that glimpse. I’m like a slipping glimpser.”

I don’t necessarily think that this quote is appropriate for this photo but of the Bing photographs I found, I liked this one the best; in all, I am still undecided about the work in general. However, I am enamored with Willem’s words and am grateful for the reference (thank you Cyrilla and Philip; great minds do think alike!).

We will be celebrating the opening of what’s left, silver gelatin prints by Sara Distin (me!), Monday, June 9th, 6-8 p.m. at Pratt Institute Steuben Gallery.

spiderweb, 20.5″ x 15″ silver gelatin print

I’ll be at the gallery the rest of the week, Tuesday - Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and/or by appointment.

I am the proud new owner of a Jason Polan Every Person in New York drawing. I was one of the lucky 200 to order one at 20×200 before the edition sold out in a matter of seconds. The series is part of Polan’s mission to draw every single person in New York City, a daunting but admirable task, no doubt. To learn more about the project, check out his site (linked above). He has garnered much deserved attention, so you can find even more information here, here, here, and here.

The best part about this project was opening the envelope to see who I received… and…. drum roll… pause… my New Yorker is a man at MOMA, drawn on May 18th, 2008. I was SO happy that this was my drawing because I am also a fan of Jason’s Every Piece of Art in the Museum of Modern Art Book.

I envy Jason’s energy and tireless dedication to drawing and am grateful for his observations of one the best things about New York City… its extremely diverse, bustling, humming, and (mostly) minding-our-manners-and-getting-along-in-a-relatively-small-space population.

I was super excited to see Roger Ballen’s work at the NY Photo Festival a couple weeks ago and was disappointed to miss his lecture. I was even more disappointed to see that the prints in the show, curated by Kathy Ryan, photo editor of The New York Times Magazine, appeared to be mediocre digital inkjets rather than his typically flawless silver prints. On the upside, Ms. Ryan featured numerous works in black and white, including those by Ballen, Horacio Salinas, and Stephen Gill. But this is all beside the point.

Ballen’s work came to mind again when I was looking at drawings by Joseph Beuys at Zwirner&Wirth uptown.

Handyman (1996), above, and Head Inside Shirt (2001), below, by Roger Ballen are courtesy of Edelman Gallery.

I am not really familiar with Beuy’s work and know very little about Ballen except that he started making documentary photographs in South Africa and switched to a more personal photographic exploration of “the interior.” (Jorg Colberg has an excellent interview with Ballen about this transition at Pop Photo.) I also know that the feeling of both the documentary photographs and the more personal photographs is similar; both are dark, surreal, and a little absurd. I think it is these qualities, in addition to the use and arrangement of “found” objects, that reminded me of Ballen when looking at Beuys.

While Ballen has moved from his more “political,” documentary work, Beuys is an overtly political artist, with works including the installation, I like America and America likes me, 1974 (still above). Looking at the two artists together makes me wonder if there is a difference between “political” works and “personal” works aside from the designation given by the artist. I wonder about this especially now, when political and social realities are incredibly absurd. What is the difference between the two? Is is possible for “political” works to function on a “personal” level, and isn’t it true that the most successful political works are so because they effect people personally? And aren’t successful “personal” works achievements because they effect people other than the artist universally, in spite of political, social, racial, and ethnic divides?

(This post refers to a show that is, unfortunately, no longer on view in NYC… but more info can be found on ICP’s excellent website. This was actually supposed to be my *very*first* post but in my excitement and haste I forgot that I ever wrote about this show!)

For this exhibition, The International Center for Photography brought together over 20 contemporary artists using archival documents to create new works. The collective body of works highlights social, political, and personal uses of both gems and remnants from the past and their influences on the present. Two of the most engaging works, however, indicate that present cultural, political, social, and personal identities are not shaped as much by what we remember as by what we forget.

The first artist, an Albanian student living in France, Anri Sala, restored a 16 mm film reel he found at home that neither of his parents could identify. The footage showed his mother meeting Enver Hoxa, Albania’s communist leader. In the absence of audio accompanying the film, Sala hired deaf mutes to read his mother’s lips and translate the film. The resulting film and narrative are shown to the mother who denies recollection of her involvement with the Communist party, arguing that she would never say the things she is purported to have said. In Sala’s video, Intervista (1998), present day conversations between mother and Sala regarding the film are inter-spliced with the archival footage. While the son and the viewer are inclined to believe the translators, the mother’s adamant denial is convincing. It is so convincing that the only explanation for the incongruity is that she has forced herself, over time, to forget that part of her life. The confrontation with the past, with the forgotten, is unsettling for her, her son, and the viewer.

American artist Zoe Leonard approaches the archival document in what is almost the opposite manner of Sala but likewise examines the failure to recall. In The Fae Richards Photo Archive (1993–96), Leonard has assembled photographs from the life of Fae Richards, showing her as a teenager in the 1920s, as a starlet in the 1930s and 40s, during the Civil Rights movement in the 60s, and aging into the 1970s. A few photographs imply that she may have had an intimate relationship with another woman. In short, her life is one that could have been made into a feature film but her name doesn’t register. And in fact, her name does not register because she is an entirely fictional character. Working with filmmaker Cheryl Dunye, Leonard staged each image, then printed, toned, stained, tore, wrinkled, and crinkled each photograph enough to appear old and dredged from a trunk or an attic. The startling realization is that had Fae Richards existed, it is entirely likely that her name wouldn’t be easily recollected, if at all. As the ICP website explicates, “her accomplishments have supposedly disappeared into the pit of American cultural amnesia, no doubt because of her blackness.” Again, we are reminded of the ability to forget and the role that forgetting plays in shaping cultural, political, and social identities.

While many of the works in Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art use the archival document to help us remember, to highlight what shouldn’t be forgotten, these two works are among the most unsettling for reminding us of what and why we don’t recall. Not only are we capable of forgetting but sometimes we insist on it.

It’s been a particularly wet and gray day in Brooklyn. If you live here and you don’t have a car, chances are you hate this weather because you will inevitably have to spend a portion of your time getting from here to there out in the rain and arrive at your destination a little wet. I live here and don’t have a car and love this weather. It reminds me that Manhattan and Brooklyn are surrounded by water and that despite our best efforts to obstruct or outsmart Mother Nature, she usually prevails, in little ways like this rainy day reminder of the water cycle and in big ways, like the devastation in Myanmar.

I’m not going to talk about Myanmar because you can read more at the link provided but I don’t want to sound like I am making light of a serious situation when I go back to talking about the East River, and the weather, and of course, art.

So today, not only was the East River flowing around my neighborhood in Greenpoint but it was also saturating the air and maybe/hopefully/eventually generating sustainable energy. As far as I know, the underwater turbines are gaining financial support but have yet to be re-installed for another trial. The first time around, the river was so powerful it broke blades and other pieces off the turbines.

Apparently, it’s not easy to make water do things according to human plans. That is, unless you are Olafur Eliasson, then you can make a waterfall run uphill. What Eliasson makes clear though, is that while you can accomplish this feat, it sure isn’t pretty. PS 1 has the better half of his retrospective show, “Take Your Time,” including Reversed Waterfall, 1998 and Model Room, 2003, a peek into the man’s brain and his obsessions with spheres. Not to be missed at MOMA is Wall Eclipse, 2004 which is as almost as enchanting as watching an actual eclipse but you have the opportunity to experience it again and again. It’s like rewinding and replaying that moment on west coast beaches when the sun drops below the horizon more quickly and more brightly than you expect. And, oh yeah, one thing not to be missed at PS 1? Beauty 1993 (above). The installation occupies one of the dank rooms in the basement of PS 1, and is essentially, a misty day in New York. Enter it and you will surely be as damp as you were getting to work this morning, only this time, you will have paid for it. Are you starting to share my appreciation for gray days in the city yet?

I finally made it to see the Whitney Biennial this weekend and am SO glad that I did. I won’t try to give a synopsis of the show because I don’t want to and I can’t. Once I saw Javier Téllez’s Letter on the Blind for the Use of Those Who See, 2007, video, my brain wouldn’t allow me to think about anything else.

The video is based on the Indian parable, “The Blind Men and the Elephant” and documents the experiences of six blind New Yorkers who approach and touch an elephant in the empty space at McCarren Park Pool, Brooklyn.

Experiences vary between participants but the encounter is tightly framed, often including only the participant’s hand and the elephant, so the viewer is brought as close as possible to the intimate exchange. The footage of each experience ends with a tonally lush still* of the elephant’s skin and audio from the participant. One older man says that he would not like his sight back at this point in his life; it would require learning a whole new way of living, not something he could/would do at this stage in life. Another reminds us that even if we walked around for a week with a blindfold on, we would still not know what it is like to be blind as we would be secure in the knowledge that the blindfold could be removed. In the context of these comments, the black and white still image serves as a beautiful but impenetrable wall between those who see and those who can’t.

While most production stills I found online were in color, the actual video, in entirety is converted to black and white. Seeing the production stills confirmed my initial idea that grayscale made the video, moving and still images, more seductive, more beautiful, and more ethereal, exaggerating the viewing experience, in particular the experience of light and dark. The color images feel cold and detached (neither of the images I’ve provided here do the film justice, just go see it). But black and white is, obviously, not the way (most of us) see, we are provided this enhanced image to remind us of how fortunate we are to experience lightness and darkness. It is also possible that Téllez made this decision to give us as close to the same remarkable experience the blind participants had in the making of the film. If so, then the way our own vision functions (in color) falls short of the richer experience had by those who can’t see. Which is it? Regardless, the film is one of the most compassionate, thoughtful, and evocative things I have seen all year.

* I’m not sure/don’t remember if the image was actually a still, there may have been some movement. Either way, it was a close-up of the elephant’s skin and resembled a rock wall.