André Feliciano (Brazil)
Brazilian Cultural Office and Location One International Committee

André Feliciano considers himself an art gardener. His utopian view of the world can be better understood by his concept of “Floraissance Art,” which mixes the words “flora” and “renaissance” and calls for a postmodern return to arcadia. Feliciano uses words like sprouting, cultivating, and gardening in his artistic practice. His colorful, artificial garden made out of resin-based flowers and dirt is majestically beautiful and leads us to an inner state of calm and contentment. Why not extend these feelings to our present condition so that we can start building a better future?

Feliciano, born in 1984, in São Paulo (Brazil), has exhibited at Photoville (New York, 2012), Bonni Benrubi Gallery (New York, 2011), and the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (2010), among other venues. His work has been featured in the New York Times online, Time magazine’s photography blog, and the blog of the International Center of Photography. He is part of the upcoming exhibition Festival of Art and Gastronomy at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (November 2012). More information can be found at his blog, blog.natureza.art.br.

Feliciano’s Residency is made possible by Location One’s International Committee and by the Brazilian Cultural Office.

Artists 2011-2012

Pablo Helguera (Mexico)
Location One International Committee

Born in Mexico City, 1971. Lives and works in New York

Pablo Helguera (based in New York, born in Mexico City, 1971) works in the fields of pedagogy, literature, musical composition, and theater. His projects have included performance lectures, scripted symposia, and panel discussions (with or without the knowledge of the audience) as well as a variety of experimental formats of verbal presentation.

Helguera’s works have been presented in many venues including the Liverpool Biennial, Performa 05, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, ICA in Boston, MoMA, and many others. His play, The Juvenal Players, produced by Grand Arts in Kansas City, was presented at The Kitchen in 2010. His orchestral work Endingness was performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leonard Slatkin. He is the author of more than 10 books including Theatrum Anatomicum (and other performance lectures), a collection of performative works. His social practice project, The School of Panamerican Unrest (2006), consisted of the creation of a nomadic schoolhouse that traveled by land throughout the Americas from Alaska to Chile, presenting collaborative performance and civic events in over 26 cities. He is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Creative Capital Grant; and in 2011 was named the first winner of the International Award for Participatory Art of the Regione Emilia Romagna in Italy. As an educator, Helguera has worked in museums for over two decades and currently works as Director of Adult and Academic Programs at The Museum of Modern Art. He is the Pedagogical Curator of the 8th Mercosul Biennial, opening in September 2011.

Jacob Dahl Jürgensen (Denmark)
Danish Arts Agency

Born in Copenhagen, 1975. Lives and works in London.

Jacob Dahl Jürgensen’s sculptures pose as fictive relics; the possible artifacts of a future archaeology unearthing the ethnological debris of today. Influenced by early 20th century Modernism, Jurgensen often quotes from art history by intertwining recognizable forms and ideologies with fragments of popular culture to create ritualistic monuments divining a contemporary spirituality. His Folly, The Mystical’s Sphere, nods to the futuristic architecture of Tatlin and Fuller; the sparse copper structure standing as a theatrical oracle, emanating a primitive occultism from the power of low-watt light bulbs.
website: http://www.jacob-dahl-jurgensen.com/

Jacob Dahl Jürgensen’s residency is made possible by The Danish Arts Agency.

Maria José Arjona (Colombia)
Location One International Committee

Born in Bogotà, Colombia in 1973. She lives and works in New York
Ms. Arjona graduated from The Higher Academy Of Art Of Bogota (ASAB) in 2000 and her practice is exclusively focused on long duration performance.

She has been part of numerous exhibitions in different museums, galleries, and instituions in South America, The United States, Europe and China. Her work is a permanent part of many relevant collections around world.

Hiraku Suzuki (Japan)
Asian Cultural Council

Born in Miyagi, Japan, 1978. Lives and works in Tokyo.

Hiraku Suzuki obtained an MFA from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Focusing on ideas of memory and excavation, his work centers on an expanded notion of drawing which encompasses works on paper and panels, installation, murals, frottages, and live performance drawing. Much of his work hinges on the vast library of signs and glyphs he has developed by focusing on the shapes, forms, rhythms, and materials of his immediate environment (which can be understood as the base units of the ever-changing hidden language of the city).

His recent solo exhibitions include WIMBLEDON space, London (2011); Galerie du JourAgnes b., Paris (2010); and Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya, Tokyo (2008). Group exhibitions include Roppongi Crossing, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2010); 100 stories of love, The21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2009); Between site and space, ARTSPACE, Sydney (2009); Redbull House of Art, Hotel Central, Sao Paulo (2009); and Vision of Contemporary Art, The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo (2009). His early works are held in the collection of The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan.

Publications include GENGA, published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha/Agnes b., and Looking For Minerals, published by BEAMS.
http://www.wordpublic.com/hiraku

Mr. Suzuki’s residency is made possible by The Asian Cultural Council

Michaela Müller
Location One International Committee

Born in St.Gallen, Switzerland. She lives and works in Switzerland and in Zagreb, Croatia.
Michaela is in love with paint and film, and through the process of animation she has found a perfect means of combination. She is currently researching and exploring the borders between narrative and abstract experimental film, based on rhythm and choreography via animation.
She likes to work on social topics of public concern. Her 8 minute animation, “Miramare” (2009), (paint on glass), is an impressive encounter between tourists and immigrants shown from a children’s perspective. It has been shown at more than 70 film festivals all over the world including Cannes, Annecy, London, Melbourne, Sarajevo, Rio de Janeiro and St. Petersburg. “Miramare” won more than 15 awards includion the Swiss Film Prize Quartz, the Centaur for Best Debut Film at Message to Man Film Festival, St. Petersburg, the Grand Prix at Animateka Film Festival, Ljubljana etc.
Michaela studied animated film and New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia. Miramare is her diploma film. She likes to collaborate on theatre and dance projects, where she contributes animated scenographic elements.
Michaela Müller’s residency is made possible by Pierre Nussbaumer and the Location One International Committee.
website: www.triboje.com

Na Yingyu (China)
Lijiang Studio
Location One International Committee

Na Yingyu is a Chinese artist, born in 1973 in Yichun, Heilongjiang, China, he lives and works in Beijing. Na Yingyu has exhibited extensively in China, Brazil and Israel. Our Homeland! Gone Just Like That will be Na Yingyu’s first solo show in the United States.

Na Yingyu’s residency made possible by Location One’s International Committee and Lijiang Studio, Lashihai, China.

Andrea Yugoslavia Chirinos (Mexico)
Location One International Committee

Andrea Yugoslavia Chirinos Brown was born in Mexico, where she studied dance, theater and art history. There she began to dance professionally and also to experiment with choreography. In 1994 she moved first to Boston and then to New York to achieve a Bachelor in Fine Arts (Dance major) at the Boston Conservatory and in Mary Mount Manhattan College. Around that time she danced with the Stanley Love Performance Group and with Anime Dance Japan, at the same time showing her own work in venues around the city of New York.

In 2000 she moved back to Mexico City where she was assigned as the director of the students company of the university Instituto Politécnico Nacional where she did several choreography and toured in all the campuses of this important public Nacional University. She also began her own company called Mitrovica Dance. Since the moment of its creation, Chirino´s Dance Company has performed in museums, schools and theaters. Her pieces, like the Faith Line, Restaurant Tesuyo, Tangled, Familiar Environment, Second Life and Ritual de lo Habitual have made the company to be named the Best Artistic Project of the City, an annual price voted by the people. In 2009 she won the first prize in the prestigious Mexican Contemporary Dance Award with the piece Tangled, for its originality and its use of space. This price is issued by the INBA, the Institute National of Bellas Artes, a pivotal institution in Mexican culture.

In March of 2011, she presented and installation called Hotel Irina, with more than 15 dancers, sponsored by Universidad National Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM). The company also tour in museums with the last project called Corridor Shadows Exterior Evening. In May 2011 Andrea Yugoslavia Chirinos move back to New York City.

Tommy Støckel (Denmark)
Danish Arts Council

Born in 1972 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Tommy Støckel uses computer-generated calculations to create elaborate and intricate sculptural installations that resemble fractal-like architecture. Geometry, scale and perspective are essentials in the work of Tommy Støckel. His fascination of cool modernism and science fictions novels from both the 19th and 20th centuries is reflected in collages and installations that represent a constructed future seen in miniature worlds and deserted sci-fi landscapes. With a precise mathematic technique Støckel creates collages using figures cut out from catalogues and sculptures showing different layers and the inevitable decay of time. The use of materials as paper, cardboard and foam contrasts the sophisticated themes as deconstruction and chaos theory.

Monica Baptista (Portugal)
Gulbenkian Foundation

Born in S. Paio de Oleiros, Portugal, 1984. Lives and works in Portugal.

Monica Baptista is a painter-turned-documentary filmmaker who has created several films on topics ranging from Chechnyan soldiers on the TransSiberian Express, to tracts on herbal tea, to experimental investigations of architectural structures. Present in all of her work is a focus on the perception of space and time in relation to the particular community or subject matter of her films.

Monica Baptista’s residency is made possible by The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Luso American Foundation

Agnieszka Kurant (Poland)
Polish Cultural Institute
Trust for Mutual Understanding

Born in Łodz, 1978. Lives and works in Warsaw.

Agnieszka Kurant is an artist based in Warsaw. She represented Poland at the Polish Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2010 (collaboration with the architect Aleksandra Wasilkowska). She is interested in the ways in which trying to interpret the world logically results in a fictional version of reality. Her works explore how things created as fictions, rumors, paranormal phenomena as well as objects not existing materially, enter into economy and politics of contemporary world. She is interested in virtual capital, imaginary property, immaterial labour, hybrid authorship, changes of aura, value and status of objects in cognitive capitalism. Many of her works are related to the existence of the future in the present. Her works have been shown in art institutions including: Witte de With, Rotterdam (2011); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2004); Tate Modern, London (2006); Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York (2005) and Museum of Modern Art, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw. Kurant has participated in international contemporary art exhibitions including: Performa Biennial, New York (2009), Athens Biennale (2009), Moscow Biennale (2007) and Bucharest Biennale (2008). In 2008 she was commissioned to realize Frieze Projects at Frieze Art Fair, London. In 2009 she was shortlisted for the International Henkel Art Award (MUMOK, Vienna). Kurant was an artist in residence at Palais de Tokyo, Paris in 2004; ISCP, New York in 2005; Konstfak, Stockholm in 2007 and at the Paul Klee Center (Sommerakademie) in Bern, 2009. Sternberg Press published Kurant’s monograph “Unknown Unknown” in 2008 and the Venice Biennale catalogue “Emergency Exit” in 2010. Her solo show is currently on view at Montehermoso Cultural Center in Spain.

Agnieszka Kurant’s residency is presented in association with the Polish Cultural Institute in New York within its Poland-U.S. Artists-In-Residence Exchange Program, organized by a-i-r laboratory at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Poland and Location One in New York, with generous support of the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Ana Freitas Machado (Brazil)
Location One International Committee

Ana Freitas Machado is an artist who lives and works in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. Many of her works are the result of a conceptual and visual theme. Time, geometry, nature and morphology of the creative process are part of its research universe in different media such as drawing, photography, artist book, printmaking and sculpture.

Atsushi Kaga (Ireland)
The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon

Born in Tokyo, Japan, 1978. Lives and works in Dublin, Ireland.

Atsushi Kaga’s work depicts a fictional world inhabited by a cast of invented characters. Through his alternative reality, Kaga explores personal and cultural identity, as well as complex social issues faced in daily life. His mixed media work, which includes paintings, animations and wall drawings, attest to his keen sensibility and sense of intimacy. His work is whimsical and playful but with a dark and biting sense of humor underlying deceptively ‘kawaii’ imagery. website: http://www.atsushikaga.com/

Click here to view the embedded video.

Atsushi Kaga’s residency is made possible by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon

<< current residents

David Molander (Sweden)
Hasselblad Foundation

Born in Stockholm, Sweden 1983.

In the project An Urban Anatomy visual artist David Molander is in pursuit of the essence of the urban centers. By the use of digital photography and animation, he collects a documentary material of hundreds of photos and film clips that he dissects and reconstruct into large still- or moving images that can be placed between document and fiction. He cut open interiors, sample streetlights, stitch together pavement and gather parts of the city that although closely linked, seldom meet. Molanders work put emphasis on new relationships between architecture, social environment, living memory and the humans within it. David Molander has been studying photography and film at Harvard University and has a BA in Rhetoric and a BA in Art history from Uppsala University. He graduated 2010 with a MFA from School of Photography in Gothenburg/Sweden. Website: http://www.davidmolander.com

David Molander’s residency is made possible by The Hasselblad Foundation

Location One 10th Anniversary Exhibition
Laurie Anderson
From the Air: Two Installations

March 10 – May 2, 2009
Opening Reception, Tuesday, March 10, 6-8pm

Location One is pleased to announce the exhibition From the Air: Two Installations, by Laurie Anderson which will be presented in celebration of its 10th Anniversary. Anderson, who was invited to be Location One’s Senior Artist-in-Residence in 2008, will present a new piece and the revival of an older work, both addressing the concept of disembodiment, which has been a common thread throughout her oeuvre. The exhibition will be on view from March 10 through May 2, 2009, with an opening reception on Tuesday, March 10 from 6 to 8 pm.

The title piece, From the Air, uses a series of 3D projections, a technique Anderson has employed since the 1970s, to create a story about the artist and her dog. The second installation, Aleph, projects sound electronically into the gallery space, focusing the sound to make it seemingly emanate from midair. Originally commissioned for the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, the text for Aleph is inspired by the unspeakable nature of this Hebrew letter, and the installation examines the unconscious process of putting ideas into words.

Fostered by the experimental art scene of downtown New York in the early 1970s, Laurie Anderson created her earliest performances in Soho, where Location One is based. In addition to continuing her acclaimed performance work, she has gone on to broaden her artistic practice to include music, video, digital art, and sculpture.

Location One will organize its inaugural Benefit Gala in celebration of its 10th Anniversary on Thursday, March 5, 2009. Honoring Laurie Anderson and her contributions to the downtown New York art world and beyond, the gala will feature a preview of the exhibition and a special performance that the artist will reveal.

About Laurie Anderson:
Laurie Anderson is one of America’s most renowned—and daring—creative pioneers. She is best known for her multimedia presentations and innovative use of technology. As writer, director, visual artist and vocalist she has created groundbreaking works that span the worlds of art, theater, and experimental music.

Her recording career, launched by “O Superman” in 1981, includes the soundtrack to her feature film “Home of the Brave” and “Life on a String” (2001). Anderson’s live shows range from simple spoken word to elaborate multi-media stage performances such as “Songs and Stories for Moby Dick” (1999). Anderson has published seven books and her visual work has been presented in major museums around the world.

In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA which culminated in her touring solo performance “The End of the Moon”. Recent projects include a series of audio-visual installations and a high definition film, Hidden Inside Mountains, created for World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan. In 2007 she received the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for her outstanding contribution to the arts. She recently completed a two-year worldwide tour of her latest performance piece, “Homeland”, which will be released on Nonesuch Records this year.

Location One exhibition related press:

NY Times[link] – PDF
Artcat[link] – PDF
ArtForum[link] – PDF
Artico[link] – PDF
Artlog
New York Observer[link] – PDF
Performa[link] – PDF
Theater Mania[link] – PDF

Wednesday, July 16, 2008
7:00 pm

Jean Shin in conversation with Nathalie Anglès, Director of Location One’s International Residency Program

A Conversation on The Topic of Jean Shin’s Exhibition “And we move”
Wednesday, July 16, 2008 7pm
Free admission, Open to the public
at Location One 26 Greene Street (between Canal and Grand)

Jean Shin’s current exhibition at Location One “And we move” is an installation that explores the nature of music and musical production by analyzing some of its fundamental structures: the score, the conductor, the magnetic tape on which is it is recorded. A site-specific work developed during her residency at Location One, “And we move” incorporates large-scale inkjet prints, magnetic tape, and a video projection of a close view of a conductor’s back as he leads an orchestra, the folds of his jacket undulating with each of his movements. We don’t see his arms or the musicians, but the quiet passages and dramatic swells of the music (Ma Vlast (My Country), by Czech composer Bedrich Smetana, and Ibert’s Flute Concerto) are expressed in the rippling shadows and folds of the fabric.

Artist Jean Shin will talk about her work with Director of Location One’s International Residency Program, Nathalie Anglès on Wednesday, July 16 at 7pm. The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

Jean Shin creates elaborate sculptures and site-specific installations that suggest imaginary communities through the use of accumulated cast-offs. Mary Ceruti writes, “Jean Shin uses discarded material (the excess, the forgotten, the no longer useful) in works that operate between abstraction and representation. Made from the remnants of contemporary urban life, Shin’s sculptures form a sort of visual history and a social mapping.”

A Brooklyn-based artist, Jean has exhibited widely in the U.S. and abroad. Recently awarded a GSA Art in Architecture commission, she is working on a permanent large-scale work in the lobby of the Fallon Federal Building in Baltimore, Maryland. Exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Asia Society, Brooklyn Museum, Sculpture Center, Fabric Workshop, Socrates Sculpture Park, PKM Gallery (Beijing), Ssamzie Space (Seoul), Frederieke Taylor Gallery, and Galerie Eric Dupont (Paris).
Website: http://www.jeanshin.com

Jean Shin’s residency at Location One is supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Snake Alley is part of Asian Contemporary Art Week which connects leading New York City galleries and museums in a citywide event comprising of public programs such as exhibitions, receptions, lectures and performances. The Week focuses on the broad spectrum of artworks produced by Asian contemporary artists working in their home countries and abroad. Please see details from http://www.acaw.net/ACAW2008/aboutacaw/

Snake Alley is a two-venue group exhibition of cutting-edge Taiwanese contemporary art at The Taipei Cultural Center and The Gabarron Foundation Carriage House Center for the Arts—Curated by Eric C. Shiner

Deep in the midst of Taiwan’s capital Taipei lies the Wanhua District, the city’s most historic area and home to Longshan Temple, the city’s oldest religious structure. The area was also home to Taipei’s red light district and a tourist attraction called Snake Alley where live animals including snakes and turtles were displayed in small cages—and often publicly killed for the extraction of their blood which could be consumed on site for good health and sexual prowess— until animal rights activists successfully brought the practice to a stop in the 1990s, or, more likely, pushed these activities behind closed doors, and thus ending this spectacle that was interweaved with tradition and hucksterism writ large. Today, it is a place filled with restaurants, night markets and shops, reflective of the bustling hub of the gleaming modern city that surrounds it. Yet, at the heart of Wanhua lie the secrets of Taipei’s past, a conceptual and shared history that artists from Taiwan have looked to again and again for subject matter that so often plays out in their work. In SNAKE ALLEY, the work of many of Taiwan’s most prominent contemporary artists shows how they are negotiating the epic changes that have occurred over the last two decades in Taiwan as the nation has exploded economically, and how they rectify those changes with an at times troubling past.

All of the artists in the exhibition examine the secrets, shadows and growing pains of contemporary Taiwanese culture. By no means pessimistic, their works smartly analyze the underground aspects of a specific site bound in the throes of unprecedented growth and informed by the binary of stability versus uncertainty that comes along with it. These artists look at the themes of identity, sexuality, politics and the environment (both built and natural) frequently, making critically-aware art that engages rather than condemns the ever-changing face of Taiwan.

Photojournalist and artist Chang Chien-Chi, for example, often turns his camera’s lens on the unspoken. His best known project comprised portraits of psychiatric patients whose families deeded them over to a temple complex known for taking in the unwanted. In SNAKE ALLEY, Chang again focuses on a topic of current debate in Taiwan: the growing number of older Taiwanese men who are traveling to Vietnam to use a service that matches them with a wife. Chang documents the process from start to finish in his “Double Happiness” series, showing the young women being interviewed, documented and eventually married (in a group ceremony) to their new mates from the other side of Asia. The portraits show resignation and excitement in not only the brides, but the nervous grooms as well, and document the simple fact that due to demographics, there simply aren’t enough women of marriageable age available for every potential husband back in Taiwan.

Twin brothers Chang Keng-Hua and Chang Geng-Hwa collaborate on projects revolving around technology and violence, and the fine line between the two. Here, the brothers display works from their “Shotgun Blue” series, sumptuous imagery of machine guns wrapped in black nylons and set against a rich blue ground. By encasing these lethal weapons in a product used in the construction of beauty—and the occasional bank heist—the Changs attempt to put a soft edge on the hard core realities of a world marred by war and violence, while at the same time critically addressing the media’s fixation on packaging war as a consumer product in and of itself. Young artist Chang Ling also looks at the meeting point of media and culture in his eerie paintings that combine traditional Chinese motifs, such as imagery of animals and nature, with such contemporary subject matter as war planes and mutated bodies. His fleshy and mysterious beasts populate a world riddled with violence, suggesting that Armageddon is upon us, or that it has already come to pass. Painter Wu Tien-Chang also depicts alternate bodies in his work, most often in the form of a strange clown-like character who appears again and again in the artist’s oeuvre. Whether riding a bicycle built for two or rowing in a boat, Wu’s strange and slightly menacing clowns, like Chang Ling’s animals, allow us to imagine a world populated by the completely bizarre.

Contemporary dance wunderkind Chou Shuyi not only pushes into uncharted territory in his choreography and dance performances, but also goes so far as to create installation art within which he stages dance happenings. Seemingly impromptu in nature, his jolting recitals are in actuality very much planned and rehearsed; their manic movements and seizure-like vibrations standing in for the real bodies which navigate the space of a radically-shifting Taiwanese landscape, both actual and psychological. Photographer and performance artist Hou I-Ting also looks at the topic of changing bodies in space by using herself as the primary subject of her work. Hou uses costuming and make-up to create alternate personalities, for example a sexy—yet faceless—figure in Day-Glo fishnets and a neon yellow wig in an early video work, while using a projector in other photo-based work to literally screen other possible selves onto her actual face and body. In so doing, Hou melds fantasy and reality, making us question the limits of both.

Painter Hua Chien-Chiang also creates fantasy environments, often using mythic animals and technologically-enhanced bodies as the main characters in his vivid canvases. In Hua’s world, birds sprouting earphones or USB cables as plumage are the norm, as are human beings with recharger attachment portals and futuristic jetpacks. Here, the past and the future become one, exactly mimicking the actual conditions of society in flux that so defines contemporary Taiwan. Sculptor and installation artist Huang Shih-Chieh also works within this vocabulary, but in radically different—and often large-scale—ways. A representative of Taiwan at the 2007 Venice Biennale, Huang is known for using junk technology as the primary material in his work. Highlighter fluid, cheap plastic shopping bags, remote control toy motors and other odd elements all come together in Huang’s flashing and whirring contraptions as if to bring a sense of optimism to the patchwork nature of life in the here-and-now. For SNAKE ALLEY, Huang installs his massive work Organic Concept in the carriage house of the Gabarron Foundation at 149 East 38th Street. Consisting of just a few box fans and meter-upon-meter of reconstituted plastic bags, the billowing snake form that results inhabits the entire space and is both menacing and tranquil in equal measure. Sculptor Wong Yuh-Shioh also uses the detritus of life—polystyrene foam, marbles, bricks—to piece together fantasy realms based in the realm of nature. Her Jellyfish Lamp sends out a bright light that seems to expose the cheap materials from which it is made, making us question the concept of truth and beauty, and indeed of life itself.

Carrying on with this theme, artist Ku Shih-Yung presents a video work, The Astonishment of What I Have Been Through Abolishes the Aureola of Experience, that features an animated skeleton cavorting on the screen. Part of a larger installation that was presented at the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art, the work looks at the underpinnings of life and how something as simple as our own biological framework can be construed in a variety of ways, while at the same time charting the course of time on our physical containers. And it is those very containers that photographer Kuo Hui-Chan takes as her subject matter, often times using her own body as the canvas upon which she depicts alternate beings or fantasy environments. Literally painting aspects of architecture, nature and urban views over her skin and clothes, Kuo becomes a chameleon that perfectly blends into her surroundings, whether against a back alley wall in downtown Taipei, or standing in a rice paddy in the countryside. By becoming one with the diverse landscapes of Taiwan, Kuo charts her lived environment by fusing herself to its very make-up.

The youngest artist in the show, Lan Yuan-Hung, also manipulates the body, however does so not to blend in, but to stand out. His grotesque digital manipulations feature men across a variety of age groups and body types lying in their beds in contorted poses and sprouting additional appendages such as an extra leg here or a third arm there. Seemingly depicting the after effects of a toxic spill or nuclear disaster, Lan’s mutants both repulse and attract thanks to their focus on the flexibility of the human form, whether through digital or actual means. Video artist and photographer Lin Hsin-I also features mutants in her animated films and enhanced photography. Here, the artist plays the role of a futuristic nymph with cyber eyes and sockets embedded into her flesh, no doubt a site for the implantation of nourishment, energy or data. Lin’s work often features this cyborg character in lush tropical environments, an effect that makes her robot-like form appear even further distanced from nature. She questions the role of the human corpus as technology gradually overtakes it, positing that at some point in the not-too-distant future we may all begin to morph into hybrid bodies that straddle the binary of nature versus technology. Video pioneer Yuan Goang-Ming also explores this divide in his new series of videos and C-prints composed of endless thickets of lush green leaves, all without life-giving veins below their glistening surfaces. Through using technology to erase an important element of his natural subject, Yuan takes on the role of creator, editor and fabricator in one fell swoop, producing a faux nature that can never exist in real life.

For sculptor Shyu Ruey-Shiann, this same binary has always infused his work with a hard-edged grit and witty sense of humor. Known for his large-scale sculptural works made from old machine parts, working motors, fan belts and gears, Hsu seems to utilize the detritus of industry as the primary building blocks of his elaborate works. Referencing Taiwan’s own loss of industrial jobs due to rising production costs and the migration of factories to mainland China in the 1990s, Hsu’s work gives the past’s mechanical ghosts a new lease on life. Here, his new sculpture Between comprises two standard kitchen garbage cans in metal. When guests use the foot pedal to open the can, they are confronted with a most unexpected barrage: lion roars exploding from the speakers set within. As with his massive churning sculptures, Hsu here too seamlessly blends the natural with the man-made, forcing us to question where the line of distinction between the two truly lies.

Video artist Tseng Yu-Chin also confronts the “man-made” in his work, but not via industrial or technological means. Tseng is much more concerned with the production of identity as it develops in childhood and how the fears, dreams and secrets of our youth remain with us for a lifetime. Perhaps Taiwan’s most celebrated young artist, with a showing at Documenta in 2007 and the recent receipt of China’s most celebrated art prize, the ACCC Award, Tseng has created an entire aesthetic vocabulary based on diverted glances, childhood uncertainty and a sense of longing for something just outside the camera’s frame. Haunting in its loneliness, Tseng’s work takes us back to the universal time of feeling out of place and prompts us to think about the influence these memories have on us today. Novelist and photographer Seven U also takes us back in time, whether through a literary passage about the glories of youth, or through his stark black and white photography that documents the abandoned or hidden space of cities around the world. In his “Low” series, U snaps pictures in old factories and empty buildings throughout Taipei, showing that even in the face of unprecedented development and economic growth, unwanted and unkempt spaces still exist. Indeed, all of the artists in SNAKE ALLEY turn to the secrets and fantasies of a society in flux for inspiration, and in so doing, create works of art that capture the uncertainty, aspirations and realities of life in Taiwan today.

tpecc.org

Jean creates elaborate sculptures and site-specific installations that suggest imaginary communities through the use of accumulated cast-offs. Mary Ceruti writes, “Jean Shin uses discarded material (the excess, the forgotten, the no longer useful) in works that operate between abstraction and representation. Made from the remnants of contemporary urban life, Shin’s sculptures form a sort of visual history and a social mapping.”

A Brooklyn-based artist, Jean has exhibited widely in the U.S. and abroad. Recently awarded a GSA Art in Architecture commission, she is working on a permanent large-scale work in the lobby of the Fallon Federal Building in Baltimore, Maryland. Exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Asia Society, Brooklyn Museum, Sculpture Center, Fabric Workshop, Socrates Sculpture Park, PKM Gallery (Beijing), Ssamzie Space (Seoul), Frederieke Taylor Gallery, and Galerie Eric Dupont (Paris).

Jean’s residency at Location One is supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Events & Exhibitions

Jean Shin: And we move
June 19th – July 26th 2008

The nature of an interview is to pose a series of questions to clarify, elaborate and provide a verbal description of a certain issue. In this case ‘the certain issue’ is one which has risen out of Andrew Duggan’s encounters with some of the New York art world he has met.

Andrew interviewed a number of persons with whom he has conversations with during his 10 month residency.

These interviews were conducted via e mail. Transcripts were made into a script and were handed to and read by auditioning actors. The recording is presented alongside images of ‘interview props’. The artist and the interviewer have been removed from ‘The Artist Interview.

Special thanks to Claire Montgomery, Diego Fasciati, Drazen Pantic, Dan Cameron, Pieranna Cavalchini, Sebastien Delot, Heather Wagner, Nick Normal, Barry Dunne and Sebastien Sanz de Santamaria.
[display_podcast]

THE SCRIPT

Interviewer – Some artists, when they spend time in different places ‘relocate’ their practice. That is the ‘local’ changes, but not the practice. What do yo think happens when if artist ‘dislocates’ themselves in the new local thus working with the language of that local?

Interviewee #1 – I first mention the much-remarked-upon emergence of a kind of “international art” that seems to prevail these days – a kind of homogenous, global perspective, whereby everyone is trying very hard NOT to be local and end by making blurry references to the same ideas (be they the French theorists or American irony and contingency crowd). Artists develop a method and re-employ that method in whatever locale they arrive- not so interesting.

Interviewee #2 – I think, nowadays that all artists are ‘international’. We all communicate, because of technology, internationally. But maybe a new situation is called for, and maybe what is needed is to look at how an artist is ‘interlocal’, in that the local is what becomes important.

Interviewer – So how do you think the the phrase “all politics are local”, applies to artists’ practice with this idea of all artists being international but not all being ‘interlocal’?

Interviewee #2 – More general question about politics and globalization is what is “local” now? Any single political issue (however local it is) bounces back to the global discussion, one way or another. And is the re-appropriated by different political groups, for different political purposes. And law of unexpected consequences works every time …

So, yes all artist are international, some are “interlocal” but all issues are global either way. And the less prominent political signifier in their work, the more it might be suitable for reinterpretation and (inverse) contexulization. One consequence of what is that we see now lots of very politically transparent work, using art as a political megaphon. I’m trying not to put value judgment here, but I kind of like art political agit-prop. Except that it is so often unclear what are the political premises and values brought to the table. If any.

Interviewee #1 – Most interesting to me is an artist who takes some part of his/her perspective on the world and, looking very carefully at the particular locale, examines the new locale with new eyes. So, perhaps relocation is simply geographic; dislocation takes you out of both time and space. It is a real letting go, and is truly unnerving, but a brave and important thing to do.

Interviewer – I’d like to move on and discuss the perception of the word �America� and ‘the United States of America’ within this context of the building of the wall along the southern border of the United Stated with plans for surveillance web cams.

The United States of America builds a defensive structure along it’s border, posts a military presence and employs new surveillance technology to maintain that border.

What do you think the legacy of such a structure and action will be on the psychology of America?

Interviewee #2 – The current hysteria over the US/Mexican border plays to the very worst aspects of our national xenophobia, while revealing how little of the discourse over ‘security’ has anything to do with making our borders secure. No terrorist has ever been shown to have entered our country through the US/Mexico border, which is quite amazine if you consider how many undocumented workers, contraband narcotics, etc do slip through every single day. It is also worth pointing out that virtually all of the border territory under discussion was sovereign Mexican territory little more than a hundred years ago. My strong belief is that the Bush administration’s fear-mongering is almost entirely motivated by the desire to generate enough dread and anxiety in the citizenry that we will submit to their increasingly dictatorial aims. Having said that, I also think there is good reason to hope that the congressional elections this fall will put the brakes on the some of their most extremist policies, and that by the end of 08 they will have so disgraced themselves on every other front that voters will be ready to throw the whole crowd out (and lock a few up for good measure).

So, to answer your question: I believe it is vital that our next president, Al Gore, begin dismantling the border wall immediately after taking office, recall the National Guard, and diarm the Minutemen. The security apparatus, which is probably inseparable from our national objectives in technology and information, would remain.

Interviewee #1 – It is incredible the Berlin Wall came down in 89 and here we are building new ones. When I use the “we” I am thinking transnationally. Our surveilling exploits have not improved our ability to see or to think critically…and then there is the very frightening issue of WHO surveils those doing the surveillance.

Interviewer – …and perception of ‘America’?”

Interviewee #2 – Unfortunately, our national self-image as ‘America’ and us as ‘Americans’ will most likely never be addressed along the way, and we will probably find soon enough that many of our neighbors no longer wish to have that word associated with their own identities anyway. So, despite my own personal discomfort about using the word ‘America’ to describe the USA, when its proper reference belongs to the two continents of North America and South America, getting people in this country to examine that imperialist habit more closely is probably a lost cause.

Interviewee #1 – Back to your question…..Will “to America” become synonymous with “to surveil”. I most sincerely hope not. The positive thing about an action (no matter how blind and stupid) is that sooner or later it brings a reaction. Nothing stays still no wall can stop the flow.

Interviewer – President Bush during a recent speech to the Press at the Rose garden after his surprise visit to Iraq said that the war in Iraq was not THE war on Terror but part of the THEATRE. How do you think this ‘theatre’ is perceived

Interviewee #2 – It seems that politics is a series of “coup de théâtre!” and he needs some as he is in a weaker political position. It is interesting to make this connection with terror though the civil war is not taking place on the american soil and cannot have the same impact as the french terreur. It feels that terror will grow as more and more american will die and public opinion might shake things. Despite growing tensions, scandals nothing has been done and it is amaizing to watch this puppet show going on.

On the other hand the use of the term can be understood as part of Hollywood vocabulary. As America has had actors in strategic position, the star wars was an interesting choice.The axis of evil is an other good title for a science fiction movie. Though the device of “Theatre” appears as a way to introduce a necessary distance with the real. Actors on stage are only performing though here people are dying, anger is growing and shall linger for decades.The cycle of violence is not nearly at an end. The future between western/ arab diplomatic relation has been damaged severely. And here we can also blame Europe for not finding a way to be an altrenative voice in that concert of discontent and to sink into mediocrity. I wander when the political consciousness awakening in Europe is going to take place.

Interviewer – AND how does it relate to the ‘theatre’ of the gallery?

Interviewee #2 – Interestingly enough the use of the word to refer to military operation with President Bush as the cast director. Actors have enterred politics and we have watched already the star wars and amaizing declaration in CA recently. Theatre is away to bring illusion to distort and recreate reality, it is also a way of mastering things since you can control them. It is a way to put things in a space and time frame that you control but in an art gallery you might play with the illusion of the White cube in order to create that spce of wonder and make people feel they enter a sacred space. In real life the theatre can not be that illusion, it is way too unresponsible to act as if there were no difference, politics is about playing with events and issues in such a way that you may bring emphasis or silence them. Here it would not be so much of a white cube theatre but maybe a new concept a red cube theatre.

Interviewer – So could the red cube be a shift from say the corporate clean white cube to one which art engages with politics in a gallery context?

Interviewee #2 – it would be very interesting, as politics can be bloody and the gallery is the prefect stage ou theatre…Red tape strategies.

Opening Reception: Thursday, 9 February 2006 6-8pm
Open through: March 4th, 2006 (Tue – Sat, 12 – 6 pm)

On Thursday, February 9th, Location One presents the first of two Spring exhibitions showcasing new work developed by artists from Italy, France, Germany, Korea, and Portugal who are participating in the 2005-2006 International Residency Program. Featured works represent a diverse range of artistic approaches:

Reclaim the Media! by Paololuca Barbieri and the Alterazioni Video collective, is a a three-piece installation that acts upon and reacts against the implications of unprecedented media control in our society.

Alterazioni Video develops software platforms and tools to question issues of conventional borderline of legal and illegal use of media technologies.“Baghdad Space Sharing” (2005), interactive video installation. “Blue Jack” (2005), bluetooth phones, software and media – experiment testing the limits of privacy protection at conventional consumer electronics devices.“If You Hear Something, Say Something” (2005), pirate radio transmitter, gold MP3 recordings. A project in collaboration with Nikolas Gambaroffand special guests Franco Berardi Bifo, Raddek Community, Sylver Lotringer, Avdey Ter Oganien, Los Osamas, Dj Pollution, Aldo Vignocchi, and others.

On the Road (dvd, 2’06″, 2005) and Parade (dvd, 1’49″, 2005) by Isabelle Ferreira

Ferreira describes On the Road as “a road-movie that has been short-circuited.” Through the depiction of an action that is quintessentially absurd, this short video aims to liberate landscape as a format from all narrative content and human representation. The second video Parade is a silent and visual dialogue between two mechanisms. More generally Isabelle’s work tends to create a time suspended atmosphere, where gesture and motion are slowed down and hidden rhythms revealed.

Stars (2006) by Geka Heinke

A monumental wall installation. Here a dynamic structure is achieved through the juxtaposition of a large monochromatic star motif painted directly on the wall against a backdrop of loose, free flowing technique on papersheets rearranged by the artist to engage the viewer into the depths of illusionistic space.

Logo Oriental Landscape Painting (2005-2006) by Yoon-Young Park

consisting of 6 vertical panels, painted in Chinese ink on rice paper. It is the artist’s reflection and comment on reading a western book on Oriental Painting which identifies Oriental landscape painting as Utopian, as opposed to the realistic approach of western landscape painting. Park observes the logos of several bottled waters that include mountains and rivers, and are depicted in a utopian and stylized manner. She elaborates these in the traditional technique of Oriental landscape panels with ink burshed on rice paper.

In her new work, Mariana Viegas

continues to investigate the impact of landscape as a transformative and transforming entity in urban contexts. The artist’s photographs suggest evidence of human activity in the design and articulation of parks and other green areas in the city. In the video, Mariana examines how objects in communal garden settings are placed in such a way that they become designations of each user’s area. Increased familiarity with these objects can also shift our perception and lead to the construction of possible narratives. All these investigations address the larger issue of the relationship between fiction and reality, nature and the construction of nature.

The residencies of the artists included in this show are generously supported by Associazione Artegiovane, Milan; The FondiAnima; Comune di Milano; L’Association Française d’Action Artistique – AFAA, and Ville de Paris; Schloss Balmoral, Stiftung Rheinland Pfalz für Kultur; The Korean Culture and Arts Foundation; Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Luso-American Development Foundation.

Transcript:

(this interview was conducted in Japanese on February 9 2002).

YUKO SAKURAMOTO: I’m with Atsushi Nishijima. Atsushi is a sound artist from Kyoto, Japan. His work and activities are diverse, including sound installation, he live performance, and research on soundscape. He just made an installation at Location One in New York.

So, first please tell us about your installation at Location One :

ATSUSHI NISHIJIMA: I used TV monitors, video tapes, and solar batteries to design the sound system for the installation. For the video screening, I used two different types of sequences: one features images of natural glimmering from the sun and the moon, the other consists of a man-made rhythm resulting from evolving neon signs and the cityscape that I shot at Times Square. Sound was produced by the changing lights, and on screen, color and movement were transformed into electric signals through the use of solar batteries.

YS: Your exhibition was titled, “Subtractive Creation.” Could you explain the meaning of ‘subtractive creation’ , and tell us how you came up with the idea?

AN: Usually, when I think of an idea, I tend to think of different kinds of things by analogy. For instance, in the case of sound and light, they are interesting to me because they are both wave forms. We perceive colors when the waves within the sunlight or streetlights are reflected on things, so that the waves that could be seen red or blue out of all the spectrum of light only reach our eyes. In other words, we simply receive something that is subtracted from some existent totality. In this sense, I am interested in the relationship of the totality, a thing as its part, and myself, and how they interact with each other. Using the earlier example, rather than mixing or adding ‘red’ and ‘blue’ to create something, my concern is how something can be subtracted, mediated by my work, and what the outcome will look like.

YS: So-called “Sound Art” has been gaining popularity recently. As new technology or the computer software has become more available, it seems that everyone can become musicians. What is your definition of Sound Art?

AN: As for the technology, I don’t make any distinction between high and low technology. A friend of mine told me that some people still use the terms ‘new media’ and ‘old media’ for categorization. For me, it seems to be a matter of methodology or choice. Some people use a digital camera, and others opt for a traditional camera with photographic film. Rather than claiming which is good or bad, new or old, it’s becoming more like a matter of one’s taste. The question is how to utilize them, how to use the media ! I heard an interesting story concerning the invention of Hovercrafts. A group of ship specialists started the project in an attempt to produce a high-speed vehicle on the water. They first tried to elaborate the design of the hull, improve the screws, the engine and so on, but failed in their attempts. At some point a specialist on aviation technology joined the team that was working on this project and proposed to create a “flying ship”, which is neither a ship nor an airplane. Ship specialists couldn’t even conceive of such an idea. They were only concerned with the idea of updating the qualities of the ship, and could not imagine a ship hovering in the air. I found the story really interesting. I titled my installation at Location One, “Subtractive Creation” in a rather symbolic sense, as opposed to the idea of creation by addition or mixing. I don’t think adding or mixing is enough. You need to reach a completely different idea in order to create something interesting and new. Unless you can create different ways of looking or thinking, or produce interesting concepts; if I use the example of the ship, you would end up upgrading its performance, efficiency or comfort level. In my case, although I compose and perform music, I want to present different ways of listening to music through my work, or compose and create in relation to the way in which music is listened to. Proposing new ways of listening and hearing, that is my focus. As for the definition of Sound Art, it’s a difficult question. Generally when the work utilizes sound as a medium, it’s often refered to as “Sound Art”. For me, whether sound is used or not, this is not the issue. What matters is whether the work is conceived from “sound”. As long as it is conceived or designed from the perspective of sound, it can be called “sound art”, regardless of whether it is painting, sculpture, or photography. Because what we refer to as “sound” has various aspects. A good example is a musical instrument. Like, when we think of a box whose volume is identical to the volume of a violin, since the shape is different the box doesn’t produce the same sound as the violin, even though the volume is the same. In other words, shape, material, and volume as components of the instrument, the architectural space or environment in which these components are found, all these elements can relate to sound either as a whole or individually. Either way, since it is related to sound, it has that distinct shape and space. To put it in reverse, whether it’s painting, sculpture, photography or architecture, I think “sound art” has interesting possibilities.

June 9-July 28, 2001

Audio interviews of each resident artist by Koan Jeff Baysa:

Ksenija Turcic with Koan Jeff Baysa

Marta Deskur with Koan Jeff Baysa

François Bucher with Koan Jeff Baysa

Museum of Mankind : François Bucher

Museum of Mankind is a video installation depicting the statues that stand high on the roof of the Museum of Mankind in London. François Bucher has shot these cornerstones of Western philosophy and politics with a powerful zoom against a twilight blue sky. The hand-held camera endures the stare of the statues, defying immortality. Images are projected in the upper corners of the gallery. Sound is spatially distributed so that the viewer is surrounded by the direct sound of steady London traffic. Less audible selected tunes reach the ear as well. This piece reveals the hidden elements in the architecture that spell out an alphabet of supremacy. Being Latin American on the one hand while having a French father heavily involved with the history of Western thought, Bucher’s work is a continual critical negotiation between two cultural codes. Parallel to this there is a reflection on cinematic language and its metaphorical potential. The shooting of inanimate statues stems from a reflection on Jean-Luc Godard’s film “Le Mépris”. This visual metaphor was previously quoted by Bucher in his video works “Two Essays on Contempt” (2001) and “Twin Murders” (1999).

New Baby : Marta Deskur

In a multimedia installation and web site project, New Baby?, Marta Deskur questions the significance of family today and the conflicting issues this question addresses. As a socio-economic and political investigation, family has always been central to her work. For “Family in New York”, Deskur initially placed an advertisement in the Voice to interview “people who live alone, couples with no children, couples of different race and religion, gay and lesbian couples and singles, pregnant women, women who have terminated their pregnancies, people who have chosen not to have children”. She selected 14 individuals, submitted them to a questionnaire of identical questions dealing with this subject and then photographed them in her studio. The web site that she has created sums up all of this research and invites the viewer to pursue these discussions. Projected on the wall of an enclosed space, viewers are invited to enter one by one a confessional-like-space and interact directly over the web site. On the outside walls, color photographs of the interviewees are displayed in light boxes as a tribute to their physical presence.

Phase : Ksenija Turcic

Ksenija Turcic presents a new multimedia installation, Phase, where she pursues her investigation of emotional space. In this work, she is interested in the communication space between men and women. Motions of communication between two people are likened in her words to “a whirlpool of misunderstandings that circle within an energetic field”. Men are prone to hide their emotions, whereas women tend to scrutinize and elaborate, sometimes to an extreme. Turcic has filmed the face of a man performing familiar daily gestures (e.g. eating, drinking, shaving); the image is in slow motion and inexpressive. The sound of his breathing becomes audible as the viewer approaches the image. On another screen, a 3rd view of a woman’s face is projected. For a second, both images freeze. This moment in time reflects the possibility of a shared space of communication. A soundtrack of inaudible whispering voices of women can be heard. When both images resume motion, this sound disappears.