Jane Philbrick is an artist working with language.  From September 2008 to June 2009 she will be an International Fellow at Location One as well as an artist research affiliate at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT, where she is developing a solo exhibition for the Skissernas Museum for Public Art in Lund, Sweden, opening in 2009. Her exhibition “PULL” opens Location One’s 2008 season and is on view from September 10 through November 8, 2008. She will be interviewed about her work by Denise Markonish (from Mass MoCA) on September 17, 2008.

http://cavs.mit.edu/artists.html?id=50,644

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

Arario Gallery
www.arariogallery.co.kr
#354-1
Shinbu-dong, Cheonan-si,
Chungcheongnam-do, Korea
Tel : 82 41 551 5100,5101
Fax : 82 41 551 5102
PRESS RELEASE

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IXTLAN STOP
Her work is a restructuring of a mysterious event that unfolds in a dreamlike manner, the way a mystery novel develops as the investigator patches together the pieces of evidence found.

1. The Story

“I think the best way to describe my work is that I am inspired by things that peak my ‘interest’. Therein lies the back story and the evidence behind these unsolved mysteries.” -Among the artist notes

The above statement is artist Yoon-Young Park’s self-professed central idea surrounding her work. And it is true that Park is drawn by events that stir her curiosity which in turn lead her to conduct her own set of research to get to the bottom of it. The Pickton murder, the Virginia Tech Shooting, the Logheed Highway incident, the Riverview Mental Hospital, Vancouver’s downtown east side, Martin Luther King Jr., the Mt. Baker, Exxon Valdez oil spill, etc. were all events and cases that peaked Park’s interest. Park’s work is researching the evidence found in these cases, so as to reach her own interpretation of what had happened. Not only does she explore a variety of media to find such evidence, she even goes as far as to visit those very locations where the mysterious events took place. Park went to the actual location of the Pickton farm where the serial murders took place, making a video of her visit there. Not only that, she recorded her visit to the Riverview Mental Hospital on her own camcorder as well as to Vancouver’s downtown east side where she interviewed the homeless. Such discoveries of evidence surrounding existing cases and their scenery get complicated and mixed up within the context of Yoon-Young Park’s own story in a dreamlike manner. Her stories are her work.

The following three cases were used as motifs for the pieces that are being shown in the current exhibition:

The Pickton Farm serial murder case, Canada: A shocking murder takes place in a pig farm owned by a man named William Pickton in Vancouver, Canada, a beautiful place which is often considered heaven on earth. A total of 69 women either were killed or went missing, with many of the missing women’s DNAs found in the farm’s pig feed, etc.. A series of surreal and unbelievable events had taken place at the Pickton farm.

Exxon Valdez Oil Spill: In 1989, an Exxon Valdez supertanker was crossing the ocean nearby Alaska when an error by the captain led the ship to run aground causing an oil spill of some 11 million gallons of gasoline. The spill caused the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States and hundreds of thousands of ocean creatures were killed as a result. Today, almost 20 years later, the ocean has yet to fully recover from the disaster.

Martin Luther King Jr. murder case: On April 4th, 6pm in 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. He was shot by 30-06 Remington rifle. James Earl Ray was arrested for this case and sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison.

Yoon-Young Park’s works draw from such incidents and she presents the various pieces of evidence she finds in her work, especially in a special space she calls Ixtlan, where Park rearranges the details of the events to tell a brand new story. The story that Park tells is a completely different kind than that which we read or hear through the media.

For this exhibition, Park has completed two full mystery novels. One is the story she wrote while preparing for “Pickton Lake” entitled The Blue Pillar that Appears for a Moment, then Disappears and the other is The Dark and Unlit Logheed Highway. Both novels are fantasy pieces which include her own experiences in the setting, i.e. place, characters, as well as various imagined elements. Her stories are dreamlike and mysterious in that she combines elements of events from the above incidents with other mysterious objects and characters. On one level, her novels are her installation pieces, only in a different form, the only difference being that the materials are words and that the words are the various pieces of the installation.

2. The Space

“IXTLAN is the space you can reach right before death, after you have given up all your desires and the things that you love.”

-Among the artist notes

Ixtlan, the title of this exhibition, is a place that is described in Carlos Casteneda’s book “Journey to Ixtlan”. The Ixtlan that Casteneda describes in his book is an imaginary space that is somehow connected to the real world, but can only be reached after having given up all of one’s worldly desires and loves etc.. Casteneda describes three types of plants that help one to reach Ixtlan, namely peyote (a kind of cactus), jimson weed (white datura stramonium), and psilocybe (a hallucinogenic mushroom). These plants are natural plant substances which cause a kind of hallucination.

In this exhibition, Yoon-Young Park has in a way re-imagined the place of Ixtlan into a place where violence, murder, disasters etc. are non-existent, in other words, a place where such unfortunate events can be prevented from happening.

The various incidents and cases that have interested Yoon-Young Park, such as the Virginia Tech shooting, the murder of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Pickton serial murders etc., are here re-presented and restructured in ‘Downtwon Eastside’. The physical ‘triggers’ involved in these incidents were the gun that was used in the murder of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Exxon Valdez supertanker itself and the Walther P22 used in Cho, Seung Hee’s Virginia Tech shooting. Park sketches these three objects on the surface of a screen then uses these parts to create an equipment made to prevent tragic acts and/or incidents from taking place. The above-mentioned three hallucinogenic plants, i.e. peyote, jimsonweed and psilocybe, are then drawn over the equipment, growing all around it. The three plants in nature cover and therefore prevent these equipment from enacting the kinds of tragic events that they do, and by doing so, Ixtlan is imagined as a place where life and death have come to a stop, i.e. a new place with the potential for a new life and healing. In conclusion, Ixtlan Stop is a place where all the tragedies created by man’s desires and selfishness, are healed by the cleansing power of nature.

3. The Story within the Space

Reading and understanding the stories within Yoon-Young Park’s space of Ixtlan is an indispensable aspect of experiencing Park’s work.

Investigators, on the site of a crime, look around for pieces of evidence which, when put together, help them to come up with a believable story of what may have taken place. And as such, Yoon-Young Park’s exhibition invites us to participate in experiencing the space of Ixtlan where she has re-structured the ‘crime scene’ so to speak.

So what are the stories within Yoon-Young Park’s space? Park approaches the question of life and death and the vague separation between them by comparing the real against the surreal, past against the present, reality against the world of dreams etc.. The artist presents such a blurred and mysterious border between life and death in her depiction of ‘Downtown Eastside’, a mysterious looking installation piece made of a white screen, a large-scale mirror and bright orange paint. The mirror placed below the screen and the large pipe placed over the screen seems to make reference to the act of inhaling the smoke from the use of drugs. The pipe is a symbol of the straw used to inhale cocaine and the sheep skin and screen are also the drug itself. The mirror and the newspaper is each the mirror and razor (tools used in the process of measuring the amount of cocaine in preparation for inhalation). Within such a setting, Park casts the victims of the Pickton case as women living in New York’s downtown eastside and connects the two events by depicting the women as inhaling the drugs. Here, Park juxtaposes death and the act of inhaling drugs while simultaneously exhibiting the correlation between the two, as well as revealing the dream-like state brought on by the drugs.

Since the beginning of her career, Yoon-Young Park has always explored death and the disappearance of people upon death, about all those that die and the naturalness of it, even when it was caused by some other force. However, her obsession is not in death itself. Rather, Park is interested in that which causes death and the event of unexplained deaths. The deaths involved in those incidents that Park explores in her work are not simple incidences which occur as a result of some physical force or even by the tools that are used. These incidents are mired in mystery. Park takes these mysterious incidences and tries to understand and undo the mystery, either through her imagination or with the help of common sense and logic. The stories that Park unravels seem very personal and lyrical but these stories in the end ask the deep question of life and the common angst of living on earth.

We always tend to remain somewhere in-between. Whether it is the beginning or the end, getting on or off, matriculating or graduating, meeting or saying good-bye, and/or living or dying, etc. we are always somewhere in-between something that begins and will eventually end. Yoon-Young Park’s works too are located somewhere between as she searches for a certain world, place. Ixtlan stop or the Journey to Akeldama is all located in an in-between space, somewhere between the real and surreal, reality and imagination, etc., and where Park hopes to go might be a place where she dreams of, a place where bad things can self-heal, or the kind of world that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of, a place where the strong protects the weak. However, in the end, the place she is searching for is where nature brings unity.

Yoon-Young Park’s exhibition is a very special place, an opportunity to meet Park’s works in the midst of her long journey as an artist. Reading her stories in her work in an imagined space that is created by Park is sure to be a special occasion in our own journeys as well. After our meeting, we will all be on our own ways, but let us stop for a moment at Ixtlan Stop and read her works.

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.
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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.

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Cécile graduated with honors in 1996 and received a Diplome National Supérieur d’Expression Plastique in Nancy (France). She teaches, since 2002, at the École Nationale Régionale des Beaux Arts de Nantes.

She is represented by Gallery Eric Dupont in Paris and exhibits regularly in institutional contexts in France. Recent projects include a public art commission for the Barbès subway station in Paris (2004) and participation in the event “Off the Record/Sound Arc” at ARC/Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris (2004).
Cécile’s residency at Location One is supported by AFAA and Ville de Paris.

Projects and Exhibitions at Location One:
3 Videos and 3 Songs Video :: Winter Exhibition 2004-2005

Online:
Video Interview with Marc-Olivier Wahler, Swiss Institute.
Video Interview for CANAPE – CUNY TV

Website

Cécile’s residency at Location One is supported by AFAA and Ville de Paris.

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Under Strange Skies :: Public Screening, Wednesday, December 3, 2003 8 PM

Daniel Blaufuks has been showing widely in Europe and works mainly in photography and video, presenting his work through books, installations and set designs.

Daniel Blaufuks – artist in residence, interviewed by Anne Barlow in July 2003His latest work Collected Short Stories can be seen at present at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, displaying several photographic dipthycs in a kind of “snapshot prose”, a speech based on visual fragments that give indication of private stories on their way to becoming public. Last year, Daniel Blaufuks finished the documentary Under Strange Skies, a personal tale on the Jewish refugees, who passed through Lisbon during the Second World War. This film was selected, among other festivals, for the Hot Docs Festival in April in Toronto.

website :: http://www.danielblaufuks.com
read an article by Sérgio Mah in Lab 71 :: http://www.lab71.org

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KOAN JEFF BAYSA is a practicing specialist physician with a broad curatorial background. He recently completed the Whitney ISP in curatorial studies and divides his time between Honolulu and New York. His curatorial interests lie in examining how medical science impacts artistic practice and production.

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