Intermedia/New Media presents Sara Black of the artist collective Material Exchange

Intermedia/New Media: Sara Black of the artist collective Material Exchange

Visiting Artist Lecture

Thursday, November 5

6:30-8:00 PM Adler E105

Material Exchange is an artist collective that creates installations, games, designed objects or spaces, and direct exchanges. They say about their work, "The world is filled with things made for a specific purpose. When their purpose has been fulfilled, or their valued properties diminish, there is often some material remainder. Our projects attempt to extract or exploit that history,

-as a celebration of the human and biological labor embedded in materials,
-as a means of investigating the complex relationships between humans and things, objects and images, representations and their referents,
-as an inquiry into the various forms of being,
-as an elaboration of the western interest in found materials from Duchamp's experiments with ready-mades to driftwood figurines, from Rauschenberg's combines to ethnographic artifacts and religious reliquaries,
-as a symbolic or tactical intervention,
-as an antidote to expansionist economics,
-as alternately apocalyptic and utopian"

The projects of Material Exchange have been exhibited at the Smart Museum of Art, The Experimental Station, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Betty Rymer Gallery, Gallery 400, The Hyde Park Art Center, Threewalls, Eyebeam, The Park Avenue Armory, The DeVos Art Museum and others. Other projects include collaborative workshops or courses with art and design students at the Northern Michigan University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Harrington College of Design, Braddock Active Arts, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Street Level Youth Media. Material Exchange is Sara Black, Alta Buden, John Preus, and David Wolf. More information available at www.material-exchange.com

Sponsored by the School of Art and Art History, part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact the School of Art and Art History at 335-1771.

Art for the Issues

National advertising campaign for health care reform. There are 20 finalists on barack obama's website that you can vote for. Its just interesting how far an artist can really take a message these days, all the way to the white house.
Vote Now.

one by graffiti artist Saber:

R. Crumb + Bible = awesomeness.

R. Crumb has a distinct satirical style of illustration, and is credited as the founder of underground comics; he is now taking on the Bible. Not only is this really cool, but I thought it pertained to some of the projects in class. He has basically taken the book of Genesis and illustrated it, neither veering from the story nor adding any commentary. He spent four years studying ancient translations and creating illustrations.
It ties in with KJ's project because of the bible, obviously, but it seems to take on a new translation because it forces his visual on the reader instead of them imagining it for themselves. It also reminded me of our discussion about Caitlyn's childrens book because Crumb is laying out the violence, sex, and victimization that goes on in the bible visually, which normally may not come across fully when only read. He provides a humanistic supplement to a story already told millions of times before.

Check out the article about it on NPR

Climate Action -- Aviva Rahmani

On October 24, people and animals at the bank of the Hudson River on the upper west side of Manhattan will gather with artist Aviva Rahmani, to make a joyful noise and sing to 350, as part of the largest global day of climate action ever. The event-one of almost 4,000 rallies and actions in more than 140 nations-is coordinated by 350.org to urge world leaders to take fast and effective action on global warming. This is the first global campaign ever organized around a scientific data point: 350 parts per million CO2 is the safe upper limit for the atmosphere according to the latest scientific data. It is now 387.

WHO: Everyone is welcome but especially children and animal companions

WHAT: Artist Aviva Rahmani will alternately walk to the water and sing Puccini's aria Vissi d'arte, acapela, a song about beauty and betrayal and stop at the shore to draw pictures of the waters, reflecting on how they are rising in some places under the assault of global warming while in other places, fresh clean water is vanishing. Simultaneously, people in every corner of the world will be taking up to 4000 similar actions, from climbers with 350 banners high on the melting slopes of Mount Everest to government officials in the Maldive Islands holding an underwater cabinet meeting
to demand action on climate change before their nation disappears.

WHEN: October 24, 2009 from 2:30 PM to 4:30 PM

WHERE: 94th street and the bank of the Hudson River

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Photos from the event will be available at Aviva Rahmani's website.
Photos from events happening all over the world will be available for free use at: http://350.org/media

For more information on the global 350 campaign, please visit www.350.org
or contact Cosa Bullock in New York, cbullock@mrss.com

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ABOUT 350.ORG
Founded by author and environmentalist Bill McKibben, 350.org is the first large-scale grassroots global campaign against climate change. Its supporters include leading scientists, the governments of 89 countries, and a huge variety of environmental, health, development and religious NGOs. All agree that current atmospheric levels of
co2-390 parts per million-are causing damage to the planet and to its most vulnerable people, and that government action at the Copenhagen climate conference is required to bring the earth's carbon level swiftly down.

Marisa Jahn's "A Dash of This and a Dash of That"

Here's the cookbook project I mentioned during Tasha's presentation today: http://www.marisajahn.com/art/cookbook.htm. She has an excellent project description on the site.

The House That Herman Built

It seemed that a few people were interested in this great project today when I mentioned it in class. Here's the website: The House that Herman Built. I'm also poting a photo that shows a bit of the wall drawing timeline that I mentioned.

Liam Finn: Second Chance Dirrected by Angus Sutherland

Alright, this is totally late but here it is.

For my contribution to the Archive discussion I decided to call upon a art form that I believe has been marginalized by it's own popularity: the Music Video.

Liam Finn's "Second Chance," hits me as the theme song for our entire conversation over the definition of "the Archive." The song starts off as though it were being wound up with some kind of krank, and has to catch up to the it's own rhythm. What follows is a melancholy melody about a woman haunted by her past and a man who no longer recognizes her. Finn described this as a song about breaking up with a girl that couldn't move on from the relationship. I think the lyrics are infused with the themes of time, memory and the human condition, which seem also to be the core themes in dealing with the archive. Sutherland's dirrection of the video summons a highly archival aestetic as well. The aged look of the film gives us the feeling of looking into Finn's past. The technique of putting two shots on screen at the same time shows us contrasting renditions of the same event, highlighting the faultiness of human memory. Throughout the video, we see snapshots of locations, many including stone structures and buildings, and long stretches of time sped up to seconds. These images ellicit a dualistic sense of the lasting versus the inpermanent. Likewise, the stopmotion animation of Finn's movemen give us a sense of recall decay as time passes us by. All of this esspecially makes the video a wonderful expression of the archive and human memory.

I can't figure out how to get the video on the blog, so here's a link:

Second Chance

Enjoy!

Kiel Johnson: Cardboard Twin Lens Reflex Camera Time Lapse

I see time lapse videos as an archive project because someone is documenting an object/project/thing over a period of time, sometimes years, sometimes days, sometimes minutes, but it shows a growth or movement etc. I find these kinds of projects very interesting.
This is a video of Kiel Johnson creating an oversize camera out of cardboard. (and cameras are used to document!)

Kiel Johnson's Cardboard Twin Lens Reflex Camera Time Lapse from Theo Jemison on Vimeo.

It's interesting how he uses the cardboard, it starts to look like he's shaping wood. Plus cardboard is such a common thing, why is it frowned upon as material for art? It also appears that multiple people collaborated to make this video possible.

originally found on the Juxtapoz Magazine website.

Eight Artists in an Archive

I was researching different exhibitions involving archiving, I found this particular one interesting. The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, CA had an exhibition in 2000 called To the Rescue: Eight Artists in an Archive, in which eight different artists made artwork inspired by and in response to archived photographs of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which is an organization that helped Palestinian Jews during WWI. The majority of the photos are of saved indiviuals, and of the group's relief efforts. I thought this exhibition was cool because it revealed all the efforts of the JDC to the public, and it also displayed the oppression the Jewish community has lived through. Its really interesting how so many artists now are using archival documents to make their own art, and to rethink history. I couldn't find any photos of the exhibition except one really small one, but the article explains it pretty well.
the website is below:
http://www.thecjm.org/index.php?option=com_ccevents&scope=exbt&task=detail&oid=36


-caitlyn