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It's been a long haul! And it's not quite over yet. Five months since proposing an idea for my first installation project, yet alone my first public installation project, and a project that is all sculpture and no photography, I'm finallly announcing the dates and times of the installation!

I've been working on constructing the sound boxes in the lovely creative community that is 3rd Ward in my current neighborhood of residence, Bushwick, Brooklyn. It's been really wonderful working there. Everyone is friendly and helpful. It's definitely an open and collaborative space. Thus, a great one to be working on a project, especially one where you may need to ask the person working next to you for some technical advice!

Also thank you so much to everyone who has participated by recording a story for the installation, friends and strangers alike. 

Installation Dates and Times:

Union Square (west pathway bench north of 14th Street):
Sat Oct 1: 2-5 PM; Sun Oct 2: 1-4 PM; Mon Oct 3: 1-3 PM; Sun Oct 9: 1-4 PM

6th Ave, 14th St F/M Station (uptown platform bench near L train stairs): 
Sat Oct 1: 2-5 PM; Sun Oct 2: 1-4 PM; Wed Oct 5: 6-7:30 PM; Sun Oct 9: 1-4 PM

Hope to see you there.

 

(and other NYC restaurant employees who have other apirations for their future lives project)

I went down to the City Clerk's office last Sunday to photograph some of the first same-sex couples to get married the first day it became legal in New York. Everyone was in high spirits, and the couples were, well, really great.

 

 

In order: Ernest Rodriguez and Paul Benit, together 17 years, waiting to get married for 14 years; Dr. Debra Curtis and Rhonda Otten, together for 6 years and waiting to get married for 6 years; Gigi Perez and Jill Romanoff, together for 3 years and waiting to get married for "forever;" Chris Oates and Michael Brooks, together for 11 years and waiting to get married for 3 years; Jonathan South and Steven Dimmick, together for 4 years and waiting to get married for "my whole life;" Tony Nuzzo and David Powers, together for 30 years and waiting to get married since NY legalized it; David Alliker and Carl Dellatore, together for 3 years and waiting to get married for 3 years; Ramond Wepner and Pierre Courmont, together for 37 years and waiting to get married for 37 years; Amy Christie and Meg Murray, together for 6 years and waiting to get married for 3.5 years; Jasper Thacker-Bowell and Dave Thacker-Bowell, together for 12 years and waiting to get married for 7 years; Paul Teixeira and Dave Rimple, together for 16 years and waiting to get married for 5 years.

Some exciting news!

I was recently accepted to participate with my installation proposal (currently titled Bench Stories) in Art in Odd Places 2011: RITUAL, a public art festival of performance and installation works that will take place along 14th Street in Manhattan from October 1-10th 2011!

Bench Stories explores the public rituals, habits and norms of pedestrian life. New York’s pedestrian culture is infamous for its overwhelming masses of people, cut-off from others, each immersed in their own daily agenda. However, when paused on a park bench or in the subway, we open up our bubble and allow for the possibility of connection with others. Bench Stories focuses on moments of anticipation, tension, power and vulnerability when we connect with others in public. Bench Stories will facilitate a moment for participants to contemplate the conflation of public and private space in pedestrian life.
 
Two sound boxes will be installed, one in Union Square, the other on a bench on the subway platform on the uptown F/M 14th St stop. The boxes will play the stories that have been collected for this project. Participants will have the opportunity to sit on the bench, and experience a moment of connection with another person as they listen to the stories. Participants may also have the opportunity to then record their own story.

You can view the project page on my website here. 

Participate/Collaborate
 
For this work to be fulfilled, I am searching for wide-ranging participation. You are invited (and encouraged!) to record your story and be a part of this work. I am looking for stories where you have connected with another person in public space, whether it is sitting in a park, on the subway, on the street, in a threshold, or a street corner. Specifically, these stories should recall fleeting connections with others: non-verbal moments of sexual tension and anticipation, an encounter that left you with butterflies, a time when you felt overpowered, or touched (physically or not) by a stranger or someone you know in public. These are the private moments where you have felt vulnerable, tense, powerful, or nervous; they are fleeting connections in public space.

For examples of these moments in visual and story form, see The In-between project.
**Note: Stories should NOT use proper nouns, i.e. no names of people or places. Rather use pronouns: he/she, the park, the bench etc. But please use as many details/emotions/descriptors as you like. Stories do not have to take place in New York CIty.
 
To submit your own story, all you have to do is call!

1. Think of a story. Don’t worry if you’re not sure if it’s good enough, it probably is! It should be around two minutes or less.
2. Call (512) 827 0500 and enter the PIN 187 221 715#
3. Press 1 to record your story, and # when you’re finished. (Don’t worry if you mess up, just repeat the sentence and keep going.)
4. Press 2 to re-record, 3 to save or 9 to not save.
5. Thank you so much for participating!

Please pass this along to a friend or anyone who may be interested in participating. 

 

You can view the project page on my website here. 

 

 

 

A friend of mine, Alex Andrejko, asked me to photograph the publicity images for part II of The Human Variations, a serires of plays of which he is the playwright!

 

You can find out about the upcoming act, Largo, which will be held at the CV Lounge at the Hotel on Rivington in April, here.

 

A little bit of progress in some drawings. Much more work needs to happen. 

 

I got to attend the Armory, Volta and Pulse art fairs this weekend with some free passes thanks to PS1. I went to the "Preview Brunch" at Pulse where they served orange juice, mimosas, and sparkling water, but I didn't see any food. They also gave out some tote bags with lip balm and postcards inside. I liked the feeling of Pulse, and a lot of the art that was on display. I think I may even have found some inspiration. It was also good people watching. Most interesting was watching the world of the art market happen before me, and reflect on my interatctions with the different gallery workers who were trying to discern while talking to me whether or not I was in the position to be buying their art. Volta was also pretty cool, in a midtown office building taking up a whole floor converted into mini gallery booths. There was a bunch of great art, and a bunch of not-so-great art. Definitely things to ponder!

The Armory show, unlike Pulse which was at the Metropolitan Pavillion near the Chelsea gallery district, was as it always is--in Piers 92 & 94 which have the corporate feeling of the Jacob Javits Center conventions. It was so strange and off putting to see art put on display in such a way where famous artists represented by brand name galleries appeared as if they were nothing more than chotchkes at a trade show. But take away the VIP access lounge and free Acura car service for Armory Circle members, and well, it is a trade show. Some favorite overheard quotes include an art buyer while looking at a work made out of red plastic, "oooooooh i just loooooove that, but my client hates red. Haha isn't that funny? They have such great taste though, but they just have this thing with red. Sorry, no can do." Or another lady inquiring about a print, "oooooh gorgeoussssss, what is that! Is that an original work? It's sooooo pretty. And interesting." "Yes ma'am," says the gallery owner. "It retails for $380,000."

I was also put off at the Armory after visiting two gallery booths from Santiago, Chile. Both were galleries I had visited while I was studying abroad there and I was really excited to see that Santiago had two galleries representing Chile at one of the mose prestigious and important global art fairs. One of the galleries displayed work by Lotty Rosenfeld, an artist I did a lot of research about for a paper on Chilean art during their dictatorship. However, when I introduced myself to a woman representing the gallery to tell her I'd been a fan of the gallery as well as Lotty Rosenfeld and studied at La Universidad de Chile, she merely stared back at me, until I said, well I just wanted to come and say hello and express my excitement that Santiago is at the Armory Show. To which she responded, "aaaaaah ok, thank you so much." And then I remembered that most of the people working at the galleries in Santiago, most of which are located in the wealthy and generally-inaccessable-by public-trasportation-neighborhood of Vitacura look down upon the rest of the city and so I probably shouln't have mentioned that I studied at La Chile since it is Chile's best regarded public university. So much for the general feeling of human connection, you know, around art.

All in all, Armory Week was definately an experience.

 

Also, I thought I'd share an essay on the repression of desire in photography, "Too Drunk to Fuck" by Mark Wise. It also deals with the deconstruction of photography as a medium we use to try and understand ourselves. Super interesting. 

 

Here is the final book for Chido Johnson's Love Library at the Craft Alliance in St. Louis. 

Thief of Hearts is a pair of stories that documents two relationships. It explores the idea of how relationships are recorded and how they are housed in books and stories. The book plays into the idea of love being like a card game—taking one through ups and downs, with an unknowable outcome or duration. Readers are invited to explore the stories inside and to take with them a Thief of Hearts as a memento of a relationship with this book, a keepsake of a connection that allows us to look back at the chance, timing, euphoria and despair we all experience.

 

See the book on the Love Library's online catalouge here.