Opening Reception on Friday, January 13, 2012,  6-10pm

January 13 – February 12, 2012

Double Break, 1821 5th Ave, San Diego, California  92101

Double Break is very excited to announce a solo exhibition of drawings by Rubén Ortiz-Torres. A prolific and accomplished artist known for his work in a variety of media, Ortiz-Torres revisits his roots with this exhibition, which brings together over 70 early portrait drawings, completed between 1983 and 1990, as well as a number of “updated” portraits completed on a recent trip to Mexico City. Combining academic studies, sketches of friends and family and a number of self-portraits, these drawings act as a springboard for viewers to gain insight into the career of this acclaimed conceptual artist. Though his current work is primarily sculpture, installation, painting and video, this belies his deep history with drawing as a medium and his keen sensitivity for traditional works on paper. Double Break is incredibly honored to host this exhibition- an occasion not to be missed by San Diego!

Rubén Ortiz-Torres was born in Mexico City in 1964. Educated within the utopian models of republican Spanish anarchism soon confronted the tragedies and cultural clashes of post colonial third world. Being the son of a couple of Latin American folklore musicians he soon identified more with the noises of urban punk music. After giving up the dream of playing baseball in the major leagues, and some architecture training (Harvard Graduate School of Design) he decided to study art. He went first to the oldest and one of the most academic art schools of the Americas (the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City) and later to one of the newest and more experimental (Calarts in Valencia CA). After enduring Mexico City’s earthquake and pollution he moved to Los Angeles with a Fulbright grant to survive riots, fires, floods, more earthquakes, and proposition 187. During all this he has been able to produce artwork in the form of paintings, photographs, objects, installations, videos, and films. He is part of the permanent Faculty of the University of California in San Diego. He has participated in several international exhibitions and film festivals. His work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the California Museum of Photography in Riverside CA, the Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid Spain among others.

619.238.2325
info@doublebreakstore.com
www.doublebreakstore.com
www.facebook.com/doublebreak

Front and back covers. Making WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing will be published mid-March, 2012.

Leonard Koren published WET Magazine for 5 1/2 years between 1976 and 1981 as part of a creative and philosophical experiment he called “gourmet bathing.” WET Magazine became his primary vehicle of expression during that time. Overt definition equals death for artistic ideas so Leonard has maintained a refusal to define explicitly what gourmet bathing is, however he has offered four basic tenets or principles:

~ Water, steam, air, and mud—and the energy to heat them—are precious resources to be cherished and conserved.
~ Cleanliness is next to impossible (but keep trying anyway).
~ Nakedness is almost always an excellent idea.
~ In addition to all its other charms, bathing is an accommodating metaphor.

Full of youthful ambition, and desiring to become a part of the gourmet bathing revolution, I wrote Leonard a letter in 1981 and convinced him to let me be his design intern that summer. I was psyched. When I arrived in Venice, California with my t-square and x-acto blade in hand (in the days before desktop publishing), Leonard told me this was to be WET’s final publication. Like Billy Preston jamming with the Beatles on their last album, there was something bittersweet about having a part in WET’s swan song but I embraced every moment.

“Mudbath” (detail), by Leonard Koren, is an offset, spray-painted lithographic print (21 x 21 inches).

“WET never took itself all that seriously,” said Leonard. “To paraphrase one of its contributors, WET was a parody of all enthusiasms, or more accurately, a parody of all enthusiasms taken a bit too far. WET’s most endearing quality was its wholehearted embrace of the absurd. Each and every issue wrestled mightily with seriously silly propositions: Workable Extremist Thinking. Waste Everything Twice. We Eat Tuna . . . Take your pick.”

Leonard’s post WET career has gone on to include an eclectic array of gigs directing Japanese music videos, being a popular culture commentator and most steadily as publisher of fifteen beautifully crafted books related to design and aesthetics. Some of the titles are; Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers (1994) and Which “Aesthetics” Do You Mean?: Ten Definitions (2010). His current project is Making WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing. It will be published this coming mid-March, 2012 and will feature selected layouts and covers from each of the issues as well as a narrative of the more interesting episodes and personalities along the way to making WET.

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AGITPROP: What is your current job description?

LEONARD KOREN: A guy trying to make a living by producing and publishing books. That is, books made of paper, not books intended for electronic devices. My book subjects are primarily design and aesthetics related—though I hope to move a bit into ethics also.

AGITPROP: Do you mean the ethics of design or are you referring to ethics in a larger social context such as justice, courage, temperance and so on?

LEONARD KOREN: The domains of design and aesthetics, in and of themselves, really don’t have much to do with notions of “right” and “wrong” or “good” and “bad” in the moral sense. In fact “stealing,” as in incorporating someone else’s ideas into your work, is almost institutionalized as a “best practice” in fields relating to design and aesthetics.

No one involved in the fields of design or aesthetics is necessarily bound to a particular moral code. By “move a bit into ethics” I really mean I want to bind myself more strongly to a personal code of right and wrong behavior in terms of what I produce and its effect on the larger community.

AGITPROP: Can you expand on this?

LEONARD KOREN: When I make an artistic decision, I try to consider how the ramifications will play out down the line, say 50 years or more. I try to keep in mind “do no evil,” but not as a corporate marketing slogan, as a personal credo. Frankly, I’m not always successful. It’s hard to account for all of life’s unintended consequences.

Cover, December 1980 (8 x 10 inches). Photo illustration and design by Taki Ono and Lisa Powers. Art direction by Leonard Koren.

AGITPROP: In December 1980 you published the Fire Issue of WET. The cover photo was of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thích Quảng Đức, emolating himself as a protest to issues related to the Vietnam War. Would you please comment on the ethics of publishing that image?

LEONARD KOREN: A number of creators associated with WET felt the image was in very bad taste—almost sacrilegious. I disagreed. Someone gave their life to make a very visual anti-war “statement.” The more that image is reproduced the better, I thought. If WET was making fun of the burning Buddhist, that would be a different story. But we weren’t. I think it was a quite sobering cover.

AGITPROP: I think it was Mallarmé who said, “Everything exists to end up in a book.” (Or maybe a magazine!) You’ve published fifteen books. What is it about books that has created such strong devotion in you?

LEONARD KOREN: I like the physical qualities: the kinds of paper, the tactility, the “objectness.” I also like that you can stare at an open page for as long as you like, without glare, and really get into an image. I also like the totemic aspects of the book as a thing: just possessing a book, without even reading it, confers some kind of value.

AGITPROP: Digital books are revolutionizing the publishing industry. Any thoughts on how this change from tactility to intangibility will affect the consciousness of tomorrow’s readers?

LEONARD KOREN: I’m not sure how readers’ consciousness will evolve. The future for critical, thoughtful consideration of information inflows doesn’t seem too promising though.

AGITPROP: What is essential for you to be able to do your work?

LEONARD KOREN: Reasonably good health, time, and a little (physical) space for a desk and chair.

AGITPROP: Speaking of space, you recently moved from a city to the country. How’s that working out?

LEONARD KOREN: I don’t miss the city, if that’s what you mean. I do like the quiet and beauty of the country.

Anatomically shaped water basins excerpted from the book Bodies of Water by artist Stephen Laub. Featured in WET December/ January 1977.

AGITPROP: You’ve been in cities so long I was curious to know if you have noticed a shift in your focus and/or interests.

LEONARD KOREN: When in cities I find my concerns tend to be more reactive to the things around me; “responsive” is a more positive term. In the country, undisturbed by the noisier world outside, I tend to focus more on the perennial, existential thoughts that occupy my mind.

AGITPROP: How important is empathy for what you do?

LEONARD KOREN: Not much.

AGITPROP: So are your design solutions based on your own preferences or do you try and imagine a universal end user?

LEONARD KOREN: I try to satisfy what I imagine to be that universal part of myself that requires (1) clarity, (2) a sensual charge, and (3) some degree of novelty.

AGITPROP: During the 70s and 80s there was clearly a moment when Japanese culture was important to your development. Can you describe your first conscious encounter with it?

LEONARD KOREN: My mother was interested in the Japanese sense of order and beauty for as long as I can remember. I think she thought the Japanese aesthetic sensibility was smart, cool and, of course, beautiful.

At one point she had a Japanese carpenter build some furniture for my brother and my bedrooms. (Which I still have to this day). Then she instituted a rule that we had to take our shoes off at the entrance to our house, which made sense because we lived in the hills on a dirt road. . . . When I was around 16 or 17, my stepfather returned from a trip to Japan with a few books about Japanese architecture and design. I was fascinated by the concepts of asymmetry, refined rusticity, warm minimalism, et al, therein. I asked my mother if I could build a “Japanese tea house” on her property. She agreed and I set to work scavenging materials from the neighborhood. I designed as I built. I applied my interpretations of the photographs I studied whenever I needed to make a decision.

By the end of my teens I had moved on and was no longer consciously interested in things, or design systems, Japanese.

AGITPROP: Making WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing is your most recent book and it will be published in mid-March 2012. It’s the true story of how you created WET Magazine (1976-1981) and opened up a dialogue around the idea of “gourmet bathing” while pushing a pretty radical design aesthetic. Can you please describe the milieu WET was born out of and why it was important?

WET publisher peddling magazines, for fun, on the Venice boardwalk. Leonard Koren, in 1978. The prototype WET canvas shoulder bag was fabricated by WET staff member Ronnie Lynn Kritch. Photograph by Lyle Mayer.

LEONARD KOREN: WET was born in Venice, California. I fell into Venice by accident. I grew up on the Westside of Los Angeles and Venice beckoned from high school on as a place of special freedoms. The Venice I lived in and knew was a community of artists and like-minded creators. Most of the artist/creators were open to having me come by their studios and hang out. I was able to study the degree of seriousness, both artistic and commercial, necessary to “make it” as an artist/creator. I learned that you had better make “success” happen yourself, because that is the only way it is going to happen, if at all. I also learned that each artist must create their own unique way if they want to have something of value to offer the world outside their heads. In sum: My time in Venice provided a metaphorical kick in the butt. And the permissiveness of the Venice culture allowed me to seriously pursue my silly work—making WET—and not feel like a complete idiot.

AGITPROP: Well, the idea of gourmet bathing certainly is a very silly and slippery idea in a perverse kind of way. What kinds of thinking and or activities were you hoping to encompass with it?

LEONARD KOREN: I wasn’t thinking out very far. I simply liked the semantic frisson of the conjoined “gourmet” and “bathing.” The term seemed to connote a kind of sensuous absurdity. I was, of course, interested in bathing as a source of artistic imagery. But I also knew that in the realm of art, any abstract notion can take on a solid existence if you plug away at it long enough, which is what I had hoped to do with the notion of gourmet bathing. Exactly how that would manifest, I didn’t know. That’s where putting one foot in front of the next, and not thinking too deeply about the consequences, comes into the picture. That is, start making something and the next step/s to take begin to reveal themselves.

AGITPROP: Anyone who remembers WET remembers that it was as mental as it was visual. What would you say was WET Magazine’s influence on the collective unconscious at the height of its influence?

WET Cover, September/October 1978 (8 1⁄2 x 11 inches). Photograph by Herb Ritts. Logo by Jim Deesing. Design and art direction by Leonard Koren.

LEONARD KOREN: I was too close to the enterprise to assess its influence. I do know that lots of art directors, designers, and many artists in the US and Japan were very into the magazine. I doubt if magazines like Ray Gun and Beach Culture would have emerged in the form they did if there wasn’t the prior example of WET. Also, there were some pretty high profile WET alumni, like Matt Groening who went on to co-create the The Simpsons TV show. And graphically, WET was once of the incubators for the style then known as “New Wave,” and later as “Postmodern.” Ultimately all of WET’s graphic and editorial innovations seemed to be absorbed into our visual culture. . . So to answer your question, I really don’t know how far or deep WET influenced the “collective unconscious.” If you have any insights into this question I’d really like to know.

AGITPROP: I discovered WET while I was an art director for a college humor magazine. It became my design bible. I think that was in 1979.I do remember that WET seemed to come along in that moment just before Postmodern style and New Wave came sharply into focus. My earliest impression of a Postmodern look was that it was about visual references to Classicism floating against a deconstructed grid! People were really having a field day with all the prefab graphics you could get on Letraset sheets and that fostered a kind of a collage aesthetic. Then when I did my internship at WET in the summer of 1981, I recall Matt Groening hanging around the office. He was doing Life in Hell and other comics. His visual style was humorous but primitive. His slightly misanthropic personality added a contrasting note to most of the other staffers I met. Wippo was another great character who really embodied the energy of the New Wave musical moment. Gary Panter’s work was also a revelation to me and referenced Japanese culture a lot, too. WET was not iconoclastic like punk. It always seemed to be more about bringing what was hidden into the open rather than destroying what was already in plain site.

LEONARD KOREN: Thanks for the snapshot!

AGITPROP: With so many talented people hanging around and contributing what did your experience with WET teach you about the value of collaboration?

LEONARD KOREN: I learned that people at a certain stage of their creative careers crave an opportunity to create, and a visible venue to show off their creations. In such circumstances they will work for free. I learned to honor and respect these contributions. I had fun as an art and creative director. I also learned that I need long stretches of solitude, away from these creators, so I can consolidate my own thinking and let my intuition come to the fore. In other words, I like collaborative environments and situations, but I need an equal amount of time away from them to recoup my energy and direction.

AGITPROP: Is there a connection for you between intuition and the conscious cultivation of a spiritual dimension of life?

LEONARD KOREN: I don’t understand exactly what you mean by the term “spiritual.” If you mean a non-rational poetic perception of the invisible underlying mechanisms of reality/realities, then yes, there is a connection between intuition and the spiritual dimension of my life. But I don’t consciously cultivate it.

Cover (and back cover), March/April 1981 (8 x 10 inches). Collage and design by Bob Zoell. Art direction by Leonard Koren.

AGITPROP: For me cultivating a spiritual dimension means being in a place that’s apart from the domain of ideas, words and logical thinking; a place where the mind can recognize itself again. Was gourmet bathing ever intended to fill that role?

LEONARD KOREN: Yes and no. Gourmet bathing was intended to engage your mind, to force it into an encounter with absurdity, so that you could no longer take your thinking or your ideas so damn seriously. Of course, it is easier to make such observations in retrospect. There wasn’t such a vigorously coherent agenda for gourmet bathing at the time I was publishing WET.

AGITPROP: How did you come around to the idea of making Making WET?

LEONARD KOREN: To make a book about the process of making WET was an impulse that has reoccurred to me about four or five times since the magazine’s demise. What was different this time, that is, why I finally made the book this time, are three factors. One, I have a young son, and I am an old guy. I wanted to impart some of the lessons I’ve learned about art, life, and business to my kid in a light, easy-to-digest manner. He won’t even know the book is for him, but it will give him some resonant clues about where he came from and how his DNA predecessor responded when confronted with certain circumstances. Secondly, the last couple of books I’ve made have been rather heady, veering toward the non-sensual. I wanted to get back to the sensual, the visual, the visceral, and Making WET allowed me to do that. Thirdly, I got an email out of the blue from an Italian bathroom fixture manufacturer abut a year ago asking if I would consider starting up WET again. I politely said no, but it made me realize that maybe the circle of culture had come around again and a dose of WET—this time in book form—was in order.

AGITPROP: Is there WETness after death?

LEONARD KOREN: Who knows?

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Leonard Koren on the web

Leonard Koren’s books can be found on Amazon.com

A recent New York Times profile of Leonard Koren

Something to do with crossing…

UCSD VAF 404 Gallery

December 6 – 9, 2-6pm

Opening Reception Dec. 7 @ 6pm

For some, migration requires blending into the desert geography while crossing the border, and, once in the United States, blending into the urban landscape. Clothing allows for the latter: the appropriate outfit will divert attention and suspicion from authorities. This has led migrants to take articles of clothing they find hanging on clotheslines in yards of houses near the border, to make themselves inconspicuous. Something is left in the place of what is taken, creating a system of informal exchange in neighborhoods like those near the border in Calexico, CA.

This informal system is replicated in the gallery space, as visitors are encouraged to exchange a photograph of clothing hanging on a clothesline, for a piece of actual clothing that will take its place. The clothing collected at the end of the exhibition will be photographed and serve to replicate the installation at a later date, in a different context.

Please bring an article of clothing if you would like to participate in the exchange.

The gallery hours will be from 2pm-6pm from Tuesday to Friday. On Wednesday, it will be open until 9 pm for the reception (which starts at 6pm). And it will also be open by appointment, by contacting cognate.collective@gmail.com.

DOUBLE BREAK EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT

DECEMBER 11, 2011 (4-7pm)

Closing Reception for our Double Breaks group exhibition!

PLUS Live Performance!! Sun Foot (feat. Ron Burns, Chris Johanson and Brian Mumford)

Darin Klein & Friends touch down at Double Break in San Diego for the release of the latest in the ongoing Box of Books series. This unique and affordable boxed set of 20 artist-made ‘zines is perfect for collectors and gift-givers alike! A limited edition of 100, don’t miss your chance to grab one.

Box of Books, Vol. IV showcases the work of Heather Benjamin, AA Bronson & Ryan Brewer, Julia Dzwonkoski & Kye Potter, Brennan Gerard & Ryan Kelly, Abel Baker Gutierrez, Darren Ankenbauer (Handbook Magazine), Johanna Jackson, Chris Johanson, Christopher Kardambikis, Dawn Kasper, David Larsen, Sarah Locke, Jeaneen Lund, Francesca Mirabella, Zac Monday, Erwin Ong, Davy Rothbart, Jen Smith, Chris Vargas & Greg Youmans, and e war.

Portland, OR and Los Angeles based trio Sun Foot create barely amplified, feel-good vibes on electric guitar and bass nicely intertwining with analog and digital percussion. At live gigs, they deliver spare, honest jams filled with friendly humor to appreciative audiences. Join Sun Foot on the San Diego leg of a California tour supporting their new LP, Songs in the Key of R, B & C, on Awesome Vistas/Teenage Teardrops. Recent appearances include a Quiet Fruit Party in the Los Feliz Hills and legendary venue The Smell in downtown LA; Breeze Block Gallery in Portland, OR; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Oh – did you know that one time they even played on a barge at Art Basel, Switzerland? Sun Foot members are Ron Burns (IS and Amen, again Amen), Brian Mumford (IS, Collectivo and Dragging an Ox through Water), and Awesome Vistas record label founder and Box of Books, Vol. IV contributor Chris Johanson (IS, Deepthroats and Tina, Age 13).

Tonight is also the closing party for the fifth Double Break exhibition, Double Breaks. Co-curated by artists Jay Howell and Louis M. Schmidt, Double Breaks brings together 30 artists working in nearly as many styles. The show features a slew of fantastic artists, including Box of Books, Vol. IV contributor Christopher Kardambikis, 80’s skateboarding legend Neil Blender, iconic comics artist Bill Griffith (creator of Zippy the Pinhead), plus widely exhibited artists like Thomas Campbell, Mel Kadel and Travis Millard.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2011 (4-7pm)

Box of Books, Vol. IV Release Party

Live Performance: Sun Foot

Exhibition Closing Party: Double Breaks

(Free admission)

Double Break

1821 5^th Ave

San Diego, CA 92101

619.238.2325

info@doublebreakstore.com

www.doublebreakstore.com

www.facebook.com/DoubleBreak           

www.twitter.com/DoubleBreakSD

From SignOn San Diego:

Students ‘reclaim’ UCSD library

Book Release Party!

Reflection, Refraction, Projection, by Ela Boyd

*DJ Set with Jamuel Saxon!

DECEMBER 2, 2011 (6-10pm)

Please join us on December 2 (6-10pm) to celebrate the release of Reflection, Refraction, Projection, a new (very) limited edition book by artist Ela Boyd!

The 80 pg. full color limited edition artist book features images of Boyd’s light installation work, full bleed images of the prism series and an accompanying text. The essay details theories of visual perception, spatialized imagery and the ontology of the decentralized object as mediated through consciousness and media. A limited edition of 25 numbered and signed books will be sold in deluxe packaging with a signed print included.

DECEMBER 2, 2011 (6-10pm)

Reflection, Refraction, Projection, by Ela Boyd

*DJ Set with Jamuel Saxon!

**art books and refreshments will be available!

therenotthere.com

elaboyd.com

Double Break

1821 5^th Ave

San Diego, CA 92101

619.238.2325

info@doublebreakstore.com

www.doublebreakstore.com

www.facebook.com/DoubleBreak           

www.twitter.com/DoubleBreakSD   

Kim Koga

Kim Koga is the author of Ligature Strain (Tinfish Press 2011).  She received her MFA from the University of Notre Dame where she co-edited two MFA publications The Bend and Re:Visions, worked as Action Books’ editorial assistant, and curated a reading series with fellow MFA student CJ Waterman.   She’s a co-founder of Cal State San Marcos’ Creative Writing Community and Workshop, their publication: Oh, Cat, and the Student Reading Series.  Kim has interned with 1913 Press and Factorial Press.  Her publications include Lantern Review, Triton College’s Ariel XXX, and 1913: a journal of forms.

Ken White

Ken White is a poet, screenwriter, and member of the Screen Actor’s Guild, who received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. His poetry has appeared in several journals, including The Boston Review, The Tusculum Review, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, and Versal. In addition to co-writing and co-producing the forthcoming feature film “Winter in the Blood,” his screenplay “Blight,” (with JJ Braider), was optioned by Titan films in association with Sony and later by JML films. He has also written screen adaptations of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (with JJ Braider), and the medieval Irish epic The Tain Bo Cuailgne – The Cattle Raid of Cooley. He’s currently working on a new poetry manuscript, The Getty Fiend.

Agitprop readings are free, but wine and donations to the gallery are always welcome.

We hope to see you there and for festivities before and after.

For more information about the Agitprop Reading Series, browse past events or join our Facebook group.

Agitprop Gallery
Saturday, December 3, 7pm
2837 University Avenue in North Park (Entrance on Utah, behind Glenn’s Market) Google Map
San Diego, CA 92104
619.384.7989

Like other art museums The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles hosts an annual gala event, with the goal of extracting surplus wealth from donors. The time-honored quid pro quo in this transaction is entertainment, and MOCA’s newly-acquired director Jeffrey Deitch has proven himself a master of pushing the notion toward the poles of art and spectacle. The result is proving a glorious mess.

For this year’s gala Deitch commissioned the 64-year-old society artist Marina Abramović to stage a performative matrix within which the gala would proceed. Abramović’s solution involved hiring attractive young people to pose in ways that would normally be identified as degrading and humiliating objectification: lying motionless on a dinner table for hours, naked and under a skeleton; or similarly stuck under a table for hours, with only one’s head sticking through, for that Bring Me the Head of John The Baptist effect.

Artist Yvonne Rainer caught wind of the upcoming event from a disgruntled hireling, and proceeded to write a letter to Deitch questioning the moral and ethical implications of MOCA underwriting an event so classically retrograde in aesthetic. The art blog HyperAllergic then broke the story.

In short: Rainer’s letter went viral, Abramović went into defense mode (e.g., hilariously insisting that gala attendees wear white lab coats during the event), the event went off as planned, certain attendees were duly offended, and MOCA netted 2.5 mil for the night.

(Gory details.)

The amoral of the story is one of people in the world with every power in the world, save one: the power of youth. The resulting dialectic plays out in many ways — some subtle, some not — across the arts.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Turn on/Tune in/Drop out/Log on

The awesomeness of Steve Jobs has been given a canonical accounting with the publication of Walter Isaacson’s 570-page authorized biography of his life. So just how did Jobs transmogrify the world? The CEO Messiah of User Experience claimed he did it by standing at the intersection of technology and liberal arts. But there’s much more to his story than that. By the end of the book one thing is clear – Jobs’ accomplishment at Apple Computer is the greatest legacy to come out of the Bay Area’s “turn on, tune in, drop out” hippie culture of the 1960s.

But at its heart this is also book about a man who was described by a former girlfriend as “an enlightened being who was also cruel.” To quote the dust jacket, he was “driven by demons. Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair.” Isaacson and Jobs agreed that the book should not sanitize his life and many episodes reveal a dark side to his personality. Jobs was given up for adoption as an infant and wrestled with deep-seated feelings of abandonment throughout his life. It is understandable how such beginnings might engender a defensive and spiteful attitude towards the world. But from Jobs’ point of view, his cruelty was not a psychological reflex but a form of truth speaking. He was given to rationalizing his rough manners as a way of ensuring quality control. He felt it was a part of his job description to be brutally honest when critiquing other’s work for the sake of the product and Apple’s reputation. For Jobs, being true to himself was a priority, no matter how ugly it might appear from the outside.

Troubles with Tribble and Beyond

Isaacson has traced Jobs’ phenomenal guru-like influence over others through extensive interviews with friends, family and colleagues. Throughout his life, Jobs repeatedly inspired those working around him to go beyond themselves. In a burst of inspired geek-speak Bud Tribble, a software designer at Apple in the early days of the company, coined the term “reality distortion field” to describe Jobs’ effect over others. Chapter Eleven recounts a conversation between Tribble and Andy Hertzfeld who was a new Apple employee at the time.

When Andy Hertzfeld joined the Macintosh team, he got a briefing from Bud Tribble, the other software designer, about the huge amount of work that still needed to be done. Jobs wanted it finished by January 1982, less than a year away. “That’s crazy,” Hertzfeld said. “There’s no way.” Tribble said that Jobs would not accept any contrary facts. ”The best way to describe the situation is a term from Star Trek,” Tribble explained. “Steve has a reality distortion field…in his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything.

Tribble remembered the term from an episode of Star Trek called “Menagerie” in which the aliens have the power to construct reality out of the sheer force of their mental powers. Job’s distortion field had a positive and a negative side. “It was dangerous to get caught in Steve’s distortion field, but it was what led him to actually be able to change reality.”

The launch of the Macintosh was one occasion in which Jobs deployed the distortion field in order to spur his engineers to hit a seemingly impossible deadline. The timing was critical. Apple had launched its remarkable 1984 Super Bowl ad campaign and expectations for a revolutionary product were running high. Any delays would have undermine the carefully constructed expectations surrounding the launch of the Mac. The only problem was the engineers were still behind schedule with the operating system. At a conference call they prepared to give Jobs a recommendation to send out a demo version of the software to be followed up with a final version two weeks later. They carefully pleaded their case and sat back…

There was a pause. Jobs did not get angry; instead he spoke in cold, somber tones. He told them they were really great. So great, in fact, that he knew they could get this done. “There’s no way we’re slipping!” he declared. There was a collective gasp…”You guys have been working on this stuff for months now, another couple weeks isn’t going to make that much difference. You may as well get it over with. I’m going to ship the code a week from Monday, with your names on it.”

…and he did.

Perhaps the most poignant example of the distortion field working against Jobs was when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003. Isaacson observes, “The flipside of his wondrous ability to focus was the fearsome willingness to filter out things he did not wish to deal with.” After his initial diagnosis, Jobs put off medical intervention for nine months. He had been a vegetarian almost all his life and was known for his adherence to strict, some would say insane, eating habits, including binging and purging of food. He often spoke of the energy and mental power his diets gave him. Therefore he was reluctant to undergo what he considered orthodox medical intervention and instead pursued a series of diet cures and new age remedies. Despite a phalanx of friends and family members urging him to do what was best for his health, he resisted. In the end, facing death after an eight-year battle with cancer, he expressed regret he had not acted more aggressively in battling his illness when it was still in its early stages of development.

Steve Jobs sitting in the lotus position. Photo by Diane Walker.

Zen Apples

The word Zen is often associated with the ease of use of Apple products and is a direct result of Jobs’ study of Zen Buddhism that he began as an undergraduate at Reed College in Oregon. Chapter Three of the book describes the years Jobs lived on a commune after dropping out of college. He was responsible for tending a grove of apple trees on the commune grounds. He learned to prune, water and harvest the apples and sell them to earn money for the commune’s operating costs. During this time he also practiced meditation and dropped copious amounts of LSD. All this activity disciplined his mind in an intense way and honed his ability to sustain single point focus for long periods of time. “Jobs’ intensity was evident in his ability to focus. He would set priorities, aim his laser attention on them, and filter out distractions,” explains Isaacson. Nourishing the mind’s powers of intuition was at the root of his integrity as a human being and of his Promethean creativity. Jobs respected direct experience. He disdained decisions based on committees, Power Point presentations and market studies. He dismissed people who did so as “bozos.” His faith in the mind’s intuition over rational thinking and logical decision-making was the fruit of his Zen spirituality and it lay behind the design philosophy of all Apple products. Bodhidharma, the Indian patriarch renowned for bring Buddhism to China around 475 AD, identified the mind as the source of enlightenment. The following passage is from the “Breakthrough Sermon”

The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included. It’s like the root of a tree. All a tree’s fruit and flowers, branches and leaves depend on its root. If you nourish its root, a tree multiplies. If you cut its root, it dies. Those who understand the mind reach enlightenment with minimal effort.

The metaphor embedded in the quotation has obvious relevance to the history of Steve Jobs and Apple Computer Inc. But it is also indicates that at the root of his success in the field of technology was a worldview based on the idea of the universe as an organism. This binary narrative of the organic and the technological was woven deeply into Apple’s culture and distinguished it from Microsoft and other competitors.

Now that Jobs is no longer alive and the force of his distortion field begins to fade, the public image of the man and his company is bound to shift. But for the time being his legacy seems to be how he humanized technology by force of his will. Isaacson returns to this theme repeatedly. The final pages close with Job’s speaking in his own voice. “Edwin Land of Polaroid talked about the intersection of the humanities and science. I like that intersection. There’s something magical about that place. There are a lot of people innovating and that’s not the main distinction of my career. The reason Apple resonates with people is that there’s a deep current of humanity in our innovation.”

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For those of you who missed the opening or would like to see this work one more time; heres your chance.. come say hi/bye! ;p

joshuajonmiller.com
unLocation.com

disclosed unLocation

All Traditional and Digital Print Media

Exhibition Dates
January 30 – March 9, 2012

Submissions Deadline
Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Organized by the University Galleries at William Paterson University, American Impressions is an annual juried printmaking exhibition featuring traditional and digital print media and book art. Select works will receive Purchase Awards and become part of the University’s permanent collection. One artist will be selected to have a solo exhibition at the University Galleries.

ELIGIBILITY
The exhibition is open to all artists residing in the United States. Prints must have been completed within the past two years and may not exceed 60 inches. Work previously shown at the William Paterson University Galleries will not be accepted.

ARTWORK REQUIREMENTS
All accepted work requires proper framing and should be ready to be hung (except for book art which will be displayed in vitrines on pedestals). The Juror reserves the right to reject any work found to be unacceptable upon arrival.

SALES & AWARDS
Sales are encouraged. A 20% commission will be taken by the University. Prints and books selected for Purchase Awards will become part of the University’s Permanent Print & Book Collection.

LIABILITY
All work shown at the gallery will be insured for the duration of the exhibition. The gallery cannot insure works in transit.

SHIPPING REQUIREMENTS
The cost of shipping works to and from the gallery is the responsibility of the artist. Please do not send artwork in packing peanuts.

SUBMISSIONS PROCESS

1. To submit your artwork, please visit: www.wpugalleries.slideroom.com
2. Register an account with SlideRoom. Click on ‘Start a New Submission.’
3. Fill out the Application Form.
4. Upload your Artist Bio/CV and Artist Statement in the Documents section.
5. Upload up to 3 images (one image per artwork; 4 x 6 inches at 300 dpi). Be sure to list the Title, Date, Medium and Dimensions in the specified areas.
6. Pay the entry fee of $25 when prompted to receive submission confirmation.

(Entry fees go toward the purchase of artwork from the American Impressions exhibition for the William Paterson University permanent art collection.)

TIMELINE

Submissions Deadline
Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Notification
Thursday, December 22, 2011

Receipt of Work Deadline
Monday, January 16, 2012

Reception Date
Sunday, February 5, 3:00 – 5:00 p.m.

ABOUT THE JUROR

Elizabeth F. Spungen, Executive Director of The Print Center in Philadelphia, PA.

Liz Spungen has been the Executive Director of The Print Center in Philadelphia since 2006. She received both a BA and MA in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania and has spent her entire career working with the visual arts in Philadelphia.

During her tenure at The Print Center, her curatorial efforts have included Black Pulse: Doug + Mike Starn (2007); Nakazora: space between sky and earth: Masao Yamamoto (2008); and the upcoming Silver Mine, a retrospective exhibition of the work of photographer Robert Asman.

Spungen has been on the curatorial staff at the Institute of Contemporary Art, The Fabric Workshop and Museum and Bryn Mawr College, and was President of the Chester Springs Studio and the Arcadia University Art Gallery. From 2002 – 2006 she headed Liz F. Spungen Fine Art, specializing in works on paper from the greater Philadelphia region.

ABOUT THE COMPETITION

Since 2001, this national juried exhibition has celebrated the print and the printmaker. Elizabeth F. Spungen, Executive Director of The Print Center (Philadelphia, PA) is the juror for the 2012 printmaking competition. Past jurors have included: Anne Coffin (Founder and Director, International Print Center of New York); Willie Cole (Artist/Printmaker); Ofelia Garcia (former Dean of the College of Arts and Communications, William Paterson University); John W. Ittman (Curator of Prints, Philadelphia Museum); David Kiehl (Curator of Prints, Whitney Museum of American Art); and Dr. Marilyn S. Kushner (Curator of Prints and Drawings, Brooklyn Museum); among others.

Exhibitions are made possible in part by a grant from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Department of State.

http://www.wpunj.edu/coac/gallery/southgallery.dot

Saturday Nov. 12, 7pm

Architects by Force

Photography Installation by

Maria Teresa Fernández

Oct. 8 – Nov. 27, 2011

Art Produce Gallery  3139 University Ave. San Diego

ARCHITECTS BY FORCE

Maria Teresa Fernández

From Art Produce website:

“Need is what makes them “Architects by Force.” An elementary knowledge of building, along with bold and contradictory components, are precisely the raw materials for these houses in Tijuana. Some of these “Architects,” with their unfulfilled American Dream, now fight for their survival in any open space, fearlessly claiming their forbidden grounds. In order to protect themselves from the forces of nature, they ingenuously battle with whatever materials come across their path. Upon the disheveled and torn walls there is a sense of serenity and coexistence with nature. Like weeds, these homes bloom and spread across any existing territorial opening. They use objects such as tires, garage doors, springboard mattresses, refrigerator doors, planks of wood, iron, plastic, metal sheets, and waste from the maquiladoras to construct their homes.
They do not use these materials as environmentalists, but merely as architects facing the harsh fact that they have no other alternative. “Architects by Force” is an architectural style never taken into consideration by mainstream culture. Mexican architecture is being promoted in beautiful books and magazines, but no one looks to the originality and creativity of these “Architects by Force”.
The photographs depict a dialogue between form and material, between the patterns and textures, all of which combine with the wild range of colors to create a cacophonous dialect. These factors confirm the notion that a piece of discarded material is no longer a piece of trash; the colors, the patterns, and the textures conjure up the vitality and imagination required to convert trash into a home. These constructions summon the spirit and creativity of those Mexican Architects who solely want to achieve their objective; a tranquil and covered space for their family to feel protected: a HOME.
They have my respect and admiration.”

-Maria Teresa

Hello friends,

Papers must be received by September 15, 2012 to be considered for publication in this issue. Please send manuscript publications to the managing editor: Leslie Shortlidge shortlidge.2@osu.edu. See Style Guidelines at www.raceethnicity.org.

Submission of artwork for the cover that relates to the theme of the issue is welcome. See website for submission guidelines.

Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts encourages and welcomes contributions by scholars, researchers, grassroots activists, policy advocates, and organizations

Submissions are invited to explore the politics of contention and social movements in the postcolonial world (Africa, Asia, and Latin America), with particular regard to the ways in which race and ethnicity relate to identities and claims revolving around class, gender, nationality, and religion. Comparative discussions of social contestation in different societies are welcome.
Guest Editor Franco Barchiesi, Associate Professor in the Department of African American and African Studies at the Ohio State University, and the editorial staff of Race/Ethnicity invite submissions for Volume 6, Number 3, and entitled “Grassroots Politics in the Postcolony.” We welcome submissions from activists, advocates and practitioners working on relevant issues, as well as from scholars in the social sciences and the humanities. In this issue, we look to engage the following questions:

• How are racial and ethnic identities implicated in collective mobilization (including rural, labor, women, youth, indigenous, and religious movements) in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the “global South”?
• Is the concept of “social movement” useful to understand contemporary forms of social contention and grassroots politics?
• How do racial inequalities shape local contentious politics and everyday forms of social contestation?
• How do claims for racial and ethnic justice relate to grassroots politics in realities of of economic liberalization and privatization?
• In which ways do intersections of race and ethnicity with current social conflicts interrogate the legacies of nationalism and decolonization?
• Do processes of migration and diaspora internationalize postcolonial political identities?
• How do grassroots identities, and their elaborations of race and ethnicity, interrogate political institutions and ideas of citizenship and civil society?
• How have postcolonial social movements responded to the global economic crisis and its impact on racial and ethnic dynamics?

Contributions from scholars, activists, and social movement participants can include, but are not limited to, case studies, theoretical discussions, and experience-based reflections.
Papers must be received by September 15, 2012 to be considered for publication.
Submission of artwork for the cover that relates to the theme of the issue is welcome. See website at http://www.raceethnicity.org/coverart.html for submission guidelines.

Visual Arts Department Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presents:

Jeffrey Vallance

Thursday, November 10th, 2011, 4-6PM

UC San Diego, Visual Arts Facility Performance Space (Russell Lane)

Free & Open to the Public

Jeffrey Vallance’s work blurs the lines between object making, installation, performance, curating and writing. Critics have described his work as an indefinable cross-pollination of many disciplines. For research, Vallance has often traveled to meet with appropriate officials in the field. Often an installation is exhibited in a site-specific museum location. Examples of this procedure include such projects as burying a piece of meat (chicken) at a pet cemetery in California, traveling throughout Polynesia in search of the origin of the myth of Tiki, having an audience with the King of Tonga, meeting with the President of Iceland, creating a Richard Nixon Museum, traveling to the Vatican, Turin, and Milan, Italy to study Christian relics, installing an exhibit aboard a tugboat in the Västerbotten Maritime Museum in Umeå, Sweden, curating shows in the fabulous museums of Las Vegas, such as the Liberace Museum, Debbie Reynolds Casino, Cranberry Museum and the Clown Museum, and initiating a campaign for ”Preserving America’s Cultural Heritage,” a federal bill that would establish a benefit fund for all living visual artists in the United States. Vallance curated the first art world exhibition of the Painter of Light™ entitled Thomas Kinkade: Heaven on Earth. In addition to exhibiting his artwork, Mr. Vallance has written for many publications and journals including Art issues, Artforum, L.A. Weekly, Juxtapoz, and Fortean Times. He has published five books: Blinky, the Friendly Hen, The World of Jeffrey Vallance: Collected Writings 1978-1994, Thomas Kinkade: Heaven on Earth, My Life with Dick, and Relics and Reliquaries.

Please direct inquiries to V/A/L/S Coordinator Jessica Sledge at: jsledge@ucsd.edu.
http://lectures.visarts.ucsd.edu/VALS_FA2011/index.html

Double Breaks

Co-Curated by Jay Howell and Louis M Schmidt

November 11, 2011 (6-10PM)

With an After Party at Tin Can Alehouse! (10PM-Close)

Double Break is very excited to announce our fifth exhibition, Double Breaks, a group show co-curated by LA-based artist Jay Howell and Louis M Schmidt. Throwing together 27 artists with nearly as many styles, Double Breaks will leap from painting to graffiti, from drawing to illustration, from comics to fine art, then turn in on itself to create a vacuum of lawless, unadulterated aesthetic chaos. Or something like that… The show will feature a slew of fantastic artists, including 80’s skateboarding legend Neil Blender, iconic comics artist Bill Griffith (creator of Zippy the Pinhead) plus widely exhibited artists like Thomas Campbell, Mel Kadel, Travis Millard, Mark Mulroney, Russ Pope, Deth P. Sun and many more!

Exhibiting artists include:

Jesse Balmer, Neil Blender, Rich Bott, Thomas Campbell, David Cook, Matt Coors, Jim Dirschberger, Bill Griffith (Zippy the Pinhead), Rob Helmstetter, Jay Howell, Michael Hsiung, Christopher Kardambikis, Mel Kadel, Deth Kills, Thomas McMahan, Travis Millard, Mark Mulroney (pictured), Russ Pope, Tim Presley, Remio, Louis M Schmidt, Sean Stout, Chris Sullivan, Deth P. Sun, Ruth Swanson, Mark Whalen (Kill Pixie), Marco Zamora

Opening Reception: November 11, 2011 (6-10PM)

After Party at Tin Can Alehouse (1863 5^th Ave) from 10PM-Close!

Bands selected by artist Sean Stout!

Show runs November 11- December 11, 2011

Double Break

1821 5^th Avenue

San Diego, CA 92101

619.238.2325

info@doublebreakstore.com

www.doublebreakstore.com

www.facebook.com/DoubleBreak

www.twitter.com/DoubleBreakSD

* images courtesy of Mark Mulroney and Jay Howell

“My project is a mini mobile museum of sweeteners, which I call MMMsweet cart. The mobile cart presents information about artificial and natural sweeteners by traveling the streets of San Diego and possibly other cities in the future. Adults and kids will be invited to participate by taste testing sweeteners, playing a game, taking a quiz, inventing a sweetener, creating a new soda, etc.. The world of sweeteners is about as complex as food itself. I’m fascinated by where typical packaged food comes from and how it’s made. Food Scientists and the food industry work together to create new products for consumers and most of us get fooled by the advertising and the excitement of a new product.

I began a few years ago with designing the mobile cart to resemble an old fashion ice cream cart. I struggled for months to create characters to go with each sweetener. I was inspired by Charlie Harper’s style of illustration and I studied Pokemon characters. I painted lots of creatures with my two kids, until I finally found some that could resembled sweetener heros.

The ironic heros on the trading cards are meant to recruit followers to be concerned about what they eat? My big questions are, What are these sweeteners doing to our bodies? Which ones are better than others? How do we decide what sweeteners we should eat, if any?

The sweetener mobile cart includes a collection of natural and artificial sweeteners in jars. At every event, I will unveil a new trading card. The trading cards will be given away for free and include a donation jar to fund printing costs for future trading cards. I anticipate about 18 trading cards distributed over the first year of the project. Nine trading cards have been completed but I need funds to print the cards and pay the graphic designer to set up more trading card designs. I also need funds to purchase sweeteners for tasting events and soda invention activities. Thanks for your support.

Budget:

$520 initial printing costs of the first 9 trading cards, 1000 each.

$300 graphic designer cost to set up the front and back of the next 9 trading cards

$180 for sweetener samples, soda making supplies and photocopying for public events.

To find out more about the Sugar Museum’s past projects, please visit

www.sugarmuseum.org.”

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1582061794/mini-mobile-museum-of-sweeteners

art, science & business/workshop: »Chronicles of Work 1. Work without Qualities«

24. November 2011 through 26. November 2011
Akademie Schloss Solitude

A Workshop: Discussions, Film Screenings, Performances

With its new central topic, “Chronicles of Work,” Akademie Schloss Solitude initiates a comprehensive interdisciplinary discussion regarding the consequences of the change in work organization within contemporary societies. The workshop “Chronicles of Work 1. Work without Qualities” introduces the topic with the goal of addressing legal professionals, sociologists, economists, philosophers, anthropologists, and artists of all disciplines. During the three-day program, a series of roundtable discussions and presentations will interweave various notions of work processes, work conditions, and work mutations in the context of artistic practices and procedures, as well as, in the fields of economics and law.

with
Egon Amman, publisher, Berlin
Olaf Bach*, economist, Zurich
Manuel Boutet*, sociologist, Paris
Halton Cheadle, jurist, Cape Town
Bojana Cvejic, dramaturg and performer, Brussels
Tacita Dean, artist, Berlin
Corinne Diserens, curator, Berlin/Brussels
Patricia Falguières, art historian, Paris
Leontxo García, sports journalist and chess commentator, Madrid
Bernardo Gouthier-Macedo, economist, São Paulo
Tamar Guimarães*, artist, Copenhagen
Xavier Le Roy, dancer and choreographer, Berlin
Stefano Mirti, designer, Milan
Mariko Nagai*, writer, Tokyo
Berno Odo Polzer, curator and dramaturg, Brussels
Matthias Sauerbruch and Louisa Hutton, architects, Berlin
Elia Suleiman, filmmaker, Paris
Jalal Toufic, thinker, writer and video artist, Berlin/Beirut
Christophe Wavelet*, performer and curator, Paris

*current or future fellows of Akademie Schloss Solitude

It is indeed the mark of all laboring that it leaves nothing behind, that the result of its effort is almost as quickly consumed as the effort is spent. And yet this effort, despite its futility, is born of a great urgency and motivated by a more powerful drive than anything else, because life itself depends upon it.
Hanna Arendt

The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism (that of Feuerbach included) is that the thing, reality, sensuousness,
is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive
human activity itself as objective activity.
Karl Marx

The arrow of time is broken: in an economy under constant restructuring that is based on the short-term and hates routine, definite trajectories no longer exist. People miss stable human relations and long-term objectives.
Richard Sennett

Only an interruption in the flow of temporality can change subjectivity, which can in turn be reoriented. At that moment a new process begins, a constitutive process out of which a different form of subjectivity arises. We have to consider the instruments at our disposal to create these partial interruptions in temporality. It’s
essential that we break out of the market’s temporality.
Maurizio Lazzarato

… The question is to give a voice to the body – the body that is usually asked to keep quiet, or not to use another language than this of the gestures prescribed by the tradition of ballet.
Christophe Wavelet

Lygia Clark constantly questions the stable identities of the author, of the object and of the spectator of the aesthetic equation, and defines the radical nature of the work by its potential to bring the capacity of transforming the consciousness of its recipient.
Corinne Diserens

Registration
The conference fee, catering included, is 50 euros/ 30 euros (students). The number of participants is limited to 50.
Please register by November 14, 2011:
Karoline Weber, +49 (0)71199619134, kw@akademiesolitude.de

Akademie Schloss Solitude
Solitude 3
70197 Stuttgart
Deutschland
Fax +49 (0) 711 99 61 95 0

Julia Warmers
Referentin
Tel. +49 (0) 711 99 61 91 35
Email jw@akademie-solitude.de

*Photo credit: “La Pantinoise,” produced in a French tobacco factory, during an occupation by the workers (1982–1983). The package was offered along with a support voucher. The picture is taken from the catalog “Trente-neuf objets de grève présentés par Jean-Luc Moulène.” © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2011

Kristi Maxwell is the author of Realm Sixty-four (Ahsahta Press, 2008), Elsewhere & Wise (Dancing Girl Press, 2008), and Hush Sessions (Saturnalia Books, 2009). Her third full-length book, Re-, will be published by Ahsahta in Sept. 2011. In 2010, she completed work toward a Ph.D. in English & Comparative Lit at the University of Cincinnati, where she also completed a graduate certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She teaches at the University of Arizona and the Poetry Center in Tucson.

Stephanie Balzer is the author of Revenant (Kore Press) and faster, faster (Cue Editions) and a former executive director of VOICES Community Stories Past and Present, Inc., a Tucson nonprofit that empowers youth to share their personal stories through professional media outlets. PShe holds a master’s degree in creative writing from The University of Arizona and is the 2009 recipient of the Mary Ann Campau Memorial Fellowship through The University of Arizona Poetry Center, which honors talented writers who strengthen and inspire our literary landscape. Her poems have appeared in Chelsea, MidAmerican Review, and CUE.

Agitprop readings are free, but wine and donations to the gallery are
always welcome.

We hope to see you there and for festivities before and afterward.

Agitprop
Saturday, November 5th, 7pm
2837 University Avenue in North Park (Entrance on ah, behind Glenn’s
Market) Google Map
San Diego, CA 92104
619.384.7989

Rendering of "Self titled" by Nina Preisendorfer and Brian Zimmerman

Susan Myrland‘s career is difficult to put into a box. Her resume includes stints with both for-profit and non-profit organizations. She has done TV production, interactive video communications, internet and management consulting and has her own consulting firm, Silvergate. The most recent chapter in her career was marked by her completion of a Museum Studies class she took at San Diego’s Mesa College taught by Alessandra Moctezuma. Myrland may be one of Moctezuma’s most high profile disciples, having gone on to curate and organize this year’s Art San Diego’s Art Lab project, an at large series of events that brought the community together under the umbrella of creative collaboration. It’s an understatement to say she is continually searching for the next big challenge that will test her experience and expand her knowledge of the world. After taking a couple months off from the recently completed Art San Diego 2011, Myrland was ready to look back on her experience and offer her opinions on the state of culture and capital in San Diego.

Can you begin by giving a sense of the scope of the Art Labs? How many artists were working in how many venues across the city? How long was the process of curating from beginning to end?

The process began last fall when the Art San Diego team met to debrief about the 2010 Fair. Last year’s Art Labs were a combination of exhibitions that were already underway, like MCASD’s Viva La Revolución, and events planned specifically for Art SD weekend, like the block parties and art walks held in Barrio Logan and East Village. Ann Berchtold, Executive Director of Art SD, wanted to expand the latter and asked if I would curate. We exchanged ideas over the holidays, and things really got rolling in January and February as we developed the Request for Proposals. In the spring I spent a lot of time building relationships, going to shows and meeting new artists. That was one of the high points for me. We have a lot of good people here.

By the time of the Fair there were 18 sites from North Park to Tijuana, with some locations hosting multiple projects. Approximately 250 artists, curators and volunteers were involved. It grew organically as artists recruited their friends and mentors. You often hear “there’s so much going on in San Diego that the public doesn’t know about” — and that desire to show who we are helped drive the growth. Plus it was summertime and it was a fun thing to do.

What was your mandate for the Art Labs as it was handed down to you from the organizers of Art SD? Was the model based on an existing fair?

There was no mandate other than the Art Labs should activate the urban space and showcase local art. As a starting point for discussion Ann sent me a link to Art Basel Miami Beach’s Art Public project. They staged nine installations near the Convention Center intended to “interrupt the daily routine of passersby in poetic and surprising ways.” I’m sure they worked well in Miami but the idea of doing only nine projects didn’t appeal to me. San Diego is spread out and fragmented. Our region is composed of many distinct nodes, whether you’re talking about our political system, economic base, art scene, geography or habitat. I felt that our Art Labs needed to show this diversity, and it was important to do it on a big scale.

The theme of the Art Labs was for each lab to have a response to the identity of San Diego, why was this chosen and do you think it was a successful theme and why? Why not?

I chose it for several reasons. First, it picked up where MCASD’s Here Not There left off. On a panel at last year’s Fair, MCASD curator Lucia Sanroman said, “San Diego is defined by what it is not, and a place defined by what it is not is constantly slipping towards ambiguity.” This contributes to our well-established second city syndrome. If we are not L.A. and we are not Tijuana, what are we? The Art Labs presented the perfect opportunity to outline the space and let local artists fill it.

It was successful because it motivated artists to respond and put to rest the stereotype that we are bland and conservative. None of the Art Labs were in-your-face controversial but some had a quietly witty, subversive streak while others were simply unusual for our city.

The theme also helped draw media attention, and that was part of Art SD’s end of the bargain with the Art Labs. The local media really got it right – especially Voice of San Diego, CityBeat, KPBS and the U-T. They understood that this was a rich, complicated story with lots of different aspects, and they did their best to cover it all.

Where the theme was less successful was that, in order to get the big picture of “what San Diego is,” you had to see all the Art Labs. You had to experience the high-tech skill and social commentary of Xavier Leonard’s With These Hands… the messages about binational cooperation and complexity that were built into Twins in Twain… the delicate beauty of Stephanie Bedwell’s sculpture, Firmly Afloat, referencing coastal geography and her ties to the community… the SoCal imagery of Anna Stump and Ted Meyer’s Exploding Tattoo… the ambivalence about our Navy heritage that Andrew Oslovar tackled in XO has the Conn… the subtle conceptualism of Claire Zitzow’s And Forth… the audacious, ballsy, “swing for the fences” experience that was Space 4 Art Cubed… and many more. Several of the events required being at a specific place at a specific time. If you missed it, you missed the message. The Art Labs structure became a metaphor for our art scene with the same strengths and weaknesses. We continue to grow and spread and become more diverse, and it’s hard to get your arms around it all.

How was the traffic flow between Art SD and the satellite events? How well did the audiences overlap?

Not surprisingly, the Art Labs at the Hilton saw the most foot traffic, with (In)Visible Project getting about 3,000 – 4,000 visitors. (In)Visible was sited between the Indigo Ballroom where the commercial galleries were located, and an exterior terrace used for donor receptions. In other words, we placed the homeless people right in the path of VIPs headed for the bar. I was afraid that the message might come across as heavy-handed but Bear Guerra’s portraits and Jessica Jollett and Rebecca Rauber’s audio interviews were so captivating that they easily drew you in.

At the other extreme, Twins in Twain had hardly any foot traffic, which broke my heart because it was a wonderful concept and a beautiful, minimalist installation. A lot of people worked very hard on that Art Lab. When Casa Familiar submitted their proposal, we discussed the issue of getting visitors to San Ysidro – but we all still believed that they would draw a larger crowd than they did. (Ed. note: They are selling the t-shirts online. You can buy them here. )

Besides location, another major factor that determined attendance was the program catalog. We went to press in June but several of the Art Labs didn’t take shape until August. As a result, critical information wasn’t in there – like the addition of the multimedia aspects at Art Produce and the start/end time of performances at Agitprop and the airport. Plus we had to scale back from last year’s catalog that had three pages for the Art Labs, including photos and a map. This year we had one page without photos, no map, and a very short description that was two months old. We tried to compensate by highlighting a few events elsewhere in the catalog and promoting the Art Labs website. The Union-Trib generously donated space in Night & Day to run an updated schedule and they brought 3000 copies to the Hilton. But for folks walking into the Fair and getting their first exposure to Art SD, that catalog is their bible.

So attendance varied, with sites reporting 50, 100, 300, 1000 visitors. Several things have to fall into place in order to get people to climb out of their comfort zones and go to a new event: a compelling photo and description, the time of day, what else is scheduled, distance, traffic, and parking. The Padres games made parking difficult for East Village and Hilton events, and might have deterred tourists from leaving the hotel and driving through the Gaslamp.

As for overlap between audiences, there’s no way to know. That would require surveying a representative sample at all the sites and we didn’t have the resources to do any substantive evaluation.

I have heard there was an issue with some of the exhibitors who criticized the Art Labs for drawing crowds away from the hotel and suppressing sales. Is that true? And if so how does one reconcile these two competing interests?

I wasn’t involved with the commercial side this year so I can’t speak firsthand, but what I heard is that the dealers had strong sales. It seems unlikely that anyone who visited the Fair decided not to buy something because they got distracted by one of the Art Labs. Miami’s example shows that it’s definitely possible to have simultaneous events in multiple locations — in fact, it helps brand the city as an arts destination. That’s part of the maturation of San Diego’s art scene. Rather than scaling back out of fear of competition, let’s focus on growing the audience, broadening awareness of all the events taking place, and creating an environment of arts and culture supporters.

Were you able to deliver everything you promised in terms of logistical support to the participants of the Art Labs?

Yes. Art SD’s commitment was to promote the Art Labs as a key part of the Fair and Arts Month. In the RFP (request for proposal), we said that artists who were confirmed by July would be featured by name in the program catalog and on the website. When the list of artists grew to more than 100, this posed a problem for the catalog. We had to choose between giving more room for a description of the Art Lab and mentioning people by name. We decided to stick with what we’d promised but it could have gone either way. We used the website to give more detail, and reinforced the Art Labs through the Art SD Facebook page, Twitter feed, multiple email blasts to 8,000 subscribers, and radio/television/print/online editorial coverage. We also promoted the Art Labs in advertising placed in San Diego Magazine, Art Ltd., Art in America, The Art Newspaper, and others. The only place where we were unable to include the Art Labs was an iPhone app developed by an outside company.

This year’s Art Labs were fueled by enthusiasm on the part of the artists but no funding was offered to them. How do you sustain such a high level of participation in the future based on this model?

There will always be artists who want to exhibit in exchange for exposure, but it’s unlikely to get the quantity and quality of people we had this year. However Art SD isn’t intended to be a volunteer-driven organization. Relying entirely on volunteers isn’t sustainable. Art SD is a for-profit that isn’t making money yet due to the economy, the time needed to establish a reputation, the nature of the San Diego market, and as of this year, a competing fair. Ann Berchtold and Julie Schraeger, the Managing Director, are still paying for many of the expenses out of their pockets. They can’t continue to do that so they’re rethinking the business model and looking for ways to create revenue.

Let’s say they find a corporate sponsor, private foundation, or government agency to underwrite the Labs. The question then becomes “what are the implications of getting paid?” A funder has the right to put restrictions on what gets created. This year artists had free rein to do whatever they wanted as long as they could make the case that it related to San Diego’s identity. They were free to explore whatever avenues called to them and make it as simple or complicated as they desired. They were free to change their minds at the last minute (and some did). I think that helped contribute to the enthusiasm – but at the end of the day we all have to earn a living. The point is, there will be benefits and drawbacks to any approach, and this is still a very young venture that is attempting to figure out what will work. That’s the ethos of Art SD: experiment, take risks, try a lot of things.

Will you be returning next year? If not, what valuable lessons did you learn that you’d like to pass on to your successor?

Although I had a great time, I won’t be returning. I want to move on to bigger challenges. I’m not sure how many of the lessons from this year will apply, as next year’s Fair and Labs will probably look very different. But in general, the tips I’d give to the community are:

1) Simpler schedule with fewer events = greater attendance. Complicated schedule with more events = less attendance.

Duh, right? It’s so easy to see in hindsight but when we were accepting proposals back in April, our expectations were skewed by the 2010 Barrio Logan Block Party which drew 1000 attendees and several collectors. This year we learned the magic formula. To get the most attendance, be located within 1-2 miles of the Fair + have little or no competition + employ extensive, repeated promotion by the site as well as Art SD + a clear, consistent concept that can be explained in a few words + a compelling description and photo. Any deviation from that and headcount starts to drop off.

2) Ignore #1.

Too much focus on attendance and luring collectors makes the Art Labs just like the commercial galleries inside the Hilton. In the months leading up to Labor Day Weekend, people buzzed about the excitement of working with their colleagues and feeling part of something that was big, creative, wide-open and artist-driven. We started to link those nodes together, see the commonalities, learn our landscape, try out new skills, and make an authentic statement about our city. To me, that is the success of the Art Labs, and I was proud to be part of it.

…a short performance by Collective Magpie (Melinda Barnadas and Tae Hwang), Andrew Printer, Eddie Miramontes, Jessica Sledge and David White.

Art(ist) in Context II: or How I Learned to Scrub the City of Undesirable Elements and InScribe Economic Viability onto the Urban Landscape imagines the stage of the Agitprop space as a speakeasy and a mini factory of cultural production. The five artists perform working methods indicative of practices of today; each artist, through this production method, focusing on a topic relevant to their individual interests. Through this, a performative system is established that elbows out the other over a progression through time.

Art(ist) in Context II:or How I Learned to Scrub the City of Undesirable Elements and InScribe Economic Viability onto the Urban Landscape is a collaborative performance and installation happening at the Agitprop space in North Park. It is an encore of a performance and installation originated as part of ART San Diego 2011.

This performance and installation will take as its starting point five very different artistic practices that utilize disparate approaches to extra-institutional engagement with various issues, groups and environments. The artists participating include Melinda Barnadas (Collective Magpie -with Tae Hwang), who explores the natural and biological through sculptural installations; Andrew Printer, whose “new photojournalism” captures the social idiosyncrasies of particular subcultures and individuals blurring the line between fiction and fact; Jessica Sledge, whose New Orleans-inspired performance work blends the alchemical with buried urban narratives; Eddie Miramontes, who uses traditional postering and screen-printing techniques to spread poetic and critical messages; and David White, who uses art historical conventions (and institutions) as a way of creating participatory events connecting individuals and groups in localized productions.

The performance on Friday October 28th at 8pm will unfold in three acts. Act I will take place in an old school speakeasy complete with ambiance, music and alcoholic libations. Audience members are encouraged to participate in a card game based on vegetation collected locally. Act II consists of a multi-media audio-visual performance and presentation of the processes of displacement that frequently occurs to the natural and cultural landscape when strategies of economic development are implemented on models of corporate dynamization coupled with cultural initiatives. The final Act ends with the distribution of informational material as the speakeasy resumes.

Please arrive promptly (at 8 P.M.) for the performance as space is limited.
This event is free.

Agitprop

2837 University Ave. (entrance on Utah)

San Diego 92104

contact@agitpropspace.org

Thursday, October 27, 2011 : 7:00pm
University Park Campus
Harris Hall (HAR)
Gin D. Wong Conference Center
Reception with live music to follow.

Admission is free.

http://web-app.usc.edu/ws/eo2/calendar/113/event/893724

Join us for a provocative evening of performance, media art and rebel phones. The event will highlight three extraordinary projects that support immigrant communities in Los Angeles through the use of mobile-phone devices. The controversial Transborder Immigrant Tool, a mobile-phone app by the Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0/b.a.n.g lab, helps sustain those crossing the border into the United States by assisting with directions to water and poetry. Voces Móviles/Mobile Voices (VozMob), a collaboration between USC’s Annenberg School and the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California, helps day laborers record and share their stories using cell phones. The LA Flood Project delivers a locative media narrative about crises in Los Angeles—both historical and imagined. These stories, located across the Southern California landscape, are mapped via GPS. The evening will also include photographs by Maria de Lourdes González Reyes, a reading by Roberto Leni-Olivares and a discussion moderated by USC Annenberg professor Josh Kun.
Organized by Mark C. Marino (Writing Program) and Roberto Leni-Olivares (Anthropology). Co-sponsored by the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, the Center for Transformative Scholarship, the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration, El Centro Chicano and the Latina/o Student Assembly.
For further information on this event:
visionsandvoices@usc.edu

West on Chapo Marquez; South through the alley to Cuevas.  I barely notice the wire mesh that Luis installed the other week to keep the cat in.  Across Malaroq, wind up the ramp.  The footbridge across the canal toward Centro.

Negrete to Juan Sarabia.  Across Sánchez Taboada.  One block more to Los Heroes.  The Glorieta Independencia (traffic circle at the intersection of the Paseo de los Heros and Independencia/Juan Sarabia). Across the boulevard, a metal cylinder wraps around El Cubo, which “forms part of the architectural complex of CECUT.”  Across decima (10th), a Commercial Mexicana announces its presence at Plaza Río in a bold, green sans serif.  I look to the camellón (median) between Plaza Río and the Plaza Financiera.  There is no one in the camellón.  But I do notice people in the middle of the glorieta, facing traffic as it moves in the direction of the Club Campestre de Tijuana (a golf course), Caliente Hipodrómo (the racetrack), 20 de Noviembre (location of the municipal station where the 20 were detained after the police raid on October 18; (http://www.uniradioinforma.com/columnas/columna1319.html).

Drivers acknowledge statements in acrylic on cardboard and canvas, as they orbit the Tijeras (a monument constructed in the middle of the traffic circle).  From the glorieta, to the camellón in front of CECUT.  I take one end of a 4X12 piece of canvas.  We move to the sidewalk.  Vendors organize, in relation to the 29th Anniversary of CECUT.  We move west, back east, on the sidewalk. Across the street, and then back to the camellón.

Constant movement.  Advised.  Necessitated by a conversation earlier that afternoon: “alrededor de las 13:50 horas, un agente de la policía municipal de Tijuana dialoga con una de las personas que fue detenida la madrugada del martes” (“around 1:50 PM, a city police officer spoke with one person who was detained on Tuesday morning,” from http://www.la-ch.com/).  $100-$200 (USD, per arrestee) every three days is not sustainable.  Is not affordable.  Only 3 days in the camellón between Plaza Río and the Plaza Financiera, from October 15-18.  70 police.  At 2AM.  To arrest and detain 27 “indignados”: 20 men, 6 women, 1 child (of 3 years).  In violation of a municipal code: sleeping in a public space.

Article 9 of the Constitución Mexicana of 1917: “No se podrá coartar el derecho de asociarse o reunirse pacíficamente con cualquier objeto lícito; pero solamente los cuidadanos de la República podrán hacerlo para tomar parte en los asuntos políticos del país.”  (“You may not restrict the right to assemble or associate peaceably for any lawful purpose; citizens of the Republic (have the right to do so) to take part in political affairs.”)  Is it legally possible for municipal code to supersede a constitutional article?  Without doubt, Tuesday’s arrest “restrict(s) the right to assemble or associate peaceably for any lawful purpose.”

The next Asemblea General takes place Monday, 5 to 8, at the Vidriería Torre de Agua Caliente.  It is important that the meetings take place in public space.  To be publicly visible.  To permit participation of a larger public.  To maintain transparency in processes of decision making. But it is difficult to evade the police.  Particularly in Zona Río.  Where the presence of dialogue, which is separate from (in contrast to) that in the exclusive interest of empresas financieras y multinacionales (financial and multinational firms), is urgently needed.

https://www.facebook.com/ocupemostijuana
 

Thursday October 27th, 2:30-4:00. Location: Agitprop,  2837 University Ave. (entrance on Utah St.)

The You That Is In It - Fiona Hallinan

This class will be an exploration of the notion of ‘limbic resonance’, the scientific term for the unspoken communication that occurs between mammals in physical contact with one another.

Taking form as a Skype chat with the teacher speaking from Ireland, the class itself challenges the possibilities of non-present communication. Can we replicate the experience of presence virtually? Using methods of anecdote, meditation and video trickery, the class will play with notions of embodiment and physicality, ultimately questioning whether true connection can be created through technology.

Also happening that week at UCSD:

KCDC All Corners Internet Conversation series.

Tomorrowland Forever

These three events will be free and open to the public.

Featured Events to be held in the UC San Diego Literature Building, Rooms 155 and 138

&NOW is a biennial traveling festival/conference that celebrates writing as a contemporary art form: literary art as it is practiced today by authors who consciously treat their work as a process that is aware of its own literary and extra-literary history, that is as much about its form and materials, language, communities, and practice as it is about its subject matter.

&NOW brings together a wide range of writers who are interested in exploring the possibilities of form and the limits of language and other literary modes and who are interested in literature that emphasizes text as a medium, that investigates the essential emptiness of language, and that articulates an assumption that literary form both reflects and emerges from its location in time, forming multiple associations within competing matrices of power and value.

The &NOW Festival of New Writing remains invested in the idea that aesthetics are political, cultural, and interpersonal, articulating convictions about how the world works, including the literary world. Unlike much literature sold for mass appeal, this is a type of literature that by its nature tends to keep generic and even disciplinary definitions unresolved.

Sometimes called experimental, conceptual, avant-garde, freaky, hybrid, surfiction, inaccessible, radical, slip-stream, neo-baroque, hyperfeminine, afro-futurist, postmodern, self-conscious, paradiscursive, gimmicky, and most especially at this moment in history “innovative,” literary art is writing (most often made of words), whose aesthetic often shares an ethos with contemporary concerns and modes of both resistance and exhaustion. This is a literature that often takes its own medium as part of its subject matter and sometimes works against the dominant/dominating assumptions about what literature is and does by employing a variety of linguistic games, slippages, puzzles, parodies, annihilations, needs, historical disjunctions, discursive juxtapositions, visuals, appropriations, spatial play, extra-diagetic codes, and other rhetorical strategies and constraints. Literary art may draw attention to modes of performance, distribution, and reception—from the visual coding of the book and page—to other aspects of literary staging, including the author’s identity matrices, as this influences how (and if) a text is perceived and received. Contemporary literary art is as invested in its own medium, materials, practices, and engagement with others as it is engaged with the rest of the world.

By bringing together all kinds of writers who are interested in literature as a contemporary art form, &NOW fosters friendships, love affairs, arguments, new writing projects, collaborations, fabulousness, (sometimes all of these at once), the polar opposite of these previous terms, and of course, the means of its own undoing.

Oct. 13 “The Future’s History”
Our Lady J and her Gospel for the Godless
Carole Maso (keynote)
Presented by Connie Samaras

Oct. 14 “Matters of Mind”
Rae Armantrout
V.S. Ramachandran
Bhanu Kapil
Vanessa Place
Presented by Miranda Mellis

Oct. 15 “Always Almost Always-Already”
Steve Tomasula
Black Took Collective
Cathy Gere
Presented by Ricardo Dominguez

http://andnowfestival.com/

Send questions, comments, or concerns to: andnow2011 [at] gmail [dot] com

Session I  Oct. 22th- Nov. 19th 2011
Session II Nov. 26th- Dec. 10 2011

@ Agitprop space
2837 University Ave. (North Park, entrance on Utah st.)
San Diego CA 92104
contact@agitpropspace.org
619.384.7989

What: Three Crises: a Satellite.  An open seminar to discuss the historical development of the current economic crisis and how we got here.

 

Where: Agitprop space in North Park  2837 University Ave. (entrance on Utah st.) http://agitpropspace.org- This project is a local satellite of a seminar based out of MessHall in Chicago where it is being organized and led by theorist/activist Brian Holmes.  

We will relocate to Civic Center in San Diego

in solidarity of Occupy San Diego

after first meeting .

>>>UPDATE (10/19/11)- ALL MEETINGS WILL TAKE PLACE AT CIVIC CENTER PLAZA.  WE WILL MEET NEXT TO THE FOUNTAIN AT 3PM. <<<

How: Through a series of weekly meetings we will be using the posted texts from MessHall to facilitate the conversation locally.

 

 

In June of this year a proposal was made to hold a seminar with aims to “develop a framework for understanding the present political-economic crisis and for acting against and beyond it”. The seminar is based at Mess Hall, an “experimental cultural center” in Chicago.  We would like to propose a satellite, with aims of better understanding and intervening in the crisis, as it is felt in the context of Southern California/San Diego.

The Mess Hall seminar began on September 17, 2011; lectures and readings are posted to messhall.org.  A significant amount of networked activity/gestures toward resistance have taken place since September 17 (re: #OccupyWallSt., #OccupyLA, #OccupyChicago, #OccupySD).  We will commence on October 15, with participation in local gestures organized around the International Day of Action Against Austerity (http://www.sdcpj.org/ , http://sandiegoiso.org/event/oct-15-international-day-action-against-austerity-and-war , http://activistsandiego.org/node/3222 ).  Our first official meet will then take place on Saturday October 22nd from 3PM to 5PM, we will meet at Agitprop Space (behind Glenn’s Market, entrance on Utah, in North Park), to begin a formal conversation around the historical development of structures that underlie the necessity of networked resistance, in which social relations are re-coded solely in economic terms.

An extended description of the seminar at Agitprop follows: 

“By undercutting social solidarities and destroying ecological equilibriums the neoliberal program of accelerated capital expansion immediately spawned its neoconservative shadow, in the form of a military, moral and religious return to order.  Nothing could have made better cover for the denial of democratic critique, the clampdown on civil liberties, and the continuing budgetary shift from social welfare to corporate security.”
Brian Holmes, “Continental Drift: Activist Research, from Geopolitics to Geopoetics.”

Impacts of the aforementioned “budgetary shift” are strikingly apparent in San Diego County, with the privatization of public institutions, such as UC, the effects of encroaching development on natural systems, and the omnipresence of D.O.D./D.H.S. (and supporting industries) throughout the county.   We believe it has become crucial to understand these impacts, as evident in Southern California, in order to develop some means of direct public intervention.

During Session I of the satellite seminar at Agitprop, we will host a series of discussions orbiting around texts posted to the Mess Hall website, flurries of text around #occupy___, among others selected for their relevance to the context of San Diego/the Californias.  Through discussion, we would like to solidify a framework to develop a series of “interventions,” which may take any number of forms (including performances, texts, cartographies, et.al.), to be actualized in Session II.

To read a full description of the seminar, as proposed by Brian Holmes, please visit http://occupyeverything.org/2011/three-crises-30s-70s-now/ ).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This satellite is organized with the help of Elizabeth Chaney, Jeanine Webb, Cara Baldwin and David White

Thursday, October 13 · 1:00pm - 8:00pm

Palomar Community College 1140 West Mission Road, San Marcos, CA 92069 Telephone: 760.744.1150

Oct 11th- Nov 9th
Opening Reception Thurs. October 13th, 1pm to 3pm & 6pm-8pm
Gallery Talk: Thurs. October 13th 2:00pm-3:00pm

OCTOBER 27-DECEMBER 9, 2011

Opening Reception Thursday October 27, 5pm-7pm, gallery@calit2
Panel Discussion Friday October 28, 12pm-2pm, Calit2 Auditorium

Harold Cohen, founding director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA), was an English painter with an established international reputation when he came to UCSD in 1968 for a one-year Visiting Professorship. His first experience with computing followed almost immediately, and he never returned to London. Cohen is the author of the celebrated AARON program, an ongoing research effort in autonomous machine (art making) intelligence, which began when he was a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Lab in the early 1970s. Together, Cohen and AARON have exhibited at London’s Tate Gallery, the LA County Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and many more of the world’s major art spaces. They have also been shown at a dozen science centers, including the Ontario Science Center, the Boston Science Museum and the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry. Cohen represented the U.S. in the world’s fair in Tsukuba, Japan, in 1985. He has permanent exhibits devoted to his work in the Museum of Computing History in Mountain View, CA, and in the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh.
An acknowledged pioneer in relation to computing in the arts, Cohen has given invited papers on his work at major international conferences on AI, computer graphics and art technologies, and his work is widely cited in the literature.
More than forty years of continuous work on and with AARON has significantly transformed the typical artist/medium—or programmer/program—relationship for Cohen. One of the few artists ever to have become deeply involved in artificial intelligence, he began with a strong thrust towards program autonomy, in the course of which AARON became the only program in existence to function as a world-class colorist. Today, however, he regards AARON as collaborator rather than independent artist. The changing states of this relationship are reflected in the three groups of works in this exhibition: works on paper made by AARON and presented as “orthodox” editioned prints: one-off printed images that have then been permanently mounted and surface-treated to function as “paintings.” In the most recent work, AARON generates “underpaintings” rather than completed images, printing them on canvas for Cohen to develop by hand. The exhibition also includes a screen-based version of the program in the exhibition, which continuously modifies a single image for the duration of the show.
Gallery events are FREE and open to the public.

Please RSVP to Trish Stone, Gallery Coordinator, tstone@ucsd.edu
Media Contact Doug Ramsey, dramsey@ucsd.edu

http://gallery.calit2.net

Occupational poetry is practice that aims to use relevant
meaningful action to re-charge sluggish lives
Whether nurse waiter lawyer day laborer or cook
Occupational poetry provides hands-on creative responses to
existential-social-financial-political downturns

Occupational poetry has proven effective against loss of function
onset of apathy and alienation from democratic processes
Is best when practiced in groups
Cannot be applied effectively at home alone or in the privacy of your own room
Should be practiced in public with others who share an interest in returning
humor love sanity and balance to lives jobs communities and beyond

Wake up! Realize you are not alone
Millions of others across the globe have already changed their lives
thanks to benefits of occupational poetry
Best thing about occupational poetry
Everyone can do it
Occupational poetry is D.I.Y.
Become an occupational poet by following four simple principles and four basic steps

The principles are
EMPLOY reason to penetrate obscurity of mass advertising and fog of media disinformation
VISUALIZE/ACTUALIZE life without corporate patterns of production and consumption
(less bland more flavor less processed more local)
ACTIVATE network of friends and collaborators who think and feel the same
CREATE enthusiasm for changing how America does business by
engaging in forms of mass occupational poetry

The steps are
STEP ONE Following the four principles compose a song or perform a skit
Write a poem or paint a picture
Invest in bold tip marker and poster board
Make signs that express conviction in short pithy messages like
B a n k r o l l A m e r i c a N o t K S t r e e t
STEP TWO Identify offices of bad corporate players in your neighborhood
STEP THREE Transport friends signs paintings poems performances funny hats
noisemakers skits & etc to sidewalk in front of bad corporate player’s office and occupy
STEP FOUR Relax and enjoy while occupational poetry happens

Gaining mastery of occupational poetry leads to application in other facets of life
Within short periods of time practitioners will be able to
Occupy heads while lying in bed
Occupy feet while walking on streets
Occupy eyes while looking at skies
Occupy time with presence of mind
Occupy space by standing in place
Occupy existence through acts of resistance

29th – 30th  October 2011, Barcelona, Catalonia & Online http://www.digital-commons.net

Building Digital Commons and Collaborative Communities is a new initiative aiming to bring together individuals, collective and organizations from different Free and Open Collaborative Communities, Digital Commons Initiatives and Researchers in the area to identify ways to support and learn from each other and collaborate in order to promote together digital commons.

Why?

The new technologies offered a big opportunity to create, innovate and collaborate to share and build information and knowledge resources. However, we are living challenging times, with   an ongoing growth of the enclosure of the commons.

i) We want to promote  the ?makers? and ? doers? approach: To increase the visibility of the initiatives that are based on building digital commons.
ii) Systematize experiences & learn from each other (at the legal, infrastructural, sustainable, participation and governance levels).
ii) Map the digital public spaces and promote common actions
iv) Create public procommons references: To underline the distinction between the governance of digital commons and other forms of corporate-providers not based on free and open infrastructure.
v) Build bridges between action and research on commons as a form of governance, production and horizon for social transformation.

What?

We will address collaboratively and critically a series of working lines:

1. Participation and engagement in communities
2. Sustainability formulas and dialogue between social digital economy and cooperativism
3. Mapping a variety of digital commons initiatives and to define a common strategy

A “How to manual on digital commons: participation engagement, sustainability formulas and over all digital commons networking” and a “Digital commons alliance/network” will be the resulting outcomes of the event.

When and Where?

29th  and 30th  of October 2011 physically at the CCCB ( 5th Montalegre str. ? Aula 1) (Barcelona) and online at:http://www.digital-commons.net

See program: http://www.digital-commons.net/program/

How to participate and keep informed?

To attend physically register at: www.digital-commons.net/form/registration

Keep updated and participate online:
Identica & Twitter: @dimmons_forum
Facebook: ForumGlobal Dimmons
IRC: #Dimmons
Visit www.digital-commons.net for the streaming
Engage with the event documentation and collaborative writing at: wiki.digital-commons.net

Looking forward to hearing back from you!

Building Digital Commons is an initiative promoted by Amical Viquipedia (http://www.viquimedia.cat) and Institute of Government and Public Policies – Autonomous University of Barcelona (http://igop.uab.cat), and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation (http://wikimediafoundation.org).