events

Some Sort of Uncertainty

Axiom Gallery, 141 Green Street, Green Street MBTA Station, Jamaica Plain, MA
January 11 – February 2, 2008
Opening: Friday, January 11, 2008, 6–9p
Hours: Wednesday, Thursday 6–9pm – Saturday, 2–5pm, or by appointment.
For more information please call 617–953–6413, http://www.axiomart.org/

Curated by Adriana Rios, and presented in collaboration with Art Interactive, Some Sort of Uncertainty creates an immersive atmosphere where spectators are encouraged to reconsider expectations of a traditional art exhibition.

Featured artists: Bruce Campbell, Lina Maria Girlado, Elias Heim, The Institute for Infinitely Small Things, Brian Knep, Nathalie Miebach, Liz Nofziger, Michael Sheridan, and Douglas Weathersby.

Installation description:
This is foreign, 2007, an installation with sitting area, magazines and sound.

Sound excerpt:  

This is foreign explores the cultural and physical experience of dislocation and being “the other” in a new locale. Through sound and object, elements of my current living environment in Jakarta, Indonesia are inserted into the aural and physical space of the Axiom gallery.

Magazines sitting on a coffee table at first glance appear natural to the gallery setting. On further inspection the viewer finds the subjects and language foreign. Most of the magazines emulate a “Western” look and have covers in English with the contents in Bahasa Indonesia—the national language.

On the radio in the backroom, inter-cut with ambient sounds and long-distance phone conversations with family and friends, the BBC news tells of cultural anomalies and disasters in Indonesia. Ironically many Westerners equate Indonesia with disasters and bombings, but Indonesians rarely talk about these subjects.

This is foreign intends to dislocate while maintaining allegiance to the “invisible-art” construct of the exhibition Some Sort of Uncertainty. The visitor is left to juggle the actual sounds and objects of the gallery with the visual and aural imaginations coming from the magazine images, news stories, phone conversations and background sounds of a far away place. Through the process of deciphering what is real we participate in the everyday act of developing vague perceptions (or misperceptions) and imaginations about what ‘the other’ is thinking and doing.

Finally, the act of ‘placing’ myself and my wife back at home in Boston—as if living in the backroom of the gallery—while living on the other side of the planet accentuates the issue of dislocation.

Greed, Guilt and Grappling: Six Artists Respond to Climate Change.

Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont St., Boston, MA 617.426.5000, bcaonline.org
February 1 – March 30, 2008
Opening: February 1, 6–8
Curated by exhibiting artists: Mags Harries and Clara Wainwright.
Featured artists: Jay Critchley, Lajos Heder, Michael Sheridan, and John Tiguri.

Installation description:
Instant Noodles, video, sound, 2008
From my 7th floor balcony in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta a trash and sewage-filled river flows, floods and recedes with the near-daily torrential downpours. The sky shifts from a haze caused by high humidity to a blue-gray smog from burning trash, industry and the world’s worst traffic jams. The smoke drifting across Southeast Asia from the country’s burning jungles also assists the fantastic sunsets and intense storms.

Whole state-size chunks of forest are being cut down and burned off at an “alarming pace.” They are cut to feed our lust for jungle woods and toilet paper. In addition the millions of square miles of ‘recovered land’ are turned into prosperous palm-oil plantations. Palm oil is used primarily to prepare and preserve foods such as Instant Noodles (and Kit Kat bars and Pringle chips…) so they can be kept “fresh” in their plastic wrapping. Indonesia is the largest producer of Palm Oil (and Instant Noodles) and the biggest tree chopper and forest burner in the world. The depletion of the dense tropical forests removes the planets primary means of consuming CO2. Therefore, Indonesia is now the third greatest contributor to global warming—after the US and China.

The Presence of Absence

Chemeketa College Gallery
4000 Lancaster Drive NE, Salem, Oregon
February 19 – March 14, 2008
Reception: Wednesday, February 20, noon – 2 p.m.
Gallery Hours: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Tuesday and Thursday 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Saturday noon – 3 p.m.
Info: 503–399–2533.

The common theme of loss permeates the work of five artists. Each piece becomes a tangible manifestation of absence.

Shift will be showing as part of this show. You can read more about the piece.

Senior Fulbright Scholar, Indonesia, 2007-08

I am in Indonesia until the end of June as a Senior Fulbright Scholar working on new films and installations and teaching at the Art Institute of Jakarta (IKJ) and the Institute of Technology Bandung (ITB). My course work includes teaching Advanced Documentary Production and Video Art. I am also offering individual advising, workshops and artist talks. This has included presentations at the Art Institute, the House of Natural Fiber’s Videoworks Festival and the Festival Film documentary in Jogjakarta and serving on the Jury for the Documentary Filmmaker’s competition at the Jakarta International Film Festival.