Lectures and discussions
Temple Gallery is offering a lecture with Philadelphia resident and Creative Time curator Nato Thompson on Thursday, Feb. 23 at 7:00 PM. Thompson will speak about his latest book Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the Age of Cultural Production. We at artblog would love a Creative Time organization in Philly, and as it turns out we have the curator right here! Reserve a seat for Nato Thompson’s lecture at
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2826019701 or call 215 777 9138.  And in West Philly, artist and independent curator Matheiu Copeland speaks at Kelly Writers House Thursday, Feb. 16, 6pm, about his efforts at subverting curatorial practice.

Mark Tribe, The Liberation of Our People: Angela Davis, 1969/2008, Port Huron Project, 5-minute video based on a 10-minute speech, Photograph by David Jung; Courtesy of the artist

[NOTE: We just learned that this discussion has been POSTPONED until Mar. 17.] Meanwhile, this weekend Marginal Utility is hosting a discussion at Vox Populi on the structure, imaging, and personal affects of protest.  The talk, Saturday, Feb. 11, at 6pm, Sat. Mar. 17, at 6pm features Naeem Mohaiemen and Mark Tribe, curator Yaelle Amir, and Slought Foundation’s Aaron Levy and is in conjunction with the MU show Five Acts: Chronicles of Dissent.

Ward Shelley at Pierogi

Ward Shelley, "Teenagers", 2012, Oil and toner on mylar, 61 x 34.5 inches.

Ward Shelley’s show of trippy timeline paintings opens Feb. 17 at Pierogi in Williamsburg. We’re fond of this gallery, and we love Shelley’s work, which traces musical and counter cultural movements (among others) throughout history using colorful, sinewy patterns.

Leo diCaprio teams up with La Colombe
Philadelphia-based coffee roaster La Colombe is joining forces with Leonardo DiCaprio to sell his new coffee line LYON.  All proceeds from sales go to environmental charities supported by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. Thanks to Ms. Stella Kimbrough for this tasty tidbit.

Kutztown University installation

Onishi Yasuaki, "Reverse of Volume" at Kutztown University Art Gallery

A while ago we brought you the news about the residency applictions f0r Kutztown University, well the last installation is now on display. The resident artist is Onishi Yasuaki, and his work is entitled “Reverse of Volume“. There are no more residency opportunities, according to Kutztown, but you can still submit to the gallery your proposals for solo or group exhibitions. The installation is on view until March 2.

Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival poetry slam
A poetry slam and a screening of the documentary Louder Than A Bomb are part of the Jewish Film Festival at the Gershman Y this Sunday, Feb. 12 at 2:30 pm. The Poetry Slam is courtesy the Philadelphia Youth Poetry Movement.

Coldhearted
Get a peek at the new Philadelphia Sculpture Gym while perusing the Valentine’s arts and crafts fair, Coldhearted, Saturday, Feb. 11, from 11am-5pm.  The Sculpture Gym is Darla Jackson’s Knight Arts Challenge project.

Opportunities

Ladies and gentlemen, but especially, we think, ladies, this is for you. Casting calls are over, but all you beautiful and tool-savvy people can still apply to the upcoming HGTV program All American Handyman until February 17. Email HGTVamericanhandyman@gmail.com with some information about your handiness and telegenic qualities.  We think ladies should apply to this politically-incorrectly titled show.

The Studios of Key West have an open call for 40 month-long residencies for artists, writers, composers, performers, and interdisciplinary artists (via Wooloo.org). The deadline for applications is May 15.

Eastern State Penitentiary is accepting applications for site specific artist installations for the upcoming 2013 season.  The deadline for proposals is June 13, 2012. Find all the details on the program here.

The Siddhartha Arts Foundation has a call for artists for the second annual Kathmandu International Art Festival. Climate change is the topic of this year’s Earth|Body|Mind festival. The application deadline is February 29. You can find the application form here.

Via Leeway –  CalArts is seeking a digital media teacher/artist. You can find more details about the position here.

3rd Ward is seeking innovative and compelling work and will be giving out $15,000 in prizes. More information on the open call page.

Little Berlin is looking for people who want to participate in FLASHFLooD, a “semi-secretive mass public exhibition of rapidly-distributed hidden flash drives containing downloadable exhibitions.”  If you are as intrigued as we are, check out the website for more information.  And if you participate in the FLASH distribution (juried by Little Berlin members, extraextra members and others), you’re also invited to show your work at a BYOBEAMER event First Friday, Mar 2 at Little Berlin.  Apply before Feb. 23.

Writers and editors, this one’s for you. College Art Association has two positions available: an editor-in-chief position for The Art Bulletin and a reviews editor for the Art Journal. The deadline for both is April 2.

Artist News

Andrea Packard from Vista and Strata

Andrea Packard, Director of the List Gallery, Swarthmore College, has an upcoming solo show at The Painting Center in New York entitled Vista and Strata. The opening is on February 28.

Susan Myers has a solo show of her metalwork at the Society of Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh in a show entitled All Consuming. The exhibit opened on February 3 and runs until June 30.

Daniel Heyman, "Do You Remember This Night?"

Daniel Heyman presents Bearing Witness at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. The show is up now through February 29. On display is Heyman’s Istanbul Portfolio of the Abu Ghraib Detainee Interview Project.

David Kettner, "The Prodigal Son - Rapture"

David Kettner is retiring after 43 years of teaching painting and drawing at University of the Arts — Kudos!!  David’s retirement show, at the UArts Hamilton Hall Galleries, opens on February 24 with a reception on the 29th from 5 – 8 PM.

Naeem Mohaiemen Live True Life or Die Trying, 2009
photographs with paired text (21 pairs)

The PEI-supported exhibit at Marginal Utility, curated by Yael Amir, features five artists whose works either document or re-enact moments of dissent or political engagement. The nicely-installed show has some high points — with the most interesting being works with some emotional presence like Sharon Hayes’ audio work which conflates lost love with dashed political expectations and Naeem Mohaiemen‘s photo and text wall, “Live True Life or Die Trying” in which the artist describes his feelings about the political strife in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and his sadness at the impotence of a University student protest in light of a forceful protest (the same day) led by Islamic groups.

Mark Tribe‘s “Port Huron Project” re-enactments of seminal speeches of political activism from the Vietnam War era (speeches by Stokley Carmichael, Angela Davis Cesar Chavez and others) call into question the timeliness and timelessness of activist speech. Are all speeches of dissent the same speech? Seeing the reenactments, staged with actors or performance artists giving the speeches and with a staged contemporary audience of seemingly disinterested and uninvolved people is enough to make you question how fleeting the impact of even heated rhetoric.

Sharon Hayes’ “I March in the Parade of History,” an audio piece with a spray painted word poster component, humbly nestles into a little corner where you have to cozy up to the speaker to hear the words–it’s worth it. Listen to the words at her website …it’s a monolog of love, heartbreak and protest that she spoke live on the street corners of Manhattan — with the aid of a bullhorn.  The artist’s quavering voice weaves together seamlessly the tale of lost lost love and unaccomplished political mission.  It’s a poignant and potent message making the political personal, which it always is.

Less poignant is Andrea Bowers‘ tree-sitting video from 2009, which shows the artist learning how to safely sit in a tree for a prolonged period of time. The video is installed near the gallery ceiling on a wood pallet with words on the bottom that say “SHUT DOWN TAR SANDS” (whatever that slogan means, it’s surely words of protest).  Perhaps the pallet is the one Bowers sat on when she was tree sitting in 2011 when she was arrested along with other activists who were protesting the destruction of a grove of oak trees.

Yael Bartana‘s two-channel video projection “Wild Seed” shows a group of young Israelis play a Twister-like limb-entanglement game on a mountaintop in Israel. The kids struggle happily, gleefully to extract themselves from the fleshy knot. The filmmaker’s utopian allegory for the messy entanglement of Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied territories is undercut by the mountaintop loveliness and the innocence of the young people, both of which are impossibly lovely stand-ins for the sometimes deadly truth of the occupied territories.

This is a show that can make you sad.  It’s not that the idea of protest movements is sad, but the thought that the battle is an uphill fight, noble perhaps, but not particularly winnable.

More from the Vox building coming up…

TIGER STRIKES ASTEROID

Tim Belknap at Tiger Strikes Asteroid

moving on is a spare little show. With works by three artists, one local, one in London and one in upstate New York, the exhibit covers a lot of geography — and a lot about the human condition,  in sexy, manic, or bare-bones fashion.

Carolee Schneemann at Tiger Strikes Asteroid

The surprise here is Carolee Schneemann, the powerhouse 60′s-era feminist artist — her presence is highly unexpected in an alternative gallery show.  ”Fuses,” her scratchy film-to-video, (1966) is a melange of moving images of bodies (herself and her boyfriend making love), sometimes so up-close they are completely abstract. The work slips from one image to another with a liquid fluidity, and the mournful piece talks beautifully with both Tim Belknap’s skeleton piece and William Blackhurst’s two videos. All the work in the show is moody, a little forlorn and human-focused.

Belknap’s motorized skeleton somehow conjures the ambiance of a post-life The Dude with his loose-limbed, sandal-footed amble. Alexis Granwell, who was gallery sitting, said that the piece had been and was supposed to step more lively. But to me, the slow, almost-drunken movement more closely suggests the elasticity of time and its unstoppability. The digital read-out reinforces the idea of time and speed as well. Belknap has a solo show at Rebekah Templeton, and Dennis will tell you about that soon.

William Blackhurst at tiger Strikes Asteroid

William Blackhurst’s animations merge video footage of what might be home movies with animation to create a psychedelic and fractured narrative — a take on human interaction that suggests we all have real and unreal characters within. The artist lives in London and the press release says this is his first gallery exhibit.

NAPOLEON

Max Seckel in Commonplacing at Napoleon. Pencil on wall

The tiny gallery looks great with a big group show in it! Commonplacing is the debut curating show by members of Napoleon; the members each selected one of the eleven artists in the show. Pay attention in particular to the wall drawing by Max Seckel, a marvel of control over a difficult surface (stucco). Described by Leslie Friedman — there when Cate and I visited — as a landscape with a Where’s Waldo aspect, the cartoon landscape is dotted with tiny references from the artist’s life. Seckel is a Space 1026 member.

Loo Bain, Fixed Strays, at Napoleon

Perhaps because it is a large hanging object, Loo Bain’s “Fixed Strays” made of yarn, thread and string, has a big presence in the show.  Backlit by the window and swaying in the breeze, it’s the piece you gravitate to first in the show. The colors are totally upbeat, but the hanging animal harkens back to the dark work of Berlinde De Bruyckere (featured in ICA’s Springtide show in 2005) who also suspends animals or animal-like creatures in the air (or on plinths) to suggest commodification. (See also, Maurizio Cattelan’s suspended horse.) I’m not sure that’s what’s on Bain’s mind (commodification) but it’s a reference for sure. Apparently the artist was going to use this structure an an armature for another piece but decided the armature is the finished work.

Edward Marshall Shenk at Napoleon

Edward Marshall Shenk’s mystery pills on a plinth are optical magic (due to an optical illusion). (Remind me somebody where I’ve seen this piece before…)

Dana McElroy at Napoleon

Also a kind of magic, Dana McElroy’s photo of a room with a spooky luminescent window, and a door that appears to be coming up out of the floor. We were told the image is of a miniature environment. Whatever the source, there’s some Magritte-like wizardry in the work.

Joe Boruchow in Commonplacing at Napoleon

And it’s great to see Joe Boruchow’s cut paper works here. The virtuoso pieces are the basis for some of the artist’s recent street posters–you’ve seen them on mail boxes and elsewhere around town. Also in the show Shelby Donnelly, Hannah Rose Dumes Nelson Figueroa, Anna Gray, Ryan Wilson Paulsen and Ryan Parker.

Napoleon has a website now,  designed by Matt Kalasky. The full complement of Napoleon members includes: Matthew Brett, Daryl Bergman, Dustin Campbell, Leslie Friedman, Christopher Hartshorne, Jose Ortiz, Jordan Rockford, H. John Thompson, Tamsen Wojtanowski and Jacob Yeager.

VOX POPULI
Vox members James Johnson and Anita Allyn create dueling environments that are oblique comments on human behavior.

James Johnson, Work, at Vox Populi

Johnson’s work is called Work and to read the press release it’s really about work — the work of the artist and what it means to be an artist. But honestly, when I saw Work I hadn’t read the release and so I didn’t think one thought about artists — I though about people.  And I think Johnson’s piece is applicable to more than just the idea of the artist today, although artists are included of course.

Johnson has been a maker of theatrical environments for a while now. Usually, the stage-set-like rooms are accessible only through peep holes or windows. But this time the artist has abjured the container to display a few tiny scenes on the floor without their housing units to protect and encase them. There’s a tiny window in one wall (in front of an actual window, and this doll-house sized window lets in a jewel-like burst of light. Other lighting elements in the otherwise dark room ratchet up the theatricality.

James Johnson

Like with an installation by Pepon Osorio or Ilya Kabakov, there is a story suggested, although Johnson is more a formalist and less a linear story-teller, and so the rudimentary installations (a table, a carpet, a light) suggest Waiting for Godot more than bodice-ripping page-turners. As you tower over the little environments, it’s hard not to feel your size and clumsiness — and how you are the outsider, the audience. No matter what your narrative here, the rooms are haunted, provoking thoughts about childhood hopes and expectations — with sadness, regret and anger all present.

James Johnson

There’s one life size element — a really great-looking object — a box inset in the wall holding what appears to be a stack of large denomination bills. The glass-enclosed case is lit up like a jewel display in Tiffany’s. Everyone’s holy grail is money, whether you’re an artist or work on Wall St or at MacDonalds.

Anita Allyn, I love postdemocracy

In the bright-lit gallery up front, Anita Allyn’s life-size installation, i heart postdemocracy, with balloons, reflective mylar-coated protest placards, mirrors and a low table, is another stage set. Allyn’s pre- or post-party installation (and the ironic title of her show) suggest the played-out actions of those who feel for/against a cause, policy, war, group, politician, but whose feelings are less articulable than the trappings of the protest. Hardly a call to arms, the work seems more a comment on and perhaps condemnation of civic engagement.

Bonnie Begusch, flying type at Vox Populi

Guest artist Bonnie Begusch’s Motion Pictures — animated bits of moving type flying and flashing and flitting across screens or projected onto walls — reminds me of  Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries‘ moveable type text-video in the Temple Gallery Philagrafika show.  Whereas the Heavy Industries’ piece is a story with music, Begusch’s silent works are abstractions of language — formalist designs using bits and pieces of keyboard type.  Some of the pieces are more captivating than others — the piece projected low on the wall that has actual words — but words that are so blurry and sped up you can’t read them — kept us hostage as we hoped for a sentence, or at least a word or two (not forthcoming while we were there).

Claudia Weber at Vox Populi

And guest artist Claudia Weber’s Something Something Panorama, a multi-panel photographic panorama, while formalist and chilly (it seems to show debris on a table or floor, has a cosmic night of the soul aspect that’s worth staring at for a bit (where’s the bench???!).

MARGINAL UTILITY AND GRIZZLY GRIZZLY

Hadassah Goldvicht's Sabbath door at Marginal Utility, made by David Carrow

We walked up to Marginal Utility and were stopped by the gated and grated entrance to the gallery. The sign said they were closed for the Sabbath.  According to MU’s David Dempewolf and Yuka Yokayama, this Sabbath closure is the wish of the artist Hadassa Goldvicht, a Brooklyn-based Israeli artist whose work is about ritual and voices and whose installation here is called Songs for the Peacemaker.  In the dark gallery space, visible behind the grate is a video projection of a woman speaking, and this image behind the grated door conjures lots of ideas about prison, war, police states, harsh economic conditions even.   The artist was in Italy at the time of the opening but would be back  later in the month to install some additional work.  Dempewolf met the artist at Skowhegan, he said. And another artist named David, David Carrow, created the door specially for the exhibit. David Carrow is a poet in metal and the door, while forbidding, is elegant and beautiful.

Grizzly Grizzly closes at 3pm on Saturday, something I always forget, so I am always there too late. But I enjoyed their new fancy gallery name printed on the wall. They’ve seriously claimed ownership now.  Chip will tell you about the exhibit soon.

Rust-ridden, day dream-laden, and dizzying are just a few phrases that can describe the distortions in get it while its cheap at Marginal Utility this month. The exhibit showcases the exploration and experimentation that comes with being a young artist.

Gahee Park's "Skin Disease"

Gahee Park, a recent graduate of Tyler School of Art, paints with a fun and fearless approach to color and texture. The abstractness of her forms is only reined in with her declarative titles, as they give light to the paintings’ inspiration. Her point of view is one of satire as she easily lets go of profound conclusions and paints in an imaginative manner. “A shit with a fat fly and a bird” causes a smile to creep across your face when you think of the artist remembering or dreaming up this somewhat irreverent still life. Park’s variety of texture and defined forms keeps your eye moving and your mind playfully trying to fill in the blanks.

Gahee Park's "A shit with a fat fly and a bird"

If Park’s painting lets go of pragmatic search, Jim Grilli’s “Metal Shop Floor Sweepings” embraces the process of work and time. Grilli is employed at the University of the Art’s metal studio and uses the waste of a day’s work to make his pieces. After sweeping up debris, mixing it with acrylic gel, and spackling the mixture on canvas, Grilli sets the pieces outside and lets the elements take their toll. The result is a canvas speckled with the orange-red of oxidized metal and a gray scale of dust blending together in a field of layers that becomes more intricate the closer you look. The piece is completed with artist-made objects that sit on the fold of the hanging canvas. The artist-made figures interrupt your eye from wandering about the landscape of rust and debris and remind you that this isn’t simply a metal shop floor.

Jim Grilli's "Metal Shop Floor Sweepings"

Just as Grilli lets uncertainty into his process, Brittany Papale lets distortion take center stage in her installation, “Whisper down the Lane.” Papale points a video camera at one of Park’s paintings, while three other camcorders follow suit. Each succeeding camera is pointed at the preceding camera’s pop-out screen.

Brittany Papale, Whisper Down the Lane, at Marginal Utility

When the final camera’s feed is shown on an old television stationed nearby, the result is a pixelated distortion of color and shadow. The draw of Papale’s installation is twofold: the individual’s interaction with the piece (the video feed captures gallery viewers as well as the painting) and the somewhat archaic technology’s interpretation of the environment. As suggested by the title, “Whisper down the Lane” talks about how one’s self can change through time and different lenses of media. Papale’s work looks at how we can distort ourselves with our own devices of media and technology.

Matthew Ortega's video Sky City at Marginal Utility

Matthew Ortega uses technology not to distort but to fragment stories. His narrative video “Sky City” follows a girl who leaves home for the titled “Sky City.” The film achieves its surreal-like quality by piecing together found videos from the internet along with voice-over created by stringing together people telling stories. Ortega’s piece wanders through YouTube and collages videos to a mesmerizing effect. The movement and narration causes you to become lost in the streaming images. The story does not matter against the backdrop of images, with their muted colors and dizzying compositions.

Get it while it’s cheap wants to clue you in to the young talents of emerging artists, and the gallery plans on making it an annual event.  get it while it’s cheap is up through August 27.

New York State, 2011. Digital print, drawing, paint

Harrod’s oversized digital prints beckon the viewer to look in on various scenes of a typical urban apartment: a shower, a window, a staircase, a mirror. Pleasantly familiar details, like an out-of-date plastic window shade or painted-over Victorian ornamentation remind us of someplace we have lived or visited. Yet on second glance, the spaces are impenetrable.

In several instances the artist places a bright light smack in the middle of an image, darkening the surrounding area. Instead of a view through a window or a reflection in the mirror, we see nothing but black. The weight and energy of the image thrusts back toward us, and spatial reading is undermined.

Another of the artist’s tricks is to pepper photographs with real-life objects. One pair of images, Open Shower and Shower (2011) shows a cramped tub—first without, then with a curtain. In fact they are the same photograph, but in the second Harrod has added a pencil line and a few strips of patterned toilet paper to represent rod and curtain respectively. The falsehood of these devices pokes fun at conventional representation even as it blocks our entry into the space. A photograph, we are reminded, is as flat as a piece of bathroom tissue.

Shower, 2011. Digital print, drawing, toilet paper

Harrod’s Stair Business (2011) takes the viewer on a wild goose-chase through a mocked up environment. Blob-like plaster casts hang in front of or are applied directly to the surface of a fish-eye view up and down a staircase. The piece promises to be a trompe l’oeil exploration, in which the casts move freely out of the photograph and into the viewer’s space. But some of the objects are out of proportion in relation to their position on the stairs, and the spatial reading again falls apart. The joke is on the viewer, and as if to rub it in, the artist has given his plaster appliqués a curiously scatological appearance. What kind of business, we wonder, has been done on these stairs?

Stair Business, 2011. Digital print, plaster rocks, applied prints

The artist’s ultimate expression, Retinal Burn 2, Cat and Mouse, actually hurts your eye when you look at it. You struggle to see into an array of broken-up mirrors, but their raking angles reflect only blank wall and ceiling. Meanwhile, a system of bright blinking lights burns a blue-green afterimage into your eye. The annoying string of dots that now crowds your line of sight is bitter payback for having tried to apprehend your own reflection. Promising a pleasant look into personal experience and everyday life, this uncanny and very effective show leaves you half blind.

Retinal Burn 2, Cat and Mouse, 2011. Mirror, bright lights, representation of retinal burn

Marginal Utility is located at 319 North 11th Street, 2nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Hours: Friday 5:00-8:00pm, Saturday + Sunday 12:00-5:00pm

Upon entering the room, the first thing you notice is a wall of t-shirts on hangers. “Am I on the Jersey boardwalk?” you’d ask yourself at a glance. Well, close, but no cigar. Instead of “Beer Pong Champ” or cheesy slogans about fist pumping, you would be met with such classic lines as “Kiss Me I’m HIV Negative” or “Morally Bankrupt.” Musson’s shirts are in the style of those ubiquitous, tacky souvenirs, except smarter – and tackier. After all, who wouldn’t want to walk around Philly in a shirt that exclaims, “My ancestors survived slavery and all I got were these stupid rims?”

Formerly the author of the Philly Weekly (and later Mad Decent Records) column “Black Like Me,” Musson is as much a writer as he is an arist. The Hard Sell consists of large-scale, printed tirades that evolved from his poster series Too Black for B.E.T., which was exhibited in 2001 and 2006. These rants cover topics from why only Christian nations should own nukes to how believing in god would be worse than having a jealous ex because god has superpowers. They are delightfully derisive contradictions.

Musson said his content is drawn from the observations in his life: the people around him, the news media and his own personal experiences. His work, although potentially a social critique, is made almost entirely for its humor-value and absurd dissonance. “There is no way to gauge when I put on my serious tie and take off my funny slippers,” he told me.

While many of his pieces wield a blatantly dark humor, like the shirt “Suicide is for Winners at Losing!,” or lengthy tongue-in-cheek explanations of why some people should have been aborted, a couple of more subtle pieces get lost in the clamor. For instance, a connected strand of three-dimensional letter Z’s appear to fall off the edge of a pedestal. Wrought with implications of the boring and the mundane, this statement acts as a centerpiece for a show that is anything but.

A personal favorite of mine is the wall mirror with a red 2nd Place ribbon hanging from one corner. Possessing a healthy dose of scorn for the day-to-day rat race and enough self-doubt to go around, this devastatingly simple piece frames the sheer absurdity of it all and forces us to reflect. “Congratulations,” you can almost hear it say, “you didn’t win.” Perhaps not because you lacked anything, but because there was never a competition to begin with.

The Hard Sell is up to Mar 27 at Marginal Utility.

Neoteny poster with ALF, from the 1980s tv show about a smartass alien living amongst us

“Neoteny | The Hard Sell” is the name of his solo show this month.  ”Neoteny,” just fyi, refers to a condition of lifelong psychological adolescence, which pretty much describes the narrators of Jayson’s grumpy, know-it-all art who whip out the “n-word”, the “f-word” and every other hyphenated attack vehicle to excoriate a viewer who has the temerity to stand there and read the text.  Often, Musson’s narrative voice is self-mocking.  He’s a world-weary guy whose bad luck with girls has soured him on the female sex and whose encounters with the power structure of the art world have made him cynical about his chances of making it. Ever. Musson in person is, of course, a big Teddy Bear, one of the nicest, smartest, funniest guys you’ll want to meet.  But when he puts on his art hat — like he did recently in his YouTube advice columns by Hennessy Youngman, his barbed tongue knows no bounds. Musson is getting his MFA this Spring from the University of Pennsylvania.  Catch his act now before he takes his “sturm und drang” on the road.

“Neoteny | The Hard Sell: Jayson Musson” Feb 4 to Mar. 27.  Opening reception, Friday, Feb. 4, 6-11 pm. Marginal Utility, 319 N. 11th St., 2nd floor.  917 355 4487

Read this at Philadelphia Weekly.

Jayson Musson 39-second promo

Our series sponsor is Fleisher Art Memorial.

Two new print publications expand the writing about art in Philadelphia. We talk with Rachel and Trevor Reese of Possible Press, a zine of writing and projects by artists; and David Dempewolf and Yuka Yokayama of Machete, a critical commentary publication.  The two couples, who have not met each other before, find out that they all use the same printer in Long Island City, Linco. Both couples also run project spaces where they show edgy interesting art.  Rachel and Trevor run Possible Projects and David and Yuka run Marginal Utility.

Rachel and Trevor Reese (l) and Yuka Yokayama and David Dempewolf, before our talk with them, held at Marginal Utility's office

Below is a 41-second sample of the interview. Below that is the full 15-minute interview:

Download audio file (zinespromofinal.mp3)
Right click to download 41-second machete and possible press sample

Download audio file (zinesfinal.mp3)
Right click to download full 15-minute zines podcast

This episode is edited by Peter Crimmins. The music is by Eric Biondo. Thanks to the Knight Foundation and our series sponsor, Fleisher Art Memorial, for their support of this project. Thanks to WHYY NewsWorks for partnering with us. You can subscribe to artblog radio on iTunes.

The Tate Modern offered the invited orgs, collectives and etcs absolutely no compensation for setting up shop in Turbine Hall–but neither were the galleries charged to be a part of the proceedings. Many spaces accepted the Tate’s invitation as a great opportunity while at least one group of anonymous British artists and arts professionals called “Making a Living” issued an open letter that stated “The title No Soul For Sale re-enforces deeply reductive stereotypes about the artist and art production. With its romantic connotations of the soulful artist, who makes art from inner necessity without thought of recompense, No Soul For Sale implies that as artists we should expect to work for free and that it is acceptable to forgo the right to be paid for our labour.” Read the entire letter online here. Other groups, like W.A.G.E (Working Artist and the Greater Economy), participated in NSFS at X Initiative but drew the line at having a presence at NSFS at the Tate Modern.

This small protest was of course accepted by curator Cecilia Alemani as welcomed institutional critique (3) and perhaps mostly forgotten about in the nearly six months since NSFS took place. The issues raised by NSFS have a larger art-world relevance and set up an interesting conversation about the price and the value equated to diy arts establishments and what those stakes might mean to the creative economy. In order to explore these issues I have written two articles.

This article takes an against stance, arguing that artist and art organization should have protested NSFS and exhibitions like it, alternative spaces are alternative for the very fact that they operate outside the systems ascribed by the Tate–artists should be paid for the work that they do, especially by major institutions that have the resources to do so. Art is a skill that people are educated for and like all educated persons that render a useful service they should be paid.

The opposite argument–also by me, has been published in print in Machete. You may pick one up at Marginal Utility, located at 319 N 11th street (Philadelphia) on the 2nd floor, absolutely free of charge.

In this article we will explore what it might mean to set up a system in which cultural capital has an exchange rate of zero dollars.

Exhibit A:

An excerpt from a conversation with Nike Desis and Josh Kerner of FLUXspace. FLUXspace was invited to be a part of, and took part in, both incarnations of NSFS.

Annette Monnier: “I get it. No organization or project that I’ve ever been a part of would have ever said ‘no’ to being part of something at the Tate Modern. We would have gone, no matter what the tickets cost and paid the whole way ourselves. . . but when you’re a young artist going to art school you think that by the time you make it to the Tate Modern you are getting paid to be there. . . ”

Nike Desis: “That was my question, if we don’t get paid at the Tate Modern then when do we get paid?”

Josh Kerner: “I think you just answered your own question.”

AM: “That’s a little scary”

ND: “That is a little scary”

JK: “The economic situation that we’ve set up as an alternative art space is not an economic system that functions through monetary transfer. It functions through the transfer of time, generosity, and other things and that’s a system that WE, I believe, are responsible for. It’s one of those situations that if you’re going to point your finger at the Tate you’ve got to point four fingers back at yourself.”

*It is important to note that this is a excerpt from a half hour conversation in which both Nike and Josh expressed various views, both positive and negative, about the NSFS experience.

Exhibit B:

I sell my soul but at the highest rates

Closing Arguments

Those organizations that participated in NSFS should feel used, because they were. By hosting NSFS the Tate was made to look like a friendly and open environment that supported and in fact worked in tangent with alternative models. NSFS was not a conference put together so that fellow independent spaces could network together. Nowhere in the programming did time exist to do so. The Tate instead scheduled an art exhibition in which each alternative space was the art–only they were art that constantly had to work and perform for the public. This is very cheap programming that garners a lot of press. This is cheap programming instead of programming that someone should be getting reimbursed for.

Art is an important service provided to the public by skilled and trained individuals who are indeed special and who require reimbursement for services. Artists who work inside the system  of established art institutions but work for free or very little sabotage an artist’s right to earn a living and create an environment where art is expected to be provided to the public free of charge. It is one thing for an artist to remove themselves entirely from capitalism and create an oeuvre that politically challenges the system of monetary exchange but it is quite another for an artist to work within the system and yet still not receive the benefits of doing so. If artists do not demand payment for their services they will not be paid and art will become a service that is always free.

Artists and artist-run spaces should band together and boycott situations like those set up by the Tate Modern for No Soul for Sale. This is not to say that festivals like No Soul for Sale should not take place, but they should be properly equipped and provided for when they do. Institutions like the Tate, large Institutions with enormous budgets and resources, must be held accountable for being the model of art-world practices.

Referenced in this text:

1. Tate Modern web press

2. “Restoring the ‘Eek’ to Eking Out a Living” written by Holland Cotter and published in the New York Times on June 24, 2009

3. Artnet news May 20, 2010

This article would not have been possible without valuable conversations with Andrew Suggs, Nike Desis, Josh Kerner and Angela Jeradi–all of whom were participants in No Soul for Sale.