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Grant
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Selected
Grants from 1995-2002:
Guns and Roses
Jerilea Zempel
In the Cytadela, a large public park in Poznan Poland, Jerilea Zempel
and her colleagues cover a Russian military tank with an elaborate
crocheted blanket of flower-like forms. The Cytadela has been the
site of many military battles throughout Polish history and, to
represent their power and influence over the Polish nation, the
Russians placed tanks on an open plaza there. Now the tanks are
dinosaurs, reminders of life during the communist era. A tank, covered
with crocheted pink flowers, the common handiwork of Polish women,
is a powerful symbol of the complex threads of history that embody
this space.
Let Freedom Ring
Krzyztof Wodiczko, Mildred Howard, Jim Hodges, and Barbara Stenman
"Let Freedom Ring" was a series of site specific artists'
projects, commissioned and presented by Vita Brevis, along
Boston's historic Freedom Trail and Black Heritage Trail. Artists
Wodiczko, Howard, Hodges, and Stenman addressed the core themes
of freedom and tyranny––personal, physical, political,
and philosophical––using sites such as Bunker Hill Monument
and The African Meeting House to unearth the multiple interpretations
of well-known histories.
Table of Voices:
Conversations on the Criminal Justice System
Richard Kammler
A long narrow table of lead and gold leaf in the basement of a cellblock
on Alcatraz Island. A vertical sheet of safety glass bisects the
table, much like a non-contact prison visiting room. Ten seats are
on both sides of the table, with a phone in front of each seat.
Pick up the phone on one side of the table and hear the voice of
a parent of a murdered child telling her story. Pick up the phone
on the other side and hear the voice of the perpetrator telling
his story. Richard Kammler's "Table of Voices" seeks a
common ground, a context for communication and healing to occur,
a new way to understand the troubled system of incarcerating people.
The Roof is on Fire/No
Blood No Foul
Suzanne Lacey
"The Roof is on Fire"/"No Blood No Foul" included
two linked performance events that use the urban settings in Oakland,
CA as backdrops for explorations of conflict between youth and police
officers. In one performance, the public wandered from car to car
under stark lights of a parking lot, listening to heated discussion,
provocation, insight and tenderness, witnessing an authentic exchange
between youths and Police officers that gives human face to a significant
social dilemma. In another performance, youth and police met face
to face on the basketball court, transforming the tensions of the
street into positive action. Both youth and police suffer from negative
public stereotyping and both have misperceptions of the other; these
performances confront and challenge these stereotypes.
Projections
Shimon Attie
Shimon Attie presented a series of site-specific installations which
explored New York's immigration history, fostering a reflection
on today's prevailing attitudes towards immigration. Using historic
and contemporary materials, such as archival photographs, maps,
letters, and newspaper clippings, Attie aesthetically processed
and projected these images onto historically significant sites.
The project specifically traced Jewish identity and assimilation
in New York, reminding viewers of New York's extraordinary history
as a port of freedom for refugees from around the world while shedding
light on our shifting attitudes towards new immigrants. Attie describes
his work as "peeling back the wallpaper of today and revealing
the histories buried underneath." Presented by Creative Time.
Freedom Sweep––Africa,
Michael Bramwell
Using his physical labor as a tool for activating historical awareness,
Michael Bramwell sweeps spaces that are loaded with the contradictions
of a troubled past. In "Freedom Sweep––Africa",
Bramwell will spend ten days sweeping Goree Island. This UNESCO's
World Heritage Site off the coast of Dakar, Senegal, was settled
by the Portuguese in the 15th century and became an important center
of African slave trading. The prisons, where slaves were held while
awaiting their shipment to the new world, still remain. The simple
and unexpected act of an individual sweeping hints at the sisyphean
task of "cleaning up" a tragic past that defies tidiness.
The Pedestrian Project
Yvette Helin
"The Pedestrian Project " is an ongoing performance piece
in which performers wear entirely black costumes modeled after the
"School Zone" traffic sign people symbols. The pedestrian
characters are silent and faceless, communicating through choreographed
and improvisational works including interactions with existing public
sculptures, architecture, people and situations as well as everyday
activities, such as shopping, riding the trains, going to work and
other mundane pursuits. The pedestrian character is of a certain
personality, mostly lacking one. The roteness of its personality
adds to the mystery of the pedestrian and creates "an expression
of the anonymity we experience as individuals in a large systematic
society."
Shakespeare’s
Storms: King Lear and the Tempest
Lucidity Theater
Performed on closed out street in the old section of Philadelphia,
this one person performance by Thaddeus Phillips plays with Shakespeare’s
texts. A man enters with a steamer trunk filled with the necessities
for a voyage: a map, clothes, and even a souvenir. As objects are
removed from the suitcase, their meaning is transformed: the man
with the trunk becomes Lear; a scarf, a shoe, and a flower in his
lapel become his daughters; a pipe becomes his servant; and the
trunk opens to create the podium from which Lear (behind a torn
map of the world) will announce his retirement and the new divisions
of his kingdom. As “Playing” is the most important aspect
of this creative process, Lucidity theater aims to break down the
divisions among acting, directing, design, and audience in order
to make each one part of the creative effort.
Working Histories
Presented by Los Angeles Center for Photo Studies
This public "exhibition" included the work of ten artists
who addressed historical and contemporary perceptions and realities
of working people in Southern CA during the 20th Century. The spectrum
of approaches taken by these artists challenged the vernacular of
traditional labor photography. Although issues of labor impact the
communities of Los Angeles on political, social, and economic levels
they are rarely visually represented in public spaces. Voices and
representations of the working forces are still hidden. The work
was reproduced into bus shelter posters and installed in areas specified
by the artists. Artists included: Adam Avila, Slobadon Dimitrov,
Christina Fernandez, May Sun, Leda Ramos, Allan Sekula.
Circulation
REPOhistory
"Circulation" was a temporary public art project that
examined the ways in which a seemingly natural thing (blood) is
socially articulated. "Circulation" consisted of a series
of multi-sited outdoor signs displaying images and texts concerning
the circulation of human blood through the city of New York. These
signs addressed blood literally as a physical substance that is
collected, processed, stored, distributed, and disposed of as well
as figuratively in terms of its diverse metaphoric readings for
a variety of social/historical, and popular conceptions or beliefs.
Reflecting on the many unexamined assumptions about blood such as
anxieties about racial purity or national identity or the danger
of contaminating oneself by donating blood, the project featured
approximately 30 colorfully printed metal street signs located at
specific points along one segment of the actual transportation routes
used to move blood products from collection centers to city hospitals.
Entering Buttermilk
Bottom
REPOhistory
"Entering Buttermilk Bottom" was a site-specific public
art project about a Black neighborhood adjacent to downtown Atlanta,
which was effectively erased as a result of Federally-sponsored
urban renewal programs in the early 1960s. The project looked at
the evolution, daily life and dismantling of a once-vital neighborhood,
with a special emphasis on the period which destroyed it. This project
combined personal memories of the area, its texture, topography
and built environment, with an analysis of the social, economic
and political forces which brought it down.
Circus Amok
A New York City based circus-theater company, Circus Amok addresses
contemporary issues of social justice to a diversity of neighborhoods
throughout the NYC area. Trained in traditional circus skills as
well as experimental dance, activist theater, and gender-bending
performance art techniques, Circus Amok is creating a new meaning
for the term "Circus". As vaulting tumblers, clown doctors,
and heavenly hula hoopers take on the subjects of budget cuts, Mayor
Guiliani's "Quality of Life" campaign, and police brutality,
activist theater becomes a tool to help build a larger activist
movement in New York.
walk2work
Karen Wilcox
For several years now, Karen Wilcox has anonymously created "blitzkrieg"
art installations on her walk2work. Her tools have been Cheetos,
marshmallows, and pine cones; the sites have included cracks in
the sidewalks, park benches, and chain link fences; the results
have been deceptively simple and humorous transformations of the
everyday. Before the installation is blown away or carried off by
furry critters, the audiences who co-populate these paths will hopefully
look upon the world in a slightly different fashion.
Ramona Country: An Automobile
Audio Tour of the Santa Clara River Valley
The Center for Land Use Interpretation
The Center for Land Use Interpretation will produce a 60 minute
auto audio tour that notes and describes the points of interest
along Route 126, a beautiful and historic thoroughfare linking the
California towns of Valencia and Ventura. Lurking just beyond the
golden hued orange groves and quaint fruit stands that line the
rural highway, exists an array of land uses ranging from crude oil
drilling sites, land fills, military installations, Hollywood backdrops,
and religious retreats. The Audio Tour tape discusses these sites,
offering an alternative view to the traveler, and encouraging a
new and arguably "more real" view of the landscape.
Give and Take in Waikiki
Gaye Chan & Andrea Feeser
The struggle for Hawaiian sovereignty receives virtually no coverage
on the continental U.S., and when many Americans first come to Hawaii,
we imagine that we are visiting or settling into just another one
of the United States, which happens to be a tropical paradise. "Chip
away at the mass-produced, superficial experiences of tourism. We
offer a small piece of real Waikiki." So says the small tourist
knick-knack called "Historic Waikiki" produced and distributed
by Gaye Chan and Andrea Feeser for purchase by tourists ever-eager
for a small momento of their trip. The souvenir packages include
a little piece of real Waikiki cement and a short text that unveils
the effects of seeking pleasure in a place contorted by colonialism
and capitalism.
Damaged Genes: A Legacy
of the Vietnam War
Dinh Q. Lê
After 20 years of economic embargo and now dependent on the billions
of dollars of foreign investment to jump start a troubled economy,
the Vietnamese government has capitulated to the wishes of the United
States: bury the issue of Agent Orange. However, in the summer of
1998 in the financial district of Ho Chi Minh city, Dinh Lê
opened a souvenir shop in attempt to readdress this repressed history.
He sold mass produced and handmade objects—but these weren't your
ordinary tourist knickknacks. The objects focused on the issue of
birth defects relating to the use of Agent Orange during the war.
For example, one could buy a hand-knit baby sweater with two hoods
or a frilly baby's dress monogrammed with the company name Monsanto.
Roll Out the Red
Carpet
Standard and Poor
The performance team of David Henry Brown Jr. & Dominick McGill,
or "Standard and Poor", play with the issue of celebrity
fascination in the public realm. Arriving at a building in their
formal attire, they wait patiently with their red carpet, ready
to roll it out when the "celebrity" arrives. A crowd gathers,
and the excitement builds in anticipation of this unknown celebrity,
as building managers become baffled by the whole situation. Of course,
there is no celebrity, there is no need for a red carpet, and the
confusion captures all involved in the farce.
Peepshow
28
No Live Girls
At The Lusty Lady, the famous adult entertainment establishment
in San Francisco and Seattle, the customer enters a dark booth alone,
sits down in front of the monitor and activates the videos with
quarters or dollar bills. Yet, instead of the usual menu of porn
being served up, the customer will be able to select short videos
from a diverse group of artists who engage and explore issues of
sexuality, voyeurism, eroticism and gender. Is there a better space
to view critical work on these subjects than the authentic space
of a peep booth?
Citizen's Square
Tomislav Brajnovic
The winners of political battles write (and often rewrite) history—and
sometimes, it is not just the history that is rewritten. In Zagreb,
the Croatian capital, when new political forces sweep into power,
there is often an ideological battle over the names of town squares,
streets, and monuments. Recognizing the importance of naming and
the consequent relationship to power, Brajnovic has decided to equalize
all the people of the town by renaming a town square, “Citizen’s
Square.” Using an LCD display placed on a building in this
square, the names of all the citizens during the year will appear
on the display––every few seconds, as another name appears,
power becomes symbolically redefined.
Eminent Domain
Mel Ziegler and Kate Ericson
The various names of house paint often convey a particular value
system related to the ideal of the American home. By devising a
paint chart based on the history of public housing and housing legislation
in the United States, the artists have provided a subversive alternative
to the conventional “clean” histories and pointed out
the many ironic and contradictory perceptions of public and suburban
housing issues. The chart includes such color names as “Red
Lining” and “Eminent Domain” as well as colors
which have been specifically matched to significant historic public
housing structures like “Robert Taylor Homes Brick.”
On the chart, each color name corresponds to a small paragraph explaining
the meaning and significance of that name. The charts will be distributed
by True Value Hardware in their 6,000 stores across the country.
Toxic Now
Riverbed Theatre
Against the backdrop of Taiwan’s “miraculous”
economic and industrial growth, environmental pollution has emerged
as one of the nation’s most pressing concerns. In recent years,
the government has enacted environmental protection bills, but industrial
companies continue to illegally dump their wastes.
To highlight the immediacy of this problem in the daily life of
Taipei, two performers wearing full-body chemical protection suits
collected and labeled “samples” they gathered throughout
the city—water from street puddles, fallen leafs, dead bugs.
Before leaving each site, the performers created a small circle
of rice flour, ornamented with yu-lan flowers from the mountain
ranges in northern Taiwan. The small white, fragrant “sculptures’
are residual traces of the performance action, replacing the toxic
with the natural.
The Electric Fields
of California
Debby and Larry Kline
In the wake of California’s energy crisis, these installations
of fluorescent light bulbs strategically placed beneath electrical
power towers create an undulating light that is both eerie and beautiful.
The catch is that the bulbs are illuminated solely by ambient electricity
produced by electrical transmission lines. In other words, no plug
required—the bulbs draw their energy from the air surrounding
the towers. The environmental and biological effects of this ambient
electricity have been hotly debated, but not resolved “scientifically”.
Amidst the wake of California’s energy crisis, these electrical
fields are a provocative reminder of our energy and environmental
woes.
A Fox Lives Here Too
Steven Siegel
Using 7 tons of newspaper culled from local recycling centers, Siegel
designed a 20-foot monument to the ecology of trash. The piece was
designed to decompose over time, and local students who helped to
construct it also help to study the processes of nature affecting
its degradation. Hidden in the woods amongst trees that may soon
face the same fate, this juxtaposition of trash, natural flora and
aesthetic form underscores the dissonance between a disposable society,
economic progress, and the ephemeral quality of life.
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