WORLD IS WATCHING – MANIFESTOManifesto MaxKingCap
WORLD IS WATCHING – MANIFESTO
THE LIVES OF INNOCENT BLACK CIVILIANS ARE TARGETED BY THE RACIALLY BIASED POLICE FORCE WHO USE UNJUSTIFIED LETHAL FORCE. WITH THE RISE OF SOCIAL MEDIA, THE VIDEO RECORDING OF THIS DAILY INJUSTICE HAS BE HIGHLY DOCUMENTED ON SOCIAL MEDIA, HOWEVER, EVEN WITH THE INCREASED VISIBILITY, THE STATISTICS OF POLICE BRUTALITY HAVE NOT CHANGED. WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO USE THIS AWARENESS TO CREATE A PLATFORM FOR PEOPLE TO LEARN ABOUT MYOPIC AMOUNT OF POLICE BRUTALITY, UNDERSTAND THE POTENTIAL POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND VIDEO, AND DEMAND CHANGE FROM OUR POLICE FORCE WHO ARE EXPECTED TO UPHOLD OUR HUMAN RIGHTS AND PROTECT EVERYONE.
Yasmin Roberts and Natalie Marsh, WORLD IS WATCHING, 2018, multimedia. Courtesy of Gina Lamb, Visiting Associate Professor of Media Studies. https://www.makesomenoise.online/world-is-watching.html
Steven Liang
Cannon Bernáldez
Guest curated by Jesse Lerner, Pitzer College professor of media studies
September 10–December 9, 2016
Opening Reception:
Thursday, September 8, 5-7 p.m.
Lenzner Family Art Gallery, Atherton Hall
Exhibition walk-through with curator Jesse Lerner
Wednesday, November 16 at 11 a.m.
The Lenzner Family Art Gallery, Atherton Hall
In this exhibition, Mexico City-based artist Cannon Bernáldez brings together selections from three series of works in her first mid-career survey. Although trained in photojournalism and documentary practices, Bernáldez’s work over the past decade has moved towards the production of constructed images staged for the camera. These three bodies of work—Miedos (Fears, 2004-08), El Diablo anda Suelta (The Devil on the Loose, 2007) and Hermanas (Sisters, 2011-14)—comprise a series of visual essays that poetically reflect upon the physical and psychological effects of a violent culture. In the series Miedos, Bernáldez stages her own death; in El Diablo anda Suelta, faux blood splatter and forensic equipment evoke the aftermath of violent crimes; and in Hermanas, Bernáldez references the nineteenth-century tradition of photographing dead babies as if they were alive.
Much of Bernáldez’s recent work reflects the climate of violence that has taken over Mexico, the country in which she was born and works. The pervasive brutality and culture of fear, amplified by the federal government’s attempts to eliminate the criminal organizations involved in the cultivation and export of illegal drugs (as well as kidnapping, murder and extortion), is one of Bernáldez’s enduring themes. She also incorporates elements of autobiography and reflects upon the fragility of the human body, the role of re-creations within the documentary tradition, and the medium and history of photography.
About the Artist
Cannon Bernáldez is a photographer based in Mexico City, where she runs the Literna Mágica studio. She has exhibited at galleries and cultural centers in Latin America, the United States, Russia and France. Her solo exhibitions include shows at the Nacho López Gallery of Mexico’s National Photography Archive (2005); the Images du Pole in Orléans, France (2004); and the Alliance Française Gallery in Mexico City (2003). Her work is included in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; the Zoellner Arts Center at Lehigh University; and, in Mexico City, at the Centro de la Imagen, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, the Museo Universitario del Chopo and Fundación Cultural Televisa. Winner of the 12th Mexican Biennial of Photography in 2006, Bernáldez has received two Young Creators scholarships from Mexico’s National Arts and Culture Endowment. Her other awards include honorable mention at the Visual Arts National Biennial, Merida (2002), the Omnilife Cultural Foundation Award (honorable mention, 2001), the Fernando Benítez National Award of Journalism and Culture (2001) and the Body and Fruit Photographic Contest (2000).
About the Curator
Jesse Lerner is a filmmaker, curator and scholar based in Los Angeles. His short films Natives (1991, with Scott Sterling), T.S.H. (2004) and Magnavoz (2006) and the feature-length experimental documentaries Frontierland/Fronterilandia (1995, with Rubén Ortiz-Torres), Ruins (1999), The American Egypt (2001), Atomic Sublime (2010) and The Absent Stone (2013, with Sandra Rozental) have won numerous prizes at film festivals in the United States, Latin America and Japan, and have screened at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery in Washington DC, and the Sundance, Rotterdam and Los Angeles film festivals. His films were featured in mid-career surveys at New York’s Anthology Film Archives and Mexico’s Cineteca Nacional. He has curated projects and exhibitions for Mexico’s Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes, the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Bilbao, and the Robert Flaherty Seminar. His books include The Shock of Modernity, F is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing (with Alexandra Juhasz), and The Maya of Modernism. Jesse Lerner is a professor of media studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA.
Far from Indochine
Guest curated by Chương-Đài Võ
September 10–December 9, 2016
Opening Reception:
Saturday, September 10, 2:30-4:30 p.m.
Nichols Gallery, Broad Center
Lecture by Guest Curator, Chương-Đài Võ
Wednesday, September 7 at 11 a.m.
Room 210, Broad Hall
Artist Lecture: Site and the Imaginary
Saturday, September 10 at 1:30 p.m.
Broad Center Performance Space, Broad Center
Patty Chang and David Kelley join us to discuss their collaborative video work Route 3, which is currently on view at the Pitzer College Art Galleries in the Far from Indochine exhibition, and a selection of other projects. While the pair work across a wide range of mediums and disciplines, from sculpture, drawing and photography to film, performance and new media, at the core of their collaboration is the intersection of site and the imaginary.
Route 3 is their recent video about a newly completed highway in rural Laos. Connecting China to Thailand through the former Golden Triangle, the new highway has accelerated Chinese development of Lao agricultural and gambling industries, and the migration of rural Lao minority populations to the growing roadside towns. The video considers the enigmatic changes in the visual landscape through performance and sculpture.
Panel Discussion: Modernism: Western Fantasies of the Orient
Wednesday, October 5 at 11 a.m.
Broad Center Performance Space, Broad Center
Panelists: John Tain, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Collections, Getty Research Institute; Wendy Cheng, Assistant Professor, American Studies, Scripps College; Viet Le, Artist and Professor, California College of the Arts; and Dewey Ambrosino, Artist and Professor, CalArts and Art Center College of Art and Design.
Generous funding for this event is provided by the Pitzer College Campus Life Committee.
Far from Indochine engages with the myths and ideas that shaped modernism and inform contemporary imaginings of Southeast Asia. In conversation with the recent 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, the exhibition brings together five artists from France and the U.S. Through film, photography, sculpture and embroidered cloth, these artists provoke questions about perceptions of and in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. The exhibition is an assemblage of illegible screens that recall and refract fantasies about another world.
Organized by curator Chương-Đài Võ, Far from Indochine features three projects by Dewey Ambrosino, Patty Chang and David Kelley, and Frédéric Dialynas Sanchez and Jean-Sébastien Grill.
Route 3, a film by Patty Chang and David Kelley, takes viewers along a new Silk Road that serves as a stage for local and transnational imaginings about modernity in Laos. Multiple storylines and images pop in and out of the frames, continually interrupting each other and unsettling narratives of economic development.
The installation Hiding in the Light by Dewey Ambrosino offers a ghostly dance of night-vision photographs of an insect farm in Cambodia, and a sculpture of a Hindu and Buddhist protector deity. The juxtaposition of the mundane and the spiritual aligns with centuries-old practices that view the micro within the infinite time and space of the cosmic.
Triangle, by Frédéric Dialynas Sanchez and Jean-Sébastien Grill, plays with the celebratory and conflicting politics of nationalism by merging the Cambodian, Vietnamese and Laotian flags. The billboard-size cloth decontextualizes political symbols, appropriating the authority of the state and advertisements for the desires and platitudes of global capitalism.
Far from Indochine addresses definitions of the modern and the contemporary, the blurry boundaries between appropriation and innovation, and artistic and curatorial strategies in and about Asia. The exhibition originated as part of the Curatorial Opportunity Program at New Art Center in Newtonville, MA.
About the Artists
Dewey Ambrosino received undergraduate degrees in Sculpture and Industrial Design from University of Illinois, Chicago, and an MFA in Art from CalArts. Based in Los Angeles, he is a current faculty member at CalArts and Art Center College of Design. His practice examines the relationship between aesthetic phenomena and cultural conditioning through a wide variety of media. Ambrosino has performed and exhibited throughout the US, Europe and Asia.
Patty Chang works primarily with performance and video art. She has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as Museum of Modern Art, New York; New Museum, New York, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museet Moderna, Stockholm, Sweden; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Fri-Art Centre d’Art Contemporain Kunsthalle, Fribourg, Switzerland. Chang is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient.
Jean-Sébastien Grill is a graphic designer based in Nancy, France. An advocate of “Do It Yourself” and nomadism, Grill studied visual arts at ESAL in Metz and Épinal (2002/2007). Since 2010, he and Frédéric Dialynas Sanchez have worked together on projects in Geneva, Dijon, Mosset, Saigon and Shanghai. Their video “Night at The Observatory” was shown in Amsterdam while their flip book “Night on Earth” was published in (Re)Collecting the Vietnam War, a special issue of The Asian American Literary Review.
David Kelley’s work is research-based, internationally produced video installation and photography. His recent projects dealt with themes of infrastructure space, modernization, landscape, the margins of art history and the instrumentalization of art in the built environment. His work has been shown at Museum of Modern Art in New York, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA, Commonwealth and Council in Los Angeles, MAAP Space in Brisbane, Bank in Shanghai and Beirut in Cairo. Kelley is assistant professor of art at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
Frédéric Dialynas Sanchez lives and works in France and Vietnam. He completed post-graduate studies in Lyon (ENBA, 2008/2009) and Shanghai (École Offshore, 2013/2014). His work focuses on abstraction, collective identities and cultural bricolage. He has participated in numerous projects in Saigon, Hanoi, Shanghai, New York, Boston, Montréal, Fujiyoshida, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Vienna and Paris.
About the Curator
Chương-Đài Võ is an independent curator based in Hong Kong, where she works for Asia Art Archive as the Researcher for Southeast Asia. Her exhibitions have been selected in curatorial competitions sponsored by apexart in New York City, New Art Center in the Boston area, and Dorsky Gallery in Long Island City. She is a former Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has received fellowships and grants from Asian Cultural Council, Fulbright Program, the National Endowment for the Humanities and University of California Pacific Rim Research Program. She has a PhD from University of California, San Diego, and a BA from Johns Hopkins University.
INTENSION: Senior Art Exhibition 2016
I N / T E N S I O N
2016 Senior Thesis Art Exhibition | Apr 21–May 14
Evy Borkan
Justin Dixon
Molly Haas
Rhea Jayachandran
Alexandria Johnson
Mikaela Joyce
Clovis Oglivie
Drew Woods
April 21 – May 14, 2016
Pitzer College Art Galleries:
Nichols Gallery, Broad Center
Lenzner Gallery, Atherton Hall
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 21, 5-7 p.m.
Food and drink provided by the Grove House, Shakedown Cafe,
Zenia Gutierrez, Claremont Craft Ales, Walter’s, Pappas
Artisanal, Wolfe’s Market, Nuno’s and Ventana Wine.
Juan Downey: Radiant Nature
Curated by Robert Crouch and Ciara Ennis
Pitzer College Art Galleries and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE)
Pitzer: September 9–December 8, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 9, 3-5 p.m.
LACE: September 13–December 3, 2017
Opening Reception: Wednesday, September 13, 7-10 p.m.
Juan Downey: Radiant Nature is a two-part exhibition on the early works of Chilean-born artist Juan Downey as part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative exploring the vast subject of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles.
From the late 1960s until the mid-1970s, Juan Downey (b. Chile, 1940; d. New York, 1993) pioneered interactive, participatory artworks that helped shape his better-known multichannel video installations such as Video Trans Americas (1973–76) and The Thinking Eye (1974–89). The works that make up Downey’s Electronic Sculptures (1967–71); Happenings and Performances (1968–75); and Life Cycle Installations (1970–73) take radically different forms, but they share similar strategies; conceived as vehicles for interactivity, they are intended to be played with or participated in rather than passively observed.
Downey was especially interested in the potential of technology to facilitate viewer participation, transform social relations, and forge new modes of communication between organic elements or environments and machines or machinic systems. Borrowing ideas from second-order cybernetics, he conceived the organic and technological aspects of his work as relational, operating in tandem and alterable by feedback. Viewer-participants interfacing with the Electronic Sculptures, for example, may trigger an array of outcomes—sounds, colored lights, projections—depending on their actions. Similarly, Downey imagined participants in his Happenings and Performances as part of an unpredictable, amorphous system in which performers, video cameras, closed-circuit televisions, laser beams, and viewer-participants are working together. The Life Cycle Installations create an interdependence between organic and machinic elements—plants, soil, and insects and electronic sensors, cameras, and television monitors—demonstrating Downey’s belief in the potential of cybernetics to solve large-scale environmental issues by rebalancing relationships between humans, technologies, and ecologies.
Related Events:
Symposium on Cybernetics
Saturday, November 18, 10 a.m.–3 p.m.
Benson Auditorium, Pitzer College
Exhibition Publication Launch
Sunday, December 3, 1–4 p.m.
Doing Things Together: Presentation by Grant Wahlquist 2–3 p.m.
LACE
6522 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles
Juan Downey: Radiant Nature
Curaduría Robert Crouch y Ciara Ennis
Pitzer College Art Galleries
9 de septiembre – 8 de diciembre, 2017
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE)
13 de septiembre – 3 de diciembre, 2017
Juan Downey: Radiant Nature es una exposición en dos sedes enfocada en la obra temprana del artista nacido en Chile Juan Downey que forma parte de Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, una iniciativa de la Getty dedicada a explorar la amplía temática del diálogo entre el arte latinoamericano y latino y la ciudad de Los Ángeles.
Desde finales de la década de 1960 y hasta mediados de la siguiente, Juan Downey (Chile, 1940 – Nueva York, 1993) concibió obras de arte interactivas y participativas que antecedieron y dieron forma a sus instalaciones más conocidas de video multicanal como Video Trans Americas (1973–76) y The Thinking Eye (1974–89). Las obras que conforman las Esculturas Electrónicas de Downey (1967–71); sus Happenings y Performances (1968–75); y las instalaciones de Life Cycle (1970–73) se manifiestan de manera radicalmente distinta pero comparten estrategias similares; planteadas como vehículos de interacción, su intención es propiciar el juego y la participación en vez de la observación pasiva.
Downey estaba particularmente interesado en la capacidad de la tecnología para facilitar la participación del espectador, transformar las relaciones sociales y forjar nuevos modelos de comunicación entre elementos y ambientes orgánicos y sistemas mecanizados. A partir de teorías de la cibernética de segundo orden, planteó los aspectos orgánicos y tecnológicos de su trabajo como simbióticos, operando en conjunto y capaces de alterarse mutuamente a través de retroalimentación. Por ejemplo, dependiendo de la acción que lleven a cabo los espectadores-participantes al interactuar con las Esculturas Electrónicas pueden activar cualquiera de una serie de respuestas: sonidos, luces de colores o proyecciones. De una manera parecida, Downey imaginaba a los integrantes de sus Happenings y Performances como parte de un sistema amorfo e impredecible en el que colaboraban participantes, videocámaras, televisores en circuito cerrado, rayos láser y espectadores activos. Las instalaciones de Life Cycle articulan una simbiosis entre elementos tecnológicos y orgánicos—plantas, tierra, insectos, sensores electrónicos, cámaras y monitores televisivos—que demuestra la creencia de Downey en el potencial de la cibernética para resolver problemas ecológicos masivos al alterar el equilibrio de la relación entre humanos, tecnologías y ecologías.
Recepción de apertura
Pitzer College Art Galleries: Sábado, 9 de septiembre, 3-5 p.m.
LACE: Miércoles, 13 de septiembre, 7-10 p.m.
Simposio sobre cibernética
Sábado, 18 de noviembre 10 am-3 pm
Auditorio George Benson, Pitzer College
Lanzamiento de publicación de la muestra
Domingo, 3 de diciembre, 1-4 p.m.
LACE
6522 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles
Traducción: Javier Rivero
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Award-winning Writer David Goldblatt Reflects on Juan Downey: Radiant Nature
- HipLatina highlights Juan Downey: Radiant Nature
October 14, 2017 - Pitzer College Art Galleries’ upcoming Juan Downey: Radiant Nature, a 2017 Getty Pacific Standard Time LA/LA exhibition, highlighted in The Huffington Post
November 18. 2016 - artnet news highlights Pitzer Art Galleries’ upcoming exhibition, part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative.
March 31, 2016 - The New York Times highlights the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time grant for Pitzer Art Galleries’ upcoming Juan Downey: Radiant Nature exhibition
March 15, 2016
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Juan Downey: Radiant Nature is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin America and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions across Southern California.
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Major support for Juan Downey: Radiant Nature provided through grants from the Getty Foundation.
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Additional support is generously provided by Dirección de Asuntos Culturales, DIRAC, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Embassy of Chile; Pasadena Art Alliance; Estrellita B. Brodsky; and Consulate of Chile in Los Angeles.
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In-kind support is provided by Human Resources Los Angeles.
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This exhibition is organized by Pitzer College Art Galleries and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE).
Image:
Energy Fields (1972); Photographic documentation from video-performance, 112 Greene Street, New York, February 1972; Dimensions: 6.30 x 9.45 inches (16 x 24 cm); Courtesy of the Estate of Juan Downey; Photo: Peter Moore © Estate of Peter Moore/VAGA, New York
Energy Fields (1972); Documentación fotográfica de un video-performance realizado en 112 Greene Street, Nueva York, febrero de 1972; dimensiones: 6.30 x 9.45 pulgadas (16 x 24 cm); cortesía del Estate of Juan Downey; Fotografía: Peter Moore © Estate of Peter Moore/VAGA, Nueva York.
More Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA exhibitions at the Claremont Colleges:
Pomona College
Pomona College Museum of Art presents Prometheus 2017: Four Artists from Mexico Revisit Orozco from August 29 to December 16, 2017.
Events on Saturday, September 9:
Opening reception: 5-7 p.m.
Gallery Talk with artist Rita Ponce de León and scholar and catalog essayist Daniel Garza Usabiaga: 4-5 p.m.
FMI: www.pomona.edu
Scripps College
Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery presents Revolution and Ritual: The Photographs of Sara Castrejón, Graciela Iturbide and Tatiana Parcero from August 26, 2017 to January 7, 2018.
Events on Saturday, September 9:
Opening reception: 7-9 p.m.
Panel Discussion with the Writers: 1-2 p.m.
Tea: 2-3 p.m.
Panel Discussion with the Artists: 3-4 p.m.
FMI: rcwg.scrippscollege.edu
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NINE: Senior Art Exhibition 2015
Adrian Brandon
Hall of Fame is meant to provoke thought on how marginalized lives are valued in today’s society, and to begin a dialogue about how entertainment affects society’s perception of young people of color. By using trading cards and posters, my work shows how our society glorifies the lives of professional athletes, yet disregards the lives of the minorities who are not entertaining the country with lightning quick crossovers, back-breaking tackles and effortless home runs.
Cameron Carr
My current focus is dedicated to putting emphasis on race and its social ramifications. I’m interested in shining light on the effect race has on the public in regards to people consciously or unconsciously perpetuating the system of oppression. In my recent video works, I’ve made spatially palpable the issues of being a black body within a post-slavery and post-largely oppressive environment of racial abuse, as well as the tensions formed through the process of racism being reconfigured and changing throughout the timeline of modern day. I’m committed to making predominantly white societies, schools, communities, cultures, work forces and institutions aware of these dislocations, highlighting issues that all too often remain unconscious.
Raz Krog
I focused on the intersection between form and function in the automotive, motorcycle and aircraft industries. I strive to define an adrenaline-filled and athletically stimulating lifestyle through my strategic use of stills and motion pictures. By playing with the language of mainstream advertising, I’ve created a body of work composed of stories that range from motor vehicle advertisements to character-driven documentaries. My final project looks at the militarization of our nation’s airports and urges viewers to question, “What are we protecting?”
Rocío Medina
I was born and raised in Los Angeles. While I have experimented with political subjects, I always seem to draw on personal experience. My intimate experiences are more compelling when expressed through the markings of my hands and body. My subjects are personal, reflecting childhood and loss. Being an only child, I became accustomed to solitude and temporary periods of abandonment, which carried on to my adulthood through my romantic relationships.
Leah Pomerantz
Connecting my artistic practice to my career goals as a veterinarian I bring my love of animals and biology into my drawings and paintings. My current work depicts animals typically perceived as inferior beings. Through illustrating “undesirable” animals at human scale and in vibrant color, I am trying to dismantle the anthropocentrism of the average viewer and have them understand these animals in a new way.
Ari Saperstein
When creating an artwork, the concept and message always come first, long before I know what physical form it will take; while I’ve spent most of my time at Pitzer making drawings and videos, my final piece is an interactive performance piece. Inspired by innovative artists like Tino Sehgal, Marina Abramovic and Janet Cardiff, my work explores communication by engaging the audience, challenging our tendency to avoid vulnerability by hiding behind digital walls.
Leonard Schlör
I use sound, film and performance as a means of exploring somatic representation of human relationships. My movement is deeply influenced by my study of the Alexander Technique and inspired by the dynamic, confrontational choreography of Pina Bausch. Bell hooks has grounded the theory of relationship intentionality and loving in my work. My fluid sense of home began in Boston and has continued through Pittsburgh, Germany, central Illinois.
Dan Stranahan
I use studio portrait photography, combined with cyanotype or “sun” printing to create photographs that are about the attitudes college students have toward their surrounding material world. By involving peers in the sun printing process, my hope is that they will feel empowered to question and strengthen their own philosophy of objects and, in doing so, become better users and makers rather than buyers and consumers.
Alyssa Woodward
#takecareofyourself is an audience-driven installation that shows how different levels of balance and self control create an exploration of what is considered to be “healthy.” This installation is also a reflection for the audience to not forget to treat yourself. Treating yourself is the first step in taking care of yourself. So indulge to satisfy that sweet-tooth craving with the treats provided, and enjoy.
