20 Oct – 24 Nov 2007: KRISTIN LUCAS : If Then Else End If

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Art Exhibition
New Pertinent Event

Postmasters Gallery
New York

KRISTIN LUCAS :

If Then Else End If

20 Oct – 24 Nov 2007

Kristin Lucas succeeded in legally changing her name from Kristin Sue Lucas to Kristin Sue Lucas. In Alameda County Court, the presiding judge who granted the request said:
“So you have changed your name to exactly what it was before in the spirit of refreshing yourself as though you were a web page.”

Postmasters is pleased to announce the exhibition of new works by KRISTIN LUCAS “If Then Else End If” opening on October 20 and remaining on view until November 24. This is the artist’s third solo show with the gallery.

Positioning herself at the center of her projects, Lucas’ work addresses the complexity of our relationship to the digital realm and the psychological effects of rapid spread technology. Reversing a popular concept of infusing humanity into machines she instead applies familiar strategies of electronic media to her own life. Transformations, mutations, copies, updates, versions, and self-investigation are the focus of Lucas’ exhibition.

“Light Boxes” (digital prints on backlit film) are photographic self-portraits with special f/x makeovers wherein the body appears diseased, the virus attacking the organic matter. Lucas, the techno-martyr, is placed within surroundings infused with digital debris and artifice. The portraits translate the complex state of being either/or, all and in between: send and receive, crash and recovery, and physical and virtual in times of transition and mutability.

“Whatever Your Mind Can Conceive” is a multiple channel video projected onto roadside billboards surrounded by a desert landscape. Flaming comets, translated from pinball game graphics into laser-cut forms, pummel a landscape of cast fiberglass rocks, interlacing psychological, physical, and virtual terrains. In the videos, Lucas performs herself differently-abled, set out on an introspective journey in search of self- knowledge, while recovering from the bizarre effects of an inflamed rash, a rash that functions as an antenna for receiving Bingo call numbers. Under the care of licensed hypnotherapist, Dr. Ron Abbott, a collaborator in this lived performance, Lucas retires from her position as Bingo caller (a position that she does not actually hold) at an airport casino (that does not exist).

Also Showing: Second gallery of Postmasters presents the projects related to new Kristin.

In “Refresh” the artist receives a government-issued refresh. Kristin Lucas becomes the most current version of herself. Documentation includes a certified name change form, newspaper clipping, sketches from court hearings, and a transcript of a philosophical debate between the artist and the presiding judge over the perception of change.

Shown alongside “Refresh” is “Before and After” – a mixed media group show/installation of portrait sets of Kristin Lucas before and after her name change.

Postmasters Gallery
459 West 19th Street
(at 10th Avenue)
New York
NY 10011

#34 with guest speaker JUDITH BARRY

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From the Panoptic to the PantopicJudith Barry will discuss some of her installations and projects in relation to a broadly defined notion of surveillance and through questions of ‘spectatorship’ and ‘viewer participation’.  Some of the issues she will address include voyeurism and its relation to models of vision (including surveillance) and the scopic drive; tropes of interiority and subjectivity as they appear in the figure of the ‘flaneur/detective/female flaneuse/stalker’; observation as the model for identity/visioning/representation/responsibility/control along side the paradigm shifts posed through the ‘imaging’ of the ‘invisible’, remote sensing and nano technology.Judith Barry is an artist/writer whose work crosses a number of disciplines: performance, installation, film/video, sculpture, architecture, photography, new media. Trained in architecture, film and literary theory, she received her MA in Computer Graphics from NYIT in 1986. She has exhibited internationally/nationally at such venues as the Berlin Biennale (‘03), several Venice Biennale(s) of Art/Architecture (‘88, ‘90, ‘01), Sao Paolo Biennale (‘94), Nagoya Biennale,(‘93)  Carnegie International(‘01), Whitney Biennale (‘87), Sydney Biennale (‘82), and two InSites (San Diego/Tijuana) (‘97, ‘00), among many others. In 2000, she was awarded the Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts and in 2001 her piece, “Voice off”, received “Best Pavilion” and “Audience Award” at the 8th Cairo Biennale. Public Fantasy, a collection of Barry’s essays, was published by the ICA, London, edited by Iwona Blazwick (1991). Other publications include Projections: mise en abyme, with an essay by Brian Wallis and interview between Judith Barry, Mark Wigley and Brian Wallis, Presentation House, Vancouver 1997; the catalogue for the Frederich Kiesler Prize, Vienna 2000, the catalogue for the 8th Cairo Biennale 2001, essay by Gary Sangster, Contemporary Museum, Baltimore and Study for the Mirror and Garden, Diputacion Granada, Spain with essays by Jan Avgikos and Jean Fisher (2003). Recent exhibitions include “Playback”, Musee d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris (07), “Evidence of Movement”, Getty Museum (07) “Queens International”, Queens Museum, (’06), Galerie Karin Sachs, Munich (’06) “SHOP 1V” Whitechapel Gallery (‘06), “Dark Places”, Santa Monica Museum of Art, (‘06), “Wall to be Destroyed”, Frac Lorraine, Metz (‘05), “Baroque/Neo Baroque”, DA2, Salamanca (‘05), “Phonorama”, ZKM, Karlsruhe (‘04), “East Village USA”, New Museum (‘04). In April 2008 a survey of her work will open in Domus Atrium 2, Salamanca, Spain and will travel in Europe.  She has taught and lectured extensively in the USA, Japan, and Europe. Currently, she is Director of the MFA Program at the Art Institute of Boston/Lesley University.

#33 Hacking Domestication: Embedded and Surveillant Technology in Animals

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GEMMA SHUSTERMAN

animals

“Hacking Domestication: Embedded and Surveillant Technology in Animals” is a preliminary inquiry into human hegemony and the use of animals (including humans), in conjunction with technology, as tools for social control. Animals have continuously been an integrated part of human warfare, espionage, and research endeavors. The role of domesticated “helper” has been played by various species — from the use of pigeons as messengers dating back to 1150, to the use of dolphins for surveillance and mine detection, to current DARPA research into implanting microchips in insects. Technology provides a framework for animals’ unwitting collusion with decidedly human agendas. Actions toward animals reflect both human attitudes of entitlement as a species and the substructure that supports stratification of our own human social systems.

november 6th 2007 / 11 am to 4 pm / vor sankt martin 1 / cologne

Gemma has worked as a floral designer, actor, dancer, software engineer, dishwasher, webmistress, acupressure technician, PBX technician, cocktail waitress, pilates and Gyrotonic® instructor, dance teacher, choreographer, baker’s assistant and designer. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Art from Mills College in Oakland, California and a MS in Media Arts and Sciences from the Media Lab at MIT, in Cambridge Massachusetts where she worked with the Computing Culture Group.

http://atomicbee.com/

iKatun

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ikatun

Free Fear from the USA (if you take it)

Vancouver, 2007

Part of Participatory Dissent, curated by Natalie Loveless for the Western Front.
In October 2007, the Institute for Infinitely Small Things reverse-shoplifted over 40 copies of The New American Dictionary: Security/Fear Edition into bookstores and educational institutions in Vancouver, BC. The dictionary catalogs over 60 terms related to fear and security which have entered American English since 9/11, including new terms (“freedom fries”, “islamofascist”) and old terms which have been redefined (“torture”). The books are now available for free in select Vancouver locations or on amazon.com for $19.95.

http://www.ikatun.com/

link list of the week

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last week of november

 http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/

i document
http://i.document.m05.de/?p=416

Jenny Pollak
http://www.jennypolak.com/jennypolak_about.htm

space recognition, fear and matters of perceptual interest
this article is about space recognition, fear and matters of perceptual interest for the seminar, especially anyone interested in memory, recognition or making spaces to induce a certain kind of feeling
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/deja-vu-0607.html

Surveillance Film 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_%282008_film%29

MyFingr
http://www.myfingr.com/howto

We Know You Are Watching: Surveillance Camera Players 1996-2006.
Published by Factory School.
http://www.factoryschool.org/pubs/scp/index.html
On this topic, with a slightly different spin: At the Ars Electronica Festival a few weeks ago in Linz / Austria, there were two presentations on how people used CCTVs to shoot whole movies. They got access to the footage either via data protection law requests about their own data (Manu Luksch) or because the cameras were accessible by wifi (Graham Harwood). :-)

#35 with guest speaker NANCY DAVENPORT

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NANCY DAVENPORTnancy12.jpgArtist Nancy Davenport will present her recent photographic and digital projects including “Workers (leaving the factory)”, an installation presented last September at the 10th International Istanbul Biennial. Throughout her work, Davenport has consistently explored architecture as a symbolic social space, specific built environments as sites of contested meaning and the temporal ambiguity of digital technology. All of her DVD projects have explicitly explored the territory between photography and film mediums; lost illusions of the ‘real’ and lost political illusions.nancy2.jpgnancy32.jpg

Rhizome Commission Proposal 2007

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eavesdropping

http://www.oddible.com/eavesdropping/rhizome/

Remix Your Blogroll

Is your blogroll getting stale? Do you need to pump some bass into your RSS feeds? You might consider adding Remix Theory, a relatively new blog maintained by media artist, writer, and curator Eduardo Navas. While Navas has written on the contemporary climate in essays such as ‘Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture,’ he makes a distinction between remix culture, and remix proper, and focuses directly on the latter creative act. This inquiry has been addressed by the prolific critic in a number of projects, including his essay on The Blogger as Producer; his curatorial project, The Latency of the Moving Image in New Media, at Los Angeles’ Telic Art Space; and his recent interview with Yto (Isabel Eranda) in the Chilean magazine, Escaner Cultural. Remix Theory aggregates Navas’s work, alongside excerpts and projects from others. In addition to coverage of various manifestations of the principles of remix, one essential goal of the blog is to define the ter!
m, itself. Navas insists that this effort must begin with the study of remixed music, before branching out. Offering copious historical and bibliographic resources to that effect, the site is stimulating on several levels, offering insight into new art works and new means of discussing them. – Elizabeth Johnston