Artists Space

Jeff Preiss and Union Gaucha Productions

Screenings & Discussion

Thursday, November 19, 7pm

Artists Space Books & Talks

55 Walker Street

Filmmaker Jeff Preiss's long-term engagement with Union Gaucha Productions has encompassed the production of collaborative work, as well as sharing with Nicolás Guagnini and Karin Schneider an involvement in the co-operative exhibition space Orchard, which operated in the Lower East Side of New York between 2005 and 2008. This evening of screenings and conversation between the three artists, dedicated to Preiss's work, draws on these exchanges among others and includes the presentation of three films: the early 8mm film Boy Town (1987); Twins (2001), a 16mm film produced by Guagnini and Schneider with Preiss; and the premiere screening in 24fps HD video of Part 1 of STOP (2012), Preiss's feature-length chronicle distilled from footage shot between 1995 and 2011.

This audio recording documents the discussion, between Jeff Preiss, Karin Schneider and Nicolás Guagnini, that followed the three screenings.

Jeff Preiss is a filmmaker living in New York. During the eighties he became involved in the production of experimental cinema; work from this time was included in Big as Life, a History of 8mm at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1998. Through much of the eighties he was co-director of the pioneering Lower East Side Film series Films Charas.

In 1984 he traveled to Berlin to shoot the Rosa Von Praunheim produced vampire film, Der Bis. In 1987, Preiss was invited by photographer Bruce Weber to be Director of Photography on a series of short films and two feature documentaries, Broken Noses and Let’s Get Lost — the latter winning the Venice Film Festival Critics Award and an Academy Award nomination for best documentary. After three years of collaborating with Weber, Preiss’ film career began to include directing commercials and music videos (clips for Iggy Pop, Malcolm McLaren, REM, B52s, Mariah Carey / Nike, Coke, Sony, etc) and in 2014 the feature film Low Down. In 1995 he became a partner at Epoch Films. During this period he continued to shoot experimental projects and completed a series of video installations in venues including The Whitney Museum of American Art, Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville Paris, Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam, MediaCity 2000 in Seoul Korea, and The Pompidou Center. Preiss was a founding member of the co-operatively run Lower East Side exhibition space Orchard and currently serves on the board of Light Industry.

For more information click here http://artistsspace.org/programs/jeff-preiss-and-union-gaucha-productions

Juliana Huxtable & LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs

Readings

Friday, October 9, 7pm

Artists Space Books & Talks

55 Walker Street

“Performance is a bothersome word for writerly poets” writes poet Nathaniel Mackey in his essay “Sight-Specific, Sound-Specific…” from 2005. Despite twentieth century poetry’s rich tradition of performance, Mackey notes that in poetry there is often an expectation for words do the performing, as opposed to people or things. Yet, language exists beyond just words, and functions in tandem with images, gestures, bodies and technologies. In this series of readings, distinctions between the language of performance and the performance of language are blurred. Foregrounded are writerly poets who embrace images, gestures, bodies and technologies in the presentation of their poetry – as elements that don’t overshadow their poetics, but are embraced as part of its liveliness, and of reading as a social experience.

The series is structured via themes of sound, the body, technology, theater and comedy. These themes offer different formal histories for poets to explore the presentation of poetic language. Juliana Huxtable and LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs both experiment with the effects of audio distortion and sampling. Sophia Le Fraga, Ian Hatcher and Alejandro Miguel Justino Crawford all utilize different digital technologies to question the ground of their poetry. Whitney Claflin and Corina Copp present relational and formal theatrical environments out of which their poetics unfold.

There is an invisible architecture often supporting

the surface of the poem, interrupting the progress of the poem. It reaches

into the poem

in search for an identity with the poem,

its object is to possess the poem for a brief time, even as an apparition appears.

writes Barbara Guest in her poetic essay, “Invisible Architecture” (2000). In this she understands the formal and historical context of the poem as a material that contributes to its meaning – as both apart from and a part of poetic language. Reading functions similarly; it is not a neutral action, but contributes to the meaning of the text presented. In a moment when language and presentation of self alike are understood as multiple, and bound within wider, connected systems, performance becomes a means of making the “invisible architecture” of the poem visible, and activating it as a poetic material in itself.

Juliana Huxtable is an artist, poet, performer, and DJ who often uses her own body, gender fluidity, and identity as her primary subject. Huxtable’s work was featured in the 2015 Triennial, Surround Audience at the New Museum, New York (2015), as well as at MoMA PS1, New York (2014); White Columns Annual, White Columns, New York (2014); Take Ecstasy with Me, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2014); and Frieze Projects, London (2014), among other venues. She lives and works in New York.

For more information click here http://artistsspace.org/programs/huxtable-diggs

Alejandro Miguel Justino Crawford,

Ian Hatcher & Sophia Le Fraga

Readings

Friday, October 16, 7pm

Artists Space Books & Talks

55 Walker Street

“Performance is a bothersome word for writerly poets” writes poet Nathaniel Mackey in his essay “Sight-Specific, Sound-Specific…” from 2005. Despite twentieth century poetry’s rich tradition of performance, Mackey notes that in poetry there is often an expectation for words do the performing, as opposed to people or things. Yet, language exists beyond just words, and functions in tandem with images, gestures, bodies and technologies. In this series of readings, distinctions between the language of performance and the performance of language are blurred. Foregrounded are writerly poets who embrace images, gestures, bodies and technologies in the presentation of their poetry – as elements that don’t overshadow their poetics, but are embraced as part of its liveliness, and of reading as a social experience.

The series is structured via themes of sound, the body, technology, theater and comedy. These themes offer different formal histories for poets to explore the presentation of poetic language. Juliana Huxtable and LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs both experiment with the effects of audio distortion and sampling. Sophia Le Fraga, Ian Hatcher and Alejandro Miguel Justino Crawford all utilize different digital technologies to question the ground of their poetry. Whitney Claflin and Corina Copp present relational and formal theatrical environments from which their poetics unfold.

There is an invisible architecture often supporting

the surface of the poem, interrupting the progress of the poem. It reaches

into the poem

in search for an identity with the poem,

its object is to possess the poem for a brief time, even as an apparition appears.

writes Barbara Guest in her poetic essay, “Invisible Architecture” (2000). In this she understands the formal and historical context of the poem as a material that contributes to its meaning – as both apart from and a part of poetic language. Reading functions similarly; it is not a neutral action, but contributes to the meaning of the text presented. In a moment when language and presentation of self alike are understood as multiple, and bound within wider, connected systems, performance becomes a means of making the “invisible architecture” of the poem visible, and activating it as a poetic material in itself.

Ian Hatcher is a writer, programmer, and sound artist whose work explores cognition in context of digital systems. He is the author of Prosthesis (Poor Claudia 2015) and The All-New (Anomalous 2015). With Amaranth Borsuk and Kate Durbin, he is co-creator of Abra, a conjoined analog (artist's book) + digital (iOS app) poetry instrument/spellbook. >> ianhatcher.net

For more information click here http://artistsspace.org/programs/crawford-hatcher-le-fraga

Juliana Huxtable & LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs

Readings

Friday, October 9, 7pm

Artists Space Books & Talks

55 Walker Street

“Performance is a bothersome word for writerly poets” writes poet Nathaniel Mackey in his essay “Sight-Specific, Sound-Specific…” from 2005. Despite twentieth century poetry’s rich tradition of performance, Mackey notes that in poetry there is often an expectation for words do the performing, as opposed to people or things. Yet, language exists beyond just words, and functions in tandem with images, gestures, bodies and technologies. In this series of readings, distinctions between the language of performance and the performance of language are blurred. Foregrounded are writerly poets who embrace images, gestures, bodies and technologies in the presentation of their poetry – as elements that don’t overshadow their poetics, but are embraced as part of its liveliness, and of reading as a social experience.

The series is structured via themes of sound, the body, technology, theater and comedy. These themes offer different formal histories for poets to explore the presentation of poetic language. Juliana Huxtable and LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs both experiment with the effects of audio distortion and sampling. Sophia Le Fraga, Ian Hatcher and Alejandro Miguel Justino Crawford all utilize different digital technologies to question the ground of their poetry. Whitney Claflin and Corina Copp present relational and formal theatrical environments out of which their poetics unfold.

There is an invisible architecture often supporting

the surface of the poem, interrupting the progress of the poem. It reaches

into the poem

in search for an identity with the poem,

its object is to possess the poem for a brief time, even as an apparition appears.

writes Barbara Guest in her poetic essay, “Invisible Architecture” (2000). In this she understands the formal and historical context of the poem as a material that contributes to its meaning – as both apart from and a part of poetic language. Reading functions similarly; it is not a neutral action, but contributes to the meaning of the text presented. In a moment when language and presentation of self alike are understood as multiple, and bound within wider, connected systems, performance becomes a means of making the “invisible architecture” of the poem visible, and activating it as a poetic material in itself.

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is the author of TwERK (Belladonna, 2013). Her interdisciplinary work has been featured at MoMA, the Walker Art Center and the 2015 Venice Biennale. A native of Harlem, LaTasha is the recipient of numerous awards; of them include New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

For more information click here http://artistsspace.org/programs/huxtable-diggs

Talks & Readings

Thursday, October 1, 7pm

Artists Space Books & Talks

55 Walker Street

Ariana Reines will open the evening with a reading of “Littoral Madness”, a section from Chris Kraus’ forthcoming critical biography of Kathy Acker, and will complete the evening with readings of her poetry.

In between two talks will be delivered by Melissa Gordon and Meredyth Sparks on the value of presence in art in relation to gender, history and genius.

Melissa Gordon will discuss her research into female artists who have “dropped out” of the art world, framing their actions within the wider context of feminist art’s expansion / rejection of authorship, and attempting to debunk the assumptions of failure surrounding the gesture of being absent. Touching on the fallible notion of ‘the original’ and the problematic gesture of “aggregating” as recently written about by David Joselit, Gordon will consider recent court cases around authorship in order to question where the boundaries of an artist persona / authorship are mapped in the contemporary playing field. She will discuss Cady Noland’s essay “Towards a Metalanguage of Evil”, published in the Documenta IX catalogue in 1992, as a key to understanding the “game” in which presence and absence operate.

Meredyth Sparks will address the structural problems that arise in attempting to integrate “recovered” or “overlooked” artists into an art historical canon, as well as the complexities surrounding authorship as it relates to gender. Sparks will focus on two artists, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Eileen Gray, both of whom made significant contributions to modern art, poetry and architecture, respectively, but who have only recently begun to be recognized within primary historical narratives.

The Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874 – 1927) was a German-born poet, sculptor and proto-performance artist whose influence on and shaping of Dada have been, until recently, marginalized and misunderstood. New research by the Baroness’s biographer, Irene Gammel, among others, uncovers evidence to suggest that Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), arguably the most significant artwork of the 20th century, was perhaps a work by the Baroness.

Eileen Gray (1878- 1976) was an Irish-born designer and architect whose house, E. 1027 (1926-29), had for many years been attributed to Le Corbusier. This misattribution stems, in large part, to an (in)famous act of “claiming” on Le Corbusier’s part, a physical and conceptual appropriation that has only recently begun to be reconsidered by historians.

With this discussion, Sparks hopes to examine how these artists’ contributions have, in the best case scenario, been misattributed or, in the worse case, intentionally claimed. Re-visiting these placards might open a new art historical or studio-based space for production where, instead of merely correcting or righting a dominant narrative, we might conceive of art and history as an accumulation (rather than a singular realization or articulation) of ideas and methods.

For more information click here artistsspace.org/programs/presence-and-absence

This public event was part of We (Not I), a four-day program of discursive meetings, presentations, and events bringing together a wide range of female artists, writers, curators and thinkers identifying with feminist practices to exchange and produce content addressing questions around the role of "we" in contemporary art practice, held at Artists Space between September 30 and October 3, 2015.

For more information click here artistsspace.org/programs/we-not-i

By request of the author, Ariana Reines' reading of Chris Kraus' chapter "Littoral Madness" has been removed from this recording.

Talk

Tuesday, September 22, 7pm

Artists Space Books & Talks

55 Walker Street

The International Art Exhibition in Solidarity with Palestine was inaugurated in Beirut, Lebanon, in March 1978, and was intended as the seed collection for a museum in exile. Inspired by the Museum of Resistance in Exile in Solidarity with Salvador Allende, the museum took the form of an itinerant exhibition that was meant to tour until it could "repatriate" to Palestine. Organized by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), comprising almost 200 works, donated by 200 artists from nearly 30 countries, the exhibition remains one of the most ambitious, in scale and scope, to have ever been showcased in the Arab world until this day. Tragically, during the Israeli army's siege of Beirut in 1982, sustained shelling destroyed the building where the works were stored as well as the exhibition's archival and documentary traces.

This historical "ghost" exhibition has been an area of sustained research for Beirut-based writers and curators Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti in recent years, culminating in the exhibition Past Disquiet: Narratives and Ghosts from the International Art Exhibition for Palestine, 1978, at the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) this year. This exhibition revisited the world of art and political engagement among the international anti-imperialist left during the 1970s, uncovering the extraordinary networks of individuals and practices behind it. Using recorded testimonies and private archives it retraced the complicated mesh of networks of affiliation and solidarity that linked militant artists across the world in the context of the Cold War. The exhibition also addressed similar museographic initiatives centered on the impassioned defense of causes, and emerging from shared soil, such as the struggle against the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and against apartheid in South Africa.

Khouri and Salti's presentation at Artists Space Books & Talks will focus on their research conducted towards the exhibition at MACBA, considering how their methodology responded to and intersected with the historical context of The International Art Exhibition in Solidarity with Palestine, and other such examples of political engagement rarely studied in prevailing contemporary historical narratives. Their talk parallels Past Disquiet's attempts to construct a speculative history of the PLO initiative and equivalent practices in the 1970s, and its address of the problematics of oral history, the trappings of memory, and of writing history in the absence of cogent archives.

This presentation is supported by the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, and is part of the AFAC Cultural Week in New York 2015 entitled Uncover, Discover, Recover - Narratives from a Region in Transformation, running September 20th till the 26th.

For more information click here artistsspace.org/programs/past-disquiet

Talk

Friday, October 2, 7pm

Artists Space Books & Talks

55 Walker Street

This discussion will consider the construction, performance and broadcast of gender archetypes over the last fifty years, and how these have been transformed, critiqued and subverted within visual art – specifically in the work of Dara Birnbaum and Joan Jonas. Both were part of a generation of women artists who began working in the 60s and 70s, and were pioneers in their radical address of subjectivity, imagery, artistic processes and technology. Within the wider social and political context, their work contained a powerful message of transformation that was extremely prescient: firstly, in relationship to writing by theorists such as Judith Butler and Donna Haraway in the early 90s; and, more recently, the digital and virtual revolution’s effect on identity construction and performance.

For more information click here artistsspace.org/programs/how-to-be-a-woman

This public event was part of We (Not I), a four-day program of discursive meetings, presentations, and events bringing together a wide range of female artists, writers, curators and thinkers identifying with feminist practices to exchange and produce content addressing questions around the role of "we" in contemporary art practice, held at Artists Space between September 30 and October 3, 2015.

For more information click here http://artistsspace.org/programs/we-not-i

Talk

Friday, October 2, 7pm

Artists Space Books & Talks

55 Walker Street

This discussion will consider the construction, performance and broadcast of gender archetypes over the last fifty years, and how these have been transformed, critiqued and subverted within visual art – specifically in the work of Dara Birnbaum and Joan Jonas. Both were part of a generation of women artists who began working in the 60s and 70s, and were pioneers in their radical address of subjectivity, imagery, artistic processes and technology. Within the wider social and political context, their work contained a powerful message of transformation that was extremely prescient: firstly, in relationship to writing by theorists such as Judith Butler and Donna Haraway in the early 90s; and, more recently, the digital and virtual revolution’s effect on identity construction and performance.

For more information click here artistsspace.org/programs/how-to-be-a-woman

This public event was part of We (Not I), a four-day program of discursive meetings, presentations, and events bringing together a wide range of female artists, writers, curators and thinkers identifying with feminist practices to exchange and produce content addressing questions around the role of "we" in contemporary art practice, held at Artists Space between September 30 and October 3, 2015.

For more information click here http://artistsspace.org/programs/we-not-i

Double Bind

with Rhea Anastas, Daniel Bozhkov, K8 Hardy, Leigh Ledare, and John Miller

Book Launch & Talk

Sunday, September 13, 4pm

Co-presented with A.R.T. Press http://www.artresourcestransfer.org/#art/about

For more information click here http://artistsspace.org/programs/double-bind

Finding Words

Angie Keefer & Lynne Tillman

A talk, a reading and a conversation in assorted voices

Wednesday, September 30, 2015, doors 6.30pm, starts 7pm sharp

Artists Space Books & Talks

55 Walker Street

For more information click here http://artistsspace.org/programs/finding-words

This public event was part of We (Not I), a four-day program of discursive meetings, presentations, and events bringing together a wide range of female artists, writers, curators and thinkers identifying with feminist practices to exchange and produce content addressing questions around the role of "we" in contemporary art practice, held at Artists Space between September 30 and October 3, 2015.

For more information click here artistsspace.org/programs/we-not-i