Blog - The Project Room

Episode 21 - Displacement: Visual Artist Veit Stratmann

The Project Room

 Paris-based artist Veit Stratmann, who presented the work title L'Aquila at The Project Room in 2012, has made a practice of researching and writing about places of massive upheaval and its impact on the people who have lived there. After the recent terrorist attacks in Paris which took place near his home, we had a conversation about the connections between this event and his work, and what motivates him to be an artist, especially during difficult times.

Notes from the artist: The picture below were taken in early December 2015 during a visit to Addis-Ababa. I was invited there as an echo to the L'Aquila project as there are parallels in the progressive dissolution of the city, namely  the clearing  out a 700 acre wide neighborhood along the Bantyketu River in the absolute center of the city. This historical and socially crucial neighborhood was evacuated, bulldozed and then fenced in. Nothing happened since. Former inhabitants described the neighborhood to me as a place of high social coherence, mutual support and solidarity. But I heard that it had a high crime rate as well. This crime rate was often given as the reason for the destruction of the neighborhood. But most of the former inhabitants firmly believe the that the real reason was that the authorities considered their neighborhood as too ugly to be looked at from the national Palace, situated in the immediate vicinity. 

After the destruction of the neighborhood and its fencing off, the inhabitants who could afford it were relocated in condominiums outside the city limits. Those who couldn't pay simply became homeless, living in the streets. Naturally, in the process, the social coherence and the dense network of solidarity of the former neighborhood disappeared. 

About Veit:

Born in Bochum (Germany), Veit Stratmann lives in Paris. From 1981 to 1986 Stratmann studied fine arts at the Ecole Supérieur des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg, France and the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenen Künste in Düsseldorf, Germany as well as History and Political Sciences at the Albert Ludwigs Universität in Freiburg, Germany. Veit has exhibited widely and internationally. At the Museum Folkwang in  Essen, Fondation Serralves in Porto, Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val de Marne MAC/VAL,  Vitry sur Seine (France) , Sox in Berlin, Le Centre d’Art et de Diffusion Clark in Montréal, CAPC-Musée à Bordeaux, The Project Art Centre in Dublin, The Taedok Science Town in Taejon (South Korea), LiveInYourHead-Institut Curatorial de la Haute Ecole d’Art et de Design, Geneve, L’Institut d’Art Comtemprain in Villeurbanne, The Anderson Gallery at the Virginia Commenwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, The Nevada State Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada, La Fondation Miro in Barcelone, Le Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, le Saarlandmuseum à Saarbrücken and Galerie Chez Valentin in Paris and more recently at the Suyama Space in Seattle. Stratmann has given multiple lectures and participated in various symposiums in Europe, North and South America and Africa. The “imposible tasks” surfaced in the media of many countries, as proposals in the form of lectures, press articles  and web sites. The developpement of the newest of those projects just started in Addis Abeba.

Learning Outside The Classroom: Electronic Artist Michna

Episode 20 - Learning Outside The Classroom: Electronic Artist Michna

The Project Room

Adrian Michna learned the trombone as a child, which led to experiments with electronic sounds (for example, gently squeezing a friend's cat to generate a squeak) and now to an established career as a DJ and electronic musician. Here, he shares his perspective on what makes a good song, how college transformed his musical style, and advice for young musicians. Have a listen!

Michna live at work during a 2013 tour in which he built a portable music set-up that fit into two custom suitcases. Using two tiny projectors shooting into mirrors and reflecting onto the weather balloons, he placed a strobe underneath his DJ table that was triggered with his foot, while projecting footage of each city that he had shot earlier that day onto the balloons. 

The New Art Marketplace: Digital Artist Kevin McCoy

The New Art Marketplace: Digital Artist Kevin McCoy

The Project Room

Artist and Monegraph Founder and CEO Kevin McCoy

In 2011, New York-based digital artists Kevin and Jennifer McCoy created Northwest Passing for TPR; but instead of presenting what one might expect, they offered visitors to the space a live improvisational theater experiment featuring professional actors giving fake lectures about traditional artworks by Northwest Masters. The experience revealed all kinds of questions about the assumptions we make about works we think we know and should always revere.

In this interview, we visit with Kevin McCoy during the launch of his first company, an online platform for the buying and selling of digital artwork. Monegraph, as this company is called, could change everything about how we value artwork and how artists get paid for the work they make.

Watch video of Northwest Passing

A Symbol of Pride: Rainbow Flag Designer Gilbert Baker

Episode 18: A Symbol of Pride - Rainbow Flag Designer Gilbert Baker

The Project Room

In 1978, Gilbert Baker, a drag queen and community activist in San Francisco, responded to his friend Harvey Milk's assertion that the gay rights movement needed a new symbol. The pink triangle had been in use but was  connected to the atrocities of the Holocaust, and the movement needed something uplifting to replace it. Using his creativity, his sewing skills, many many volunteers and even more fabric dye, Baker designed and produced the Rainbow Flag- or Gay Pride Flag- that we know today.

Baker with the Rainbow Flag at the Museum of Modern Art, 2015

The Original 8-color Rainbow Flag, San Francisco United Nations Plaza, June 25, 1978. Photo: James McNamara. Courtesy of the artist. Baker is third from the left "in satin pajamas with my long hair." 

In this interview, he chats with TPR Founder Jess Van Nostrand about the flag's first showing in 1978 and many of the interesting things that have happened since.  

Was Here: Visual Artist Ellie Dicola

Episode 17: Artist Ellie Dicola

The Project Room

This month's podcast is a conversation with Seattle-based artist Ellie Dicola. As part of Seattle Storefronts, a program that places artist projects in vacant storefront spaces, Ellie created the installation Was Here. As a corporeal monument to places that are gone, Was Here is a documentation of local businesses and organizations that have disappeared over the last handful of years. Ellie refers to her project as a map of experiences, and in our discussion of evolution and change, we explore what it means to give voice to memory and to create a place to collectively mourn the intangible. Thanks for listening!

Ellie Dicola has lived and worked in Seattle since graduating with an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005. Her background in sculpture has developed into a creative practice focused in video, performativity, experimental poetics and net-based platforms. She employs devices, often highly autobiographic, that speak to the overtly female. Working from the forces of love, hate, desire, death, madness and belief, a process of self-identification is at the core of her work. She approaches embodiment as a site--inevitably gendered and politicized--where agency and refusal posit further questions.  Ellie has an interest in alternative exhibition formats, having most recently presented a guerrilla project on pornhub.com through the avatar HipsLipsTitsPower. Her work has been shown at On The Ground Floor (Los Angeles), Present Company (Brooklyn), Seattle University's Hedreen Gallery, the Henry Art Gallery Test Site (Seattle), and on the Amazon campus through Shunpike's Storefronts Program.

Episode 16: Building the Impossible City: Non-Profit Arts Collective Sawhorse Revolution

Episode 16: Building the Impossible City: Non-Profit Arts Collective Sawhorse

The Project Room

For this month's podcast, TPR Editor Tessa Hulls sat down with Sarah Smith and Micah Stanovsky of Sawhorse Revolution, a Seattle nonprofit that teaches carpentry skills to high school youth. With an emphasis on projects that serve their local communities, Sawhorse has constructed everything from tree houses to garden beds. Recently, they've been garnering national attention for their project The Impossible City, a partnership with the Nickelsville homeless community in Seattle, in which students are building micro-homes for homeless residents.

Sawhorse's mission tackles the idea of our current topic, Monument, in its most literal sense, but it also explores the ways in which students create their own legacy of empowerment and engagement by learning the value of concrete skills. In addition to their educational programs, Sawhorse Revolution produces a literary journal, FRAME. In conjunction with the release of this podcast, we published This Is Your Arm, an essay about intention, focus, and drywall screws that was first featured in FRAME. Be sure to head over to Off Paper to give it a read, and thanks for tuning in.

Photo: Alec Gardner

Photo: Sam Hunt

Photo: Nate Watters

Photo: Sam Hunt

Talking with Underscore: Sound Artist Daniel Neumann

Episode 15: Talking with Underscore: Sound Artist Daniel Neumann

The Project Room

The Project Room is pleased to present the work of sound artist Daniel Neumann, who joined us for an interview in his Brooklyn studio and generously created a new piece in response to that conversation. Have a listen to this conversation as it plays alongside its "underscore"- and enjoy! 

Getting Good: Interdisciplinary Artist Tameka Norris

Episode 14 - Getting Good: Interdisciplinary Artists Tameka Norris

The Project Room

Tameka Norris.  Still from her newest video, Recovery.

Interdisciplinary Artist Tameka Norris visited Seattle from New Orleans to talk with TPR Director Tia Kramer about the challenging experiences she faced while making her recent film, Meka Jean: How She Got Good, for Prospect 3 New Orleans.  Diving into issues of intellectual property, authorship, appropriation, and her relationship to art history, Tameka reveals the vulnerabilities encountered while creating her legacy in our digital era.  Thanks for listening!

This TPR podcast is sponsored by:  The Neddy Artist Award

Tameka Norris (b. 1979, Guam) received her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Los Angeles before graduating with an MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2012. Through her work in performance, video, photography, and installation, Norris has always sought to originate and control the distribution of her own images, delving into themes of authorship and subjecthood. She has participated in the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2009), the Fountainhead Residency (2012), and the Hermitage Artist Retreat (2012). Her group exhibitions include Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art recently at the Walker Art Center and Gifted and Talented, Third Streaming Gallery, New York (2012). Norris debuted her feature length film/installation Meka Jean: How She Got Good at Prospect 3 in New Orleans (2014). Publications include articles in Art News, ArtForum, Art in America, and The New York Times. Norris lives and works in New Orleans, LA and Berlin, Germany

http://www.tamekanorrisart.com

Tameka Norris. Venus of Rags, 2011

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Meka Jean represented on social media.  #gettinggood  #stressmanagement #strong #progress

Tia Kramer & Tameka Norris at The Project Room.

From Masquerades to Motherhood: Artist Natasha Marin

From Masquerades to Motherhood: Artist Natasha Marin

The Project Room

Natasha Marin is a Seattle based poet and interdisciplinary artist whose immersive and interactive performances, writing, and experience as the co-founder of SPoCS (Seattle People of Color Salon) explore themes of legacy, connection, community, and play.  This month Natasha and TPR Director Tia Kramer enjoy a lively evening discussion at The Project Room touching on how Trinidadian masquerades, Canadian friendliness, and motherhood all influence her work.  

Thanks Natasha! 

Natasha Marin's superpowers include Being Black, A Woman Artist, Writer, & Mother of Two. Her written work has been translated into several languages and has been showcased in exhibitions, performances and events around the world. Her debut collection, MILK, explores what it means to be nurtured in the Digital Age. Natasha has been published in periodicals like the Feminist Studies Journal, African American Review, and the Caribbean Writer and has received grants from the City of Austin, Artist Trust, the CD Forum, and the City of Seattle for her community projects involving text-based, visual, performance, and multimedia art. She is more popular on the internet than she is in "real life" and co-founded the Seattle People of Color Salon or "SPoCS"—live long and prosper. 

Learn more about Natasha Marin on her website: natasha-marin.com

Monuments, Durian, & Portable Toilets: Artist Jenifer Wofford  

Monuments, Durian, & Portable Toilets: Artist Jenifer Wofford

The Project Room

This month, Project Room Editor Tessa Hulls sat down with visual artist and educator Jenifer Wofford in her San Francisco home. Their sprawling conversation traced the themes of monument and memory and their presence in Jenifer's diverse body of work. Join us as they discuss durians, portable toilets, and growing up as a mixed-race American.

Jenifer K Wofford is a San Francisco-based artist and educator whose work plays with notions of hybridity, authenticity and global culture, often with a humorous bent. She is also 1/3 of the Filipina-American artist trio Mail Order Brides/M.O.B. Her work has been exhibited in the Bay Area at the Berkeley Art Museum, Oakland Museum of California, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, and Kearny Street Workshop. Further afield, she has shown at New Image Art (Los Angeles), Wing Luke Museum (Seattle), DePaul Museum (Chicago), Manila Contemporary (Philippines), VWFA (Malaysia), and Osage Gallery (Hong Kong). Wofford’s awards include the Eureka Fellowship, the Murphy Fellowship, and grants from the Art Matters Foundation, the Center for Cultural Innovation, UCIRA, and the Pacific Rim Research Program. She has also been artist-in-residence at The Living Room, Philippines, Liguria Study Center, Italy and KinoKino, Norway.

Learn more about Jeniffer Wofford on her website: www.wofflehouse.com

Works by Jenifer Wofford.