DOLORES FROM 10h - 22h
Friday April 5, 2002 11am - 11pm Santa Monica Museum of Art Project Room
Once upon a time in a not so faraway free trade zone at the northern edge of Mexico, a woman who cobbled machines together for a living was accused of trouble making at her job. Her boss locked her up in an office without food or water or a phone. He tried over and over to cajole her into signing a letter of resignation. He watched her to see if she would break down. She held out for twelve hours, and later she sued the company. Her boss told the judge that she was crazy and that it never happened. No one would claim to have seen her. Dolores from 10h to 22h is based on a story that no one saw.
AIM III, in collaboration with the Santa Monica Museum of Art, presents a video installation of Dolores from 10h to 22h by interdisciplinary artist, curator and author Coco Fusco and artist and theorist Ricardo Dominguez. . Dolores from 10h to 22h is curated by Christiane Robbins: AIM Executive Producer, and Ciara Ennis: SMMoA Associate Curator.
This twelve-hour durational performance of 'simulated evidence' took place at Kiasma, Helsinki's Museum of Contemporary Art, on November 22, 2001. It was transmitted live via security cameras directly onto the internet, where it was hosted around the world by AIM; X-Teresa Arte Alternativo, Mexico City; the Institute for International Visual Art, London; Galerija Kapelica, Ljubljana; Artspace, Sydney and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal.
THE ARTWORLD, COMMUNITY AND ACTIVISM:
A MEDITATION INSPIRED BY THE EVENTS OF SEPTEMBER 11TH
Tuesday April 16, 5:30- 7:00 pm
Taper Hall, room 215, USC University Park Campus
A lecture by Robert Atkins, noted art critic and author, online producer and activist.
Modern art emerged two centuries ago from social crisis and this activist impulse lives on in recent public art by artists and organizations such as Joseph Beuys, Group Material, Gran Fury and Visual AIDS. In an age of sensationalistic mass media and the theme-parking of museums, can the art world promote the emergence of independent and critical voices? Is there a tradition of community-based and political art in the U.S.? Is the internet the last, best hope for artists pursuing social change? As with the numbing, post-Sept. 11th rhetoric about "patriotism," "sacrifice," and "change," are the appropriate issues even being addressed? In his illustrated lecture, Mr. Atkins will raise such questions -- and even provide a few answers.
Robert Atkins, a New York-based art historian, is the initiator of 911-THE SEPTEMBER 11 PROJECT: Cultural Intervention in Civic Society and a founder of Visual AIDS, the group that originated Day Without Art and the Red Ribbon. He has taught at various universities and art schools; most recently at the Rhode Island School of Design. The author of books including ArtSpeak: A Guide to Contemporary
Ideas, Movements and Buzzwords and a former columnist for the Village Voice, he has received awards for art criticism from the NEA, Manufacturers Hanover Bank, and the Penny McCall Foundation. A research fellow at Carnegie Mellon's Studio for Creative Inquiry, he is media arts editor of The Media Channel and editor in chief of Artery: The AIDS-Arts Forum. He is currently working on an anthology of his work called Eye/I Witness: Art Writing as Activism, Criticism and Reportage.
Presented by the USC School of Fine Arts, the USC Department of Art History, and the USC Matrix Program for Digital Media and the Arts
HOW DO WE KNOW THE SKY ISN'T REALLY GREEN AND WE'RE JUST COLORBLIND?
Project Room at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, April 19June 9 2002
Bergamot Station 2525 Michigan Avenue, Building G1 Santa Monica 90404
The work of internationally acclaimed film & video director Johan Grimonprez presented in an exhibition organized by Ciara Ennis.
The title of the exhibition - How Do We Know the Sky Isn't Really Green and We're just Colorblind? sets the uncertain tone for Grimonprez's investigation into the history of sky-jacking and its interpretation, mythologizing, and manipulation by the media over the past thirty years. For the project, Grimonprez has created an environment reminiscent of an airport lounge complete with television monitors, coffee tables, INFLIGHT magazine, and extra wide seating. Also on view will be Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, (1997) Grimonperez' sensational and critically acclaimed study of sky-jacking.
AIM III CLOSING PARTY, presented by PROGRAM 12
Saturday April 20, 10pm-4am
1275 East 6th street (off Alameda) Los Angeles
Entrance: $25
Further details + Directions : Program12.com /// 323.960.5511
COMFORT CONTROL
Raid Projects Gallery, the Brewery, April 6 - April 27, 2002
602 Moulton Street Los Angeles, CA 90031
Hours: Thursday, Friday + Saturday 12-5pm Sunday 12-3pm.
Bound to a chair by wrist restraints and placed in a recliner facing a large-screen TV, you are pulled into an intense game of objectives, penalties, and rewards. Only the right emotional expressions will set you free.
Comfort Control is created by engineer and computer scientist Douglas Fidaleo and visual artists Brian Cooper and Tomo Isoyama, with Ann Page as coordinator and advisor. Part video game and part amusement park ride, Comfort Control invites participants to enter a den-like domestic interior, sit in a lay-z-boy recliner, and watch TV. Once seated, the sense of comfortable familiarity is disrupted as armchair restraints immobilize the viewer and the television begins to issue its demands.
The participant's responses are monitored by a digital video camera, and their facial expressions are detected and measured using custom-designed software. Only if the software detects the correct emotional responses, offered in the correct order, will the bound participant win the prize of freedom.
Comfort Control addresses the ways in which private arenas are rapidly becoming public spaces through the application of surveillance and facial analysis technologies. While simultaneously, personal 'interior' spaces increasingly become arenas for pre-scripted behaviors and emotional expressions that are 'officially sanctioned' by convention, collaboration or coercion. It is about those moments of individual hypocrisy that take place as a by-product of survival within a society of conventions that are intensified by tools of surveillance.
The exhibition is curated by Janet Owen, AIM Executive Director and Raid Projects Guest Curator, with Janice Ledgerwood, Raid Projects Board of Directors.
Comfort Control is presented by AIM, the University of Southern California School of Fine Arts annual international festival of time-based media, and co-sponsored by the University of Southern California Integrated Media Systems Center and Raid Projects.
METAPET: Presentation of the premiere of 'METAPET', in collaboration with MOCA and the Pacific Design Centre:
AIM presents the Metapet BETA launch: May 15 2002, 7:30pm, Pacific Design Centre, Los Angeles.
Metapet, an on-line virtual pet game presented by Creative Time in association with Action Tank is created by Natlie Bookchin with Jin Lee plus Cathy Davies and Mark Allen. With Metapet, Action Tank explores the complex social and political issues surrounding genetic engineering and corporate behavior. Metapet is a part of DNAid, Creative Time's ongoing series of commissions addressing themes and issues related to genetics, and was produced in association with Hamaca
