6 Strategies

Because this exhibit is intended to focus on process, blur lines between artworks, and reduce the primacy of the individual artist in favor of a loose integrated net of creativity that blankets the entire gallery - even the act of writing a statement about the individual work could be seen to detract from the exhibit's mission.

What follows is therefore, not a concise statement but rather a long rambling description of participation.


In the spring of this year I was invited by Jose Ruiz, curator of Bronx River Art Centre (BRAC) and Heng-Gil Han, curator for the Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL), to submit responses to a set of questions.

They were asking a variety of artists to respond to the idea of an exhibit where artists would make work in a gallery setting and then have it subsequently altered by others. Among the questions asked were: "What contribution can you make to this unconventional exhibition?", "Can you allow other artists to revise your installation?", and "Who would be other artists that you would like to invite to the exhibition for the revision and collective art-making?"

The resulting exhibit: "Metro Poles, Art in Action", is a curatorial collaboration with Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL), the Bronx River Art Centre (BRAC), the Asian American Arts Center (AAAC), and the Maiden Lane Exhibition Space.

Among the things I wrote back in my initial response were the following:

"I will photograph in or near the display space - i.e. nearby buildings, back yards, whatever. The available views will function as a filter or organizing principle. This will become the target of research."

"I will then go out on the street and find anecdotal information from passersby (as well as from people employed by the art institution) regarding who lives there, what business is conducted, what events have been witnessed etc."

"In a third step I will do further historical research about the visually identified locations on-line. I will then make a collage from the various information materials, printed with ink jet, in a variety of sizes and textures of paper and post the information on the galley walls, like fliers or even gorilla-style like paper street art."

"All this material, both the physical printing on paper and the conceptual structure surrounding it would then be available as raw materials to use by subsequent artists in any way they see fit. I would simply hope they might function as a launching off point of interest in the creative process going forward."

I also invited artists Chang-Jin Lee, Marcy Brafman, and Åsa Elzén to be "team members" for our group, one of seven groups to work in the space.

For my part I ultimately adopted 6 strategies, relating to my initial proposal that were designed to explore the Bronx, West Farms, (the neighborhood where BRAC is located), and the area's relationship to the gallery and the mission of the exhibit.

Strategy 6 - Blog and website

Strategy 6: Blog and website.

I created this blog to document my own progress so that other artists in our team could see what was happening, and am also posting materials to a section of a site. In a way though, this can also be seen as another strategy to "network out" the artwork, and a kind of final addition to the work, on my part.

Strategy Five - Interacting

Strategy Five: Incorporation with other works.

I placed an old laptop within an arrangement of refuse, which another artist had put together. The computer displays the text from the "poems" I had created from the earlier documentary material, and so creates another avenue of historical communication, and also relates to the work it is situated in by referring to the problem of e-waist.

I Added text comments to artist Marcy Brafman's work, in the areas where the public is invited to participate.

I plan to fill in several blanks in mad libs left on the walls by another artist.

I created a stick figure comic from one of the many works on paper strewn throughout the gallery, referring to both that work and other art in the gallery, using text from a visitor as inspiration, and which questions what constitutes art.

You can just see the old laptop peeking out on the left...

Changes from Week 2

This is Marcy Brafman on her first day working in the second room.

The front room actually ended up so full that I decided to post the mapping and comic stuff in this room with Marcy's work instead of in the front room. The jpeg image stuff and the texts as well as a few stray bits of comics stayed in the first room.

Here's the front room. It became even more complex over the ensuing weeks...

Strategy Four - Mapping

Strategy Four: Mapping and modeling the neighborhood

Using a data projector I traced a street map of the entire neighborhood of west Farms onto a big 8' x 10' piece of paper and then cut the map roughly out of the center of it and pinned it to the gallery wall. I then recorded impressions about the neighborhood and where I met the people who became part of the comic.

Using a ground plan of the BRAC gallery I made a quick 3D computer model of the space and recorded where the first elements of the project were placed in the space.

I photographed part of an MTA subway map with my phone, showing West Farms, then emailed it to BRAC while on route to the gallery. Once there, I had them print the email with the map and posted it with the other mapping elements. This related to the personal nature of the work and to the idea of the documentarist or participant-observer including information about themselves within the surroundings being documented.

In the same vein, I downloaded an app to my mobile phone allowing me to track my GPS location and record in real time to a version of Google Maps. I posted a printout of one particular tracking event documenting my crossing of the entire length of West Farms, when the MTA train I was taking to the gallery went express and passed my intended stop. I thought, "This must happen all the time, when you live in West Farms."

Strategy Three - Comics

Strategy Three: Non-linear story telling, through the use of Comics

I have little connection to the world of comics, and never read them as a kid. I came at the format from video art, looking for a way to accomplish similar results, but in a form that allows the viewer more leeway in the amount of time they devote to the process. Still images allow more immediate intake.

The text for the comics comes not from the net research, (as is the case with many of my past projects) but from things that people actually said to me. This is combined with photos that are digitally reworked to become a sort of cartoon or comic book, printed in non archival inks on 13"x19" mat ink jet paper and pinned to the gallery wall. Various walks as well as interviews with gallery staff and local patrons provided the materials. Some responses also came from emailed questions to specific participants.

People from the neighborhood

These are pics of some of the people I met and interviewed in the neighborhood.

I decided to go ahead with the comics, but focus on people and what they say, rather than on architecture as I first imagined. I'm looking for material on economics, ethnicity, and cultural change, and also how the relationship of the Bronx River Art Center, to people here in West Farms.