Kristy Kang

Nameless Science
Curated by Henk Slager

December 10, 2008 - January 31, 2009
@ apexart
291 Churchstreet, New York, NY

Opening reception:
Wednesday, December 10, 6-8 pm

With projects by Ricardo Basbaum (Brazil), Jan Kaila (Finland), Irene Kopelman (The Netherlands), Matts Leiderstam (Sweden), Ronan McCrea (Ireland), Sarah Pierce (UK/USA), and Morten Torgersrud (Norway).

Related Symposium: December 12
@The Cooper Union
(Wollman Auditorium),
51 Astor Place, New York, NY

The debate on artistic research emerging worldwide in the field of visual art for some five years now tends to focus on what artistic research could be or should be. As a consequence of that debate, artistic research as a yet undefined sanctuary for creative experiment and knowledge production is prone to the danger of being absorbed by an intellectually crippling academic discourse on how the specificity of research-based art as a novel modus operandi could be defined and framed. That tendency is comparable to what happened in the 1990s with the initially so radically formulated anti-disciplinary cultural studies. Such academic debate that ultimately seems to be focused particularly on institutional and managerial results–and is, moreover, connected in Europe time and again with the so-called Bologna rules, i.e. the introduction of a bachelor, master, and PhD structure in art education–provides very little insight in the specific qualities of the artistic research process as such. Therefore, it is more than urgent to approach research practices from the perspective of the artistic profession implying entirely different and also more intrinsic views.

In that context, the project Nameless Science aims at expanding the artistic research debate while showing the concrete outcome of seven best artistic research practices in PhD projects. These actual projects will demonstrate that the form of research taking place through the practice of visual art is, in fact, much more dynamic than is common within the traditional academic bastions still characterized by distinct and clear fields and disciplines. (read more)

"RMB City" is a project in Second Life created by the 30 year old Beijing artist Cao Fei in March of 2008. Exploring the boundaries between virtual and physical worlds "RMB City" is a wry exploration of the correllation between the boom in Beijing's global real estate market and the parallel international growth of the Chinese contemporary art market. When exhibited in a gallery, the show is set up to look like a real-world real estate office for this virtual city. According to a review in the NYTimes this Second Life version of Beijing ''resembles the retro-futuristic metropolis of the Jetsons crossed with a modern-day Beijing. A smokestack belches flames, a statue of Chairman Mao salutes visitors, and a giant panda balloon floats overhead."

URL: http://rmbcity.com/

Documentation of "RMB City": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MhfATPZA0g

About Cao Fei: www.caofei.com

T-RACES: Testbed for the Redlining of Archives of California Exclusionary Spaces

The University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), in collaboration with the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at UNC Chapel Hill, will preserve, analyze, and make publicly accessible online documents relating to the practice of redlining neighborhoods in the 1930s and 1940s in eight California cities (redlining refers to the practice of flagging minority neighborhoods as undesirable for home loans.)

Redlining is a practice that started in the 1930s when the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) asked Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) to create "residential security maps" to indicate the level of security for real-estate investments in different cities. These maps used color coding to indicate which areas were more or less desirable based on the demographics of that area. Neighborhoods that were "A" grade and considered most desirable had a Caucasian population. Those areas that were red were considered the least desirable for development because they had "subversive racial elements" (non-whites).

The T-RACES project is an online archive using GoogleMap and GoogleEarth to organize its informational interface around the notion of the neighborhood. It makes visible the relationship between data and segregation by making visible the racial lines drawn on our geographic space and opens up possibilities for collaborative scholarly work in digital humanities.

This project will go live in a couple of weeks and be available through Vectors Online Journal.

http://salt.diceresearch.org/T-RACES/demo/#

http://www.vectorsjournal.org/

Shilpa Phadke, Shilpa Ranade & Sameera Khan (India)
Collaborating with: University Scholars Programme Cyberart Studio

This was an interesting interactive piece featured at ISEA 2008 in Singapore. It explores questions of female subjectivity and public space in Mumbai.

Like Singapore, Mumbai is reputed to be one of the safest cities in the world for women, and yet through extensive research the artists have observed that this does not translate to an equal claim to public space. The act of loitering, 'hanging around' on the streets, for example, is still very much seen as an occupation exclusively for men. Women who appear to ‘purposelessly’ inhabit public space are looked upon with deep suspicion. Loitering is certainly not the act of a respectable woman. This artwork aims to question some of the underlying assumptions about public space and gender in both Singapore and Mumbai. The installation ironically gestures to the impossibility of loitering for women. It will be complemented by time-lapse video footage that explores the gendered inhabitation of public spaces in the two cities. Through the idea of loitering, the artwork asks questions about pleasure, risk, and citizenship.

Shilpa Phadke, Shilpa Ranade and Sameera Khan (India) have collaborated on a research project about women in public space, under the aegis of PUKAR, an inter-disciplinary urban research group based in Mumbai, India.

www.genderandspace.org

You are invited to a presentation by:

Filmmaker MASAAKI TANABE and his Producer NORICO T. WADA

HIROSHIMA GROUND ZERO & HIROSHIMA - WHERE DID MY HOME GO?
Two documentary films featuring a 3-D graphics re-creation of the city
before it was destroyed by the Atomic Bomb. Both films are part of
Tanabe's HIROSHIMA RECONSTRUCTION PROJECT

WHEN: MONDAY, SEPT. 15TH, for 4 to 6:30 pm
WHERE: RON HOWARD SCREENING ROOM in the Robert Zemeckis Center

Presentation will be followed by a discussion of:

• A Proposed collaboration with the USC School of Cinematic Arts on an interactive version of the project.
• A panel on the Hiroshima Reconstruction Project at the forthcoming SCMS Annual Conference in Tokyo in May 2009.
• A documentary-in-progress on Mr. Tanabe produced by Paul Shepherd.