Understanding the work - Thoughts on one day with three art events.
“Go to everything, see everything, talk to everyone.”
- Excerpt from a slide my art history professor briefly had on the screen.
A few days back (02/23/2020) I spent my day going around to a handful of art events around Boston. A lot took place, I thought I’d take a minute (or many more) to jot down a few thoughts I had on the events before they’re lost to time.
Valkyrie Mumbet by Joana Vasconcelos and the group show Game Changers at the recently opened MAAM Museum.
In Conversation: Investigating the Material, a discussion by the curator and two of the artists exhibiting in the Emerson Contemporary’s Media Arts Gallery as part of the on exhibit show Spacetime (x, y, z + t).
The Thotbot Implantation Center, a interactive performance art piece by Boston artist Rebecca Kopycinski, aka Reagan Esther Myer.
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Valkyrie Mumbet and Game Changers at MAAM.
The MAAM is MassArt’s ̶n̶e̶w̶e̶s̶t̶ most recent iteration of their museum facilities, and was recently re-opened to the public after extensive renovation. In fact, it was so recently finished that I had no idea it existed until people I pay attention to started posting about being excited to go to the grand opening, in three days.
Oh.
So at that point tickets to the opening (02/22) were sold out. Ah well. I did the next best thing and went the day after. On display were 3 exhibits. -
Valkyrie Mumbet by Joana Vasconcelos - Valkyrie Mumbet consists of an enormous inflatable sculpture covered in a layered and embroidered textiles skin. It’s displayed in the main exhibition area.
Game Changers - A group show featuring artists “working at the confluence(1) of contemporary art and video games”. This show was in the ground floor gallery.
Yesterday is Here by collective Ghost of a Dream - The photos online look great, but I can safely say I didn’t even register it as an art piece when I went through. I think it was in the museum entrance.
I started off my experience of the museum by happily learning that admission was free and then promptly getting confused by the self-check locker system. I managed to completely botch(2) the select-your-pin process and unwittingly left my locker unlocked. However, during that interaction I did unwittingly capture my only photo of Yesterday is Here while taking a photo of my locker to help myself remember later.
Does that lock make any sense to you?
From there I proceeded to the main floor gallery, where Game Changers was on display. This show consists of work by Cao Fei, Paloma Dawkins, Tracy Fullerton, Dan Hernandez, Nyamakop, Juan Obando, Momo Pixel, Skawennati, Brent Watanabe, and curated by Darci Hanna.
Immediately upon entering the gallery you confront(3) the piece Momo Pixels Momoland, which sits directly inside the gallery doors. Its a colorful installation that consists of an assemblage of sculptures and flat works revolving around a fictional universe imagined by the artist. While interesting, I was distracted by the craft on some of the Perler Bead portraits, some of which appeared to be damaged. That said, I was struck by the similarities to Trenton Doyle Hancock’s epic installation MIND OF THE MOUND: CRITICAL MASS, which I’d recently seen at MASS MOCA. Both rely on an assemblage of stylized characters and environments and draw heavily from pop iconography to craft an alternate reality. I’ll chalk it up to my personal preference, but the cotton candy aesthetics and use of video game iconography lead me to not dwell too long on Momoland.
However, the pieces that struck me the most in this exhibit were the video pieces by Bret Wantanable and the collages by Dan Hernandez. Wantanabe’s San Andreas Deer Cam (2016) follows a deer NPC in the game Grand Theft Auto V, which he modified to show a third person view of the deer as it runs aimlessly across the the game’s environment. Created as a background element, the deer’s AI leads it to run across the hills of the totally-not-LA landscape and occasionally interact with other NPC dynamic elements of the game, such as cars or predators. While these actions may seem normal when viewed through the player characters in game avatar, once the perspective is shifted to the deer the illusion is completely broken(4). The deer behaves nonsensically, colliding with scenery and de-spawning without explanation. I’ve played GTA-5 a fair amount, and never put a single thought into the Sisyphean lives lead by the NPCs in the game. It’s really so surreal and jarring to watch Bambi spend a few moments trying to walk though a wall only to turn around suddenly and bolt in a random direction to then completely disappear.
Hernandez’s collages blend the visual structures and sprites present in video games with classical religious iconography. His work blends the signifiers of the two archetypes, into an indistinguishable amalgam. Space invaders aliens become angels in the heavens. The ultra flat pre-renaissance style of compositions take on the look of 2D side scroller games.
The exhibit held true to to it’s mission of presenting artists working at the confluence of art and video games.
Once I’d had my fill of Game Changers, I headed upstairs to the main gallery. Before I’d even finished out climbing the staircase, I was greeted by part of Valkyrie Mumbet in the form of a large tentacle hanging over the staircase landing. Upon rounding the corner, the full scale of the installation and the gallery that contains it came into view.
This was a panorama from the balcony, and even then it couldn’t capture the full scale of this piece.
This thing is massive. If I had to guess(5) , I’d place it at 40’ wide, 60’ long, and about 40’ tall. The sculpture fills the whole of the space. And what a space it is, with the large main gallery floor area and the balcony that provides another vantage point for to the floor. The windows that constitute much of the outward facing wall provide an abundance of natural light.
Joana Vasconcelos’ piece is a large inflatable covered with a quilt-like fabric skin. There are about ten appendages that hang off the piece, each at different angles and with a different skin. The underside of the piece consists of a hanging curtain of thread hanging down. Besides the four appendages falling directly the main body, the entirety is hung above the height of any viewers on the main floor. Combined with the structures form being composed of an actual balloon, the whole of the piece feels like a sort of craft-work cloud, ethereal and light despite its size.
Valkyrie Mumbet is the latest(6) from a series of Valkyries by Vasconcelos, each consisting of a site-specific free-form fiber sculpture. The Valkyries of Norse mythology were fierce warrior goddesses who determined the fates of others. For this installation Vasconcelos created an homage to Massachusetts own Elizabeth ‘Mumbet’ Freeman(7). Mumbet was born a slave, and was so until she successfully petitioned for her freedom in 1781 under the recently adopted Massachusetts State Constitutions Bill of Rights, which in the first part, Article I, states “all men are born free and equal.” This set the precedent for later court cased that later abolished slavery in the state.
Full statement here, with more background…
All that said, the piece is impressive in the scope of its execution alone. MAAM opening with this piece in its main exhibit hall lays credence to their statement that they are absolutely a museum that can hold its own, and not just an institutional gallery. Valkyrie Mumbet is a great choice for the space, able to fill the volume of the gallery and display a serious set of artistic chops all the while.
However, it does nudge a thought that I’ve been mulling over for a while. It may just be what I’ve been seeing lately, but it seems like the large exhibits I’ve seen lately have been almost tailored to feed the feed. They’re made to fill out a social media presence. For instance, The ICA Boston, has recently made a large part of their curation interactive exhibits. The past William Forsythe Choreographic Objects show (10/31/18 – 2/21/19) and the current Yayoi Kusama LOVE IS CALLING (9/24/19 - 2/7/21) are built around direct public interaction and their limiting ticketed throughput, allowing for posed photos to be easily taken without crowds and shared easily. Of course both of these shows were showcasing accomplished artists in their own right, but they’re undoubtedly also Insta-fodder. Even the modern(8) institutions are getting in on it. the one of the MFA Boston’s more successful shows as of late was the Takashi Murakami Lineage of Eccentrics show (10/18/17 - 4/1/18). I think there’s a vast sea of reasons Lineage of Eccentrics was selected for the MFA’s lineup, but I’d bet money(9) that it’s ability to be photographed and shared via social platforms factored into that choice.
I am by no means saying that interactive works or those with vibrant colors and fun/pop aesthetics should be considered any lesser as art, but can foresee that those sorts of pieces could start to crowd out minimalist or pieces that rely heavily on concept to hold their own. Take for instance the Museum of Ice-Cream or Refinery 29’s 29 Rooms, which seem to be built out around their ability to act as backdrops for photos. That’s enough about that for now(10), The Verge’s Podcast Why’d You Push That Button? (S3 E7) focused on this topic quite a bit if you’re interested in thinking about it some more.
Is Valkyrie Mumbet in the Stephen D. Paine Gallery a large, vibrant sculpture with great natural light and a well positioned balcony for taking photos? Yes. Does it have it’s own hashtag? Yes. Does that devalue the piece at all? I don’t think so, but I am skeptical of anything that is made to appeal to Instagram. It was a great piece to have installed for the grand re-opening of the MAAM. Plenty of free press for sure.
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From left to right: Sarah Trahan, Zsuzsanna Szegedi, and Dr. Leonie Bradbury.
Spacetime (x,y,z+t) and Discussion at the Emerson Contemporary Media Arts Gallery
Finagling my bag back out of the aforementioned locker, I proceeded downtown to the the Emerson Media Arts Gallery for a discussion on the show Spacetime (x,y,z+t), featuring artists Zsuzsanna Szegedi and Sarah Trahan, and organized by Curator Dr. Leonie Bradbury. Spacetime focuses on contemporary artists incorporating time an an integral component to their pieces, and how that integration changes the other components of the work. I’d visited the show briefly prior to coming to the artists talk but hadn’t really engaged with the work. However, I’d had the pleasure of running into Zsuzsanna at our shared makerspace we work out of, and she’d mentioned this artist talk. Sounded right up my alley, so I planned on joining.
The talk itself was wide ranging and covered quite a few different topics. I’ve not been able to find a recording for a comprehensive record of what all was discussed, but I tracked the pieces that were interesting to me in my notes.
Zsuzsanna started off by mentioning that her work typically revolves around the concept of absence, and the studying of fractures. For her work in the gallery, she described it as exploring the middle space between technology and the human. It was described as a disruptive process.
Sarah’s work for the show was described instead as a collaborative act, instead working though the process of working with the technologies used to produce a sort of group effort. She described that the authorship of the pieces couldn’t solely exist with her, and instead could be attributed to the designers of the machines and the software used to produce the 3D printed objects she had selected to be presented.
It was brought up that due to the dynamic nature of all the pieces (as enabled by technology), all of the works in the gallery were essentially in process even when on display. That description fit well with the +t aspect of the show title, and was on display on almost every piece of the show. For instance, one of the pieces Sarah was showcasing was a 3D printer set up to continuously print objects throughout the course of the show, quintessentially showcasing a process in action in the creation of art objects. This point was brought up in the conversation, where the 3D printer itself was referenced as an art artifact that was producing further art artifacts(11).
At first when this term was used I was unsure that I agreed with it’s use. However, the term artifact is used to describe an objects temporal significance as much as anything. The entire show is about that temporal significance, and the reinterpretation in using it to describe an object that is so new that it hasn’t even cooled off from fabrication is interesting.
Another interesting point that was that the most of the pieces in the show create their own forms of secondary media(12). For instance the 3D printer produces art objects but in addition it also has the side effect of producing mechanical noises through its operation. Zsuzsanna’s piece in the main lobby included a projector, which when shown onto a white wall at a sharp angle had the unintended side effect of creating a purple reflection on other areas of the show, transforming them as well.
During the Q&A session the question about how each of the artists got into art-making originally came up. Both artists mentioned that art making was their chosen method of communication, how they expressed and articulated feelings in the medium they knew best. Also in the Q&A was the question of how the aspect of play factored into both of their works, to which both artists responded that play was a serious part of their art making, and that they recognized their privileged to be able to be able to work with high-tech equipment.
The point was also brought up that while the Media arts gallery is attached to Emerson, that this show was intended as less of a didactic(13) exhibit, and instead as more of an experiential show. The distinction being drawn that didactic work explains (often via text) itself whereas an experiential work instead is experienced and understood that way. It’s an interesting comparison, especially as the artworks in the show are pretty high concept for their stated reasons for creations, but quite experiential in their execution. That distinction is also the crux of one of the critical arguments against high tech art, that the wow-factor of any tech enabled art will blow out any thoughtful consideration that could have been possible. It’s the razors edge that tech-heavy artists have to walk when creating a piece, and likely the reason that the School for Poetic Computation’s motto is “more poetry, less demo.”
One of the final topics of conversation was the role that the space played in the realization of the show. The term "the ecology of the space” was used, in reference to the contexts surrounding the gallery. These contexts include the time, place, culture of and around, and the politics in and around the space. Using the ecology of the space also helped to frame that idea as a composite of all those factors, much like a biological ecology is a interdependent web of connections between all pieces included in a given area. In that same way, the work was clarified as a plural, as a body rather than any specific piece. All the pieces in the show were dependent on each other to form a show, like any individual piece of biome.
Overall, quite an interesting talk. It surfaced more than a few new concepts that I’m glad to have been exposed to. I hope to be able to attend more of these sorts of talks in the near future.
Side note - Unfortunately I’d forgotten to get photos during this exhibit, but if you’re curious I’d suggest you look at the individual artist’s websites.
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Thotbot Implantation Center at the the Bow St. Market.
Jumping on the Red Line and speeding up to Somerville, I made my way over to the Bow St. Market. If you’re in the area and haven’t been, I’d suggest you check it out(14). They run a program called Get Artists Paid where they’ve reserved one of the market stalls for use as a sort of artist in residence space.
All of this serves as the backdrop for event #3 of the day, The Thotbot Implantation Center, a combination art and musical performance piece by Reagan Esther Myer (aka Rebecca Kopycinski). For this performance, Reagan/Rebecca(15) posted thousands of flyers around Boston like so…
And with that in mind, I was greeted at the front door by a mute figure in a head-to-toe Tyvek suit and carrying a clipboard. I gave my name and was ushered to one of about a dozen seats around the perimeter of the room. Interspersed throughout the room were CRT Televisions and old filing cabinets, the TVs tuned to a recording of a woman describing our roles in the experience to unfold. We had been incorporated into an alternate/future timeline governed by an totalitarian group called The ULTRA, an organization ruling the area of the former United States after a catastrophic meteor impact had decimated most of the planet.
As explained by the female narrator on the televisions, one of The Ultra’s main goals was to condition the populace, primarily by instituting a social credits system that incentivized loyalty and penalized non-conformist actions such as disobedience, expression of emotion, or any nostalgia or recognition of life before the apocalypse. Interspersed within the infomercial are snippets of testimony from citizens living under the ultra, that while trying to paint a rosy picture of the group lay out a scenario that is overall quite dire. For instance, we hear of a family that is reported to The Ultra by the daughter in the family because they’d expressed displeasure over how the meager food ration they’d been provided had been.
‘Comply / Add Value / Redeem’
In this scenarios we’d been brought into, we were at a location called the Thotbot Implantation Center, an institution devoted to spreading propaganda and reeducating/brainwashing the anyone lacking social credit. Within the filing cabinets around the room were tie envelopes containing piece of media labeled contraband. These were collections of old articles, books, post cards, and a few cassette tapes each around a central theme. These themes were varied, but primarily revolved around banned emotional expressions such as nostalgia or sadness.
The overall effect of this was an immersive environment that amplified the feeling a unease that started upon being greeted by the covered proctor at the entrance to the space. Throughout the course of the experience there was a mix of more PSAs and silent gazes by the proctor as dozen-or-so participants all perused the contraband. Of note, all the assembled media seemed to be from the late 60’s to early 80’s, which added a retro-futurist sorta vibe to it (16).
About 45 minutes in the participants were shooed out the door for an intermission, prompting them to sample the other amenities at the Bow Market. After about 30 minutes we were allowed back in, where the set had been shifted from a worse than usual dental office waiting room (17) to a stage pointing all the chairs to the front. In front of a keyboard stood Reagan Esther Myer, and she proceeded to perform a half dozen original songs themed around the dystopian setting laid out earlier. In the setting, Reagan was separated from her mother and is not integrating well into the Ultra’s society as she seeks to be re-united. Over time and through repeated visitations to the in setting Thotbot Implantation Centers she is cowed into a state of passivity.
The whole of the performance drew on the language of political resistance and counter-cultural aesthetics to conveys the settings. If I had to guess, the overall message was that of a warning of the possible authoritarian futures possible under Trump and similar politics. But that’s likely only part of it, as there were so many groupings of potent signifiers that you could likely draw a veritable banquet of different concepts out of the experience. I personally thought it all worked together well, and it was such a novel experience that It put me in a unique mindset to consider the experience, rather than allowing me to drop into the usual tracks I use to process art experiences, such as a museum’s gallery or a standing room show.
One note about the space - Bow St. Market is a shopping area that fits squarely into the pop-up vendors style shop, much like a Chelsea Market in NYC. Typically these are small shops or stalls that tend to be a blend of quick food vendors and craft/antiques retail shops. The Bow market is able to host the ThotBot Implantation Center is able to host this through their Get Artists Paid program, which is where they offer a sort of residency and free space to an artist in the local community. To have a dedicated rotating art space as part of the lineup is excellent.
Overall and interesting and novel experience at the Bow Market for the ThotBot Implantation Center. I’m interested to see what else comes out of the Reagan Esther Myer project.
Well that took a while to complete. I started writing this March 1st and I’m finishing it April 22nd 2020. A lot of time has passed and a lot has changed since then. COVID-19 is in full swing and I’ve lost regular access to my studio space. In the meantime I’ve started a number of smaller projects to keep myself occupied, so I’ll see about posting a little something about those when I get a chance.
Until then, stay safe.
Mac
(1) - Confluence [Merriam Webster] - a coming or flowing together, meeting, or gathering at one point. This term is used interchangeably with intersection or crossroads or convergence when discussing art. I’ve always found this distracting, as within the town I grew up in had an area known as “The Confluence” just outside it. The name described the are where two major rivers met. I can tell you from personal experience that I never saw an artist there. Plenty of fishermen though.
(2) - I wonder if Hieronymus Bosch ever botched a painting.
(3) - literally
(4) - My immersion !
(5) - And trust me, I simply have to.
(6) - At time of writing, which has been a few weeks in the making itself. Currently 9pm on 3/16/20 - Hello from COVID-19 land.
(7) - Born ~1,744, died 1829 at a supposed age of 85.
(8) - That’s a heckin fraught term.
(9) - $1 to whoever proves me wrong. Really.
(10) - https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/044/247/297.png
(11) - Which brings up this excellent project from 2015 by Ami Drach & Dov Ganchrow - Man-Made
(12) - Mac, what does that even mean?
(13) - I looked up the meaning just now, and feel slightly embarrassed that I had to do so. Per Merriam Webster - Didactic (adjective) is something that is - designed or intended to teach.
(14) - After, you know, that whole pandemic thing calms down.
(15) - Not sure about the agency / authorship on this one. Fight me.
(16) - It’s all the rage.
(17) - Appropriate reading material age for this comparison.