Dance Capsules: Walker Art Center acquires Merce Cunningham Dance Company Collection

Robert Rauschenberg, set piece for "Minutiae," 1954.
Photo by Herb Migdall, 1976.
Courtesy Cunningham Dance Foundation.

Minneapolis. I think I might be able to do it. I could live there if I could work or study at the Walker, with their AMAZING collection to keep me intellectually stimulated. That city isn't bad, from what I recall. This comprehensive acquisition of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company's collection only makes it that much more appealing. E-flux writes: The Walker Art Center and Cunningham Dance Foundation (CDF) announce the Walker's acquisition of a comprehensive collection of artist-made set pieces, costumes, painted drops, and props, created for the internationally renowned Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC). Over the course of his nearly 70-year career, Merce Cunningham (1919–2009) redefined the visual and performing arts through pioneering collaborations with leading artists, designers, and musicians. More than 150 objects created by such artists as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, John Cage, and Frank Stella will arrive at the Walker this year and be displayed for the first time beginning in November 2011. The placement of these works at the Walker supports a key goal of CDF's Legacy Plan—ensuring the preservation and ongoing accessibility of the Company's singular collection of 20th century art. The acquisition of major works from the MCDC collection aligns with the Walker's cross-disciplinary collecting strategy and its mission to present contemporary art in a multidisciplinary context, in order to foster an understanding of the nexus between artistic disciplines. The acquisition marks a major landmark in both the museum and dance fields, making the Walker a new center for research and scholarship of Cunningham's work, and presenting a new model for preserving works created by multiple artists in support of a single choreographer's artistic vision. "The acquisition of these works is groundbreaking for the Walker and for the museum field at large, affirming our longstanding commitment to bringing together diverse artistic practices to form a cross-disciplinary blend of programs," said Walker Executive Director Olga Viso. "We enjoyed a lasting relationship with Cunningham beginning in the early 1960s and look forward to inspiring future generations with programs, exhibitions, and new scholarship devoted to his legacy of innovation and collaboration." The Walker will present its first installation of works from the collection in November 2011, in an exhibition focusing on Cunningham's creative collaborations with major artists. This exhibition coincides with MCDC's final engagement at the Walker, to be presented November 4–6, 2011, as part of the Company's farewell Legacy Tour. The engagement continues a relationship that began in 1963, when MCDC was first presented by the Walker. The performances will be the company's first actually held inside the Walker (all past MCDC performances have been off-site or outdoors).The Walker will organize additional exhibitions exploring Cunningham's collaborations with artists over the next three years. The Walker is acquiring more than 150 objects dating back to 1942, when Cunningham began his distinguished 67-year career. During that time, Cunningham choreographed nearly 200 dances, most of which involved significant collaborations with leading visual artists who contributed unique set pieces and costumes. Notably, the collection contains Robert Rauschenberg's combine Minutiae (1954/1976) and his costumes for Antic Meet (1958), Frank Stella's set pieces for Scramble (1967), and the mylar pillows from Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds installation used for RainForest (1968), and works created independently by John Cage, Cunningham's life partner, that were ultimately incorporated into MCDC dances. The collection also includes set pieces and costumes created in the Company's later years by a younger generation of artists, including Ernesto Neto and the fashion designer Rei Kawakubo. To complement the acquisition and aid in ongoing scholarship, CDF will grant the Walker access to "Dance Capsules"—digital packages of archival materials which are being developed as another part of the Legacy Plan. Each Dance Capsule contains documentation of a Cunningham work, including performance videos, sound recordings, lighting plots, décor images, costume design, Merce Cunningham's choreographic notes, production notes, and interviews with dancers, and will serve as an invaluable supporting resource for Walker programming and the public. The acquisition is a gift of Jay F. Ecklund, the Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation, Agnes Gund, Russell Cowles and Josine Peters, the Hayes Fund of HRK Foundation, Marion Stroud Swingle, Kathleen Fluegel, Barbara G. Pine, and the T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2011.

Janet. and her uncanny obsession with her breasts

For a long while, I have been trying to find a beat up "Janet." tour shirt. My ebay search for such a 90s relic is what generated this post. Although it probably started earlier in her career, Janet Jackson's 1993 album "Janet.", released under the Virgin label really propelled her into a full-fledged sex-symbol, and seemingly foreshadowed her now ubiquitous obsession with own her ti-tons. Before "Janet." she was already a pop-star and an icon with "Control" and "Rythm Nation" two records that mark the beginning of Janet's forage for her own identity, separate from the Jackson family. It was in 1993 that she finally shed her good-girl "All in the Family" image and pursued crafting her own career apart from her pop-royalty heritage.



The image found in the liner notes for "Janet." album, was a cropped version of the photograph above, which also appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. The pic, shot by Patrick Demarchelier, featured a relaxed and confident Janet whose bare breasts were being held by her husband (at the time) René Elizondo, Jr.


After "Janet." came "Poetic Justice," her filmic debut, which was panned. This didn't make one bit of difference to me as a 10 year old, renting the VHS from Blockbuster. I thought it was cinematic gold, and held it over all my friends that they weren't allowed to rent it. Plus there's this:

Amid the media hurricane that came along with defending Michael from child molestation alligations, as well as denying Latoya's public claims that the Jackson parents abused their children, mixed with her own high profile success; Janet started getting a little weird... and really into her boobs.



She also thought it would be a good idea to be in the sequel to the Nutty Professor remake?


Hey, check out my boobs!


The peak of all this funny business was undoubtedly at the 2004 Superbowl halftime, where the Janet performed with Justin Timberlake, who tore half of her bra off exposing her left breast. The two performers both apologized, claiming it was a "Wardrobe Malfunction." The photos evoke an original sin connotation, with Janet looking shamed and irresponsible, while J-Tim looks guilty and unapologetic.

"What does this mean for boobs?" you might ask. From Lil Kim, to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, to Janet Jackson the United States is oddly conservative regarding breasts, which only further fetishizes them within our cultural fabric, and results in a tightening of FCC regulations. It's ironic, given the overwhelming support of breast cancer/ (I prefer the term "breast health") awareness in this country. Culturally, America needs to turn this fear-respect relationship to breasts into a love-respect relationship. Now I'm really ranting, this was supposed to be a funny slide show, and has now turned into an (probably) ill-informed cultural proscription. I'm sure some scholar somewhere has theorized about this in a more coherent manner.

One thing about Janet is that she never stays out of the public eye for too long, so it probably won't be long now before she resurfaces, boobs waving in the spotlight.

The Andy Monument

The New York Public Art Fund will present a tribute to Andy Warhol in Union Square this spring, a short distance from where the Factory once stood from 1968 until the artist's death in 1987. The second Factory (the White Factory as opposed to the Silver Factory, which was located in midtown from 1962-1968) was just around the corner from Max's Kansas City at 33 Union Square West. It was also the site where Valerie Salonas’ assassination attempt occurred and where Interview magazine was launched.

Sculptor Rob Pruitt created The Andy Monument as a tribute to the late artist, who publicly signed and gave away copies of Interview magazine at the street corner where the monument will stand beginnning March 30th, 2011.


Public Art Fund Director and Chief Curator Nicholas Baume says that, "The figure is based on a combination of digital scanning of a live model and hand sculpting, its surface finished in chrome, mounted on a concrete pedestal. It depicts Warhol as a ghostly, silver presence: a potent cultural force as both artist and self-created myth." As Rob Pruitt observes, "Like so many other artists and performers and people who don't fit in because they're gay or otherwise different, Andy moved here to become who he was, to fulfill his dreams and make it big. He still represents that courage and that possibility. That's why I came to New York, and that's what my Andy Monument is about." '

Really looking forward to this, and hope that the Public Art Fund can manage to make the sculpture a permanent presence to remind passerby's of the once-cultural/historical significance of the now Sephora-ed and Babies-R-Us-ed out strip.

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' You know the song "New York, New York," and how for year after year people have come to New York to "make it." One of the most important examples of that is Andy Warhol, who spawned a generation of people who think they can make it here in this city. Andy Warhol embodies the spirit of the city that still draws people. Every day a thousand more kids come to New York propelled by his legacy. And even if the decades pass and Warhol becomes a vaguer and vaguer character, there will still be something here that's directly linked to him - this pilgrimage, or calling, coming here from the Midwest, Eastern Europe or South- East Asia, to make it big, to be an artist. I think there should be a destination in New York to mark all those journeys.

There are hundreds of monuments to politicians in the New York City, but I can’t think of any monuments to artists, and other figures who actually represent the lived experience of most of the people who live here. When I was a teenager, I visited Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde are buried. I was struck by the throngs of people that came to visit the tombs of their idols. When Andy Warhol died, his family had his remains sent back to Pittsburgh, where he was born, and so no such marker for him exists in New York. So a public statue of Warhol has a sense of righting a wrong.

Andy, like so many other artists and performers and people who don’t fit in, moved to New York to be himself, fulfill his dreams and make it big. That’s why I moved here, and that’s what my Andy Monument is about. Of course it could be argued that someone could just go to the Modern and look at his Soup Cans, but I think there is something to being truly out in streets of New York, to have something you can visit at 4:20 in the morning with your friends.

I will be unveiling the Andy Monument at the North-West corner of Union Square on Wednesday, March 30 at 6:00PM. I hope you will be able to join me to celebrate one of our own. '


Rob Pruitt
New York
March 2011

Takahiko Iimura

Pretty stoked to check this out, and I have been hearing good stuff about this new space. I didn't make it to the opening, which appropriately happened during the "supermoon," but this guy did and blogged about it.

I was introduced to Iimura's work through my research on an exhibition and publication with Electronic Arts Intermix, called Vital Signals:Early Japanese Video Art (2010). The work included in the exhibition was Camera, Monitor, Frame from 1976.

Additionally, there will be a screening of Iimura's Early Experimental and Conceptual videos, and a benefit fundraiser with donations towards Red-Cross relief efforts in Japan.

Microscope Gallery
4 Charles Place, Brooklyn NY 11221 Tel: 347.925.1433
E-mail: info@microscopegallery.com www.microscopegallery.com
Hours: Thurs to Mon. 1-6PM

Mar 19 - Apr 11, 2011
Opening Reception:
Sat Mar 19 6pm - 9pm

Takahiko Iimura
BETWEEN THE FRAMES
installation, digital drawing, video, and other new & evolving works by the film & video pioneer

Verbatim from the gallery's site:

TAKAHIKO IIMURA
Between The Frames
w/ live 16mm projection performance of the ever-changing “Circle and a Square”

Microscope Gallery is honored to present the first Brooklyn solo exhibition of the film and video pioneer Takahiko Iimura. Between The Frames is a comprehensive exhibition featuring works made from 1975 to the present, many of which are constantly evolving. The new suspended installation “400 frames” uses ink drawings from 1975. A new print series “MA: The Stones Have Moved” are made from digital drawings related to his 2004 animated video of a Zen garden in Kyoto of the same title. Also on display: Iimura’s famous 1993 “funny faces” silkscreens and video game installation based on Derridda’s “Differance” dealing with physicality of language “AIUEONN Six Features“, never-before-seen sculptures made from 16mm film loop and more.

Iimura has been working with the moving image on film since the 60s and video since the early 70s. After moving to New York in the late 60s became involved with the avant garde scene along side Yoko Ono and Nam Jun Paik and is recognized as one of the most important Japanese artists today. His work is shown widely with numerous solo shows including MoMA, the Whitney Museum, the National Gallery Jeu de Paume, Paris, Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo. Iimura currently lives and works in Tokyo and NYC.

“His [Iimura’s] Japanese origins contributed decisively to his uncompromising explorations of cinema’s minimalist and conceptual possibilities. He has explored this direction of cinema in greater depth than anyone else. To review all of Iimura’s work…is an important occasion for all who are concerned with the development and pleasure of cinema as an art.” — Jonas Mekas

Please note: Takahiko Iimura is generously donating his proceeds on the sale of sculptures from the series One Second Loop (= Infinity) to the American Red Cross for relief efforts in Japan. Additionally, Microscope Gallery is donating 15 % of the sales of all works of the exhibition.

from video-installation AIUEONN SIX FEATURES, 2′ 30″ (vers. I), 7′ (vers. II), col, sound, 1993

Notes on the screening program (verbatim from program note):

For many years, Japanese experimental film was Takahiko Iimura.
- Malcolm Le Grice, Time Out, London.

In connection with his current exhibition BETWEEN THE FRAMES, Takahiko Iimura brings a selection of his earliest film and video works to the gallery. The evening will be divided into two parts: “60 Experiments” with four 16 mm films made between 1962 & 1964 including his famous AI (LOVE); and “Early Conceptual Videos”, six short video works that contributed to the birth of conceptual video art. A Q&A will follow the screening.

60s EXPERIMENTS
Original 16mm films

Kuzu (Junks)
1962, 10min., b/w, music by Takehisa Kosugi
It’s a mixture of [dead]animals, pieces of [broken] furniture, industrial waste, kids playing. I didn’t have in mind any of the kind of historical perspective, nor was I trying to make an ecological statement. I was showing the new landscape of our civilization. My point of view was animistic. I tried to revive those dead animals metaphorically and to give the junk new life. – - Takahiko Iimura (from “An Interview with Taka Iimura”, Scott MacDonald, Journal of the University Film Association XXXIII, 4, Fall 1981)

Ai (Love)
1962, 10min., blown up from 8mm, b/w, music by Yoko Ono
“I have seen a number of Japanese avantgarde films at the Brussels international Experimental Film Festival, at Cannes, and at other places. Of all those films, Iimura’s LOVE stands out in its beauty and originality, a film poem, with no usual pseudo-surrealist imagery. Closest comparison would be Brakhage’s LOVING or Jack Smith’s FLAMING CREATURES. LOVE is a poetic and sensuous exploration of the body…fluid, direct, beautiful.” – - Jonas Mekas, Film Culture,1966, New York

On Eye Rape
1962, 10min., b/w, silent, Co-Pro. Natsuyuki Nakanishi
The second film (On Eye Rape) was made with footage I picked out of some trash. It was originally an educational film which recorded a plant growing out of the ground. The content isn’t important. I punched almost all the frames with a puncher. I made big holes so that when it was projected, people could barely see what was originally in the frames. I didn’t punch every frame; there was a lot of flicker from the holes. People got very annoyed and complained. They were afraid they would get hurt by the light. That film was called, in English, On Eye Rape (1962). In fact, I had also inserted (a few frames of) *some porno shots. Pornography was forbidden in Japan; It’s still forbidden…. [...] *ps. This is in fact subliminal shots against censorship.” – - Takahiko Iimura (from “An Interview with Taka Iimura”, Scott MacDonald, Journal of The University Film Association XXXIII, 4, Fall 1981)

A dance party in the kingdom of Lilliput
1964, 12min., b/w, sound
A surper-real comedy with Sho Kazakura. The film is divided into a number of very short scenes or chapters, each with a title at random. We see him lame in a crowd, see him running up stairs, see him absolutely naked, watch him urinate, etc. An anthology of discontinuous happenings and events.” – - T I

“The movie may well be one of the first ‘Conceptual’ film ever made anywhere in the world. It was a rather slow, but clerly defined daily motions of Kazakura, a mysterious underground figure of Japan, who is still unknow in Tokyo, yet has a strange presence in his remote area of Japan, KYUSYU Island.”
- – Nam June Paik, 1987

(Total 42 minutes)

EARLY CONCEPTUAL VIDEOS

After coming back from New York in 1969, I began video production in Tokyo. Working in experimental film since the early 1960s, I first combined the art of film with video, thus making a kind of flicker effect in video in two pieces: “A Chair ” (1970) and “Blinking” (1970). These videos are experiments in perception, and are very minimal formally, consisting mostly of a single object. “Time Tunnel” (1971) is an attempt at time travel in a very conceptual sense. The video combines a repetition of the countdown leader of film, which runs the numbers 10 to 1 , with the feedback effect of video. The result is a tunneling of the numbers in time. ”Man and Woman” (1971) shows the full body of a man and a woman shot from above, in the posture of the drawing of a man by Leonardo Da Vinci, without movement. They are shown alone as well as together one over (or under) the other, narrating in words their positions at the same time. “Visual Logic (and Illogic)” (1977) shows the visual logic (and illogic) of various signs in letters and simple forms on paper combined with limited camera movement and voice-over narration. These early videos constitute the very early experiments of a particular “conceptual video” that almost no other video artists had ever tried at that time. – - Takahiko Iimura

A Chair
1970, 6min., b/w, sound

Blinking
1970, 2min., b/w, sound

Time Tunnel
1971, 5min., b/w, sound

Man and Woman
1971, 2min., b/w

Visual Logic (and Illogic)
1977, 8min., b/w, sound

(Total 23 minutes)

Maria Lassing "Films" at Friedrich Petzel

Known mainly for her paintings, (specifically, her 'Body Awareness Paintings') Chelsea's Friedrich Petzel Gallery has organized an exhibition of the Viennese artist Maria Lassing's videos. These lesser known works were created in New York, where the artist resided for 12 years until 1980. During her stint with the city, it makes sense that she became friends with video artists Dan Graham and Vito Acconci, judging by the content of the program. Where their styles (and medium) are wildly different, one can appreciate the common thread of philosophical discourse engaged by Lassnig's films, and many early video artists.

Ten short films, plus an eleventh (Kantate-created in 1992) comprise the exhibition, in FPG's clean and simple ground floor space on 22nd Street. Integrating live-action, stop-motion animation, found photography as well as early green-screen technology, these nuanced works, like her paintings, illustrate the artist's interest in self-representation, where psychoanalysis, feminism, and phenomenological discourses enter her lexicon as well. Often humorous and satirical, each work I watched informed the other works being screened. By the end of the screening, an interconnected web of images, styles, and concepts had been constructed; and I'm still thinking about a lot of these relationships, a week later.