New Media Projects Showcase - March 17, 2010

The showcase was a culmination of 10 weeks of creative research and discussion by the 13 participants (see sidebar) in the ART 245 - InterArts: New Media Projects course featuring videos, lectures and performances.

WARCH CAMPUS CENTER CINEMA

SCREENINGS & LECTURES:

7:00 J. Shimon & J. Lindemann, facilitators: Introduction to Program

7:10 Ian Wallace - Love is Madness: Performance, presentation and product affair about the pangs of passion produced by MAD Design.

7:20 Yexue Li - Occident & Orient: An artist talk on her recent photographs about Chinese identities embracing, rejecting then merging with the West.

7:30 Zenabu Abubakari + Lindsey Ahlen - The Missing Link: A critique of Western media portrayals and the perceptions and misconceptions of Africa and America  (9 min. video). 

7:40 Natasha Pugh - China Here/China Now: The sociopolitical landscape of contemporary China explored and exposed to enlighten viewers (7:30 min. video).

7:50 Marvanna Avery-Cash - Trapped Between 2 Paradigms: A compelling journey within the world while one overcomes a battle against themselves and the urban environment, in order to enjoy a peaceful and refreshing adventure (8 min. video).

8:00 Jordan Severson - Raw Shock: A Study of Cultural Conformity: A personal investigation of the effects associated with the phenomenon of reverse culture shock and the experiences of returning  home after extended period of time (6:09 min., video).

8:10 Molly Preston - Wondering Aimlessly: A stroll through your brain while you're dreaming (6 min. video).

8:20 Fariha Ali - PoMoNow Magazine Launch: A release event for a new glossy magazine for the existentially overwhelmed featuring video profiles (6 min. video).

WARCH CAMPUS CENTER ESCH STUDIO
PERFORMANCES:

8:40 Zachary Becker - Webinar: The myth of the artist in his studio Skype lecture.

8:50 Wilmer Chan - trans: Back and forth. Black and White. What do I seek? What, Should I seek? (6 min. performance with video).

9:00 Lawton Hall - Drift (a Field): Live video and sound for exploring noise, snowblindness, indeterminacy in nonlinear narrative structures, and the color white (~7 min., live electronic performance).

9:10 Liam O’Brien - Duet: Performance piece for two humans dining with projection (4 min. performance).

RECEPTION FOR ARTISTS

Garden of Wandering and the Exodus

"In any case, everything is replanted and grafted." -- NB

In the final section of The Radicant, French curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud makes the point that recycling the vast storehouse of forms is what we are left with, that Duchamp's invention of the "readymade" (1913) was a "tipping point in the history of art." Quoting Duchamp he writes:

"When you make an ordinary painting," he explains, "there is always a choice: you choose your colors, you choose your canvas, you choose your subject, you choose everything. There isn't any art: it is a choice, essentially. There [with the readymade],  it's the same thing.It is a choice of object."

Duchamp pointed toward art as rearranging and transporting what already exists. Not to make more.  And Bourriaud envisions an exodus urging the collective to consider "inventing a common world, of realizing, practically and theoretically, a global space of exchange." Whether this exchange will give birth to a monster, a new master narrative or paradise, we can not imagine. Thus chanted The Residents: We are simple, you are simple, life is simple too.

James P. Danky on the Underground Press (Case Study No. 9)

We first heard of Jim Danky in the early 1980s while undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Everyone we knew was making films, publishing zines with names like White Noise, Reagan Death and Catholic Guilt, playing in bands at Merlyn's or staging performance art pieces on the State Street Mall. As a librarian at the Wisconsin State Historical Society, he collected DIY photocopied band flyers and zines produced by undergrads like ourselves. We felt validated each time "the guy from the Historical Society" (as Catholic Guilt editor Danny used to refer to him) acquired one of our publications. His collecting/archiving included a range of periodicals ranging from alternative newspapers, underground comix to zines and more. In 1974, he published his first book, Undergrounds: A Union List of Alternative Periodicals in Libraries of the United States and Canada. He subsequently authored and edited numerous books on print culture with titles such as: Women in Print: American Women in the 19th and 20th Century published by University of Wisconsin Press and Reading, Writing and Resistance: African-American Print Culture and The Oppositional Press: A History of the Book in America published by Cambridge University and many more. He is on the faculty of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also founded and directed the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America. Underground Classics: The Transformation of Comics into Comix, his recent book, provides the first serious survey of underground comix as art, turning the spotlight on these highly influential and largely under appreciated artists. It accompanied a traveling exhibition of the same name that showed at the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin in summer of 2009. Jim might be considered a "radical librarian" based on the scholarly attention he has paid to periodicals that fall under the radar of most institutions. He makes us pay attention to the things we have been conditioned to ignore.