Alberta Blues. I worked on this video with my dear friends and colleagues Sharita Towne, Patricia Vazquez, and Grace Hwang. They are a very delightful and talented artists each. Such a pleasure to work with them.
Social Practice & Community Art
In the Event of a Hitchhiker
Submissions are now closed.
I am now accepting submissions of audio material to be played in my car, a 1998 Light Green Ford Escort Wagon, in the event that I pick up a Hitch Hiker. Material can be in the form of audio art, music (mixed tape), monologue, silence, audio love letter, radio dramas, etc. Anything is possible. You be the DJ.
NOTE: I will not listen to the material before I pick up a hitcher.
Please make sure all submissions are in the form of a standard audio-cassette, cds cannot be played. Please also give some consideration to my safety and that of the stranger/new friend sitting next to me. Participants will receive payment in the form of one surprise item by mail.
All submissions would ideally be mailed to me by March 31st, 2012.
In the event of a Hitch-Hiker
c/o Zachary Gough, Misc Gallery Intern
312 Gillespie, Sherbrooke, QC
J1H 4X4
People Shooting Guns
A compilation of found footage of people shooting guns for recreation.
Demonstrate a Talent
Assignment 3. "Demonstrate a talent. Create a short video (3 min maximum) where you demonstrate a talent. Video quality is not an issue, Cell phone/web cam videos are acceptable."
December 10, 2011. Sherbrooke, Québec.
Novous Ordo Seclorum with Parallel University
August 8, 2013 and August 15, 2013
Under the auspices of Parallel University, Francesca Frattaroli, Zachary Gough, Laurel Kurtz, and Sandy Sampson conducted a two-part participatory discursive research project during Emerging Tactics: Public Schools at PNCA. They facilitated two discussions stemming from a well known 1971 debate entitled Human Nature: Justice vs. Power between linguist, political theorist and activist, Noam Chomsky and philosopher, social theorist and historian, Michel Foucault.
In the first event, they explored Foucault’s insistence of the necessity to understand the complex systems of oppression in our society. Taking on a performative facilitatory role, Parallel University attempted to dupe the audience by providing an overly authoritative and alienating experience. Due to the complexity of questions, and their icy and condescending demeanor as they read from a purposely lackluster and hard-to-follow Power Point, Gough and Sampson asserted their power and attempted to place participants in a disempowered and subordinate role. Kurtz, visible to the group and wearing security cop blues, sat expressionless and watched the event unfold through a video camera that was placed in front of a surveillance camera. Frattaroli, who stood unseen above the crowd while documenting the discussion, yelled, “TIME!” on cue, signifying that the jig was up. Parallel University then revealed the game, and initiated a conversation about how the model they had presented, though exaggerated, was reminiscent of what one might typically experience. The conversation continued through the second half of the first event, but in a more natural way.
In the second week, Parallel Universtiy followed Chomsky’s assertion that we need to envision better systems, while unearthing current injustices. They invited special guests who had particular experiences using decision making models to explore different power structures, from top-down decision making to consensus models. These special guests were invited to share their experience using these group decision making models, as well as some successes and failures of these models. From this, a discussion ensued, where all in attendance added to the conversation to get a deeper understanding of this topic.
Special guests included:
Alex Rempel (www.westmyfriend.com)
Ali Sadiq (OHSU)
Ally Drozd
Andre Fortes (CTCR Ma @ PNCA)
Charlie Foster (Project Grow)
Chloe Womack (Recess Gallery)
Eden Oliver (www.westmyfriend.com)
Jeff Poyner(www.westmyfriend.com)
Kimi (Recess Gallery)
Kurtiss Lofstrom (artist profile)
Lynda Wysong (PNCA)
Marco Frataroli (Bastas, Cibo)
Mark Jondahl (Spherelab, Legendary Map)
Nicholas Perrin (Lower Mainland Painting Company)
Rosemary Sotta
Rachel Mulder (Project Grow)
Sky
Tori Abernathy (Recess Gallery)
Participants were invited to join the conversation, and watch the video ahead of time
Part 1: http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=8tQRoUS8Plk
and
Part 2: http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=QOb3cVBGXC4
Charles Hale’s article “What is Activist Research?” and other texts were available to participants in the Emerging Tactics Reader.
Red Clay Radio
August 10th - 17th, 2014. Economy, Nova Scotia.
White Rabbit Arts Residency and Festival.
Red Clay Radio is a pop-up radio station located on Red Clay farm in Economy Nova Scotia for the duration of the White Rabbit Art Residency and festival. The station is broadcast onsite via FM transmitter and over the internet on the festival website. The radio station functions as an experimental art space, conversational and educational platform, a traditional radio station, and a communication medium between artists onsite during the residency and between the community at Red clay and the greater public. During the residency, artists in residence (rabbits) make radio programming throughout their residency on Red Clay ranging from experimental audio art, music and traditional talk radio. Guest contributors from elsewhere are invited to submit material to be played on the station. Artists debate topics of critical interest to their practice. Critiques happen on air. Local experts and community members are consulted for contextual framing of the site. etc. The station was originally founded five years ago by Newfoundland based artist Michael Waterman with his own transmitter.
To listen to some of the broadcast, head to
http://whiterabbitartfestival.bandzoogle.com/home
Currency by Danny Shapiro. Danny colored 50 one dollar bills with sharpee to obscure the visual information pictured on the bills.
Currency Swap Project
A project and exhibition by drawing students at Jefferson High School, Portland Community College and Portland State University, in Oregon USA. Students were given the following assignment: Using a selection of skills and techniques covered in class along with those you came with, design and draw a currency that represents your own value system. Come to class on November 26th with at least 50 pieces of currency. These could be individual drawings or photocopies of one drawing, or printouts of something you draw, scan and print.
On November 26th, 2014, in the afternoon Amy’s class from Jefferson came to Sandy’s class at PCC in room 221, and in the evening Sandy’s Drawing class joined Zach’s drawing class in room 285 Neuberger Hall at PSU for a currency viewing, exchange, conversation and celebration. Each student made 50 units of their own currency and went home with a unit of each class mate's currency.
http://currencyswapproject.tumblr.com/
ART 131 004
These students have really come through with this assignment! The challenge was to hack some kind of moving object and have it make drawings for you. This footage comes from our in-class showing. Nice work ART 131 !
A&SP MFA Program Goes on Tour, Takes Vacation
For about ten days, students from the Art and Social Practice MFA Program went to Southern California to visit a few artists and institutions who are making work there in the field of Social Practice. The trip included visits and discussions with many people to expose us to new insights and get a sense of the field in LA. We ate together, slept together, traveled together and did each others' hair. Here are some of the highlights:
RSVP workshop with Fritz Haeg at the Sundown Dome.desert
Two days in the desert at Andrea Zittel's A-Z West
Reference Points reading at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego.
The San Diego Public Library!
Studio visits with Miranda July, Chris Johansen, Mark at Machine Project, Alison Agsten at the Hammer, John Spiak at the Grand Central Art Center.
Meals with the OTIS Public Practice MFA program, John Malpede.
Hiking in Joshua Tree State Park.
I also got a chance to join Susannah Tantemsapya for her show ...The Charming Mistakes of My Youth... on KCHUNG AM Radio!
Citizen Journalism
Chiron Studies is an amazing program at Portland State University, in which students facilitate courses for other students for credit. The program has been around since the late sixties, and has continuously been an opportunity for radical pedagogy within the traditional institution since then. (For more info about Chiron Studies, listen to the interview I conducted with it's long standing coordinator and board chair, Rozzell Medina, below).
Luckily for me, the course I proposed entitled Citizen Journalism, an evolution of Correspondents' Be the News, was accepted and will run, provided sufficient enrollment, in the winter term.
Interview with Rozzell Medina first episode of Radio School on KPSU
This year in the PSU Art and Social Practice MFA program, I'm helping to organize and produce a weekly radio show. The show evolved out of the weekly conversation series. Everyweek on the show students in the program interview people who's work, usually connected in some way to PSU, relates to Social Practice in some way. For the very first episode I had the privilege to interview radical pedagog Rozzell Medina.
Rozzell Medina dropped out of high school at 17 because he was tired of being told what to learn about and how. He earned a liberal arts degree from Portland State University almost 14 years later. In 2009, he became interested in how people can come together to form independent, self-organizing learning communities that improve the quality of participants' lives and their abilities to co-create equitable and liberated societies. Since 2009, he has been working, creatively and collaboratively, to nurture these kinds of learning communities.
In 2009, he became co-director of Public Social University with Judy Fleming, creating over a dozen free, all-ages learning events in art galleries, museums, and public parks. In 2010, he became the coordinator and committee chair of Chiron Studies at Portland State University, a unique program that makes it possible for graduate students and upper-division undergraduates to design and instruct official 4-credit classes that the university does not already offer.
He is currently collaborating with others to establish People's Social Learning Collaborative, a nonprofit organization that will nurture diverse face-to-face learning opportunities that are not dependent on institutions and which do not create burdens of debt. He is also completing his master's degree in Educational Leadership and Policy with an emphasis on Leadership for Sustainability Education.
Interested folks can listen to the show almost every week at 12noon PST on kpsu.org.
Seniors, Sexuality, and Spirituality: Art and Social Change
I spent much of the summer working with Roya Amirsoleymani at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art putting together a symposium that finally happened this past weekend. Friday was a Think Tank of local and national experts convened surrounding Holcombe Waller's piece LGBT Requiem Mass (working title). Queer clergy, liturgical experts, performing artists, musicians, socially engaged practitioners, community engagement arts administrators, scholars brainstormed opportunities and directions for Holcombe's piece. Saturday, the program shown above, had a roundtable public presentation by Holcombe and the Think tankers, a large community forum facilitated by Ruth Wikler-Luker, a Q&A conversation with Ariana Jacob and Darren O'Donnell of Mammalian Diving Reflex, and respondent remarks and public conversation with the amazing Kate Duffly and Joel Tan.
Flash Field Guide
I was Happy to host a Flash Field Guide session with friend and collaborator Grace Hwang at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's Time Based Arts Festival on Thursday, Sept. 18th 2014. The conversation explored Mammalian Diving Reflex's piece All the Sex I've Ever Had. It was an opportunity for audience members to engage around the issues and forms hat the piece brought up, and share a bit about our own experiences with sexuality. We also did and talked about a couple exercises that the participants in the piece did as part of the process of ATSIEH: Tell us about your first, last, best and worst sexual experiences. On your own in public, find someone who is 'out of your league' and approach them, tell them that you think that they are 'out of your league' and ask them if they agree.
International mostly-radio artist residency tour comes to an end. :(
A quick summary:
Two host institutions familiar with working with Socially Engaged artists and who were very invested in a successful outcome of the projects, and two institutions that don't have much experience working with artists who invest themselves in the community, who left me to my own devices. Of the four big projects that I set out to do, I'd count two as resounding successes, one that was a fantastic experience but would have greatly benefitted from a longer stay, and one project that failed before it even started but that made way for new research and explorations!
An incomplete list of the people that I met, and who generously helped out on the projects and life on the road in general, Thank you to each of you:
YUKON: Sarah Pupo, Emma Tius, Dan and Laurie Sokoloski, James Fitzgerald, Chris Foster (I had met before but really got to know), my darling book ends Joey O'Neil and Justin Apperly, Karen Dubois, Eldo Enns, Diego Martin, Erica Barta, Peter Menzies, Lulu Keating, Tara Rudnickas, Ange Bonnici, Matt Sarty, Rebecca Olsen, Nicole Rayburn, Veronica Verkley, John Steins, Greg Hakanson, Mathias McPhee, Linsey Johnson, Dana Levine, Ashlee, Miche and Hector.
WINDOSR: Nadja Pelkey, Alana Bartol, Josh Babcock, Hiba Abdallah, Rosina Riccardo, Michelle Soulière, Srimoyee Mitra, Arturo Herera, Michelle Le Chien, Mary Fitzgerald, Judy Harling, Nancy Musson, Richard Blair, Dorothy Barnett, Albert Cockburn, Alice Sheean, Thelma Butcher, John, Jan at the front door, Safi Houssein, Lorette Watson , Edna Rutherford, Karen Boutlier, Diane, Barbara D'Alosio, Sarah Morris at CJAM, and Dave at Wavemach.
SACKVILLE, many friends old and new: Julia Feltham, Michael Freeman, Louis Zatzman, Jisun Kim, Martin Omes, Kate Phillips, Jeanne Fries, Quincy Russell, James Anderson, Vanessa Blackier, Pierre Malloy, Ilse Kramer and Joe of Kappa Chow, Eric, Theresa Richards, Kaeli Cook, Amanda Fauteaux, Elli Hearte, Cynthia Naggar, Rebecca and Jessica, Erik Edson, Dan Steeves, Adrianna Kuiper, Ryan Suter, Chris Down, Leah Garnet, Lesley Bonang, Brian Riley, Andrew Maize, Courtney Harris, Sophia Horowitz, Greg, Tom Young, Tom Macdonald, Al Melnyk, Natasha, Alix Wilson, Jacques Mindreau, Zach Melanson (one of the first people to pick me up hitchhiking EVER), Evan Matthews, Rosie Butler, Bucky Buckler and family, Graeme Patterson, Dr. Paul Bogaard. Jennie Parker! So many others I'm forgetting!
MELBOURNE: My DARLING Gemma Rose Turnbull, Marnie Badham, Robert John Ball, Leuli Eshragi, Kate Just, Hart, Adva Weinstein, Ben Fox, Lucas Ihlein, Ted Purves, Amy Spiers, Lara Thoms, Ferdi Thajib, Tania Canas, Steve Mayhew, Rimi Khan, Tiffany Bishop.
Bourdieux was a success!
I never would have imagined all the ways that the participants of the Spectres of Evaluation Conference used and organized Bourdieux. They really got into the role playing of the project! There were charitable organizations working toward social-financial equality, artists selling objects, currency counterfeits, and crowd-sourced funded art projects, quantitate easing, embezzlement, you name it! Bravo everyone for supporting the project and putting such creative energies behind it. I'll make a proper post soon, but for now, here are some photos.
Be the News is Happening
We're half way through our four-part radio series, Be the News. The 1hr shows are created by CHMA Correspondents, Sackville citizen journalists reporting on issues that matter to them, showcasing their communities' perspectives. Local media by local people. Have a listen to some of our stories at http://chmafm.wordpress.com/
Be the News
Take a listen to the promo clip for the show that the Correspondents are making, Be the News. I'm so excited to be working with an awesome team.
We're creating local talk radio, invested in diversifying the voices and perspectives on CHMA 106.9FM and progressing the discourse on local social, environmental and political issues in Sackville New Brunswick. We're also acting as ambassadors of CHMA to the community, and teaching ourselves the ins and outs of how a community radio station functions.
This project made possible by the support of CHMA Struts Gallery and the Faucet Medai Arts Centre!
Coming up in Melbourne! February 6th & 7th, 2014.
BOURDIEUX is a medium of exchange for social capital between the participants of the Spectres of Evaluation conference.
At the beginning of the conference, the currency is distributed in correlation with the hierarchies present at the conference: keynotes get the most, presenters and panelists get lots, artists get some, attendees get just a bit, and the general public get none at all.
People are invited to exchange the currency for information and items of social value in whatever way they see fit. Email addresses, ideas, inspiration, influence, contact information, inside jokes, url links, website coordinates, pdfs are bought, sold and traded with Bourdieux. Transactions are recorded in each participant’s personal log.
Participants are encouraged to discuss how they generate power in an art context, who accumulates social capital in socially engaged art works. At the end of each keynote lecture and panel discussion participants are encouraged to take an amount of Bourdieux that correlates with how much they felt that they learned/acquired during the presentation. At the end of the conference, participants use their wealth of Bourdieux to bid in a silent auction for prizes rich in social capital.
Participants can also evaluate the project’s success by submitting their evaluation form found in the currency logbook, along with a quantity of Bourdieux. Thus, participants who accumulate more Bourdieux will have a greater say in determining the project’s success.
The project aims to reveal the economy of social and cultural capital already present at the conference. It also shows how our economies of power mimic or operate under similar rules to our financial economy. Further, the project presents currency as an abstracted representation of our social relationships and explores the danger of quantifying value.
Make Your Own Ready Made!
"R.Mutt 1917" vinyl stickers now for sale.
Taken from Marcel Duchamp's first ready made Fountain these "R.Mutt 1917" stickers can be applied to any object in public or private.
“It’s time to put Duchamp’s urinal back into the restroom” —Tania Bruguera
"R.Mutt 1917" vinyl stickers now for sale.
Please send $2 to me at 2238 SE Oak, Portland Or, USA 97214, complete with your name and postal address.
The photo below shows the toilet on Air Canada flight AC7758 Windsor to Montreal, transformed into a readymade art object at 15 000 feet.
Pablo's Method
What advice would you give to someone who is losing their independence?
