Director Chris Paine, via NUVO.net

@mitchmaxsom: Happy or sad, well-told stories that better help us understand another perspective or circumstance are beautiful and necessary

@joanofdarkknits: I watch them, but I hate them [at the same time]. I still have images burned into my brain from one on animal cruelty and one on child cruelty.

@raypawulich: They can be powerful, but if I’m going to invest my time in sitting still and watching something, I choose to be entertained.

Sure, they can really open your eyes. But sometimes, they just tell you to keep on keepin’ on. For example, I’ve been on an save-the-planet documentary kick lately, but I’ve always been pretty passionate about the environment. I don’t eat meat, I recycle, ride my bike a lot, I’ve worked for an environmentally-conscious local newspaper, and now an environmentally-conscious museum. All good things, but I have to admit, just like anyone I get lazy (I forgot my reusable grocery bag at home. Again. Oh well.) and stray from the path. Sometimes I just needed a jolt of reality to reaffirm my tree-hugging beliefs. That’s not a bad thing, right? Do what you gotta do to stay motivated.

Here are the last few documentaries I’ve seen that have done just that.

Watching those movies reminded me why I chose my way of life in the first place. They didn’t change my opinions, just made me aware again. Given my interest in all things ‘green,’ it’s probably no surprise to you that I really dig the Planet Indy speaker series here at the IMA. Tonight, you can see Who Killed the Electric Car? by director Chris Paine… here’s the trailer:

The aforementioned local paper, a.k.a. NUVO, recently interviewed Paine:

NUVO: Why did you think electric cars would make a good documentary?

Chris Paine: The mainstream media didn’t cover the story of why these 5,000 cars were all re-possessed and destroyed. We were shocked. And we thought, well, why is that? Then later, in the midst of a production at a television station in Michigan, someone there said, “You know, one of the reasons the story wasn’t covered was that so many of the TV stations got burned by covering the Firestone rollover stories earlier in the ‘90s.” Everyone had their advertising budgets pulled by the car companies. Car advertising is so critical to so many media outlets it usually pays to not do highly critical stories of the auto industry. So it created this vacuum for us.

Here’s a little info on the event: In the four years since filmmaker Chris Paine released the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, electric vehicles have been revived. In that film, Paine documented the corporate leaders, government officials and consumers who embraced SUVs over electric cars, exploring the larger story of our car culture in the process.

See Who Killed the Electric Car? at 5:30 pm, then at 7:30 pm hear Paine discuss the latest progress on electric vehicles, the relationship between good design and sustainability, and new ways of thinking about mobility. After the program, see an electric car up close and get information about companies making electric vehicles in Indiana. How did we get that electric car in the building? Glad you asked…

So will you leave the Toby feeling depressed and hopeless? Maybe. Maybe you’ll feel outraged. Or maybe, like me,  it will just get you back on track. When NUVO asked Paine what people interested in seeing more electric cars should do, he gave a really simple, but brilliant answer:

They can keep motivated, keep asking questions and keep taking risks.

Have you seen a film or documentary that has changed your opinion on social issues? Has a film ever inspired you to make changes?

You may have heard, that we softly launched the new IMA website on Tuesday? Well, we were kind of busy with that recently. But we’ve kept our eyes on a couple of other projects, including a major video documentary. You may recall our first major documentary, on Maya Lin which we debuted on ArtBabble. A pic of Dan on location for that documentary, below.

Senior New Media Producer Dan Dark, on location in Walla Walla

So speaking of documentaries. In December, Danny Beyer and I spent a week in NYC working on our next documentary, featuring the artist duo Type A.  This is a really unique project for us, because we have enjoyed a wonderful working relationship with them – in fact, they’ve become ingrained in IMA’s culture through their work in 100 Acres….even on this blog. We’ve been even luckier in that we’ve received the full support, encouragement, collaboration and engagement from IMA’s contemporary curator, Lisa Freiman. It’s the makings of something special.

Stay hydrated! Simple advice.

In fact, this might be our most prolific collaboration with any artist. We’ve got hours and hours of team building raw footage, a Flickr set, blog posts, hilarious phone calls, hugs, the exchange of gifts and more.  It’s lasted years. They’ve also given us (and ArtBabble) one of the best In the Factory series to date. You can view that below. I implore you to at least watch the beginning…which will prompt you to watch the end.

It’s already become a very special project (and we’re a couple of months away from completing the documentary). Type  A have opened their studio to us, befriended the entire IMA family and been incredibly kind, patient, funny and inspiring collaborators. They even gave us hockey tickets for a Rangers game.

Our week in NYC was intense and we shot hours of footage. Interviewing people is an exhausting process and during the week we conducted on-camera interviews with several different people involved in Type A’s career (you’ll meet them in the video) and we grabbed tons of studio b-roll footage. It was an intense but good time.

The final day of shooting at Type A's studio

We’re a couple of months away from completing this video. Danny is currently editing the piece, sifting through all of the footage and searching for usable nuggets. There are plenty.  Even though it’s not done yet, I can imagine the final product being well over twenty minutes long, in which case, this would be our longest documentary to date. We’ve come a long way.

So while you’re waiting for this release, take time to watch Type A’s In the Factory interview (above) or check out their section on the IMA site and what they’re doing in 100 Acres. We love them.

So, it has been quite some time since we last blogged. Got tons of reasons why. Let’s see, we can start with our planning and facilitating our last Team Building meeting (which occurred in June). We’re also in production mode for our upcoming gallery and museum shows. We have family obligations that include end-of-the-school-year festivities. We have our other, extra-curricular activities such as martial arts and band practice.

But no excuses.

Wea culpa.

Members from a variety of IMA departments participate in the Type A project.

We can attest to the fact that it’s hard to maintain the level of energy and, truth be told, excitement throughout the Team Building project. And, now, the meeting-with-the-group-portion of the project has concluded. The Align sculpture is being produced as we write and we still have the installation and opening to look forward to. But the meetings are over.

And this brings us to the focus of this blog entry. What happens when the the project, the experience, nears or comes to an end? How does one transition out of being actively involved in this process back into life without it? As artists, we experience this every time we finish drawing or editing or printing or framing whatever we’re making (okay, we don’t actually frame our own work, but you get the idea). But what we’re talking about goes beyond the creative process. Or, more accurately, it expands the realm of artistic process into the viewers’ experience.

When we were training up at High 5 waaaaay back when, we found ourselves in the middle of what was acknowledged to be a pretty profound experience. The group with which we worked bonded in a way that surprised even veteran facilitator and yoda-esque guru, Jim Grout. The question arose: how do we transition back to our “real lives”? How do we take all of what we experienced back home? The answer, as we discussed again and again (as if we could wrangle something tangible from the words) was that we shouldn’t necessarily try to do anything, shouldn’t try to hold on too tightly. We could, if we were aware, let the experience seep back into our lives in ways that maybe we couldn’t predict. Sounded like a tall order at the time, especially since we were all psyched to go and tell our families and friends about what happened.

So, we did exactly that. Went home. Told family and friends that something pretty great had happened. Let them know that we couldn’t communicate everything but hoped it would come out. In time.

And that’s where we find ourselves now at the end of this portion of Team Building. How do we take myriad events we’ve all experienced throughout the project allow them to integrate into our lives? And, by extension, how can we, if it’s possible at all, convey its substance and spirit to the 100 Acres visitor? If the nature of the work we’ve done together is intangible, without physical residue and based on experience, then how can that be meaningfully communicated to both intimates and a larger public? Without bridging this gap, the project will remain a closed loop and the Align sculpture will not realize its full resonant potential. It’s time now to reflect upon the seemingly contradictory endeavor of recording your thoughts and anecdotes for park visitors. We ask you to do this to reflect and to see if that very action can bridge a formidable gap. Ultimately it’s up to each member of the team to decide his or her involvement. Didactic by choice? In any case, we ask that you take the leap and see where you land.

We’ve been avoiding writing this blog entry (even more than our usual procrastinating selves), since it would mean some amount of closure. We have to acknowledge that some of our time together has ended. By extension, we have to acknowledge that our time working together will, at some point, end altogether.

While we look forward to the culmination of what we’ve done together at the opening of 100 Acres, we’re not looking forward to the finality of the calendar which specifies an ending when Align is de-installed. But, like any artistic endeavor, we hold on loosely to what we can and hope the rest lingers and maybe gets woven into the fabric of our lives.

Type A: Adam and Andrew

We have the shared experience. We have some images and some words. We have the group’s collective memory and creative energy, much of which went into the inspiration and design of Align. We have so much.

And to be clear, this is a thank you, not a good-bye.

A+A

The first in-house video I worked on at the IMA was re-editing an African Pottery Techniques documentary shot in Burkina Faso.  At the time, it was a pretty big step for the museum – to actually do this in-house, quickly, easily and for free.  When I compare that to our latest  video release on Orly Genger’s installation “Whole”, I kind of laugh.  We shot this video in HD, incorporated Time Lapse, used a lift for certain shots and then published to YouTube.  Check it out below.

My colleague Dan Dark recently recorded the Christmas at Lilly House tour with the LH Director, Bradley Brooks in an afternoon.  Dan then finalized and edited in the space of a few hours, then uploaded it to our Guide by Cell account.  Visitors to Lilly House can access this content by using their cell phone. Our first Christmas at Lilly House involved a lot more time editing and recording, and incorporated the Dell DJ Ditty mp3 players.  I am actually laughing….but it worked at the time.  We plan on increasing our audio content across all of IMA’s collections in 2009, and I am incredibly excited about some of the concepts we are planning.  But I can’t discuss those yet…

imamuseum.org/blog is almost a year old.  It’s been a really exciting year for the blog with some superb posts from all over the museum.  I’m proud when I think that internally, the IMA supports a variety of areas blogging.  Where else can you go and hear directly from conservation, security, horticulture or an artist duo?  We’ve come a long way from the Felix Gonzalez-Torres blog (did anyone ever see that?) we setup a few years ago, and our imamuseum.org drupal based blog just a year ago.  Sometime we get it wrong.  Sometimes we get it right.

I’m also reflecting on past projects because I can’t quite share some of the upcoming projects in 2009, yet.  I’m dying to, and the second I can I will post.  The main change in the digital content we produce is an increased focus on the contemporary world.  The Toby, Contemporary department as well as the opening of 100 Acres in 2009, presents access to cutting edge artists, performers and academics.  That means content opportunities that will become audio guides, videos, and web projects.  It’s gonna be a big year, and we plan on making ‘09 the best for the museum visitor and technology-focused experiences.  It’s all about keeping the momentum.

And in closing, this is Despi’s last day at the museum.  She’s been an integral part of the IMA and New Media, a dedicated professional, supportive colleague, and more importantly, a friend.  Best of luck Darnell!

Danny Beyer, sporting the new IMA Blog t-shirt

The IMA joined Flickr a little late in the game, but I feel like we are really starting to use it in some interesting ways.  My colleague Despi recently created a set featuring the new IMA blog t-shirts.  You’ll be hearing more about that.  Our conversation department has been active creating individual case studies on art objects.  You can learn about a recent Thornton Dial acquisition here (complete with video), or the treatment of a Saarinen Sideboard.  It’s an interesting glimpse into some behind-the-scenes action at an art museum and a new way of discovering engaging content.  Look for more of these conservation case studies in the very near future.

2009 will bring lots of activity to the IMA, especially in 100 Acres: The Virginia B.  Fairbanks Art and Nature Park.  The Nugget Factory will be working very closely with the contemporary department to document the art installations, capturing artist interviews and developing new visitor experiences.  On Flickr, we created a set dedicated set to Type A’s involvement in this space, here (I recommend the videos).  Under development, is the official 100 Acres Flickr group.  We’re still tweaking it, but please feel free to join and contribute your photography.

IMA’s Horticulture department was kind enough to place some new signs across the beautiful IMA campus.  We often spot photographers walking our grounds and we would love to see their perspective.  I hope these signs encourage or inspire our visitors to go online and shape IMA’s presence on Flickr.  I mean that.

We really want you to get involved in Flickr

IMA blogger Noelle, also just completed a Flickr article in PREVIEWS, the publication for members of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  I told you we love Flickr, perhaps a little obsessed.  If anyone is interested in a copy, leave a comment and I’ll send you one.

And finally, Museums and the Web will be hosting their annual conference in Indianapolis next April.  They’ve created a group requesting images of Indianapolis.  It will give conference attendees from all over the world (Australia, Japan and Holland) a chance to discover our city and check out the new airport.

I’m all Flickr’d out.  Have any Flickr ideas?  Let me know.

We’ve been wanting to write a short note to you all ever since the evening of the IMA’s 125th Anniversary Gala. What a night! A great show of energy and commitment to the museum, a rare chance to spend time with a brand new, permanent work from a major living artist and really just a great party.

Type A piece up for auction at the 125th Gala

But one thing stuck in our heads more than anything else. As we walked in, we saw so many familiar faces at work: first Kim, then Jyl, then Tad, Sarah, Allison, eventually Tammy (on duty with full security gear!)… The list goes on. So many others. We greeted each other, high-fived, maybe chatted a bit. Knowing so many people at the IMA is a privilege and a direct result of the Team Building Project. The kind of familiarity experienced that night, so casual and so comfortable, struck us as a rare and remarkable result of the art-making process. We always hope that in making art, we are exposed to new experiences, ones that we could not have predicted before (and sometimes after) a project begins. This is a personal dividend that we truly value in the work we’re doing together.

Next week we return to Indy to make art together and discuss new ideas for the sculpture. The Team Building Project continues to get deeper, more rewarding and more meaningful. The tangible outcome of the Project, the “residue” we discussed in previous entries, is evolving as a direct response to the encounters we’ve shared. We never planned where this would take us. We have simply been committed to responding as honestly and openly as possible, as artists and as participants in an ever-changing process. We continue to balance commitment to our ideas with responsiveness to the challenges that emerge.

We believe there is a creative arc in the process of making art. It starts with the artist searching for an idea and then shaping what it is to be. At some point, there is a switch; the idea begins to let the artist know what it needs to be and what needs to be done to achieve its ends. Recognizing that tipping point and responding honestly is something that we have always tried to do in our practice. This Project has brought new meaning to that creative arc. It is a privilege working with you all and we look forward to seeing you on November 14th.

Type A

Dear Count Blogula,

I’m still trying to figure out what we were trying to say last time.  Something about the Invisible Man and mirrors. Good reading. I figure we should keep going with this.

More new things percolating since we last wrote. At this point we are reevaluating what the sculpture will look like and what it means within the larger context of the project as a whole. The original conception for the piece, a 40ish-foot climbing tower suspended about 12 feet of the ground, has been expanded to include handholds that are cast from our team members’ grips, and indeed the decision to suspend or not suspend the tower has come into question.

We are back to having it in the ground and accessible to those who want to touch and climb it, and then we’re back again to the suspended version with all its visual impact and conceptual tickle. We will be discussing what all this means with the Team and we hope this could influence the direction the sculpture takes. In the end, we might have the sculpture suspended for one year and then renew the piece and give it new meaning by lowering it onto the ground for another year. So the question remains: what does it mean to build the tower and suspend it and what does it mean for it to rest on the ground?

One connection jumped out at me: the Tower of Babel allegory. Babel was the first city built after the Flood, and the tower was built as a tribute to the human endurance that allowed the city to flourish. Forget the fact that God destroyed it and fractured the population into multiple languages as punishment for building such a monument to themselves and not to him… I am mostly interested in how the Tower was the first utopian gesture, how it was a bold manifestation of the Life Drive and an assertion that the community can grow, survive, and improve itself without limits. As it turns out, God didn’t like that idea and neither did Freud. (I made drawings of our sculpture in a way that strongly referenced the Tower of Babel, but it made the thing look like some Meso-American shrine. Looks aaaall wrong. Scrapped that idea.)

So there we were, minding our own business when a certain curator who shall remain nameless came along and dropped Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents in our lap. This is the first I’ve read of Freud and I am completely blown away by the ideas he offers and their relevance to our project. I write this blog entry from within a prankster-socialist family camp somewhere near East Noseblow West Virginia, and was able to get you on the pay phone for a few moments today to express my enthusiasm for said ideas. It seems these are all familiar to you, dare I say old hat, so no need to spell everything out for you. But in the interest of our gentle readers, Mr. Smarty McShrinkpants, I will lay it down as I see it. Everyone, stick with me here. It’s gonna get a bit stuffy in here. I’ve only read only the introduction and am already wanting to bring in the ideas presented. Let’s see what happens when I read the actual book.

For those who want the brief version of my conclusions: the suspended tower expresses the unattainability of balanced society and the absurdity of monuments built to honor that ideal. The grounded tower introduces the element of risk (to an inferred or real climber) and as such becomes a device that can be used to confront our primal desire to destroy ourselves, which manifests as a fear of bodily harm and death. This confrontation of our primal Death Drive is what ultimately makes the use of the high course in Experiential Education so powerful and effective. We negotiate our own primal desire/fear of death to grow and perhaps realize that we all are driven to die but go on living thanks to the Life Drive, a striving towards that unattainable ideal of an inner and outer growth and, ultimately, utopia.

I’ve been going on about the idea of Recapitulation(ism) for years, and it seems Freud was into that idea as well. In terms of biology, the idea is that as the human fetus develops, it reenacts key stages in the evolution of life, from single-cell creatures to amphibians to primitive mammals, etc. What this means is that developmental evolution is scalable: the path taken by life at a macro level can be scaled to apply to the path taken by one organism in its development process, and conversely, can be scaled up to apply to the evolution of civilizations and cultures and communities.  Stages of the psychological challenge and growth that individuals face are reflected in the growth of societies. Understand the person and you’ll understand the community. Seems like there is some relevance here to the Project.

The neuroses of the individual and how s/he negotiates them can be scaled up to societies at large. Since the collaborative process is at heart a functioning within a society or a community, we are indeed a community of two. As part of the Team Building project we are inviting others to create a larger community and as such it’s worth examining how community is created and how it can succeed or fail. Louis Menand in his introduction to Civilization and Its Discontents says that humans can’t help but create a culture wherever they are, that “humans beings produce culture in the same sense that they produce carbon monoxide: they can’t help it.” (I think he meant “carbon dioxide”, that culture is a natural byproduct of our existence. I doubt he’s referring to internal combustion engines.)

But where do the individual’s and society’s neuroses and anxieties come from?

Another idea that Freud embraced was Lamarckianism, which proposes that a creature’s behavior can create traits which are genetically passed down. This idea is somewhat at odds with Natural Selection in that it proposes that there is an ideal towards which every species is striving, rather than Natural Selection’s hit-or-miss stumble towards better reproductive success. As it applies to Freud, the idea is that the traumas of our ancestors are somehow carried down the generations for us to struggle with. We still not only feel the repercussions of the Fall from Eden and the murder of Abel (or our crazy great-grandfather Sid who killed his wife with an ax); we have to find our own way to actively negotiate their consequences. Freud believes that everything comes back to the Oedipal struggle. As Menand puts it, “civilization began when the young men of the tribe ganged up and murdered the father-figure, the tribal leader who had appropriated all the women for his own sexual use. The guilt they experienced (since hatred is ambivalent: they loved their leader, too), is the origin of the Über-Ich – the superego – and of the repression that makes culture possible.” The idea is that we’ve been paying for this ever since, that this primal guilt is what redirects that violent urge inward towards self-destruction and destruction of societies, or can be displaced to focus on others. Masochism is primal urge; sadism is that same urge redirected. Most importantly, society and culture cannot exist without this primal guilt, and it is this guilt that lies at the root of anxiety and depression.

Freud originally proposed that humans have two primal drives: the Sexual, or libido which is a Pleasure Principle, and the Ego, which is the Reality principle. These drives, he proposed, are always in conflict. But when it comes to narcissism, the theory breaks down. Lust for self has no place within this original system. So he revised his thinking to describe these two primal drive: the Life Drive, or “Eros”, which is the drive to reproduce and the assemble organic substances into larger entities, such as culture and civilizations. This is in conflict with, and can only exist because of the struggle with, the Death Drive. This is the legacy of our father-killing guilt and is a primal drive towards a suicidal penance for that crime. This energy can be redirected towards others in an effort to allow ourselves to live a bit longer and control the circumstances of our own death.  We do not fear death so much as loss of control as it pertains to the timing and manner of our own death.

And so enter the high elements on the challenge course.

In short, tension is central to the meaning of the Team Building project and the sculpture, and I believe that this tension is between the creative and the destructive.

OK, I’m worn out from this. I am fully prepared for you to blow holes all through this if need be, and surrender control of this blogfest into your capable, Lacanian hands. Lacan was, after all, a strong believer in Freud.

Yours in over-thinking everything,
Blogwin

Rubber Baby Bloggy Bumper,

Okaaaaaaay.

I’m not going to attempt to blow holes in this because I’m not that up on my Freud. And, I’m not reading the copy of Civilization and it’s Discontents that you so graciously sent to me. It’s sitting on my desk just looking like I read it, right next to my very tattered copy of the latest GQ (you deal with what theory goes into our heads; i’ll worry about what styling product goes onto them).

Anyhoo, what you wrote is intense and well considered. It’s also more of a lecture than a dialog. And, that’s both welcome and needed. Just makes a response a bit tougher. I was going to go through it and respond paragraph by paragraph but rejected that method. Figure I’ll just jump in with thoughts about where the project is and where it appears to be going.

First, I’m writing this before our third Team Building session coming up next week. It’s amazing how quickly the time in between our meetings has passed. It’s welcome though. This project needs a forward momentum. Without it, we’d lose energy and, truth be told, interest.  Experiential education has a half life. The effects do last but tend to fade as does all experience. Real life, as they say, creeps back in. Throwing oneself back into the experience is both beneficial and necessary. I can honestly say that the time spent away from the project becomes tinged with a certain longing for both a return to team building as well as an end to the whole thing. Kinda like “Should we include the Wiggle Waggle initiative?” vs. “If I have to say ‘Wiggle Waggle initiative’ one more time, I’m gonna lose it!” There’s a desire to hold on to the profundity that can accompany Experiential Education (as with art). Isn’t that what brings me/us/everyone back to it again and again? It is motivation. At the same time, there’s a desire to just have it be over, to let the artwork be complete. Ah, there’s our beloved tension.

How do we address the idea that we want this project to be over, that we want to move on to the next thing, when the experience and growth we’ve encountered through it has been unprecedented? Our entire working process has changed. We’ve always wanted to challenge notions of what we could be as artists. We attempted to do this at first by always making stuff that looked different from other stuff we made. At some point, we let ourselves play with concepts that were different as well. But, With Team Building, it’s moved to a whole new level. We have chosen a medium that does not have an end like a painting or a sculpture or a video has. Oddly enough, it can also have an amorphous beginning since all experience preceding the team building plays a role in whatever happens. The opportunity to relinquish defining the parameters of the artwork is unique, at least for us. We hope it is for both the team members and anyone else who is following the project. That level of collaborative uncertainty helps to propel. It’s real life that tends to drag its heels in this kind of situation.

Heading back to Indy for the third session, I am very interested in how the team will respond to a new challenges, including low course and high course elements. We’ve seen how the team can both unify and we’ve seen how they can remain fragmented. That’s the nature of such a diverse group. The next session will bring a level of individual challenge heretofore unaddressed. Yay! It’s exciting and, of course, anxiety provoking for everyone involved. It’s the biggest challenge yet.

During this next session, we will, as you mentioned, discuss the sculptural element with the team in a direct manner that will call for participation and engagement in the creative process. We’ve already broached this subject but in a more indirect manner. We’ve referenced the sculpture for the park but not necessarily the decision making process that goes into making it, the realm usually reserved for the artist(s) proper. The questions surrounding the handholds and the tower’s suspension will be addressed as will others that will arise throughout the team’s time together. The discussion and results will make it official: we are truly collaborating with the team. It’s necessary for the project to culminate and, then, end. And isn’t that what we all want, a satisfying resolution? I know I do.

In suspending the tower, we end the Team Building project. The tower becomes a symbol of what we did, at least for those that did it. Like a photograph, it could remind someone of something, but it’d be hard pressed to offer up a new experience other than viewing it as art.  On the ground, the tower offers more experience. You could actually climb it. Team Building continues. Not sure I’m ready for that. As mentioned, I want an ending, something definitive.  So, I’m up for the one-two punch of suspending it and then lowering it after a designated period of time. That way, Team Building ends and we get all the good stuff that comes along with that (and a big, sexy sculpture to boot).  Lowering it in the future will be a way to revisit what we and others have done as well as start something anew. Now, I’m not saying that we should go back and teambuild new people on that tower. I’d be happy to have someone else determine how the tower will be used, to let it live on without us.

The best I can do to connect these ideas with what you wrote is to acknowledge that in realizing the Team Building project, we’ve engaged in Recapitulation that follows our own ten-year-old, artmaking relationship. Team Building began by focusing on conflict (Type A vs. IMA); it’s evolved to true collaboration (Type A hearts IMA). This is how it happened with us. This is cool. In this sense all the Life/Death drive of which you speak exists for The Team in the project as well as for us behind the scenes. You and I have pushed and pulled with our ego and the attempt to subvert it. We are dealing with our own pleasure but also with our own death. We are both the fathers and the sons who want to kill them. No wonder we’re so guilty. In any
case, we are definitely dealing with the primal urge to control our own demise.

On that note, let’s make sure that our harnesses are secure when we’re up in the high elements.

AA

Check out this photo on Flickr to see a diagram of my crazy.

This is a super-busy time for the Nugget Factory and it just sort of happened.  For a couple of days last week, Daniel was out of the office with Dan shooting some video in San Francisco for the upcoming show, Power and Glory: Court Arts of China’s Ming Dynasty. I found myself sitting at my desk, working at a normal pace…and bored out of my mind.  Two days later, with the full factory back in action, things sort of erupted, with new tasks flying in at every angle.  I guess I prefer it that way…Check out this selection of stuff we have coming soon:

• A new Flickr project giving you a look at some conservation work done by IMA conservators in conjunction with the exhibition, Preserving a Legacy: Wishard Hospital Murals (coming January 2009)
  
• The website for Power and Glory, which will integrate video in a way we have never tried before (coming October 2008)
• A full length documentary on Maya Lin that is in the home stretch, we hope you can see this late 2008
• The special web presence featuring Type A, in the final stages of editing, getting ready for the Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park groundbreaking on September 18th
• A new Flickr group called “Class Picture Day” – submit your own class photo inspired by the exhibition, Class Pictures: Photographs by Dawoud Bey (You should submit your class photo, but even if you don’t you can find mine on there!)
• Two audio tracks recorded by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra for you to enjoy, inspired by works of art in the American Galleries

So that is a just a taste for the next couple of months.  We’ll keep you posted as new things come up.  Next year will be bringing some super exciting things that you will definitely hear about here, so stay tuned!!

Tentacles of the Beast, 2008

I just returned from a trip to New York in the height of the August heat with all of the lovely smells and suffocating humidity that comes with it. The goal of this trip? To spend as much time with artists and their work as possible, to slip into the city’s unique rhythms and magic anonymously and deeply. To see again.

My first experience with art on this trip happened unexpectedly and almost immediately. When I got to my Midtown hotel to drop off my bags before rushing down to a Chelsea studio on 26th Street, I pulled back my curtains and opened the windows, letting in the outside air to equalize the freezing air in my room. Set before me was a Hitchcockian scene, a 21st century Rear Window. I looked outside of my room on the eighth floor and saw various people engaged in quiet, disparate activities: in one window a woman busy at her desk, in another two people kissing, and an old man walking out onto the fire escape to grab a secret smoke. There were silent intimate recognitions, an awareness that we were all seeing each other, despite our resistance to acknowledging it, a fierce refusal to allow our eyes to meet directly. Extreme privacy and exposure both at once. I was reminded of the Impressionist era opera paintings where the subject of the work is spectatorship, the reciprocal experience of looking and being looked at. What happens in the space between.

The old man turned out to be a performance artist of sorts. Standing on the balcony he pulled open a new pack of cigarettes, removing the small bit of rectangular foil and carefully and intentionally released it in midair. My first reaction to his gesture was anger, but this soon yielded to embarrassment at witnessing his private transgression, an acknowledgment that we all have these moments but never want to admit to them. And then something happened: the small piece of foil wafted through the air, catching the glints of sunlight like some precious, weightless gem released from outer space. Watching it descend and flutter eight floors to the ground, I found myself smiling completely, awed by the simple beauty that such a common object could bring to this very particular context and moment. And then I realized that the old man had dropped the foil just for me, enacting a private performance pointing to the Beautiful, an experience of the Sublime.

Type A and Lisa

Then on to Chelsea to meet up with collective Type A (Adam Ames and Andrew Bordwin), two artists with whom I’m working on a major Team Building project for the much anticipated Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park which will open in September 2009. The streets of Chelsea were mostly abandoned, the dealers secreted away in the Hamptons for the last gasp of summer before the frenzy of season openers in September. Adam and Andrew and I were about to head to South Street Seaport to take the Circle Line around the Harbor to see Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls project.  When I got to their studio, they were excited to show me a new body of work, a series of photogravures that they had been developing over the past year.

Untitled, Type A, 2008. Courtesy of the artists and Goff & Rosenthal, New York.

They laid them out before me and talked about their menacing quality and I disagreed with them immediately, saying that the series was emphatically intimate, beautiful, vulnerable, romantic, mysterious, nostalgic, and poetic. The velvety, luscious images depict the artists’ bodies posed in extreme shadow to reveal only a fragment of the whole. Each picture presents one body separate and alone, but inevitably in dialogical relation to the other. The best ones verge on abstraction, where the forms become almost unrecognizable, but forcefully organic and referential. Because Adam and Andrew each took the complementary picture of the other, there is a fascinating duality to the works that encapsulates Adam and Andrew’s unorthodox artistic relationship, a kind of unified portrait of the maker and the sitter, a self and other, a presence and a lack. In most photographic situations the photographer and the sitter usually are unrelated, but these images take on more significance because of Adam and Andrew’s collaborative practices over the past ten years. There is an interesting in-betweenness in these photos, a tension between the two of them that is an unspoken but visual and physical form of intimacy.

Adam, Andrew and I had a lively, rambunctious cab ride downtown to experience Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls from a boat. Approaching the Pier on a hot New York summer night, I was blanketed by the smell of saltwater and sea air along with the accompanying odor of diesel fumes. It reminded me of my youth at the New Jersey shore (and of another incredible project that Adam and Andrew are developing. . . more to come on that in a future post, perhaps). Now the art was coming to me in the form of a smell, showing me the way an odor can evoke memories and physical sensations, creating an elusive mental picture that fades immediately upon experiencing it, leaving a satisfying sense of longing and desire for a past that can never be completely reconstructed. Standing in line, Andrew had me turn around to see an old ship and the skyline of downtown New York through its masts. More magic in everyday things.

South Street Seaport near the Circle Line

The waterfalls are remarkable and ordinary at the same time. Our favorite one sat beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, itself a work of art. The majestic bridge juxtaposed with the immense scaffolding of Eliasson’s waterfall’s armature was strikingly beautiful and perfectly sited; the scale of hundreds of feet of rushing water against the backdrop of the bridge and cityscape utterly breathtaking and pleasurable. The irrationality of a manmade waterfall made from hundreds of feet of steel and pumps, sitting in an absurd location, pointed to the unlikely relationship between art, nature, urban infrastructure, and the postindustrial present.

So much more happened on the trip, including a wonderful studio visit with sculptor Petah Coyne who is finishing up a new body of work that will premiere at Galerie Lelong on October 24, 2008. I’ve been watching the work develop over the last few years and have been lucky enough to engage with Petah in an intense dialogue about its relationship to art history, literature (particularly Dante’s renowned epic poem The Divine Comedy), film, and personal memory. I think it is some of the best work that she has produced to date. There are two objects that stand out the most for me, one based on the medieval poet Dante’s idealized, beloved Beatrice and the other on the Roman poet Virgil. I would welcome either of these objects into the IMA’s permanent collection with gusto, just in case there’s anyone out there reading with the will and means to help us grow the collection with a single gesture.

Petah Coyne, Untitled #1180 (Beatrice), 2003-08. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Lelong, New York.

I have fallen in love with Coyne’s Beatrice, once described by Dante as “La gloriosa donna della mia mente” (the glorious lady of my mind). Long the subject of Pre-Raphaelite artists and poets, Beatrice has been transformed anew into a peculiar abstract vision comprised of roughly 20,000 silk flowers, wax cast statuary, taxidermy animals and birds, thread, silk/rayon velvet, felt, tree branches, tree bark, driftwood, specially formulated wax, pearl-headed hat pins, black spray paint, pigment, plywood, wood, metal hardware, chicken wire fencing, wire, cable and cable bolts. With all of these components, one would be hard pressed to believe that the final object could be specific, cohesive, and staggering. But it is.

Petah Coyne, Detail, Untitled #1180 (Beatrice), 2003-08. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Lelong, New York.

Petah’s irresistible blue and purple Beatrice, which contrasts with previous depictions of her in red and white, towers over the spectator at just over eleven feet tall; she is the whirling embodiment of Divine Love, virtue, and grace, a force of good, a personification of Beauty. This condensed representation of essential love simultaneously encapsulates the geography of paradise and its most famous guide.

Petah Coyne makes the viewer want to believe in Heaven, even if s/he has her doubts.

And then an amazing dinner conversation with Orly Genger who is in the midst of developing a powerful commissioned project for our Efroymson Entry Pavilion which will open on November 21, 2008. Orly once told me that she sees her work perched at the intersection of Anni Albers and Richard Serra. This colossal hand-knotted, organic installation is going to be amazing. Be prepared to be moved in lots of ways!

Then back to Indianapolis to escort a Chicago-based blogger around the Art & Nature Park. Walking out of the rear loading dock, heading over towards the Park, I ran into two IMA employees, Brad Dilger, our masterful installation tech who handles all of our intermedia art projects with great innovation and commitment, and Brose Partington, a fabulous artist in his own right who helps build mounts and other things for our exhibitions. Walking over to me with impish grins, they asked me to take a look at two shiny, ribbed aluminum venting pipes that were spilling out of a dark mechanical doorway on the side of our limestone building. Tied together and suspended on the side of the building, the functional pipes looked like part of a Tim Hawkinson installation (perhaps I was thinking this because on Monday I just installed a new addition to our collection, Hawkinson’s Mobius Ship, up on the third floor in the contemporary galleries). Upon closer inspection, I saw an object label (perfectly scaled and formatted) haphazardly affixed to one of the exhaust pipes.  On it someone had typed the following words:

Tentacles of the Beast, 2008
Aluminum on Limestone
Building Services
2008.1

I marveled at this installation of shiny pipes and the gesture invoked by our Building Services employees through naming it. Although I knew it was meant as a spoof, the effort that they made to name this everyday functional form moved me; the fact that they named it was a way of seeing in it its artistry and humor. It brought the Beautiful back to me again in another guise. It is always a good sign for a creative institution when things like this start popping up around the building where people work. And I thought how great it was that so many people sitting at the smoking shack – custodians, electricians, curators, preparators – were talking about the question of what made something art. Could a set of aluminum exhaust pipes transform into a sculpture in situ? The very real act of seeing was happening in the IMA’s back yard, people were talking about art and the everyday. It was exceptionally cool.

Tentacles of the Beast, 2008

So I asked Bert Reader, our facilities engineer, a.k.a., the artist, to share a little bit more about the work. Here’s what he said:

“This whole contraption came about in an effort to eliminate the need for the temporary emergency generator which cost the IMA about $1000 per day just to sit there.  Part of the reason for the recent generator failure was that the room air temperature became too hot when the generator ran. Adapters where purchased from Caterpillar and mounted on the combustion air intake manifolds.  12″ aluminum flexible pipes were connected and they were run outside allowing combustion air to be drawn in at ambient conditions. We are currently working with BDMD and Circle Design group to find a permanent solution.  Hester DeLoach [our typesetter] remarked that the pipes look like tentacles, David Lingeman [from Buildings] noted that it was aluminum on limestone, and the generator has been a beast, a problem child, since it was placed there, hence the title.  Someone mentioned that it looked like it was trying to get out, and interestingly enough had we placed the generator outside to begin with, we wouldn’t have had any issues.”

Art is found in the places in between. It is the responsibility of each of us to open ourselves up to seeing it.

Hey MC Blogmaster 5000,

Here I am again, getting back in the writing groove. Funny enough, just read a story in the last New York Times Magazine (August 3rd) about a group of internet pranksters that generally call themselves “trolls.” Seems they like to nuke web sites and mess with people very aggressively. One of them is quoted as saying that he “wants everyone off the Internet. Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed.” Guy seems like a real party. Too much free time, if you ask me.

But back to the arts.

The project has evolved significantly since we last exchanged thoughts this way. We’ve completed our first two-day workshop with everyone in the Team Building project and have been talking about what it all means ever since. Right after the second day concluded we went out with Lisa (Freiman) to discuss where this was going and exchanged some really interesting ideas.

Type A has always made work that respects the idea first and the medium second. Ultimately the medium we choose for a project must be in response to the concept driving that project, and, in fact, the medium ideally helps to inform and reinforce the concept. Different media can do different things well, and we would never choose video to do what a photograph can do, nor would we choose to make photographs when the weight and authority of a sculpture is what’s called for. In the end, then, the medium is simply a conduit and is chosen for its ability to channel the idea properly. Reveling in the medium makes sense only when it’s functioning as a good conduit. Once that purpose has been fulfilled, we can roll around in the formal glory of whatever medium we happen to be working in. In the end, the medium should practically disappear.

This is a way of working which has been liberating for us because it means we are free to use whatever path is best suited to the concept and can focus completely on developing that concept. Although we’ve always loved the OBJECT in art, whatever that object may be, in the end it is disposable and is in fact not the art itself. This is where the Team Building project comes in.

When challenged with developing a piece for the Art and Nature Park, we realized early on in the process that an object-oriented piece would never be able to achieve what we wanted. We are too concerned these days with the shortcomings of art-as-commodity and the dangers of institutionalized mediation and intimidation messing with the experiencing of art by the public at large. Object-oriented art reinforces this, with the aura of the object being preserved and augmented through access control, provenance, market fluctuations and an accretion of expertise that a very small community of people continues to guard as their own. In short, it is often intimidating for people to go into a museum and restrictions on how one can understand art are inferred at every turn. This can be reinforced by an institution or it can be challenged. There are now significant discussions at the IMA to lead things towards a more open way which encourages a sense of entitlement in how the community can access and experience art, and we are privileged to be a part of that.

You and I decided that we wanted to create a gesture as well as an object and that the gesture is the primary component of the project. The medium we chose is Experiential Education, one which has no physical result (other than minor injuries) and which is direct and unfiltered by the history or art or any other discipline other than its own. The Team Building project can’t be touched or held or bought or sold. It can be experienced, either as a participant or as a viewer. It has an presence beyond what happens within the core team of participants, but defining that is as elusive as defining an invisible man. You can only see his shape when something is draped on him, when some piece of fabric or a mattress or a bathtub full of water betrays his outline and weight and movement. In a sense we have done away with the object and the medium altogether and instead have started a relationship with a cross section of people at the institution which has invited us to make work. What happens within that group is the piece itself, the draped fabric that gives this invisible man shape. The work we do is based on a set of principles and ideas that’s constantly changing, but has a foundation in trust, respect, inquiry, playfulness and honesty.

The project does have an object-oriented component as well, and how. It’s going to be a huge sculpture (we think) and, as such, will function as a counterpoint to the experiences we are sharing as a group. At this point we are feeling an increasing need for the group to have a hand in the design and fabrication of the piece and that will play out in the weeks to come. Having a huge sculpture is arguably the complete flip side of the principles that inform the intangible, performative heart of the project. But is it incompatible? Are we having our cake and eating it too? Seems pretty clear that the answer is yes, but is that so bad? Don’t these two components complement each other and in doing so set the issues in relief?

There’s a lot to consider. This has been an amazing experience so far and we’ve got a long way to go.

Yours in rubber chickens,
Blogwin

Dear B-Lo (again with a new name, this one with a trendy feel),

“Trolls” going onto the Internets to get everyone off the Internets? Hmmm, irony can be pretty ironic.

Anyhoo, it has been a while since our last blog-fession. What’s the penance for that? I’m guessing it has something to do with getting on Facebook.

So, in the last three weeks, much has happened, as you mentioned, with the Team Building project. The blog has the potential to be a place to expand our conversations, to continue to leave residue. I say “potential” mainly because we haven’t exactly… written. Instead, the ideas stayed where, I guess, they are more comfortable: in the ether just above our head waiting to be referenced. Holding the concept to be primary and leaving it formally undefined is a way to avoid losing it. Trying to contain ideas by writing them down, for example, can be a foolproof way of having the concept become slippery, more evasive. At the same time, I want to get some of this stuff down on paper (or, at least, on The Internets). The idea that things cannot be defined is a nice bit of theoretical play but winds up creating paralysis. Sure, no one can know exactly what I am trying to convey. So what? Trying is a noble failure.

So, on to the residue or, more specifically, the Invisible Man (I like to capitalize this as a proper noun since I prefer to believe he actually exists). He’s wrapped in bandages in order for his shape to be seen (he also wore those funny, goggle-like glasses and, if memory serves, a dashing smoking jacket). In order to be identified as a human, these “drapings” were necessary. Sure, no one could tell exactly what he actually looked like, but they could tell where he was and what the hell was holding that pipe up in mid-air (By the way, if he smoked or drank, wouldn’t we see the substance ingested? I mean, the invisibility didn’t extend to external objects, right?) From there, we realized that the “drapings,” or residue, can initially be acknowledged as a need for everyone else to know where the Invisible Man was at all time. Otherwise, he would be undefined, undetectable and, at some point, able to see them naked. Though the residue was for the protection of the visible, we soon realized that they were much more important for the Invisible Man himself. Without it, he would not know where he was. And that would be maddening (not in an irksome way but in a loony-bin way).

Without a sense of self, without the ability to have some identifiable aspect shown to someone or, more importantly, reflected back to oneself, there can be no sense of self. Sure, the reflection can only approximate and is inaccurate (Check this out), but they are somewhat beneficial reference points. And don’t get me started on Lacan’s Mirror Stage (You have read your Lacan, haven’t you?). Inaccurate reflections may create anxiety that sends us to analysis, but they do provide for some psychological stability. The alternative would be much worse. In art, we need our concepts to have a physical or psychological remnant. In a cynical way, art can be too interested in the physical object. People can use their knowledge of what the object “means” and what someone may or may not understand about it to create a culture of intimidation. The residue can, and often does, end up in the hands of someone with an agenda. This happens quite often when the artist is unreachable or, more so, dead. When the gap between artist idea/experience and audience is so vast, some feel the need to create authority in order to tell people when they are experiencing art. Perpetuating the myth that people need to be led through art in one way or another is a way to keep a lot of people employed (art consultants, anyone?). This has gotten us a bit P.O.’d. We’ve been around too many people who make such a point of being told what to see and, more specifically, what to buy. Now, we are definitely calling for a egalitarian, non-commodified, peace, love and understanding hippie like art world. But, we’d like to see a bit more direct experience as the rule, not the exception, right? This has been the driving force behind Team Building. Give some people some direct experience and see what happens. Let the art be made from that.

So, the project needs the residue. Without it, it could not be identified. More importantly, without it, we could not identify what we’re doing. We set up situations and then leave a lot to chance. But, the residue has become a prominent point for us to reevaluate and understand our need to get some of the ideas down. Without it, we would not be able to point to what we’re doing. And, without that, we would not be able to point to ourselves.

As for the sculptural element, this “big tower” that we’re constantly referring to, it is as necessary as we want it to be. It can be the largest bit of residue that our involvement with the IMA could produce. I’ve been struggling with the “having the cake and eating it to” thing as well. It’s always seemed like the Team Building and Tower endeavors were separate but connected. After our last meeting with The Group (capitalized for the same reasons), we’ve become much more focused on how the tower cannot be discrete from the experiential education. Each part keeps seeping into the other; and while it’s akin to osmosis to maintain homeostasis, the environment keeps changing. So, we continue to attempt to bring the various elements into balance while acknowledging that tension is necessary in art as it is in life. So, these seemingly antithetical elements maintain a stress but also provide a release. I have to believe that we have internalized Experiential Education’s message of self-challenge to such an extent that we are seeking out struggle as a choice to expand our lives and, by extension, grow. The two components don’t have to be resolved; that would be improbable, unrealistic and just plain misguided.

Our goal now is to continue to push to find ourselves in new situations providing new experience, tension and all. We can then offer ourselves and others the opportunity to drape something. To not do so would be insane.

AA