MDW Micro Meditation: Chris Collins & Anjali Alm-Basu

by Robert Chase Heishman

RESPONSE 1: EXPLICIT VERSION 

video still, YouTube video of Ginuine's "Pony" (w/ lyrics)

I'm just a bachelor, I'm looking for a partner. Someone who knows how to ride, without even falling off. Gotta be compatible; takes me to my limits. Girl when I break you off, I promise that you won't want to get off. If you're horny, lets do it, ride it, my pony. My saddle's waiting. Come and jump on it. If you're horny lets do it. Ride it: my pony. My saddle's waiting; come and jump on it. Sitting here flosing, peeping your steelo. Just once if I have the chance, the things I would do to you. You and your body, every single portion, send chills up and down your spine, juices flowing down your thigh. If we're gonna get nasty, baby, first we'll show and tell, 'till I reach your pony tail. Oh, Lurk all over and through you baby, until we reach the stream. You'll be on my jockey team. 

~Ginuwine

RESPONSE 2: ACTUAL VERSION

video still, Chris Collins, "Pony", 2011 http://youtu.be/2RWg8ER-j5Q

Whenever Ginuwine's song "Pony" makes it into an artwork, an angel gets its wings. Okay, well, maybe not, but at least it gets my attention. For this year's Suitable Video MDW Fair screening room, curated by Scott Wolniak, there were many thoughtful, intriguing, and often humorous videos presented. Coming to the forefront was Chris Collins' "Pony", and subsequently, "Response to Pony" by Anjali Alm-Basu. In Collins' screen-capture-recorded video, shot within the spaceless context of a computer choreography software, a lone computer-generated human stands ebbing to the intro of Ginuwine's burpy bass sounds. Soon, the figure is enacting an impossible choreography. The body becomes mangled and at times indistinguishable due to its contortions into and around itself, before syncing back to its starting pose. The choreography addresses the limits and possibilities of taking a computer software and playing with it to the point of an unrealistic real-world application. It is an intriguing display of a body in glitch-form. By hovering in the virtual, the work feels pleasurably latent. And all throughout, the Ginuwine soundtrack fits perfectly. The song doesn't quite match up with the dance solo (thankfully), instead it cuts the heady, even absurd, performance of the digital body with a dish of explicit lyrics and booty jam.    

video still, Anjali Alm-Basu, "Response To Chris Collins' 'Pony'", 2011 http://youtu.be/N6nncbuwfxc

Equally compelling was Anjali Alm-Basu's "Response to Pony", which pays real-life tribute to Collins' choreography. In "Response to Pony" you are presented with a similar fixed point-of-view, yet this time instead of the endless vista of a digital world we have a view of a rather cluttered bedroom, a woman starting a video recording on her computer's camera, who then assumes the same introductory pose as Collins' figure. With Ginuwine's song as soundtrack as well, you soon realize that this real-life figure is attempting to perform the same timeline of movement. As a companion piece, you see the translation from computer figure to real-life figure. With the template before her, the woman stares, determined, to the screen, us. Her movements, equally folded and awkward, appear to be untrained and yet her earnest reconstruction of Collins' solo commands attention. Each of these videos can certainly stand on their own, but when paired they have a sweet kind of flirtation. Alm-Basu’s video speaks to our (semi-newly discovered?) human desire to liberate, expand, and realize the digital world in real space. Even if the gesture is an artist's game of mimicry, or simply a YouTube "response” to the posted "call", the resulting video has value both aesthetically and culturally. With digital contexts and platforms pervasive throughout our daily lives it's only natural that we attempt to understand their contours and movements by replicating them in our bedrooms, and everyday life.

MDW Micro Meditation: Jenny Drumgoole

By Heather Marie Vernon

Jenny Drumgoole, Level 32 Delight (Video Still)

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytSAzfLUw1M

How does it “pheel” to step into ‘the new center of your feminine being’, using cream cheese as a vehicle for self-discovery?

Spread on your face: can it be a form of anger repression therapy?

A hydrid: facial, moisturizer, hair conditioner, identity politic, tool for art making, a personal methodology, and a device to sublimate your sexual desires?

When un-wrapping the silver wrapper, this ‘little taste of heaven’ in a brick? Can it be means to experience the purest meta-physical reality and replace those difficult to achieve orgasms? Maybe that’s why she has solved the puzzle can you ‘pheel-it’?

MDW Micro Meditation: Evan Jenkins

By Matt Morris

Evan Jenkins, It Matters Where You Are, 2012

Given the carnivalesque clamor of this autumn’s MDW fair, Evan Jenkin’s It Matters Where You Are, 2012, elects itself to be an offhandedly self-reflexive element in the mix. The 24x30” archival pigment print is a drossy tumult of what appears to be clumps of cotton candy in a Rococo palette. While recalling material precedents like, say, Pollock’s Lavender Mist or Sonnier’s pale-hued flocked paintings, Jenkin’s allover trope is that of wrapping paper, a confectionary surface signification of desire and consumption. Its criticality is camped up: celebratory of its context while delicately satirizing its own position.

How to Justify Doing-Nothingness; Tips for Salad Connoisseurs

by Andrew Green
Guest Editor: Pat Elifritz

Jack Schneider

“[The young worker’s] true pleasure in motorbike riding is in the anal sounds it emits.”
― Max Horkheimer

“We always find something, eh Didi, to let us think we exist?”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

For quite some time now nepotism has grown rampant within the under-grad art world: friend shows are quite common to us and receive no criticism. [1] They are usually just nice enough for the documentation to look like an artist has done something, while still being blasé enough to not need any crucial curatorial thought. These shows are “free-for-alls”, typically introduced with a generic statement about the artists’ personal relationships, ages, or mediums and how this connects their work. Perhaps there is nothing too wrong with this at all; maybe it is a necessary nothingness for the undergraduate artist-under- construction. It is an uncritical gesture and is experienced as such, with little to no room for a camera obscura of curation to distort the works into something that they are not. [2]

But what of a show that attempts to input critical thought into this utterly un-critical act of ‘free-for-all’ non-curation? This strange paradox is quite blatantly explicated in a recent show at Alcatraz Chicago titled Salmagundi. What makes this show important and significant in distinction from a myriad of other friend-shows is the extent to which the curator, Zachary Shay Huber, went to justify his precise lack of curation. In fact, this friend-zone model of curation is apparently now so canonized that can be used as a critical platform, or so Huber might think. Instead of simply presenting his colleagues work as a generic showcasing like every other one of these friend-shows does, Huber employed an ill-conceived and grandiose concept to justify his curatorial choices: Salmagundi.

 

Installation view

According to this flyer, Salmagundi is a salad dish composed of a myriad of disparate ingredients, which, in some logic-defying absurdity, make a pretty eclectic and tasty dish: an ice-cold iceberg lettuce detournment. It is also the name of a surprisingly delicious cocktail (apple juice and champagne) served at the opening. In an underwhelming one-to-one analogy to its title, the show is an aggregate of seemingly different approaches to painting that “make a sum that is greater than its parts…[where] each piece is activated and illuminated,” just like this bespoke dish. Though this might seem quite shocking to all of us on the art-school diet, haphazardly choosing ingredients by Deleuze’s chaotic anti-teleological rubric will not always result in a tasty meal, regardless of how avant-garde a method of salad-tossing it might be. In fact, the majority of the time, as is the case with the show, it results in something quite distasteful. And here what is offensive is not simply that I have been served a sub-par dish, but that it has been dressed up and decorated as to convince me that it is actually a well-composed plate whose very disparate character is what makes it so delectable and refined. No, I’m sorry, the Burger King here is not wearing any clothes and this dish is unsatisfactory. In fact, I’ll send it back and order saucisson sec and, to wash it down, a sparkling bottle of biodynamic wine.

 

View of work by Michael Madrigali (right)

Not quite conceptual and not quite formal, the whole show is an indeterminate and irritating confusion like the buffering of a not-quite funny Youtube video puttering itself along for an empathic pity-laugh. The works worth noting in the show are two paintings by Jack Schneider and a painting and a photograph by Michael Madrigali. The playfully ironic neon auras of Schneider and Madrigali's work disparagingly hiccup (complete with apple-juice-champagne-foam) on the pseudo-poetic stoner-joke paintings that occupy the rest of the space. While these two artists might have the possibility of an interesting dialogue between their new-age strategies of visual seduction from formalist grids to make-up advertisements [3], the emphasis on this conversation is eclipsed and
fit into a tiny.chat of non-sense. A microcosm for our social conditions under capital, Salmagundi is an excellent representation of the utter impotence of any artwork being able to say anything worthwhile, as its audience will immediately misrecognize its importance based on the deceptive context through which it is experienced.

Installation view

As Robert Pippin writes, “The problem with contemporary critical theory today is that it has become insufficiently critical.” To be a bit more specific, perhaps the problem today is not simply that there is no critical theory, rather the real problem lies in the misrecognition of uncritical thought as being critical, which prevents the possibility of something critical from ever being said in the future. The problem with Salmagundi is not that its curation is simply uncritical, but that it dresses up the disappearance of critical thought, nihilistically calling for its uncritical substance to be experienced critically. In doing so we deceive ourselves and regress deeper into Plato’s cave where art's capability to reify society and enable us to attain a self-recognition of our conditions for the future possibility of criticality becomes more and more dormant, waiting for a resurrected Christ-figure critic to magically one day reveal what we have been missing throughout the 150 year epoch of Capitalism. A thorn in the foot of any doing-anything whatsoever, “Perhaps [criticism] exists to remind us that we haven’t gotten anywhere.”

[1] Nepotism is not reducible to the undergraduate art world

[2] In saying this I do not mean that works only function for themselves within non-curated spaces,
rather I mean that they are not consciously put into a dialogue with each other and are not intended to be experienced as such

[3] It should also be noted upon that these artist’s works also enter into numerous other dialogues
specifically regarding the ephemeral nature of work’s physical life and their afterlife as .jpegs.

Guest Editor: Pat Elifritz

Pat Elifritz is a writer and exhibition-maker living in Chicago. He is interested in the social organization of exhibitionary models under post-Fordism. He has held positions at the Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. He curates independently and contributes exhibition reviews to Newcity Art. patelifritz.us

MDW Micro Meditation: Jeff Austin

By Elliott Mickleburgh

Jeff Austin, Untitled, 2012

Sentient architecture seems like the subject matter of science fiction but Jeff Austin’s contribution to the Make Space booth says otherwise. Materials from the site are composed into a delicate organic framework: metal wires and poles become ribs, stones mimic vital organs, threads resemble a complex network of veins and nerves. The balancing act these sculptural components find themselves in presents a kind of equilibrium albeit a vulnerable one. I get the sense that the heavy footsteps of an intoxicated patron could knock Austin’s piece out of homeostasis and into a terminal condition. And the metal bone that leads through the ceiling? Somewhere in a dark boiler room this architectural organism is replicating.

Opening Event at Tritriangle

by Kristofer Lenz

Guest Editor: Pat Elifritz

Ivan Lozano, "A HERMA (DEAD EYES OPENED)", 2011

 


In a culture bounded by a surge of technology seeking to optimize, polish and auto-correct, the antithetical aestheticization of analog flaws makes perfect sense: Instagram will make your digital photos look grainy for a nominal fee, vinyl fetishists can pay double for an unwieldy object that sounds marginally better. Glitch and dirty new media artists take this idea to a barbaric extreme, manually subverting, contorting and otherwise dismantling everyday objects to create something altogether new, but not necessarily pleasant.



Hero-worship of the glitchy misdeed was on display at the Opening Event of Tritriangle; a new performative media center run by artists Ryan T. Dunn and William Robertson. The space itself is living act of reclamation. Perched three floors above the Disney-fied Hipster Village of Wicker Park, this former location of sound art/performance venue Enemy is equal parts performance space, art studio and living quarters. It’s a remnant of a gritty “burnished age” when cheap rent and shitty lofts once attracted artists, the first pebble dropped of the unabated tide of gentrification.



At the Tritriangle opening event there were installations by artists, including Ivan Lozano’s  “A HERMA (DEAD EYES OPENED)” (2011) and film screenings from Katie Torn and Eric Fleischauer. But the highlights of the evening were performances by glitch/dirty new media artists who in unique and original ways re-appropriated common technology to create effects that ranged from painful to unsettling to profound.



Exploration of the boundaries between endurance and pleasure began earnestly with a 15-minute sound collage by Vertonen. He used a record-less record player, looped field recordings of a child crying, and audio from Casey Anthony’s first vlog after being acquitted. The ensuing cacophony lacked melody, harmony or rhythm. Faced with the illusion of sound without structure the ear lurches and grinds, performing similar leaps to those of the eye faced with an abstract painting, seeking form and structure. Just as textual boundaries become landscape for the play of mark/remark, patterns rose from within Vertonen’s sound: crying child as jittery backbeat, tone arm pulling throbbing bass notes out of thin air, and Anthony’s tearful voice twisted into the semblance of weeping monster. There was no straight line to an experience of the sublime in Vertonen’s work. But after contending with the limits of audience endurance, the reward at journey’s end made the journey itself of value.



Jeff Kolar, "Hallmark Cards"

Jeff Kolar’s performance attacked the new media aesthetic via an appropriation of hatefully twee greeting cards that play music when opened. He plugged their audio chips into a mixer and through physical compression and digital manipulation played them like a miniature orchestra. Most striking was the apparent willingness or desire of the card to be performed. The simple chips, when appropriately stroked, seemed to cry out as if bursting with pent up sonic anger. Instead of coaxing out the music, Kolar seemed more like a lion tamer struggling to keep them under control. The ensuing tunes were alternately funny, overpowering, and beautiful. 

As Jon Satrom, the evening’s closing act, set up his Prepared Desktop a moment of technical difficulty provided comedic relief. As Satrom fiddled with the plugs connecting his laptop a piercing squeal emitted from the A/V system. A sarcastic round of applause ricocheted around the room as someone called out, “Now THAT is glitch.” To which Satrom replied: “No, that was literally white noise.”

Jon Satrom, "Prepared Desktop"

Satrom’s performance (once up and running) began with the visual of his laptop screen projected against a screen, zoomed in and slightly out of focus. You could vaguely follow Satrom’s progress as he opened and ran a variety of programs that caused a slow-building swell of sound to fill the room – part mechanical whirring, part sonorous and elegiac ambient trance.  


During the 15 minute performance that followed the screen devolved into pixelated shapes and unfocused waves of light. Simultaneously the sound grew deeper, richer, louder, building toward a feverish pitch. A sense of unease began to settle in as the crescendo neared: “Can it get louder? Wilder? Can I handle it when it does?” Suddenly the concern that space and time might split open and the whole affair would blink out of existence felt almost real.

Finally Satrom hit a single button and the whole thing went blank. He muttered a quiet “thank you,” which was lost in a wave of applause.

All images by Ryan T Dunn, courtesy of Tritriangle
TriTiangle is located at  1550 N Milwaukee Ave Fl 3. tritriangle.net

MDW Micro Meditation: Robert Heishman

By Robert Burnier 

Robert Chase Heishman, _IMG #5, 201

Robert Chase Heishman's photography doesn't lie. But it doesn't tell the unvarnished truth, either. It's like the Truman Show where the protagonist sails his boat into the horizon only to bump into a really good giclee print. Such is the mix of pleasure and claustrophobia one gets from viewing Heishman's recent work. Merely by applying artist tape to his subjects, their physical presences and inclusions enter into real space, tracing and circumscribing the field of view such that everything tends to advance into the picture plane.  I’m reminded of Gustave Courbet’s incessant crowding toward the viewer, along with hints of the world of flat screen TVs and cell phones, with their resolution and clarity but ultimate falsehood.

MDW Micro Meditation: Morgan Sims

By James T. Green

 

Morgan Sims, Palisade, 2012

Morgan Sims' Palisade, presented by Heaven Gallery, was an immediate MDW stand-out. As a designer and artist working in technology, I was captivated by its glow. Historically, a "palisade" is a wooden wall used as a defensive structure by the ancient Greeks and Romans. I immediately correlated this modern day palisade with our mobile screens, and how they can act as defense mechanisms from others. The colors in "Palisade" are reminiscent of the RGB used in LCD screens, the same screens that absorb our attention, playing defense against human interaction.

Compelled by a specific piece of art at the Midway Fair?

CAW is asking for fair attendees to write micro-meditations on an artwork of their choice!

1. take a cell phone photo of the artwork
2. unpack the profundity in 100 words or less
3. email us the pic, artist name, piece title, and text
4. CAW will post attendees' moments of epiphany and wonder

Send micro-meditations to chicagoartistwriters@gmail.com through November 16th!

www.mdwfair.org

Christopher Aque at PEREGRINEPROGRAM

By Georgia Wall

Guest Editor: Christy LeMaster

 Rock, 2012, concrete, paper shopping bag

Part 1: ‘Rocks’

Christopher Aque creates a landscape in which he has turned black and white photos of male models into ‘Rocks’. These ‘Rocks’ are Abercrombie & Fitch shopping bags filled with poured concrete. The petrified space within the bags give new texture to the familiar images of this type of male flesh. The ‘Rocks’ are placed with distance between them, casually dividing the surface of the gallery floor.

Privacy Partition (Blue), 2012, powder-coated steel urinal partition, anti-theft hardware

Part 2: Walls

There are two urinal dividers in the space. They jut out from the wall, awkwardly as if somehow resisting gravity and their own weight. They are very still and a bit proud looking, out of the bathroom and in this context.

There is a framed image Aque has placed behind one of these urinal dividers. I notice that when a gallery goer gets close to it, her body is concealed while her head remains visible. It appears to float like a live replacement for the beheaded men on the shopping bag’s surfaces. In this way Aque repeats the action of the cropping used in the Abercrombie & Fitch photos and performs it momentarily on the bodies in the gallery.

I step behind the divider to look at the framed image, another photo of a nude male’s middle and in this moment my middle falls out of view, covered by the urinal wall.

The other urinal divider works to divide the room from its own corner. No floating heads can appear behind it, only a small bit of air and the seam of two walls.

Projection (Far from Heaven), 2012, hand-etched black glass, mirror-hanging hardware, 4 elements 

Part 3: Plaques

There are large black plaques that line the walls of the gallery, like canvases turned to shiny and smooth stone. On the black surfaces there is black text. The text seems to reference what might be cropped. It mentions the architecture of the space, the ceiling, the walls and the body, the heart. The words are lyrical and make me think about the absence of the eyes within the show. I consider how it is of course hard to find when there are no faces and probably quite difficult to meet, when you are peeing in a urinal.

Part 4: Stillness and shifting

In the gallery the landscape feels fixed and yet there is a hint that something is shifting behind Aque’s many flat surfaces. Perhaps due to the words that line the walls, black words on black surface hinting to some hidden part, unseen. Perhaps the people moving in and out from behind the dividers. As I watch, a woman’s body goes from being revealed, to partially concealed and then revealed again. The bags, once soft, moved under the weight of wet concrete. The images of the men moving slightly before being frozen, Abercrombie’s awkward Pompeii sigh.

All images courtesy PEREGRINEPROGRAM. Homonyms (for Misfits and Outcasts) is up through November 4 at PEREGRINEPROGRAM,  3311 W Carroll Avenue, #119. More information can be found at www.peregrineprogram.com.