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EFA Gallery

Dan Graham, Performer/Audience/Mirror (1975)

November Events at EFA Gallery

Performance on Demand, and Brian Dewan and Natalie Weiss
EFA Gallery
EFA Studio Center
323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10018
between 8th and 9th AvenuesGallery Hours: Wed through Sat, 12-6 PM

http://www.efa1.org

Performance on Demand
EAI Viewing Room at EFA Gallery
Organized by Josh Kline for Electronic Arts Intermix

November 2-17, 2007
Opening reception Friday, November 2, 6-8 PM

Vito Acconci, Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, Phyllis Baldino,
Lynda Benglis, Ante Bozanich, Chris Burden, Cheryl Donegan,
VALIE EXPORT, Dan Graham, Ursula Hodel, Joan Jonas,
Mike Kelley, Kristin Lucas, Gordon Matta-Clark, Paul McCarthy,
Ana Mendieta, Charlotte Moorman, Shana Moulton, Bruce Nauman,
Dennis Oppenheim, Tony Oursler, Nam June Paik,
Charlemagne Palestine, Alix Pearlstein, Martha Rosler,
Carolee Schneemann, Stuart Sherman, Michael Smith,
Hannah Wilke, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, and others

November 2-17, 2007
Opening reception Friday, November 2, 6-8 PM

Brian Dewan and Natalie Weiss
an evening of words, music and pictures

November 14 and 15 at 7pm
Tickets available through Smarttix: smarttix.com or 212-868-4444

Performance on Demand
EAI Viewing Room at EFA Gallery

EFA Gallery is pleased to offer, during the Performa07 performance biennial, Performance on Demand: EAI Viewing Room at EFA Gallery. EFA Gallery will be transformed into a video lounge to host Electronic Arts Intermix’s Viewing Room, a program that provides free public access to one of the foremost collections of video art in the world. Visitors to EFA Gallery will be able to choose from a curated selection of major performance-based video works by over 30 artists from the EAI Collection. Viewers may watch these seminal performances and contemporary classics at their own pace in a comfortable viewing environment. During the opening reception on Friday, November 2nd, programs featuring selected works will be installed throughout the gallery.

Since the advent of affordable and portable video cameras, video has been a vital tool for artists working in performance. The history of performance art and the history of video have become inseparable. Through video, artists can capture the fleeting and ephemeral, preserving unrepeatable actions as electronic moving images, and audiences that could not be present in the flesh are able to access the rich and dynamic history of performance.

The works available for viewing at EFA Gallery will include rarely-seen video documentation of ground-breaking performances by artists including Chris Burden, Dan Graham, and Carolee Schneemann; extraordinary videos in which performance was carefully crafted for the camera by artists such as Vito Acconci, Eleanor Antin, Joan Jonas, Martha Rosler and William Wegman; conceptual masterpieces by John Baldessari, Bruce Nauman, and Lawrence Weiner; as well as important works by many other key artists who have explored the profound consequences of combining performance and video.

EFA Live presents
Brian Dewan and Natalie Weiss
an evening of words, music and pictures

EFA Live: music and performances
November 14 and 15 at 7pmTickets available smarttix.com or 212-868-4444

EFA Live, in association with PERFORMA07 performance biennial, is delighted to present Brian Dewan and Natalie Weiss. Both artist/musicians will offer musically based performances with visual art elements at 7pm on Wednesday, November 14 and Thursday, November 15, at EFA Gallery. There will be an intermission between performers.

Artist, musician, poet and instrument designer, Brian Dewan, offers a solo performance featuring song, spoken word, autoharp, zither and instruments of his own invention. Dewan’s music references folk music, hymns, century-old popular music and rock music to weave eccentric and anachronistic tales. As an added treat, Dewan will present selections from his series of “I Can See” filmstrips which use the technology of the educational filmstrips from the mid-twentieth century as a point of departure for satirical and surreal narratives.
myspace.com/briandewan

Natalie Weiss wields an accordion, keyboards, circuit-bent children’s toys, traditional African instruments and armfuls of samplers, electronics, and props in her eclectic performances. Self-described as a musician/DJ/puppeteer/playwright/performance artist, the energetic Ms. Weiss’ indescribable performances reference the noise scene, contemporary visual art, musical theater and, most recently, the Christian church, with refreshing wit and complexity.
myspace.com/unicornicopia

These events are presented by EFA Gallery, a program of The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. EFA Gallery is supported in part by public funds from the New York Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts. Private funding for the Gallery has been received from The Carnegie Corporation Inc., The Foundation for Contemporary Art, The Helen Keeler Burke Charitable Foundation, Peter C. Gould, Materials for the Arts, and many other generous individuals.

ABOUT EAI
Founded in 1971, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is one of the world’s leading nonprofit resources for video art and interactive media. EAI’s core program is the international distribution of a major collection of new and historical media works by artists. EAI’s activities include a preservation program, viewing access, educational services, online resources, and public programs such as exhibitions and lectures. The Online Catalogue provides a comprehensive resource on the 175 artists and 3,000 works in the EAI collection, including extensive research materials.
http://www.eai.org

ABOUT EFA GALLERY
EFA Gallery is a multi-arts curatorial project space. Through the gallery, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts supports the creative work of independent curators. Curators build the framework in which we understand artists and the art they make. At their best, they redefine how we look at culture. The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts believes in the essential importance of art in a civil society, and that the value of the artist’s creative spirit is not limited by age, race, nationality or acceptance by others. http://www.efa1.org

ABOUT PERFORMA07
PERFORMA07 (October 27-November 20, 2007) is the second biennial of new visual art performance presented by PERFORMA, a non-profit multidisciplinary arts organization dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century.
http://www.performa-arts.org

ABOUT PERFORMA
PERFORMA is a non-profit multidisciplinary arts organization dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century. Part of PERFORMA mission is to present a biennial of visual art performance in New York City that illuminates the critical role of performance in the history of art as well as its enormous significance in the international world of contemporary art.
http://www.performa-arts.org

The PERFORMA05 biennial offered an exciting program of performances, exhibitions, symposia, and film screenings organized in collaboration with a consortium of leading museums, galleries, alternative spaces, and independent curators in New York. The first of its kind, PERFORMA05 was an enormous critical and popular success and set a new standard for the positioning of live performance in the international contemporary art world. Over 25,000 people attended sold-out and filled-to-capacity events at more than 20 venues across the city, activating and animating all of New York, from Harlem to Wall Street. PERFORMA was founded in 2004 by art historian and curator RoseLee Goldberg. PERFORMA07, the second biennial of new visual art performance, will take place in New York City from October 27- November 20, 2007.

For further information:
Elaine Tin Nyo, Director
T. 212-563-5855 x203, F. 212-563-1875
elaine@efa1.org

ARTISSIMA 14

ARTISSIMA 14
9 - 11 November 2007
11 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Lingotto Fiere, Turin
Vernissage November 8, 2007
http://www.artissima.it

ARTISSIMA 14: A NEW TYPE OF CULTURAL EVENT

Artissima takes place in Turin, Italy, from the 8th to 10th of November, 2007. A project by Andrea Bellini, director of the Fair from 2007, Artissima 14 is a window on emerging art worldwide. 131 galleries from 17 countries: a launch-pad for the best research in the field of visual arts on an international scale. The galleries will be showing outstanding works by both renowned established artists and cutting-edge newcomers. The New Artissima is a marketplace of the highest quality, but it is also a flexible tool, a container of art exhibitions, parties and crossover events. At the Fair, together with the traditional booths, there will also be two sections — Constellations and Present Future — designed as authentic exhibitions.

PRESENT FUTURE is a special section of the Fair in collaboration with illycaffè, which will include this year 15 projects by artists emerging on the national and international art scene, selected by a team of three curators: Cecilia Alemani, art critic and independent curator, New York; Luca Cerizza, curator BSI Collection and art critic, Berlin; Raimundas Malasauskas, curator Artists Space, New York / Advisor, California College of Arts, San Francisco. Present Future will introduce an exciting new feature for Artissima 14: the artists have been invited to display their works in a separate and independent area devoted exclusively to this section, designed like a real exhibition, enhancing the dialogue between the works whilst creating an itinerary with constant and stimulating surprises. During the Fair, a jury composed by Corinne Diserens, Director, MUSEION, Bolzano, Francesco Manacorda, Curator, Barbican Art Gallery, London, and Susan Pfeffer, Curator, KW Institute for Con
temporary Art, Berlin will meet to assign the illy Present Future Award to the most significant work. The winning artist will receive a 10,000-euro prize from the event partner, illy, and will have the opportunity to present a design for the “illy Art Collection” of auteur coffee cups

CONSTELLATIONS is devoted to large museum-quality works, exhibited for the first time at Artissima in a museum-style exhibition. 10 artworks from more than 90 projects submitted by the galleries taking part in the Fair have been selected by Daniel Birnbaum, Director of Portikus, Frankfurt, and Marc-Olivier Wahler, Director of of Palais de Tokyo, Paris.

NEW ENTRIES will present 17 emerging avant-garde galleries from 8 countries at the Fair for the first time, selected by the Board of Directors and Consulting Committee of Artissima. The Guido Carbone Award, devoted to the galleries taking part in this section, will be assigned by an international Jury that will consider, as a primary selection criterion, the work of research and promotion of young artists carried on by galleries. The jury is composed by Fabio Cavallucci, Director, Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Trento / Coordinator, Manifesta 7, Vasif Kortun, Director, Platform Garanti, Istanbul / Founding director Project Istanbul Museum of Contemporary Art, Anton Vidokle, Artist, curator, founder and director of e-flux, New York, and Laura Viale, jury’s permanent member on behalf of the Award Promoting Committee.

The VIDEO LOUNGE, curated by Cecilia Alemani, is devoted to the latest trends and the most recent creations of artists who work with film, video and animation. Mixing together documentaries, visions and digital perceptions of about sixty international artists, the Video Lounge opens a window onto the world of contemporary art, guiding the audience on a journey through possible worlds and new landscapes of imagination. The program revolves around the themes of “War, Peace, and Ecstasy” which have been chosen as the key concepts for an exploration of today’s art. The artists have been selected among those working the galleries taking part in Artissima.

The SEMINAR ON CURATORIAL PRACTICE, curated by Måns Wrange (CuratorLab, Konstfack, Stockholm) consists in two days of intense debate and dialogue, with the participation of twelve leading international curators and artists: Ute Meta Bauer, Luca Cerizza, Caroline Corbetta, Meg Cranston, Joshua Decter, Ronald Jones, Yu Yeon Kim, Vasif Kortun, Marysia Lewandowska, Francesco Manacorda, Chus Martinez, Anton Vidokle. Three emerging curators from Colombia, Ethiopia and India will be guest speakers at the seminar, in cooperation with illycaffé, thus offering evidence of the new frontiers of contemporary art: Meskerem Assegued, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Mariangela Mendez Prencke, Bogotà, Colombia, Suman Gopinath,
Bangalore, India.

Artissima will also extend beyond the borders of the fair, exploring the city and its most significant centers of artistic and cultural production.

ARTISSIMA CINEMA will present “Shanghype!”, a video program featuring the new chinese art scene, curated by Davide Quadrio, BizArt/Arthub, Shanghai.

ARTISSIMA VOLUME is a high-impact performances and events with the participation of some of the greatest names in neo-avantgarde music, curated by Nero magazine, Roma.

ARTISSIMA COMICS is an anthological exhibition of GIPI, one of the most notorious Italian cartoonists within the international art scene, curated by Daniele Ratti and Sergio Pignatone, Torino.

NIGHT OF CONTEMPORARY ART - As part of the project “Contemporary Arts Torino Piemonte”, and on the occasion of Artissima, museums, foundations, and art institutions will propose openings and exhibitions of international appeal whilst the streets of Turin will be illuminated by Luci d’artista, light installations designed by artists. The “night of contemporary art” on Saturday the 10th will feature special openings of galleries, museums and other art spaces, concerts and performances throughout the city, followed by a closing party in collaboration with Club to Club, The International Festival of Electronic Music and Arts.

For additional information and the complete list of galleries, please visit our website http://www.artissima.it

Project Arts Centre

BLACKBOXING
NOV 2 - DEC 1, 2007
OPENING NOV 1, 6PM
Project Arts Centre
39 East Essex Street
Temple Bar
Dublin 2, Ireland

http://www.project.ie

Mariana Castillo Deball, L Budd et al., Rene Gabri & Ayreen Anastas, Peter Galison & Robb Moss, Bea McMahon, Garrett Phelan, Grace Weir and Mick Wilson
Curated by Tessa Giblin

If the term blackboxing means to accept a function or an application but not a method(ology), what is it - both scientifically and socially - that compels us to peer inside black-boxes?

Brought together in the exhibition Blackboxing are a number of artists and intellectuals who have at the core of their practice a hunger for knowledge, and from whom this term has emerged.

Our open curiosity and defiance in the face of evidence has seen the term blackboxing expand from its origins in information technology. It has become a broadly compelling rallying point for those hoping to enable independence in an individual’s experience of fact, truth, absolute ideas and beliefs. By looking inside blackboxes, artists can activate discreet bodies of knowledge — finding concrete ways to address the increasing abstraction of complex mathematics and physics, and building back roads into politically unstable global scenarios where international reportage is diffused by popularising rhetoric and
smoke-screens.

The mimicry, blind faith and increasing dependence on ever-more complex systems is changing the way we comprehend our world; although we slavishly attempt to regenerate our systems at the rate of development, we are at the same time loosening our conceptual grasps on the functioning realities of these systems and cornering ourselves into a state of acceptance.

In an interview with artist Rene Gabri, theorist Manuel de Landa recalled his earlier experiments with code-writing, hacking and what he now refers to as blackboxing. Applying a technique widely used in everyday activity, he would copy a body of computer code which he knew to function a certain way into another system in order the replicate that function, yet utilise it towards a different end. As Bruno Latour explains, blackboxing accounts for the moment whereby ‘technical work is made invisible by its own success’.

“As a realist… I have to open as many blackboxes as I can. I have to give accounts in terms of mechanisms.” Manuel de Landa

Mariana Castillo Deball’s (MEX) film Blackboxing, introduces us to The Escape Artist, The War Magician and an inventor blinded by the complexity of his own eye. Tracking a series of observations, descriptions and definitions, the film illustrates the wonder of what it is to be curious. L Budd et al. (NZ) maximise the conditions in which telepathic exchange might occur. In an attempt to engineer a telepathic device, four suitcases perched on top of four grey stools conduct a quasi-conversation, while the suitcases’ strange songs compel us to ponder the possibility of such a device. Rene Gabri (IRN) & Ayreen Anastas’ (PLE) video works, What Everybody Knows, is a play on what everybody possibly ignores or hides from themselves. Their research and experiences in Palestine and Israel resulted in a series of videos where characters emerge and lead us towards a deeper awareness of the situation in Palestine, punctuated by poignant and alarming personal stories. Co-directors Pe
ter Galison (USA), Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University and cinematographer Robb Moss’ (USA) trailer to their film Secrecy, explores the relationship between secrecy and security — ‘We live in a world where the production of secret knowledge dwarfs the production of open knowledge’. With the film ready for release in January of 2008, the trailer acts as another Pandora’s Box. Bea McMahon’s (IRL) background in maths and mathematical physics is used to great effect to illustrate complex theories involving space and time. In a new film featuring two turtles attempting to understand the numerical relationships between their own, animated beings, and the coded figures displayed above them, McMahon introduces everyday signifiers such as car number plates in a didactic and humorous animation. Garrett Phelan’s (IRL) spray-painted black void looms over the gallery. Trapped in the dense blackness is an object for communication, a receiver, or nothing at all. In recent years Phelan has focussed his practice around extensive explorations into ‘the formation of opinion’ and ‘the absolute present’. The Penrose non-periodic tile is the subject of Grace Weir’s (IRL) installation, and we are treated to the evidence of her own efforts to complete the unsolvable puzzle. It is a mathematical certainty that the repetition of these specific tiles will never result in a repeating pattern — while they may lock in together, which is in itself a formidable challenge – the closer one comes to solving the puzzle the closer they more they activate its futility. As Weir says — ‘is that not a portrait of the universe?’. Mick Wilson (IRL) splices together a number of disparate voices, asking what it is about their representation which causes them to evoke such irrefutable origins in our minds. In a sound work the various iterations of Hallelujah are cast adrift of their defining properties, while in a publication texts are compiled, speaking of a variety of different ideas — one of which is a proposition for a code of behaviour in interdisciplinary practice. While we sample other fields of knowledge, do we take care to understand the research that the knowledge is constructed from?

Tessa Giblin

FRIDAY, 16 NOV
Rene Gabri and Ayreen Anastas present an extended screening of What Everybody Knows, and will be joined by Mariana Castillo Deball, Mick Wilson, Bea McMahon, Garrett Phelan and Tessa Giblin to publicly discuss the ideas and artworks within Blackboxing.

Please contact Publicist, Aisling McGrane for further information and images: aisling@project.ie or Curator, Tessa Giblin by contacting the gallery.

Forthcoming exhibitions at Project Arts Centre:
Aurélien Froment, Calling the Elephant 14 DEC - 26 JAN 2008
Rosa Barba & David Malkjovic, 7 FEB - 15 MARCH 2008

Project Arts Centre is funded by the Arts Council - An Chomhairle Ealaíon and Dublin City Council.