Contents for January 11, 2021 (Scroll down for more information):
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1. Amanda Hunt/IV Castellanos, FF Fund 2019-2020 recipients, on YouTube, Jan. 19
2. Marian Goodman, FF Visionary, presents “Multiples, Inc. 1065 – 1992” with John Baldessari, Jennifer Bartlett, John Cage, Jan Dibbets, Ger Van Elk, Dan Graham, Peter Hutchinson, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Ruscha, Richard Tuttle, Bernar Venet, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, FF Alumns, at Marian Goodman Gallery, Manhattan, Jan. 12-Feb. 27
3. Martha Wilson, FF Alumn and Common Field Board member, announcing CF “Reimagining, Together” initiative
4. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo, FF Alumn, at Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT, Jan. 24 and more
5. Judith Bernstein, Pablo Helguera, Dread Scott, FF Alumns, now online at ArtAtATimeLikeThis.com
6. Cheri Gaulke, FF Alumn, at Cannes Film Festival, Cannes, France, Jan. 17
7. Annie Lanzillotto, Salley May, FF Alumns, live online, Jan. 24
8. Quimetta Perle, FF Alumn, at Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, thru Jan. 31
9. Dynasty Handbag, FF Alumn, at Sundance Institute, Park City, UT, Jan. 29 thru Feb. 3
10. Joseph Nechvatal, FF Alumn, online at WaveFarm.org, Jan. 16
11. Jay Critchley, FF Alumn in Cape Cod Times, Jan. 8
12. Mark Bloch, FF Alumn, now online at BrooklynRail.org
13. Frank Moore, FF Alumn, at Cushion Works, San Francisco, CA, Jan. 20-Mar. 6
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Weekly Spotlight: Mark Fox and David Zaza, FF Alumns, now online at https://franklinfurnace.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p17325coll1/id/44/rec/23
Enjoy this week’s spotlight on Mark Fox and David Zaza’s, “The Kiss,” narrated by Zaza. “The Kiss” was originally webcast on March 19, 1999 from The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Watch this half-hour production as it floats through multiple segments depicting the shifting moods of the moments before and after the titular kiss shared between two unnamed puppet stars operated by Fox and Andrea Sparks and voiced by William Earle and Annabel McCall, respectively. A surreal use of visual imagery combined with recited poetry aid in exploring themes of eternity and infinity- and the idea that all will pass. Tune in for a dynamic telling of a tender moment!
“The Kiss” was produced with assistance from Alex Walsh and Annika Hagen, and netcast with help from Paul Wrider, Felix Nevarez, and Jeff Zespy. David Zaza’s website is goldbergpoems.com and Mark Fox’s website is markfoxstudio.com (Text by Eve Vishnick, FF Intern, Winter 2021)
Please watch here:
https://franklinfurnace.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p17325coll1/id/44/rec/23
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1. Amanda Hunt/IV Castellanos, FF Fund 2019-2020 recipients, on YouTube, Jan. 19
Amanda Hunt/IV Castellanos’Conduit will premiere at 7:30 pm EST as part of the Exponential Festival, on the Exponential YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCufwDlB9oA7T3dta_QbrWGQ
Here is the link to the festival: https://www.theexponentialfestival.org/shows
Conduit, co-created and co-performed by Amanda Hunt/IV Castellanos, through the Exponential Festival 2021, online
It and we wander through ideas related to practicing a de-/anti-/un-/post-colonial body, and cartoonish expressions of landscape are twisted and hung out to dry. We perform in hand made costumes of varying materials, and wear large hand cast collars around our necks oozing out material. Material oozes out of other places too. Is this ‘natural’, is this what fun looks like, is this purposeful or futile or purposefully futile? We sculpt the tone of American Empire collapsing, each crumble and pile shaped, using our bodies as the site.
Amanda Hunt is a performing artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Performance engagements include work shown at The Queens Museum, Danspace Project, Panoply Performance Laboratory, Limerick Institute for Technology (Ireland), Institute for X (Denmark), Inverse Festival (Arkansas), The Aha Festival (NM) and more. Hunt has held residencies at Chez Bushwick, Artist-in-Vacancy (Newburgh, NY), and MARSH (St Louis, MO), and will have an upcoming engagement through Mart Gallery (Ireland). Hunt ran (Runs? Will potentially continue to run in the future when we are able to gather?) Para\\el Performance Space with IV Castellanos in Brooklyn, NY. Hunt was a 2019/2020 Franklin Furnace Fund Recipient.
IV Castellanos (one/ones, they/them) is first-generation Bolivian-American abstract performance artist, curator, and sculptor. Castellanos has performed at the Queens Museum (New York), Railyard (Santa Fe), dfbrl8r (Chicago), Gruentaler9 (Berlin), and Grace Exhibition Space (Brooklyn) and at Institute for X (Denmark) . One has served as a core contributor to the Brooklyn performance art community, on the Artists of Color Council for Movement Research and have sat on the Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival, Chez Bushwick, Movement Research and Exponential Festival selection panels. They completed their MFA at the School of Visual Arts and is a Franklin Furnace Grant Recipient for 2019/2020. Castellanos co-organized the DIY performance space, IV Soldiers 2012-14 and Para\\el Performance Space 2018-current in Brooklyn, NY.
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2. Marian Goodman, FF Visionary, presents “Multiples, Inc. 1065 – 1992” with FF Alumns John Baldessari, Jennifer Bartlett, John Cage, Jan Dibbets, Ger Van Elk, Dan Graham, Peter Hutchinson, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Ruscha, Richard Tuttle, Bernar Venet, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, and Lawrence Weiner, at Marian Goodman Gallery, Manhattan, Jan. 12-Feb. 27
Please visit this link:
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3. Martha Wilson, FF Alumn and Common Field Board member, announcing CF “Reimagining, Together” initiative
Dear Network,
This is a season of transformation, within and far beyond our field. As the national convener of independent art spaces, projects, and organizers, with nearly 700 Network members across the field, Common Field is committed to meeting the challenges this moment demands with attention and intention.
Following a period of self-reflection with our board and staff alongside feedback from former staff, partners, and collaborators over the last year, Common Field is embarking on a series of structural shifts in 2021 to reorient our practice and remain responsive to the diverse needs and ongoing urgencies facing our field.
As part of this shift, the Board of Directors would like to share the news of Executive Director Courtney Fink’s departure and welcome Interim Managing Director Sheetal Prajapati to the organization. Fink departs after four years as Executive Director and five more as a co-founder of Common Field.
Incoming Managing Director Sheetal Prajapati is an educator, artist, and advisor working across the field of art and public engagement. In 2019, she founded Lohar Projects, a consulting agency working with individual artists and cultural organizations with a focus on professional development, public engagement, organizational planning, and special projects. Since 2018, she has served on faculty at the School of Visual Arts (New York) in the Master of Fine Arts program and is currently the Chair of the board of directors at Art + Feminism. Previously, Sheetal spent 16 years leading teams to develop public engagement, outreach, and artist projects for diverse audiences at organizations including Pioneer Works (Brooklyn), The Museum of Modern Art (New York), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. From 2014-2016, Sheetal co-curated Open Engagement, an international conference on art and social practice. Sheetal speaks nationally on topics including public engagement, creative forms of social practice, art education, arts advocacy, and public space and is excited to lead this chapter of Common Field’s evolution alongside the board, staff, and you, our committed Network.
In tandem with this leadership transition, we are embarking on a 360-degree audit process focused on structural reorientation towards deepened anti-racist organizing and foregrounding our commitment to equity, mutuality, and justice. As we review our existing documents, policies, programs, and practices, we will also be proactively engaging with you, our Network, to reimagine more equitable models of service, exchange and support together.
We aim to create channels of engagement at each stage of this process and remain in open dialogue with our Network and numerous stakeholders. Our hope is that this work creates space for collective reflection, reorientation, and realignment and puts our commitment to this urgent work into action together.
You will continue hearing from us, Sheetal, and staff members Chris Tyler and E. Maude Haak-Frendscho in the coming months as we share this process and invite input from our Network. Immediate feedback, press requests, and other questions may be sent to communications@commonfield.org.
We appreciate your support and look forward to hearing from you.
With care,
Common Field’s Board of Directors
Dana Bishop Root, Jackie Clay, Matthew Fuharty, Eunsong Kim, James McAnally, Sarah Williams, Martha Wilson
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4. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo, FF Alumn, at Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT, Jan. 24, and more
Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo, Anna Recasens, and Laia Solé at Ely Center of Contemporary Art (online event)
Ely Center of Contemporary Art
51 Trumbull Street, New Haven, CT 06510
On Art and Friendship
Sunday, January 24, 2021
1:00 PM 2:00 PM
Nicolás (The Bronx), Anna (Jerez de la Frontera), and Laia (Barcelona) have been communicating since February 2020 between the U.S. and Europe through WhatsApp, making visible some of the aspects of art praxis that do not usually translate as art within the exhibition space: friendship and camaraderie. All three friends share common denominators: they met in Catalonia; have worked with communities; and are interested in art that thrives within the day-to-day. Similarly, they have focused on shaping experiences and situations that defy art as a competitive field, and instead have labored within a context of partnership and familial relationships, where the artistic and the personal mingle and nurture one another.
On Sunday, January 24, 1 pm, Nicolás, Anna, and Laia will convene online, hosted by Ely Center of Contemporary Art, to discuss how On Art and Friendship has evolved through the current pandemic(s), and to engage those who attend in a conversation on relationships, creativity and the now.
This Roundtable Talk is the first in a series of live virtual roundtable events taking place during theTransart (notso) Short Fest screening at ECOCA through Feb 21 in the ECOCA Lounge and online: https://elycenter.org/not-so-short-fest. The talks feature festival artists from across the globe discussing a range of creative strategies in concert with their studio practice and philosophy as they go about making work within the construct of today’s environmental, social and political challenges. The talks can be accessed through this Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/91365876532?pwd=TGs1WmVJSkc0VTdteGk4eFlZaHVzdz09#success.
All event times are Eastern Standard Time (EST).
Need more than a link to the event? Send an email to: info@elycenter.org
-and-
Agencia de Turismo Popular Transfer #6 Bronx – Barcelona (online). This program will be mainly in Spanish)
Simultaneous dérives and explorations through Beck Street in The Bronx and Carrer Pere IV in Barcelona.
With the participation of Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo from The Bronx, and Sitezise (Elvira Pujol and Joan Vila Puig) from Barcelona.
What is a Street? A world subject to linearity, be this orderly or chaotic, it includes and hides many folds, partially disclosed remnants, significant presences and absences that one must decipher. The streets speak an urban tongue that makes them translatable and viable to all in any place, yet only under the invocation of the sight that knows to pause and to allocate time to the expression of details, to the emergence of the imprecise and to the manifestations of memories that speak of other voices. In a simultaneous walk Bronx-Barcelona, we will engage in an exercise involving an open interpretation of Beck Street and Carrer Pere IV to superimpose a dialogue that includes remembrances, collective memories and present happenings as if they were occurring in the same place and on the same street.
To join this event on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7349345923
ID: 734 934 5923
Agencia de Turismo Popular Transfer #6 Bronx – Barcelona
Derivas y exploraciones simultáneas por Beck Street en el Bronx y Carrer Pere IV en Barcelona.
Sábado 16 de enero de 2021 de 16h a 17h (hora local en Catalunya)
Con la participación de Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo desde el Bronx en NY y Sitesize (Elvira Pujol y Joan Vila Puig) en Barcelona.
¿Qué es una calle? Un mundo sujeto a una linealidad, sea ordenada o caótica incluye y esconde pliegues múltiples, señales parciales, presencias y ausencias significantes que hay que descifrar. Las calles hablan la lengua urbana que las hace interpretables y transitables para todos en cualquier lugar, pero bajo la invocación de miradas que saben detenerse y dar tiempo a la expresión de los detalles, la emergencia de lo impreciso y las manifestaciones de la memoria, nos hablan con otras voces también necesarias. En un recorrido simultáneo haremos un ejercicio de interpretación abierta de estas vías urbanas, para superponer en un diálogo acompasado recuerdos personales, memorias colectivas y experiencias presentes como si se tratase de un mismo lugar y una única calle.
Unirse a la reunión Zoom
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7349345923
ID de reunión: 734 934 5923
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5. Judith Bernstein, Pablo Helguera, Dread Scott, FF Alumns, now online at ArtAtATimeLikeThis.com
please visit this link:
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6. Cheri Gaulke, FF Alumn, at Cannes Film Festival, Cannes, France, Jan. 17
Cheri Gaulke’s film Trudie’s Goose is an official selection of THE AMERICAN PAVILION EMERGING FILMMAKER SHOWCASE at the Cannes Film Festival and will be screening virtually January 16-17 with a live virtual Q and A with filmmakers Jan. 17 at 2 pm PST.
About Trudie’s Goose:
When a young girl preparing for her Bat Mitzvah, the Jewish coming-of-age ritual, befriends a Holocaust survivor elder both lives are changed forever as they journey from darkness to healing through the power of art. Adapted from the short story, Trudie’s Goose, by Maya Savin Miller. Based on the life and art of Holocaust survivor Trudie Strobel.
Directed by C. Lily Ericsson, Cheri Gaulke, Samara Hutman and Liran Kapel. Animated by C. Lily Ericsson and Liran Kapel. Executive Producers Cheri Gaulke and Samara Hutman. Produced by The Righteous Conversations Project, a collaboration of Holocaust survivors and teens. Copyright 2020.
Trudie’s Goose has screened in 8 film festivals to date and recently received the Women Transforming Media Award from MY HERO International Film Festival.
Link to Trudie’s Goose trailer: https://vimeo.com/cherigaulke/trailertrudiesgoose
About the Showcase:
Since 1989, The American Pavilion has offered unparalleled experiences in Cannes to film students and emerging filmmakers from around the world. The Emerging Filmmaker Showcase provides an opportunity for filmmakers to have their works seen by Cannes Festival and Film Market attendees. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Finalist Films will be screened at a future Festival in Cannes. In the meantime, we will virtually showcase these exceptional and diverse films to our American Pavilion audiences for a limited time. Each of our four categories of films (Emerging Filmmaker Showcase, LGBTQ Showcase, Student showcase and High School Film Showcase) will be followed by a scheduled live Q&A with the filmmakers.
Link for more information about how to watch the films: https://www.ampav.com/student-programs/cannes-emerging-filmmaker-showcase/2020-finalists-emerging-filmmaker-showcase/
Cheri Gaulke
Artist/Filmmaker/Educator/Activist
Director of
Inside the Beauty Bubble
Everything is Beautiful: The Alma Thomas Film
Acting Like Women: Performance Art and the Woman’s Building
Gloria’s Call
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7. Annie Lanzillotto, Salley May, FF Alumns, live online Jan. 24
my next salon with CityLore
guest star: Salley May
Sunday January 24th
7:00pm on Zoom
Free
CLICK HERE FOR RSVP FREE TICKET:
with audience participation: tell your 2 minute story:
theme: How I am using art to survive these times…
spread the word
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8. Quimetta Perle, FF Alumn, at Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY, thru Jan. 31
My dear friends,
My new works on paper are featured in this Flat File Exhibition at Ortega y Gasset. I am delighted to be included. Usually an opening is a time to look at art, meet up with friends, have a glass of wine, discuss, maybe buy something, go out to eat, and generally celebrate artists and art. I hope you will find a way to see this show online if you can’t come in person.
Flat File at OyG: 2021 Exhibition Program
January 9 – January 31, 2021
Opening hours: January 9, 1-7pm & January 10, 1-6pm
Ortega y Gasset Projects is pleased to present Flat File 2021 Program, now in its second season. Flat File at OyG: 2021 Exhibition Program will be on view in the main gallery from January 9 to January 31, 2021, and after that in our Flat File until the end of 2021.
The Flat Files at OyG: 2021 will open with an exhibition on Saturday, January 9, 2021. The program will continue in our flat files through December 2021. All works will be available for viewing by visitors browsing at OyG and our website for purchase.
For more information please contact: oygprojects@gmail.com.
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9. Dynasty Handbag, FF Alumn, at Sundance Institute, Park City, UT, Jan. 29 thru Feb. 3
Weirdo Night (the movie) is an official Sundance 2021 selection!
tickets on sale TODAY.
screening on demand Jan 29 – Feb 3
Weirdo Night (the movie) is a stand in for the eponymous, wildly popular underground club night in Los Angeles, which centers queer, female and POC voices. Hosted and curated by Dynasty Handbag, the show assembles misfits from the comedy world, live bands, dancers and performance artists in a variety show that goes regularly and intentionally off the rails. A radical non-competitive Star Search for freaks and their allies. Featuring Patti Harrison with Vagabon + Sasami, Morgan Bassichis, Smiling Beth, Sarah Squirm, Hedia Maron, Bibi Discoteca. Directed by Mariah Garnett. Produced by Matt Doyle and Zebulon.
and if that wasn’t enough to make you seething with envy over my success, here is a genius poem that I wrote for you to usher in this exciting new year that’s off to a terrorrific start!
sorry dum dum
there is no 2021
she be-ith a dream
a catfish
a mysterious invitation you received
to meet a sex pot
on a yacht
in a fr0nch bikini
there to suck your wheenie
but she’s working for the other side, the fbi
or the po-lice
and she’s got lice
or deadly window spider
with a plague in her stinger
that will ruin every-thinger
again
don’t believe the failing new york times
there are no fun weekend recipie savory celebration pies
no fun to be had
its a fun-eral, within and without
if old aquaintons be forgot
that is wonderful news
you needn’t any more responsibility to 3rd tier friendships
hatin’ not celebratin’
nothing is ending
nothing is beginning
begin the beguine
we absolute béguiners
and i absolutely love you
that is all that there is
that and solid financial planning like a ROTH IRA or a can turned upside down and nailed to the inside of your closet with a slit cut in the top
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10. Joseph Nechvatal, FF Alumn, online at wavefarm.org Jan. 16
WGXC radio is presenting the Orlando et la tempête viral symphOny redux suite by Joseph Nechvatal and Andrew Deutsch on January 16, 2021 at 4pm at 90.7-FM Radio for Open Ears.
Details here: https://wavefarm.org/radio/wgxc/schedule/fywb3e
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11. Jay Critchley, FF Alumn in Cape Cod Times, Jan. 8
Greetings,
This annual Re-Rooters Day Ceremony is always held on January 7 after the “12 Days of Stockpiling.” This year’s 38th was the day after the storming of the Capitol.
Be well, Jay Critchley
Re-Rooters Day carries extra significance following year colored by COVID-19
Gwenn Friss Cape Cod Times Front Page, January 8, 2021
At the end of a beautiful Thursday afternoon in January, the weather about 40 degrees with a northwest breeze coming off the harbor, Jay Critchley, dressed in a construction helmet topped with a yellow light and an eagle perched on top, asked a series of questions to three dozen or so Cape Codders gathered at the beach at Provincetown Harbor.
“Have you ‘Karened’ Operation Warped Speed,” he asked, referring to a viral video of a woman refusing to wear a mask in a store.
“Are you revenge-traveling to Hyannis?”
“Are you confusing national security with natural security?”
Critchley, a local artist, led residents Thursday in the 38th annual Re-Rooters Day ceremony across the street from the Harbor Hotel to bid farewell to 2020.
“We are here to storm the beach, carry Provincetown’s flag of freedom and hope and purge the recklessness of not only 2020, but the last four years….” Critchley said.
The annual ceremony started after Critchley visited the post-holiday dump decades ago and found piles of Christmas tree corpses and other holiday remnants. The first year, he tried unsuccessfully to replant the trees.
Since then, Jan. 7 has been marked by loading one of the trees onto a boat Critchley himself builds. The boat is then pushed out into the harbor to burn, much like what was done at Viking funerals.
“As we gather in community on the shores of the ancient stolen lands of the Wampanoag Nation, we pause to listen to the sounds of breath and silence,” he said.
Critchley welcomed people Thursday with a sign that read “Viral Warming” spelled backward. The phrase served as the theme of this year’s ceremony, along with “The Ten Commandments of Capitalist Sea Ice Revenge.”
As it does each year, the ceremony used holiday conventions — including Christmas carols — to call out what capitalism was offering in the face of what is needed to address climate change.
The crowd watched this year’s wooden boat, adorned with a tree, burn on the horizon. The boat was heavily laden this year, as people loaded big chunks of their 2020-battered psyches onto the vessel. One participant opted to burn a calendar of the full year.
“People come to be renewed, to be released and to move forward, and we need this more than ever this year,” Critchley said in a telephone interview on the eve of this year’s ceremony for the International Re-Rooters Society.
With 2020 being a year defined by unemployment, food insecurity, political divisiveness, pandemic deaths and the pall of isolation, even for those who didn’t fall ill to COVID-19, many people were ready to just chuck the whole year and start fresh.
But Thursday’s event took on some added significance after crowds of President Donald Trump’s extreme supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol the day before. Confirmation of the electoral vote for President-elect Joe Biden was delayed for hours by the armed standoff.
Adding insurrection to the list of 2020’s failings made people eager to begin again, he said.
“After [Wednesday], to oversee a ceremony like this provides a poignant opportunity for the CEO of the [International Re-Rooting Society],” Critchley said.
—
Jay Critchley
TEDx Talk: A portrait of the artist as a corporation
Join mailing list
www.jaycritchley.com
Join me on Facebook
Instagram #jaycritchley
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12. Mark Bloch, FF Alumn, now online at BrooklynRail.org
https://brooklynrail.org/2020/12/art_books/Ray-Johnson-and-William-S-Wilson-Frog-Pond-Splash
Mark Bloch reviews Frog Pond Splash: Collages by Ray Johnson with Texts by William S. Wilson, edited by Elizabeth Zuba (Siglio, 2020).
This beautiful, pocket-sized, well-researched, smartly constructed book of 37 breathtaking collages by Ray Johnson, who died in 1995, is accompanied by 23 short texts by his friend, critic William S. Wilson, who died four years ago. Wilson’s words are metaphorical descriptions of Johnson’s methods, rather than biographical notations. His unique position in close proximity to Johnson, as collector, archivist, and friend, was established by Johnson. Wilson aptly chronicles their 1956 initial meeting with: “the feeling was of trapdoor after trapdoor opening, and of me falling through into reality.” Perhaps admiring Wilson’s eye for thoroughness, care, and detail, Johnson cleverly chose him and his wife Ann Wilson to be his archivists in the early 1960s and began documenting his activities, often by mail. Over the decades, Wilson would pepper the art press with thoughtful pieces about Johnson and his mail art. Thus has Wilson been called Johnson’s “Boswell.” (James Boswell, said to have penned the greatest biography ever written in English, of his friend and older contemporary, another Johnson, Samuel.)
In 2011, Wilson received an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers grant for a manuscript to be called Ray Johnson: An Illustrated Life in Art. As he worked towards this goal, Wilson pondered Johnson, his work, and his 1995 suicide, in emails and catalogue essays for five more years, churning out insightful prose, but never a book. Editor Elizabeth Zuba previously compiled one of the best tomes about Johnson, Not Nothing (Siglio, 2014), focused on his output as a wordsmith.
Johnson is one of the most prolific combiners of word and text, not only through his mailed art, but also in his dense, meticulous collages, including some notable gems featured in this volume. Six here from private collections are rarely seen. Eight sent to Wilson include a previously unknown Shirley Temple sendup called Mayan Letters, dated both 1958 and 1991 (though multiple dates are not unusual for Johnson), and other 1950s classics such as an Elvis Presley #2 (1956–57) with trademark “moticos” shapes; Johnson’s groundbreaking Untitled (Rimbaud) (1956) with Ben Day dots; Untitled (P Town) (c.1962) that puts Buster Keaton with a gargoyle; and two ominous suicide-foreshadowers: Untitled (Water is Precious) (c.1956/58) and the Untitled (Frog) (1983–85) piece of this book’s title. The 23 remaining collages are from the Ray Johnson Estate, including another Shirley Temple collage, Untitled (Shirley Temple with Robin) (1966, 1989, 4.15.94), of the child star silhouetted with a colorful bird and superimposed by an arcane shape.
Wilson’s text brings to Johnson’s own breadth of writing his theory of the artist’s practice of “holding systems open” to include “postponed questions of decisive completeness,” and a preference to “end events abruptly at the edge of nothingness.” Wilson precisely contrasts a severe speech deficiency he had as a youngster, which made it difficult to understand him, with Johnson’s attraction to opaqueness: “the inarticulate,” “verbal non-comprehension,” “visual illegibility,” “invisibilities,” “the imaginary,” “anonymities,” “ambiguities,” and “doubled meaning.”
Wilson claims, rightly or wrongly, that, like a frog, Johnson “set himself in motion without a plan or a chart.” The title, Frog Pond Splash, refers to a 17th century haiku by Matsuo Bashō. Wilson derides ponds that lack firm foundations. He laments a pond bottom that is soft and murky, elsewhere repeatedly waxing poetically about Johnson and viscosity. “Ray, in family, in a classroom, in a religion, and in a ‘school of Pop Art’ would experience viscosity as an idea and as a sensory experience,” he says at one point, creating ambiguity about the idea’s origins.
Johnson’s comfort level with a thick spongy pond bottom deprived of a distinct beginning, middle, or end may have been different from Wilson’s own: the artist might have more easily accepted a part water, part floor solution, as his playful work suggests. Johnson, who employed water themes frequently, knew what he could and could not control.
Wilson’s vast Johnson archive of collages, letters, and ephemera was acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago, where Ray Johnson c/o, a major show, will appear in January 2021. The exhibition catalogue will be one of the first not to include an essay by Wilson. That makes this playful book the perfect candidate for a last important collaboration between the two men. Readers of this sweet, thin volume will find it easy to forget that, other than lettering in Johnson’s collages and Zuba’s eloquent seven-page afterword, all the words in this book are Wilson’s. He talks with such familiarity about his friend that we begin to believe that we are hearing the voice of Johnson, raising questions for someone interested in the artist’s biography about where his activities end and the critic’s ideas begin. Wilson projects powerful parables about the older artist.
Ray Johnson worked alone; despite his pioneering use of networks, he worked without a net. The spine of this book, which lists only Ray Johnson as author, rightfully acknowledges Johnson as the primary creative force within, temporarily excluding both Wilson, the man of letters this book propels forth, and Zuba, the editor whose heroic effort putting this charming volume together presents Wilson’s moving words more like passages of philosophy, free verse, or extended haiku than non-fiction or art criticism. Thankfully the star of this show is Johnson, whose magnificent, uncanny, and sublime collages require little explanation that he himself did not provide in abundance during his self-truncated lifetime.
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13. Frank Moore, FF Alumn, at Cushion Works, San Francisco, CA, Jan. 20-Mar. 6
I Get Results! Frank Moore for President 2008
January 20–March 6, 2021
Organized with Keith Wilson
“Ah, yes! I did spend two years running for president as a write-in candidate! It is one of my most effective performances! It inspired a lot of people, forced changes in Laws in several states, attracted a lot of mainstream European press coverage, and gave me a platform on which to address issues. SEE, I AM NOT JUST A HUNK!”
Frank Moore (1946–2013) was an artist, poet, painter, shaman, and teacher based in Berkeley, California. In 2008, and alongside running mate Susan Block, a sex educator and author, he mounted a campaign for president of the United States of America. A political novice who used a wheelchair and communicated primarily through a head-pointer, Moore intrinsically challenged norms of appearance, ability, and communication simply by way of showing up.
While Moore was primarily known—and somewhat infamous—for his performances exploring erotic and emotional connection, he stumped for a Berkeley-friendly platform not unlike that of Senator Bernie Sanders. Along with universal basic income, health care, and education, Moore was behind election day as a paid holiday, an end to the buying and selling of debt, and a feast of further reasonable positions. After considerable effort from Moore’s longtime collaborators, he and Block were official write-in candidates in 25 states, each with its own byzantine bureaucracy.
I Get Results! presents archival video footage, including public appearances and platform pronouncements, alongside official campaign documentation, press, and merchandise, all set within a patriotic installation modeled after the Moore/Block info-table assembled for events around the Bay. The exhibition opens on Inauguration Day, 2021, and remains on view for six weeks.
Reserve an appointment to view I Get Results! at Cushion Works: https://cushionworks.cmail20.com/t/t-l-xhlag-eiyuhdkdt-t/
Cushion Works is wheelchair accessible; the building’s restrooms, however, are not.
Please mark your calendars for a public conversation with Linda Mac and Mikee LaBash, Moore’s closest collaborators, on Monday, February 1, at 5pm PST. Look for the link forthcoming at: https://www.cushionworks.info/
Keith Wilson is a filmmaker and artist based in San Francisco whose work has been exhibited at Sundance, the Berlinale, South by Southwest Film Festival, the U.S. National Gallery of Art, documenta14, and the Museum of Modern Art. He teaches in the Film & Media Department at UC Berkeley and has an MFA in film production from the University of Texas-Austin. Wilson is presently working on a documentary film about Frank Moore.
Special thanks to Linda Mac, Mikee LaBash, Alexi Malenky, Erika Shaver-Nelson, and Corey Nicholl.
https://www.cushionworks.info/
Cushion Works
3320 18th Street
San Francisco, CA
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Goings On is compiled weekly by Harley Spiller
