CURRENT EXHIBITION
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Dances with Strangers
Dances with Strangers is a social experiment with dance at the heart. From sunset to sunrise, in my impromptu dance lounge at Atrium on Bay, I will be inviting people to engage me and the Nuit Blanche audience in the partner or social dance of your choice. DJ Cozmic Cat, The City of Toronto and I cordially invite Toronto's dance communities to come out to participate in this year's Nuit Blanche on October 2nd, 2010 and especially encourage teachers and enthusiasts who may want to lead a short demonstration in their genre to contact us before or during the event More About the Project: Landscapes and Interiors
Landscapes and Interiors is a meditation on the condition of post-industry, its economics, and the boundaries and relations that are influenced by both. These installations are new works that respond to the contemporary Syracuse landscape. As the artist writes: “The three zones of the exhibition transition from exterior landscapes to the most private interior spaces, crossing between the spaces of the sacred and profane to re-create the dynamics of contemporary urbanity—blending the deep interiors of the religious sanctuary with the VIP rooms of strip clubs, the food court with the bus stop.” In the main gallery, Landscapes, Syracuse, 2008 is a set of narrative landscape “paintings” that describe the view from various houses of worship in the city. They are paired with the fantasy domains of strip clubs, which have been reduced to a set of architectural plans in Interiors, Syracuse , 2008, a collaboration with Syracuse University School of Architecture faculty member, Scott Ruff. Also in the main gallery, Hymns for Post-Industry—Congregation No. 1 incorporates video and sound of “hymns” that are culled from the texts of local developers. They are projected onto the walls that lead to the adjacent gallery, where Sanctuary is created as a functional social lounge scored by Muzak. The final piece, Interview with Reality, installed in The Warehouse Gallery’s restroom, is a video interview with a Syracuse-based dancer who is known by the stage moniker “Reality.” The interview is intercut with scenes of her performing to the soundtrack SpaceTrash—The Stripper’s Cut, composed and performed by Reality herself. |
NEW WORKS
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You Are Here… a movement, an act, an episode, an ecology
This summer found me on the LACMA campus and thinking about LACMA remotely from Japan as part of Cell Phone Stories, a project led by artist, Steve Fagin. My two episodes were musical collaborations with Preston Poe (who contributed new music) and Emily Lacy (who kindly let me mine her acoustic experiments with the Japanese Pavilion that she produced as an artist-in-residence there). Tokyo-based sound artist, Mamoru Okuno/, lent his insights and a Japanese lesson to episode 2. And episode 2’s collage was artfully engineered by Isabelle Noel. I chose a fairly multifaceted approach to my “episodes.” I begin by combining two versions of the vision toward LACMA’s future, in a “remix” of sorts of the words of its optimistic director, Michael Govan, who reflects on LACMA’s situation within Los Angeles on the occasion of BCAM’s opening in his text, “Where We Are.” The suggested listening location of this audio piece pairs it with Renzo Piano’s equally optimistic ascent into the sky and viewing platform, which looks out from BCAM and onto a horizon that includes the 99 Cent Store, the Hollywood sign and the famous Park La Brea apartments. The second episode highlights LACMA’s relationship to elsewhere, as I set out to find some of the scenes depicted in the traditional screens of the Japanese Pavilion on the ground in contemporary Japan. With the aid of Lonely Planet and a little help from my friends, I make my way by train from Tokyo, through a mind-blowing capsule hotel in Kyoto (which doubles as my recording studio) to Uji Bridge--made famous in the world’s first novel, Tale of Genji, and in the screen on view just outside the bathrooms at the lowest level of the pavilion. Charm City Remix
Part of The Story of This Place series of site-specific narratives, Charm City Remix is informed by the stories I encountered in Baltimore during my time in the city. The final narrative is influenced by the range of elements that make up this contemporary place—from its unique position in the history of American industry and politics, to its uncommon racial demographics and more common strife, to the increasing televisual presence of all of the above by way of David Simon’s The Wire. The score for the piece, developed by the work’s collaborating composer, Erik Spangler, invokes Baltimore’s relationship with musical histories from the military drum and fife to Billie Holiday to the contemporary sample-based “Baltimore Club” music. |
NEWS |
ResidenciesLMCC – Workspace Residency, NYC Art Stays, Ptuj, Slovenia Tokyo Wonder Site A Piece of Cosmos, Kii-Nagashima, Japan Press in Kii-Nagashima ExhibitionNuit Blanche Sound and Vision (Zone B West) Through a range of multi-sensory experiences, languages and forms, Sound and Vision explores how art and popular music create, anticipate, and document some of our most inspired, passionate and widely appreciated cultural moments. These musical “notes” generate sub-rosa histories and collective imaginaries that are transmitted across borders through the body, live performance, radio waves and recent technologies of communication. The convergence of sound and vision encompasses both presence and signification, opening up multiple levels of communication and ecstasy. Commissioned Projects Daniel Lanois, Later That Night At The Drive-In Cell Phone Stories: An Experiment in Mobile Narratives Inspired by LACMA May 29, 2010–September 6, 2010 Ptuj, Slovenia Open Studios – Tokyo Wonder Site June 26, 2010 THE WAREHOUSE GALLERY at Syracuse University Presents Landscapes and Interiors by Kianga Ford My Life in Fiction. Contemporary Museum I’m opening my first solo museum show at the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore on Saturday, September 20th. If you’re in ear-reach, please come by. Included in that show is Defragmentation 1.0, Prototype for a Narrative Isolation. The performance will be live from September 24th-October 1st Baltimore Live Preview Exhibition
1968: Then and Now NYU Tisch and the Nathan Cummings Foundation 1968: Then and Now explores an era when a multitude of social movements climaxed in discontent with political order, particularly in the United States, that was rooted in domestic racial inequality and imperialist foreign policy. It also serves as a reflection on the presence of the memory of that period in our hearts and minds 40 years later. Curated by Deborah Willis, university professor and chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging, the exhibition combines historical and contemporary images that construct diverse stories about the culture of resistance, beauty, power, and the notion of disenfranchisement. “Today, our world is saturated with iconic images that reflect upon and draw from 1968,” said Willis. “The work on view will transform the viewers understanding of identity, resistance, war, and peace.” ConferenceART + ENVIRONMENT CONFERENCE Global interest in the intersections of nature and culture has broadened in recent years. In this expanding field, contemporary artists and designers have re-envisioned the concept of environment. To better understand the ideas shaping this dialogue, the Nevada Museum of Art will host creative practitioners whose works explore natural, built, and virtual environments. what’s neXt: Artists Imagining the Future New Project GrantAsian Cultural Council New ProjectBrown University
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