How Fast Your World Is Changing
On Friday night (March 21st, 2008) the exhibit How Fast Your World Is Changing opened at Ampersand International Arts, 1001 Tennessee Street, in San Francisco. The opening reception was a lively event showcasing the work of Harrell Fletcher, Christine Hill, Hope Hilton, Jessica James Lansdon, Jennifer Delos Reyes and Markuz Wernli-Saito.
In contrast to most of the gallery openings I’ve been to lately, this exhibit featured work that directly requested the viewers to take an active role in the work. It was less about gazing and more about participating, and as such, blurred the boundaries of a traditional art viewing experience. Curator Lori Gordon sets up opportunities that intentionally deviate from the viewers expected experience.
Of all the interesting work presented, there were three pieces that I found myself continuing to think about: Hope Hilton’s project Walk with Me, Jennifer Delos Reyes’s piece Choral Society (for Lori Gordon), and Markus Wernli-Saito’s project Returning the Negatives. Each one of these works asked me to engage in the experience in an almost invasive way, allowing me a participatory role in the outcome.
Hope Hilton’s Walk with Me is presented by way of a wall mounted rack holding her brochure-like editioned instructions. Without a little bit of curiosity, this work is easy to overlook, however, I pulled one of the small envelopes from the wall and began to investigate. Inside, 5 small xeroxed sheets described the project in full. It began with:
“Need a break? I’ll take you on a 20-minute walk in complete silence. All you have to do is follow me and forget it all:”
I was intrigued and continued to read, allowing the project to unfold in my mind’s eye. It went on to describe Hilton’s desire to share silence with us, to create a journey through movement without spoken sound, creating a contemplative and insightful experience that leads back to where it started. In the different phases of the project that unfold during the length of the exhibition, she meets participants for regularly scheduled walks from Ampersand; solicits your favorite walks for her to take around San Francisco; and culminates by inviting us to take her on a silent walk in the city. I found this piece brave and challenging, based in a trust of strangers that seems missing in todays world. It offers participants it’s own challenge of trust, and rewards them with an ever changing landscape of experience. The instruction sheets is the only tangible product of the work, produced in an edition of 500.
Jennifer Delos Reyes performance piece Choral Society (for Lori Gordon) honors those she loves and admires through song and music. The piece confused me at first, as Lori Gordon, curator, walked through the gallery handing out large posters with her own face, cute and smiley, on the front, and the lyrics to the John Lennon song Instant Karma on the back. She kindly asked if we would like to sing in the choir. What I didn’t realize in this moment, was that Delos Reyes was about to honor Gordon with her favorite song. Delos Reyes gathered a group of singers, arranged them in traditional choir formation (each with lyrics facing them, and a multitude of Lori’s face staring back at the audience), and proceeded to lead the group through a practice rendition, and then, with video rolling to document the performance, led the singers again through the song with bass and keyboard accompaniment.
Gordon sat front and center, and beamed from ear to ear while the choir sang this song for her. I’m sure she felt both honored and a little embarrassed, like when our friends sing Happy Birthday to us in a restaurant. As is often the case with music, the act of singing out loud took people out of their personal shells, and served to notch up the positive energy swirling in the room. Strangers began talking to one another and I felt the mood changed to a lighter, more festive atmosphere. The documented performance will be played as a loop on one of the video monitors for the duration of the exhibit, with the remaining posters left beneath as a take-away.
Returning the Negatives by Markuz Wernli-Saito is perhaps the piece that I connected the most with. Wernli-Saito spent 5 weeks working with a village of tea and coffee farmers in Bao Loc, Vietnam, providing villagers with a one-time-use camera, and requesting that they photograph their days in two hour increments. The villagers were the photographers. The artist meet with them weekly, encouraged their efforts, and formed a lasting relationships with the community. In his presentation at Ampersand, he created a mosaic of prints and profiles of each photographer and allowed their stories to unfold on the wall.
In these photographs taken by villagers, I was taken back to my Global Fusion travels, seeing again the organic details of daily life of another’s culture that feel so familiar to me. Wernli-Saito asks gallery viewers to assist him in finishing the project by requesting us to return the negatives to each of the individual photographers in Vietnam.In carefully prepared packages, Wernli-Saito provides the materials; negatives, a contract stating we will post the pre-stamped and addressed envelopes (even providing us with the nearest mailbox, at Tennessee and 20th), a pre-printed personally addressed letter to the individual, and a postcard for us to write our own personal message. In this act, the project takes on a sort of pen-pal format, where we are granted access to the photography that describes their daily life, and in return, they receive back their negatives with a note from us, the viewers. In this act, the artist completes the project by returning ownership of the original film back to it’s creator.
Ampersand International Arts is a contemporary space that shows art in an alternative venue in San Francisco. Their commitment is to intercultural dialog, and cultivating an understanding of diverse cultural perspectives. I think that’s what I enjoyed most about this art venue. The artists showing in How Fast Your World Is Changing reflect this diversity, offer a dialog in cultural discussion by offering, us, the viewer, an opportunity to engage in the conversation.
For more information visit Ampersand International Arts. Gallery hours are Fridays 11-5 or by appointment.
What do you think about art that involves you in the act of creation? Please leave your comments below.
Tags: Alternative Exhibit Space, Art, Exhibits, San Francisco
April 5th, 2008 at 11:54 am
[…] familure? I wrote about How Fast Your World Is Changing a week or so ago, and this exhibit at the ICA is along a similar thread in offering the viewer the […]