Emvergeoning

Conway’s Game of Life translated into one line of APL.

“Rules of Inference” by Mel Bochner

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Rest in peace, Jack Rose.

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For the third and final installment of our interview series with San Antonio art luminaries (see previous interviews, Easy Rider and Prodigal Son), we spoke with Anjali Gupta, executive director and editor-in-chief of Art Lies contemporary art quarterly. If it hasn’t been angelic qualities that have fueled this woman’s meteoric rise through the Nebula of Texan Art, than it has been her dogged work ethic, keen sense of telemetry, her concentrated gravity, and her superhuman ability to detect faint wisps of bullshit. She cannot hide her roots–tracking them all over the house on her boots–Gupta is a seasoned DIY commando, a builder of community and an emissary for that community cosmos-wide. We sat with her at our home and hers, both on San Antonio’s southside.

You were one of the driving forces behind the legendary Wong Spot in San Antonio. Tell us a little bit about the Wong days.

The Wong Spot began in a lovely building on South Flores, the old Wong’s Grocery Store, just a few months after I relocated here from Austin. Initially, it was a co-op consisting of artists James Cobb, Alex Rubio, Regis Shephard, Gary Sweeney and my ex-partner, Robert Tatum. At the time, I still had a somewhat regular studio practice, but my role was primarily what it always ends up being: the enabler. I dealt with logistics. Don’t get me wrong—it was a blast—and through Robert’s existing contacts in the San Antonio art community, it was wildly popular. We were also fortunate enough to be spitting distance from Jesse Amado and Chuck Ramirez’ studios, as well as Franco Mondini-Ruiz’ botanica. Such proximity fostered a certain synergy still prominent and strategically successful in the San Antonio visual arts community, Unit B and Sala Diaz being perfect examples.

We did everything on a shoestring. It was truly a community effort. When we relocated to East Commerce, however, it became an all-out business venture: a full kitchen, bar and a staff of 14 in a 10,000 square foot space. We staged weekly mini shows, monthly gallery shows, weekly film screenings and music five nights a week. (Did I mention that I was also running a video postproduction house out of the same building during the day?) It was a veritable circus, and ultimately—sans trust fund—sadly and inevitably unsustainable. But we didn’t really learn our lesson. Robert and I moved on to a series of smaller endeavors including Ellis Bean (which I quickly backed out of due to the, um, idiocy factor), The Honey Factory and 811 on Guadalupe and, finally, booking and curating the Wiggle Room for a spell. During this period, I survived on freelance writing gigs, graphic design jobs, gardening on the Riverwalk and producing videos, primarily for artists-in-residence at Artpace. I then woke up one day and consciously opted for a career instead of a series of really expensive and exhausting hobbies. Ten years, two paragraphs. Whew.

As somebody who grew up in Texas but has branched out, how has your opinion of the Texas art scene changed?

Actually, I spent half my formative years on the East Coast. I’m also a first generation American, which certainly shaped my psyche much more than being a “Texan.” My interest in the arts began as child (I was a fairly talented painter and my parents encouraged this), was fostered by my sister in my teens (she is an art historian and curator), by studying abroad in Germany and by my previous incarnation as an ethnographic filmmaker, which landed me in San Francisco in the early 90s working for Survival Research Labs.

That said, I have lived in Spring (just outside of Houston), Dallas, Austin and now San Antonio. Clearly, there is a distinct timbre in each of these cities and, by extension, a “Texas art scene.”

From your idiosyncratic perspective, is it all piñatas and cowpokes, or is there hope for other Texas art outside of Texas?

Mmmmk. At least you didn’t say scatological.

I assume by “hope” you mean an audience, and furthermore, success. My question to you is what yardstick do you, as an artist, use to measure success? Mine stick is qualitative, not quantitative. It is made in Texas out of imported wood and yes, it can beat the crap out of your piñata.

Have you seen any New Media artwork lately that has had an impact on you?

Sure. Some enchanting and some disappointing, which is to be expected no matter what the media.

Prove that you’re telling the truth, and name one. And tell us where you saw it and what made it stand out from all the other sermons you’ve heard in the last year.

Miguel Angel Rios’ 2008 video series White Suit, Crudo and Matambre comes to mind. I first saw them in person at the 2009 Armory Show, which was the perfect venue for this work—a hands down smack down—a balls out parody of the art industry. What makes this work stand out is that is not a sermon at all. I like art on the secular side of the spectrum. I don’t like to be preached at.

What is the difference between contemporary art and art made contemporaneously?

Content.

If you’re lining your eyeballs up with the fine line that separates the two, what can you see on either side?

Shit/Shinola. Please see David Robbins’ Brie Popcorn in Art Lies 52.

Do you ever get too much art?

If I do, it is probably time for a career change.

How do you cope?

I don’t. I allow myself the latitude to act out with impunity.

So, despite rumors, there are no outstanding warrants for your arrest?

I didn’t say that.

How can artists be productive members of society outside of the art world?

That is reductive. The art world is an imaginary space.

There are a lot of people going into debt pursuing degrees to prepare themselves for that imaginary space.

The industry of the MFA is problematic any way you look at it. I know plenty of smart, talented artists (and curators and art historians) with advanced degrees working multiple unpaid internships and/or bartending, driving cabs, stripping, walking dogs for cash, etc. This is nothing new. Spillage is normal and healthy. The very idea that a degree is somehow an automatic direct flight ticket to see the wizard is a very strange fallacy—one quite obviously reinforced in the labyrinths of our upper learning institutions. People coming out of prestigious MFA programs are simply not prepared for rejection, and let’s face it, even rejection has to be earned. Perhaps the idea of a PHD in studio art is a temporary solution to your question. That way, by the time these kids get out of school, they will be totally incapable of dealing with the real world and well prepared for the comforting and insular interior of a padded cell.

How did the economic crisis impact artists and the art industry?

How did it or how is it? We’re all still pretty fucked, top to bottom, coast to coast. Anyone who says differently is trying to sell you a self-help seminar. Funding freezes. Hiring freezes. Layoffs. Cutbacks. Ad budgets slashes. Programming halts. Tenure track position cuts. Gallery closures—I could go on, but the bottom line is now is the time to get creative. Collaborate. Pool resources.

Survive.

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(from left to right) Foucault, Lacan, Levi-Strauss, and Barthes.

The recent passing of Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009) marks the end of an era as he was the last of the four great Structuralists (and Post-Structuralists) represented in the infamous cartoon “The Structuralists’ Lunch Party.” At a 100 years old, he outlived Foucault, Lacan, Barthes, and even the Deconstruction of Derrida.

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StoneHenge in San Antonio?  When I stopped to take the photograph, the homeowner came to the screen door and told me he was a carpenter. He said,  “if anybody needed any work done, to tell them to stop on by.” The address is 327 Lone Star, San Antonio, TX 78204.  Feel free to check it out for yourself.

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With the busy weekend, you don’t necessarily have to go to Rayburn’s 1312 Wyoming studio to add some of his art to your collection. Instead, you can peruse the artworks at this website and then email your bid to JFNelson@Me.com. Just be sure to get your bid in before 4:30 p.m. this Sunday afternoon.

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This is a little reminder of some of the art events on this busy weekend.

• Mel Bochner is showing recent work at Lawrence Markey gallery on Friday night, 5-7 pm.
• For those of you who dig theory, the Land Heritage Institute is hosting an art-sci symposium, “The Nature of Place,” full of important thinkers, from Lucy Lippard, Sandy Stone, and Joan Jonas to Anjali Gupta (editor / director of Art Lies) and Leslie Raymond (head of the New Media Program at UTSA and one half of Potter-Belmar Labs). This is on Saturday & Sunday. It’s free, but you have to register.
• For some more family-oriented fun on Saturday, check out the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center’s Family Day, with free workshops, demonstrations, food, drink, and live music. There’s even a bike rodeo and free silk screening if you bring your bike & t-shirts!
• Saturday night the Martinez Street Women’s Center is having a fundraiser at Artpace called the Bling-Bling Fling. Should be a blast. Tickets are $25.
• The street art festival Clogged Caps is going on all day Saturday, with top-notch aerosol artists & DJs.

Don’t miss any of this stuff! Seriously!

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Justin Quinn: Moby Dick Chapter 54 or 13, 879 times E (detail)

A little over a week ago I posted on Glasstire about a show of paper works up at Texas State University. It’s really worth checking out if you are in San Marcos (or driving through). The show closes this coming Thursday (the 22nd). Read the review and drop by.

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I just posted my take on the Ansen Seale installation mounted by the Land Heritage Institute over at Glasstire. LHI is positioning itself at the intersection of a number of different issues and movements, potentially functioning simultaneously as a park, an educational resource, an equestrian center, an advocacy group, a think tank and an art center. It should be interesting to watch how the whole thing plays out — the series of events that led it to where it is today has not exactly been predictable, and I doubt its future development will be either. In any case, I’m looking forward to LHI’s “art-sci symposium” The Nature of Place next month. With participants like Sandy Stone, Lucy Lippard, Erik Knutzen from the Center for Land Use Interpretation, and Anjali Gupta from Art Lies, it should be interesting to say the least. We’ll keep you posted.

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San Antonio artists – applications for LUMINARIA 2010 are now available at luminariasa.org/participate. Last year, artists uploaded their applications on-line but this year the Luminaria committee opted for the more traditional mail-in/drop-off application.

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Art21 returns this October with its 5th season which will premiere on KLRN on Wednesday, October 7 at 10:00 p.m. Being publicly funded, PBS has had some problems, in the past, creating shows about art and often supported kitsch values – as seen most evidently in the show ‘The Joy of Painting’ which was hosted by cultural icon Bob Ross. Similarly, NPR often supports Classical music as opposed to avant-garde or cutting edge music/sound art. While Classical music needs to still be appreciated and have a venue – it represents another generation and era. Art21 got it right by documenting some of the most prominent artists in the field today and this season’s first episode will showcase William Kentridge, Doris Salcedo, and Carrie Mae Weems.

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We recently switched web hosts, and the transition was a little hairier than expected, due to some Wordpress database quirks. I think everything’s more or less ironed out at this point, but we did lose some comments that were posted over the last couple of weeks. If you posted anything that has disappeared, please know that this was due to a database snafu and nothing more.

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In his short essay ‘Romancing the Looky-Loos‘, Dave Hickey shares his interesting viewpoint on the evolution of coöptation as viewed through its audience. He makes a distinction between Spectators(the titular looky-loos) and the Particiant. You can spectate the full article here or participate with it here.

“spectators invariably align themselves with authority. They have neither the time nor the inclination to make decisions. They just love the winning side— the side with the chic building, the gaudy doctorates, and the star-studded cast. They seek out spectacles whose value is confirmed by the normative blessing of institutions and corporations. In these venues, they derive sanctioned pleasure or virtue from an accredited source, and this makes them feel secure, more a part of things. Participants, on the other hand, do not like this feeling. They lose interest at the moment of accreditation, always assuming there is something better out there, something brighter and more desirable, something more in tune with their own agendas. And they may be wrong, of course. The truth may indeed reside in the vision of full professors and corporate moguls, but true participants persist in not believing this. They continue looking.

Thus, while spectators must be lured, participants just appear, looking for that new thing—the thing they always wanted to see—or the old thing that might be seen anew—and having seen it, they seek to invest that thing with new value. They do this simply by showing up; they do it with their body language and casual conversation, with their written commentary, if they are so inclined, and their disposable income, if it falls to hand. Because participants, unlike spectators, do not covertly hate the things they desire. Participants want their views to prevail, so they lobby for the embodiment of what they lack.

The impact of these participatory investments is tangible across the whole range of cultural production. It is more demonstrable, however, in “live arts” like music, theater, and art than in industrial arts like publishing, film, and recording. Because in the “live arts,” participatory investment, as it accumulates, increases the monetary value of the product. You increase the value of an artwork just by buying it, if you are a participant. Thus, you will probably pay more for the next work by that artist you buy. You do the same if you recruit all your friends to go listen to a band in a bar. If all your friends show up and have a good time, you will almost certainly pay more at the door the next time the band plays. But that’s the idea: to increase the social value of the things you love…”

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The application for the Artist Foundation of San Antonio is now available. In the past they have given grants to San Antonio artists for up to $12,500. Apply here before October 16th.

UPDATE: There will be an application workshop on Saturday, October 3rd at Trinity University Digital Lab from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m.

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This is kinda old but looking at Justin’s slide show of Berlin graffiti wanted me to check it out again. I found the Berlin murals being made here but my favorite is still the one posted below. It is an interesting glimpse into the possible legacy of William Kentridge.

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6:39 am, September 5, 2009.

The In and Outlaws CD release party, Casbeers at The Church, San Antonio, TX.

“…a large vacant area.”

Not at all.

My favorite cow music this side of Jon Wayne.

Brad, the drummer, has a serious demeanor to say the least. Not that different than the visage of Charlie Manson, who appeared on TV a few hours earlier in the bar downstairs where I was hanging out with the chilled out blues of Los Mescaleros and intermittently watching the Cowboys play the Vikings in the last pre-season game of the year. It’s a contest in which a few players who may still have the chance of gaining a roster spot are said to be “on the bubble.” Choice quote, from one of the play by play guys, in reference to Patrick Watkins, who’s putting out an extraordinary performance: “He’s like Glinda The Good Witch. That’s how far inside the bubble he is.” Odie, of the Mescaleros, sitting down behind his stand up bass, has a tambourine strapped head side down to his boot. This makes me smile. I chill a little further in.

Later on, I join the standing room only congregation gathered for The In and Outlaws. The shadow of Lloyd’s bass head on a fluted column, which stands behind him, truncated, too white, supporting nothing. Burton, on pedal steel, wearing an Eleven Hundred Springs gimme cap with a high foam front. Ragged mic hole in Brad’s kick drum. Long red rag hanging from Matthew’s left pocket, has a Fifties Full Service look. Frayed hems of Gordon’s jeans splay around his too flat used car salesman shoes. These are the details that keep me alive between songs.

Downstairs, fetching beers, I hear Mike say, “In Utah they think 88 degrees is hot.” Justin says, “In Berlin they think 87 is.”

Guys, thanks for playing the unicorn number for the encore. Matthew, I love the middle school lead you do on this song. Brad, rumor has it you don’t care too much for playing it, but I like it. You write most of the material — please come up with one titled Guernsey Girl. I know Gordon can sing it.

(photos by Justin Parr)

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In my first post in a long time over at Glasstire, I call out Elaine Wolff for her characterization of Daniel Saldaña as “post-contemporary.” I like the pieces he has on display at David Shelton Gallery, but her implication that his art is at odds with current art-making trends is a stretch, and I think a misreading of what’s happening in the art world.

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Lucky Jim, a London squatter with a great blog, scores some old anti-colonialist posters at one of his squats. I’m particularly fond of the ANC posters:

African National Congress poster

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A Los Angeles Urban Ranger explaining something

The LA Times has a story up about the Los Angeles Urban Rangers, a group of “geographers, environmental and art historians, artists, curators, architects, and others” who dress up like park rangers and teach people how to enjoy public urban space responsibly. They lead urban safaris, such as a “guided hike of Hollywood Boulevard that deconstructed the famous street as if it were a natural park.” They teach people how to (legally) enjoy Malibu beach fronts where the homeowners have often (illegally) posted “Private Beach” signs.

San Antonio's Bike Gang Summit, 2008 (photo: Justin Parr)

This is what performance art should be: seductively entertaining while challenging implicit assumptions about what constitutes public space and how it should be used. In their own way, the Final Friday bike rides (and Bike Gang Summits) in San Antonio encourage this kind of urban exploration, albeit with less explicitly pedagogical goals. Mark Jones and the rides’ other organizers lead bikers through obscure urban environments on the edges of downtown, descending on unlikely VFW halls and pocket parks. It’s a social sculpture if there ever was one.

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Daniel Saldaña dropped by the other day to show off his new penny farthing art bike. This piece will be in his “Electroism” show opening tonight at Blue Star. For more background, see Saldaña’s bikes here and here, and the Current article by Elaine Wolff. Also, check out his work in the ongoing David Shelton exhibit, Multiples.

Daniel Saldaña standing with his newest art bike

Daniel Saldaña art bike handle

Daniel Saldaña art bike ornament

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“Raul Castellanos and Skye Cosby will be destroying a historic piano upon which music legends such as Sam Cooke have played. The piano was a gift from the late artist Reverend Seymour Perkins’ family to commemorate his artistic career and legacy. Perkins and Castellanos collaborated extensively for the last 2 years of Perkins’ life. Afterwards, Castellanos will build a wall sculpture out of the piano pieces…” -Raul’s MySpace

“My performance partner suffered a heat stroke last week cancelling our performance but we are now able to guarantee that on Tuesday the 28th, at 7:45 PM, at 602 Nevada (and Hackberry) at Reverend Seymour Perkins’ famous cement slab/sculpture garden, I, Raul Castellanos, will be breaking a piano given to me by the Perkins family to honor the late controversial and legendary artist from the Eastside. My assistant is Skye who is also Perkins’ only authorized biographer. I collaborated on many projects with Perkins for a bit more than 2 years and was truly honored to do so.” -Raul’s MySpace

It’s hard to believe, but this event was actually as good as it sounded. Raul once had an art studio next to mine and he was always pretty intense- destroying perfectly good instruments to create paintings and sculptures that helped him represent his deafness to the world. Destroying this antique, though, seemed particularly irreverent as well as the fact that, this time, his chaotic artistic performance was taking place in the middle of one of San Antonio’s poorer black neighborhoods. For the most part, passing cars would just honk curiously at the gathering crowd. There were moments, though, when this art crowd might have felt they were on the wrong side of Sunset Station. One passing neighbor yelled at a nervous spectator and told him to put the piano back together. Overall, though, I felt a real sense of community built between artists, San Antonians, and the recently bereaved. It has often been said that in art- in order to create, you must destroy. What better place, then, than at the Reverend’s Revival Center which once strived to rebuild the tattered remains of strung-out lives.

UPDATE: A video of the event was just uploaded to youtube.

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Platform 21 is hyping repair as “the new recycling” with its Repair Manifesto, along with various contests and publicity efforts. It’s interesting that some of the “repairs” Platform 21 is publicizing are not functional or structural, but are really aesthetic in nature.

This Jan Vormann project is cool, but it doesn’t appear to offer much in the way of structural integrity. Then again, maybe that’s not the point — highlighting quirky projects like this means more attention for the project, and perhaps a broader reach for the “repair ideology” it is pushing. It also encourages people to think creatively about repair, and makes a chic movement out what often becomes just a greasy time sink. So here’s my contribution: a handmade porcelain teacup I broke and repaired a little while back. It’s not as flashy as Legos in a brick wall, or the “golden seams” of traditional Japanese tea bowl repair, but out of four similar cups, this is now my favorite.

PS. This cup inspired another Emvergeoning post a while back.

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2009 CAM weekend #2:

Randy Wallace / Rae Culbert price list

Kristy Perez: All that stands between us

Love Shack: undisclosed location

Mike Casey at FL!GHT Gallery

An unexpected visit from Bruce High Quality Foundation

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I think I figured out how Chad Dawkins is reviewing all those CAM shows:

In this study, I investigated whether pigeons could be trained to discriminate between paintings that had been judged by humans as either “bad” or “good”. To do this, adult human observers first classified several children’s paintings as either “good” (beautiful) or “bad” (ugly). Using operant conditioning procedures, pigeons were then reinforced for pecking at “good” paintings. After the pigeons learned the discrimination task, they were presented with novel pictures of both “good” and “bad” children’s paintings to test whether they had successfully learned to discriminate between these two stimulus categories. The results showed that pigeons could discriminate novel “good” and “bad” paintings.

This study was published recently in Animal Cognition (hat tip).

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Chad Dawkins attempts to review every visual art exhibit on the Contemporary Art Month calendar on a blog created for the project: Publicity Stunted. So far he’s off to a good start, though more images could help. We’ll see if he can keep up the momentum through this weekend, which looks pretty packed.

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