In 2003, Eloisa Haudenschild founded the haudenschildGarage, a 21st century cultural search engine, pursuant of interesting work wherever it occurs and in whatever form it takes. Today, the haudenschildGarage hopes to transcend the 19th century salon and the 20th century alternative art space by providing a home away from home to all seeking to engage in cultural experimentation, play and conversation. It routinely presents symposia, lectures and film screenings to the public.
Whether international projects, dialogs or commissions, the haudenschildGarage wishes to collaborate with like-minded institutions and artists. The goal is that by providing a permissive context for opinion and production, new ideas and visions will have an opportunity to take shape.
The haudenschildGarage initiatives for 2010 and 2011 include the establishment of new collaborations and the continued support of existing programs that involve at-risk youth. The haudenschildGarage established the Fundación Migdalia Rubio that offers scholarships to economically disadvantaged students of the Guillermo Prieto Elementary School in Tijuana for the 2010-2011/2011-2012 school years. Artist Felipe Zuniga was commissioned to create a program with artists at the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California (UABC). Titled Laboratorio Experimental de Óptica (LEO), these weekly classes (February – May 2011) explored the concepts behind light, optics, and vision and created pinhole cameras, periscopes, kaleidoscopes, and zoetrope strips.
Larger, often collaborative, events, GARAGE TALKS, have included lectures by French philosopher Alain Badiou (2010), Argentine literary collective Eloisa Cartonera with author Washington Cucurto (2009), Chinese artist and author Mian Mian (2009), the MOCA Allan Kaprow retrospective, Art as Life (2008); the exhibition Disorderly Conduct, a collaboration with the Orange Country Museum of Art (2008); the Political Equator II conferences with the collaboratives Ala Plastica and the Urban Think Tank (2007); Teddy Cruz with Yvonne Venegas, Josh Kun, and Michael Krichman (2007); Walid Raad and The Atlas Group (2007); Asian Art Now with curator Mami Kataoka, Norman Bryson, Doryun Chong, and Yukie Kamiya (2005); the panel Alternative Universes: Emerging Artists’ Spaces (2006); inSite_05 Conversations (2005); and The Political Equator I conferences, a three-day event featuring Hou Hanru, Pi Li, Andrew Ross, Teddy Cruz, Steve Fagin, and Eyal Weizman, among others (2006). This event included the World Premiere of Cao Fei’s video Whose Utopia.
The haudenschildGarage hosts FUEL4TALKS, a series of small format interviews. Past FUEL4TALKS have included Lincoln Schatz with Monica Jovanovich-Kelley and Jordan Crandall (2008), Lisa Tan with Derrick Cartwright and Lauri Firstenberg (2007), Jim Nisbet (2007), Leslie Thornton (2007), Martha Rosler (2007), Eduardo Abaroa (2007), The Orchard Group (2006), and Slavoj Zizek (2006).
The haudenschildGarage has also commissioned new works by emerging international artists. In March 2011, young Argentine artist Cécile Perret completed a mural commissioned for the Garage’s Buenos Aires space. Chinese artist Yang Zhenzhong and Mexican artist Eduardo Abaroa were invited to collaborate on the project The Gift Exchange which culminated in a private gift exchange during their ten-day residence at the Garage in October 2010. In conjunction with the Political Equator II conferences, Raul Cardenas of Torolab was commissioned to create the stage for the discussions with an Emergency/Conversation Table (2007). As part of the 2008 Spare Parts project in Buenos Aires, A Crime Has Many Stories, young Argentine author Washington Cucurto was commissioned to write a text, El Hijo, based on Ricardo Piglia’s 1975 short story The Madwoman and the Story of a Crime. A video of Piglia reading his short story at MALBA – Fundación Costantini (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires) was commissioned as well. Chinese artists Yang Zhengzhong and Shi Yong in 2003, as part of the haudenschildGarage artist-in-residence program, produced new works. Yang Zhengzhong’s video I Will Die, made while in residence, was selected for the 2004 Venice Biennale and Shi Yong held a performance of Super Angel, an interactive web-based project, at San Diego State University. In 2007 Tom Zummer was a featured artist-in-residence and produced new work while at the haudenschildGarage. Infamous Chinese author Mian Mian was also an artist-in-residence in 2009 where she discussed her banned novel Candy (2000) and forth-coming novel, Panda Sex.
In addition to the residency program and commissions, the haudenschildGarage works directly with artists through GARAGE PROJECTS. In 2010 the haudenschildGarage supported Teddy Cruz’s project at Madrid Abierto. Coinciding with the anniversary of the Art For Sale exhibition in 2009, the haudenschildGarage held a ten-year reunion in Shanghai and Beijing for artists, critics, and curators. In 2007 New York artist Lisa Tan traveled to Buenos Aires to complete her Recoleta grave rubbings and Los Angeles based artist, Karla Diaz, created a mural with artist Mario Ybarra Jr. for the 2007 Prague Biennale. Critic Matthew Schum traveled to the 2007 Istanbul Biennale to interview the organizing curator Hou Hanru and created daily blog postings for our web from the biennale. In 2006 the haudenschildGarage collaborated with the New Chinatown Barbershop bringing eight graffiti artists together to create a work the Garage’s Los Angeles space.
Since 2003 the haudenschildGarage has directly supported a variety of projects and programs ranging from exhibitions at REDCAT, the Americas Society, and San Diego State University to a year of seminars at the Centro de Investigaciones Artisticas (C.I.A.) in Buenos Aires and Steve Fagin’s 2011 feature film “A Cloud of Hope.”
In 2006, the haudenschildGarage launched SPARE PARTS, a 3-year cycle of projects commissioned and produced by Director Eloisa Haudenschild and Commissioning Editor Steve Fagin that encourages the juxtaposition of the crucial, the trivial, and the arcane. Projects include A Crime Has Many Stories in Argentina, Decolonizing Architecture in Palestine and The Last Book in the US.
The Last Book
The Last Book, produced by the haudenschildGarage, was conceptualized and directed by Steve Fagin. The attempt was to resurrect the medieval illuminated manuscript through the invocation of today’s current alchemy, new technologies, to conjure a future as the past in reverse. To this end the haudenschildGarage constructed a one of a kind book that includes text, drawings, moving images and sounds. Its construction in the medieval, supersized tradition consists of three illuminated folios each eighteen and a half inches high, thirteen inches wide and three inches deep. The Last Book enlisted the writing skills of Mary Gaitskill, the moving images of Leslie Thornton and YouTube, the drawings of Davina Semo, the music of Greg Landau, and the soulful voice of Shanghai novelist, Mian Mian. The performance of The Last Book took place at the Schindler House in Los Angeles on April 26, 2009.
A Crime Has Many Stories
A Crime Has Many Stories, is an exquisite corpse project commissioned and produced by the haudenschildGarage, based on Argentine writer Ricardo Piglia’s short story, La Loca y el Relato del Crimen (Madwoman and the Story of a Crime, 1975). The November 29, 2008 multidisciplinary, one-day traverse of the city of Buenos Aires was plotted with co-conspirators Judi Werthein, Sonia Becce and Alejandro Ruiz. In response to Piglia’s short story, the project generated two site-specific pieces by Argentine artists Rosalba Mirabella and Roberto Jacoby and Fernanda Laguna, and a commissioned story, El Hijo, by Argentine writer Washington Cucurto. The literary collective Eloisa Cartonera produced a limited edition Survival Kit and a catalog of the entire project.
The goal of this project was to generate a dynamic event that would work across literature, art and the city. Our hope, by joining artists from the 60s with young artists of the present and crossing the boundary of literature and fine art, was to “perform” the continuity and range of Argentine cultures at its strongest.
Decolonizing Architecture
Decolonizing Architecture is a collaboration between the haudenschildGarage and London-based architect and theorist Eyal Weizman and Bethlehem-based architects Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti. Giorgio Agamben is among the consultants for this project. The project takes the settlement of Psagot, overlooking Ramallah, and redesigns it for a post-evacuation time and context. A scale model, architectural plans and public events, including an exhibition and symposium at the Bozar Center for Fine Art in Brussels (2008-09), were produced around plans for turning the fabric of this settlement/suburb into a Palestinian public institution.
In 2009, the project was presented at the Venice Biennale and in 2008 it was selected for the 11th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Decolonizing Architecture has been exhibited at REDCAT in Los Angeles (2010), COAC in Barcelona (2009) and at the 4th International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam (2009-2010).
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