Click here to read more about the exhibition on the UAG website: www.universityartgallery.ucsd.edu

Click here to read more about the conference

About the Participants

Julian d’Angiolillo

Julian d’Angiolillo is a visual artist, filmaker and playwright whose work explores questions of urbanism, spatial practice, public space and memory. This exhibition features his recent feature-length film Hacerme Feriante [Become a Stallholder], along with documentation of its creation. The film is the product of d’Angiolillo’s intensive research on a massive informal market known as La Salada. Condemned by the European Union for violations of brand copyright laws, La Saladais the largest informal market of its kind in Latin America, attracting migrants from Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay and the Argentine countryside. D’Angiolillo’s film examines the coordinated efforts of stallholders, local bosses or caudillos, and visitors who open the fair in the middle of the night or pre-dawn hours twice weekly. Italso explores the ways in which the market is far more than a site of commerce, and is also a place for celebrations, religious ceremony and popular assemblies and a strategic field where the identity of immigrants and workers is reaffirmed.

www.elnuevomunicipio.com.ar

Eduardo Molinari

Eduardo Molinari is a multidisciplinary artist whose work centers on research through artistic methods and walking as an aesthetic practice. His Archivo Caminante [The Walking Archive] is a meta-work that is both an archival collection he has, maintained since 2001, as well as the manifestation of his ongoing artistic-cum-research practice. This practice draws on varied epistemological frameworks and methodologies, including those associated with militant research, conceptual art, ethnography, post-colonial historiography, travel writing and psychogeography. El Camino Real is a diptych comprised of an installation that features documents drawn from the Archive and the book, El Libro Plateado y Real, appearing in its first English translation. In El Camino Real history unfolds in a non-linear and palimpsestic time that moves between the Southern Cone’s colonial history, Argentina’s hyper-neoliberalization in the 1990s and ensuing economic crash, and the potentiality of popular revolt and armed struggle seen in the country in the early 1970s. This work not only refigures a sense of national identity, but also proposes an especial understanding of the past — one that encompasses the unpredictable landscape of collective memory, fugitive events and experiences that have escaped the archival record, and the untapped potentialities still latent within them.

www.archivocaminante.blogspot.com

Jennifer Flores Sternad

Jennifer Flores Sternad is a scholar and curator whose research focuses on militant and activist art, performance, and artistic practices developed within or in alignment with social movements. Since 2001 her work in these fields has included extensive research in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, as well as on Xicano/a and Latino/a art and theater in the U.S. Her texts have been published in books and academic journals in the US, Europe and Latin America, including Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization (NAi, 2011); Live Art in LA, 1970-1983 (with Suzanne Lacy, Routledge, 2011 forthcoming); Zona de Poesia Árida: Coletivos de Arte (Universidad de São Paulo, 2011 forthcoming), MEX/LA: Mexican Modernisms in Los Angeles (with Ricardo Bracho, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011 forthcoming); Haciendo Tiempo: Arte Radical, 1999-2004 (Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de Mexico, 2010); and the journals GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies; Contemporary Theatre Review; The Journal of American Drama and Theater and Interreview. She has directed and produced public art events in Argentina, Chile and California and she is co-founder with Fran Ilich of the media art/research project Collective Intelligence Agency. She holds a BA in Literature from Harvard, an MA in Art History from UCLA, and she is currently a doctoral candidate and MacCracken Fellow in American Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU.

About the artists

Mariano Brizzola

Mariano Brizzola lives and works in Buenos Aires where he studied Visual Arts at the IUNA (Instituto Universitario Nacional de Arte / National Universitary Art Institute). He continued his education with Eduardo Gil and then participated in the artists’ workshops coordinated by Fabiana Barreda, Raúl Flores and Máximo Jacoby. He has obtained Mentions and Awards at the National Salon of Visual Arts (2009) and the photographic competition organized by Banco Ciudad (2007). He has taken part in several group photography exhibits at local galleries such as Belleza y Felicidad, Tanto Deseo / Apetite (2006), Meridión Arte Contemporáneo (2008) and Ángel Guido Art Project. His work has been included in museums and festivals such as Museo Sívori (2008) and the International Photo Festival of Porto Alegre (2009). Two years ago, Brizzola began doing solo exhibitions at Centro Cultural Recoleta. Currently, his show titled Pluscuamperfecto hangs at Studio 488 Gallery, located on the first floor of Patio del Liceo.

Visit his Flickr page: www.flickr.com/photos/marianomio

Tomas Ghiorzo

Tomas Ghiorzo started taking photographs at the age of 13 with his father’s Zeiss Ikon. Though he holds a degree in architectural engineering, Ghiorzo has worked in both print and digital photography with a large format camera, specializing in fashion photography. He writes of his work: Una antonimia: lo inerte de los espacios y lo activo de la descomposición. El encanto de lo horrible. Lo enorme y majestuoso. Lo invisible, imperceptible. El minucioso y exquisito desorden. El silencio ensordecedor de los espacios muertos. Sentir vacío, soledad, miedo, frío, silencio, devastación. Sentirse mínimo. El trabajo lo estoy haciendo en dos espacios, ex plantas, dos hitos en la industria de Zarate de mediados del siglo pasado, que con su cierre marcaron las mismas cicatrices de lo degradado en sus paredes que en los cientos de obreros que trabajaban en ellas. Son tomas de “espacios en estado de descomposición”, como una visión de la arquitectura como algo orgánico, generado por el paso del tiempo y de nuestra historia. Mas que una obra arquitectónica de hierros, cemento y materiales inanimados parecen un cadáver de un ser biológico que existió, respiro, y almaceno en su seno a mucha gente que vivía el mismo esplendor que su construcción, y que de esta misma manera se fue degradando con la muerte del mismo. El ser humano se degrada y los espacios se descomponen.

Visit his website: www.tomasghiorzo.com.ar

Alain Marcus

Alain Marcus was born in 1978 and studied art, music and film at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, CEAMC (Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Musica Contemporanea) and Fundación Universidad del Cine. Fluent in English, Spanish and French, Marcus’ photographs are closely intertwined with film and music. He writes of his work: I look for the notion of “something happening”, “something wonderful”. I believe that this occurs up to a certain extent when one’s intellectual understanding cannot cover the perceptual experience. It’s about recognizing that something beautiful is taking place, yet not being able to express it or reduce it to a concept. I am interested in the mystery of things happening beyond one’s understanding. I consider those experiences to be rich and consciousness expanding. This kind of experiences leave me no choice but to live them through with humility. Thus, the experience takes an overwhelming dimension; we might actually become one with the experience. This motivates as a photographer, as well as a composer….The music I have written and recorded over the past years has the sole purpose of reinforcing the aura I am trying to evoke behind my pictures. Personally, I would like to throw away all misconceptions pertaining the idea of “art field”, and trusting one’s intuition. For me, showing these images by themselves, is incomplete. I usually specify a certain piece of music I was listening to at the time of the shooting. This is essential. I honestly believe that the effective way of showing my work is with music, mine or someone else’s.

Visit his blog: www.alainmarcus.blogspot.com and flickr page: www.flickr.com/photos/alainmarcus

Cecile Perret

I was born in Rio Negro, Argentina in February 1977 and I expressed an interest in painting and drawing from an early age. I was encouraged by my parents to take lessons since I was 4 years old and did so on and off until the age of 21. After graduating from college, I moved to Buenos Aires with my family and studied Visual Arts at the Escuela Panamericana de Diseño y Publicidad and an introductory year of Graphic Design at the University of Buenos Aires. It is at that time that I started showing my work and participating in competitions. I lived in Paris, France for three years from 2002 to 2005. This was an extremely enriching and introspective period where I spent much of my time in my studio, seldom showing my work. I moved to Milan in 2005, encouraged by close friend and trompe l‘oeil master Guesso. I spent one year working as his assistant and continuing my studio work. Through the years I developed a great interest towards graffiti and street art, as well as comics and illustration. Elements from which started to gain space in my canvases. I returned to Buenos Aires, where I currently live, in 2006 and immediately started to connect with artists, organizing group shows and contacting galleries. We created a series of massive group shows called Supermuestras and recently smaller versions called Veo-veos. My work can be seen in galleries such as GP espacio de arte (Palermo), La Guanaca Azul (San Telmo) and VYP (Retiro).

Visit her Flickr page: www.flickr.com/photos/hilorojo

Barbara Renati

Barbara Renati was born in 1984 in Buenos Aires, Argentina where she lives and works. She has a degree in visual arts from IUNA and has worked with artists such as Carlo Molina, Carlos Scannapieco, Patricio Bosch, Rodrigo Alonso and Carlos Bisolino. Her work often combines the disciplines that she works with including engraving, drawing and painting. The stereotypical image and iconography clearly linked to the cliché, cites the graph of the 50’s. The word has great significance in her compositions by introducing irony and wordplay. She has been participating in individual and group exhibitions since 2005. Also performs collective work with a group of young contemporary graphic artists  - Florencia  Sfoggia, Marcelo Moreno and Antonella Andreoletti – involving playful and reminiscent of childhood in site-specific works. Performed in parallel she carries out along with AntonellaAntonella Andreolleti ephemeral art project and fun “PIÑATA”.

Visit her Flickr page: www.flickr.com/photos/br-mushroom

Alejandro Sordi

Alejandro Sordi was born in 1986 in Buenos Aires, Argentina where he lives and works. He studied design at the Escuela Técnica Fernando Fader and has been involved with the Asociación Estímulo de Bellas Artes. In addition to drawing and painting, Sordi works in music and film. He has been the recipient of multiple drawing awards including 2010: Mención Especial Faber Castell, 2009: 3er. Premio en Pintura, 2008: 2do. Premio en Pintura, 2008: Mención Categoría Dibujo, 2007: Mención Categoría Dibujo and 2007: 2do. Premio en Pintura l Concurso de Pintura Palermo Viejo. Group exhibitions include 2010: Pintar Pintar l Sexto Kultura, Buenos Aires, 2010: Pintura Mural en Casa Manifiesta, Palermo, Buenos Aires, 2009: Ambientación bar La Cigale l Ciclo de los martes Noche Francesa, 2009: Instalaciones y montaje Ray Ban Arts l Lado B: Niceto Club, Palermo, 2009: Combo Paint & Design l pintura mural en Planeta Cúbico, Palermo and 2008: Muestra Colectiva en el Centro Cultural Paseo Quinta Trabucco.

Visit his website: www.alejandrosordi.com.ar

About Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou, Ph.D., born in Rabat, Morocco in 1937, holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School EGS. Alain Badiou was a student at the École Normale Supérieure in the 1950s. He taught at the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis) from 1969 until 1999, when he returned to ENS as the Chair of the philosophy department. He continues to teach a popular seminar at the Collège International de Philosophie, on topics ranging from the great ‘antiphilosophers’ (Saint-Paul, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Lacan) to the major conceptual innovations of the twentieth century. Much of Badiou’s life has been shaped by his dedication to the consequences of the May 1968 revolt in Paris. Long a leading member of Union des jeunesses communistes de France (marxistes-léninistes), he remains with Sylvain Lazarus and Natacha Michel at the center of L’Organisation Politique, a post-party organization concerned with direct popular intervention in a wide range of issues (including immigration, labor, and housing). He is the author of several successful novels and plays as well as more than a dozen philosophical works.

Trained as a mathematician, Alain Badiou is one of the most original French philosophers today. Influenced by Plato, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze, he is an outspoken critic of both the analytic as well as the postmodern schools of thoughts. His philosophy seeks to expose and make sense of the potential of radical innovation (revolution, invention, transfiguration) in every situation.

Unlike many of those schooled in the anti-humanist principles of Louis Pierre Althusser and Jacques Lacan , Alain Badiou has never been tempted to celebrate the apparent end of philosophy, to question the possibility of metaphysics, or to qualify the classical attributes of truth: rigor, clarity, and eternity.

As Alain Badiou explains in detail in his major work to date L’Etre et l’événement (1988), truths are militant processes which, beginning from a specific time and place within a situation, pursue the step-by-step transformation of that situation in line with new forms of broadly egalitarian principles. Only a pure commitment, one detached from any psychological, social, or ‘objective’ mediation, can qualify as the adequate vehicle for a truth, but reciprocally, only a properly universal truth qualifies as worthy of such a commitment. Only a truth can ‘induce’ the subject of a genuine commitment.

Badiou’s most general goal can be described, then, as the effort to expose and make sense of the potential for profound, transformative innovation in any situation. Every such innovation can only begin with some sort of exceptional (though invariably ephemeral) break with the status quo, an ‘event’. An event can occur at any time but not in just any place; an event will generally be located close to the edge of whatever qualifies as ‘void’ or indistinguishable in the situation, i.e. in that part of the situation where for literally fundamental reasons the prevailing forms of discernment and recognition cease to have any significant purchase. A truth then expands out of this ‘evental site’ (site événementiel) insofar as it elicits the militant conviction of certain individuals who develop the revolutionary implications of the event, and by doing so constitute themselves as the subjects of its truth. A subject is thus anyone carried by his or her fidelity to the consequences, as rigorous as they are haphazard, of an event, while a truth is nothing other than the cumulative collection of such post-evental consequences. The laborious, case-by-case application of these consequences will then serve to transform the entire way the situation organizes and represents itself, in keeping with the implications of the event.

An ordinary individual, or ’some-one,’ only becomes a genuine subject insofar as he or she is caught up in a materially transformative procedure of this kind. By the same token (for reasons sketched in Badiou’s most accessible short work, L’Ethique (1993), subjects only remain subjects insofar as their fidelity is in turn equipped to resist the various sorts of corruption it must inevitably face: fatigue, confusion, and dogmatism. For example, those mobilized by the civil rights, feminist, or anti-colonial movements remain true subjects insofar as these movements, initially sparked by certain events affecting particular groups of people in particular situations, call for the transformation of the situation as a whole in terms that can be directly and universally affirmed by its every inhabitant. But should such a movement seek simply the promotion of a particular group for its own sake, then its partisans act only as the proponents of an interest in competition with other interests. The identification of suffering victims is not by itself the sufficient basis, Alain Badiou insists, for a genuine political movement. Like all truths, politics must proceed in a sphere of rigorous universality, on the basis of statements that literally anyone could make or affirm.

This does not mean, however, that truth operates in the domain of consensus or communication. Every genuinely universal principle has its origin in an active and precisely situated taking of sides; every true affirmation of the universal interest begins as divisive. There is no philosopher more opposed to the ‘ethical’ coordination of opinions or differences than Badiou.

Alain Badiou distinguishes four general fields of truth, or four domains of subjectivation (which in turn operate as the four generic ‘conditions’ of philosophy itself): politics, science, art and love. These are the only four fields in which a pure subjective commitment is possible, i.e. one indifferent to procedures of interpretation, representation, or verification. Alain Badiou provides his most concise overview of the generic procedures in his Manifeste pour la philosophie (1989). True politics is a matter of collective mobilization guided by a ‘general will’ in something like Rousseau’s sense, and not the business of bureaucratic administration or the socialized negotiation of interests. Within the limits of the private sphere, genuine love begins in the wake of an unpredictable encounter that escapes the conventional representation of sexual roles, continues as a fidelity to the consequences of that encounter, and is sustained through an unrepresentable exposure to what Lacan famously described as the ‘impossibility of a sexual relationship’. True art and true science proceed in somewhat the same way, through a searching experimental fidelity to a line of inquiry opened up by a new discovery or break with tradition. Mathematics is then the most ‘truthful’ component of science simply because, thanks to its axiomatic foundation in the basic postulates of set theory, it is the most securely abstracted from any natural or objective mediation.

In the end, every truth is ‘founded’ only on the fundamental ‘inconsistency’ that Alain Badiou discerns as the exclusive and insubstantial stuff of pure being qua being — the generic being of all that is simply insofar as it is, but that is only exceptionally accessible, through the rare commitment of those who become subjects in the wake of its evental exposure.

*Biography as posted on the European Graduate School EGS

On October 15, 2009 a Garage Talk was held presenting Washington Cucurto and Maria Gomez of the Argentine literary collective Eloisa Cartonera in conversation with Steve Fagin, Eloisa Haudenschild, Teddy Cruz (architect, estudio teddy cruz), Juli Carson (Director, UCI Art Gallery) Jennifer Flores-Sternad (art critic and curator), and Monica Jovanovich-Kelley. Steve Fagin and Juli Carson were moderators and respondents. All of the October 15 participants were part of the November 2008 A Crime Has Many Stories traverse in Buenos Aires. At the Garage Talk, Cucurto read an excerpt from El Hijo.

A Crime Has Many Stories, is an exquisite corpse project commissioned and produced by Eloisa Haudenschild and Steve Fagin of 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) set in Buenos Aires and plotted with co-conspirators Judi Werthein, Sonia Becce and Alejandro Ruiz. Piglia’s text generated two site-specific pieces and a commissioned story by Argentine writer Washington Cucurto, El Hijo. In May of 2008, the haudenschildGarage traveled to Buenos Aires to meet with its advisory curatorial committee. Argentine curator Sonia Becce and Argentine artist Judi Werthein selected a short list of artists for the project, working in installation, photo and video. From this short list, Eloisa Haudenschild, Steve Fagin, and Alejandro Ruiz selected artists Roberto Jacoby, Fernanda Laguna and Rosalba Mirabella for the two site-specific pieces. Monica Jovanovich-Kelley coordinated the project in San Diego and Buenos Aires.

On November 29, 2008 a multidisciplinary, one-day extravaganza organized by Argentine producer Alejandro Ruiz began with a video of Ricardo Piglia’s elegant interpretation of his own text performed especially for our event and premiered at Malba – Fundación Costantini (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires). A catalog of the entire project and a limited edition Survival Kit was provided to the participants at Malba to facilitate their journey. Both were produced in collaboration with Eloisa Cartonera.

From October 14 – 16, 2009 Cucurto and Gomez were Artists-In-Residence at the haudenschildGarage. From October 16 – 18, 2008 Cucurto and Gomez traveled to Tijuana to present a lecture and a two-day workshop in conjunction with the haudenschildGarage, inSite, Nortestacion, Epicentrico and the Escuela de Artes de la Universidad Autonoma de Baja California.

About the Participants

Eloisa Cartonera

Eloísa Cartonera is a social and community-related artistic project in Buenos Aries, Argentina. The central office is a cardboard store – a place where cardboard and paper is sold – named “No hay cuchillo sin Rosas” (“There’s no knife without Roses”). There, cardboard collectors, cartoneros, exchange ideas with artists and writers. The cardboard collector is a South American phenomenon and many times there are entire families working as cartoneros. Eloísa Cartonera invents its own aesthetic; open minded and unbiased, wishing to produce reciprocal learning, fueled by creativity. Books with cardboard covers are edited on the street; these covers, painted by hand with temperas and paintbrush, are made of the cardboard that was collected in the streets. Eloisa Cartonera publishes unknown, border and vanguard texts of Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Brazil and Peru. They have a roster of world-renowned authors including Ricardo Piglia, Cesar Aira, Gonzalo Milan (Chile), and Luis Chavez (Costa Rica).
Click here to visit their website.

Jennifer Flores-Sternad

Jennifer Flores Sternad is a critic, curator, and researcher whose work focuses on militant and public art practices, performance, and art making as a mode of research. She has done extensive research in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico with fellowships and grants from Harvard University and UCLA. She was the South American Coordinator for the international public art project The School of Panamerican Unrest and the organizer and producer of Público Transitorio, a traveling event series in L.A. that featured artists from throughout the Americas. Jennifer is currently a research fellow at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), where she is organizing an exhibition and publication on performance art in Southern California in the 1970s.

Juli Carson

Juli Carson is Associate Professor in the Studio Art Department at UCI where she teaches Critical and Curatorial practice in Contemporary Art and directs the University Art Gallery. She was curator of Exile of the Imaginary: Politics, Aesthetics, Love (Vienna: Generali Foundation, 2007). She also curated the archival exhibition accompanying Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document (Vienna: Generali Foundation, 1998). Her essays on conceptualism and psychoanalysis have been published in Art Journal, Documents, October, Texte Zur Kunst and X-Tra, as well as in numerous critical anthologies. She is currently completing her forthcoming book, The Conceptual Unconscious: A Poetics of Critique.

Teddy Cruz

Teddy Cruz was born in Guatemala City. He obtained a Master in Design Studies at Harvard University in 1997 and established his research-based architecture practice in San Diego, California in 2000. He has been recognized internationally for his urban research of the Tijuana-San Diego border, and in collaboration with community-based nonprofit organizations such as Casa Familiar, for his work on affordable housing in relationship to an urban policy more inclusive of social and cultural programs for the city. In 1991 he received the prestigious Rome Prize in Architecture and in 2005 he was the first recipient of the James Stirling Memorial Lecture On The City Prize, by the Canadian Center of Architecture and the London School of Economics. In 2008 he was selected to represent the US in the Venice Architecture Biennial and he is currently a Professor in public culture and urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at University of California, San Diego.

Washington Cucurto

Born Santiago Vega, 1973, Quilmes, Buenos Aires, Argentina, he is better known as Washington Cucurto – Argentine writer, poet, narrator and editor and one of the founders and directors of Eloisa Cartonera, a publishing house that disseminates contemporary Latin American literature. The central office is a place where cardboard and paper is sold. There, cardboard collectors, cartoneros, exchange ideas with artists and writers. Eloisa Cartonera invents its own aesthetic; open minded and unbiased, wishing to produce reciprocal learning, fueled by creativity. Books with cardboard covers are edited on the street; these covers, painted by hand, are made of the cardboard collected in the streets. Eloisa Cartonera publishes world-renowned, unknown, border and vanguard texts of Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Brazil and Peru.

With the publication of Cucurto’s first book of poetry, Zelarayán (1998), he burst forth on to the South American cultural scene creating, along with other poets, the style today known as Realismo Atolondrado. Both in poerty and novels, the Cucurto experience is an explosion of music and insolence with invented words, insults to politicians and reflections on literary masters. Other books of poetry include La Máquina de hacer paraguayitos (2000), 20 pungas contra un pasajero (2003) and Hatuchay (2005). Some of his novels include Fer (Eloísa Cartonera, 2003), Panambí (Eloisa Cartonera, 2004) and Las aventuras del Sr. Maiz (Interona, 2005). His poems have appeared in anthologies published in Mexico, Chile and Germany. His 2003 novel, Cosa de Negros (Nigga Shit), made him a cult author especially among young readers. These novels and poems describe the Dominican, Peruvian and Paraguayan immigration of the mid-1990s to Buenos Aires. In 2005, 2006 and 2007 he received a scholarship from Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart.

On April 23, 2008 the haudenschildGarage held a Garage Talk with Shanghai-based author Mian Mian which included a premiere reading from her forthcoming novel, Panda Sex and a conversation about her infamous novel, Candy. From April 20 – 26, 2009 Mian Mian was an Artist-in-Residence at the haudenschildGarage as part of the hG, Spare Parts project The Last Book.

On April 26, Mian Mian was part of The Last Book performance as one of the readers at the Schindler House in Los Angeles. The haudenschildGarage, Spare Parts produced an homage to “the book” in the age of the conquest of the Kindle. Steve Fagin wished to resuscitate the magnificence of the illuminated manuscript as the world turned toward darkness. Perhaps electronic technology could be used, not to leave the book on the dustbin of history, but to reconstitute a forgotten past where words and images danced in each other’s arms.

To this end the haudenschildGarage constructed a one of a kind book that included text, drawings, moving images and sounds. Its construction in the medieval, supersized tradition consisted of three illuminated folios each eighteen and a half inches high, thirteen inches wide and three inches deep.

To make this more than a dirge for the dead, a proper Joycian Wake, we incorporated into our project the live and kicking writing skills of Mary Gaitskill (Two Girls Fat and Thin), the macabre visual lyricism of Leslie Thornton (Peggy and Fred in Hell) and YouTube, the MySpace-with-a-twist drawings of Davina Semo, the retro-futurist music mix of Greg Landau, and as the piece de resistance, Shanghai’s notorious and ever so talented bad girl author Mian Mian as one of our readers with Monica Jovanovich-Kelley and the Kindle. This bouillabaisse was concocted by Steve Fagin.

About Mian Mian

One of the most important writers from China’s new generation, Mian Mian has lived up to her reputation as China’s best bad girl novelist. She drew wide attention from the literati starting at the age of 17 when she became the first Chinese writer to ever describe a drug related life. Her characteristic flavor of “cruel youth” and her serious attitude towards self-reflection quickly attracted a large following of young readers. Her novels have been translated into 15 different languages and published worldwide. Candy, Mian Mian’s magnum opus, an underground best seller, is regarded as the most remarkable adolescent literature in China. In April 2000, the government officially banned her book and subsequently the rest of her books. However by this time, hundreds of thousands of pirated copies had already been circulated. Mian Mian’s literature had exerted tremendous influence on the Chinese X and Y generations. She has become a cultural icon for a generation of Chinese youth who value the authenticity and honesty of her portrayal of the future of the new Shanghai. In 2009 she published her new novel, Panda Sex, in China and France, soon to be published in English.
Click here to visit Mian Mian’s website

Coinciding with the anniversary of the “Art For Sale” exhibition, the haudenschildGarage held a Ten Year Reunion Celebration for artists, critics, and curators on January 18, 2009 in Shanghai and on January 20, 2009 in Beijing.

Organized by Laura Zhou and Lorenz Helbling, some attendees included Li Xiangyang, Liu Wei, Yang Fudong, Yang Zhenzong, Shi Yong, Song Tao, Xiang Liqing, Wang Youshen, Zhu Jia, Yang Enli, Zhao Bandi, Lisa Movius, Tang Maohong, Hu Jieming, Lynn Zhang, Zhou Tiehai, Ding Yi, Helen Zhu, Chen Ya, Lu Leiping, Florence Dinar, Shaway Yeh and Xu Zhen.

On April 5 and 6, 2008, the haudenschildGarage collaborated with the Orange County Museum of Art to present a Garage Talk, performance, panel, and film screening in conjunction with the exhibition Disorderly Conduct: Recent Art in Tumultuous Times (2/3 – 6/1/08).  The exhibition and its public programs were co-sponsored by the haudenschildGarage.

Saturday, April 5th began with a video screening of Martin Kersels‘ opening performance at the Orange County Museum of Art. Following, Kersels performed Breath. Glenn Kaino’s Burning Boards installation at the Garage consisted of 16 chess games with candles in place of chess pieces were played simultaneously by artists, writers, and chess pros who included Daniel Chamberlin, John Doloszycki, Mari Eastman, Stephanie Hanor, Christian Haye, Pato Hebert, Pearl C. Hsiung, Martin Kersels, Larry List, Elliot Liu, Daniel J. Martinez, Aaron Sandnes, Jennifer Shahade, Afshin Shahidi, and Sage Vaugh.

On Sunday, April 6th videos by Pearl C. Hsiung, Rodney McMillian, and Robin Rhode were screened. Daniel J. Martinez was in conversation with cultural critic Mike Davis and Martin Kersels presented with Pearl C. Hsiung.

Disorderly Conduct: Recent Art in Tumultuous Times featured painting, video, and installation projects by local and international artists whose works reveals the political turbulence, cultural malaise and general instability of our tumultuous times. Including Pilar Albarracin, Karen Finley, Pearl C. Hsiung, Glenn Kaino, Mike Kelley, Martin Kersels, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Rodney McMillian, and Robin Rhode, these artists reference subjects such as war and terror, social and racial tension, urban and environmental disaster, psychological break-down, and criminal behavior in a range of mixed media and video installations. Using striking images and imposing structures, often imbued with surrealist absurdity and irony, they represent and perform this pervasive sense of global chaos and disorder. Disorderly Conduct was curated by Karen Moss, curator of collections.

About the Participants

Daniel J. Martinez

Fifteen years after his indelible first appearance in the Whitney Biennial in 1993, Daniel Joseph Martinez continues to create work that unapologetically probes uncomfortable issues of personal and collective identity, seeking out threadbare spots in the fabric of conventional wisdom. A strategic provocateur with a keen intelligence and a wicked sense of humor, Martinez deploys the full range of available media in his practice, having used at various times (and in various combinations) text, image, sculpture, video, and performance to construct his uniquely tough-minded brand of aesthetic inquiry. The artist’s works over the last few years vividly demonstrate both his methods and fascinations. The House America Built (2004), for example, staged an improbable, mordant collision between Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and design maven Martha Stewart (with an added touch of Gordon Matta-Clark’s anarchitecture), in the form of a wooden cabin that filled the space at his New York gallery, The Project. Painted in deliberately tasteful Stewartesque pastels, the looming structure—riven from bottom to top by a widening slice evoking Matta-Clark’s famous house cut, Splitting, of 1974—was in fact a reimagining of the Montana dwelling where Kaczynski penned his infamous manifesto.

Glenn Kaino

Glenn Kaino, a Japanese American artist born, raised, and currently working in Los Angeles, has versatile skills as an art maker and director of large media projects. Weaving in and out of fine and commercial art realms Kaino has worked as a co-founder of Deep River Gallery in LA and as chief creative officer of Napster. He has also taught at UCLA and University of Southern California. Kaino’s work has been shown at the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, The Studio Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. Transforming commonplace objects and iconic cultural symbols, Kaino (like Andy Warhol) references the subtleties and ironies of popular culture. He often explores issues of cultural identity through both still and kinetic sculptures. In Graft, a proud and ominous ostrich stands atop a light box. The Ostrich is a plastic, life-sized reproduction, but the artist has sewn the bird’s exterior—by hand—using real python snake skin. Kaino gives careful consideration to his materials and process in order to evoke meaning. Possible associations a person might make after viewing Graft range from plastic surgery and second skins, to fashion accessories and trends. In grafting new skin onto this nomadic, head-in-the-sand herbivore Kaino creates a new bird—a likely predator capable of dealing death by its grip. The inner nature of the tightly bound bird is hidden in plain sight. Like taxidermied animals found in hunting lodges and natural history museums around the world, this once-fast hybrid ostrich is now permanently stilled.

Martin Kersels

Martin Kersels, co-director of the Program in Art, is a Los Angeles-based artist who works with sculpture, audio, photography and performance. He has had one-person shows in New York, Los Angeles, Bern and Paris. In September 2008 Martin Kersels’ retrospective exhibition, Heavyweight Champion, was shown in the Santa Monica Museum of Art and at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. He recently won a Guggenheim Fellowship Award for 2008/09. Martin Kersels’ work has been shown in numerous group shows such as Departures: 11 Artists at the Getty, Young Americans 2 at the Saatchi Collection, and The 1997 Whitney Biennial. His work is held in various collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, MOCA Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum and the Norton Family Foundation.

Mike Davis

Mike Davis is an American social commentator, urban theorist, historian, and political activist. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in his native Southern California. Named a Macarthur Fellow in 1998, Davis was also honored for distinguished achievement in nonfiction writing this past fall by the Lannan Literary Foundation. Davis is the author of more than 20 books and more than 100 book chapters and essays in the scholarly and elite popular press. His scholarly interest span urban studies, the built environment, economic history and social movements. Perhaps his best know book, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles was named a best book in urban politics by the American Political Science Association and won the Isaac Deutscher Award from the London School of Economics and has been translated into eight languages.

Pearl C. Hsiung

Born in Taiwan in 1973, Pearl C. Hsiung received her BA at the University of California, Los Angeles (1997) and her MFA at Goldsmiths College, London (2004). Hsiung has had solo exhibitions at Max Wigram Gallery, London (2006) and Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles (2007). Hsiung’s work has been featured in group exhibitions including Humor Us at the Los Angeles Municipal Arts Gallery (2007); 2006 California Biennial and Disorderly Conduct: Art in Tumultuous Times (2008) both at the Orange County Museum of Art; 2006 Busan Biennale, South Korea and Expander, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, London (2005). Pearl C. Hsiung makes works that are an amalgam of diverse, metaphor laden images of transmogrified landscape-portraiture hybrids. Hsiung draws from varied sources of visual vocabulary, including generic photography books found in thrift stores, sci-fi/fantasy illustrations, medieval alchemical drawings, mass culture graphics and images culled from memory. The resulting images offer a multitude of interpretations ranging from the psycho-sexual to the anthro-geological. Click here to visit her website.

March 6, 2008 was the second annual Half King affair in New York. The Half King dinners were an opportunity to share with haudenschildGarage friends and collaborators, past, present and future, the ideas around the hG, Spare Parts projects in an informal context immersed in cheap drink, greasy food and loud music.

hG, Spare Parts is a 3-year cycle of projects commissioned and produced by Director Eloisa Haudenschild and Commissioning Editor Steve Fagin from 2006 – 2009 that encouraged the juxtaposition of the crucial, the trivial, and the arcane. The projects included Decolonizing Architecture, selected for the 2009 Architectural Venice Biennale, A Crime has Many Stories that premiered at MALBA in Buenos Aires in November 2008 and The Last Book which launched in April 2009 at the MAK Center, Schindler House in Los Angeles.

Decolonizing Architecture

Selected by ARTFORUM in January of 2010 as one of the top ten projects of the decade, Decolonizing Architecture was originally conceptualized and its pilot stage produced in dialogue with Eloisa Haudenschild and Steve Fagin, partners in the haudenschildGarage, Spare Parts projects.

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. Decolonizing Architecture is a multi-pronged project that addresses the possibilities of understanding and redesigning Palestine in preparation for a post-evacuation time and context through two case studies, the former military base, Oush Grab, and the settlement of P’sagot. A scale model, architectural plans and public events, including an exhibition and symposium with Eloisa Haudenschild, Steve Fagin, Sandi Hilal, Eyal Weizman, Alessandro Petti and Lieven de Cauter at the Bozar Center for Fine Art in Brussels (10/31 – 1/4/09), were produced around plans for turning the fabric of the case studies into Palestinian public institutions.

The Manual of Decolonization is the result of a residency that Salottobuono (www.salottobuono.net) made in August 2008 in Beit Sahour (Bethlehem) at Decolonizing Architecture. The manual is a choral work where different approaches stood out at the same time. The production of the manual was supported by the haudenschildGarage and based upon a series of meetings with the “stakeholders” in this process. It includes representatives of various organizations and individuals, the local community, members of various NGOs, government and municipal bodies, academic and cultural institutions, local residents and resident associations. Click here to view the manual.

The manual and scale model will be on view in Los Angeles at SUPERFRONT as part of the exhibtion UNPLANNED: Research and Experiments at the Urban Scale (3/25/10 – 7/2/10).

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 also been exhibited at COAC in Barcelona (2009) and at the 4th International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam (2009-2010).

Click here to visit the Decolonizing Architecture website.

A Crime Has Many Stories

A Crime Has Many Stories, is an exquisite corpse project commissioned and produced by Eloisa Haudenschild and Steve Fagin of 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) set in Buenos Aires and plotted with co-conspirators Judi Werthein, Sonia Becce and Alejandro Ruiz. Piglia’s text generated two site-specific pieces and a commissioned story by Argentine writer Washington Cucurto.

In May of 2008, the haudenschildGarage traveled to Buenos Aires to meet with its advisory curatorial committee. Argentine curator Sonia Becce and Argentine artist Judi Werthein selected a short list of artists for the project, working in installation, photo and video. From this short list, Eloisa Haudenschild, Steve Fagin, and Alejandro Ruiz selected artists Roberto Jacoby, Fernanda Laguna and Rosalba Mirabella for the two site-specific pieces. Monica Jovanovich-Kelley coordinated the project in San Diego and Buenos Aires.

On November 29, 2008 a multidisciplinary, one-day extravaganza organized by Argentine producer Alejandro Ruiz began with a video of Ricardo Piglia’s elegant interpretation of his own text performed especially for our event and premiered at Malba – Fundación Costantini (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires). We traveled from the opening of the project at Malba – Fundación Costantini to the closing celebration in La Boca by way of the projects by Jacoby, Laguna and Mirabella in a movable feast of culture and repast. The climax of our extravaganza was the inaugural performance of Washington Cucurto’s savagely brilliant short story, El Hijo, commissioned by the haudenschildGarage in response to Piglia’s La Loca y el Relato del Crimen. Cucurto and the literary collective Eloisa Cartonera performed an ensemble reading of the story in La Boca. A catalog of the entire project and a limited edition Survival Kit was provided to the participants at Malba to facilitate their journey. Both were produced in collaboration with Eloisa Cartonera.

The Last Book

For this project, the haudenschildGarage, Spare Parts produced an homage to “the book” in the age of the conquest of the Kindle. Steve Fagin wished to resuscitate the magnificence of the illuminated manuscript as the world turned toward darkness. Perhaps electronic technology could be used, not to leave the book on the dustbin of history, but to reconstitute a forgotten past where words and images danced in each other’s arms.

To this end the haudenschildGarage constructed a one of a kind book that included text, drawings, moving images and sounds. Its construction in the medieval, supersized tradition consisted of three illuminated folios each eighteen and a half inches high, thirteen inches wide and three inches deep.

To make this more than a dirge for the dead, a proper Joycian Wake, we incorporated into our project the live and kicking writing skills of Mary Gaitskill (Two Girls Fat and Thin), the macabre visual lyricism of Leslie Thornton (Peggy and Fred in Hell) and YouTube, the MySpace-with-a-twist drawings of Davina Semo, the retro-futurist music mix of Greg Landau, and as the piece de resistance, Shanghai’s notorious and ever so talented bad girl author Mian Mian as one of our readers with Monica Jovanovich-Kelley and the Kindle. This bouillabaisse was concocted by Steve Fagin. On April 26, 2009 The Last Book was performed at the Schindler House, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles.

On February 6, 2008, the haudenschildGarage held a FUEL4TALK with artist Lincoln Schatz in conversation with Jordan Crandall and Monica Jovanovich-Kelley.

FUEL: Thai

About the Participants

Jordan Crandall

Jordan Crandall (http://jordancrandall.com) is a media artist and theorist. He is Associate Professor in the Visual Arts Department at University of California, San Diego. He is currently at work on a new film entitled Exposure, a meditation on identity and ethics in contemporary network-driven cultures, where operational media and personal media combine in unstable, emergent systems and ecologies. He is also continuing to develop his multi-platform work Showing, which looks at erotic cultures of self-exposure and display.

Lincoln Schatz

Lincoln Schatz (http://www.lincolnschatz.com), since 2000, has focused on the experience of place and the meanings produced by the collisions of nonlinear sections of time. His recent series of generative video memory works selectively record and display images culled from specific environments, amassing thin slices of video/time over a minimum of eight years. Onscreen, those slices overlap and juxtapose with live images to create participatory experiences where the viewer shapes the memory of a space. Like the human mind, past and present events wash over one another, resulting in new possibilities and impossibilities. His latest project, CUBE, is currently on view at Quint Contemporary Art in La Jolla and was recently featured as a special project at PULSE Miami 2007, concurrent with Art Basel Miami Beach. CUBE, a 10’ x 10’ translucent architectural structure, extends from the artist’s formal background as a sculptor and draws on his more recent practice in generative video. CUBE is designed with 24 video cameras mounted at varying heights within the structure. During a one-hour sitting, digital capture from each video camera is streamed to a computer that houses the artist’s specially designed software. The resulting portrait is compiled from thousands of randomly selected video files; these infinitely reconfiguring images are presented on a plasma screen powered by a computer. Through this process, 24 cameras generate a 24-hour rendering that extends beyond the historical notions of portraiture as a static image and creates a lasting record that is wholly dynamic in its ability to reconfigure images and reorder time. Hearst Corporation in New York recently commissioned Schatz to create CUBE portraits that will celebrate the 75th Anniversary of Esquire magazine in Summer 2008.

Monica Jovanovich-Kelley

Monica Jovanovich-Kelley has been the Managing Director of the haudenschildGarage since 2006 and is a PhD candidate in Art History, Theory and Criticism at the University of California, San Diego. Her research in early 20th century art and architecture focuses on urbanism, gender, and the corporate sponsorship of public space in the Americas. Monica teaches modern art, contemporary art and American art at San Diego State University, Point Loma Nazarene University and UCLA Extension. She has worked with the San Diego Museum of Art lecturing on American landscape painter, Asher B. Durand (2008). She was involved with the San Diego Museum of Art exhibition Paper Traces: Latin American Prints and Drawings from the SDMA Collection (2006) and has lectured for the Latin American Arts Committee of San Diego, California (2006). Monica has presented at the California American Studies Association (2011), Association of Historians of American Art (2010) and the annual Art Deco Conference in Los Angeles (2007). She has also been a guest lecturer at the Timken Museum in San Diego presenting on George Inness (2011) and 19th century American genre paintings (2009). In November 2011 she will co-chair a panel on corporate commissions in the Untied States at the SECAC conference.

On November 16, 2007 the haudenschildGarage collaborated with the Visual Arts Department of UCSD, inSite, CECUT and Casa Familiar to present the Political Equator II Conferences: Collective Territories/Territories of Collaboration. This three-day, trans-border public event took place in San Diego, Tijuana, San Ysidro, and Los Angeles from November 16 – 17 2006.

The haudenschildGarage invited Ala Plastica’s Silvina Babich + Alejandro Meitin (La Plata, Argentina) and Urban Think Tank’s Alfredo Brillembourg + Hubert Klumpner (Caracas, Venezuela) to be in conversation in a presentation moderated by Ariana Hernandez.

The haudenschildGarage also commissioned Raul Cardenas of Torolab to construct an Emergency/Conversation Table as the stage for exchange between these two groups.

This event was organized by Steve Fagin, Eloisa Haudenschild, Teddy Cruz, Grant Kester, and Jennifer Flores-Sternad.

About Political Equator II

The Political Equator Conferences were launched in June 2006 with an investigation into the theme of Urbanities of Labor and Surveillance. Political Equator ll stages an exploration of the intersection between sociopolitical and natural domains, foregrounding the notion of a collective territory, but also a territory of collaboration that transgresses hemispheric boundaries. At the core of such trans-hemispheric sociopolitical and economic dynamics is the conflict between transcontinental borders and the natural and social ecologies they interrupt and seek to erase. A renewed politics of environmental activism, searching for effective paths to sustainability worldwide, increasingly collides and eventually clashes with the now-ubiquitous climate of heightened security and territorial dominance that is flourishing at the local as well as the global scale. What has been called the “disaster capitalism complex” is rapidly rising to its own form of dominance as global warming and terrorism challenge aging urban infrastructure and threaten fragile ecosystems and economies.

The field of operations represented by the collectives of architects and urbanists brought together for Political Equator ll traces an invisible trajectory across the political equator. This time the axis runs south to north, along which emergent Latin American practices of intervention simultaneously engage the politics of the environment and policies that are shaping contemporary cities. The Political Equator re-emerges in 2007 as a collaboration with Tránsito(ry) Público / Public(o) Transit(orio), following an event-based itinerary that travels from Los Angeles to San Diego to Tijuana, and back again. This provocative series of events and interventions will be hosted by major cultural institutions, neighborhood-based NGOs, and independent alternative spaces, eventually crossing over into the no man’s land of the border zone itself, where the Tijuana River symbolizes the conflicts these collaborative practices seek to expose and engage.

About the Participants

Ala Plástica

Ala Plástica is an art and environmental organization based in Río de la Plata, Argentina that works on the rhizomatic linking of ecological, social, and artistic methodology, combining direct interventions and precisely defined concepts to a parallel universe without giving up the symbolic potential of art. They are concerned with relating the artist’s way of thinking and working with the development of projects in the social and environmental realm. Since 1991 Ala Plástica has developed a range of non-conventional artworks, focused on local and regional problems, and in close contact and collaboration with other artists, scientists and environmental groups. Ala Plástica works bio-regionally, within Argentina, as well as internationally in relationship to other transformative arts practitioners.
Click here to visit their website.

Urban Think Tank

Alfredo Brillembourg & Hubert Klumpner are from The Urban Think Tank(U-TT) a multi-disciplinary design practice dedicated to high-level research and design on a variety of subjects, concerned with contemporary architecture and urbanism. The philosophy of U-TT is to deliver innovative and sustainable solutions through the combined skills of architects, civil engineers, environmental planners, landscape architects, and communication specialists.In each project the design team explores and understands issues generated by the client’s demands. U-TT was founded in 1993 by Alfredo Brillembourg and, in 1998, Hubert Klumpner joined as principal. The office consists of 10 permanent staff members working out of Caracas, Venezuela. In 2003, U-TT expanded its business activities with the addition of a New York research branch called www.slumlab.com at Columbia University GSAPP.
Click here to visit their website.

Raul Cardenas & Torolab

Founded in 1995 by Raul Cardenas Osuna in Tijuana B.C., MexicoTorolab, is a collective workshop/laboratory of contextual studies that identifies situations or phenomena of interest for research. The result of this investigation should, in some way, enhance the “quality of life” (starting with our own). The projects are being developed according to our own competences and collaboration with other artists and experts in the fields that we are studying and investigating. The themes that we have developed until now range from research on the identity of the border region, to housing and security to community building and survival-the areas of concern are as broad and varied as the lifestyles and environs we’re studying. The traces we leave behind with these investigations go from such things as Urban Interventions, Media Projects, Construction Systems, Survival Units to everyday things like furniture and clothing.
Click here to visit their website.

Ariana Hernandez-Reguant

Hernandez-Reguant is a former resident of Cuba. A professor at UCSD, she teaches courses related to contemporary Cuba, such as the cinema of the Cuban revolution, Ernesto “Che” Guevara and revolutionary cultural politics, to globalization and late socialism and to ethnographic approaches to cultural and media production, cultural circulation, and politics of culture with a focus on Latin America. Her expertise includes anthropology and cultural studies, the music business, and socialism. She is also interested in Latin American societies, with emphasis on Cuban politics, culture and their relationship with the United States. Hernandez-Reguant has many publications on topics such as popular culture, mass media and cultural policy in revolutionary Cuba, arts, politics, commerce, value and subjectivity in late socialism, the Marxist theory and cultural production/circulation, as well as Latin American cultural studies.