From October 25 – 31, 2010 two artists from very different countries entered a blurry zone between intimacy and aesthetic compromise at the haudenschildGarage.

Any form of exchange implies risks. An undesired outcome can be almost imperceptible as when someone did not really like their birthday present. But some other gifts are a form of disaster. Think of the Trojan horse or President Obama’s DVD collection for Prime Minister Brown, which outraged the UK last year. The practice of the gift is a key element in a set of social coordinates that are deeply related to the process of art making, which many times is disastrous in itself.

The project began in June as a common interest in plastic toy factories in China and then it went on to the case of unlicensed Marvel super hero piñatas in Mexico. A few e-mails later it took the form of an exchange of photographs in what would be a sort of trans-cultural guessing game (I am still very fond of the idea of making an alternative free trade agreement between China and Mexico). Each artist would try to sing the other’s national anthem in its original language. The final touch that put it all together was Eloisa’s suggestion that the Chinese artist and his Mexican colleague should exchange a suitcase full of gifts, taking into account Marcel Mauss’ seminal essay The Gift and the traditions that these two cultures embrace.

Yang and I were confronted with a challenge. The vast differences between China and Mexico ensure some degree of unfairness and misunderstanding. A few hypotheses can be drawn up to this point:

- A gift exchange can become a ritualized form of combat, an amicable competition that in this case may be equal to deciding who has the most resourceful imagination. Yet there is something paradoxical to it, for the loser in this combat will get the better stuff.

- The feeling of power comes not only from a capacity to subdue the other, but also from the capacity to make someone else happy. These two forms may be separated or coexist in one and the same gift exchange. Altruism does exist, but only as expression of the giver’s own enjoyment with the other.

- Gift giving can be intensely aggressive, a form of control. In Mexico politicians give away caps, t-shirts, food, bags of cement or many other useful things to the people who are supposed to correspond with their vote. Voters favor the candidate who delivers the better gifts. It would be too innocent to believe that affection is never involved in this kind of exchange. I believe receiving gifts from the big man in the village would not be an equivalent of selling the vote for many of the people involved.

- A gift implies reciprocity, but this does not mean that the gift of each participant must be of the same kind. A person may even expect to be reciprocated in another life, by a specific spiritual entity or something similar. Reciprocity is relative. It is understood as an equivalent percentage of each participants´ energy or resources, not as objects or services having the same material value as in the case of barter exchange. While the unequal exchange is thus stabilized as fair, it also preserves the difference in hierarchy between the givers.

- Even if the exchange has strict rules, the end result is excessive and irrational from the point of view of material progress.

By Eduardo Abaroa

Click here to listen to the national anthem of Mexico as sung by Yang Zhenzhong.

Click here to listen to the national anthem of China as sung by Eduardo Abaroa.

About the artists

Eduardo Abaroa

Eduardo Abaroa is a mexican artist working in the fields of sculpture, installation and live action since 1991. He has shown his work in many major museums in Mexico, LA MoCA, PS1 and ICA Boston in the United States, Reina Sofía Museum in Spain, and Kunstwerke, Germany as well as in important venues in the UK, Canada, France, Korea and other countries.

As a writer, he was an art reviewer for the art section of Reforma newspaper, and has written for other important Mexican publications like Curare, Casper, Moho, D.F. and Codigo 06140. He has contributed texts for exhibition catalogues of artists like Francis Alÿs, Melanie Smith, Pablo Vargas Lugo, Tercerunquinto and Dr. Lakra, among others. He is currently course director at Soma, and was a co-founder of the influential Temistocles 44 artist run space in Mexico City(1993-1995).

Yang Zhenzhong

Born in Xiaoshan in 1968, Yang Zhenzhong now lives and works in Shanghai. He graduated from the oil painting department of the China Fine Arts Academy in Hangzhou in 1993 and began working with video and photography in 1995. Yang Zhenzhong’s work has showed at major biennales and triennials including Venice (2003), Shanghai (2002), Guangzhou (2002) and Gwangju (2002). Yang Zhenzhong became famous in 2000 with his half-hour video “(I Know) I Will Die” that features short sequences in which a series of people speak the phrase “I will die” to the camera. It is a disconcerting, soberly presented film that confronts the viewer with existential questions.

Yang Zhenzhong recognizes that individual participation is the starting point for the transformation of perception. The video “922 Grains of Rice” plays with the interaction of the image of a cock and a chicken pecking grains of rice and the sound of a male and a female voice counting the number of pecked grains. It is a humorous representation of the battle of sexes as well a comment on today’s competitive behavior.

The desire to challenge normative notions of social behavior informs the practices of Yang Zhenzhong’s work. He is pre-occupied with China’s intrinsic disharmony and extreme discrepancies and often touches upon taboos such as death and out-dated social norms. His approach is metaphorical rather than narrative. His videos often start from witty ideas, employing image repetition and rhythmic coordination of sound, language and image. “Let’s Puff” (4th Shanghai Biennale, Zone of Urgency, 50th Venice Biennial) similarly starts from the interplay of two images: a young woman puffing and a busy street. Every time the woman breathes, the image of the street moves away from the viewer. The rhythm of the traffic and the angle of perception are altered with the rhythm of the woman’s breath. (from ShanghART; Shanghai, China)

* The Garage would like to thank Yang Zhenzhong’s translators during the project: Alexia Dehaene in Shanghai and Alice Zhu and Ya Xiao in San Diego.

The haudenschildGarage, Spare Parts Projects

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.

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.

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.

The Manual of Decolonization is the result of a residency produced by Salottobuono (www.salottobuono.net), a collector of research experiences and design production, in August 2008 in Beit Sahour (Bethlehem) for Decolonizing Architecture. 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 is 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.

The haudenschildGarage supported the project Vallecas Abierto: How is your art going to help us?, a public art intervention by architect Teddy Cruz with M7Red and Iago Carro at MADRID ABIERTO 2010.

MADRID ABIERTO by Cecilia Andersson

This first edition of MADRID ABIERTO is a biennial with the theme of collaboration. The ten commissioned artists probe into terrains that often remain in obscurity and/or silence. The open call for works spans across disciplines and for artists who situate their work within the social realm of art practice and audience participation.

For this MADRID ABIERTO, directed by Jorge Díez and curated by Cecilia Andersson, ten artists and groups have initiated a multitude of processes engaging a broad range of participative collaborators that currently are being carried out in various locations around the city: Time Notes by Gustavo Romano (Buenos Aires, 1958), Torre by Pablo Valbuena (Madrid, 1978), Unofficial tourism by Iñaki Larrimbe (Vitoria, 1967), Huert-O-bus by Lisa Cheung (Hong Kong, 1969), Ghostown by Laurence Bonvin (Sierre, Switzerland, 1967), Una Casa Digestiva Para Lavapiés by Josep-María Martín (Ceuta, 1961), Campo AA-Madrid by Adaptive Actions, Hucha de deseos: ¡Todos somos un barrio, movilízate! by Susanne Bosch (Wesel, Germany, 1967), Bajar al subterráneo recién excavado/Going down to the recently excavated underground passage by Lara Almarcegui (Zaragoza, 1972) and Vallecas Abierto: ¿Cómo nos van a ayudar con su arte? by Teddy Cruz (Guatemala, 1962) with M7Red and Iago Carro.

Vallecas Abierto: How is your art going to help us?

Text by Teddy Cruz with M7Red & Iago Carro

From the global border to the borderneighborhood

Architectural investigation by the artists at the border between Tijuana (Mexico) and San Diego (California) has focused on observing the trans-border urban dynamics between these two cities through the current politics of surveillance and immigration , the conflict between formal and informal urbanisms and economies , and the tensions between enclaves of mega wealth and the rings of marginality and poverty that surround them. These critical issues, they argue, characterize the contemporary metropolis everywhere.

The multiple dividing vectors that operate at global scales between geopolitical borders, natural resources and communities end up inscribing themselves locally, at the scale of the contemporary neighborhood.. It is here where global conflict takes on a particular specificity, becoming local crisis characterized by the lack of affordable housing, jobs and public and social infrastructures.

This is the way in which Cruz’ work has focused on the micro scale of the urban neighborhood, understanding it as a site of production, where new conceptions of economic and social sustainability, housing and density may be amplified. This process has motivated the artists to question the role of architecture and art as producers of new interactions between physical space, alternative programs, institutions and communities.

The façade of Casa de America as a production site

The artists’ proposal for MADRID ABIERTO intends to extend this investigation and adapt it to the context of Madrid and the façade of Casa de America. Beyond a singular and only visually protagonist intervention, their proposal has to do with facilitating triangulations across institutions, social actors and networks, economic resources and a specific neighborhood of Madrid. Instead of intervening upon the façade of Casa de America, their interest is to work inside of it, literally activating it with a work-program, a platform of collaboration with other Spanish and Latin American artists, architects and social activists. Their main intention is to transform the façade into a site of production, within which to conceptualize and generate a parallel project that will be enacted once MADRID ABIERTO ends. To produce and event after the event.

A collaboration

Teddy Cruz proposes to activate the façade by producing a critical, interdisciplinary collaboration. This project is developed mainly by Cruz in collaboration with the collective M7Red, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, led by architects Mauricio Corbalan and Pio Torroja. Teddy Cruz conceives this initial collaborative process as an ‘artist in residency’ program inside MADRID ABIERTO (a program inside the program), transforming this intervention in Casa de America into a platform for cultural exchange, facilitating and promoting the presence of Latin American architects and artists in order to create contact with local dynamics inside a neighborhood of Madrid.

A neighborhood: Puente de Vallecas

The artists have chosen Puente de Vallecas as the neighborhood to operate because of its history as a critical threshold in the margins of the urban structure of Madrid, with a significant amount of immigrant population and because of its associative and activist network. Inside this neighborhood, they have selected a series of agencies and social actors that will be part of the project, including Vallecas Radio, Asociación al Alba and Asociación Cultural de la Kalle.

The open façade

The elements that constitute the physical intervention of the façade are minimal: a text and a ladder. 1. The text contextualizes the intervention in an emblematic way, by posting on the façade a question that was made by a Paraguayan immigrant to a group of artists during a dialogue in Villa 31, an informal settlement inside Buenos Aires, in which Teddy Cruz and M7Red participated. “How is your art going to help us?” is the question they have decided to bring from Buenos Aires to place it on the façade of Casa de America and making it the background for their project during this edition of MADRID ABIERTO, suggesting the necessity to investigate a more functional relation between research, artistic intervention and the production of the city. 2. The ladder is the physical element that enables the artists to ‘penetrate’ the façade while activating it internally, using theInca Room as the scenario for a series of working meetings between different publics and activists from the neighborhood.

The architecture of a Conversation

The working meetings will be orchestrated and conceptualized by Teddy Cruz and M7Red, who will suggest a criteria that can give shape to the conversation and, eventually, to an alternative project towards the neighborhood. These are some of the initial topics related to the content and general parameters of the event:

- Questioning the role of artistic practices in relation to the current real estate crisis and the shortage of socio-economic resources and public infrastructure.

- Putting forth the question of the Participative Budget: The idea of generating a seed economic capital that can emerge from MADRID ABIERTO’s budget to support an artistic intervention in Puente de Vallecas, while connecting it to other public resources, processes of action and urban imagination, inside and outside the State.

- Creating a process to locate dispersed resources, without a previous idea of their application, so that the different actors and the public can together configure critical relations between these resources and diverse spatial and temporal dynamics, using the façade as an interface between this way of thinking in ‘real time’ and the city. .

- Apart from the scheduled meetings that will be held inside the façade among the social actors (activist practices) of Vallecas, who, in turn, will generate the intervention in the neighborhood, the artists will also choreograph exchanges with the general public. During three separated meetings, the Inca Room will be opened from the façade in order to invite a group of people, some of them chosen by the actors, others institutionally affiliated and from diverse sectors. During these three meetings a ‘mini-performance’ will be elaborated inside the Inca Room where actors and M7Red will create a public update of the conversation and the diverse mappings of the neighborhood.

-The façade of Casa de America will potentially ‘double’ on the Internet, and in some strategic site inside the neighborhood. The artists are interested, for example, in the possibility of duplicating the façade several times.

- For the artists, an essential part of this project is to leave an institutional trace, once MADRID ABIERTO concludes, the foundation towards an architecture of collaboration among activists groups in a critical Madrid neighborhood. It is then when the actual project of MADRID ABIERTO will begin.

Click here for more information about this project and Madrid Abierto

About 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.

When Sean Neil and his underground band, Aa, received an invitation to tour different cities in Europe at the end of 2009, the haudenschildGarage commissioned Sean to document the “long, unglamorous and exhausting” experience of the band’s first European tour. Upon his return, he decided to extend his tour journal by inviting the participation of his students at Juvenile Hall to critique his documentation and artwork produced during the tour.

When offered the teaching position at Juvenile Hall, I accepted under the condition that I be allowed to leave for three weeks in December in order to tour with my band Big A Little A (Aa) (www.sleeep.com/aa/). The tour was spread out over 11 countries in Europe, and was long, unglamorous, and exhausting. Upon returning from the tour, it was back to work for me in the jail. When offered the opportunity to write for the haudenschildGarage’s blog, I decided that I wanted to share a bit of my trip with my students, and in turn, I hoped to learn a bit about their lives as well.

I started the band eight years ago with my friends Aron Wahl and Nadav Havusha. We were bored with some of the traditional elements of independent music at the time, which seemed so heavily guitar based. We started the band with the idea in mind that there would be multiple drums and no guitars. The band has always been a bit of a collective with members coming and going. We were constantly inviting our friends to play with us at our shows. The shows themselves were always very high energy as we never wanted our audience to get bored while watching us. We put multiple records on various labels, and gained a strong following in New York City. A childhood dream was recognized when we were able to open for the band Sonic Youth. Thurston Moore even wrote a review of our first EP (click here to read). We all invested a lot of hearts into the music, but I eventually left the band and moved back to the West coast. But the collective spirit still exists within the band, and I was asked to join them for their first European tour.

My role was to sing/scream on certain songs, and to bang away on a big orange kick drum that had followed us since our conception. I made it my goal to destroy the drum by tours end. I would begin the shows always out in the audience, pushing the boundaries that existed between spectator and performer. A highlight from the tour occurred in the Czech Republic, when the audience dragged me off stage and hoisted me into the air. I’m 31 years old, a 200 pound school teacher, and I was crowd surfing for a bunch of manic kids.

Coming back from tour, I immediately went back to work at Juvenile Hall in San Francisco. I was hired to teach the students science, math, and technology. The students that worked with me on this project were involved in my technology class. It is my belief that if the students can learn 21st century technology skills, they will have an easier time finding a job and not contributing to the high rate of recidivism that exists amongst juvenile offenders. The students I work with have not had the easiest of lives. The group that helped me work on this project are all serving a portion of their teenage years behind bars. I feel compassion for each and every one of them, primarily because I feel that not many have in the past. The students helped me in transcribing my journal, as I tried to help them develop their typing skills, and we then sorted together through relics obtained from the tour. After reading through the journal, I realized that my words were boring. No one would want to read about the details of the food we ate or where we went to the bathroom.

Here’s how I described our van breaking down in Italy. Don’t worry, we make it to both the shows in Croatia and Vienna.

“The road to Zagreb. Mighty and I are up round 7. We are going to back track to the car so we can take the train heading back to Cessna . Our stop is Forli. Three police question Mighty and I. I don’t have my passport. They don’t like that mighty is Czech. We arrive and cab to the car dealership. Our van won’t be ready until tomorrow, which means we may have to miss Zagreb and Vienna. I drag mighty to the airport in Forli in hopes of finding a van, which we do for 750 euros. Now the race is on to pick up guys and go to Croatia, but it is not looking good for us. We cab to the city centre to eat. I get some squid from a street vendor. We are on time back at the hotel waiting for Sergio, but little do we know about Italian time. He’s 45 minutes late. Soundman seems annoyed by us, but after we set up, he proclaims to be a big fan and I believe him. We play and crowd it a little bit mildly raucous. I electrocute myself for the second time, but the power does not cut out.”

My students especially didn’t care about what I wrote about. I was hoping to share a world with them that they have never been exposed to. I was hoping to help them flee the confines of their cell. The process was not always successful. But one aspect about the art of teaching that I love best is what I learn from failure.

Before I begin, I think it would be prudent to describe the sound of my band. To me, the band is a poly-rhythmic, noise, drone, electro, marching band assault. My students didn’t quite see eye to eye with me on this. When asked for an honest, written response to my band’s music, I got a wide range of responses. I try to represent that range in the selected quotes below, and hopefully I arrive at a more accurate representation of our sound:

“I don’t like it, this is weak. I like hip hop. This is not good at all. Who would like dis? Not me.”

“I heard beats and wild music, and I did not like it. No one was singing or rapping, it was just music playing for along time. I would never listen to this ever again in my lifetime.”

Not all the students hated the music, however. We were touring in support of a new single being released in Europe by the label Deleted Art (www.deletedart.org). You can download side A of the single here. Two students had an interesting review of the songs on the single, as I forced them to listen to the songs on decaying headphones, played on even more decrepit computers.

“The song I just heard was cool. It sounded like two young youth were getting married from an African tribe or an Indian tribe. The beat was cool and I actually liked it a little.”

“The music pieces that I listened to was a lot of different instruments and beats. I like the beats and the drums and other instruments. To me, this sounded like some kind of African or Arabian kind of celebration, but at first to me it sounded like a Chinese new years celebration. The music was interesting and maybe something I might be interested in if somebody rapped on it or something.”

I wasn’t expecting them to connect the music to any type of music they like. However, this website talks about a supposed obsession my band has for the rapper Lil’ Wayne, someone who my students definitely love. I’ve never heard his music, but most of my students mentioned wanting to play music with the man.

“If I could be in a band, I would be in Lil’ Wayne’s group, because they make a lot of money. He knows a lot of women and I like women.”

Unfortunately we do not pull in the dough like Lil’ Wayne, nor do we “know a lot of women.”

There has always been a strong visual component to the music (thank you Aron).

I made a homemade cd with original cover art to sell and give away during the tour. The thirty cd’s all came with a hand made cover collage made from old dissection textbooks. I asked my students to critique the art, based on the cover seen here.

One student was brutally honest in his critique.

“This piece of artwork looks like some kind of deformed pizza or something with a human leg in it. This artwork doesn’t really appeal to me. I’m really not food art type of guy. It also looks like they’re trying to compare the pizza to a person’s leg/foot. I think it weird to do that, but whatever floats your boat. I don’t like it.”

One of the better shows we played was in a town in France called Clermont-Ferrand. Here is my journal entry description of the show:

“Marlena (www.myspace.com/handclappinggirls) greets us at the squat we will be playing, looking as if she were ripped from and Edward Gorey comic. She’s a fascinating individual, proudly informing me that she doesn’t like to use money. Sound check goes a bit well but I need to leave my mic stands in the audience as there is no room on the stage. The three-story squat is in shambles, but the people here are genuinely kind. They pushed hard to get us to play in their shithole town, and for this I am glad. Aron tags the wall by the train station and then steps in a pile of poop. During our set, I’m throwing drums and lights into the crowd. For the first time on tour, people in the audience are banging on my drum. I electrocute myself, and trip a fuse, but it’s quickly turned back on. This happens again during the best time possible. The sound cuts out during thirteens allowing the sound of just the pure drums to ring true without the hiss from the PA. The sound comes back on right in time for me to sing. It’s these moments that I love best. Happy little accidents. Nine of us sleep upstairs. No one here seems to have a job. No one here seems to have a need for money. The kids plan on following us to Lyon.”

I asked my students to describe the flyer that was made for the show.

“I don’t know what this story is telling. It looks hella dumb and what does France and New York have to do with each other? It looks like three ugly girls are trying to get away from an elephant/octopus. I don’t like this piece.”

None of my students recognized that we were called the “best band in the world”, or that we were playing with a hip hop group.

When asked to describe another flier, for a show in Lyon, my students responded below.

“I’m not sure what this picture tells me. All it tells me about is an old lady and a young lady. I really don’t like this picture because it don’t tell me about nothing.”

“The picture does not mean nothing to me I don’t like it. It is ugly.”

It’s hard for my students to relate. Which emphasizes the importance of how I relate to them. Performing every night in front of a crowd can be a bit of scary experience (click here to see). Vienna was especially scary. The audience seemed hostile, and I was worried for the first time that I might actually get hit by someone. The second we began, both my mic stand collapsed into the audience as I hurled myself out into the crowd. Nobody hit me, and the audience seemed to enjoy themselves. I still was expecting someone from the audience to show me a bar graph they created which would explain the elements of our performance. I wanted to see if my students could share with me a time that they had performed in front of a crowd.

“When I was in Diabetes camp in Santa Clara we would always do a night out and we’d do skits in front of the whole camp.”

“I had to perform at a school play in 9th grade. I was the lead actor.”

“It was cool when I had to present something about a book to a group.”

“The time I had to perform in front of a group is when I was in the 5th grade. Then one more time is when I was in the 9th grade, know what I’m sayin’.”

“When I was in elementary I had to sing over the rainbow.”

Another highlight of the tour occurred in Heidelberg, when we played a show in an old Nazi movie theater. The audience was seated, so I would repeatedly march up and down the aisles, making everyone stand up. Eventually I just walked straight into the crowd, supporting myself on the armrests while banging on my big old orange drum. I was amazed that I didn’t fall, and grateful that I didn’t fall on anyone.

I never successfully destroyed the drum. Duct tape helped keep it intact every night. I did manage to almost fall out of a four story window in Berlin right at the start of our show. But luckily the glass didn’t break when I fell against it. So there are many tales that I leave out of this blog. Tales of vans breaking down, being cursed out in front of a classroom, hands cut from smashing on a drum, student’s tears, bruises obtained from a crowd, loneliness and isolation, hungry stomachs, broken dreams. My journal has been demolished. Its pages have been ripped out of the bindings and passed through the hands of my students. In its place exists this blog. The written stories, as I journaled them, no longer exist. There are many more tales that will never be heard that belong to my students.

- Sean Neil

Sean Neil has been teaching in the public school system for seven years. He began his teaching career working with inner city youth in Brooklyn, NY. He taught science for three years and then taught literacy for three years at Ray Kroc in San Diego. Currently he is teaching at Juvenile Hall in San Francisco. He is working to raise money to build a computer lab at the school (click here to donate at DonorsChoose.org). By teaching his students how to use modern technological skills, he hopes to reduce the high rate of recidivism of incarcerated minors by giving them skills that would help them in entering the workforce. He loves both his parents.

Aa was on tour in Europe from November 27 – December 12, 2009
27.11.2009 Malmo, Sweden – Debaser
29.11.2009 Utrecht, Netherlands – Les Guess Who Festival w/ WAVVES, The Field, more
30.11.2009 Kortrijk, Belgium – The Strip
01.12.2009 Heidelberg, Germany – Altes Schlosskino
02.12.2009 Paris, France – Panic Room
03.12.2009 Bordeaux, France – Le Saint Ex
04.12.2009 Bilbao, Spain – MEM Festival w/ KTL
05.12.2009 Clermont-Ferrand, France – Raymond Bar
06.12.2009 Lyon, France Grrrnd Zero
07.12.2009 Cesena, Italy Officina 49
08.12.2009 Padova, Italy Stalker Reloaded
09.12.2009 Zagreb, Croatia – KSET
10.12.2009 Vienna, Austria – Fluc
11.12.2009 Prague, Czech Republic – Klub 007
12.12.2009 Berlin, Germany – Raum 18

A Crime Has Many Stories (English)

The shortest distance between two points is never a straight line

November 29 2008, Buenos Aires, Argentina

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 goal of this project was to generate a dynamic event that worked 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. We feel that the role of South America and Argentina in general has been greatly underestimated on the world stage and we hope this event, in its modest way, will support the growing awareness of the quality and specificity of Argentina’s historical and current contributions to world culture.

This project is dedicated to the wisdom, energy and spirit of generous debate that Olivier Debroise (1952-2008) provided us in regard to Latin American culture. With our project, we wish to continue that path.

*On October 2009 the haudenschildGarage invited Washington Cucurto and Maria Gomez of Eloisa Cartonera for a residency at the Garage and a Garage Talk on October 15th. From October 16 – 18, 2008 Washington Cucurto and Maria 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.

In May of 2007, the haudenschildGarage collaborated with artist Lisa Tan. While in Buenos Aires she made a collection of grave rubbings from the Cementerio de La Recoleta and sent the Garage daily images and thoughts on her experience of the city.

*On September 5, 2007 Lisa Tan presented her project Recoleta at the haudenschildGarage and was in conversation with former San Diego Museum of Art director Derrick Cartwright and LAXART director Lauri Firstenberg.

*In January of 2010 Lisa Tan revisited her project Recoleta and reflected on how three years changed her perspective on the project and the collection of drawings born out of the experience. See ‘Related Content’ below for a link to her text.

Provisionally titled Recoleta, this project began during my first trip to Argentina in August of 2006. The Recoleta cemetery is located in a well-heeled neighborhood in Buenos Aires that bears the same name. Initially, this site piqued my interest when I learned that it is configured like a city. It is in fact a city of a couple hundred mausoleums—a distinctive and elite necropolis.

The graves vary in style, density, and material. Some are ornate over-built structures that could house a small café, and others are minimal blocks of smooth granite. They all exist side by side along paths that branch off from main “boulevards,” mimicking the cosmopolitan surroundings just beyond the cemetery walls.

To take this potent site into account, I decided to make grave rubbings of select mausoleums, while avoiding all literal and figurative aspects—including areas of text, image, or overly descriptive textures. Marble statuary, glass doors, bronze plaques, and crosses, all dissolve into a collection of black monochromes. En masse, they vary little from one rubbing to the next; they become voids that reflect of a repository of unknowable histories.

Over the course of my stay in Buenos Aires, I will be posting a selection of images of my daily experience in the city. (Viva Argentina!) — Lisa Tan

About Lisa Tan

Lisa Tan (www.lisatan.net) is an artist based in Brooklyn and Stockholm. Her work draws from personal and collective history, particularly in the realms of literature and cinema to deal with longing and loss as constant conditions of being. Many of Tan’s works involve an interest in the conditions of nighttime and solitude as experienced in the context of iconic urbanism. Her work has been exhibited at venues such as Centro Galego de Arte Contemporáneo CGAC (Santiago de Compostela), Kadist Art Foundation (Paris), El Centro Cultural Montehermoso (Vitoria-Gasteiz), Andreas Grimm (Munich), FDC Satellite (Brussels), Artists Space (New York), Galerie Kamm (Berlin), D’Amelio Terras (New York), Harris Lieberman (New York), and LAXART (Los Angeles). She was the 2009 artist-in-residence at FRAC Bourgogne, (Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain – Région Bourgogne). Her work has been featured and reviewed in publications such as Artforum, artforum.com, Glänta, Blind Spot, FlashArt, and Art Papers. Lisa Tan received her B.A. from the University of Texas at El Paso and her M.F.A. from the University of Southern California (USC).

“The Last Book kindles creation-fires of a new kind; it marks the birth of the technological illuminated manuscript. With texts by Mary Gaitskill, drawings by Davina Semo, videos by Leslie Thornton, and sound by Greg Landau, this hybrid folio demands to be man-handled with care, to be rewound and fast-forwarded, to be read and touched. This jeweled and inlaid vellum reveals the book as fetish, book as master controlling and prescribing our movements, book as monster: it inaugurates a novel reading ritual–part riot, part cutting-arcane. The book at last dead? Long Live the Last Book!”
-Gabriela Jauregui, author of Controlled Decay

The Last Book: This Ain’t Your Grandson’s Kindle

On April 26, 2009 The Last Book was performed at the Schindler House, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles. 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.

Other Last Book participants included Eloisa Haudenschild (producer and line producer), Monica Jovanovich-Kelley (stage manager), John DeMerritt (book binding), Joel Swanson (graphic design), Tad Linfesty (easel and book fabrication), Jim Nisbet (book fabrication), William Brent and Marco Llanos (electronics/technical coordination), Hsiufang Chen and Kate Wall (printing), Alastair Johnston, Teddy Cruz, and Alan Rosenblum (consultants), and Patricia Montoya (video assistant). The Last Book performance photography by Yvonne Venegas and video documentation by Merve Kayan.

The haudenschildGarage wishes to thank Kimberli Meyer, Director of the MAK Center.

True to the spirit and legacy of Allan Kaprow, the haudenschildGarage reinterpreted his happening, Travelog (1968), over the course of two days, May 10 & 12, 2008 in conjunction with the exhibition Allan Kaprow – Art as Life at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (March 23 – June 30, 2008).

The original piece took place in Madison, New Jersey where Kaprow worked with a group of students from Fairleigh Dickinson University. About thirty-five people in ten or eleven cars participated. At each gas station a tire was changed; the process was recorded and photographed as it was repeated. The next day the whole process was repeated without cameras or tape recorders.

Conceptualized and organized by Steve Fagin and Eloisa Haudenschild, the haudenschildGarage was not slavish or loyal, and hence represented the best legacy possible to the humble but irreverent Allan. Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner of The Urban Think Tank in Venezuela, artist Song Tao and journalist Lin Yu in China, and researcher and professor of psychology, Nicholas Christenfeld in the U.S. chose a service to engage with and spent a day repeating the task, documenting each of the service iterations. This documentation was sent to the haudenschildGarage in a package.

On May 10, the packages were opened and the day of service was discussed,  moderated by Jeff Kelley, critic and author.  The discussion took place at the haudenschildGarage via Sykpe consecutively on three continents.  The participants divided themselves into three groups to further interpret Travelog in San Diego. Curators, Lucia Sanroman & Stephen Hepworth together with Diane Rothenberg, social anthropologist and author, and Jerome Rothenberg, poet and professor, led the groups. Group participants included Belinda Bijun Sun, George Bolster, Giacomo Castagnola Chaparro, Rishi Chadha, Coryl Crane-Kaprow, Mary Evangelista, Steve Fagin, Eloisa Haudenschild, Ariana Hernandez-Reguant, Monica Jovanovich-Kelley, Laura Kwak, David Matlin, Sean Neil, Kyong Park, Alan Rosenblum, Gail Schneider, Carlos Trilnick, Christin Turner, Nina Waisman, and Sybil Wendler.

On May 12 after the groups’ activities in San Diego, the participants reconvened at the Garage and discussed, debated, and shared their experiences with Jeff Kelley moderating the evening. Dolissa Medina was the videographer and Marcos Llanos and Monica Jovanovich-Kelley photographed the events. Present from MOCA were Aandrea Stang and Zachary Kaplan.

For photo documentation of this Happening at MOCA, please click here for MOCA’s website on the exhibition. Happenings are coordinated by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and made possible by generous support from the Getty Foundation. Allan Kaprow – Art as Life is organized by the Haus der Kunst, Munich, and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Concept of the exhibition by Stephanie Rosenthal and Eva Meyer-Hermann. The exhibition is on view at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA from March 23 – June 30 2008.

The haudenschildGarage collaborated with artists-writers, Mario Ybarra Jr. and Karla Diaz who were invited to participate in the 2007 Prague Biennale (http://www.praguebiennale.org). Golem Lives, their Garage Project, is shaped by both Mario and Karla’s love for interaction and experience as they set out to find the famous Golem of Prague. The first part of this project consisted of a mural that was painted at the biennale and the second part was a web-journal sent to the Garage that gave daily details of their experience, interviews, and photos.

Why Golem?
I am interested in the idea of myth vs. truth and how stories are told. Golem is an interesting character that resembles the American Frankenstein.

A bit of history
According to legend, “The word golem comes from the Hebrew word gelem, meaning raw material. The Golem is outwardly a real person, yet he lacks the human dimension of personality and intellect. Life is interjected into him through a mystical process using God’s special name. He is created from the ground, as was the first man. When his mission is over, the name of God is removed from him and he returns to the ground. The Golem is a very popular figure in Jewish folklore and legend. The Golem is a manlike creature that is created by use of mystical powers that are to be found in the Kabbalistic lore.The history of the Golem goes back in recorded history to the time of the Talmud, which mentions several instances of Rabbis creating a manlike creature and using him to conduct errands.

The most famous Golem is the Golem of Rabbi Yehuda Leow, the famous Maharal of Prague, who created a Golem and after using him to prevent a blood libel, hid him in the attic of the famed synagogue of Prague. Legend has it that the Golem is still hidden somewhere in the synagogue which still stands, having escaped miraculously the destruction of the Nazis. A statue of the golem stands at the entrance to the former Jewish area in Prague.
– Karla Diaz

About Karla Diaz & Mario Ybarra Jr.

Karla Diaz is a poet, performer, and art critic. She received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts and has read her work and exhibited projects in venues throughout Southern California including the Getty Art Museum, REDCAT, the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, Hunter College N.Y., and the Serpentine Gallery in London. She writes for several art magazines including Beautiful Decay, FlashArt and the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. She is a founding member of Slanguage (www.slanguagestudio.com) , an artists’ collective in Wilmington, and co-director for the New Chinatown Barbershop gallery.

Mario Ybarra Jr. lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his MFA from the University of California, Irvine and is a founding member of the artist?s collective Slanguage. His work has been featured in a number of institutional exhibitions, recently including Alien Nation at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Uncertain States of America, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and the 2006 California Biennial, at the Orange County Museum of Art. In 2007, he will participate in The World as a Stage, curated by Jessica Morgan at the Tate Modern, London.