Opening reception at REDCAT on Thursday, September 16, 6–9 pm

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the screening and conversation scheduled for Friday, September 17 at the haudenschildGarage, has been cancelled.

About the Artists

Zhang Peili (b. 1957, Hangzhou) graduated from the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou in 1984. He has been called the “Father of Chinese video art” and is a leading figure in the Chinese contemporary art scene ever since the mid-1980s. His influence on his peers and his role as educator of younger generations of artists cannot be emphasized enough. As the main founder of the first new media department in the Chinese art eductation system, his pedagogical engagement has been greatly fruitful. He has had solo exhibitions at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth (2009); OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen (2008); and Museum of Modern Art, New York (1999). Zhang has also been included in ‘85 New Wave, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2007); China Power Station, Serpentine Gallery, London (2006); Alors la Chine?, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Zone of Urgency, Venice Biennale (2003); Global Conceptualism, Queens Museum of Art, New York (1999); Cities on the Move, CAPC musée d’Art contemporain de Bordeaux and Secession, Vienna (1997-9); Inside Out, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1998). Zhang lives and works in Hangzhou where he serves as founding dean and professor of the New Media Department at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou.

Zhu Jia (b. 1963, Beijing) graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing in 1988. He has presented work at Trans Local Motion, Shanghai Biennale (2008); Not Only Possible, But Also Necessary, Istanbul Biennale (2007); World Factory, San Francisco Art Institute (2007); Zooming into Focus: Contemporary Chinese Photography & Video from the Haudenschild Collection, National Art Museum of China (2005); The Second Guangzhou Triennial (2005); Alors la Chine?, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2003); Zone of Urgency, Venice Biennale (2003); Time After Time, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2003); Tempo, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2002); Living in Time, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2001); Translated Acts, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and Queens Museum of Art, New York (2001); Cities on the Move, CAPC musée d’Art contemporain de Bordeaux and Secession, Vienna (1997-9); Every Day, 11th Biennale of Sydney (1998). Zhu lives and works in Beijing.

*Image: Left: Zhang Peili, Uncertain Pleasure, Right: Zhu Jia, Forever

In early 2010, the haudenschildGarage established the Fundacion Migdalia Rubio. Its mission is to offer scholarships to economically disadvantaged elementary and high school students in Tijuana, Mexico. The haudenschildGarage is working in partnership with the Fundacion Migdalia Rubio to support students providing all necessities for their academic success.

The foundation’s desire is to encourage the students’ families to become active and involved participants in the basic education of their children. The students were selected in the summer of 2010 based on an economic study of the neighborhoods of Tijuana. The selected students will provide progress reports on their performance and school attendance to the foundation during the year.

The scholarship will provide students with the following:

- One year of tuition
- Uniforms and shoes
- Books and school supplies
- Daily school lunches
- Special school event clothing
- Sports equipment and activities
- Artists’ workshops

If you are interested in donating to the Fundacion Migdalia Rubio, please click here to visit their page on the International Community Foundation’s website.

A Cloud of Hope is a feature length film, developed in conversation and funded in part by the haudenschildGarage, that wishes to address the hopes/dreams, actualization, and eventualities of the African Independence Movements of the 60s.

The project will take three countries as case studies. The first is Guinea, a French Colony, which was the only country in West Africa to declare independence. The other twelve voted for a common wealth relation to France. One of the main elements utilized by the newly independent Guinea at forming solidarity was through the initiation of major cultural initiatives. As in a country I have previously explored, Cuba, in my feature length film, Tropicola. I will examine the role of popular music in the construction in the evolving political scene in emergent independent Guinea.

The second of my examples will be Nigeria, a former British Colony that in the aftermath of independence went through a great ethnic divide ending up in Civil War and the secession of Biafra. This conflict will be explored through the Nigerian and then Biafran middleweight boxing champion, Dick Tiger. Through this case study I will try to examine the role of ethnic conflict in an emerging nation.

My third example will focus on the former Belgian colony, the Congo. Subject of the wonderful novel about colonization by Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, and the journalistic coverage of the Lumumba moment in the Congo by Polish correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinkski. This section will focus on the European imagination of Africa. - By Steve Fagin

About Steve Fagin

Steve Fagin (stevefagin.net) a is Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, and has produced a series of feature length videos including The Amazing Voyage of Gustave Flaubert and Raymond Roussel, The Machine That Killed Bad People and TropiCola. These films have been featured prominently at museums, international film festivals, art biennials and have been screened on Bravo International in Latin America, Canal + in Europe and PBS in the United States. His work has had a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and is the subject of a book from Duke University Press, Talkin’ With Your Mouth Full: Conversations with the Videos of Steve Fagin. The work has been presented at both the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in many contexts including both of their summary shows of the essential art of the twentieth century. From 2005-2009 he worked as Creative Consultant for the haudenschildGarage and Commissioning Editor of the hG, Spare Parts projects. The Last Book, an hG, Spare Parts project, was conceived and directed by him. Currently he is working on a feature film, A Cloud of Hope, and on a series of “smart phone pieces”, both as Commissioning Editor and as one of the artists for LACMA.

For more then seventeen years inSite has commissioned and facilitated place-based art practices at the US-Mexico border of San Diego-Tijuana. In 2006, inSite launched a new curatorial initiative designed to make this rich history more accessible, entitled the inSite Archive. Over a three-year period organizers systematically compiled and cataloged ephemera and documentation charting the development and realization of over one hundred art works in the public sphere. These works, which frequently developed out of extended artist residencies in the region, include monumental sculpture, site-specific installation, performance, actions, interventions and participatory engagements.

The early 1990s through to the 2000s is an especially compelling period in the evolution of place-based art practices. This is a period when the concept of site as a fixed location shifted as artists began to re-imagine place as a fluid, evolving entity produced by social, economic and cultural processes. Likewise, artists challenged the notion of the public as audience by engaging various constituencies as active co-producers of their work. A new model of place-based art practice emerged that, while context specific, is also dispersed across place and time. Often performative, this work frequently includes a temporary event, situation or unfolding process. While responsive to site, it also disrupts the idea of place as an immutable concept. A sense of location is re-conceptualized as a wandering position – always in the process of becoming and extending beyond temporal and geographical boundaries.

This uniquely time-based practice erases the traditional divide between the archive and the artwork. Since it is non-object based, archival material is the primary means through which the work continues to communicate beyond its original context. What was once durational gains symbolic status as it circulates as texts, photography, video, artifacts, and artist notes and sketches in the art economy.

Highlights of this work from the inSite Archive are organized here according to the following five groupings: circulating objects, public address, co-producing event experiences, performance interventions and recording trajectories. -Donna Conwell, curator

Krzysztof Wodiczko, Tijuana Projection: Centro Cultural Tijuana, 2001

Yukinori Yanagi, Proposal for Wandering Position, 1994

Silvia Gruner, Untitled (La Mitad del Camino), 1994

Due to overwhelming need, a new House opened in July 2009, with 47 bedrooms (compared with the previous 12) and a Family Care Center to help make life easier for families dealing with a sick child. The new Family Care Center at Ronald McDonald House is like none other in the world. It serves as a day resource for any family with a child in the hospital, providing necessities to make their lives easier as they go through the most difficult times of their lives. The new Family Care Center has the following services 365 days a year:

* Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Snacks
* Laundry Facilities
* Web MD Computer Resource Lab
* Three TV/Quiet Rooms
* Children’s Play Room
* Showers
* Teen Center
* School Room
* Chapel
* Exercise Room
* Day Resting Room
* 22,000 square feet of outdoor play space and separate healing gardens
* Living Room
* Beauty Salon

Our Purpose
Here at Ronald McDonald House, we are a home-away-from-home and more for families with seriously ill children in treatment at area hospitals. Seven days a week, 365 days a year, we provide lodging to family members of sick children who otherwise might sleep in hospital waiting rooms, in their car or drive long distances home and back. We also provide a Family Care Center for use during the day for anyone with a child in the hospital.

Last year, Ronald McDonald House provided housing for 43 families per month, and offered a reprieve during the day for 1,200 families per month. With our new 47-bedroom House, we expect to serve 20,000 families per year by providing bedrooms and a Family Care Center to those who need us. It costs $140 per night to provide a bedroom to a family, which often includes siblings and the sick child.

Studies show that when family members stay close their ailing child, the child heals better and family members cope better. A bed near the hospital, a warm meal, a hot shower and access to laundry facilities can make all the difference to those who sit by their sick child’s bedside day in and day out. Because of our new larger Ronald McDonald House, we can provide so many more families the comfort and necessities needed to cope when their lives are turned upside down by their child’s illness.

Please click here to visit the Ronald McDonald House San Diego’s website.

Decolonizing Architecture is a research project initiated by the collaborative team of Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal and Eyal Weizman. Set up as a studio working in Ramallah and Bethlehem, they explore how Israeli settlements and military bases in the Occupied Territories can be reused, recycled or re-inhabited by Palestinians at the time they are discharged. Decolonizing Architecture uses architecture to articulate the spatial complexities of decolonization, assuming that a viable approach to the issue of appropriation can be found not only through the professional language of architecture but also by inaugurating an “arena of speculation” that incorporates varied cultural and political perspectives. Working within a spatial reality that Weizman calls “the politics of verticality,” the studio works on a broad spectrum of critically-engaged research projects with a range of experts, activists and organizations. For REDCAT, Decolonizing Architecture will develop an exhibition–their first presentation in the U.S.—that builds on their work over the last few years, alongside new projects. A program of lectures and presentations will be organized on the closing week of the exhibition. Check website for updates.

Decolonizing Architecture was founded by Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal and Eyal Weizman in 2007. PETTI 
is a research architect based in Bethlehem and is co-director of CAMP (Centre for Architecture Media and Politics) at the Bard/Al-Quds University in Abu Dis-Jerusalem. He curated Border Devices (2002-07), Uncertain States of Europe with the Milan-based studio multiplicity (2001-03) and Stateless Nation with Sandi Hilal (2002-07). HILAL 
works with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian refugees. She is visiting professor at the International Academy of Art Palestine and holds research doctorate in Trans-Border Policies for Daily Life at the University of Trieste. WEIZMAN is based in London where he is the director of Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Weizman works with a variety of NGOs and human right groups in Israel/Palestine. His books include Hollow Land, A Civilian Occupation, the series Territories 1, 2 and 3, and Yellow Rhythms. Decolonizing Architecture was originally conceptualized and its pilot stage produced in dialogue with Eloisa Haudenschild and Steve Fagin, partners in thehaudenschildGarage, Spare Parts projects.

Simone Aaberg Kaern: Seize the Sky is a fourteen-year survey of the Danish artist’s video works that address the sky as airspace unbounded by political borders and examine flight as a metaphor for individual freedom. Seize the Sky is Aaberg Kaern’s premiere exhibition on the West Coast, and her first comprehensive solo exhibition in the United States. The exhibition and symposium are organized and curated by Tina Yapelli, director of the University Art Gallery at San Diego State University. The exhibition and symposium are sponsored by the San Diego State University Art Council; the School of Art, Design and Art History; the SDSU Center for the Visual and Performing Arts; the College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts; and the fund for Instructionally Related Activities. The exhibition and symposium are organized in conjunction with the fortieth anniversary of the Department of Women’s Studies at San Diego State University. Simone Aaberg Kaern is represented by Galerie Asbaek, Copenhagen, Denmark.

An International Symposium on Women’s Rights March 10, 2010
Moderated by Jenni Prisk, president and founder of Voices of Women, La Jolla, California. Presentations by Simone Aaberg Kaern, artist and pilot, Copenhagen, Denmark; Jessica Cox, motivational speaker and pilot, Tucson, Arizona; Loeky Droesen, senior program officer, Aim for Human Rights, Utrecht, The Netherlands; Anh Hua, assistant professor, Department of Women’s Studies, San Diego State University; Lieutenant Chris Kieszek, pilot, United States Navy and assistant professor, Department of Naval Science, San Diego State University; Captain Latifa Nabizada, pilot, Afghan National Army Air Corps, Kabul, Afghanistan

Yang Fudong, Honey, 2003 Video

Two videos by Yang Fudong (Honey (2003) and City Light (2000) ) from the Haudenschild Collection were loaned to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco for the exhibition Shanghai on view February 12 – September 5, 2010. Click here for more information on the exhibition.

From February 12 through September 5, 2010, the Asian Art Museum presents Shanghai, the first exhibition of its kind to explore the visual culture of one of the world’s most intriguing cities. Spanning the time period from Shanghai’s origins as a modest regional center to the dynamic, cosmopolitan, global powerhouse of today, the exhibition reflects upon the history of the city over the past 160 years using art as its mirror. Drawn mainly from the collections of the Shanghai Museum, the Shanghai History Museum, the Shanghai Art Museum, the Lu Xun Memorial Hall, and the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre, the more than 130 artworks include trade oil paintings, Shanghai deco furniture and rugs, movie clips, revolutionary posters, and video and contemporary art installations. Shanghai is co-organized by the Shanghai Museum and the Asian Art Museum, with assistance from the Shanghai International Culture Association. The exhibition serves as the cornerstone of the Shanghai Celebration, a year-long festival hosted by a collaboration of San Francisco Bay Area cultural institutions to honor the region’s long-standing relationship with Shanghai. The lead curator was Michael Knight, assisted by Dany Chan. Britta Erickson selected the works for the contemporary section.

Yang Fudong, City Light, 2000 Video

The Shanghai exhibition is divided into four broad sections providing an overview of the major cultural and historical developments in Shanghai: “Beginnings” (1850–1911), “High Times” (1912–1949), “Revolution” (1920–1976), and “Shanghai Today” (1980–present). “Beginnings” traces Shanghai’s rise from a modest regional center to a city of international prominence after its designation as a “Treaty Port” by Britain and China in the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing. “China Trade” oil paintings, Shanghai school paintings, and a series of lithographs present the city as the international economic hub that it became in a short time. “High Times” represents a dynamic era in Shanghai’s history, which many people consider a historic commercial and cultural height. Ink and oil paintings, posters, one-piece dresses called qipao, film clips, and Shanghai Deco furniture together capture the launching of a public romance with the city that continues today. “Revolution” highlights a collection of propaganda posters and woodcuts that document the changing landscape of Shanghai during the Communist reaction against the excesses of the “High Times” period. Other artworks in this section include woodblock prints from the 1930s and 1940s— among the earliest works to express the social criticism that would later lead to the revolution — and ink and oil paintings. “Shanghai Today” presents the visual culture that is emerging as the city reclaims its role as a leading center of global trade and finance. Prints, paintings, and video and installation art demonstrate the assurance with which Shanghai artists have reentered the global art scene with the removal of many of the restrictions of the “Revolution” period.

Because of its scope and scale, the museum has reconfigured its gallery spaces to accommodate the exhibition. Visitors will be directed through South Court to the exhibition’s beginning at the entrance to the Hammond Arcade. In the arcade, visitors will encounter the first work of art, Shadow in the Water, a white porcelain sculpture created between 2002 and 2008 by the Shanghai installation artist Liu Jianhua. The sculpture is a repeating row of landmark skyscrapers found in cities across China, suggesting a sameness in the landscape of China’s metropolises. Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl Tower (one of the tallest towers in the world), Jinmao Tower, and Bank of China Tower are among the buildings depicted.

The first historical and cultural subsection of the exhibition – “Beginnings” – is introduced upon entering the Osher Gallery. “Beginnings” introduces Shanghai as it was transformed from a modest regional center to an internationally prominent locale after its designation as a Treaty Port in 1842. In 1854, the Shanghai International Settlement – combining the British and American foreign concessions – was established, with its own system of self-governance that was effectively independent from China. In this special environment, which continued until 1943, Shanghai rapidly became a center for artistic production, with Chinese artists creating works for foreign, as well as domestic, consumption.

“China Trade” paintings are among the artworks on view in this section. This genre of paintings and drawings served the purpose of documenting the environs of Western traders and functioned as visual mementos of their time in Shanghai. These works were created by Chinese artists for the new market of Western patrons. The world portrayed in these paintings is dominated by Western-style buildings and images of Western lifestyles.

The handscroll entitled Illustrations of the Antique Collection of Kezhai by Lu Hui (1851-1920) and Hu Qinhan (act. late 19th century) is an example of the types of artworks created by and for the Chinese elite in Shanghai during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The artwork depicts the famous scholar and collector Wu Dacheng (whose poetic name was Kezhai) surrounded by his collection of ancient Chinese bronzes. Shanghai was home to a large number of wealthy, well-educated Chinese – including many artists – who fled to the city during the internal strife that besieged most of China during this time period. Such works show Shanghai artists struggling to find a balance between looking back to long-standing artistic traditions and embracing new directions influenced by Western styles.

The intermingling of Chinese and Western cultures in the city figures prominently in a set of large drawings that served as models for lithographs. Many of the drawings depict interiors with women in fashionable Chinese garb (and with bound feet) in a variety of pursuits, many influenced by the West, from playing pool to using sewing machines. Outside their windows are power lines, electric and gas lamps, and other signs of the Western-influenced modernization.

Covering the period from around the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912 to the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, “High Times” occupies the remainder of Osher Gallery and continues into Hambrecht Gallery. The boundary between “Beginnings” and “High Times” is marked by a bronze tablet originally erected at the boundary of the American Settlement in Shanghai.

“High Times” begins with a series of paintings and calligraphies in traditional Chinese mediums and formats. “Bird and flower blossoms,” a hanging scroll by Xie Zhiliu (1910-1997) is an example of the bright colors and delicate brushwork that marks works by artists of the Shanghai school of painting. Artists associated with the Shanghai school broke from the traditional mode of landscape painting and created expressive and dramatic works that responded directly to the demands of their patrons.

Shanghai’s complex and often ambiguous social structure at the time is evident in a painting that appears to be a straightforward portrait of two men in a traditional Chinese garden. The painting, “Huang Jinrong and Du Yuesheng” by Yu Ming (1884–1935), depicts two legendary bosses of the infamous Green Gang. The Green Gang controlled the criminal activities in Shanghai in the early twentieth century.

The next part of “High Times” presents the arts that bombarded the residents of Shanghai on a daily basis: fashion, film, posters, and other graphic arts. Faces of beautiful Chinese women appeared often in visual products exhibiting Shanghai modernity in the 1920s and 1930s. Two of the many examples on view in the exhibition are posters entitled Moonlight over Huangpu River and A Prosperous City That Never Sleeps, both by Yuan Xiutang (dates unknown). Each of these posters presents a woman, clothed and coiffed in the latest styles, lounging before a backdrop of the city’s skyline. Such a composition exemplifies a successful marketing strategy that linked 1) Shanghai with 2) modernity with 3) the Chinese woman. This triangular association was so prevalent in the city’s visual culture at this time that it compelled the following claim by writer Cao Juren (1900–1972): “Haipai (Shanghai-style) is like a modern girl.”

Also included in this area are five qipao, a version of traditional Chinese women’s dress that was updated in Shanghai after the 1900s to be slender and form fitting. This style was popularized by Shanghai socialites as well as glamorous courtesans. During the 1920s and 1930s Shanghai had one of the leading and most innovative film industries in the world, and clips of films from that era will be shown on a flat-screen monitor in this part of the exhibition to provide a sense of this genre and a context for the other items on view.

Osher Gallery concludes with a series of oil paintings done in modern Western styles. Very few such works have survived the turmoil of the mid and late twentieth century in Shanghai. The eight examples on view are from a private collection in Shanghai. The Bund by Liu Haisu is an example of a strong work by one of China’s most famous artists influenced by Western artistic sensibilities. This painting is a view of Shanghai’s Garden Bridge and its environs. Its twisting, dynamic forms and vibrant colors reveal the artistic influence of Van Gogh, one of Liu’s favorite artists.

“High Times” continues across North Court in Hambrecht Gallery. An installation of Shanghai Deco furniture and carpets are displayed, as well as photographs of the deco interiors and exteriors of famous Shanghai buildings of the 1920s and 1930s. The pair of armchairs is remarkable in that the original fabric has survived largely intact. The bold swirling fabric in tangerine and fuschia complements the curving lines on the hardwood and burl frames. Other art deco furniture presented include a six-piece bedroom suite, a dining room table with four chairs, and a cabinet, among others.

A change in wall color marks the transition between “High Times” and “Revolution.” Shanghai was a leader in many of the social and political movements that swept China in the middle decades of the twentieth century. The first image that greets the visitor upon entering the new section is a 1968 portrait of Mao Zedong by oil painter Yu Yunjie (1917–1992).

The next grouping of works looks backward to the 1930s and 1940s at early expressions of the reformist socialist impulses that eventually led to the revolution. The woodcut print artists of the time asserted that the medium could best serve “the people” as it was reproducible, affordable, and mobile. They increasingly pursued Socialist agendas in their prints, tackling societal ills. A good example is a 1935 woodcut print entitled Roar, China! by Li Hua (1907–1994). The slogan “Roar, China!” had become an international rallying cry for the emancipation of all oppressed people. The phrase was representative of the anti-Imperialist mood gripping many countries in the 1920s and 1930s, and it highlighted China as the focus of this global mobilizing effort. The exhibition also includes a 1946 cartoon of Sanmao, the longest running comic strip in China, which like the woodcut prints was aimed to align visual art with populist concerns.

In print, perhaps the most ubiquitous product of the government’s visual enterprise were the large-format, colorful propaganda posters. The posters on display in the exhibition depict celebrations in Shanghai of the new Communist regime. Many of the posters on display were published by the Shanghai People’s Fine Art Publishing House, a state-owned enterprise. In these and in the others on view, famous landmarks of the Bund and Nanjing Road appeared often as sites of new revolutions and campaigns against all that the city had once symbolized.

The last area of Hambrecht Gallery is dedicated to Shen Fan’s 2007 installation Landscape-Commemorating Huang Binhong-Scroll, an homage to one of China’s great artists of the twentieth century. This installation piece with computer-operated neon lights and music introduces the contemporary section “Shanghai Today.” Like most of the works in this section, it was created in the past few years, while a number of works in this section were actually created for the exhibition.

After exiting Hambrecht Gallery, the exhibition continues in Lee Gallery, which features contemporary photographs, textiles, ink paintings and calligraphy on paper, acrylic paintings, and oil paintings. For the first time North Court is being given over to art, where two large new works by the leading Shanghai installation artists Zhang Jianjun (b. 1955) and Liu Jianhua (b. 1962) are on view.

Zhang Jianjun’s work Vestiges of a Process: Shanghai Garden is situated closest to Lee Gallery on the east side of North Court. It is an installation composed of two silicone rubber Taihu rocks, manufactured from molds of real Taihu rocks which in traditional garden culture are prized for providing city dwellers with a kind of symbolic access to nature. The rocks are accompanied by a silicone rubber vase. Together they are arrayed atop a pavement of gray antique bricks, acquired from the demolition of Shanghai houses constructed between 1923 and 1926. Visitors can walk between the rocks, reflecting on time and process.

Liu Jianhua’s Can You Tell Me? occupies the west end of North Court in the Vinson Nook. The installation is a series of stainless steel books suspended from a vertical wall. Each book presents two questions about Shanghai’s future, one on each page, that are translated into five languages, Chinese, English, French, German, and Japanese. Always changing, propelled by its role as an economic powerhouse, the city suggests endless possibilities some of which Liu asks visitors to contemplate.

The last section of “Shanghai Today” is presented in what is normally used as the Education Resource Room. This space features contemporary video art, one of the mediums in which Shanghai artists are taking a worldwide lead. Three of the five videos are by Yang Fudong (b. 1971): City Light (2000); Liu Lan (2003); and Honey (2003). A celebrated photographer, videographer, and film maker, Yang frequently explores the feelings of longing and displacement. His works often focus on the lives of young urbanites who despite possessing admirable qualities such as education or beauty, may not be well-adjusted to the environment in which they live.

The haudenschildGarage supports el Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas’ 2010 art and theory courses and seminar program.

Art and theory course participants included Ana Longoni (March, 2010), Victoria Noorthoorn (March, 2010), and José Fernández Vega (March 2010).

Seminar participants include Steve Fagin, m7red (March, 2010), Ricardo Piglia (April, 2010), Washington Cucurto, María Moreno (April 2010), Rosario Bléfari, Andrea Giunta (May, 2010), Pablo Gianera and Pablo Fessel, Daniel Link, Doris Sommer (April, 2010) and José Falconi.

Workshop participants include Vasco Araujo (March, 2010), Yoshua Okon (April, 2010), and Mike Smith (May, 2010).

Past 2009 program participants included Tania Bruguera, Germán García, Josep-María Martín, Sergio Vega, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Lucio Castro, Claire Bishop, Teddy Cruz, Roberto Amigo, Alejandro Ros, Ernesto Ballesteros, Reinaldo Laddaga, Tulio de Sagastizabal, and Gonzalo Aguilar.

Click here for more information on el Centro’s programs.

About el Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas

El Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas (Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a physical and virtual space of interaction and debate for artists and thinkers from around the world, particularly those in Latin America and Spain. The purpose of el Centro is to provide critical tools for the formation and development of the artistic community in order to intervene in the constantly redefined cultural map of the moment. The work of el Centro goes beyond the frontiers of genres and disciplines, with an emphasis on those that expand the borders of practice, genre and media; those that propose new ways of production, of exhibition and exchange; those that explore broader social contexts than the institutionalized one. Writers, musicians, philosophers, architects, designers, film-makers, historians, psychoanalysts, technologists, performers, photographers, visual artists, and theatrical artists, among many others, will converge at el Centro. The activities will have a strong pedagogical component based on historic research and art theory conducted virtually and physically.

El Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas, founded by Graciela Hasper, Roberto Jacoby and Judi Werthein, is a non-profit organization under the legal umbrella of the Start Foundation. In the begining of 2006, during the International Residence for Argentine Artists (RIAA), these three artists engaged in an exhaustive discussion on art education. Since then, they investigated a number of teaching models and possible education environments. It took three years to analyze and find the means to realize a project that would establish a dialogue that could go beyond disciplinary and geographical frontiers. By the middle of 2009, CIA’s infrastructure and project launch plans were in place. The development and continuity of this project depends on the engagement of artists, scholars, cultural private and public institutions and enterprises, as well as philanthropic organizations and individuals

From October 16 – 18, 2008 Washington Cucurto and Maria Gomez of the Argentine literary collective Eloisa Cartonera 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 Tijuana the General Producer was Carmen Cuenca; Coordinator: Felipe Zúñiga González; Documentation: José Inerzia. POLEN Audiovisual; Graphic Design: Luis del Toro; Assistants : Marina Gpe. Viruete Herrera and Pedro M. Escobar Uribe. A thanks to Claudia Villa, subdirector and Mayra Huerta, academic coordinator at Escuela de Artes. Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (U.A.B.C); Heriberto Yépez and Mayra Luna at Epicéntrico; Karla L. Martínez Alvarado and Julio Alvarez Ponce at Nortestación and Magarita González at Casa de la Nueve.

From October 14 – 16, 2009 Cucurto and Gomez were Artists-In-Residence at the haudenschildGarage. Cucurto was commissioned by the haudenschildGarage to write the short story, El Hijo, based on Ricardo Piglia’s text, La Loca y el Relato del Crimen (1975) for the hG, Spare Parts project A Crime Has Many Stories. 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.

On October 15, a Garage Talk was held presenting Cucurto and Gomez 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. Steve Fagin and Juli Carson were moderators and respondents. All the October 15 participants were part of the November 2008 A Crime Has Many Stories traverse in Buenos Aires. Cucurto read an excerpt from El Hijo.

A Crime Has Many Stories is an exquisite corpse project commissioned and produced by the haudenschildGarage, based on Ricardo Piglia’s short story La Loca y el Relato del Crimen (1975). The November 29, 2008 multidisciplinary, one-day traverse of the city of Buenos Aires was plotted with co-conspirators Judi Werthein, Sonia Becce and Alejandro Ruiz. In response to Piglia’s short story, the project generated two site-specific pieces by Argentine artists Rosalba Mirabella and Roberto Jacoby and Fernanda Laguna, and a commissioned story, El Hijo, by Argentine writer Washington Cucurto. The literary collective Eloisa Cartonera produced a limited edition Survival Kit and a catalog of the entire project.

About 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).
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About 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.