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

A Crime Has Many Stories, is an exquisite corpse project commissioned and produced by Eloisa Haudenschild and Steve Fagin of the haudenschildGarage, based on Argentine writer Ricardo Piglia’s short story, La Loca y el Relato del Crimen (Madwoman and the Story of a Crime, 1975) set in Buenos Aires and plotted with co-conspirators Judi Werthein, Sonia Becce and Alejandro Ruiz. Piglia’s text generated two site-specific pieces and a commissioned story by Argentine writer Washington Cucurto, El Hijo. In May of 2008, the haudenschildGarage traveled to Buenos Aires to meet with its advisory curatorial committee. Argentine curator Sonia Becce and Argentine artist Judi Werthein selected a short list of artists for the project, working in installation, photo and video. From this short list, Eloisa Haudenschild, Steve Fagin, and Alejandro Ruiz selected artists Roberto Jacoby, Fernanda Laguna and Rosalba Mirabella for the two site-specific pieces. Monica Jovanovich-Kelley coordinated the project in San Diego and Buenos Aires.

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

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

About the Participants

Eloisa Cartonera

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

Jennifer Flores-Sternad

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

Juli Carson

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

Teddy Cruz

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

Washington Cucurto

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

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

From October 14 – 16, 2009 Washington Cucurto and Maria Gomez of the Argentine literary collective Eloisa Cartonera were Artists-In-Residence at the haudenschildGarage. Cucurto was commissioned by the haudenschildGarage to write his 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-Kelley. 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.

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

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).
Click here to visit their website.

About Washington Cucurto

Santiago Vega, better known as Washington Cucurto, is an Argentine writer, poet, narrator and editor. He is one of the founders and directors of Eloisa Cartonera, a publishing house that disseminates contemporary Latin American literature. With the publication of his 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 impudence 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, a public entity funded by the German government.

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.

“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.

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.

I arrived in Buenos Aires the morning of the 21st to a bustling city and heat bordering on stifling. Eloisa would arrive the following morning and Steve, Wednesday morning.  Little did we know how many “stories” were waiting for us in the days leading up to our event on Saturday the 29th…

Nov 21 FRIDAY – “Everything’s lost”

Around midnight, I received a phone call from Rosalba Mirabella, one of our artists involved in the project who I was meeting in the morning with curator Sonia Becce. Rosalba had been in Buenos Aires, a transplant Tucuman, for the last two months working in a rented loft on Paseo Colon. She had just finished her project (slowly painting the walls, furniture, etc of her apartment with her experience of the city) but through a horrible turn of events Friday afternoon, her place caught fire and burned completely.  Nothing was left of her work or of the loft, in her words “there’s been a terrible accident, everything’s lost.”  Luckily they were able to escape unharmed and with a video camera but with little else.

So now we needed to not only help them recover from the fire but also find a new space for her and push forward with another manifestation of her project “La despedida escrita en el espejo”…

Nov 22 SATURDAY – Mapas y Chorizos

After trouble shooting the problem of Rosalba in the morning, Eloisa, Rita, Alejandro and I went to the opening of Fundacion PROA’s new building in La Boca.  Around the corner, just two blocks from Boca Junior’s stadium, La Bombonera, is Eloisa Cartonera and we stopped by to say hello and check on the progress of our catalogs and survival kits. Eloisa Cartonera is a literary collective who publishes stories by well known Latin American authors and makes their 5 to 10 peso books from recycled cardboard bought from the cartoneros.  What we saw was very impressive and added another layer to the project.  Next door is the pizzeria who will cater the event’s closing party – 1000 chorizos and 1000 empandas! This pizzeria is the same who feed the thousands of fans who walk by on their way to La Bombonera…

Nov 25 TUESDAY – In the forecast for Saturday: Soccer and Rain

Today we had multiple meetings from our “home base” at Malba’s cafe.  We first saw Alejandro to go over the logistics of the reading and closing party in La Boca.  We had hoped to close down one of the streets and set up a small stage for the reading of Cucurto’s commissioned story, El Hijo.  But Alejandro came with the news that a lat minute soccer game had been scheduled for Saturday at La Bombonera and 40,000 people were going to be walking through our exact location. We were told that if the police saw a stage set up they would demand it be taken down immediately as we didn’t have the proper permits at the moment.  Luckily, Alejandro knew what to do and looked at it positively – this soccer match closed the streets of La Boca down for us.  We now only had to think about how deal with the stage problem…

After Alejandro, Eloisa and I met with Ana Goldman and Guadalupe Requena of Malba to look at the auditorium where we will begin the event and show Piglia’s video.  Amparo and Teo Discoli, a brother and sister team, with their associate Francisca Mancini met us later that afternoon to go over our press plans for the project.  Later, Juan Cruz from the video company Ahorita Nomas stopped by to have a meeting to go over our video needs for Saturday.

Nov. 26 WEDNESDAY – Spaghetti in La Boca

Eloisa Cartonera invited all of us over for a spaghetti lunch. One of the members, La Osa, had proudly made special t-shirts for us and over lunch we talked about the logistics of Saturday’s event. Eloisa and Alejandro bravely went to meet with the local police chief of La Boca to get his permission to allow us to set up a small platform. Slowly, while sitting in a five hundred degree office, they came to an understanding and we’re all hopeful that Alejandro’s negotiating skills will smooth things over.

Nov. 27 THURSDAY – A Place for Rosalba

This morning Alejandro, Sebsatian, Steve, Eloisa, Rosalba, her husband Patricio and I met Judi Werthein to look at her space as a possibility for Rosalba’s project. It turned out to be exactly perfect! A dark, partially sunken garage with a variety of elements strewn about… The project now will be three videos shown at the same time throughout the space with chipas and sodas to accompany.  Next we moved on to meet Roberto Jacoby at Museo de Calcos y Escultura Comparada “Ernesto de la Carcova”.  Judi was to accompany but, another unexpected story, while driving over the wheel on her car flew off! Luckily she put Jacoby in a cab along with all the project sculptures.

Nov. 29 SATURDAY – Flooding in the streets

After months of planning and multiple obstacles, the day finally arrived and we spent the morning assembling Survival Kits, wrapping chipas, and changing the address and colectivo lines on the maps everyone would use during the event. The excitement grew as we arrived at Malba and saw the mounting crowd outside the auditorium. Maria and Osa from Eloisa Cartonera were busy adding the final touches to the chocolate candies which represented Fernanda and Roberto’s project in the Survival Kits (they made sure to have Boca Junior colors as the ties for the bags of chocolate).

The presentation and Ricardo Piglia’s video at Malba set the tone for the event but as we emerged energized from the auditorium – we were confronted with a wall of heavy rain! For the hour we were inside, it had been pouring and the streets were slowly becoming flooded. No one wanted to be the first to run through the rain to get on the Escolares buses but someone had to start it and one by one, people were escorted by the few umbrellas we had to the buses. Finally on the buses, we braved water logged streets and made it to Rosalba’s space in Palermo and then to Fernanda and Jacoby’s space at Museo del Calcos.

It was there that Eloisa got “the call” from Alejandro saying that Boca was too flooded for the reading and closing party to be outside and they hurried to find an alternative place. Miraculously, one block away was the La Boca fire station which had a large (and dry) ballroom which was quickly transformed for the last stop of the event. Everyone present helped – cleaning, arranging, decorating, moving food and drinks, and setting up the stage and lighting. By the time the buses arrived after stopping at Eloisa Cartonera’s shop, the room had been reborn – fresh empanadas were being passed, beer was being poured and the band was playing on stage. Cucurto and the members of Eloisa Cartonera performed his commissioned story and as the event moved into the closing party, we thought back over the last ten days and all the “stories” that our project had. As people danced and ate chorizos, we felt that despite fire, rain and everything else thrown at us we persevered and created an unforgettable event.

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

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.

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

FUEL: Thai

About the Participants

Jordan Crandall

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

Lincoln Schatz

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

Monica Jovanovich-Kelley

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