S M F S O I N A B R U N ia z O e I n Ve S i d U AV L U I Ă C t rsi e IN v i Un
concept sketch
(co) Labor transcience
Nolli Map | Representing the public domain within urban space in 1748 Tae Hwang, MFA candidate in Visual Arts MR Barnadas, MFA candidate in Visual Arts Faculty advisor: Teddy Cruz University of California San Diego
“…we find ourselves in a moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion. For there is a sense of disorientation, a disturbance of direction, “in the beyond’: an exploratory, restless movement caught so well in the French rendition of the words au-delà…” - Homi K. Bhabha: The Location of Culture
Our practice has always been shaped by distance: the geographic expanse that we ourselves have traveled as immigrants, the arcs of time and space strectched between coastlines and the passage of the work itself through territories that we can never foresee. We have tried to mine this distance, this critical gap that Homi K. Bhabha refers to as “the in-between,” because it is in this liminal space that identities, social and cultural configurations can still be negotiated. Migration, therefore, has served as the motor of our practice. Migration and not immigration which, after all, is still anchored by fixed points of departure and arrival. Avoiding the closure of absolute beginnings and terminal endings, our work seeks to inhabit and prolong a “moment of transit.” To that end, working as a collective has been imperative, enabling us to avoid the stasis of singular intentions and objectives by conceiving ourselves always as plural, engaged in dialog and dissent. Between us we speak multiple languages, forcing a continuous translation that reminds us always of what it means to be foreign, to be in some sense strangers even to ourselves. Working collectively turns us away from the illusion of a center, and produces at the start a crucial displacement and a productive disorientation.
Collective Magpie = Tae Hwang
content Overview (Co) labor Collective Magpie projects & others
Project | Migration: After Flight Transience Collective Magpie projects & others
Under the name "Collective Magpie", our work focuses on the creation of migratory collective forms, invoking and involving mass participation in the manifestation of their ephemeral and nomadic works. Through site-specific installations, exhibitions and public commissions, their work seeks to inhabit and prolong a shared “moment of transit� while highlighting the temporal specificity of places and communities as part of a living, greater whole.
1-2
3-4 5-8
9 - 10
Project | Dream Capsule
11 -14
Map
15 -16
g & MR Barnadas + Participants
URBANISMS OF INCLUSION
As a migratory entity, we view our art production as a sites, cultures, and communities through the poetic re public circumstances. Notions of proximity and access potentials for connectivity and opportunity therein. A excavate the civic potency found in circumstances of s is discovered.
MR Barnadas
(co) labor material
form
labor
The process of our Collective Magpie projects begins first with the collaborative negotiation between artist, Tae Hwang and myself. From this space, we generate frameworks for art production that extend to participants (a localized public) for the physical realization of the work. Project participants become a visible volunteer labor force seen in tandem with the temporal art object/s produced. The labor force, the art object, the site and micro-community contained within the work itself exist simultaneously as the subsisting form “(co)labor�. (Co)labor enables a visibility of the poly-performance of effort, design, construction and environment as the fluctuating form that is our surroundings - with an emphasis on people as its producer. I am interested in re-imagining and exploring new forms of (co)labor through parallel experimentation in civic space can materialize new shared possibilities for the urban landscape. How is (co)labor is woven into the fabric of our everyday life - in the professional, social, pedagogical, natural, architectural, etc? Can we utilize the lens of (co)labor to re-imagine construction and space in the city from the vantage of the experiential? How do we create urban frameworks that facilitate volunteer participation? `
1
&
a multi-layered system of identifying and activating environments to bridge between edirecting of labor, form, architecture and people. For us, urbanity is inherent to all s are in constant flux in the contemporary and we are interested in creating new As visual artists, we seek to revisit the inherent tensions between labor and form and synergy and imagination. It is in the nexus of the fantastical and the real, that the future
Tae Hwang
transience transient structures The work of Collective Magpie is peripatetic and restless in its optimism, constantly seeking a new rhythm of sites and participants to engage with. We find it critical to create opportunities to question the environments that we inhabit and the ways we inhabit them. As such, we create localized “disturbance� in the form of an aesthetic cadence, realized through the combined material efforts of the time, place, and people it contains. The temporal nature of our work mirrors the transitory nature of the places it passes through. Most often we create one-day gestures of an intensity that can challenge, delight and illuminate through the resonance of memory and mythology. I am interested in the transitory nature of all things, the impact and movement through urbanized landscapes. In this landscape, one can find traces of the temporality in time, memory, experience and objects while new shapes are discovered and negotiated. How do we organize our environment through transitory movements? How does transitory movement facilitate in negotiating and shaping our environment? How do we utilize transitory movement as a tool to develop our urban landscape? How does transitory movement mark our permanent spaces?
2
(co) labor
(co) labor material
form
labor
Migration : After Flight Collective Magpie | California, 2013 Performance production detail Residents of La Jolla assembled into a temporary work force and open assembly line for one evening in the simultaneous production/deconstruction of over a thousand paper bird forms. The paper forms were assembled into a temporal wall 7.0 ft x 40.0 ft in length. Inspired by the spatial freedom suggested by tessellations (intricate geometric patterns), Migration: After Flight is a site-specific work that is both live construction and temporal performance.
Running Fence
Christo + Jeanne Claude | Sonoma
An18.0 ft h x 24.5 mile veiled fence exte Inspired by the fences demarking the c manifested through local negotiations
“..and for every project, because it takes years, you can see the early drawings vague idea and through the years and through negotiations of getting permit now clarified.”
3
(CO) Labor “ Work Together”
Collective Magpie | Arcosanti, Arizona, 2009 Performance detail
(co) labor
Dream Capsule
Arconaughts (residents/former residents and fabricators of Arcosanti) returned to this site for the 90th birthday of its visionary, Paolo Soleri. A weightless structure comprised of just under 3000 helium-filled latex forms was constructed and performed with the labor force of the Arconaughts.
160 cm line tattooed on 4 people Santiago Sierra | El Gallo Arte Contemporáneo, Spain, 2000 Sierra recruited heroin addicted prostitutes from the street to have thier backs tattooed in exchange for one shot of heroin. “People need money, people have to work and I am looking for strong images to expose this” - Santiago Sierra
ma County, California, 1976
ended across N. California. continental divide, this work of land use and “artistic merit”.
s and collages as just a simple its, you see that every detail is -Christo & Jeanne-Claude
4
(co) labor 5
Top: Performance documentation, wall detail, 7pm Bottom: Performance documentation, wa Without Walls Festival, La Jolla Playhouse in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art
(co) labor
wall detail, 11pm t San Diego, La Jolla, California, 2013
Migration : After Flight
6
(co) labor Mexico–United States border, San Diego pictured left, Tijuana picutred right
D S J T D S J T D S J T D S J T SD 77
(co) labor
With the labor force of the participants of the “Without Walls Festival” at the La Jolla Playhouse, a paper wall of tessellating bird forms was constructed & deconstructed over a period of one night. As the migrating bird wall stood in the center of the La Jolla Playhouse, it echoed the monumental differences of divided culture, class and labor systems between two cities: La Jolla and Tijuana. At only 30 miles apart each contains the economic extremes of affluence (La Jolla) and poverty (Tijuana) in North America. The visual spectacle and a wonderment of this 80 foot performance are complicated through the transparency of its labor process. As one worker/participant constructs the wall, another is deconstructing it slowly shaping and unearthing the differences and exclusiveness that a barrier can create between the two workers. At the end of the night, this temporal structure is completely deconstructed and dispersed by the participants throughout the landscape of La Jolla and beyond, into their private homes, parking lots, school grounds, theaters…
Mexico–United States border wall detail, Tijuana
D S J T D S J T D S J T D S J T TJ SD Migration: After Flight Performance documentation, wall detail, La Jolla, California
8
transience
Divisor Lygia Pape | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1968
A large sheet of white fabric covers and is carried by the crowd of participants through the streets of Rio de Janerio. Each person’s head pokes out of the white fabric creating a shifting amorphorus form that unifes as they strugle to maintain individuality.
The morphology of viruses was considered in the design of this model for Dream Capsule. The notion of transience through transference and replication inside the living cells of other organisms was utilized in forming the framework for the later performance.
model for Dream Capsule Collective Magpie | Arcosanti, Arizona, 2008 9
.. . . . . . .
transience
Transience Migration: After Flight, wall detail Collective Magpie | LLa Jolla, California, 2013 We utilized the simple structure of a paper box designed as a bird form which was reproduced with the aid of a die and press to create a unit that was universally understood to imply mass flight. Migration both within and between nations occurs in many forms and with them come movement and the shift of class and culture.
Film still from a video of Long’s walking in landscapes series. This series exemplifies the tension between action and form.
Walking a Straight Line Back and Forth Shooting Every Half Mile Richard Long | Dartmoor, England,1969
...................
10
transience
Dream Capsule Performance detail Arcosanti, Arizona, 2008
11
transience
12
transience
Our next work dealt with the concept of destination, specifically the possibility of a non-imaginary destination t utopian destination of Arcosanti, the urban laboratory created by Paolo Soleri in the desert site of Mayer, Arizon visions of Arcosanti’s destiny. In Dream Capsule, we devised a ritualistic, symbolic celebration of these difference Filled with smaller spores or capsules, the organic structure was carried by residents through the desert site and manifestation that for us, paralleled the continual and infectious migration of utopian desire and the disorientin
Arco ARCHITECTURE : STRUCTURE
13
transience
that nevertheless is still in the process of coming into being. This suspension is what we discovered in the na. Arcosanti is in a state of constant creation. It was built by residents, each of whom may have had conflicting es. On the darkest day of the year, a monumental but fragile form was built in the shape of an airborne virus. d eventually ruptured. The result was an unpredictable dispersal of thousands of bodies in flight, a physical ng embrace of an unknown destination.
osanti ECOLOLOGY: ENVIRONMENT
14
15
RECONSIDERING THE MAP AS FORM & PERFORMANCE Buckminster Fuller Dymaxion map/ Collective Mapie Dome models
16