Ceci Moss

Courtesy of Jessica Fee

Ceci Moss is a curator, writer and educator based in Los Angeles, CA. She is the founder of Gas, a mobile, autonomous, experimental and networked platform for contemporary art. Her first book, "Expanded Internet Art: Twenty-First Century Artistic Practice and the Informational Milieu" (2019) is released through the Bloomsbury series International Texts in Critical Media Aesthetics. Her writing has appeared in Rhizome, Art in America, ArtAsiaPacific, Artforum, The Wire, CURA, New Media & Society and various art catalogs. Previously, she was Assistant Curator of Visual Arts at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Senior Editor of the art and technology non-profit arts organization Rhizome, and Special Projects Coordinator at the New Museum. She is currently a Lecturer in Curatorial Practice at California College of the Arts and she has held teaching positions at University of Southern California, Scripps College, the San Francisco Art Institute and New York University.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. It took place in October 2021.

GM: What was your path to becoming a curator and arts writer?

CM: I fell into it accidentally! (Laughs) Throughout my life, I’ ve simply shown up for creative and artistic communities. I started going to punk shows when I was twelve years old, and I’ ve always been instinctively drawn to people making their own worlds.

GM: What is your background in curating exhibitions relating to performance art and media art?

CM: My roots are in punk, so playing in bands, organizing shows, publishing zines, and making my own clothes, etc. I’m interested in the immediacy and accessibility of performance and media art. I got into media art more specifically while I was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, as I had a number of friends who were involved in the Bay Area’s video art community, especially at SFAI. Around this time, I also discovered internet art, and after college I moved to New York City. Luckily, I landed at Rhizome and the New Museum, first as Special Projects Coordinator, and then as Senior Editor of Rhizome.

GM: What types of exhibitions did you curate while you were Assistant Curator of Visual Arts at YBCA?

CM: I was primarily responsible for organizing exhibitions in the upstairs gallery. I started a series called “Control: Technology and Culture. ” I grew up in the Bay Area and I witnessed the Silicon Valley boom and bust in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, so I approached the program at YBCA with an interest in critically addressing and exploring the cultural effects and resonance of the tech sector in San Francisco. Through the “Control” series, I was able to commission new work by artists to produce solo exhibitions in the upstairs gallery and accompanying publications. (Continued)

Exterior view of Gas, 2019. Photo by Andy Bennett and Colleen Hargaden and Courtesy of Gas

Installation view of “Custom” exhibition at Gas

(February 15 – April 5, 2020). Left to right: Louise Rosendal, No Limit (Scratch Deluxe), 2020; Dahn Gim, Names I Had You Call Me: Catherine, 2018; Natani Notah, Don ’t Bump Her, 2018; Louise Rosendal, No Limit (Diesel Destiny), 2020. Photo by Andy Bennett and Colleen Hargaden and Courtesy of Gas

[…] I also feel really blessed that I was at YBCA when I was because [there was] a lot of conversation about how [the institution] places itself as a catalyst for social justice and social change. Being in the room and collaborating with my colleagues to reflect that institution-wide was incredible and put me on my path to doing something like Gas. I learned so much during my years at YBCA, and what I took away from that experience is the importance of community building and development, as well as the limitations of working within a building.

GM: What has been your experience founding and directing your mobile art gallery, Gas?

CM: I’m in a transitional moment [with Gas] because of COVID, but before [the pandemic] I organized three shows a year, which featured a lot of Los Angeles artists. I would partner with an artist-run space, such as Tin Flats and Night Gallery, to park and present the truck every weekend, and do pop ups all over LA. I feel an immense amount of gratitude for the fact that I was able to connect with all these different communities in Los Angeles, especially as someone who had recently moved here. Each exhibition had an affordable fundraising edition, where those funds would go towards the production costs for each show, as well as an accompanying publication. As I mentioned, I got my start publishing zines as a teenager, so it was full-circle to be able to publish free publications again! Artists would say to me, “I have this poem I’ ve been sitting on!” or “I have a fictional project that I don’t have a home for. ” The publications allowed an additional presentation space. The shows would also include at least one work that was on the website or otherwise online. Each Gas exhibition lives on multiple platforms simultaneously, and not as a closed, temporal structure. As a curator, I believe work can exist in this layered fashion, and also be really welcoming – most of the time I was the person who would greet visitors during open hours. I also want this project to inspire people to start their own spaces. (Continued)

In pre-COVID Los Angeles, there was this immense abundance of artists creating their own venues and institutions, which is a big reason of why I moved here! I hope that people look at Gas and are empowered to start their own projects, and realize that this mystique of the institution is simply that. It’s just smoke and mirrors, and we don’t really need big, fancy institutions to create a public for one another.

GM: You mentioned that you’re in a transitional moment with Gas due to COVID – could you expand on that?

CM: I’ ve organized a number of successful online programs over the last year, and I’m super proud of them. Right now, I’m meeting with artists, curators, and the community to ask them how they want to authentically show up going forward, what they want to build with others, and further lessons from the pandemic. Before re-opening in-person programs again, I want to take the time and space needed to gain a sense of people’s deeper needs – creative, spiritual, psychological, etc. – given the world that we are in now and the varying futures we’re moving towards.

GM: Can you discuss your experience writing your book, “Expanded Internet Art: Twenty-First Century

Artistic Practice and the Informational Milieu” (2019)?

CM: The book looks at contemporary art practices, the rise of social media, how artists are engaging with and thinking about their work vis-à-vis new social media platforms, and how they ’re experimenting within that space. One of the main concepts of the book is Tiziana Terranova’s concept of an informational milieu, which is the notion that we are inhabiting a world that is increasingly optimized for the circulation of information. (Continued)

Installation view of “Common Survival” exhibition

at Gas (January 26 – April 14, 2019). Photo by Andy Bennett and Colleen Hargaden and Courtesy of Gas

"Expanded Internet Art: Twenty First Century Artistic Practice and the Informational Milieu" (2019) by Ceci Moss. Photo by and courtesy of Ceci Moss

I argue that contemporary artists working in an expanded fashion fold this orientation into their work. Expanded Internet Art was originally my PhD dissertation. I started graduate school at NYU in 2008 and earnestly started writing my dissertation in 2010. So, there’s a way in which the book is still really relevant and important, but it’s also a product of conversations I was having over those years.

GM: Do you believe that art institutions embrace performance art and media art in terms of exhibition and programming thematics?

CM: The support of performance and media practices in these institutions is part of a larger historical pivot in response to institutional critique, social media, and the explosion of an experience economy, for starters. It’s a big topic. How does the traditional museum address liveness? Often times, not so well. I think you can stretch and do more when you leave that container. For example, Pieter Performance Space will program the parking lot of The Box this Fall, and I won’t be surprised if they end up hosting the best performance art and dance projects that we’ll see this season. My heart and passion are for these smaller institutions, as I feel the future is there. How do we build alternate structures that support artistic community? What other structures are there? That’s one of the major questions that we’re all looking at now. It’s exciting to be in dialogue with colleagues who are thinking about solidarity economics and how that can translate into practice, or thinking about cooperative structures, etc. All of these conversations are coming from the grassroots on up, and attention should be placed there.