Graphite 3 (2012) by GRAPHITE Journal

GRAPHITE

ISSUE Nยบ 3

THE ARCHIVAL

2012

INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF THE ARTS

EDITOR’S NOTE

There is no use disciplining the term “archive.” On a practical level, archives are both sites of knowledge production and repositories of information, problematized by issues of functional storage space or by the politics that control the research placed into them. Theoretically, archives open up complex relationships with memory, finality, and the human impulse to systematize the natural and synthetic orders of the world, calling attention to their own relevance in present-day society. The intersection between contemporary art and the notion of the archive in particular poses a multitude of concerns. How does one responsibly document the increasingly interdisciplinary practices of art in an age where everything adheres to the meta-archive of the Internet, where nothing dies but simply disappears under new data? Is every work of art inherently archival given the inextricable attachment to art historical citation, or does the art object’s materiality ultimately betray and doom the project of preservation? Instead of presenting pieces that close off this kind of questioning, the third edition of GRAPHITE Interdisciplinary Journal of the Arts pushes further inquiry into the vacuum that is the archive. Perhaps it’s wiser to surrender to the ever-expanding peripheries of this idea than to attempt to gauge it. By all means we do not provide all of the answers, nor even a fraction of the forms and ideas that adhere to the archival, but this is hardly the point. The archive denies such pointed, precise definitions. In the words of Jacques Derrida, it is “a notion, an impression associated with a word and for which . . . we have no concept.” —Christine Haroutounian

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CONTRIBUTOR:

EMILY ANNE KURIYAMA

TITLE:

NATURE’S HAND IN NEW FORM

KATHLEEN RYAN SARAH MACKENZIE-SMITH

PAGE:

7 ACTIVE, PENDING, FORECLOSED

JANNA IRELAND

NICHOLAS NABER

KIEU DUNG TRAN

MERZBAU: KURT SCHWITTERS’ MATERIALIZED MODEL OF MEMORY

LUCAS BLALOCK

IRIS YIREI HU

19 25

LIVING TRANSCULTURALISM THROUGH SITE-SPECIFIC PAINTING,

PEDAGOGY, AND PLANT LIFE: A CONVERSATION WITH SARAH DOUGHERTY TRENTON SZEWCZYK

NEW WINDOW VISTAS: CULTURE HACKING NOW VIA THEN TO HERE

KELLY MCCAFFERTY

TAMEKA NORRIS

ARIANNA FUNK

BRISTOL IDENTITIES: LIVING HISTORY AS LIVING ARCHIVE

TAKMING CHUANG

BECKY KOLSRUD

SULEIMAN HODALI

COSTUMES AT THE PROTEST SITE: PALESTINIAN

PERFORMATIVE PARODY AND THE HISTORICAL (TRANS)NARRATIVITY OF DIGITIZED PHOTOGRAPHY SHOSHI KANOKAHATA & YOSEI SHIBATA

MARTEN ELDER

EVAN MOFFITT

THE POLITICS OF PRESERVATION WITH BRENDA LEVIN

CARMEL NI

ARTIST BIOS + IMAGE INDEX

101

TITLE: WRITER:

NATU RE’S HAND IN NEW FORM

E M I L Y ANNE KURIYAMA

WORDS:

2083

CHARS:

14061

KEY WORDS:

members” simultaneously exposed the

the notion further by introducing the

first photographs between June and

“author function” and distinguishing

December and the second photographs

“founders of discursivity” from mere

between the following January and June.

writers.5 Solargraphic technique refuses

Solargraphy has since garnered interest

to place a creative work between the

from artists and enthusiasts alike. Inspired

dichotomous pull of an author (photog-

image, process, temporal, reality,

by Project Solaris, Trygg launched The

rapher) and reader (consumptive other).

perception

Global Art Project of Pinhole Solargraphy

Instead, the creators of Project Solaris

in 2007.3 Expanding upon her predeces-

maintained their status as originators of a

sors’ endeavor, Trygg organized her “can

new technique without asserting control

assistants” along coordinated latitudes,

over the meaning of any resultant image,

connecting people across the globe in

opening a creative dialogue with a larger

an attempt to envision the sun’s journey

populace. In this way, meaning arises out

across the entire sky. Outside of the mul-

of dynamic interaction rather than the

titude of organized solargraphy projects,

disjointed interaction of transmission.

individual enthusiasts exchange camera

Collaborating on two levels, Project Solaris’

building and process tips across image

creators reached back into both the French

hosting websites and online DIY photog-

and English origins of photography. Like

raphy guides like Flickr and Photojojo. This

Nicéphore Niépce and Louis-Jacques-

broad-based interest in solargraphy attests

Mandé Daguerre’s collaborative effort to

to the success of Project Solaris’ inclusive

develop a commercially viable photo-

aspirations.

graphic process, solargraphic technique

solargraphy, sun, photographic,

arose out of the shared concerns and In striving toward inclusivity,

fig. 1

shared experimentation of three different

solargraphic artists assume the role of

artists. Similar to William Henry Fox

coordinator, merging the singularity of

Talbot, British photography pioneer and

authorship with the communal quality

inventor of the calotype, those three artists

In December 2009, Tarja Trygg pointed

winter into a single image and merges ter-

of a shared experience. As explained by

published their solargraphs with detailed,

one of her pinhole cameras toward the fro-

restrial reality with celestial journeywork,

Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes, the

almost scientific, instructions for a larger

zen Helsinki waterfront. She left it there for

creating a uniquely unified visualization

author as an individual genius is a modern

population.6 Reaching back into the history

the next seven months. In June 2010, Trygg

of the world. In fact, the entire order of

construct. In the practice of literary criti-

of photography, Project Solaris’ collabora-

removed her makeshift camera from its

solargraphic photography seems to yearn

cism, Barthes called for a break between

tive emphasis attempted to ameliorate

perch, carefully withdrew the black-and-

for greater unity and connectivity, and

the interpretation of a text and the identity

the initial splitting of the photographic

white photographic paper, and scanned

may be best understood by examining the

and intentions of an author. By separat-

medium—between French and English

the undeveloped image. A cold and snowy

merger of various photographic elements.

ing a work from its author, the reader is

inventors, and between scientific instruc-

freed from closed interpretation. Barthes

tion and artistic experimentation. Further

postulated that the “birth of the reader”

embodying this sentiment of connectivity,

winter colored the negative with shades of blue and white. Spring—melting the snow

The founders of this photographic

and opening the sea—emerged in shades

technique—Slawomir Decyk, Pawel Kula,

in interpretation necessitates this “death

the creators of Project Solaris and Trygg

of teal. The sun, closest to the horizon in

and Diego López Calvin—published the

of an author.”4 Foucault, responding to

invited all to participate in the creation

winter and rising upward through spring

first solargraphs in November 2000.

Barthes, argued that the author exists only

of global solargraphic maps, fielding and

and into summer, repeatedly burns its

Together, the three artists launched Project

as a function of his or her work’s structure.

organizing scanned images along latitudes.

cosmic trail into Trygg’s solargraph. Aptly

Solaris, inviting the participation of “artists,

Both Barthes and Foucault concluded

This inclusive act of coordinating and

titled From Winter to Summer, Trygg’s

photographers, and all other individuals

that the single author is a new historical

organizing participants parallels the broad

solargraph collapses summer, spring, and

interested.”2 This broad group of “project

phenomenon, but Foucault complicated

simplicity of the medium. Solargraphy’s

PAGE: 1 Fig. 1 From Winter to Summer, Tarja Trygg, Solargraph, 2010. Courtesy of Tarja Trygg. 1 Solargraphy is a form of long-exposure photography employing simple pinhole lensless camera obscuras to record the path of the sun. 2 Slawomir Decyk, “Solaris,” Slavo Decyk, accessed March 8, 2012, http://free.art.pl/solaris/solaris/Solaris.html. See for a complete description of Project Solaris’ original participant guidelines. 3 Tarja Trygg, “A World Map of Solargraphs,” The Global Project of Solargraphy, accessed February 19, 2012, http://www.solargraphy.com . See for more information and to view solargraphic images from the project.

2 4 Roland Barthes, “Death of an Author,” Image-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana Press, 1977), 142–148. 5 Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author,” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 113–138. 6 Unlike the daguerreotypes of his French counterparts, Talbot’s calotype utilizes a two-step process of making a negative and then printing a positive image. Talbot introduced The Pencil of Nature, the first commercially published book illustrated by photographs, by distinguishing the photographic prints (drawn by “Nature’s hand”) from drawings or engravings (drawn by human hands). Talbot often referred to his prints as “Photogenic drawings.”

subject appears literally everywhere,

camera obscura. In the nineteenth century,

irrevocably marries its reproduction—the

“chafed” by reality as much as seared

allowing all to participate. Furthermore, this

Niépce and Daguerre developed the first

original photosensitive paper destroyed

by it; the sun slowly, repeatedly burns

particular photographic process is relatively

commercially successful photographic

by its own preservation. In this transition,

a map of its own astral path into the

simple, and pinhole cameras can be easily

process. Experimenting with various combi-

from the technology of photography’s

emulsion. Unlike the photographs

built out of common items, like used soda

nations of chemicals, Niépce and Daguerre

infancy to that of contemporary com-

Barthes analyzed, solargraphs are false

or coffee cans, plastic film canisters, or

worked to fix images onto silvered

modity, the scanner nearly disrupts the

not only on the level of perception, but

other rubbish. A number of resources even

copper plates using a camera obscura

continuity of the solargraphic technique

also on the level of time. Freed from

provide step-by-step solargraphy guides.

and lengthy exposure times. Similarly,

by embodying the disparity between past

human retinal and temporal perception,

the development of solargraphic process

and present, art and archive, inherited

solargraphic technique plunges into

relied on the experimental curiosity of its

innovations and new technology. This

a complete and total “form of hallucina-

materials and overt accessibility opens the

This use of common commodity

creators. Decyk, Kula, and López embodied

particular technique however, maintains

tion.” Reality does not irritate and chafe

art form to a larger audience. Moreover,

the inquisitive origins of photography

coherency in the continual insistence on

the image so much as it imposes and

the sun—the basic visual content of all

by purposefully removing photographic

movement. The sun, relentlessly moving

merges itself into the photograph in

solargraphs—exhibits another reversal

reagents and chemical fixatives from

across the sky, reorients and exaggerates

a newly perceptible way. The materi-

of authorship. Considering the physical

use, pushing photographic process into

the stasis of the camera of photography’s

alization of this shift, flung from the

displacement of the photographer, bound

a new realm. By stepping away from the

origins. Similarly, the scanner reorients the

stability of known reality, would seem to

to the temporal procession of daily move-

traditional chemical processes associated

stationary aspect of traditional photogra-

send an image spiraling out of coheren-

ments, solargraphs materialize as the sun’s

with photography, solargraphic process

phy: its sensor moves through space and

cy, yet solargraphy unifies itself around

self-portrait. This reversal of actions recalls

could be misconstrued as “regressive.”

time to record the static image. In this

a new locus, a shared subject: the sun.

way, solargraphic technique reengages

Eternal, omnipresent, and universal,

the photographic techniques of past and

the sun and all its celestial journeywork

the sentiment of Talbot, who wrote that the photographic plates published in The Pencil

However, solargraphy’s release from

of Nature were “impressed by Nature’s hand

fixatives relies on the accessibility and

present, reimagining and repositioning the

reigns over our terrestrial experience.

. . . from our want of sufficient knowledge

pervasiveness of consumer technology

context of their use. In the solargraphic

By focusing their pinhole cameras on

of her laws.”7 In solargraphy, the sun

in the form of the scanner. This is where

process, technological advancements and

the sun, solargraphy enthusiasts jointly

impresses itself into the photograph. Left

Project Solaris’ creators’ vision of an

tradition are inextricably linked.

observe the most basic unifying element

to its own devices, the sun continuously

anti-technological process breaks down.

writes its own journey on the photosensi-

After being removed from the camera,

tive paper in the form of undulating trails.

the black-and-white photographic paper,

photography as “a new form of hallucina-

slightly. A solargraph, fixed to a single

By coordinating and organizing solargraphic

remaining unfixed, must be preserved in

tion: false on the level of perception,

location over a length of time, exhibits

images, Trygg and the creators of Project

dim lighting and immediately scanned. The

true on the level of time . . . a mad

the warped lineaments of the sun’s trails

Solaris brought together their upward-

action of scanning in itself destroys the

image, chafed by reality.”9 Here, Barthes

across the landscape. In solargraphy,

gazing participants in an effort to imagine

original image and can only be attempted

distinguishes between the oppositional

the sun seems to revolve around this

a more connected world.

once before the paper begins to blacken.

forces of the real and the representation in

fixed, terrestrial point of view, as if

of humanity’s earthbound reality. Yet, In Camera Lucida, Barthes characterizes

the resulting images reorient this notion

Here, the mundane dependability of

photography’s ability to pervert temporal

Copernicus never formulated the

Decyk, Kula, and López refer to their

consumer technology melds with the

understanding and perception. A photo-

heliocentric model. Though scientifically

solargraphic process as “anti-technologi-

uncertainty of an old process: the risk

graph appears “chafed by reality” because

disproven, this imagery of a geocentric

cal.”8 This term, however, seems ill-fitting

of framing a photograph with a lensless

it inevitably references a time that has

universe evokes a blissfully unified

for a series of actions that combine the

pinhole camera, and the uncertainty that a

passed, existing as an object perpetually

worldview, however naive.

experimental origins of photography with

clear image will manifest. Furthermore, the

recalling another moment. In collapsing

the prevalence of consumer electronics in

violent dichotomy between tradition and

an expanse of time, solargraphs escape

contemporary times. Above all else, the

reproducibility, as seen by Walter Benjamin

this temporal irritation, forever recalling

graphic exposure’s duration chronicles

solargraphic process is trans-technological,

in his 1936 essay “The Work of Art in

a cyclical procession of events rather than

a period of time beyond the perceptible

synthesizing analog and digital photo-

the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,”

a single moment. Solargraphy does not ap-

reach of the human eye. In distorting

graphic methods—the scanner joins the

appears quelled as the original solargraph

pear so much as a temporal hallucination

and collapsing time, solargraphs abandon

PAGE: 3 7 William Henry Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969), 1. 8 Slawomir Decyk, “Solaris.”

Ranging from one day to a year, a solar-

4 9 “A new form of hallucination: false on the level of perception, true on the level of time: a temporal hallucination, so to speak, a modest, shared hallucination (on the one hand “it is not there,” on the other “but it has indeed been”): a mad image, chafed by reality.” Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 115.

any attempt at imitating reality, putting

technique blends the frailty of photographic

forth a completely new visualization of

film with the rapid distribution of a scanned

reality. By collapsing an expansive duration

image. In collapsing the temporal-spatial

of time into a single image, solargraphy

relationship, solargraphs capture a uniquely

releases photography from the antagonistic

unified rendering of our movement through

questioning of vision’s value: the human

the cosmic landscape. This organic merging

eye cannot see as slowly as a solargraphic

of processes and conceptions has pushed

image does, therefore abstracting vision

solargraphy into a new, inclusive aesthetic

and emancipating the viewer from any

field. Renegotiating fragmented percep-

possible visual expectations. This chrono-

tion, solargraphy enthusiasts attempt to

graphic manipulation recalls and upends

reengage each other and the cosmos in the

the sun’s association with humanity’s

creation of a new visual archive, mapping

reading and understanding of time—the ap-

the sun’s journey across the sky.

parent motion of the sun’s shadow across a sundial. Through solargraphy, enthusiasts seem to be renegotiating and reengaging the cosmos in their temporal understanding of their place in the universe. Similarly, this temporal manipulation requires the blurring of details. The extreme length of exposure times pushes ephemeral details to the margins of a solargraphic image; in tracking the sun’s movement over several months, Trygg’s From Winter to Summer blurs and

Emily Anne Kuriyama is pursuing her BA in Art

eliminates transient minutiae. Solargraphy’s

History at UCLA. She worked as an Education

tendency to obscure visual traces of the

Programs intern at the Architecture + Design

momentary while collapsing a temporal

Museum and currently researches and gives

expanse into an individual image contrib-

tours at the Hammer Museum. Emi’s interests

utes to the medium’s sublime visual unity.

deal with the intersection and interplay between the built environment, photography,

With the opening of a new millennium

and cinema.

and the rise of digital imaging, solargraphic artists and enthusiasts reach backward into the origins of photography. Perhaps sensing the close of the analogic aspect of the medium, Project Solaris attempted to reimagine solargraphic process, focusing on the melding of presumed oppositional principles. Solargraphic enthusiasts immerse themselves in the oppositional discourse surrounding the photographic medium, emerging from antagonistic definitions with a new form of communal art. In merging analog and digital processes, solargraphic PAGE: 5

KATHLEEN RYAN

PAGE: 7

Untitled (Hans Coper and Dan Flavin) Acrylic on paper 24 x 18 inches each Los Angeles, CA 2011

Mom: We had French doors.

Mom: Yeah, everything skyrocketed. Within what, like five years? It doubled.

Dad: We put French doors in it. We changed the whole house.

Dad: And us, along with a lot of people we knew, took some money out of the

Mom: This was in 1999. We moved in

house in terms of the second mortgage in

actually in 2000 after some of the kitchen

order to make significant improvements

work had been done. We spent a lot of

because we thought it was worth it. So

money on the kitchen, about $50,000?

what we did was, we actually converted

But that wasn’t the only, I mean, houses

the garage—

are like money pits, they really are. We just kept doing things, you know? New patio

Mom: With that money.

and, you know, painting it, and we ended up making a studio for Sarah out of the

Dad: With that money. So we actually

garage. It was an old horse barn.

increased our mortgage percentage.

Dad: Well, I think at that point what

Mom: But at the same time, our payments,

we did is, we actually—this house was

like a lot of other people, our payments

relatively cheap in terms of houses and

went up. The recession started and

so our mortgage was actually, what you

unemployment kind of hit, and it hit us

would normally—

really hard being freelancers—William’s

fig. 1 TITLE: VIDEO:

ACTI VE, PENDING, FORECLOSED

S A R A H M ACKENZIE-SMITH KEY WORDS:

WORDS:

1484

CHARS:

7641

mortgage, Bank of America, home, documents, mom, dad

a photographer, I’m an art director—and it was really bad all of a sudden. We didn’t have as much work as we used to. I managed to get a full-time job for like [laughs]

Dad: We were looking for a house. We’d

Dad: So what did we end up paying then?

four months and the agency went out of

been looking for a while and we came over

Two hundred and—

business, you know, and it was terrible.

to this neighborhood, which is Atwater, and we saw a house that was painted a

I mean, we couldn’t make our house Mom: $230,000?

payments.

friends of ours showed it to us who were

Dad: Two hundred and twenty-seven—

Dad: Yeah, the recession hit us really

real estate agents, and we came in here

something like that.

badly and suddenly. We thought that we

horrible color but we came inside. Some

and were very surprised that it had been

were fine when we did this, we weren’t

on the market for a long time because we

Mom: Something like that, because

saw a lot of potential in this house. And

nobody could see how really, really cute

when we came in, we looked at it. We

this house was basically, and we pulled up

started talking about what we would do

all the carpeting and—and all the horrible

with it.

linoleum in the kitchen and there was hard

really stretching ourselves at the time. Mom: We had some money in savings that

fig. 2

we sort of spent for years as the work was Mom: Pretty reasonable.

wood floors and—

slowing down, and pretty soon the savings were gone. Then, less and less work, and

Mom: Yeah! We saw mint green and it

Dad: Pretty reasonable, what you would

[we] couldn’t pay the mortgage and, bam!

had white shag carpeting and it scared

Dad: We knocked out a wall through

normally pay for rent. And suddenly all of

In those days, and that was like three years

everyone away so we were able to get it for

to the kitchen and changed a couple of

the houses in this area became much more

ago, was it three years ago?

about $75,000 less than they were asking.

windows around in the kitchen so that

valuable.

suddenly the kitchen was a big kitchen.

Dad: Uh huh. PAGE: 9

10 Fig. 1 and 2 Active, Pending, Foreclosed, Sarah Mackenzie-Smith, Film stills, Los Angeles, CA, 2011.

Mom: In those days, they would just

our financial records, all of our pay stubs,

take your house after three months, you

everything. And they are just jerking us

know? It was like, forget it. But it’s been an

around, and we have friends who are being

interesting progression because the last

totally jerked around, too. This is Bank of

few years we had very little work, but just

America, by the way.

recently we started to get busy and we’re in a supposed loan modification, which is a

Dad: We don’t know what they are doing.

complete wank, isn’t it?

The last time we sent in eighty-five pages of documents, I kept calling the woman

Dad: [Laughs]

saying I had sent them, have you got them? Never called me back. Get a letter

Mom: I mean, we’ve sent in documents

from Bank of America saying you have

to get a loan modification and we’ve sent

been turned down. Why have we been

in, what, six sets of documents over the

turned down? I called to find out. It wasn’t

last year?

in the letter, and I hear it’s because two pages of documents were missing.

Dad: No, they keep saying they are going to modify our loan and then someone new

Mom: Well, hello! Call us and tell us what

comes on to be a modifier and you send in

they are!

new documents and— Dad: Call us and tell us what those docuMom: You can’t get them on the phone.

ments are because they were there, right there, when I faxed them.

Dad: You can’t get them on the phone, and then you never hear anything and

Mom: So basically these evil people

suddenly they say, oh, by the way, we’re

[laughs] turned our loan down because

going to sell your house.

this—I think this woman just wanted to get

fig. 3

the paperwork off her desk, you know? Mom: Next week. Dad: Oh, yeah. Dad: Next week, at an auction. And you’re like, hang on a minute, we haven’t heard

Mom: I mean, how unconscious [sic]

from anybody.

is that to actually tell someone, you’re losing your house that you’ve lived in for

Mom: Yeah, hang on a minute, we’re mak-

eleven years and you’ve poured all of your

ing some money now. Can we start paying

savings into and everything. You’re losing

this? No, nope.

it because you didn’t send me something that I didn’t tell you to send. And also, her

Dad: Sorry! And then suddenly you’ve got

mailbox was closed. Do you remember that?

a new person. We must have sent in what, six or seven sets of documents.

Dad: Yeah, I couldn’t get through.

Mom: Yeah, about eighty-five pages each

Mom: Her voicemail box.

time we sent these documents in—all of PAGE: 11

12 Fig. 3 Active, Pending, Foreclosed, Sarah Mackenzie-Smith, Film stills, Los Angeles, CA, 2011.

Dad: I sent her a fax saying your mailbox

Dad: Which they made us miss.

is full, please call me. And she never called me. And then they turned us down. And

Mom: Which they made us miss.

actually it turns out that the branch, the Bank of America branch where it was faxed

Dad: By taking so long.

from, they had dropped a page. Mom: So it’s like dealing with this Mom: [Laughs]

enormous, blobby, weird, you know, entity, that—you know, it’s like nobody is flying

Dad: It was actually Bank of America’s

that plane.

own fault! Dad: I think that what they are dealing Mom: They were faxing a cell phone!

with—they have no idea what they are

Remember that, you were dropping off the

doing.

paperwork and they were faxing your cell phone [laughs].

Mom: They have no idea what they are doing, and I’m sure they are all told, you

fig. 4

Dad: No, they weren’t, really?

know, who cares, just—

Mom: He had to go back to the bank and

Dad: Get this out of here.

tell them. Mom: I know. So that’s where we are. Dad: All you had to do was say, hey, that was amongst the papers. The ones they said were missing were actually amongst the ones they sent. Mom: So [that’s] where we are right now, back to square one, trying to get the loan mod. Born in Los Angeles, Sarah

fig. 5

Dad: We’ve, yeah—and the thing is, it

Mackenzie-Smith is a recent

seems amazingly disorganized. We have no

graduate of UCLA where she

idea where we are. We don’t know whether

received her BA in Fine Art.

we’ll be here. We don’t know how long we’ll

Before UCLA, she went to the

be here. We keep trying to get a proper loan

Los Angeles High School for

modification process going. We can’t seem

the Arts and attended a sum-

to do it.

mer session at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Mom: Oh, the last, the first one that

She currently lives in Atwater

we tried, it took them so long. It’s the

Village, Los Angeles, CA.

President’s loan mod program. It took them so long to sort the paperwork out that we missed, we actually missed, we could not do it because we missed the deadline. PAGE: 13 Fig. 4 and 5 Active, Pending, Foreclosed, Sarah Mackenzie-Smith, Film stills, Los Angeles, CA, 2011.

JANNA IRELAND

PAGE: 15

above: Centerpiece from Altar to the Swimming Pool opposite: Centerpiece from Altar to the Orange Grove Inkjet prints 36 x 24 inches Los Angeles, CA 2011-12

NICHOLAS NABER

PAGE: 17

above: Construction 5 opposite: Construction 1 Graphite on printmaking paper 30 x 22 inches Brooklyn, NY 2011

The heart of the Merzbau project TITLE:

MER ZBAU: KURT SCHWITTERS’ MATERIALIZED

Merz was characterized by the

derived from Schwitters’ creation of Merz,

employment of everyday materials

an artistic movement that indicated an

and found objects in assemblages and

intense preoccupation with one’s relation

collages. Essentially, Merz conveyed a

to the past—a memory crisis. Coined

desire to salvage the past by rebuilding

by Richard Terdiman, author of Present

a new order out of the remnants left by

Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis,

the destruction of war. Interestingly,

the term “memory crisis” refers to a

although Schwitters claimed to have

fixation on the status of memory under

created Merz out of optimistic elation for

But rather than leading us to some

the conditions of modernity by people in

the end of World War I, the word itself

authentic origin or giving us verifi-

Europe following the French Revolution of

recognizes the condition of Schwitters’

able access to the real, memory, even

1789. Due to the broad cultural transfor-

material as fragments of war and waste

and especially in its belatedness, is

mations that occurred all over Europe,

in its intimation of negative connota-

Terdiman proposed that for the first time,

tions. Merz is derived from the second

people experienced an “insecurity of

syllable of Kommerz (commerce), but it

family house on Waldhausenstraße in

their culture’s involvement with its past,

also resonates with Schmerz (pain) and

Hannover as a series of approximately

the perturbation of the link to their own

merde (shit). Despite its scatological and

K I E U DUNG TRAN

WRITER: WORDS:

2504

CHARS:

14992

MODEL OF MEMORY KEY WORDS:

memory, Germany, trauma, spatial metaphors, collective history

in itself based on representation. The past is not simply there in memory, but it must be articulated to become memory.

Merzbau began in the studio of Schwitters’

ten assemblages, but gradually the vast

inheritance.” Similarly, drastic changes in

negative connotations, Merz was born

sculptural project consumed the entirety

Germany caused the same memory crisis

from an impulse to rehabilitate the culture

of his home in a labyrinthine structure of

in Schwitters. In the winter of 1918–19,

before the war, reaching its pinnacle in

archives. They are improvisations, inter-

grottoes, caves, and columns. He consid-

Germany plunged into revolution: World

the Merzbau—“a compensatory effort

pretations of experience. The details

ered it to be his life’s work. Designated as

War I ended and the Weimar Republic

to re-stitch the fabric of [Schwitters’]

one attaches to a particular event, no

an entartete Kunstler (degenerate artist)

was established. The demise of an empire

experience” that also reasserts the work’s

matter how vividly one remembers that

by the Nazi regime and pursued by the

and a lost war generated a period of

existence as a personal monument for

experience, may be factually wrong.

Gestapo, Schwitters was forced to flee to

uncertainty that disarticulated the contin-

its creator.6

This is because the unconscious has a

Norway in 1937 and later to England. He

uous flow of Schwitters’ sense of time and

habit of creating composites, selectively

began a second and third Merzbau in these

threatened his place in it. In an effort to

choosing, repressing, and inserting details

new locations, but they never achieved

alleviate the memory crisis he suffered,

site in which Schwitters could give

after the fact. Sigmund Freud, the founder

the degree of complexity as the original.

Schwitters created his own artistic

tangible form to his anxieties, reconfigure

of psychoanalysis, proposed that this

Due to Schwitters’ secretive nature and

movement: Merz.

traumatic experiences until they were

filtering process is performed as a defense

the Allied bombings on the nights of

mechanism; the external consciousness

October 8 and 9, 1943, which destroyed

I felt myself freed and had to shout

frustrations. Similar to the repression of

acts as a shield, parrying the barrage of

the Hannover Merzbau, the full extent of

my jubilation out to the world. Out of

dangerous memories by the unconscious,

stimuli and regulating its influx to protect

the original structure is not known because

parsimony I took whatever I found to

Schwitters occasionally concealed niches,

the fragile psyche from being invaded.2

what remains of it are only a few written

do this, because we were now a poor

columns, and sometimes complete

Unfortunately, defense mechanisms are

accounts and photographs. Regardless,

country. One can even shout out through

grottoes with plaster and wood; however,

not always fail-safe. Kurt Schwitters,

Merzbau provided an “unsullied and unfet-

refuse, and this is what I did, nailing

“traces of earlier constructions could be

—Andreas Huyssen

Memories are not like historical

Merzbau became a tactile, secondary

bearable, and repress unresolved

whose shield was compromised by the

tered abstract reality” in which Schwitters

and gluing it together. I called it,

read on the surface as bulges and inden-

conditions of war, attempted to fortify

could come to terms with traumatic

“Merz;” it was a prayer about the

tations,” almost like scars of traumatic

his damaged exterior consciousness with

memories by repeatedly reconfiguring the

victorious end of the war, victorious

experiences.7 This likens Schwitters’ act

the creation of the Merzbau—a cathartic

project’s components through constant

and once again peace had won in the

of collecting and memorializing fragments

project that became a secondary shield for

assemblage and disassemblage, thus

end; everything had broken down in any

to the unconscious act of negotiating

his psyche and a prosthetic receptacle for

transforming it into a materialized model

case and new things had to be made out

memory. Memories are constantly

his memories.

of his memory.

of the fragments; and this is Merz.

PAGE: 19

changing, as details are skewed and new

1 Andreas Huyssen, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (New York: Routledge, 1995), 2–3.

4 Richard Terdiman, Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 1.

2 Leah Dickermam and Matthew A. Witkowsky, “Merz and Memory: On Kurt Schwitters,” in The Dada Seminars (New York:

5 Elizabeth Burns Gamard, Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau: The Cathedral of Erotic Misery (New York: Princeton Archi

Distributed Art Publishers, Inc., 2005), 119. 3 Ibid., 113.

tectural Press, 2000), 23. 6 Dorothea Dietrich, The Collages of Kurt Schwitters: Tradition and Innovation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 117. 7 Dickerman and Witkowsky, 113.

ones are inserted by the unconscious after

souvenirs, photos, birth dates, and other 12

Plaster of Paris.16 Over time, the labyrin-

her firstborn’s death and indicated her

the event has transpired. By obses-

respectable and less respectable data.”

thine interior of the Merzbau contained

lost opportunity to nurture. Schwitters,

sively rearranging the elements of his

Despite its hollow form, Der Erste Tag

some forty different rooms, grottoes,

who may have blamed himself for the

Merzbau, he mimicked the same process

Merzsäule did have a base and a sculptural

and caves. During the course of the

death of his son, inserted the blank

the mind exercises when archiving an

body molded from collected artifacts

project, Schwitters would also frequently

cartridge between the legs of the man

event. Merzbau became the receptacle of

that included newspaper clippings, an

disassemble and reassemble the interior.

to communicate his son’s loss and fear

Schwitters’ memories, and it was also the

early collage (identified as Der Erste Tag),

To try and distill the many themes that

of impotence. Schwitters relived this

physical manifestation that demonstrated

children’s toys, plaster casts, a little

the Merzbau’s structures address would

scene of anxiety by hanging a bottle of

the process of reconciliation and reclama-

figurine of a black boy climbing a post,

limit its reading. However, restricting its

urine over it for assurance, as urine was

tion of traumatic anxieties. Schwitters’

a candlestick, bits of wood and metal,

function to a catharsis for Schwitters

used for plants before the invention

act of repression even bore scars in the

and dried flowers.13 Also attached to its

seems the most relevant: those structures

of fertilizer and even credited with

form of obscured protuberances in his

base was a series of collages culled from

were dedicated to personal anxieties, and

healing properties.18 Schwitters turned

structure, signifying that their contents

Schwitters’ recent publications, including

the fetishistic shrines memorialized his

this grotto into a spatial metaphor for

could be rediscovered if a psychiatrist

the Anthologie-Bonset issue of De Stijl

friends as if already dead.

were able, like an archaeologist, to dig into

(November 1921) and the inaugural

conscious act of connecting his numerous

the deep abyss of repressed memories or

Holland Dada issue of Merz (January

mnemonic devices demonstrates how the

the secret grottoes of his Merzbau.

1923), which reported his successful

various components of our memory can

Dada performance tour with Theo van

weave a personal history together.

Merzbau, a cavernous collage

Schwitters’

Doesberg, Nelly van Doesberg, and

his personal anxieties regarding his son’s death in order to alleviate the pain he felt. Similar to the Catholic tradition of imbuing the relics of saints with the evocation of their presence,

structure based on the principle of Merz,

Vilmos Huszár.14 By building this column

became a “lifelong salvaging operation

from collected trinkets and fragments

Schwitters’ memories, the private grot-

that focused around an object

to reclaim personal wholeness in the

from his life, Schwitters was recreating

toes of the Merzbau allowed him to make

characterized by their touch or use.

face of fragmentation and loss”8 caused

and revisiting old memories. Similarly

visible the tragedies that haunted him

There were caves dedicated to artists,

by World War I. The project stemmed

as the first column of the Merzbau, Der

in order to resolve them. The Grotte der

including Hans Arp, El Lizzitsky,

from Schwitters’ rumination of his own

Erste Tag Merzsäule demonstrates how

Liebe (Great Grotto of Love) contained a

Hans Richter, Raoul Hausmann, Lazlo

personal tragedy. In her 1997 biography

Schwitters first began to use col-

biographical scene that harkened back to

Moholy-Nagy, Hannah Höch, and

of Schwitters, Gwendolyn Webster

lected trinkets from his personal life as

the same theme of filial loss addressed by

Sophie Täuber-Arp.19 These caves were

described the first assemblage of the

mnemonic signifiers to stand in for the

Der Erste Tag Merzsäule. Schwitters wrote

created around pilfered keepsakes,

Merzbau as a tall, slender column crowned

“absent referents”15 of memory in order

that the grotto only took up a quarter of a

some seemingly mere trash, all of

with a plaster head of Schwitters’

to aid remembrance.

column and had a broad staircase leading

which bore the indexical trace of the

up to it. The scene unfolded with a couple

donor. Sophie Täuber-Arp, an overnight

embracing in the middle, however the

guest, even woke up one morning to

as a single column in the corner of his

woman had lost her arms and the man

discover that Schwitters had stolen

As a prosthetic receptacle for

wife Helma, titled Leiden (Suffering).9 Schwitters originally installed it in a corner of his studio, but relocated it to another room and later modified it.

Although Schwitters started Merzbau

Schwitters built shrines to his friends

studio, he eventually expanded it into his

his head, with a blank cartridge between

her brassiere to contribute to his

He replaced his wife’s bust with a plaster

apartment when he began to tie various

his legs. There were also two children

grotto.20 Hans Richter recounted that

death mask of his first son Gerd, who

assemblages together with string to

greeting the couple, but one of the figures

Schwitters cut off a lock of his hair and

died within a week of birth on September

emphasize their connections. The act

was damaged. Hovering above the scene

put it in a hole. Schwitters also filched

9, 1916, and renamed it Der Erste Tag

of tying parts of his structure is similar

was a bottle of Schwitters’ own urine.

a pencil from the architect Ludwig Mies

Merzsäule (The First Day Merz Column).11

to how all points of memory are tied to

This grotto rendered a portrait of personal

van der Rohe, 21 while some of the

one another in chains of connection.

tragedy and anxiety. The presence of the

other objects included a half-smoked

Gradually, Schwitters continued to

two children and damaged mother refer-

cigarette, a dental bridge, a bottle of

the Berlin Dada group, described this

underscore these initial connections by

enced his two sons and the tragedy of his

urine, and a piece of a shoelace. The

“column” as having “apertures, concav-

using wire, which he eventually replaced

firstborn’s death. The loss of the mother’s

signs of touch that Schwitters held dear

ities, and hollows in which Schwitters kept

with wooden structures joined with

arms stressed her inability to prevent

in these stolen objects imbued them

Richard Huelsenbeck, founder of

PAGE: 21

8 Dietrich, 89.

17 Dietrich, 190.

9 Gwendolyn Webster, Kurt Merz Schwitters: A Biographical Study (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997), 210.

18 Gamard, 419.

10 John Elderfield, Kurt Schwitters (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985), 146.

19 Ibid., 97.

11 Gamard, 88.

20 Dietrich, 198.

12 Dickerman and Witkowsky, 109.

21 Dickerman and Witkowsky, 115-116.

13 Dietrich, 85. 14 Ibid., 181. 15 Terdiman, 8. 16 Gamard, 94

with presence, thus allowing a conjuration

of personal memory into cultural memory.

of the donor’s essence in the grottoes of

Since the mysterious structure was so

his Merzbau. The fetishistic shrines to his

privately guarded by Schwitters, what

friends that memorialized them before

remains are only a few photographs and

death were indicative of a memory crisis.

written accounts. These accounts are

Schwitters’ repetitive act of collecting

often conflicting, which suggests they are

traces of his friends was driven by a desire

also constructed composites created from

to assure a future always threatened by

the details chosen by the filtering process

finitude. Within this project, Schwitters

of the viewer’s unconscious. Destroyed

sought to recreate relationships with all of

and without much documentation, the

his friends in the hope of preserving them

Merzbau thus achieves the effect of

for posterity.

constantly being transformed through the perpetuating reconfiguration and

Merzbau became Schwitters’ corporeal

negotiation of memory by every individual

model of memory in which he built and

who encounters it. Recalled and recovered

sustained a connection to the past

through the archival material available

through his obsessive restructuring of the

to us today in the form of photographs,

project—a form of continual reconsidera-

personal accounts, and documents, Kurt

tion of the past. The frequent assemblage,

Schwitters’ Merzbau not only functions as a

disassemblage, and occasional building

materialized model of his personal memory,

over, of the mnemonic objects that

but also encapsulates the process by which

comprised his project delineated the

memory is transmitted, negotiated, and

process by which Schwitters came to

eventually archived in collective history.

terms with not only his personal trauma, but also the grief induced by World War I. Like the contents of his psyche, Schwitters guarded his creation. As an act of protection, he even painted the windows of his house so that the contents of his “prosthetic memory”22 could not be seen from the street.Schwitters’ house became the exterior of consciousness that parries stimuli from rupturing the protective

Kieu Dung Tran received her BA in Art

shell that prevents traumatic neuroses:

History from UCLA in 2011. She has worked

within the depths of his house, Schwitters

with various arts organizations including

attempted to be the controller of his own

the Hammer Museum as a Getty Multicultural

unconscious to actively ameliorate his

Undergraduate Internship recipient, Durden

anxieties through material and spatial

and Ray Fine Art Gallery as an assistant,

metaphors.

and USArtBerlin as a member. Having lived in the rich artistic capitals of Berlin and

Although the Merzbau in Hannover was destroyed by Allied bombings in 1943, its

Rome, she looks forward to further engaging with the international art scene.

greatest legacy may be its ability to demonstrate the transmission and absorption PAGE: 23 22 Ibid., 115.

LUCAS BLALOCK

PAGE: 25

Objects (clockwise) 1. jimjob, 20 x 16 inches 2. Bananas, 24 x 20 inches 3. untitled, darling, 50 x 40 inches 4. Blue Balls, 20 x 16 inches Chromogenic prints New York, NY 2011

Covered Objects (clockwise) 1. untitled, New York, NY, 2010 2. untitled, Skowhegan, ME, 2011 3. untitled, 42 x 34 inches, New York, NY, 2011 4. unititled, Los Angeles, CA, 2012 Chromogenic prints

PAGE: 27

Pink (clockwise) 1. Shipwreck (for Nina), 28 x 23 inches, 2011 2. Pink Moon, 24 x 20 inches, 2011 3. Untitled (boxes), 24 x 30 inches, 2010 4. Clown, 40 x 31 inches, 2011 Chromogenic prints New York, NY

Fields (clockwise) 1. Untitled (blue field), 40 x 32 inches, 2011 2. grid/grid, 40 x 32 inches, 2010 3. Figure with Blanket (arms raised), 18 x 14 inches, 2010 4. Decorative Pattern, 40 x 32.5 inches, 2010 Chromogenic prints New York, NY

LIVING TRANSCULTURALISM THROUGH

them. Sarah opened my mind to different

I needed a structure because I wanted the

SITE-SPECIFIC PAINTING, PEDAGOGY,

approaches to art making, and encouraged

viewer to enter a place of reflection with

AND PLANT LIFE: A CONVERSATION

me to explore different ways to reinterpret

me, which would be difficult if it were just

WITH SARAH DOUGHERTY

identity and to question the way art is

one big wide-open room, especially the

made and accepted academically and in

way the doors are situated on the opposite

activism, pedagogy, transculturalism,

the art world at large. My work evolved

side of the gallery. I wanted a space for

Bolivia, fold tradition, mythohistory,

conceptually, theoretically, visually, and

reflection, but I didn’t want to hit viewers

Bikini Kill, Florence, racism, plants,

socially when I allowed myself to find

over the head with the issues I wanted to

parents

new ways of exploring transcultural

bring up. I wanted to ease them into it.

issues. It was only natural for me to ask

I thought if they could travel around the

Sarah to participate in this dialogue

outside, then it’s sort of an initiation into

about transcultural narratives, as she is

the center, and by the time they got to the

an artist who documents and questions

center, they would be in a different state

transculturalism. A recent graduate of the

of mind based on having looked at the

UCLA MFA program in Painting, she is an

different works.

TITLE:

I R I S YIREI HU

WRITER: WORDS:

7321

CHARS:

40612

KEY WORDS:

educator and an active participant in this ripe, transformative cultural era.

I wanted moments of density within the show, decorated with all of my objects

Iris Yirei Hu: Tell me about your

that collectively create new meaning.

thesis show, The Circle within the Square.

Simultaneously, I wanted spaces that felt

How did it all come together? You really

open for reflection. I wanted the paint-

activated that space, and turned it into

ings to have space on the wall so that

something so memorable yet critical. The

they could be seen individually. I had a

work was self-aware of its environment

nightmare about everything falling into

and context.

one living room environment where people weren’t sure if they could put their drinks

fig. 1

I make work that negotiates my trans-

I first met Sarah Dougherty when she

Sarah Dougherty: The Circle within

down on a painting or not. I woke up from

the Square is a pedagogical installation.

the nightmare thinking that I didn’t want

cultural experience as a Chinese and

was the teaching assistant for my fall

The pieces on the walls are autonomous,

it to all fall into or become one piece.

Taiwanese American living in Los Angeles.

painting class. At the time, I was having

and they each have their own title. I knew

I wanted moments that had the language

I reinterpret my family’s fragmented

a lot of trouble making any sort of work—

all along that I wanted the inside portion

of a modernist painting display, and also

narratives through paintings, self-built

instead of writer’s block, I had artist’s

to have a physical structure. I wanted to

other moments of high urban density.

environments, and performances. But

block, so to speak. Now that I can reflect

include the red bunk bed because it was

in the process of making work, I feel it

on it, I had been infected by the institu-

already at hand, I was familiar with its

IYH: It really did feel like a living archive.

necessary to talk to others about their

tionalized practice of art—I was being told

dimensions, and it would be less work

Objects upon objects seemed unrelated

practices and the possibilities of actively

what art was and was not, how to make

than to build a new one for the space. It

but had formed new relationships when

rewriting transcultural narratives that

art and how not to. I refrained from any

seemed the best way to make do. I wanted

put together, alluding to the cultural

reflect our daily realities. I decided to

sort of intuitive approach because I was

to put into practice—in the creation of

differences that coexist in a given place.

start a series of conversations—I hesitate

afraid of “not being conceptual,” so I forced

that installation—the ethics that are sort

But what is the critical space in your

to use the word “interview” because there

myself to stop painting and collaging. Until

of guiding me in all the other realms of my

work? I know you led your own workshop,

is a certain institutionalized formality

I worked with Sarah, my work was dry and

life. I tried not to buy new things too much,

Dismantling Racism, in conjunction with

associated with it—with artists, writers,

uninteresting, and purposely not address-

so it was really an art of scavenging—how

your show. How does that workshop—your

thinkers, and cultural producers who

ing issues that were important to me

to pull disparate items together to recreate

pedagogy—play into the show and your

similarly question cultural identities.

because I did not know how to approach

meaning in them and recurate the space.

entire practice?

PAGE: 29

Fig. 1 Installation View of MFA Thesis Show, New Wight Gallery, UCLA, 2012. Courtesy of Chris Cruse.

SD: Some language I came up with

that they’d grown, and food. It turned into

ahead of time and let everyone know that

last year is “living pedagogy and living

a really amazing afternoon.

it was going to be part of my art exhibit

practice.” They interrelate and they’re

IYH: What did you end up doing?

and asked them how they felt about it.

SD: Randi and I came up with this work-

really similar, but I can keep them separate

So, how do we introduce pedagogy into

I think they were all really excited because

shop together. We consulted a little bit

if I want to. For my thesis show, I wanted to

daily life in a more directed, focused, and

in the History Department, there isn’t

with Devin McCutchen, the grad student

see if I could actually pull off both in such

intentional way? I was thinking about how

much color on the walls. They talk about

in the History Department who initially

a way that viewers could engage with one

a Dismantling Racism workshop would

having unmovable chairs in auditorium-

contacted me to do a Dismantling Racism

or the other or both, according to what

function within an art gallery, specifically

style classrooms and how horrible it feels

workshop with them. He contacted me on

they were interested in getting out of it.

with my art objects around the people

to be lined up that way. The metaphor of

the last day of my Critical Pedagogy class,

That’s why I decided not to do a workshop

participating. Although I have given

The Circle within the Square speaks to

when we went out to Lu Valle Commons,

during the opening because I thought it

several talks on dismantling racism, I had

how our bodies move within the institu-

a social spot on campus, and passed

would be too distracting and might be

only facilitated one full workshop before.

tion’s boundaries. Rhetoric and the way

out essays we had been reading from

more of a performance. Although I think

My collaborator for the workshop was

the world is framed in the academy are

different Critical Pedagogy theorists, like

education can be performative, I’m still

Randi Burley, who I met a few years ago

often bound with borders that don’t nec-

Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and others. The

exploring that. I didn’t want the people

when she was an undergraduate at UCLA.

essarily function in real life. They remove

students had made zines as part of the

participating to feel like they were being

The first time we did it, we learned so

people’s lived experiences and limit the

curriculum, and we also had some food

put on a stage. I wanted to do the work-

many things from mistakes and problems

possibilities of what a formal education

left over from our brunch—we were just

shop in a more intimate, private setting.

that came up. I felt confident enough to

can be. If we’re not completely Western,

giving everything away! It was a really

lead one in my installation with the gradu-

male, and practicing different forms of

festive ending to the class. Devin walked

ate students in the History Department.

hierarchy—you could substitute a lot of

by and said, “This is what we need! The

words in there—the institution already

grad students in the History Department

isn’t Western because we make up the

want to practice Critical Pedagogy, but we

institution right now. The Circle within the

don’t have any training in this. We want

Square is a proclamation of that.

to be more effective TAs for our students,

I worked a lot with Rodney [McMillian] over the past three years. Our relationship has gone through so many different stages

IYH: Was it open only to them?

of trying to understand each other and finding common language. He was super

SD: I sent out one e-mail listing all

supportive while I was trying to figure out

of the different events happening from

the last-minute details of the installation.

the opening [of the thesis show] to the

I get that comment a lot: we’re in a

have a few minutes in our training about

I think I worked with him almost more

Dismantling Racism workshop to the Seed

Western institution. I hear that so often,

multiculturalism in the classroom, but it

than anyone else, which is funny because

Exchange. 1 I didn’t put in the date and

and it’s completely ridiculous to me. That

doesn’t feel sufficient.” He got my contact

I had the most problems working with

time for the workshop because I wanted

made sense when it really was about

info and as he was asking me to do this

him to begin with. But he was adamant

people outside of the History Department

European settlers and colonizers, but in

workshop for them, I told him that I had

that I should not keep elements of my

to contact me if they were interested.

2012 it’s hardly the case—thank God.

no free time, but if we could incorporate it

life separate and that I should be able to

It was open to the public in the sense

Well, in some places, unfortunately, it

as part of my thesis show, then we could

bring my teachings and activism into the

that you could e-mail me and you could

still is overwhelmingly that place. But

totally do it.

art that I’m doing in the academy. I love

definitely come. But I didn’t want people

UCLA is in Los Angeles! There’s no reason

informal education as much as formal

to come as art spectators because we

for that! Anyway, the grad students

Randi and I decided to create the

education. I’ve been doing a series called

needed to have more trust built—confi-

were really gracious, and I think they

workshop on critical pedagogy and on

Patio Pedagogy, and the idea was that I

dentiality was important. The workshop

were also excited to be in that space.

dismantling racism. It was a very cursory

could invite people over for a skill-share at

was built for educators and people inter

We did have a couple of grads from

introduction in that sense, but we had

my house. Food was always incorporated

ested in education more than anyone else.

outside of the History Department—

three hours, which was really important.

and so was socializing, but we’d all be

A person could be an artist interested in

two Art Department grads and one Math

I don’t think I would ever do a workshop

learning something together. People would

education, but it wasn’t for someone who

Department grad came. It was a really

like that in less time—we had previously,

exchange ideas and items they brought.

wanted to be a spectator of the event.

amazing experience.

but it was a disaster. You need time to

I did one to make a sketchbook and

I wanted to respect the participants in

dialogue about the material and digest

everyone brought different papers, herbs

that sense. I e-mailed the participants

it slowly, get into it comfortably, feel

but nobody really talks about this. We

PAGE: 31 1 On March 16, 2012, Sarah held a Seed Exchange in The Circle within the Square, where she and collaborator Jess Gudiel passed out seeds to the participants sitting around the installation’s center circle while explain ing their plants’ significance and the care required. It was done in a ceremonial manner, giving the seeds songs before planting them.

safe, and create trust among the group

critically thinking about the origin of those

consciousness. Yet, critics of your work

Sometime during my second year, I was

members. The first half was a basic intro

values, and how those might function to

seem to disagree with that and have told

emotionally drained and disillusioned,

to Critical Pedagogy: who were the main

create a power dynamic that favors the

you: you are in a Western institution, a

and I was about to quit the program.

theorists initially, and who is working

upper class white and/or male student.

lawyer works within the boundaries of

I went home to North Carolina, and

law and an artist needs to work within the

one of my mentors there could tell how

in that field today? Then it moved into Dismantling Racism for the second

However, I wanted to end the workshop on

boundaries of art, and—one of the most

devastated I was. She just said, “Don’t

part. By the end of it, participants had

a positive note. We were listing things that

blatant comments—your work is an insult

spend energy contextualizing. You don’t

analyzed their own departments at UCLA

people were already doing to address these

to your gender. You took those statements

have to explain anything. You don’t have to

with this list from an organization called

power dynamics, and things they could do

and turned them into an art object as part

defend anything. Use that energy toward

Dismantling Racism Works based out

in the future. We have to ground all the

of your installation that I think functions

all the things that you believe in and are

of Durham, North Carolina. It is a list of

theory in actions within the classroom.

simultaneously as parody and as a form of

important to you, and use it to communi-

white supremacy cultural characteristics

That’s what it’s all about. As a teacher,

self-empowerment not only for yourself,

cate with people in a more positive way.”

that show up in organizations. It is a really

you have so much agency. Even the Math

but also for viewers.

I had also realized at that point, through

helpful list that exposes neutralized values

student was finding ways in which he

that we take for granted as the way things

could communicate these ideas to make

SD: Now that I’m in my third year and

people explain their work on the defensive,

are. The whole point of the Dismantling

the classroom more inclusive. For TAs, it

I’m done with the thesis show, I can look

it automatically implies to the viewer that

Racism workshop for me is to expose

depends on how much is coming from the

back on all the stages I’ve been through

something has to be compared to some

these assumptions because white culture,

professor, but one way is to increase office

in grad school. In my first year, I was

other standard. But when you’re making

or European culture, is so neutralized or

hours for students to come in and talk

open, excited, and curious, and wanted

proclamations or positive statements

unmarked that we don’t even realize the

about the material as well as their personal

to hear everything that was being said

about what it is rather than what it’s not,

way it’s affecting everyone who comes

lives. One thing that happens in the univer-

to me. When things were said to me

it empowers you as a person.

into contact with it, which in our country is

sity a lot is: your body is disconnected from

that I fundamentally disagreed with in

in institutions or organizations a lot of the

your mind. Just taking care of people’s

every bone of my body, I would become

I had been in a place of anger, primarily,

time, making decisions for other people

bodies and your own body as a teacher

emotionally crushed, sad, depressed.

during my second year after I was done

such as what information should be

can be a really effective way to implement

I doubted myself, had low self-esteem,

being open with these people. The more

taught, how to teach, things like that.

critical pedagogy in the classroom.

and became more and more defensive.

closed and angrier I got, the more I was

I spent a lot of time during my first year

being attacked, if you could call it that.

attending various artist talks, that when

I’m really all about agency. I’ve been

IYH: That’s really great. I find that I can

contextualizing for people what my values

It felt like an emotional or aesthetic attack.

privileged to have a lot of agency by hav-

dialogue about my personal life with my

were, how my world view is slightly

At that point, I wrote everything down. Just

ing teaching positions at this university, for

Chinese language professor because of our

different from the one they were telling me

the process of writing everything down in

example. Critical Pedagogy is also about

common cultural understanding, and less

to participate in—all of these things that

my sketchbook already took them out of

helping students find their own agency,

so with other professors because there is

I had studied as a Latin American Studies

me, and off my shoulders. It’s this lovely

and a lot of the time agency has to start

such a strong divide between work and life

undergrad. All of that vocabulary just

way in which ideas just pop up in your

with exposing things that we don’t even

in Western society. But the Chinese are

rolled off my tongue. Those people [telling

head. Most of the time, my paintings come

realize are oppressive. You could do the

also very communal, generally speaking,

me that] were actually art students, my

from immediate sites and memory, but

same with gender. You could look at ways

and encourage straightforward communi-

peers in graduate school, art professionals,

sometimes this other strain of creation is

in which patriarchy pushes women down

cation, believe it or not.

faculty, and people who would come for

more of a vision. A vision will happen and

in daily life, and we don’t even know it.

studio visits. When I didn’t use the art

I see it through. I’m docile, and the vision

I don’t even know it. I need more training

In any case, I wanted to go back to the

language that they were comfortable with,

is what guides the project, even though

in that. So, in the second part of the

comment you made about being in a

they completely misinterpreted what

I don’t necessarily know what it means

Dismantling Racism workshop, we were

Western institution. Your work gives voice

I was doing and saying. I spent so much

or where it’s going. The tongues were the

looking at UCLA and our own departments

to anonymous voices, namely women

energy explaining the context for what

vision for that project—I just imagined

to find ways in which we were passing

and people of color, who have typically

I was doing.

tongues unrolling and these words coming

on normalized Western values without

been left out of the mainstream cultural

off of them. As they came off the tongues, PAGE: 33

they came off my shoulders again. I didn’t

I wasn’t trying to attack anyone here.

have to process them anymore. I was asking

It was something I had to do for myself.

the viewers to process what biases people

Generally, everyone received that piece

have. I think Andrea [Fraser] was really

very well.

helpful because she said something like, you have to find a way to make people

IYH: A lot of people received your

reflect back on their assumptions about

thesis show very well. Can you talk about

naiveté, or make them reflect back on how

the aesthetics of your work, it having

uncomfortable something they see as

associations with craft, folk art, and art

naiveté makes them feel.

“not belonging to” the academy? You talked a bit about how your work has been

Anyway, that was a very site-specific

received in the art world, but how does it

installation. It was meant for my profes-

function outside of it? I remember during

sors and peers to see more than anyone

your show in the fall, the one prior to your

else, although during Open Studios

thesis show, you were trying to work out a

[where the tongues were also displayed],

bartering or trading system for your work,

when we get a little wider public, so many

as opposed to selling your work through

women especially came up to me and said,

a gallery.

“It’s so empowering to see this because people have said the same things to me!”

SD: About the bartering, unfortunately

It became really positive, and it helped me

I still haven’t done any sort of formal

process those really tough conversations

contract with people. I’m still practicing it

in ways that made me no longer respon-

in every way, like trading for instance, but

sible for them. The responsibility now is

it hasn’t become a formal gesture that

on whoever said those things. I think those

I could include in a show yet.

comments are symptoms of a greater bias. The aesthetics of the work in relation to IYH: How did your peers and professors

those categorizations of art is pretty hard

respond to that piece?

for me to talk about because I don’t see my work at all as folk art or vernacular.

SD: A lot of them didn’t realize they had

First of all, when those words are spoken

made those comments about my work!

as pejoratives, I just can’t relate because I

They would be like, was that me?

don’t see those things as negative or lower

fig. 2

than. It’s just another way of respondIYH: That’s how potent ideology is!

ing to the world visually. I come from backgrounds that have a lot of folk art or

SD: Yeah! They were shocked! Barbara

“folk culture.” Both my mother’s side and

Kruger—none of those things were some-

my father’s side—my mother’s side from

thing she had said to me—got very self-

Bolivia, where she grew up. Her mother

conscious and seemed to be afraid I was

was Bolivian and her father was Euro-

going to put anything she said onto a list.

American, so her experience was very

And it’s not like that! That project feels

bicultural. Bolivia has an incredible “folk

done—it’s not something I’ll do again. It

art tradition.” My father’s from Louisiana,

was medicine I needed for that situation.

which, like many places in the U.S., still PAGE: 35

2 Sarah is referring to a painterly sculpture she made in early 2011 that was partly a miniature replica of a house in Las Animas, Bolivia and partly an altar that also had a shelf for seed storage on the back side.

Fig. 2 Installation View of La Casa de las Ánimas, 18 x 12 x 7 inches, Diorama on found desk: oil on paper, mineral pigment on wood, housepaint on metal, plants, aluminum, wire, seeds, adobe (clay, sand and water), and travel-ephemera, New Wight Gallery, UCLA, 2012.

has a lot of the handmade, folk music and

other. I like making art about life, so that

when your parents’ cultures have been

to teenagers—people my age have it

dance traditions, and applied arts.

means things that pop up in life, such as

colonized by a more dominant culture. It’s

too, these crises of identity. How do I fit

homes, personal aesthetics through décor,

negotiating more than one culture.

this ideology into that ideology? How

I was thinking about this today during

the environment, that’s what will pop up

our Caribbean art history class when the

in my paintings more than references to

I think “transculturalism” is a nicer word

do I respect my parents’ worldviews and also work with professors and their

professor spoke about how artists like

Western art history.

to use than “globalization.” Globalization

worldviews? It is a struggle, but out

is often associated with anthropology or

of that comes amazing art that can be

Belkis Ayón started using found objects to make prints because they didn’t have

IYH: And there are so many influences

economics, which implies that maybe

really honest. I try to create curricula

access to other objects. That’s something

from other cultures and places in the

one model is being dispersed throughout

that can address that and facilitate the

I don’t agree with. When people make

world that “fine artists” have taken and

the globe, particularly a capitalist model

exploration of it.

art, it’s an active choice. It can come from

have made popular. Now, when you think

from the United States and other Western

limited resources, but what if you’re using

of art made of found objects, those who

power centers. At this point, at the speed

I’ve been using the word “transcultural-

objects around you for ethical reasons?

have gone through the institutionalized

that it’s going, I think everyone’s negotiat-

ism” rather than “transnationalism”

What if it is a cultural value for you not

study of Western art history would

ing different cultures all the time through

because a friend pointed out to me

to buy things? When I showed the little

immediately locate it to Duchamp.

the Internet, travel opportunities—you

that maybe the nation-state model

are constantly negotiating world views in

is going to dissolve more and more.

Bolivia house2 I made to Mary Kelly’s Critique class, my colleague Meleko

But on a different note, how do you define

ways that people didn’t when populations

Simultaneously, there are also people

Mokgosi brought up how in his hometown

transnationalism? How do you document

were more isolated, when transportation

holding onto it more and more. Who

in Botswana, it is a highly respected skill to

it? “Transnationalism” and “transcultural-

and communication were much slower.

knows what the fate of that will be. Right

make something out of nothing, and also

ism” are both really big words, but you

It’s such an important skill to be able to

now, I do think we are in a transnational

tied it to the favelas in places like Rio de

can’t ignore them because they are so

negotiate that rather than just accepting

era. But transculturalism maybe speaks

Janeiro, where people have to creatively

potent in what’s happening now. I think

the terms offered to you. Many people

more to things outside of geopolitical

make do as part of catachresis—the willful

that a lot of artists, writers, makers,

are actively digesting information given

boundaries like nations. Both affect us

misapplication of something. It’s not abject

cultural producers, or what have you,

to them, and that’s being critical. People

all, especially colonized people.

necessarily, and that’s an assumption that

have made work that only showcases the

make critical choices all the time when

people make in this country more than a lot

facade of transnationalism, but have not

they refuse something that’s forced onto

IYH: What and where have you stud-

of other places—that to reuse materials in

been able to dig deeper. Whereas I think

them, if they can. People are contesting

ied? What and where have you taught?

a new way is abject or based only on class,

for you, your painting and your pedagogy

hegemony all the time in decisions in

rather than a reflection of the person’s

are so intertwined—you’re really living

daily life. But it’s hard to define because

SD: I like those questions. I think

worldview, ethics, morals, what have you.

what you’re making.

I don’t want to recreate another model

it’s really important—that is why I am

that people have to follow. When I’m writ-

not an “outsider artist.“ When I was

I am always trying to understand what

SD: When a young person is becoming

ing curricula, it’s really about how to make

nineteen, I took a semester off at the

people mean when they use “folk art” in

an adult, that’s particularly a time when

it extremely site-specific. Something

University of North Carolina at Chapel

association with my work. If they mean

you’re exploring identity: where you stand

can be transcultural and site-specific at

Hill, where I did Latin American Studies

it as a compliment, I’ll take it. I’m very

in the world, who your peers are. I started

the same time. For me, that’s what art

with a focus on South America and

inspired by textiles, furniture painting, the

teaching art to that age group because

education is all about: how to enable

the Andean region. I knew I wanted to

way we dress ourselves, and all of those

through aesthetics we can open up the

someone’s specific location in the world

make art, so I temporarily withdrew

things could probably be considered part

possibilities for students to form their own

geographically, culturally, spiritually.

from school and enrolled in the Santa

of folk art in different cultures. Again,

identity amongst more than one culture.

It’s about basing the education on their

Reparata International School of Art in

I don’t have that distinction between folk

That, for me, is what transculturalism is.

context and allowing them to contest,

Florence, Italy. I am very much a maker

art and fine art. Now I really understand

When you’re encountering more than one

reject, invent, fantasize identity. Because

of my own learning—I’m constantly

how that distinction is made in universities

culture in your day-to-day life. Maybe it’s

visual art is making and doing something

seeking formal and informal education

and the art market. But I think they’re so

when one parent is from one culture and

physical, it gives concrete form to a

and teaching opportunities. I enrolled

interchangeable and they influence each

one parent is from another. Maybe it’s

confusing existential crisis that happens

in this little school and studied textile

PAGE: 37

38 3 Alebrijes are bright multicolored Mexican sculptures that depict fantasy creatures. They are often constructed with cartoneria (cardboard sculptural art) and paper mache, and are frequently used in public celebrations. 4 Metabolic Studio, previously known as Farmlab, is a multidisciplinary practice dedicated to transforming natural resources into energy, actions, and objects that preserve and perpetuate all living things. 5 Anabolic Monument is Lauren Bon’s thirty meter radius circular sculpture of decaying corn bales located at the Los Angeles State Historic Park. These twenty-two composting bales were made from the remainder of corn plants grown on-site and harvested during Bon’s artwork Not A Cornfield. 6 Today around Anabolic Monument grows a lush native garden tended by Raramuri descendent Olivia Chumacero, who also uses the space to share her knowledge of using native plants for food, medicine, and cultural items. She organizes on-site cultural and educational events to teach the native histories of Southern California by inviting the Tongva people, indigenous to the Los Angeles basin, back to do ceremonies on their land for the first time in over two centuries. Her program, Everything is Medicine, is currently funded through Lauren Bon’s Metabolic Studio and the State Parks Foundation.

fig. 3

fig. 4

PAGE: 39

Fig. 3 Casa Gudiel, 48 x 36 inches, oil and watercolor on paper, La Puente, CA, 2011.

Fig. 4 Flower Cave, 8 x 12 feet, Wall painting, paper mache cave with oil, acrylic, cloth flowers and a City Quilt as curtains, Los Angeles, CA, 2011. Courtesy of Marina Pinsky.

design, printing, bookmaking, and oil paint-

I needed to study art in Mexico. I moved

in Bolivia as well, specifically with indi-

far removed and pushed out through

ing—you can’t get more Western tradition

there and did a lot of informal education.

genous Quechua people. If you want to

institutionalized religion and state.

than that. But it was amazing! There wasn’t

I studied at El Faro de Oriente in Itzapalapa,

take from the plant, you have to give first,

much emphasis on concept—it was very

Mexico City. The art center was in a

which could be so many different things:

Through her class, I met an incredible

much about engaging with the material

commuter neighborhood, which meant

it could be a song, thanks, water, tobacco,

group of people who really feel like my

because I think there was an assumption

that people would sleep there in giant

hair—there’s no mandate for that. Creating

peers. I feel like we’re all on similar

that concept and content would naturally

housing structures, work in the city, and

relationships with plants is shifting my

projects. Her class is clarifying more

form and flow.

commute home. I studied alebrije painting

experience as a human being in ways that

and more why I think I’m here on the

on cartoneria,3 and I was an assistant to an

are mind-blowing and beautiful. I’ve been

planet and what I want to do. Visual

I was there for three months and it was

oil painting instructor there. I also taught

incorporating a lot of her teaching into my

art in painting is just one facet of a

glorious. We went to the Uffizi Gallery and

a class on collage and diorama. There,

art and my teaching.

larger project. The larger project has

saw work by the school of Macchiaioli

Hugo Peláez taught me a whole different

painters who were painting from life—

approach to painting, in which you let the

I’m really excited about having her as a

immigrant’s rights, colonized people’s

predecessors of plein air painting. They

object inform how you paint it rather than

mentor. I already saw magic everywhere,

rights, decolonization projects, and

were painting from light outside, and

impose your control over the paint onto

and now even more so. And her model

land rights, the rights of the earth that

we were studying how light was hitting

the object. That’s been so influential in how

of education is based on the circle, so

will flow back into people’s rights. For

architecture in Florence, and we could also

I paint, and I teach that along with linear

that’s another reference to The Circle

me, if I’m doing teaching, activism, and

see the real thing. It made a lot of sense

perspective.

within the Square. We always get into

painting, and I have in my mind this

a circle in class because when you’re

cosmology of what my four directions

in a circle, there are certain things that

are that make me feel fulfilled as a

happen that don’t happen when you’re

human being, I always think about

included people’s rights, especially

to me. Our teacher was Gene Baldini. He was so old school, but his ideas of

IYH: What are you learning now?

painting were so radical for me to hear because painting at UNC was very much

SD: I’ve been taking classes with Olivia

sitting in a line. You have to acknowledge

those main tasks. That’s why the deci-

a conceptual program. To hear him talk

Chumacero, who worked with Lauren Bon

everyone there—you see them all. There

sions I make in an installation in an art

about painting with integrity was actually

at what was called Farmlab, now referred

is even a circular way we say goodbye to

gallery might feel very different from

really radical, even though he had learned

to as the Metabolic Studio.4 Olivia is

each other. We are not allowed to write

other shows you’ve seen in university

it eons ago and valued it as a tradition.

funded through the California State Parks

anything down. We can only listen and

art galleries because the goal isn’t

Foundation, and she has created a garden

experience, and through enough listening

necessarily recognition in an art histori

When I thought about what I could

at Anabolic Monument,5 which is Lauren

and experiencing, you start learning in a

cal context, although I’m not opposed

possibly add to the body of work made in

Bon’s piece in Los Angeles State Historic

different way than you would if you were

to that. It would be dishonest if I said

Florence, Italy, I realized that the one thing

Park. Olivia started doing the educational

trying to write things down in a written

I wasn’t into having my work viewed in

that hadn’t been painted before was my

and cultural components of the green

language. It’s very much embedded within

institutions and museums and places

room there, because I had brought all of

space there. Now she is teaching a class

a lot of native cultures. For instance,

like that. But things always have to be

my things into that room: my intentions,

called Everything Is Medicine.6 I’ve been in

a basic thing she teaches is that human

grounded in the fundamental beliefs

my body, and my eyes. I could see Florence

three sessions of it, and each session lasts

beings are all tribal beings, meaning

I have. In Olivia’s classes, I really felt

from my bedroom window in such a way

about two months.

everyone’s ancestors used to be tribal

like, for the first time, I was among

beings living in conjunction with their

people who shared beliefs with me.

that had never been seen before. That’s why I did the first few paintings of my room

That [class] has really changed the way

place, their land—the land. It gets back to

It’s totally shifted my experience of L.A.

there. It was a very influential program.

I experience life. She is definitely one of my

site-specificity, where the food you eat,

because previously, I was told that my

mentors and was on my thesis committee.

the medicine you take, and your sense

point of view was naive, an insult to

After undergrad, I taught kids in North

The way that she’s teaching us is through

of time, place, and identity are all based

my gender, non-conceptual, not smart

Carolina who were first- and second-

creating relationships with plants. The

on your location geographically and

enough, and though I didn’t necessarily

generation immigrants from Mexico, and

fundamental value is reciprocity. In order

historically. For tribal people, history is

believe it, I’ve now met people who

that’s when I realized that in order to

to receive something, you have to give

viewed differently than Western history,

think about intellectualism in the same

be an effective arts educator for them,

something first. It is a huge cultural value

which has tribal roots but they are very

way that I do. I feel way more fulfilled

PAGE: 41

42 7 United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is a government agency that provides economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide. 8 Mythohistory is a way to describe how history is constructed relatively and subjectively. It refers to a cos mology in which history is living; the past is here as is the future. A mythohistorian sees historical educa tion as storytelling. See Peter Nabokov’s A Forest of Time.

with my actions. Theory and action don’t

that’s all about equality, anti-racist work.

up traveling the world because he was

of values that could be different from

exclude each other. I just think that when

For me, it was an extremely supportive

stationed in different places. My mother

values I was told to internalize in school,

people are making artwork, there are so

scene growing up because I didn’t share

grew up mostly in Ecuador and Bolivia.

at church, or what have you. The funny

many different ways to reference what

the values of classmates who went to the

When we would go back there, glori-

paradox is that I love moving to a new

your concept is. My prerogative is to

mall to get Gap clothing. My mom was

ous patterns, colors, and plants were

space and finding my place within it,

continue learning and to understand the

buying me thrift store clothing. Again,

everywhere.

exploring on foot, and having adven-

world in a good way, then teach every-

it’s not a choice out of abjection, it was a

thing I’m learning, so it can be passed on.

choice for ethical reasons—you’re grow-

IYH: I like how you say go back to

my location for both social reasons and

ing so fast, why buy brand name clothing

Bolivia instead of go to Bolivia because it

my physical attachment to the old

With painting, I can have my name

when you’re going to outgrow it? It’s not

implies a sense of belonging.

room or the old space I lived in. But

specifically associated with a work, even

abject, though I felt so when I was younger.

though my influences are coming from

So, when I found punk rock, I fell in love

SD: Yeah, which is so funny because

where many women have found a

all over, whereas I’m striving to be more

with it, to my parents’ horror. I think it

when I go there, I’m way taller, whiter, and

spiritual and emotional medicine. It’s

and more collaborative with my teaching,

was the best thing my parents did for

more Western in my practices than most

creating an environment where they

and the activism, of course, is very col-

me, to send me to that middle school,

Bolivians. Yet, it does feel like going back

can nurture people, but more than that,

laborative as well. I’m interested in social

though my parents still think it was a

to something that makes more sense, but

it continues to nurture them back. My

practice, like relational aesthetics and

bad idea. I learned a language to critique

not going back in the sense of trying to

mom really taught me how to make a

those kinds of contemporary art-making

the conservative, colonial, homogenous,

live in the past or some kind of idealized

room click and pop through rearranging

models, yet I don’t see myself exactly in

Christian reality around me that in my

past culture. However, I think people

objects we found with linens from my

those categories because I think of myself

gut felt racist, classist, and fundamentally

underestimate the value of mythohistory.8

dorm and lanterns from Bolivia, which

as a painter and an installation artist.

incorrect. We would go to Bolivia periodi-

I think it’s extremely important especially

gave voice to my aesthetic—and I think

With the teaching and activism, it’s not

cally, and to be in one setting like La Paz,

for children of immigrants and migrants

making a room does that for everyone.

exclusively my art.

Bolivia, where there’s a lot of racism

to retain their own versions of their

So that’s why I love studying people’s

and classism, and not very much waste

parents’ cultural origins. When someone

homes. I think that’s a really true form

IYH: Where do you come from, and

generated by the population, and going

has this dream vision of a place where

of their personal voice.

where do you hope to be?

back to another setting of the suburbs

values make more sense, their family

where there were these “new things” all

would fit in better, and they would feel

SD: I come from the Louisiana Bayou.

the time—it was very hard to interpret

more comfortable in their own skin, that’s

I was born into a lot of humidity. When

both experiences. Punk rock gave me

such a helpful tool to find your grounding,

I was three, I moved to some wild onion

critical language through anti-racism and

confidence, and place in the world.

prairies of Missouri, which was right

equality. Also, I listen to a lot of women

behind the suburbs of St. Louis in between

punk rock groups like Naked Aggression

I want to say one more thing about place.

housing developments. When I was eight,

and Bikini Kill, and those were huge

I learned how to make a home from my

I moved into a neo-colonial-style com-

influences as well. I started to think, “Oh,

mom. Growing up, our home was filled

munity development outside of Richmond,

I can play with gender however I want

with beautiful objects from all around the

Virginia. When we first moved there, it

to?!” I was rebelling against my mom’s

world side-by-side with silk flowers from

was all farmland except for the housing

idea of femininity.

Michaels craft store side-by-side with this

tures, yet it’s painful for me to change

the act of making a home is ultimately

developments that we lived in. Now it’s

neo-colonial-style community develop-

mostly strip malls—it’s so sad—yet my

My dad is from Louisiana with Cajun and

ment. Our home was a sanctuary of color,

family was part of that transition from

Irish roots. My grandmother, Audrey,

pattern, light, and history. My mom was

rural to commercial developments when

taught me sewing. My mom’s dad was

negotiating her transcultural reality through

we moved to that community. I got

working for USAID in Bolivia, where he

the way she made her home, and it cre-

schooled in punk rock in middle school,

married his little Bolivian secretary, who

ated a nurturing environment for all of us

which has been hugely influential because

is my grandmother Marina. They ended

growing up in it. It’s also a visual reminder PAGE: 43

Sarah Dougherty documents transcultural aesthetics. She created and co-teaches Art and Nature, a quarterly workshop for L.A. youth taught at sites where the city interfaces with the garden; places both wild and tended to. She finished her MFA thesis exhibition at UCLA in spring 2012. Sarah’s paintings, installations, and pedagogy are site-specific and take pleasure in bricolage and everyday moments of bliss. Radical ecologist Nance Klehm writes about Sarah’s time in L.A.: “You have been connecting to place like you always do—the personal places of other and the larger pulses of land. A part of you has been imprinted by your temporary placement. And yet, you are finding your way, your home elsewhere. Your territory of roaming. Your greater habitat.” Find Sarah’s work and contact information at www.roomportraits.com. Iris Yirei Hu is pursuing her BA in Fine Art at UCLA. In addition to making art, she is

fig. 5

an avid writer and an active participant in facilitating multicultural dialogues through art education.

PAGE: 45

Fig. 5 A Home is Medicine, Oil and watercolor on paper, 104.4 x 104.4 inches, Los Angeles, CA,2012. Courtesy of Chris Cruse.

terrifying confusion or disruption in this TITLE:

T R E N TON SZEWCZYK

WRITER: WORDS:

2525

CHARS:

16062

While the slick sheen of digital video

Similarly in Snow Crash, author Neal

paradoxical position, where The Artist

Stephenson moves beyond poetic referents

NEW WINDOW VISTAS: CULTURE

is only able to attain some knowledge or

to physical realities to a fully simulated

HACKING NOW VIA THEN TO HERE

sense of truth through a palpable and

urban space, naming the main thorough-

immediate regression, actively forgoing

fare of the Metaverse literally as “the

convention, both aesthetic and social, in

Street,”9 which he describes as follows:

KEY WORDS:

anti-hero archetype, cyberpunk, anti-corporate retaliation, Google,

favor of an imaginary primacy that lies

disrupted urbanism, Ryan Trecartin,

outside walls of rationality. The Artist

[The Street] is the Broadway, the

cut-and-paste ethos

enters this quasi-spiritualistic space

Champs Elysées of the Metaverse. It is

where his frenzied hands must not allow

the brilliantly lit boulevard that can

the “phantom [of the moment of the

be seen, miniaturized and backward,

eternal to] escape before the synthesis

reflected in the lenses of his goggles.

can be extracted and pinned down.”6 Even

It does not really exist. But right

Baudelaire describes in his essay

and playful repurposing of mass-produced

“The Painter of Modern Life,” the terrifying

then, this synthesis is only a shadow of

now, millions of people are walking up

commodities may be idiosyncratic of the

effects that the modernization of urban

the whole, despite The Artist’s frenzy.

and down it.

current cultural zeitgeist, the tactics through

space has wrought on The Artist. Over-

which video artist Ryan Trecartin disrupts

whelmed by the sheer visual complexity of

the viewing experience are nothing but

the metropolis and its teeming populace,

in many ways resembles Baudelaire’s

the symbolic heft of New York City and

nineteenth century. Except for maybe a

Baudelaire describes the archetypal Artist

Artist, but with its own distinct variations.

Paris, becomes a reproduction of urban

little 1970, or a little bit of both. As distant

as Edgar Allen Poe’s convalescent at the

While Baudelaire’s Artist, described as

space, since each city’s most celebrated

as the two may seem, nineteenth century

window: his all-seeing gaze compels him

Poe’s convalescent, gazes with disen-

and iconic street constitutes his copy.

author and art critic Charles Baudelaire

to know all the teeming creatures of the

chantment at the flow of life, participating

He acknowledges the Street’s status as

established an anti-hero archetype for the

city to a point of desire beyond rationality,

only if his rational mind is pierced by

an iconic construction in frank and literal

continually renegotiated terms of “The

flinging himself into the unknowable crowd

impulse, The Hacker’s knowing eyes are

terms in naming it the Street, but also

Artist” that, subsequently, resurfaces in

from a momentary impulse of recognition,

glossed over with the flow of information,

insists that it does not really exist, except

the literary works of cyberpunk fiction,

in a futile attempt to experience the flow

subsumed in a digital world of data but

through the eyes of the knowing hacker.

a subgenre of science fiction that concerns

of life from which he was cut off.1

described and negotiated as though it

The archetype of the “Cyberpunk Hacker”

were urban space.7 This is exemplified

itself with the socio-political ramifications of computer technology, corporate con-

This momentary and impulsive jeté,

Stephenson’s cyberspace, then, reliant on

These descriptive passages of cybernetic

through William Gibson’s 1984 novel,

megalopolises function under the same

trol, and the bifurcation of an individual’s

brought on by the “acrid or heady wine

Neuromancer, in which the protagonist,

terms of Baudelaire’s convalescent-cum-

experiences into physical reality and the

of life,” is at once a celebration and a

a hacker by the name of Case, first con-

Artist. In each, the gaze of sedentary

seemingly infinite space of a digital domain.

condemnation.2 The “weird, violent, and

nects to cyberspace, in which a “frag-

individuals constitutes a renegotiation of

Through this distance, there is nonethe-

excessive”3 nature of modernity is felt in

mented mandala of visual information . . .

urban space as massive flows of informa-

less a striking resemblance between the

full force: the wanton embrace of life and

[transforms into] . . . a gray disk, the color

tion—akin to the flow of life just outside

motives of cyberpunk’s anti-heroic hacker

death—a paradoxical truth coiled tightly

of Chiba sky.”8 The abstraction through

the convalescent’s cafe window—pass

protagonists and those of early video art

around itself—is expressed as a heroic

which Case accesses the cybernetic world

through their perception. The frenzy of

pioneers working in the 1960s and ‘70s—

but futile act. Such becomes the futility of

refers back to the skyline of his physical

the Parisian street is impressed upon the

art historical antecedents that cannot be

artistic expression.The Artist, tasked with

reality, to the slum in which he lives.

retina of the convalescent, as Gibson’s

ignored in discussing Trecartin’s own lu-

painting “all the suggestions of eternity”4

The convalescent seated behind the cafe

mandala and Stephenson’s goggles impress

natic projects. An analysis of these source

contained within that moment of jeté can

window, now transposed onto The Hacker

an ordered frenzy upon the retina of The

materials will reveal not only the path that

only record mere impressions of the world

seated behind his computer screen, does

Hacker. Likewise, the experience of cyber-

has led to Trecartin’s signature madness,

around him, resulting in what Baudelaire

not gaze upon the urban in and of itself,

space is described in paradoxical terms, as

but also its manifold social interrogations.

describes as “an inevitable, synthetic child-

but situates the urban as referent for the

existing and not, both real and imagined.

like barbarousness.”5 There is a sense of

construction of cyberspace.

These binaries constitute allegories of life

PAGE: 47 1 Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (New York: Garland Pub., 1978), 2 Ibid., 40. 3 Ibid.

7, 11, 16.

48 6 Ibid., 17. 7 Cyberspace here is considered to be the notational realm of virtual reality in which communication, mostly through the Internet, electronically occurs.

4 Ibid., 5.

8 William Gibson, Neuromancer (New York: Ace Books, 1984), 52.

5 Ibid., 15.

9 Metaverse refers to the specific fictional world that Stephenson created, and is another version of a cyber space. 10 Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (New York: Bantam Books, 1992), 24.

and death—situating cyberspace and its

encounter during regular programming

performance videos are markedly discrete

Unlike Serra and Burden, however,

uncanny effect along the same axis as

towards the medium itself.

in content, their appropriation of a counter-

no credentials are needed for this level

corporate entity was pivotal in both

of access aside from an account with

artists’ delivery methods. This gesture

Google.18 The constellation of corpo-

Baudelaire’s descriptions of urban experience. While the on-screen image of Nam June The distinct difference between the

Paik’s 1965 sculpture Magnet TV is osten-

is akin to a hacker possessing falsified

rate bodies then, enabling the means

Artist and his Hacker counterpart is seen

sibly a highly formal experimentation, as

or stolen credentials and turning them

of creative production, positions itself

in their ability to actively participate

seen in the arabesques created on the TV

again against the flow dictated by the

beneath the banner of open access,

within the worlds and flows they inhabit.

screen, the frank and immediate presence

“corporate oligarchy . . . [who distribute]

deriving its revenue by way of similar

While Baudelaire describes the urban

of the magnet places the seductive curves

propaganda for profit,”16 allowing each to

though less explicit means like ad sales,

experience of the nineteenth century as

of the screen image against the literal and

hijack the corporate monologue and divert

which are targeted through information

one of particular helplessness against the

symbolic weight of the magnet.14 Physically,

it towards an investigation of the medium

unknowingly, but none the less willingly

machinations of a modernizing city, The

the magnet alters the signal through which

of television and the invisible meanings

supplied by the end user.19

Hacker is enabled to act, and thus resist,

visual information is delivered, bending and

embedded therein.

through the very machines that are pitted

warping the electron beam fired from the

against him: computers. In both plots, The

television’s cathode ray tube and distorting

Hackers’ antagonists inhabit what could

the means through which televisual infor-

and Burden’s early experimentations are

ical mobilization and commoditization

loosely be termed the hyper-real body of

mation is distributed. Symbolically, the

the means with which artists are able to

of video as a means of production, the

a corporate entity.

It is within the virtual

Given this lineage of anti-corporate What has changed since Paik, Serra,

retaliation and the subsequent, paradox-

magnet often operates in slapstick cartoons

produce video works. The digitization of

question remains as to which strategies

worlds that these corporations create and

as a means by which the smaller, weaker

cameras and camcorders and the advent

are applicable toward creating resistance

maintain that the expertise of The Hacker

protagonist—Jerry Mouse for instance—

of software-based video editing have

within this problematic zone of partici-

functions, undoing the powers imposed

protects himself from the plots of his predatory

allowed unprecedented access to video.

patory exploitation. For Trecartin, the

over him and allowing for, in each instance,

counterpart, Tom Cat. In appropriating the

Coupled with broadband Internet access

answer is an overenthusiastic embrace

the formation of a knowing participant.

same slapstick gag that allows Bugs Bunny

and the proliferation of the webcam,

of these historic problems. Erratic

The Hacker’s gaze then, is in constant

to disarm Elmer Fudd, Paik repositions

almost anyone can upload and globally

visuals, ecstatic, babbling dialogue, and

and literal opposition, both towards the

the viewer’s relationship to television and

distribute videos, ranging wildly from the

cross-wired identities all filter into the

screen through which The Hacker exper-

allows for the possibility—though ironic

mundane lives of our pets to Trecartin’s

uncanny feedback loops that form the

iences cyberspace, as well as the broader

and destructive—that the viewer disarm

visually anarchic, cacophonous, and

relationships between and amongst the

corporate institutions at play.12

corporate television networks by means of

fiendishly torturous plotlines of his

pluralized identities of his characters.

their own ad hoc manipulations.

feature-length works. Perhaps this is the

The performative aspects of his work

migration of forms described by Thomas

have been described as follows:

Some of the earliest instances of this specific kind of resistance in an art

Moving beyond Paik’s analog hack of the

Beard and Ed Halter in their 2009 survey

historical context—an individual working

screen, sculptors Richard Serra and Chris

of emerging forms—from the professional

Everything about them looks made-up,

against a much larger corporate body with

Burden embed their separate explora-

studio to the homes of the “pro-sumer.”17

especially gender. Male and female

the aim of revealing some truth about

tions of the commercial format within the

Even now, recent changes to YouTube

attributes are just part of a reti-

that institution—can be found in the early

frame of the corporation. In describing his

enable users to edit their video content

nue of affects everyone is trying

explorations and manipulations of the

process for The TV Commercials (1973–77),

through a web application on-site, further

on, mixing up, matching. Likewise,

televisual as material between the 1960s

Burden explained that he operated

reducing the technical barrier between

voice sounds cosmetic, applied

and ‘70s in the United States. Exploiting

through an umbrella arts organization in

the end-user and the dissemination of the

with piercing effect, to obscure

and renegotiating television’s “one-way

order to purchase airtime to broadcast

videos they produce. Perhaps, like Nam

and queer identities. ‘Cut, paste,

flow of information” and its “myths of

his abrupt and fleeting meditations.15

June Paik’s television set, the narratives

trash, burn’ is the ethos.

One presumes that such methods were

of power are embedded and invisible to

video artists were able to reposition

also used in order to broadcast Serra’s

the average consumer, hidden behind the

These methods that Schaffner

the viewer’s gaze beyond the placid,

Television Delivers People (1973). While

glossy sheen of a site redesign or a sleek

pinpoints as an ethos stem from the

consumer-friendly images one might

Serra’s scrolling-text polemic and Burden’s

new laptop with built-in webcam.

experiments of the Dadaists in the early

power, politics, and distribution,”

early

PAGE: 49 11 Hyper-real in the sense that a corporation maintains personhood in the United States, but also possesses far greater material means and capital than any lone individual possibly could. 12 bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze,” in Media Studies: A Reader, ed. Sue Thornham, Caroline Bassett, and Paul Marris (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 463. 13 Kenneth Goldsmith, introduction to Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), v. 14 Ibid.

50 16 Richard Serra, Television Delivers People, videotape, from UbuWeb, “Richard Serra,” Flash video, 6:44, accessed Nov. 28, 2011, http://www.ubu.com/film/serra_television.html. 17 Kevin McGarry, “Ryan Trecartin––Exhibitions,” Hammer Museum, accessed Nov. 25, 2011. http://hammer.ucla.edu/ exhibitions/detail/exhibition_id/74. 18 Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, Deterioration, They Said, ed. Raphael Gygax (Zürich: Mugros Museum Für Gegen wartskunst, 2009), 90. 19 “Google AdSense Product Tour: Targeting Options,” Google Inc., accessed Nov. 26, 2011, https://www.google.com/

15 Chris Burden, The TV Commercials 1973-1977, videotape, from UbuWeb, “Chris Burden,” Flash video (2000), 9:08, accessed Nov. 28,

2011, http://www.ubu.com/film/burden_tv.html.

adsense/www/en_US/tour/targeting.html. 20 Ingrid Schaffner, comp., “Ryan Trecartin,” in Queer Voice: Laurie Anderson, Harry Dodge & Stanya Kahn, Sharon Hayes, John Kelly, Kalup Linzy, Jack Smith, Ryan Trecartin, Andy Warhol (Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 2010), 146.

twentieth century, but only through these

identities (in the form of logos), credit card

new means of digital production and

designs, and the mysterious symbolisms of

dissemination is Trecartin able to amplify

computer icons, meanwhile making explicit

his formal decompositions visually and

reference to the language of contemporary

sonically to a fever pitch. The audio-visual

high-end fashion design, among other sig-

experience is nearly lost on the viewer,

nifiers of wealth and social class.21 The heft

unable to cope with the unexpected speed

of this distortion lies within its recombina-

and pitch of characters’ voices, as well

tion, as discretely packaged, discernable

as the blitz of graphic distractions. Pop–

corporate entities and class signifiers are

up, –under, –in, and –over frames fill the

piled on top of one another in such a way

screen, further upsetting the expected

that the barriers between them collapse,

Trenton Szewczyk is a person blessed with

visual stability of the moving image and

destabilizing these symbols as well as the

the misfortune of teaching people across

layering the black frame of cinematic space

design standards that allow viewers to form

the globe how to pronounce a single word in

to overload.

cohesive but unspoken narratives about

Polish. Fortunately, his name advantageously

individual characters. Like the cyberpunk

positions him, since, to the best of his

The scripts Trecartin writes for his

anti-hero, Trecartin takes what is extant

knowledge, he is the first and last person

cast reflect this feverish mania as well,

and mobilizes its potential to create new

named Trenton Szewczyk, ever. His work in

resembling gibberish more than language.

forms while disrupting recognizable ones.

video, performance, and installation often

Trecartin’s written material includes deliberate typographic inconsistencies within

involves an interruption of some kind, Loosely interpreted, his process is a

though these interruptions are not consis-

the scripts, such as playful mis-capital

culture hack: drawing up bits and pieces

tently ironic gestures; sometimes, he is

ization, blatantly incorrect punctuation,

from wherever he can find them, mashing

sincere. His writings attempt to contextual-

and a seemingly capricious use of bolded

them together as coded forms of a sub-

ize and mediate distantly positioned phenom-

and italicized typefaces. These all serve

versive politics whose existence is made

ena, such as boutique cupcakes and robotic

as cues to Trecartin’s cast, hinting at the

possible only after the mass accumulation

technologies developed by the Defense

pacing and intonation of the dialogue but

of corporate detritus. The viewer so posi-

Advanced Research Projects Agency. He holds

relying ultimately on his collaborators’

tioned, experiences the uncanny effect of

a BA in Fine Art from UCLA.

subjective interpretations of the material.

these once discernable codes rewritten to

This is in opposition to the kind of stric-

function within an unfamiliar program. Like

tures seen in more traditional screenplay

the disrupted urbanism of Baudelaire’s

formats, where a clear authorial vision is

Artist archetype, the Cyberpunk Hacker,

present throughout the staging of each

and the re-contextualization of the tele-

scene. Dialogue already set into frenzy

visual medium by early video artists,

is later amplified through his editing

Trecartin disrupts the coding experienced

process, as sudden cuts between char-

daily both online and in real life—opening

acters and scenes interrupt the viewer’s

up the possibility for political dissent in the

expectation of stability within the space

obliging beige of the corporate everyday;

of cinema.

or perhaps, more appropriately, the bucolic blue of Facebook, where, like the fictive

In line with the cut-and-paste ethos de-

cattle of the game Farmville, one is free

scribed by Schaffner are the ways Trecartin

to frolic so long as the End User License

visually designs his characters. Sourcing

Agreement is never violated—an offense

imagery from Google and the web at large,

too tempting for Trecartin to resist.

he recombines anything from corporate PAGE: 51 21 Ryan Trecartin, “Ryan’s Web 1.0,” DIS Magazine, 16 Oct. 2010, http://www.dismagazine.com/dysmorphia/9884/ryantrecartin-w-magazine/.

KELLY MCCAFFERTY

Block brick wall, floor, a variety of (gaffer, electrical and duct) tapes, Post-it notes, graphite, vintage postcards, catalog cut-outs, quartz crystal, plastic fruit basket, push pins, chalk, stickers, plastic key, candy dots, felt, colored pencil, gel pen, tape wrapped bricks, wrapped presents, clip board, paper, plastic shopping bag, rain boots, plastic volcano toy, miniature plastic fish, small plastic chair, plastic cast sculptures, snapple bottle, pink crystal, ribbon, paper, custom letter party banners, sale tag, Ziploc bag, assorted pens and pencils, plastic earring packaging, chalkboard stickers and a five dollar bill (from Howard).

PAGE: 53

Sad Sweet Joke Installation Artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studio in Brooklyn, NY 2011

TAMEKA NORRIS

PAGE: 55

opposite and above: Post Katrina Self-Portraits (excerpt) Digital prints Dimensions variable New Orleans, LA 2008

TITLE:

BRISTOL IDENTITIES: LIVING HISTORY AS

A R I A NNA FUNK

WRITER:

Arianna Funk: First, I have to ask

vividly remember her coming to my first

what all of our readers want to know: what

grade class in her 1860s Civil War clothes

are you wearing right now?

and showing off her hoop skirt to twenty kids who had no idea what was going on.

LIVING ARCHIVE Justin Squizzero: What am I

When I was nine, she and I made my first

wearing? Right now a pair of Levi’s Jeans—

piece of clothing—a pair of eighteenth

Levi is my middle name, after all—

century fustian breeches.1 They were com-

specific sources, replication,

a checked button-down shirt, and a wool

pletely machine sewn. A lot has changed

apprentice archivist

sweater. If I’m not in costume at the farm,

since then. In my early teens, I started get-

I wear a brown T-shirt with the museum

ting interested in museum work and began

logo on it to help visitors know that I’m

reevaluating what I was doing and why,

staff. When I’m in costume this time of

and that’s when my interest shifted into

drying by the fireplace, all while interact-

year [fall], I’m wearing a linen shirt, linen

learning how the garments were actually

in tissue paper in climate-controlled

ing with museum interpreters. Justin

breeches, wool waistcoat, wool frock coat,

made in the past and what that meant for

spaces deep within our most celebrated

Squizzero, Coggeshall’s Director of Historic

silk handkerchief, wool stockings, leather

the people who produced and wore them.

museums, are most often thought of as

Interpretation and a costume scholar, serves

shoes, and a felt hat. It’s getting chilly.

the dominion of collections managers. But

as the farm’s tailor, dressmaker, weaver,

AF: The study of historical dress for use

historic house museums that employ his-

and knitter. Coggeshall Farm Museum is an

at living history museums is notorious for

torically clothed interpreters who actively

excellent example of how such museums

its oscillating judgment of what constitutes

engage visitors with objects and lifestyles

can be living archives of dress.

accurate historical dress, effected through-

WORDS:

2451

CHARS:

14155

KEY WORDS:

historical clothing, Coggeshall Farm Museum, live interpreters,

Historical clothing archives, buried

Bristol-

of the past constitute a different kind of

out the years by forefather worship, budget

archive. Instead of conventional practices,

constraints, and other pressures. I think

such as static mannequin displays and

your dedication to research and historical

secluded storage, the staff in these

practice makes the garments you’ve built

museums recreate and wear historical

for the farm very valuable to the field.

clothing to interpret the occupations, class

Can you talk a little about the process,

levels, and time periods represented at the

research, material sourcing, and so on?

institution. While not authentic historical

Do you feel that there are concessions you

objects, these recreated garments present

have to make because these are contem-

fig. 2

an opportunity to preserve a more dynamic

porary people you are clothing?

and active understanding of this clothing,

AF: I know you’re well versed in many

removing the preciousness so often

aspects of living history interpretation, but

JS: Theoretically, all of the costumes

ascribed to dress objects in gallery settings.

you obviously have a passion for historical

begin with exhaustive research. Practi-

costume. What about it appeals to you?

cally however—I’ll be honest—we’re not

The employees of Coggeshall Farm

completely there yet. My knowledge of

Museum in Bristol, Rhode Island, interpret

JS: My interest in historical clothing

clothing in Bristol, Rhode Island in 1799

life and work on a coastal farm in 1799.

really began as a child reenactor. We’d

is extremely limited, but like every other

Visitors have the privilege of seeing historical

come back from reenacting events and I’d

aspect of our living history museum, it’s a

clothing on real bodies that are moving

want to keep in the moment, and the only

continually evolving understanding that’s

and working in an environment where

thing I could come up with to keep that

aimed at a moving target. That’s the beauty

sweat and dirt are unavoidable. They can

going at home was to make clothes. My

of it. Our museum has extremely limited

touch the hand-woven linen of a man’s

mother made all of our reenacting clothes

resources and clothing, which have rela-

shirt, see billowing underclothes on the

then and she was definitely into it, which

tively short lifespans and will be replaced

clothesline, perhaps even smell wet wool

I’m sure played an important part. I can

within two or three years. So my priority

fig. 1 PAGE: 57

Fig. 1 Coggeshall Farm Museum, 2011, Bristol, Rhode Island. Courtesy of Steven Squizzero.

1 Fustian is a heavy, coarse, and durable woven cloth used primarily in lower-class menswear in past centuries.

Note: Farm manager Shelley Otis milks the cows in a dress made by Justin Squizzero, seen in the background. The

Fig. 2 Coggeshall Farm Museum, 2011, Bristol, Rhode Island. Courtesy of Dan Connolly.

piecing of the dress keeps with the fashionable silhouette of the 1790s, but allows for farm work; the linen is cool and lightweight.

Note: Justin Squizzero is the Director of Historic Interpretation at Coggeshall Farm Museum, as well as a one-man Wardrobe Department. He makes many of the historical clothing reproductions worn by employees of the farm, including his own. Here he is wearing a vest sewn from fabric he wove at Eaton Hill Textile Works in Vermont.

has been to create garments that are as

that, it’s a matter of deciding what we

that uses text panels instead of live

JS: I personally enjoy introducing

accurate as I can make them with what’s

need practically. If, say, Farm Manager

interpreters: the presentation is key. If

people to an entirely different way of

available, but to not let the perfect be

Jonny is only going to be working on site

the panel is professionally printed, it lends

thinking about clothes than they’re used

the enemy of the good. If I did that, our

in costume when he’s engaged in really

weight to the information that the same

to. Most of our visitors have never even

staff would be perfectly naked instead of

messy farm work, he has absolutely no

text handwritten with a marker on a piece

heard of bespoke clothing,2 let alone

costumed with good clothes.

need for anything but tough work clothes.

of paper just doesn’t.

owned any. Getting people’s minds

If Farm Manager Shelley is going to be

around the amount of time and energy

Often, factual information that would

milking, she’s going to need short hems

that was put into keeping people clothed

inspire these recreations comes from legal

and sleeves and washable garments.

in the past is something that I enjoy.

documents. But of those Bristol probate

The idea that even ordinary clothes

inventories that survive, almost none

Shoes are proving the trickier challenge.

were valuable to people is an important

include our economic bracket, and the

The little shoes often worn by ladies at

difference between a 1790s mindset and

ones that do, list no women’s clothes.

this time don’t stay on all that well in a

a modern one, and if the clothing we’re

Not one. Even in households that clearly

sloppy barnyard and some of our staff

showing isn’t accurate, we can’t convey

contained women, like those that list

have real health concerns that prevent

such aspects of eighteenth century life.

“the widow of the deceased,” none of her

them from wearing the most accurate

clothes are included. At this point, I don’t

shoes, so I’ve made a few concessions to

AF: This spring, the farm hosted the

know why. Newspaper ads from the period

accommodate those needs. I can’t cripple

annual New England Regional Conference

and area are somewhat more helpful.

any of the employees on legal and moral

of ALHFAM,3 the tagline of which was,

Most include lengthy lists of imported

bases. The materials for creating these

fabrics available for sale which gives me

garments, as well as finished objects such

AF: Or when the panels have typos!

Audience.” How is “local” represented

the impression that here on the coast, so

as shoes, come primarily from a few select

I hate that. I feel like incorrect dress is like

in the clothing your interpreters wear,

close to Newport—one of the five largest

sources that cater to eighteenth century

a typo—not every visitor may catch the

if at all?

cities in colonial America—and Providence,

living history types. I do ask if there are

error, but there should be a strong team

most people including tenant farmers

any colors that someone absolutely can’t

and strong research behind the work in

JS: I’m still in the process of research-

probably had relatively easy access to

stand to wear knowing that those clothes

order to avoid those missteps. What do

ing the particulars of what was worn

imported clothing materials and fashions.

just won’t get worn, no matter how correct

you think are some of the challenges?

in Bristol. As I mentioned before, there

New England portraits also help to confirm

they are. I can attest to having done that

some general impressions about the cut

personally on more than one occasion.

“Presenting Local History to a Distant

fig. 3

is little town-specific information

of clothes, particularly on women, during this volatile period in women’s dress.

JS: I think the biggest challenge in

available. I see “localness” expressed

accurately reproducing pre-industrial

in concentric spheres, from very broad

AF: What is so important about

costume—without sewing machines—

to very specific. The farm represents

accuracy in reconstructions of clothing?

s money. Labor costs are astronomically

American, New England, and Bristol

high compared to any other expense. It

identities, with many layers in between.

The next place I look is at surviving garments. Several collections have women’s

JS: I’m going to reverse your question

costs us between $1,500 and $2,500 to

These spheres can sometimes be

gowns dating to our period, which help

and ask what’s so important about inac-

produce a single set of clothes for one in-

cut through or connected by cultural

to confirm some assumptions about the

curacy in reconstructed costume. Living

terpreter. If that interpreter needs to work

conditions like religious affiliation, oc-

general aesthetic at the end of the 1790s.

history museums like ours depend on their

in both summer and winter you can easily

cupations, settlement history and other

These are the same garments that guide

staff to convey the bulk of the historical

double those figures. It’s a huge investment.

classifications that aren’t solely regional.

cut and construction. Most of my access

information to the visitors. In that respect,

to them comes through the web and books,

clothing is the most important part of the

AF: What is most valuable to you about

coastal New England sphere due to lack

because of my limited time to get out

exhibit to get correct. If the costume on

interactions visitors have with interpreters

of Bristol-specific sources, but the more

and study them in person. Fortunately,

an interpreter is obviously incorrect,

wearing this clothing you’ve made?

we learn, the more local the sphere we

there are some really great resources out

it lessens their credibility for the visitor.

there that have proved invaluable. After

Compare it to a traditional static exhibit

Right now, we’re only able to work in the

represent can become.

PAGE: 59 Fig. 3 Coggeshall Farm Museum, Bristol, Rhode Island, 2011, Courtesy of Justin Squizzero. Note: Close-up of the back of the dress, which was made entirely by hand. This can be painstaking and time consuming, but the results are exquisite, seen here in the precise matching of pleating and stripes at the waist. Sewing by hand also reflects contemporary practice, as the sewing machine wasn’t invented until the middle of the nineteenth century.

2 Bespoke clothing is custom-made specifically for one person using an extensive set of measurements taken from his or her body. 3 The Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums.

AF: Right. As with all things, honesty

JS: By and large our clothes are all work

JS: If anything, I’m an apprentice

is best. Along the same lines, almost all

clothes since that’s what our program’s

archivist. I think that the way clothes

aspects of textiles and clothing, including

focus is on. We have very little clothing

are made and used does constitute an

production, were bound by a distinct

that is meant for formal occasions since

important part of the understanding of

gender split at the end of the eighteenth

we don’t recreate those situations. Our

historical clothing. People living in the

century. The farm’s interpreters interact

museum doesn’t include a meetinghouse,

eighteenth century didn’t make their

with visitors from a third-person point

so our interpreters never demonstrate

clothing to be dressed on a mannequin,

of view, instead of first-person, which is

church services at the museum. Thus,

unless we’re talking about effigy clothes.5

used at Plimoth Plantation and Mystic

there aren’t any church-going clothes.

Learning how they work on a body is vital.

Seaport. This means your interpreters

If we find ourselves recreating more of

We can’t do that with the artifacts, so

can speak as twenty-first century people,

those types of activities, then we’ll obvi-

reconstructions have to stand in their

and their actions and interactions are not

ously need to expand our supply.

place. The more accurate the reconstruc-

bound by the conventions of 1799. Do

tion, the more accurate our knowledge.

you still make an effort to show gender-

I’ve had these philosophical debates

appropriate work? What parts of your

with myself about just how far we have

personal interest in making and working

to go to get it right. I’ve been concerned

with textiles can be shown in the context

that sheep-fed commercial grain instead

of this decade of American history, and

of grass won’t produce the right kind of

how do you manage those that cannot?

wool, and if that wool’s machine carded, will it produce thread with the right

JS: We aim to interpret gender-

texture? That’s usually where I look over

appropriate work, but are by no means

the budget and snap back into reality.

slavish to it. Our staff is far too small to

Someday, I’d love to get there.

try to be. Instead we just explain whatever task men or women typically did, and move on to whatever the bigger theme is. In the

More information on Coggeshall Farm Museum can be found online at

fig. 4

winter I spend a lot of time sewing in front

www.coggeshallfarm.org.

of our visitors. Some of the tailoring I do

AF: In light of this discussion, is it fair

was practiced by men professionally, but

or appropriate to call your work with the

Justin L. Squizzero is an artist with a historical bent. As the

the linen sewing and gown making wasn’t.

museum a living archive? Does preservation

Director of Historic Interpretation at Coggeshall Farm Museum, his

I just let people know if what I’m doing was

through reconstruction and usage constitute

medium ranges from wool and linen to soil and seeds in a three-

usually carried out by women and then

archiving? I feel like it’s a more dynamic

dimensional recreation of the past. He lives in Providence, Rhode

just get into the cool stuff: construction,

form of archival storage, documenting

Island, where he pursues pen and ink drawing, American Fasola

cost, maintenance, material.

and sustaining not only clothing, but also

shape-note singing, and rings the bell of the First Baptist Church

its use. Even though you’re not currently

in America every Sunday morning.

AF: How do you approach the issue of

able to find sources like a farmer’s breeches

never being able to replicate history?

found in a chest in Bristol along with his

Arianna Funk is an independent costume historian, an international

Does the third-person format of inter-

wife’s diary noting the day in June 1799

contributor to the academic blog Worn Through, and also keeps her

pretation predicate or eliminate that

on which she finished them, the context-

own blog, Are Clothes Modern. In these pursuits, she uses a material

issue? You aren’t replicating historic

ualization and use of accurate clothing

culture approach to examine middle-class American identities and

events, but instead practices. How does

that you make available to visitors seems

clothing in frontline museum interpretation. She lives in Uppsala,

that affect clothing choices?

to me just as valuable as the embroidered

Sweden, where she studies Swedish, explores the local nature

silk suits of the same period hanging in

reserves, and sews clothing of all vintages.

darkness in storage at the Met. PAGE: 61 4 Plimoth Plantation is a museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts that depicts life for colonial settlers and Wampanoag

62 5 Effigy clothing is made to be dressed on a physical representation of a person (an “effigy”), and is usually

peoples in the year 1627. All interpreters wear clothing appropriate to the year, but at the Wampanoag home site

life-sized when part of a grave memorial. A legendary example is that of Queen Elizabeth I, on view at the

they use a third-person voice, speaking in present day vernacular about 1627, while in the colonial village they

Tower of London, whose corset has been patterned for use in historic recreations.

use a first-person voice, speaking as though the year were 1627. Mystic Seaport, Museum of America and the Sea, is a maritime museum in Mystic, Connecticut. It is considered an “outdoor museum,” using historic buildings, objects, and ships to suggest life in a coastal town in 1876. Unlike Plimoth Plantation, it’s not a specific town. Their first-person living history program is one of many forms of interpretation used at Mystic Seaport. Fig. 4 Coggeshall Farm Museum, Bristol, Rhode Island, 2010. Courtesy of Steven Squizzero. Note: Doing chores on the front stoop. Even in warmer weather, outer garments such as dresses, vests, and breeches are often made of wool, while shirts and undergarments are often made of linen.

TAKMING CHUANG

PAGE: 63

Impression (opposite: documentation image) Repurposed painting (acrylic on canvas), body heat, right side of artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s abdomen, imprinted markings 2.5 x 4.8 x 4 inches San Francisco, CA 2011

PAGE: 65

Rosebud (opposite: documentation image) Repurposed painting (acrylic on canvas), body heat 2 x 1.2 x 1.2 inches San Francisco, CA 2011

BECKY KOLSRUD

PAGE: 67

above and opposite: Untitled Oil on canvas 28 x 22 inches Los Angeles, CA 2011

PAGE: 69

above: Untitled 20 x 16 inches opposite: Untitled Oil on canvas 28 x 22 inches Los Angeles, CA 2011

TITLE:

S U L E IMAN HODALI

WRITER: WORDS:

4076

CHARS:

27864

C OSTUMES AT THE PROTEST SITE:

power structures that influence and deter-

and the proliferation of the nation-state

P ALESTINIAN PERFORMATIVE PARODY AND THE

mine their very constructions and visibility.

system—described of those deprived “of a place in the world which makes opinions

H ISTORICAL (TRANS) NARRATIVITY OF To consider the Palestinian question of

D IGITIZED PHOTOGRAPHY KEY WORDS:

significant and actions effective.”7 I will

narrativity, an instant concession must be

also read closely both the structural

made to the recent circulation of images

configurations and the worldly context

Palestine, Israel, historical narrativity,

of Palestinian self-representation that

of photographs that help tell the stories

protest, costume, military occupation,

has emerged alongside the widespread

of those who remain largely voiceless

accessibility of the Internet and its textual

in formal political spheres and official

components (written, photographic, and

historical narratives.

historiophity, colonialism, YouTube History breaks down into images.

videographic) at the turn of this century. 1

I contend that this transnational communica-

—Walter Benjamin

Concerns over history’s ability to

Following Lori Allen’s appropriation

present—through particular rhetorical

tion and the material accessibility of written

of the term “politics of immediation”

sequences, embellishments, and elisions.

and visual texts, through digitization and

to describe the present context of a

achieve narrative objectivity have especially

Relativisms between certain events,

circulation on the Internet, participates in

collective engagement with historical

surrounded debates over methodology,

memories, or historical agents are made

White’s notion of historiophoty, “the repre-

narrative production, for Palestinians,

form, and authority in the practice of

while often omitting and negating the very

sentation of history and our thought about

national public discourse is premised on

historiography for the last two centuries.

existence and connectivity of others. An

it in visual images and filmic discourse.”

From German historian Leopold Von

early Zionist slogan, popularized during

Consequently, what also becomes

and the capacity of visual narratives to

Ranke’s declaration to relate “things just

the turn of the twentieth century, describ-

accessible are new mediums that unpack

transmit an “affect-laden conception

as they really happened,”2 to Fernand

ing Palestine as a “land without people for

wider historical understandings—possible

of humanity” when such human rights

a presumed universality of human rights

Braudel and the rest of the Annales School’s

a people without land,” exemplifies the

alternatives to “fill in the gaps” of the

are violated. 8 “Immediation,” Allen

repudiation of Ranke’s longstanding,

means in which one simple declarative

displacements and omissions that occur

explains, “is the necessarily covert denial

hegemonic narrative methodologies—

sentence is capable of negating the very

within the conventional processes of

of mediation that occurs in the formal

if one thing has become absolute in

existence of human life, let alone a

constructing written histories.

properties of institutions and social

such debates, it is that the subjectivity

cohesive Palestinian society before the

of the narrator, the writer of history, is

creation of Israel.

interactions that aspire to give access to It is from this context of the digital

indelibly inflected upon the discursive formations of historical representations.

By elucidating the possibilities of

an authentic experience and truth.”9 Since

public sphere of the Internet that this

the fall of Palestine with the creation of

essay seeks to approach visual repre-

Israel in 1948,10 and the subsequent birth

To invoke a general conceptualization of

different mediums to articulate the same

sentations of Palestinian nonviolent

of the United Nations Relief and Works

historiographical practice, literary critic

rendering of a subject, and the different

resistance at mass demonstrations as

Agency (UNRWA) and thousands of other

and historian Hayden White provides

methodological techniques possible to

an effective means of inscribing “history

non-governmental organizations involved

a valuable aphorism within the general

construct divergent representations around

from below.”6 The use of the Internet

within militarily occupied Palestinian civil

practice of historical hermeneutics, that

the same subject, it is without question

as a site for polemical debate and

society, Palestinians in and around historic

“every written history is a product of

that different renderings of history are

political engagement between divergent

Palestine have been dependent on foreign

processes of condensation, displacement,

capable of producing readers and visual

geographical, national, ethnic, religious,

aid for varying means of political, material,

symbolization, and qualification; [that]

spectators with multiple perceptions of

and class experiences—alongside its

and economic sustainability in the face

it is only the medium that differs, not the

past events, historical agents, politically

physically widespread technological

of military occupation and a relentless

way in which messages are produced.”3

socialized communities, and present “reality.”

access—has enabled a globally active,

system of Israeli settler colonialism. As

It is irrefutable that no textual history

Thus, it is permissible and necessary to

digital public sphere. I seek to engage

Allen suggests, for Palestinians reliant on

can be constructed innocent of some

approach narrativized textual formations

a few of the narrative forms that make

international support in the Occupied

sort of political or ideological imposition:

of historical moments in the worlds from

visible what Hannah Arendt—referring to

Territories, “aesthetic conventions privileging

an inclination to construct imaginings of

which they emerge—the surrounding

stateless peoples and refugees without

the aspiration for (an always unattainable)

the past—and its intertwinements in the

cultural formations, global relations, and

human rights in the wake of World War II

immediate affect are all that remain.”11

PAGE: 71

1 Gerhard Richter, Walter Benjamin and the Corpus of Autobiography (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002), 199. 2 Hayden White, The Fiction of Narrative: Essays on History, Literature, and Theory 1957-2007 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 274. 3 Hayden White, “Historiography and Historiophoty,” in The American Historical Review 93, no. 5 (1988): 1194. 4 Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Times Books, 1979), 9.

5 White, “Historiography and Historiophoty,” 1193. 6 Thompson, E.P., “History from Below,” in Times Literary Supplement, 1966, 279-80. Thompson’s endorsement of writing “history from below” involves following the socio-historical experiences and actions of the lower classes responsible for events of history: those generally left out of its discussion. I seek to appropriate the “below” in this context for Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation. 7 Hannah Arendt, “Imperialism” in The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1979), 296. 8 Lori A. Allen, “Martyr Bodies in the Media: Human Rights, Aesthetics, and the Politics of Immediation in the Palestinian Intifada,” in American Ethnologist 36, no. 1, (2009): 163. 9 Ibid., 162. 10 The 1948 expulsion of over half of Palestine’s indigenous population and the destruction of over 400 towns and villages is referred to in Palestinian historical narrative as al-Nakba, literally translated into English as “the catastrophe.”

In seeking to provide only a partial

at on-site interventions, or, actions that

trees, while singing songs in unison and

what might be considered a globally

analysis of moments in Palestinian resist-

involve the physical presence of protestors

celebrating solidarity against military

collectivized, visual lexicon of violence

ance, I shall use the “politics of immediation”

(activists) in the zone of conflict (such as

occupation and the continued coloniza-

and confrontations of war. Engaging the

strictly as a point of departure. While

remaining within the proximity of physical

tion of agricultural and domestic property

mass-recognition of visualized military

Allen’s discussion remains generally

barriers such as walls, checkpoints,

by the state of Israel. In a YouTube video

objects in their affective function as

concerned with the social affect of visual

bulldozers, soldiers, police, and so forth).

entitled, “bilin-Christmas under the

constituents of violence, the potential

representations of suffering, I contend

Second, the style of these nonviolent

gas”—just one among countless others

for a negative dialectic to emerge via

that the existence of images of nonviolent

demonstrations is limited to instances

documenting the same content—the

the framed visibility of other objects

resistance involving Palestinian and

involving direct action, “challenging

Occupied Territories become “a play acted

is activated through oppositional

international activists in direct opposition

convention in one or more aspects of life

out second by second by occupied and

objective-signifiers of costumes. While

to symbols of state barriers and military

[by] seeking to promote change through

occupier.”17 This video follows Palestinian

Santa Claus imagery may signify

forces at once rely on aesthetic affect—

the direct effect of everyday actions.”15

activists in the town of Bil’in dressed in

“spirit of giving” and “good cheer,” the

what Allen defines as “a way of feeling,

The mass-participation in marches in

Santa Claus outfits as they approach the

symbol’s immediate connotations work

experiencing, and reacting to experi-

parts of the Occupied Territories against

Israeli security fence. Upon arriving a few

to create a starker contrast between the

ences”12—to resist the physical imposi-

the militarily-protected construction of

meters from the fence, the Palestinian

uniformed bodies of Israeli military forces,

tions of military occupation, while also

what the Israeli government casually

and international activists are met with a

visibly enacted in the tableaux of pho-

inherently entering a politicized discourse

refers to in public discourse as a “security

barrage of tear gas canisters shot at them

tographs as administrators of the Israeli

of historical narrative. The visual pres-

fence”—a concrete wall that literally cuts

by the soldiers.

state’s repressive military apparatus.

ence of Palestinians in these photographs

across Palestinian towns throughout

is always engaged in dialectical relation-

the West Bank, effectively separating

ships with the aesthetic symbols of

inhabitants from their land, access to

self-represented visibility of suffering as

considered more closely for formalistic

costumes, geographical landscapes, brute

water, places of employment, hospitals,

a means for calling attention to oneself,

relationships of subjects in regards to

military symbology, and cultural objects

religious sites, schools, and families—will

protests with Palestinians in costumes

space and framing within photographs,

that enable self-authenticated representa-

be my primary focus of direct action

actualize the theatrical potential in direct

operating allegorically for a collective

tions for those Palestinians under military

nonviolent resistance. The images of these

action resistance zones, invoking the utility

memory of a historic expulsion from

occupation. It is these representations

demonstrations to be examined evoke one

of the photograph as a space for political

land that continues in the perpetual

that are reproduced and dispersed freely

constant, general goal: communication. It

performance.18 By costuming themselves

military acquisition and bulldozing of

across digital spheres in the multitude

is the framing and fragmenting of these

as Santa in opposition to the ever-abundant

Palestinian land towards the construc-

of video hosting sites, blogs, and the

demonstrations into visually consumable

symbols of uniformed soldiers and their

tion of Israeli settlements.19 As the

broad informational capacity of a globally

images, “directed at diverse local,

accompanying guns, tanks, and bulldozers,

Santa Claus figures in the images are

expansive social networking realm.13

regional, and international audiences,”16

the images re-signify the “Palestinian-

further engulfed in the smoke of the

circulated into the public sphere that

Israeli conflict”—as it is nominally articu-

Israeli military’s gas canisters within the

characterizes the global community of the

lated and constructed within mainstream

spatial frame of the photograph, their

resistance may take, it is necessary to be

Internet, which instantly operate to archive

media, Hollywood films, and U.S. govern

vanishing bodies become allegorically

explicit in this particular Palestinian context.

and narrate the history of the present.

ment political theatre—into an absurd

engaged as symbols for the Palestinian

encounter between seemingly disparate,

national experience of settler colonial-

caricatured symbols. The increase in

ism and violent expulsion. The smoke

Noting the variance of forms nonviolent

Considering the Palestinian struggle for

To distinguish between different modes of

The spectacle of exchange might be

nonviolent protest, and to ascertain one

Palestinian nonviolent resistance

general form of protest on which to focus

continues to be documented through

seeing events of war and their aftermaths—

becomes an allegorical signifier for the

an analysis, Andrew Rigby delineates three

photography, videography, and written

through digital spheres, literature, film,

military-colonial legacy of Israel that

criteria of characterizing nonviolent

narrative, circulating on websites and in

and other media sweeping all sectors

has resulted in the disappearance and

demonstrations: the geographical location,

videos. Unarmed collectives of bodies

of the world market—has made visual

expulsion of Palestinians.20 By access

the style, and the goals of the actions.14

march with picket signs, flags, and other

signifiers of military brutality and its

ing global cultural memory through a

First, in this context, geographic location

national symbols such as the keffiyeh,

technology immediately recognizable

symbol such as Santa Claus, each image

is exclusively concerned with resistance

a “traditional” peasantry garb, and olive

across broad geographic locales in

derives a narrative functionality that

PAGE: 73 11 Allen, 162. 12 Ibid. 13 I mean to say digital places like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and similar networking sites have become globally pervasive, particularly in their use in Egypt during the beginning of the current revolutionary period. Perhaps overstated is how valuable this means of assembling and strategizing the masses was in opposing the Mubarak regime. 14 Andrew Rigby, “Unofficial Nonviolent Intervention: Examples from the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” in Journal of Peace Research 32, no. 4, (1995): 444. 15 Ibid., 454. 16 Allen, 164.

17 Jean Genet, Prisoner of Love, trans. Barbara Bray (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1989), 3. 18 Allen, 162. 19 Lorenzo Veracini, Settler-Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 182. 20 The works of Israeli scholars such as Benny Morris, Ilan Pappé, Tom Segev, Gershon Shafir, Avi Schlaim, and Gabriel Piterberg, as well as Palestinian historians Walid Khalidi and Rashid Khalidi, document the continuation of forced expulsions of Palestinians and Israel’s programs of “removal” and “transfer” for the indigenous population.

becomes a means of signifying a national-

West Bank city of Nablus dressed in feather

experiences. The bodies that exist objec-

the frame. “Mahmoud Darwish,” she

ized historical archive. The photographs

headdress, face paint, and other exterior

tively are transmuted towards particular

begins, leading the spectator to assume

operate within a specific national discourse

markers of traditional Native American

subjectivity by the significations of their

Darwish is the Native American

that depends on the visual signifiers of

garment, with picket signs to peacefully

costumes within the object of the image.

situated in the frame. Engaged in her

geographically distant, analogous historical

demonstrate against the deplorable living

Upon viewing an image of Palestinians

writing with a downward gaze, she

experiences to express their own identity.

conditions under military occupation

as Native Americans, one might assume

continues: “You once wrote that he who

enabled by American financial support for

that this is the continuation of the Native

writes his story, inherits the land of

Israel. At once, Palestinian self-narrativity

American struggle in America, but the

that story.”22 At this moment, the cut

photographs across a universally consum-

is transhistorical and transnational as

picket signs held by Palestinians operate

to the next shot reveals the Palestinian

able space of access, utilizes props and

the performance of occupier-occupied

intratextually to inform the spectator

poet, Darwish, sitting across from her.

costumes to semiotically reconfigure a

is again re-narrativized through the use

that “We are not the Red Indians of the

For that opening frame of the scene,

postmodern frame of referents, employing

of costumes. The visual appropriation of

Twenty-First Century,” and “Israel’s Wall is

until the moment at which the spatial

“parody and irony to engage the history

face paint, feather headdress, and other

Apartheid.” The signs in the photograph

relativity between her and Darwish

. . . and the memory of the viewer in a re-

signifiers of traditional Native American

are also directed at “Mr. Bush,” and there

is revealed, the Israeli journalist’s

evaluation of aesthetic forms and contents

dress becomes a means by which

can be no fixed certainty as to whether

discourse visually directs the viewer to

through a reconsideration of their usually

Palestinians visually communicate their

such an image was intended to directly

the Native American. Just like Godard

unacknowledged politics of representation.”21

own historic plight. Palestinians effectively

reach the President as means of pleading

mixes images of Palestinians and

The images of Palestinians-as-Santa Claus

narrate another historical ethnic cleansing

for policy change against American

Native Americans throughout the film’s

operate dually: they call attention to

by adopting what have become often-

military and economic support for Israel,

melange of documentary, fictive, and

Palestinians’ direct struggle with industrial

caricatured symbols of Native American

or to employ Bush as a metonym for the

found footage, the separate historical

intrusions of bulldozers and military forces,

cultures, revealing the transnational

greater United States, in hopes of mobiliz-

narratives have become intertwined

as well as present Santa as a national symbol.

capacity of visual symbols in anti-colonial

ing popular support from the American

in Palestinian performative protest.

Palestinian folklore mythologizes Beit Jala

resistance movements. The performance

people. However, the presence of signs

Likewise, Darwish’s own poetry

as one of the towns that St. Nicholas—the

of another’s historical narrative attempts

with English text makes obvious the desire

narrates the tale of Native Americans

patron saint later acculturated into Santa

an analogy in history: to utilize the signifiers

of speaking to an outside, and the ability

to meta-narratively speak of the

Claus in all his peripatetic mythology—

of a Native American collective history—

of these images to reach an outside has

analogous Palestinian experience with

once inhabited. While establishing the

defined by its own unique experiences

become actualized through the capacity

settler colonialism. Darwish’s “Speech

tableaux of Santa Claus as a signifier of

of displacement and dispossession as a

of a digital public sphere.

of the Red Indian” calls attention to

“good,” versus the “bad” of the Israeli

result of settler colonialism—as a means

soldier trying to suffocate Santa with

of evoking the circumstances of the

noxious gas, the reference to a Palestinian

Palestinian experience with the familiar

via appropriations of costumes by

highlighting the shared history of exile

Christian history is simultaneously

settler colonial project of Zionism.

Palestinians is one of many instances

and internal displacement.23

The conscientious exhibition of these

this analogy between Palestinians The reference to Native Americans

activated and functions as an epistemic resistance to the hegemonic representa-

and Native Americans, allegorically

calling attention to the mutual experience Within the context of political demon-

of indigenous peoples—in the Americas

Although a specific politicized

tions of Palestinians as some culturally or

strations, the interaction between objects

and Palestine—with settler colonialism.

Palestinian identity has emerged as

religiously homogenous community. Here,

and written text within a photograph’s

French-Swiss film director Jean-Luc

a nationally-specific, anti-colonial

Palestinians implicitly and subjectively

frame effectively functions as a means

Godard’s 2004 Notre Musique uses the

struggle, the pluralism of virtual venues

articulate and reconstruct their national

of establishing a comparative history.

entanglement of visual signification,

such as YouTube have created a means

identities through globally registered

In the realm of the photographic image,

history, and language to construct a

of transnational performativity for

visual signifiers of costumes and props.

Palestinians use their bodies as a means

correlation between very similar historical

Palestinians to take the particular of

of writing history by enabling their own

experiences. The frame opens with the

the national “self,” and universalize it

visibility and literally embodying another

Israeli journalist-protagonist sitting in the

by painting subjective, global meanings

Condoleezza Rice in 2007, Palestinians

Upon a visit from Secretary of State

cultural history to narrate their own

right side of the frame, at a table, with a

onto the material body-as-canvas.

marched to a military checkpoint in the

national past and present cultural-political

Native American at the opposite end of

Roland Barthes remarked that narrative

PAGE: 75 21 Linda Hutcheon, “The Politics of Parody” in The Politics of Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1989), 100.

76 22 Notre Musique, directed by Jean-Luc Godard (2004; Dobbs Ferry, NY: Wellspring Media, 2004), DVD. 23 Mahmoud Darwish, The Adam of Two Edens: Poems, trans. Husain Haddawi, ed. Daniel Moore (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000).

Images of Palestinians in bright blue

to fugue.”27 But the fugue of identity that

“is simply there like life itself . . . interna-

the film’s mythical “Na’vi” characters and

tional, transhistorical, transcultural.”24

continued the weekly theatre of colonizer-

paint, illustrating their transformations

manifests itself in the appropriation of

Continuing Barthes’ remark on the

colonized resistance. They marched to the

into Na’vi, also include the visibility of

another identity, works through costume,

transnational exportability of narrative,

military barrier and, in identical response

the national signifiers of keffiyeh and the

to clarify the experience of the self. This

it can also be considered a “solution to

to the Santa demonstrations, the Israeli

Palestinian flag. The image becomes

process declares identity’s intercon-

a problem of general human concern,

military responded with a bombardment of

at once a space for intertextuality. The

nectivity to spatially disparate, analogous

namely, the problem of how to translate

tear gas canisters arbitrarily fired against

human body acting as a subject within a

historical experiences on an assumption

knowing into telling, the problem of

the demonstrators-as-Na’vi.

photograph acquires its own particular

that such communication of intercon-

meaning and identity as an active agent

nectivity is being directed at a shared

fashioning human experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning.”

through its performative interactions and

humanity—one that is able to become

For costumed Palestinians at physical

tale of colonizer (represented within the

The story of Avatar is a quintessential

relative placements to other objects in

globally socialized on the Internet.

zones of conflict, fashioning human experi-

film as “sky people”) and colonized (the

the image’s space. The self’s narrative

ences into forms adaptable to structures

film’s indigenous, anti-colonial Na’vi

is transfused with meaning through the

of meaning that are generally human—

characters). It serves as a critique of

signifiers of the fictional meta-narrative it

such colorful parodies emerges from an

rather than nationally specific—provides a

American corporate-military imperial-

has inscribed within. In this particular geo-

invisibility in institutional mediations,

new means of transmitting both historical

ism, and the tale of the struggle of an

temporal conflict, the use of costumes at

and the persisting notion of the visual

narrative and the actualized circumstances

indigenous people against the external

nonviolent demonstrations functions on

proof of suffering as the most effective

of the present. Relaying the experience of

military-industrial ravaging of their

at least two performative levels. First, the

means of mobilizing transnational unity

over sixty years of endured dispossession,

homeland. This intertwining of fiction

performance of Palestinians in resistance

and solidarity. To invoke literary theorist

colonization, and military violence is a

and human history engages “the formal

to barriers and armed military violence is

Gérard Genette on narrative, “it lives

difficult task to carry out within the frame

linking of history and fiction through the

very much a real confrontation confined to

by its relationship to the story that it

of one single photograph, but when such a

common denominators of intertextuality

its own spatial-temporal location. The sec-

recounts; as discourse, it lives by its

history is re-narrativized in a language of

and narrativity . . . usually offered not as

ond involves the hyper-real performance

relationship to the narrating that utters

familiar visual symbols that emit their own

a reduction, [or] a shrinking of the scope

of actors as Na’vi characters in resistance

it.”28 The visual form of narrativity

connotations and signified meanings, new

and value of fiction, but rather as an

For Palestinians, the very need for

to the Israeli military actors; allegorically

utilized by Palestinians during protest

expansion of these.” By appropriating the

the imperial, militarized sky people. This

in photographs actively engages in

self-as-Na’vi through external appearance,

is without mentioning the performativity

a re-imagining of the representation

Palestinians export the experience of the

involved between the spectator and the

of national identity in a world where

participant within a photographic narrative

local by intertextually embedding their

image, characterized by the viewer’s sub-

digital globalization allows for the

requires attributing a consciously subjec-

national narrative of struggle against settler

jective analysis of the formal properties

promulgation and intermingling of

tive representational value to the self as it

colonialism and military occupation

of the image. It is, of course, only through

different cultures, histories, and political

appears relative to other visual signifiers.

into the representations of a fictional,

the performative exercise between the

experiences. Through the use of

Rendering the visual reality of Israeli

mass-consumed popular culture narrative.

spectator and image that a meta-narrative

photography, Palestinians construct

militarypresence as a material objectivity

Further, by filming, photographing, and

Palestinian history inscribed within the

humanist representations that mimeti-

and extension of state power physically

circulating this imagery, Palestinians

real portrayal of the very unreal Na’vi

cally collapse stable notions of national

present since Israel’s occupation began

become actively engaged within perfor-

demonstrators is extrapolated. In the case

identity existent within the pervasive

in 1967, Palestinians are able to assume

mances of national narrativity and identity

of Palestinian resistance, when the world

exceptionalism of national historical

a deliberated subjectivity in relation to

as defined by themselves: challenging the

does not respond to the original—that

narratives, seeking rather to connect

it, performed through the interaction of

imposed, hegemonic representations of

is, Palestinians as Palestinians—to gain

historical and political experiences

visual signs within photographs. Shortly

mainstream American media and political

attention in the “politics of immediation,”

on the basis of their interconnections

after the theatrical release of James

institutions that remain concerned with

it becomes necessary for the images to

within a shared humanity.

Cameron’s blockbuster film Avatar, dem-

narratives deeply embedded in a discourse

“change from original inscription to paral-

onstrators against Israel’s security fence in

of terrorism, or in the ineffectiveness of

lel script, from tumbled-out confidence to

Bil’in appropriated the exterior costume of

official governmental dialogues.

deliberate fathering-forth . . . from melody

means of historical transmission emerge. To assume the position of an authorial

PAGE: 77 24 Roland Barthes, “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives” in Music, Image, Text. trans. Stephen Heath (New York, 1977), 79. 25 Hayden White, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,” in Critical Inquiry 7, no. 1, (1980): 5. 26 Linda Hutcheon, “Historiographic Metafiction: Parody and the Intertextuality of History” in Intertextuality and Contemporary American Fiction, ed. Patrick O’Donnell and Robert Con Davis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer sity Press, 1989), 11.

As of late, the unprecedented surge of self-narrativized representation in

27 Edward Said, “On Originality” in The World the Text and the Critic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 135. 28 Gerard Genette, Narrative Discourse, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980), 26.

images, written text, and videos circulating the Internet contributes to what can be characterized as a counter-hegemonic, counter-historiographical network inherently part of a larger, historically situated Palestinian national discourse of resistance to imperialism, and to a militarized settler colonial system. In a historical context where the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir proclaimed that Palestinians don’t exist, and 2012

Suleiman Hodali is a native of Los Angeles and

American presidential primary candidates

is currently completing his BA in Comparative

Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich both

Literature and Middle Eastern & North African

assert that Palestinians either do not

Studies at UCLA. He is interested in cultural

exist or are an “invented people,”29 visibly

criticism, music production, and investigating

accessible and consumable Palestinian

the intersections between film, art, music,

nonviolent demonstrations (as a historical

and politics.

analogy or otherwise) become an inherent means of resistance against attempts of state power and hegemonic political theatre to negate their existence. The connectivity of the digital public sphere enables an archival, historical documentation of the steadfast efforts of Palestinians, Israelis, and international activists against the physical impositions of military occupation and Israel’s expansion of settler colonies over what remains of Palestinian territory in the West Bank.

PAGE: 79

29 Saree Makdisi, “Pro-Settler Santorum Claims Mexico and the West Bank,” Salon, January 6, 2012, http://www. salon.com/2012/01/06/from_texas_to_israel_santorums_twisted_history/.

S H O S H I K A N O K A H A TA & YOSEI SHIBATA

PAGE: 81

opposite top: Bowl sent to Canada opposite bottom: Bowl sent to Turkey Another Homage to Yves Klein Ceramic, cardboard, Yves Klein blue, lacquer 16 x 14 x 12 inches Los Angeles, CA

MARTEN ELDER

PAGE: 83

above and opposite: Untitled Epson UltraChrome HDR on Epson Exhibition Fiber Paper 40 x 53 inches Los Angeles, CA 2011

PAGE: 85

opposite and above: Untitled Epson UltraChrome HDR on Epson Exhibition Fiber Paper 40 x 53 inches Los Angeles, CA 2011

TITLE:

E V A N MOFFITT

WRITER: WORDS:

4587

CHARS:

27759

floor that would activate it beyond the

projects have involved the preservation

business hours of nine to five. A more

THE POLITICS OF PRESERVATION

and refurbishment of historic civic build-

traditional tenant would have been a

ings. As a commercial architect, how did

bank or a commercial business of some

you first get involved in urban renewal?

kind, but instead he found a restaurateur

WITH BRENDA LEVIN

KEY WORDS:

and chef from Italy to create a high-end

Southern California architecture, urban revitalization, landmark

Brenda Levin: Well, I was very lucky.

designation, Downtown Los Angeles,

After working first for John Lautner on Bob

intelligent reinvestment, Pacific

Hope’s desert home upon graduation from

This was in the early 1980s, when L.A.’s

Harvard, for about two and a half years

Downtown rolled up its sidewalks at about

I was a project architect for a firm that

five or six o’clock in the evening. Whatever

designed commercial and industrial build-

street life there was after close of business

ings. One of my projects was the Oviatt

was of an unsavory type. To his credit,

Standard Time, CicLAvia, prejudicial reinvestment

Los Angeles is an architectural

Evan Moffitt: Many of your largest

To answer some of my questions

restaurant called Rex.

paradox, a little pueblo consumed by the

about preserving the built archive of

building in Downtown Los Angeles. That

the Rex, made famous in the film Pretty

American Dream of Manifest Destiny

Los Angeles, I spoke with Brenda Levin,

was really my first professional experience

Woman, was hugely successful, and was

and an agricultural oasis on the Pacific

a commercial architect whose largest

working on a historic building.

an example of what was possible there.

shoreline. When the film industry arrived,

projects have involved the preservation

Los Angeles became synonymous with

of historic Southern California buildings.

After having lived on the East Coast in

EM: How do you approach a building

American dreams—the kind of dreams

Levin, a Harvard graduate whose first job

cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia,

with history? Are there specific architec-

produced by Paramount, whose set

was working with famous modernist John

where the integration of historic and

tural archives you consult first?

designers later built the Disneyland-style

Lautner, founded her own firm in 1980 and

contemporary architecture was done fairly

historical fantasies Angelenos know as

has since headed restoration and redevel-

seamlessly and with great sensitivity,

BL: We often search files to determine

Chinatown and Olvera Street.1 In the city

opment projects on dozens of L.A. area

moving to Los Angeles, where historic

whether existing drawings are available.

that late social critic Reyner Banham once

landmarks, including Griffith Observatory,

preservation was less “evolved,” was an

Rarely if ever in any of Wayne’s projects

called “instant architecture in an instant

City Hall, Occidental College, the Bradbury

eye-opener. In fact, for most of my first

were we afforded a set of drawings that

townscape,” architectural preservation

Building, the Wiltern Theatre, and the Fine

years in L.A., there was more demolition

actually represented the existing building.

faces a unique and difficult challenge.

Arts Building. Her firm, Levin & Associates

of historic buildings than preservation

Sometimes, there were different sets of

Although few buildings over one hundred

Architects, has restored buildings by

and revitalization. Wayne Ratkovich, who

drawings from renovations. Usually, they

years old have survived L.A.’s brief

architectural luminaries including Frank

was a fledgling developer in Los Angeles

were plumbing or infrastructure repairs as

history, the built environment of Southern

Lloyd Wright, Rudolph Schindler, Myron

and had recently purchased the Oviatt

opposed to a full set of architectural and

California is no less culturally significant

Hunt, and Gordon Kaufmann. In the thirty-

building, was my client, and he saw the

engineering documents.

to those residents who experience it than

two years since she started her practice,

possibilities of reinvesting in iconic buildings

the Acropolis is to modern Athenians.

Levin has witnessed dramatic changes in

from the 1920s and giving them new life.

When demolition and reconstruction

L.A.’s urban landscape, among them the

are the municipal modes of operation,

rise of Bunker Hill, the redevelopment of

Later, he retained me to design the ground

preservationists must fight an uphill battle

loft spaces throughout Downtown, and

floor space of the Oviatt Building, formerly

BL: Well, the original set failed to

to protect the city’s living architectural

the political headway of the Los Angeles

called Alexander & Oviatt, which was a

survive multiple owners. Thus, we would

archive. How does one decide which

Conservancy. As a commercial architect

very high-end men’s haberdashery that

normally have to cobble together a set

buildings compose the built archive, when

who is closely tied to private developers

had been vacant for years. Wayne, being

and make what we call base drawings of

each is a powerful artifact of collective

yet still operates in the public realm of

the uncommon developer, looked at the

the building from whatever was available.

memory? Furthermore, in one of America’s

historic preservation, Levin provided me

former haberdashery’s interior two-story

With the Oviatt Building, for instance,

most ethnically diverse and geographically

with a great deal of insight on the politics

space, which still had its original casework

I recall there were several boxes of

expansive cities, how does one measure

of urban revitalization in the Southland.

in place, and wanted to depart from the

drawings. From them we were able to

norm and try to find a use for the ground

create a set of base drawings and then do

didn’t survive?

architectural and historical value? PAGE: 87 1 Olvera Street was originally the site of the Zanja Madre, an irrigation ditch adjacent to the Plaza. Beginning in 1926, it was converted to a romanticized Little Mexico largely due to the efforts of Christine Sterling, a wealthy white socialite greatly interested in L.A. history. Sterling later facilitated the design of Chinatown by Cecil B. DeMille’s set designers in the 1930s. 2 Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971), 3.

EM: Is that because the original plans

field measurements to verify dimensions.

EM: When you undergo the process of

that is reinvesting in both its historic house

We are starting work on the latter. Built

We often also went to the Huntington

preserving a historic building, what do you

of worship and in the full development of a

in 1958, the Auditorium is listed as a his-

Library, which has various archives of

consider in addition to the obvious task

city block, anchored by the latter and now

toric resource in Santa Monica. Welton

early Californian architects like Myron

of physically preserving the building? Are

to include four new buildings.

Becket, a significant Southern California

Hunt. We also searched the Los Angeles

there other functions restored landmarks

Public Library’s photo archive for early

must have?

architect, designed the Auditorium.

photographs of buildings. BL: First of all, their use makes them

EM: Why do you think architectural

Right now, the Los Angeles Office of

preservation is important for Los Angeles

Historic Resources, along with the Getty

specifically?

Foundation, is doing a citywide survey

EM: In addition to Art Deco office

relevant. Preserving a building just for the

to determine what unlisted properties

buildings like the Oviatt and the Fine Arts

sake of preserving a building won’t be in

BL: Buildings that are individually signifi-

should be eligible. Once it’s determined

Building, you’ve also worked on the Grand

the interest of anyone willing to invest

cant in Los Angeles—Griffith Observatory,

whether an unlisted building is eligible

Central Market in Downtown L.A. and

their resources in it. The building has to

the Wiltern Theatre, City Hall—deserve to

for listing, it will be considered a historic

currently the Hughes Aircraft hangers at

have an ongoing life function—a use—that

be renovated and restored, because they

resource, and certain criteria will apply

Howard Hughes Airport in Playa Vista—

isn’t necessarily the use for which the

are iconic architecture on multiple levels,

in terms of renovation or demolition.

sites of varying use and age. What, then,

building was originally designed, but it

with their history, their architects, and all

constitutes a landmark?

definitely needs to remain viable. Many

of the significant events that have occurred

EM: Los Angeles is often described as

of the historic buildings in Downtown

at those sites. Each of these buildings

a teardown city. Buildings come and go,

BL: Well, the official designation of a

Los Angeles that are part of the Historic

is part of Los Angeles’s cultural history

viewed as vessels for commercial profit

landmark is that it is over fifty years old,

Core, for example, were abandoned

and adds to the quality of our collective

rather than architectural footprints of

and that it has a significant association

when the Financial District relocated to

experience as citizens of Los Angeles.

the Angeleno identity. For instance, the

with an architect, a cultural event, or other

Bunker Hill. They survived intact mostly

noteworthy event, like the Academy Awards.

through ground-floor retail. For the most

EM: Are there historic buildings that are

named for silent film actress Alla Nazimova

Then it is eligible for nomination at either

part, they were vacant above the ground

not being saved that should be?

and once home to F. Scott Fitzgerald,

the local, state, or federal level. At each

floor until the 1999 Adaptive Reuse

level, the threshold becomes a little more

Ordinance allowed the conversion of

BL: I think there are buildings that

Historically, it seems that corporate,

specific in terms of reaching that designa-

those commercial buildings to residential

are fifty years old that don’t meet the

commercial interests have had a

tion. The local landmarks are executed

without full code upgrades, dictated by a

threshold of criteria and wouldn’t be listed

destructive power over what buildings

through the Los Angeles Department of

change of use.

as historic resources. That’s certainly

are demolished and what buildings

true all over the city. I think the more

replace them. When refurbishing

famous Garden of Allah villa on Sunset,

is now a strip mall and parking lot.

City Planning’s Office of Historic Resources. That office and the Cultural Affairs

Simply put, any successful preservation

interesting topic at the forefront of historic

historic buildings, how do you reconcile

Commission of the City of Los Angeles act

project is the product of a willing devel-

preservation is that the 1960s buildings

L.A.’s rich architectural history with the

on nominations. Applications need to be

oper, some legislation that encourages

are now turning fifty years old. There’s a

forces of modern urban development?

prepared that identify and document the

revitalization or preservation—whether

whole movement called “The ’60s Turn

age of the building, the type of architec-

that be tax credits, or an adaptive reuse

Fifty,” and the Los Angeles Conservancy

BL: Los Angeles has changed. What

ture, the significance of the architecture,

code, or some other kind of ability to make

has established a modern committee that’s

you’re describing was certainly the

its association with an architect of note,

a significant investment in the building—

looking at these buildings to determine

condition and the attitude in the city

significant events that have happened in

and a user or users who want to be part

which of them qualify as historic resources.

prior to the early ’80s. With the forma-

history or in the context of the neighbor-

of the ongoing history of that particular

We tend to think of the ’20s and ’30s and

tion of the Los Angeles Conservancy in

hood, and the particular style of architec-

building. It’s often complicated.

’40s as significant historic architectural

the late 1970s and the strength of its

periods in Los Angeles, but quite frankly

efforts in the decades since, the city’s

ture that might not be well represented in the area. There are individual nominations

Each project obviously has a different

there’s a lot of architecture from the ’50s

civic and political leadership now better

and historic district nominations, as well

level of viability. For instance, the Wilshire

and ’60s, like the Music Center, the County

understands the value of preservation

as cultural landscape nominations, at least

Boulevard Temple Board of Trustees, a present

Courthouse in Downtown L.A., and Santa

and revitalization. It’s a sign of L.A.’s

at the city, state, and federal levels.

client, has an active and growing congregation

Monica Civic Auditorium.

maturation. We were the Wild West, and

PAGE: 89

horizontal expansion was Manifest Destiny.

in the commercial revitalization projects

The County of Los Angeles, on the other

someone once said, “eternal vigilance is

As the city grows in population, its urban

that you do with developers like Wayne

hand, is less organized in terms of historic

the price of liberty,” and that is what it

form is more dense, and it will continue to

Ratkovich?

review. I think the tendency of the county

takes. Claremont is a great example of

is to engage a consultant to assist it in

a community that completely respects

grow over the next hundred years. As a result, the character and quality of neighbor-

BL: The Conservancy is a membership

evaluating work on a resource that has

its historic resources. It has a long

hoods and individual buildings have become

organization, and it’s now the largest in

already been identified. For instance, we’re

history of doing that, and has created

more and more valued as resources.

the United States. Importantly, it has

working on the Hall of Justice right now

preservation and resource legislation.

the capacity to review all environmental

with A. C. Martin Partners and Clark

Each community has the opportunity

Moreover, the passionate advocacy of the

impact statements, when asked, that come

Construction Group, LLC. The county—in

to become its own advocate, but the

Los Angeles Conservancy and its ability

through the City of Los Angeles concerning

addition to having Levin & Associates

advocacy usually begins with individual

to identify historic buildings through the

cultural resources.

as architects responsible for the historic

citizens who come together to protect a

components of the project—has retained

resource.

Office of Historic Resources, along with the citywide financial success of L.A.’s

When we work on a project that is a historic

Historic Resources Group as its consultant

developers, have truly changed the city’s

resource where a public agency has juris-

to assist in evaluating our documents to

EM: You mentioned the Getty

attitude toward preservation. There’s much

diction over its rehabilitation, that agency

determine whether or not they meet the

Foundation’s efforts in conducting a

more civic appreciation for an urban form

interprets the Secretary of the Interior’s

standards.

citywide architectural survey. Along with

that has both iconic new buildings like Walt

Standards for the Treatment of Historic

Disney Concert Hall and the Cathedral of

Properties. For example, for the Hercules

EM: Don’t individual municipal govern-

the foundation also sponsored Pacific

Our Lady of the Angels, together with the

project at Hughes Airport, the monitoring

ments within the county have the power to

Standard Time, the new Los Angeles

texture, character, and quality of its older

agency is the Army Corps of Engineers, and

pass historic preservation laws?

biennial exhibition. In 2013, the next

resources. I firmly believe that had Los

the person responsible is an archeologist.

sixty other art institutions in the city,

Pacific Standard Time will focus on L.A.

Angeles not invested in its central, historic

BL: Yes, that’s right.

architecture. What do you think about

core, neither Disney Hall nor the Cathedral

There’s great interest in Hercules, though

would have chosen to locate in Downtown.

quite frankly, if the buildings weren’t

EM: Is there a reason why that hasn’t

the Getty’s choice of architecture as a focus, when Los Angeles has a reputa-

associated with Howard Hughes, they

happened in so many cities in Los Angeles

tion for architectural impermanence? Is

If you contrast walking the streets of

might not meet the threshold of archi-

County?

it indicative of a greater preservationist

Downtown in 2012 with walking those

tectural significance. They’re significant

same streets in 1980, the difference is

because of the role they played in the

BL: Each city has its own character, and

night and day. For sure, Los Angeles is not

development of the aircraft and defense

the effort to preserve historic resources is

BL: Well, first of all, I don’t think

Manhattan, nor is it San Francisco, and it

industry in Southern California, and, of

usually undertaken by interested citizens

that “architectural impermanence” is

shouldn’t be in terms of urban character.

course, Howard Hughes is a person of

of the community. The development of

really the correct label anymore. It’s an

Los Angeles will always be less dense

great interest.

Old Town Pasadena, for example, really

old tagline—and the Getty’s focus on

came about because several interested

architecture is a welcome priority. The

trend in the city?

because its boundaries include 470 square miles. But the number of restaurants, bars,

EM: According to the Los Angeles

parties banded together and formed

inventive and creative architecture in

and stores, the quality of the pedestrian

Conservancy, more than a third of all

Pasadena Heritage. There were, of course,

Los Angeles has focused primarily on

experience, and the mere fact that people

jurisdictions in Los Angeles County have

developers who weren’t really sympathetic

the private realm, particularly single-

are out on Downtown’s streets at seven or

no protections for historic buildings. What

to maintaining the one- and two-story

family homes. You can’t say that John

nine o’clock on a weekday when before you

can municipal governments do to preserve

commercial district that we now know and

Lautner, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard

used to be able to roll bowling balls down

Southern California’s landmarks?

love as Old Town Pasadena, and there were

Neutra, Rudolf Schindler, and the case

development proposals to demolish the

study houses of the 1950s were not

BL: I think first and foremost is identify-

resources. Groups like the Conservancy

inventive, creative, and breaking a mold,

the middle of the street—that’s a pretty substantive change.

ing them. The citywide effort that the Getty

and Pasadena Heritage started the same

but they were all domestic for the most

EM: As an advocacy group, what role

and the city’s Office of Historic Resources

way, as a civic and community effort to

part. So when we look at major civic

does the Los Angeles Conservancy play

are undertaking is to be commended.

protect a neighborhood or a resource. As

architecture, we have to look at Disney

PAGE: 91

Hall and the Cathedral, and other public

buildings. It has an expectation that really

BL: Yes. I think if you’re part of a

It took me a while to understand the

buildings. Investment in these significant

comes from the commercial marketplace.

community and you’re an architect, you

multi-centered city and the connectivity

and iconic buildings has only occurred in

The developers who put up a high-rise

acquire that understanding through osmosis.

of transportation in your car as opposed

the last twenty years.

building are the ones who believe that they

Over the period of a career, you constantly

to the linkages of public transportation.

need to hire architects who will create

observe the evolving and changing

I gradually began to appreciate that Los

Pacific Standard Time is focused on the

environments and buildings that will reap

character of your community. I’m not

Angeles is still inventing itself. We’re

1950s to the 1980s. If it were the same

the financial return they require. That

sure what it’s like to jettison into a new

still trying to understand how to adapt,

period of time for architecture, we wouldn’t

incentive may come from a developer who

environment. All of the non-Chinese

absorb population, and densify. What

include much new architecture that people

understands that there is value added if the

architects working in places like Shanghai

was significantly different about Los

would consider groundbreaking. It will be

building is designed by a known architect,

arrive with an unencumbered canvas, so

Angeles was the lack of a strong culture

interesting to see the period of architecture

or if the design is something beyond the

to speak. From my perspective, it’s hard

of planning like the other communities

hat gets associated with the 2013 effort.

expectation of a typical apartment building.

to imagine where the visual and cultural

I was familiar with. In a city like Los

Having grown up on the East Coast, my

These kinds of decisions are made purely

cues in your design come from. I know

Angeles, which is so large and relies

whole identification with architecture was

on a financial and commercial basis. That

where the cues come from in Los Angeles,

so heavily on regional connections—

based in the urban form of New York,

being said, there are some advocates in

in California, and in other cities on the

freeway corridors and airports for

Boston, and Philadelphia—three cities

cities—in New York, organizations like

East and West Coasts, like Portland or San

instance—there has traditionally

where the blending of new construction

the Central Park Conservancy and the sorts

Diego. The cues are different in each, and

been very little implementation of the

and historic preservation happened with

of organizations that formed Friends of the

I’m certainly culturally familiar with them.

planning models that are so familiar in

apparent seamlessness. When I was young,

High Line, an unbelievable restoration

there would be new buildings going up

effort—that can promote new development.4

other cities. That’s a challenge that Los

and old buildings being preserved, and

EM: What do you mean by “jettison?”

Angeles continues to confront. It’s more

Do you mean that those architects are

a transactional city when it comes to

never did I question whether the Chrysler

In Los Angeles, I think the major

free from the challenge of working in a

planning. Projects are usually approved

Building or the Empire State Building would

opportunity to have an impactful project

site-specific context?

on a one-by-one basis, as opposed to

be there for me or my children, or my

like the High Line is with the L.A. River.

children’s children. I never thought that

The river is an incredible resource

When you live in a city for decades and

community plan and citywide framework.

either would be threatened. When you

and opportunity. A master plan has

your work as an architect is focused

Neighborhood plans are in the process

think about some of the buildings that

been designed that would generate an

there, the context is your experience and

of being updated, so we’ll see what

were demolished in the late ’50s and

extraordinary link between the different

vice versa. Your work matures as the city

happens when they advance through

early ’60s in Los Angeles, like the Atlantic

neighborhoods in the city and county

matures, and the place becomes part of

the political process.

Richfield Building, you wonder whether

that touch the river, all the way from the

your DNA. On the other hand working in

some of them would still be here if there

West Valley and into Downtown Los

new environments affords an architect

EM: Because L.A. spread out so

had been stronger advocacy and a better

Angeles. Along the river will be massive

the opportunity to find and develop the

quickly, do you think the problems

set of regulations for historic resources.3

opportunities for recreation, pedestrian

context without the encumbrances of

associated with the city’s rapid growth

Although I think attitudes toward preser-

activities, and development. It would be

assumptions formed over time.

and its lack of urban planning are

vation have changed, there is still less civic

fantastic if there were champions of that

and media attention on investing in Los

project committed to raising the money

EM: Do you think you would have felt

Angeles’s creative, public architecture.

and seeing it to completion.

jettisoned if you started doing your

BL: Of course! Too little appreci-

current work when you first came to Los

ated, especially outside of Southern

EM: Is there something that Los Angeles

EM: It seems that to be an architect of

Angeles?

California, is the massive investment

as a city can do to promote greater explor-

any kind in a city, you have to understand

ation into contemporary architecture?

as much about the historical and social

BL: Again, when I first came to the

in their transportation infrastructure.

compliance with a larger, integrated

problems it can cope with retroactively?

the citizens of Los Angeles are making

context of a building and its local

West Coast, it was very hard for me to

Three times the voters have approved

BL: Every effort takes a champion.

environment as you do about its physical

think of Los Angeles as a city because

sales tax increases to pay for transpor-

New York has a culture right now of new

structure.

its urban form had an unfamiliar pattern.

tation improvements in train, bus, and

PAGE: 93 3 Richfield Tower, also known as the Richfield Oil Company Building, was a black and gold high-rise in Downtown L.A. It was demolished in 1968. 4 The High Line is a park located on the elevated track of Manhattan’s retired West Side Highway. It is owned by the City of New York and operated by Friends of the High Line.

regional arterials. The last vote added a

Paris, or Shanghai have connectivity,

half cent, or thirty to forty billion dollars

we could link the larger portions of Los

over thirty years, to the budget of our

Angeles and ultimately the state of

metropolitan transit agency. We’re in the

California together. That would be an

Angeles presents a unique challenge.

with Levin, I began to realize the degree

process of doubling from a hundred-plus

amazing effort that would pay off in the

What began as a small town by the river

to which money has determined what

miles to over two hundred miles of rail.

next hundred years.

grew into a wide swath of settlements

my home would look like throughout my

after the Southern Pacific Railroad arrived

life, and what it will look like for future

Given our rail commitments and plans

in 1876. Los Angeles, as present-day

generations. As an architect, Levin

I still believe that civic effort and dialogue

for a green bikeway, we ultimately will

residents know it, is mostly a product of

responds to the call of developers who

are what encourage our politicians to do

link the city together, and that will be a

post-World War II suburban development

decide whether investing in a historic

the right thing. I just read this weekend

tremendous improvement in the quality

spurred by the arrival of the aerospace

resource will be profitable. Developers

that an area of Spring Street was painted

of life in Los Angeles and the safety of its

industry in the Southland. Most historic

like Wayne Ratkovich have consistently

with a green bikeway path. This is because

cyclists. If these kinds of projects could

public architecture that survived rabid

worked with Levin & Associates and

there have been local citizens who have

occur during this down cycle, then when

redevelopment in Southern California was

other firms to redevelop iconic L.A.

been advocating for a bicycle path in the

people are ready to reinvest they will re-

produced during the golden age of the

architecture; however, investment has

city, and CicLAvia’s efforts have taken

invest intelligently, building transit-oriented

film industry, when L.A. insulated itself

predominately focused on Southern

hold.5 You can find political champions for

development around public transit

from the Great Depression with reels

California’s golden age, whittling Los

projects if you’re an active citizen. I think

centers. We add to the quality of life by

of celluloid. Iconic buildings from this

Angeles’s built archive to a collection

we’ve become a little lazy—we’re compla-

reducing the congestion in the city and by

era—Griffith Observatory, the Wiltern

of buildings constructed between

cent and not necessarily demanding of our

creating opportunities for people to stay

Theatre, the Eastern Columbia Building,

1920 and 1940. Nevertheless, private

leaders and public officials. It’s the NIMBY

in their neighborhoods or move around

the Oviatt Building, and City Hall—have all

investment is so critical in the preser-

mindset—not in my backyard—rather than

in the city in ways that don’t continue

been subject to extensive redevelopment

vation process that many historic

mindfulness of the quality of our city.

generating carbon dioxide or creating air

or restoration projects; yet many others,

resources were lost when developers

and water-quality issues. We all need to

like the Atlantic Richfield Tower, the Brown

believed them to be unprofitable. The

EM: What is the greatest challenge you

be champions—and not champions of

Derby, and the Ambassador Hotel, were

buildings that define our experience

face in urban revitalization?

ceasing development, but champions of

demolished. The tally of famous architec-

as Angelenos—or residents of any

better development.

tural losses is still much smaller than the

city—include not just public architec-

BL: Right now, I think the easy answer

number of original ethnic neighborhoods

ture or Art Deco landmarks, but also

is that there’s not much public money

in early Los Angeles—Old Chinatown and

meeting halls and saloons, houses of

to invest. The city is nearly broke. The

Chavez Ravine, for instance—that were

worship, homes of community heroes,

state has a structural deficit. The country

razed to make way for Union Station and

and even tenements. It is important to

is managing, but demand for services is

Dodger Stadium, respectively. The price of

understand Los Angeles as a dynamic

outstripping revenue. The banks have only

constructing a modern metropolis as geo-

environment where hundreds of cul-

recently opened for business real estate,

graphically disconnected as Los Angeles

tures from around the world interact—

and they’re still quite conservative. In

has been the prejudicial preservation and

living together, working together, and

terms of commercial investment in real

demolition of its buildings.

building together. Southern California

AFTERWORD

spaces. As a Los Angeles native, I have greatly admired those buildings since

To architectural preservationists, Los

We’re remaking the city’s mobility landscape.

estate, it would be a fabulous time in this

my early childhood. Yet, after speaking

presents itself as an oasis of diversity,

down cycle to focus on infrastructure,

Brenda Levin has spearheaded restoration

but the region’s politics have not always

especially expanding the transportation

projects on dozens of historic buildings

preserved its historic architecture in a

system in Los Angeles. So if the dollars

from L.A.’s golden age. She is one of the

way that is culturally comprehensive.

were available from the state and federal

reasons that landmarks like the Wiltern

governments to implement some of these

Theatre and Griffith Observatory continue

long-term plans for transportation, and we

to define the character of Los Angeles

Angeles is to address a living archive,

had connectivity in the way San Francisco,

while operating as fully functional public

one that still functions as a home

PAGE: 95

5 CicLAvia is an organization that hosts large-scale bicycle rides on city streets, particularly in Los Angeles, to combat congestion and pollution. They lobbied successfully in 2010 for the installation of a green bikeway on Spring Street.

To address the built archive of Los

and workplace for its residents. Historic preservation in many cities has saved treasured buildings while forcing lowincome residents out by raising adjacent property values. Before the current housing crisis, historic Downtown high-rises were redeveloped into luxury loft spaces, many of which still remain empty. The lofts brought cafes and boutiques with them, and, while improving the lives of high-income residents, forced their poorer neighbors to move east toward the L.A. River. Private investment has allowed a

New York native Brenda Levin founded her own

historic Downtown to remain, at least in

firm in Los Angeles in 1980. Over the past

fragments for future generations, yet it has

thirty years, her firm, Levin & Associates

redefined areas of Broadway and Spring—

Architects, has restored dozens of Los Angeles

once popular shopping destinations for

landmarks like the Bradbury Building and

Latin American immigrants—as gentrified

City Hall. She is a Fellow of the American

white neighborhoods. The unique character

Institute of Architects and has undertaken

of Los Angeles is particular to its myriad of

many extensive commercial projects as well,

cultures, and historic preservation must

including work on Scripps and Occidental

encourage investment in a core that reflects

Colleges.

the city’s cultural and socio-economic diversity. Members of the community have

Evan Moffitt is a second year student at UCLA

the power to champion public policy, but

majoring in Philosophy and Art History. He

their efforts must also pursue financial

is currently a docent at the Hammer Museum

opportunities that are both historically

and Co-Chair of Publications for the Hammer

sensitive and environmentally sustainable.

Student Association (HSA). He will continue

If we care for the diverse character of our

his studies in architecture at the Free

city, we must fight to preserve its built

University in Berlin.

archive constructively and sensitively. We must embrace the paradox of L.A.’s built environment by investing in historic resources that reflect the socio-economic and cultural diversity of Angelenos.

PAGE: 97

CARMEL NI

PAGE: 99

above: Holding opposite: Expanse Inkjet prints 12 x 10 inches Mohave Desert, CA 2011

100

KR JI

KATHLEEN RYAN was born in Santa Monica, CA in 1984. She is currently completing her MFA at UCLA, and received her BA in Fine Art and Anthropology from Pitzer College in Claremont, CA in 2006.

JANNA IRELAND is an artist from Philadelphia, PA. In 2007, she received her BFA from the Department of Photography and Imaging at New York University. She is an MFA candidate at UCLA, and is currently making work about adjusting to life in Southern California.

NN LB

NICHOLAS NABOR was born in

exhibitions of his work, both in Milwaukee

Waukesha, WI in 1986. He received a

and in New York, along with countless

BFA in Painting and Drawing from the

group exhibitions. Nick’s artwork uses

Peck School of the Arts at the University

architecture as a metaphor for the human

of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2010, and an

mind and body. Architecture is a rich area

MFA in Painting and Drawing from the Pratt

for analogy, and is used in his work as a

Institute in 2012. He has had three solo

visual starting point in a myriad of ways.

LUCAS BLALOCK received his BA

Angeles. The work has been written about

in 2002 from Bard College, and attended

or featured in Mousse, Art In America, The

the Skowhegan School of Painting and

New Yorker, Frieze, Art Review, ARTnews,

Sculpture in 2011. He is currently a 2013

Guernica and Time Out NY amongst others.

MFA candidate at UCLA. His work has

Blalock is also one of ten artists featured in

been exhibited internationally at venues

Art 21’s web series “New York Close-Up,”

including Ramiken Crucible and On Stellar

which focuses on young artists in New

Rays in New York, Devening Projects +

York City.

Editions in Chicago, and Eighth Veil in Los

KM TN

KELLY MCCAFFERTY was born in

a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Painting

1980, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New

from the School of the Art Institute of

York. She received a BA from Hampshire

Chicago in 2004. Kelly will attain her MFA

College in 2003, where she studied

from Pratt Institute with a concentration

Encaustic Painting, Women’s Studies and

in Sculpture in 2012. She was raised on a

Ancient Religion. She also received

thoroughbred horse farm in Kentucky.

TAMEKA NORRIS was born in Agana,

BK YS SK

Guam. Norris attended the Skowhegan

juxtaposition of her body to the objects

School of Painting and Sculpture in 2009,

surrounding it. Located at the intersection

earned her BA at UCLA in 2010, and her

of contemporary and popular culture, her

MFA at Yale University in the Painting and

performance-based works explore the

Printmaking Department in 2012. Within

ways music videos, stereotypes, and the

her interdisciplinary practice, Norris often

media have defined her perception of race

stages exaggerated displays of self-mockery

and identity.

the performative process is documented

New York, NY. His practice incorporates

through photography. The material form is

various modes of expression to convey

reduced in each manifestation but serves

the impermanent nature of the body and

to magnify the ephemeral. He has exhibited

the mind. In recent work, old paintings

in London and New York and presently lives

are recycled into sculptural forms and

and works in San Francisco.

BECKY KOLSRUD was born in Los

exhibition will be at JTT Gallery in New York

Angeles, CA in 1984, where she lives and

this fall. She holds a BS in Studio Art from

works. Recent exhibitions include Grisaille

New York University and an MFA in Art

at Luxembourg & Dayan, and Yackety Yack

from UCLA.

Girls at Karma, New York. Her first solo

Y O S E I S H I B A T A received his BFA

print collateral and identity development

in Graphic Design from the California

to marketing communications. Yosei has

College of the Arts in 2008. He currently

worked for Japanese fashion brand, Issey

works at Tamotsu Yagi Design, located

Miyake in Tokyo in both the Graphic Design

in Venice, CA, generating projects from

and Public Relations departments.

S H O S H I K A N O K O H A T A is currently enrolled in UCLA’s MFA program, concentrating in Ceramics. Having lived in Japan, Russia, and currently in Los Angeles, his interest lies in topics that are related to cultural differences and traditions.

M A R T E N E L D E R grew up in Rehoboth Beach, DE and recently moved from New York to Los Angeles. He received his BA in Photography from Bard College in 2008 and is a 2013 MFA candidate at UCLA.

and personas, creating tension within the PAGE: 103

T A K M I N G C H U A N G was born in

C A R M E L N I is an artist living and working in Los Angeles, CA. Her process focuses primarily on the creative potential embedded in limbo, a space she conjures in both her photography and installations. She holds a BA in Fine Art from UCLA.

104

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The GRAPHITE editorial staff would like to extend their sincere gratitude to Sue Bell Yank, Assistant Director of Academic Programs at the Hammer Museum. Her constant support, guidance, and interest in this project has helped us grow and challenge ourselves with each edition.

GRAPHITEERS Christine Haroutounian Editor-in-Chief

Laila Riazi Evan Moffitt Assistant Editors

Iris Yirei Hu Head Editor, Critical Essays

Emily Anne Kuriyama Trenton Szewczyk Editor, Critcal Essays

Lauren Graycar Head Editor, Artwork

Janna Ireland Editor, Artwork

Kaitlyn Kramer Development

Carmel Ni Multimedia

Anna Reutinger Jon Gacnik Design

Issue N 3 ÂŠ 2012, Los Angeles, CA, Precision Litho

GRAPHITE o Interdisciplinary Journal of the Arts Created through the Hammer Museum and the Hammer Student Association of UCLA. graphitejournal@gmail.com www.graphitejournal.com All rights reserved. May not be reproduced. Content does not reflect the opinions of GRAPHITE editorial staff.