Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube The Multiple eXposure Project www.themultipleexposureproject.co.nr Public Spaces, Metro Manila, Philippines December 1-31, 2015 Curator: Sherwin Altarez Mapanoo Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube is an alternative, traveling, curatorial project that features image-based works across different disciplines and media by emerging artists whose works discuss the notion of the “public” and its complexities. What is public? What counts as public? The “public” is a multi-layered concept defined differently depending on how the term is used and framed. It is a notion devoid of singularity and is, grammatically speaking, a terrain of contradictions. As a noun and an adjective, the public constitutes the people, masses or community, and suggests anything that is staged, accessed, or seen out in the “open.” The public can also be used as a verb to describe something one does, as in make public or publicize, suggesting the movement or shift from the inside (private) to the outside (public). Paradoxically, however, the same term also points to the limits of such openness and movement. Given that it simultaneously refers to something “involving and provided by the government”, the public is always at risk of becoming merely an apparatus of the sovereign state and its institutions, thus making the flow of its production, distribution, and consumption partial and counterproductive. Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube seeks to re-frame the practice of curating and spectating images outside the exclusionary, institutional borders of the “white cube” or gallery space. Public spaces are used as an exhibition site to stimulate a mode of spectator experience that revolves around displacement of the passersby (public) from their “habitus” by interrupting the flow of pedestrian traffic. We alter a familiar public space and transform it into an unusual, dialogic site for image projection and exhibition, taking advantage of its accessibility and site-specificity in order to redefine the ways the spectators look at and engage with images. Adopting “guerilla urbanism” as a curatorial strategy, we make sense of the immediacy of the “public” and reflect upon its context, meanings, and intersections with representation, place, and discourse. In so doing, we intervene and reformat aspects of the urban landscapes and emphasize the “counter-spectacle” in art viewing and appreciation. This project also underlines the inherent ephemerality of an open-to-the-public display in relation to time and space. As a “traveling” exhibition which heavily depends on projection technology and public space as its “frame” or “canvas", this project celebrates the momentary nature of imageviewing, consumption, and mobility in the metropolis at a time of constant flux and transition.
Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube List of Works and Artists Video Arts Borders - Anne Murray (USA) The Separation Loop - Leyla Rodriguez (Germany) Gnomonicity - Amitesh Grover (India) 36&71 - Anthony Stephenson (USA) Sully - Marbella Carlos (Canada) You See Davis - Rembrandt Quiballo (Philippines, USA) Untitled (Sleeping People in a Train) Hannah Reber (Germany) Into the labyrinth - Geordy Zodidat Alexis (France) The Safest of Hands - Clint Sleeper (USA) Hunt/Find - Dani Salvadori (UK) Leaving My Skin - Ellen Wetmore (UK) Presence of Absence - Matt Lee (India) Untitled – Mohammad Namazi (UK, Iran) Still Images / Photographs Right Time Right Place - Robert Rutoed (Austria) Peripheral Strangers - Julie Dawn Dennis (UK) De Staat (The State) - Maarten Tromp (Netherlands) Ruinophilia - Anna Garrett (UK) Circling the Square - Arturo Soto (Mexico) The Spectator, the Viewer, the Observer and the Perceiver – Francine LeClercq (UK)
Magic Rooms - Carlos Collado (Spain) Date of Consumption - Lita Poliakova (Finland) Street Photography - John Robert Luna (Philippines) Walls - Elena Efeoglou (Macedonia) Fitting Room – Megan Mace (South Africa) Street art you can take home (for free) Lorenzo Bordonaro (Portugal) Victim – Solomon Eko (Nigeria) Performance Videos / Public Interventions Balloon Performance - Louise Winter (UK) Somarts Mural Dance - Johanna Poethig (USA) Unpatentable Multitouch Aerobics - Liat Berdugo (USA) Disclaimer at Manchester Art Gallery Laura Gower (UK) Sustaintability – Dani Lamorte (USA) Animations / Digital Job Interview - Dénes Ruzsa and Fruzsina Spitzer (Hungary) In Between - Sofia Makridou, Theodora Prassa (Greece) Decadence of Nature - Olga Guse (Russia) AsianGirl N40°42'54.488" W73°59'30.313" Victoria Elle, Rocky Li, and Jennifer Mehigan (USA)
Acknowledgement The Multiple eXposure Project would like to express gratitude to GFX Enterprise for sponsoring this curatorial project and Curator Space for letting us use the curator’s tool for accepting and managing applications online without any cost. We also thank the following websites for online visibility and promotion: Art Slant, Artist Marketing Resources, Art Plus, Trans Art Guide, The Art League, The Art List, and Regional Arts and Culture Council. Last, but by no means least, we are beyond grateful to all the participating artists across the globe for submitting their incredible works to this humble project.