Lee Tusman
Lee Tusman creates urban, socially-based art projects as a curator, installation artist and photographer. He is Creative Director of Hidden City Philadelphia and a curatorial member of Little Berlin art space.
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I love this video preview by Alfredo Salazar-Caro, artist of moving gifs, interactive landscape/game art, and mayan new media 2012. He’s hosting Swag Party: Emerging Curators Showcase May 11 and 12 in Chicago. Alfredo visited Little Berlin for our Little Glitches event during the Flash Fl00d exhibit. He and artist Patrick Quinn started Dither Doom, a temporary (due to the mayan apocalypse) online art movement of “algorithms/dither fetish/mayan doomsday/end times aware.” I’m interested in following and contributing to the confusion.
D1†H3R_DØØM_IN†RØ by Alfredo Salazar-Caro
Photos from myself and Kelani Nichole
Augmented reality (AR) is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality.
These are the AR photos from May Day taken in our Fairgrounds by Kelani Nichole on her iphone using the LAYAR app!
As far as I can gather their process consists of ALPHABETICALLY(!) applying every single image in the Public Domain photography archive to every object Zazzle offers. Amazingly almost everything they make is amazing. From doggy clothes featuring macrophotography of Chex Mix, to “Thanksgiving Shrimp” skateboard decks…
I’m pretty excited to participate in this Monday night May 7! 7PM! ONLINE! Organized by Little Berlin’s Kelani Nichole.
Open Web Studio will be hosted online for 2012 – our first event of the year will feature a number of artists skyping in to share information about their recent work, and upcoming shows – these ‘virtual studio visits’ will be broadcast live on Ustream.
Artists:
Philipp Teister (soon-to-be Philly)
Jeanette Hayes (NYC)
Alfredo Salazar-Caro (Chicago)
Sandy Frank (Philly)
Anthony Antonellis (Massachusets)
Lee Tusman (Philly)
Nicole Killian (Minneapolis)
Robert Lorayn (Phoenix)
Hosted by little berlin member Kelani Nichole.
Please join us via USTREAM. The studio is open to the public and participants can ask questions via chat on the Open Web Studio channel:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/open-web-studio
To share your work at the studio please contact us at berlin.little@gmail.com – the next virtual event will be the first Monday in June. Facebook page here.We just received word today that the Mix-Mart has been accepted as a part of FIGMENT, the free annual celebration of participatory art and culture that takes place on Governors Island in New York City. We’ll be there Saturday June 9 all day! Figment is a great fair/festival; I’m excited to come visit all of the other projects as well and meet tons of great participants and artists.
But you can also come sooner. The Mix-Mart is still a part of Recipro•city at The Painted Bride Arts Center, and we have an opening Friday May 4, 5-7PM, as well as a Market Night for DJing, making tapes, listening to music, telling stories and sharing food on Thursday May 31. Check it out.
arOCCUPY May Day is a non-violent action meant to send a message to the 1%. Augmented art works from around the world will take over the financial district on May 1st. The global community will be heard in the heart land of the 1%.
Visit Little Berlin Fairgrounds on May…
This entire exhibition of work by Javanese artists was sent by email, printed out, then displayed at Space 1026. (via Phoning it in from Yogyakarta: Javanese street art at Space 1026 | theartblog)
Another positive review for Phoning It From Yogyakarta, this time from Nicola Midnight St. Clare, an online blog/magazine about the arts in Philadelphia.
Style can be a vehicle for self-expression and cross-cultural sharing but it can also be employed as a potent tool for the communication of social and political ideas. Taring Padi makes good use of style’s function. What Curator Lee Tusman give us then is something like a well crafted mix tape. A show that can be appreciated initially for the aesthetics, and the arrangement, but one that becomes more powerful and complex over time.
(via New Faile Mural Comes to Williamsburg)
I’m loving this new Faile mural in Williamsburg, it’s made with tiles! After coming back from Philly (often referred to as ‘The Mural City’), I’ve been thinking about how lovely murals are, but also how to make them more nuanced and contemporary.
Earlier this month I gave a tour to Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosoff’s Art Safari of the Phoning It In From Yogyakarta exhibit. Now see the video! Check the art! Laugh at my hair! Video by Kim Paynter of WHYY’s NewsWorks.
A review! With criticism! Of the exhibit I curated at Space 1026! Ok!
i’m reblogging this 1. because i want to win a free complete set of “Mothers News” and 2. because this is one of the coolest non-internet mags/zines/newspapers/journals/things of note that i love. you cannot read it online. so don’t try. Subscribe to Mothers News.
i bought a buncha ads for my record label in here. when you hear the buzzer buzz back
ayo there’s only a few complete sets left of Mothers News Vol 2- if you want to catch them all, you gotta act now! Tumblrs follow and reblog for a chance to win exclusive bonus items! …
Collectors take note- each issue of Mothers News features exclusive comics from CF, Brian Chippendale,…
Creative Time’s Chief Curator Nato Thompson’s article provides advice to institutions on how to support the Occupy Movement. Some good practical ideas in here.
- Get involved and listen.
- Understand that you might be part of the problem. Corruption is structural. If you want to make a stand, you must take risks. Think hard about how radical your institution is ready to go to move toward global social justice.
- Get to know people in the movement. In general institutions should be in touch with the concerns of everyday people. As art institutions can easily gravitate toward the concerns of the ruling class, they must situate their personal worlds in the lives of people not allowed into that system.
- It is ok for institutions to work on things and not get credit for them. Because branding is symptomatic of power in an age of cultural production, institutions must be careful to not brand any political gesture as theirs. They must facilitate space for the exchange of ideas and not turn them into branding opportunities. This is not just about ethics, this is about producing space for art.
- Use social networks to circumvent the dominance of major media and spread the word of social actions that challenge power (without branding).
- Famous people are not the only ones that can speak. Provide space for organizers and activist artists who either deliberately or not, do not participate in the spheres of contemporary art. Understand that social capital is a force that must be navigated consciously and ethically.
- Realize this is not a leaderless movement, but a movement of leaders. Do not try to take a voice of authority nor decide who the leaders are.
- The movement is de-centered and thrives on autonomous actions. Focusing on specific actions to support that are part of the larger whole might be a better way to focus energy.
- Prepare, embrace and make changes according to structural criticism. Under a condition of neoliberalism, institutions are inevitably complicit in conflicts of interest. Embrace the discussion and make a commitment toward changing this. Understand that trust takes time and many people will see institutions as guilty of serving the top 1% (in many cases, that is all they do).
- As much as all of these issues are complicated, doing nothing isn’t an option. The movement toward economic and social equality worldwide is not something to be on the sidelines about.
- Remember that equity, justice, accountability and transparency are reasonable things for people to fight for. You aren’t a radical for supporting this movement. You are, in fact, doing what is obviously right.
Woah, great write-up of the Phoning It In From Yogyakarta exhibition I curated at Space 1026 up through the end of the month printed in Philadelphia’s City Paper today.
The title spray-painted across one wall of Space 1026 could be read as an accusation of laziness in graffiti form. But “Phoning It in from Yogyakarta” represents the work of a thriving DIY arts culture that is anything but complacent.
“To some degree, it was a busier art scene than Philadelphia,” says curator Lee Tusman of the two weeks he spent in the Indonesian city. “It was similar in the sense that it had a pretty thriving community, with arts universities, fine arts and DIY arts all intermingling. It’s pretty fluid between mainstream and alternative culture there.”
“Phoning It in” refers not to the artists’ efforts, but to the method Tusman used to bring their art to Philly. Taking his cue from the graphically oriented nature of much of the Yogya artists’ work (according to Tusman, locals use “Yogya” much as we use “Philly”), he had the exhibition’s 11 artists email him work, which he printed. This innovative approach bypassed 20-hour flights and a considerable amount of money. “If I did this show with original work, featuring the exact same pieces, it would probably be in the neighborhood of $8,000 to $14,000,” Tusman says. “We were able to do this show for less than $1,000.”
Check out the full article!
Photos from the exhibit reception for Phoning It In From Yogyakarta that I curated at Space 1026 in Philly. Up through April 2012. We had a great opening. Come check out the show if you haven’t seen it yet. Also, get in touch if you’d like to show it at your space. All of the works pack up into 2 boxes! And I’d like to do a Phoning It In From Philadelphia show in Indonesia next fall or winter!
Photos from last friday’s reception for Recipro•city at The Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia. I collaborated with Kathryn Sclavi on the creation of a Mix-Mart, a market stall for creating, collecting, sharing and listening to personal mixtapes. The exhibit is up for 2 months and we have several Market Nights for creating and listening to tapes forthcoming.
This Friday 4/6/12 is the opening of Recipro•city at The Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia.
Recipro•city is an exhibition-led inquiry into contemporary practice of communal exchange. The exhibit investigates the notions of the physical, emotional and spiritual act of sharing as an art practice. The artists come together to present a multilayer art installation transforming the Bride’s Independence Foundation Gallery for the Visual Arts into a tent city.
I collaborated with Kathryn Sclavi to build the Mix-Mart, a market booth for creating, collecting, listening to, trading, and talking about mix tapes and the stories of their creation, gifting and receiving. Mix-Mart serves as a temporary space for visitors to make discoveries of new music, as well as to curate themselves directly into this exhibition. A quilted fabric market booth will be stocked with personal mix tapes and CDs for participants to listen to and copy, and visitors are encouraged to add their own new mix tapes and read about others’ tapes.
Facebook page here.
Making Respect an Art Form:
Over the course of her career the fearless and provocative Cuban artist Tania Bruguera has staged performances tweaking the Castro government, commenting on drug policy in Columbia, threatening to kill herself via Russian roulette in Venice, and plenty more. Her latest project, though, is her most ambitious, and potentially her most influential. A year ago, under the sponsorship of the Queens Museum and the public-art nonprofit Creative Time, she founded an organization called Immigrant Movement International, setting herself up in a storefront in Corona, Queens and moving in with immigrants nearby.
At first locals didn’t know what to make of the fiercely energetic newcomer, but eventually the center’s wide array of services—from legal help to language and art classes—transformed her headquarters, right near the 111th Street stop on the 7 train, into a busy hub. On Monday, April 9, for example, Immigrant Movement International will host a free immigration clinic sponsored by the City Bar Justice Center. Visitors can speak privately with an immigration attorney about matters including visas, Cuban immigration and family reunification—in Spanish, English, or Mandarin.
Along the way her team created a ribbon logo to advocate for their mission, coining the slogan “Immigrant Respect” to avoid the political aspects of the immigration issue and highlight its human side. They chose brown and blue to represent the entry points of immigrants who travel to a new country, over land or sea.
Immigrant Movement—which has been so successful that Bruguera’s sponsors recently pledged to help keep it going for four more years— is part of a larger global trend, as creators like Ai Weiwei and Vik Muniz develop new strategies to connect art-making with activism. Can artists change the world? Maybe that’s not the question—yet. Can they help? Stop over in Corona and find out.
Appointment reservation information: http://on.fb.me/HPNacG
I curated an exhibit of young Javanese artists (yes, from Indonesia) opening at Space 1026 in Philly next Friday April 6, 7 - 10PM. You can read my description of the exhibit here, but essentially I was excited by the active DIY art scene and wanted to present it to Philly’s DIY art community. Space 1026 is a collective/collection of studios/community/plus gallery. Responding to the challenge of not having a dedicated exhibition budget, I developed the concept of having the work phoned in through the internet. No art was physically delivered or mailed. All works are emailed, printed and framed, screenprinted, photocopied or projected in the space. Facebook page here.
The whole exhibit packs up inside 2 medium size boxes and can be shipped within the US for $50. Get in touch if you want to show this exhibit-in-a-box at your space. Photos of the install forthcoming.
I’m mining Jason Sturgill’s back catalog on tumblr. As a part of the Shine A Light event put on by Social Practice MFA students at Portland State University, Jason created Art Is Forever. He selected 12 artists who came up with 45 illustrations (flash tattoo designs) selected from artwork in Portland Art Museum and 2 tattoo artists to do the inking. An area within the museum was turned into a temporary tattoo shop and attendees were able to select and get these as real, permanent tattoos. Wow. Bring this project to more cities.
Art is Forever from Jason Sturgill
Art is Forever was a project by Jason Sturgill that attempted to foster a more meaningful connection between the art museum and its visitors. Several Portland artists were selected and given the opportunity to create illustrations inspired by their visits to the Portland Art Museum. These illustrations were made available as free tattoos on a first come, first served basis throughout the entire day.
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I’ve walked around much of Philadelphia. These photographs are but a small portion of several I’ve taken with a series in mind.
As of late, I have become fascinated by these ‘swatches’, and in general the actions property owners take to cover up graffiti and street art. I’ve seen paint-on-paint, gloss-on-matte, fabric, drywall, aluminum, even leather nailed to brick to cover up small tags. In the end, I like making up back stories, determining if new paint was from same can as old paint, thinking about how the owners felt when they discovered a piece on their wall. Maybe I’ll interview a few over the next year or so - was this covered in their budget?
There’s a particular wall, a furniture store, near Broad and Olney that gets tagged and re-painted at least once every two/three months, and another directly across the street, part of a daycare facility, that usually remains untouched; both owners use the most beautiful, deepest shades of red, green and blue.
I’ve found these combinations more aesthetically pleasing than what was probably under them - not necessarily because I’m against tags or paste - just that I have a thing for color and contrast.
Will
P.S. Not to plug or anything, but more photos from this set are going to be uploaded to Jeffershizzle for Facebook later tonight. Right now, however, I’m going to make pancakes for dinner. Happy Monday!
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