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PROJECTS
I/O - A PUBLIC VIDEO ART PROGRAM
My second public work was the founding, directing, and curating of a public video
art program and platform, that was inserted into public space and visible only
from the street. The video was projected in the window of a gallery in a historic
office building in the heart of commercial downtown San Francisco. The projector
was turned on at the gallery's closing time and ran until opening time. the work
could only be seen between sunset and sunrise. back-lit projected on the non-descript
second floor window of a gallery in a historic office building in downtown San
Francisco. As an unexpected and ambiguous presence it mixed into the dynamic
urban world of stores (Armani, Macy's, Rite Aid, CompUSA, FAO Schwarz...), coffee
shops, trash containers, bustling city traffic, shoppers, homeless, all kinds
of accidental audiences that were not necessarily familiar with art.
What started the project off was finding a great location and platform for a
site specific art project when I was looking for possibilities to do such work.
Some years before on one evening I had passed by Macy's through O'Farrell Street
in downtown San Francisco, hurrying and on my way to get to somewhere else when
I noticed large video images playing on the other side of the street in a second
floor window of the historic Phelan office building (think Flat Iron building
in New York). It was not clear what it was about and I had little time to watch
but it looked fresh and felt like a pleasant surprise that opened up that urban
space somehow. Although I never forgot it I didn't think too much about it either,
it just lingered quietly in the back of my mind. I did notice at other times
that it wasn't there anymore and I learned it was a gallery space, of the Quotidian
Gallery to be exact. It was not until a few years later, in the spring of 2002,
when I got to visit this gallery and got to meet its director, that I shared
this earlier experience and asked him why that use of the gallery window as a
public video art platform wasn't continued. He said he would have liked to have
done that, as he had the equipment for it and a modest budget but unfortunately
he hadn't been able to find someone to manage and curate it. We agreed to discuss
this further in another meeting and by that time I had written a proposal for
a public video art program called "I/O" with ideas for six subsequent,
month-long, video art shows. Each with a theme related to the program's context.
I envisioned the program as a public, site-specific intervention of mine, in
collaboration with other artists that I would select. At that point we agreed
that we were a good match and two months later the first show already opened.
Two anecdotes
While passing by the site one day I saw this older couple in their
sixties, not looking like they were normally into art..., they were
standing on the opposite side of the street, both standing still and
staring in concentration and obviously intreagued as well as puzzled,
at an ongoing video in the I/O window. Their still attention was interspersed
with deliberations and thoughts they shared to each other out loud.
I knew it was a video by Linda Ford, that basically shows a still
frontal face of a woman with a small beauty mark. There's a strange
still movement in it, it takes a while before most people catch what
is happening... Her beauty mark changes position every so many seconds,
it hops from one location to another but as it is small and does not
continually move it's mysterious. As I had stopped to watch it myself,
they shared their quest of trying to figurie out what this was that
they had noticed while passing by. Given the location in what is mostly
a shopping area they first assumed it shopuld be a video type ad or commercial...
but they did not see the any give away that it was selling something... it felt
different. Eventually I could tell them what it was and that did not diminish
their fascination. I was pleased to have witnessed this as it exactly illustrated
what I was after. The insertion of the videos, fitting them into acontext like
this one, could surprise, bewonder, and intreague people, and it invited them
to renegotiate their understanding of the surrounding world, and to work on creating
a new meaningful relationship, in dialogue. And that's what art practice is about.
And we need more of that in the world.
At another occasion I happened to see a car park being parked along
the road at the I/O site. A man came out, opened the luggage space
in the back of his car and to my big surprise (it was getting dark,
there was lots of traffic going by in waves, people were going home)
he pulled out a folding chair and set it up on the sidewalk to watch
the video art program. Like he was going to take all the time of the
world to see this. I wondered whether it was planned or an impulse...
A list of the seven I/O shows.
The following seven shows ran in 2002 (until the gallery's permanent
closing):
I/O (#1): Introduction
Jun. 20 - Jul. 25, 2002
32 video works by 29 artists from the San Francisco Bay Area, New
York, Tokyo, and Saarbruecken (Germany).
The first show was a starting exploration of contemporary video art
by emerging artists and the conditions of the program and a first
introduction of the program itself to the world.
1. Kiriko Shirobayashi - Fish Bowl (1999)
2. Tommy Becker - Newfound Freedom
3. Claudia Brieske - Windportraits (2000)
4. Patrick Rock - Round Up
5. Elvira Hufschmid - Multiple Choice (2001/02)
6. Linda Ford - Lengua (2000)
7. Eric Amoy - Awareness derived from such a source
8. Jacquelyn Marie Sumell - Untitled (2001)
9. Eric Amoy - Hallway
10. Sarah Pizer-Bush - Yesterday (2001)
11. Kenric McDowell - Lensflares (2002)
12. Scott Hinton - Remnant Dis-Allusion (2002)8
13. Isabel Neves - North Wind (1989)
14. Katherin McInnis - Floating Walls - (fragments)
15. Julia Cowing - Chickity China, the Chinese Chicken (2001)
16. Jacquelyn Marie Sumell - Coyote Americana (2001)
17. Ferdinand Gonzalez - Tears in Heaven / Oklohoma (2001)
18. d'Art (various artists) - Exquisite Corpse: a 9.11 chain-reaction.
[2C: Tokyo]:
18.1. Monika Wuhrer - Medium Rare (2001)
18.2. Cro-Magnon
18.3. ATARITIC SERVICE
18.4. Hiroshi Nukaga
18.5. Daisuke Takeuchi
18.6. Akira Sakai
19. d'Art (various artists) - Exquisite Corpse: a 9.11 chain-reaction.
[1A: NY]:
19.1. Joy Robles - Pandemonium
19.2. Benton-C Bainbridge & Angela Mickelson - X2AA
19.3. Marisela La Grave - The Heart of Lightness
19.4. Miho Suzuki - Easy Rider
19.5. Naoko Sumi - Untitled
19.6. Kiriko Shirobayashi - A Ripple
19.7. Vladimir Po - Political Suicide
19.8. Isa Stein - Centered
19.9. Vishwanath Bush & Jason Sinopoli - A Smoking Heap of Rubble
I/O (#2): Inside/Outside
Jul. 25 - Aug. 22, 2002
19 video works by 16 artists from the United States and Mexico
A central idea behind the I/O public video art program was that it
literally (on a window) and figuratively (between gallery space and
street, during the gallery business's closing hours) existed in between
the art and the non-art world. It set to encourage new dialogues
between artists and inclusive audiences. The creation or submission
of works that addressed the specific location of the program were
encouraged. Accidental passers-by were given the opportunity to freshly
renegotiate their understanding of the world through the chance confrontation
with unmarked and ambiguous artistic imagery where one would not
expect art.
1. Kiriko Shirobayashi - Fish Bowl (1999)
2. Tommy Becker - I can be happy when trapped in a room with
a rabbit that is blind
3. Tommy Becker - Newfound Freedom
4. Eric Amoy - Hallway (2002)
5. Ana de la Cueva - Untitled (fragment)
6. Sarah Pizer-Bush - Yesterday (2001)
7. Katherin McInnis - Floating Walls
8. Scott Wolniak - Fruit Ghost! (2001)
9. Linda Ford - Lengua (2000)
10. Jessica Tully - Aqualistics
11. Andres Libreros - Session 2
12. Jacquelyn Sumell - Estoy Enamorada (2)
13. Bob Griffin - Lo
14. Jeremy Chien - The process of leaving
15. Scott Wolniak - 11/02/00 (2000)
16. Scott Hinton - Time Escape
17. Kenric McDowell - Clouds
18. Jacquelyn Marie Sumell - Coyote Americana (2001)
19. Julia Cowing - How to tell your friends from the Japs (2001)
I/O (#3): Skin
Aug. 22 - Sept. 19, 2002
24 video works by 21 artists from the United States and Mexico.
The historic, art deco Phelan Building in downtown San Francisco
(think of something like New York's Flat Iron Building) that functioned
as the carrier surface for the I/O projections, has quite a beautiful,
sensuous, outer texture. It is not flat from the outside, and shows
lots of three-dimensional play mixed with a sense of fine, subtle,
destinguished but touchable grandeur. This physical aspect of the
program's existence on the outer layer and beautiful facade was the
jump-off point for this show.
1. Michele Jaquis - Drinking Fountain (1999)
2. Michele Jaquis - Expectations (2001)
3. Linda Ford - I, Mouth (2002)
4. Linda Ford - Beauty Mark (2002)
5. Linda Ford - Proximal (2001)
6. Laura Splan - (e)merge (fragment of a 2 hour loop)
(2001)
7. Ann Marie Lanesey - SunSations (2002)
8. Sharon Anderson - Surface Tension (2002)
9. Bob Griffin - Lo (2000)
10. Mark Siska - ITTO (In through The Out) (2002)
11. Jorge Boehringer - Biography (fragment) (2001)
12. Rebekah Rutkoff - X-mas Yoghurt (2000)
13. Kevin Jones - Fire Lane, Stop & Shop, Puddle, Sky (2002)
14. Monika Weiss - Abiding (Proba Wody) (1999-2000)
15. Leon Grodski - Je vais sur la terre qui ne reste pas (2002)
16. Wago Kreider & Shane Flores (Brooklyn) - Ripple (2002)
17. Ana de la Cueva - Untitled (the last third fragment of the
work)
18. Aaron Baum - Dendritic (2002)
19. James Morgan - Truth (1998)
20. Sarah Pizer-Bush - Pixelated (2001)
21. David Familian - Floating (2002)
22. David Familian - Vortextual Projection (2001)
23. Toban Nichols - Mai'dez Pinwheel (2002)
24. Rise Industries - Traveling to Infinity (2002)
I/O (#4): San Francisco
Sept. 19 - Oct. 17, 2002
11 video works that related to the city of San Francisco, by eight
different artists who were, or had been residing in this city.
1. Chris Johanson - Historical Reenactment (2001)
- 12:15
2. Wago Kreider - Coup d'Oeil (2002)
3. Wago Kreider - The Anticipation of Pleasure (2000)
- 2:45
4. Cindy Imhoff - Be Right There (2001)
5. Jacquelyn Sumell - Estoy Enamorada (2001)
6. Misako Inaoka - Project #1 (2002)
7. Lee Walton - A Somersault (2002)
8. Jessica Tully - Bobcat Ballet (2001) - 8:25
9. Jessica Tully - Aqualistics (2002)8
10. Jessica Tully - Bay Bridge
11. Wayne Zebzda - I miss SF (2002)
I/O (#5): Video Art from the Netherlands
Oct. 17 - Nov. 14, 2002
21 video works by twenty artists from the Netherlands.
1. Michiel van Bakel - Hovering over Wasteland
2. Carla Graft - Escalator Project - Amsterdam - Magna Plaza (fragment)
3. Michal Butink - Ginza
4. Michal Butink - Damrak
5. Radina Dankova - The Junction
6. Hermelinde Hergenhahn - The Garden
7. Arianne Olthaar & Marjolijn van der Meij - Guinee Pig Disco
8. Liselot van der Heijden - Nature
9. Mieke Smits - Skin Self Portrait
10. Mariam Smit - Archeology
11. Brenda Vonk Noordegraaf - Contact
12. Hester Scheurwater - Taste
13. Irem Aydinonat - 5:00; Colour, with Sound
14. Irem Aydinonat - 6:38; Colour, with Sound
15. Yvette Teeuwen - Untitled
16. Ruchama Noorda - Annunciation
17. Sara Rajaei - Veronica & Chantur
18. Christina della Giustina - Casual
19. Ilja den Hollander - Blue Space
20. Irem Aydinonat - 2:19; Colour, with Sound
21. Klaus Boegel & Louis Spoelstra - O
I/O (#6): Scott Stark
Nov. 14 - Dec. 12, 2002
Four video works by San Francisco artist Scott Stark.
1. Scott Stark - Angel Beach (2001)
2. Scott Stark - Slow (2001)
3. Scott Stark - Posers (2000)
4. Scott Stark - in.side.out (1999)
I/O (#7): Epilogue - Michael Rich
Dec. 12 - Dec. 31, 2002
A video work made for the I/O program site by San Francisco artist
Michael Rich.
The final show was a one-work and one-man show. This site-specific
'curtain-call' work featured an interesting play with dark and light,
showing a street view of the gallery window and a silhouette of a
person (of Jason leggiere, the gallery director) doing late office
work. A fitting piece, that perhaps unintentionally also functioned
as a tribute to Jason's years of hard work at the gallery for emerging
artists, and as his goodbye to the city.
1. Michael Rich - Epilogue (2002)
(I/O - The Classics)
One show I immediately had envisioned at the start of I/O,
I unfortunately could not realize this time because of our
limited budget. It would have shown some of my favorite video
art classics from the sixties and seventies. I felt it somehow made
sense in 2002 to show this work in and to San Francisco, partly because
few seemed familiar with it, and I hadn't seen it myself for a while.
And they all felt relevant to the conditions of this program. The
works I had liked to show were by artists Ulay & Abramovich,
Joseph Beuys, Yvonne Rainer, and Bruce Nauman.
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OVERVIEW |
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Title: |
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I/O
- a public video art program
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Place
& Dates: |
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Downtown
San Francisco
Quotidian Gallery, visible only from
the street |
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Jun.
20 - Dec. 31, 2006 |
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Project
consisted out of: |
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During
the closing hours of the Quotidian Gallery in San Francisco,
looping compilations of video art, with works from artists
all over the world, were backlit projected on its unmarked
second floor window facing O'Farrell Street. The work was only
visible from the street, on a historic, art deco decorated,
office building in the middle of San Francisco's highly commercial
downtown shopping district.
I founded, directed, curated, and ran the project, named I/O
- a public video art program, as a public interventionist
and site-specic art work of its own, in collaboration with
the selected works by artists from all over the world. Artists
were encouraged to create work specifically for the site, or
to respond to four-weekly themes that related to the situation.
The selected artists had been directly approached or selected
through open calls. |
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