Here, There, Everywhere

“Here, There, Everywhere” is AC’s first virtual art exhibition. The series will include virtual art openings, artist panel discussions, and web-based series focusing on the impact of COVID-19 on the art world.

Being based in New York, one of the most populated cities in the world, we knew this would tremendously impact New Yorker livelihood, but we wanted to touch base all over the planet; gather first person accounts of what is going on, how everyone is taking precaution, and continuing to live life in a quarantined state. How are artists continuing their practice? How are we maintaining connectivity? How do we evolve our practice to tackle these new living conditions?

Geoff Bright, Gillian Whiteley, Walt Shaw

Daily into the Blue (8’11”)

[the gathering…the chewing] + Walt Shaw
Geoff Bright - Roland Aerophone, Gillian Whiteley – digital keyboard
Walt Shaw – percussion, mainly on home-made instruments

This piece was produced under lockdown conditions, hence the digital instrumentation. On invitation, our long-time collaborator, Walt Shaw, recorded three short pieces of live improvised percussion. We responded by improvising live to Walt’s pieces and later created the video with source material from the rarely used basement at Eagle Works, a former steel foundry in Sheffield, UK where we have our studio. The piece develops our ongoing preoccupation with articulating what we are calling a ‘politicized practice’. The title is taken from Volume 1 of Ernst Bloch’s monumental rumination on utopia and the imagination, The Principle of Hope (originally published in Germany in 1959). We were inspired by the following from the section ‘Daily into the Blue’.

Later we reach out more confidently. Wish ourselves where things are named more
clearly…the homely den must never venture too far into the dream. It must remain a
place the lizard has not yet violated, the butterfly not yet threatened. From here
what we like doing best is playing and collecting window-views, deep and brief
glimpses into otherness…behind which the wished-for distance lies.

Geoff Bright & Gillian Whiteley [the gathering…the chewing]
March 2021


See www.bricolagekitchen.com for more on [the gathering…the chewing].  Also, and presciently, in 2009, AC Institute hosted the first manifestation of bricolagekitchen’s Pan-demonium project, consisting of a multimedia exhibition and accompanying publication exploring the notion of ‘pan-demons’, ‘pan-demics’ and all things ‘pan’ in the light of the global political, ecological and economic situation and viral forces of ‘contagion’ at the time.  

See www.walt shaw.com for more on Walt’s projects.  

CLAUDE CLOSKY

French artist, Claude Closky, created a web series titled “The Confinement”.

A new episode will be aired everyday starting April 7th.

sebastian mahaluf

“In this video I try to show my environment, and how I relate to it.

My way of reaching the world is by measuring the space surround me. This is how I build relationships with others. The problem of communication is the way we socialize. Reaching agreements means entering a different space than yours. But now how? Analyzing the relationships between the objects and bodies that occupy my space, based on measurement and experience.

We are an engine of desire that moves us to respond and demonstrate what we are for our existence. The video main the possibility of recognizing ourselves in a vulnerable place and at the same time in a place of care and essence. We desire, suffer and connect with one another.

-It is usually manifested by the inclination of the trees and posts, the sliding of roads and railways and the appearance of cracks-.

We crawl, we slide. We move slowly and carefully. Relationships change. Everything that surrounds us determines us in an incessant, persistent and uninterrupted continuum. What is left from these experiences? Is it possible to stay in a certain context and time? A brand that can last a long time or forever?

This is how we build ourselves, based on our relationships. In this project I try to show how I relate to here and now so that it can be observed from another place.”

Sebastian Mahaluf (1976) is an artist and professor in Visual Arts. His work has been exhibited since 1998 in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, USA, China, Italy, France, Philippines, Scotland, Finland, England, Spain and Turkey. Since 1996 he has had a vast educational experience as a professor in visual arts in his country.

Other recent works include “Desplome” installed at the Patricia Ready Gallery in Santiago, Chile: March - April 2020

George Emilio Sanchez

George Emilio Sanchez will be reading for the first time from a piece titled, “Chronicle of an Invisible Enemy First Told”.

The piece is in the making, in the moment, and is fresh off the boat of sheltering in one place called normal was never good enough.

George Emilio Sanchez is a writer, performance artist and social justice activist sheltering in place and social distancing as we speak.  

Most recently he presented the first installment of his series, Performing the Constitution, his solo performance of XIV at Dixon Place.  He was going to be presenting this new work in Los Angeles at Highways Performance next week but that was postponed due to COVID-19.  

Next month he’ll be presenting “Cope-a-Pandemic” with Karen Finley through some medium at La MaMa.

Holly Crawford

Holly Crawford’s poetry performances are an assemblage of ordinary and overlooked, the casual overheard remarks to punctuation and a world now filled with instructions that are juxtaposed into new fragments that are the meat of Crawford’s of Voice Overs and Found Punctuation performances that ask you to play along. What are you going to do for Duchamp’s—after Crawford removed his words—-page filled with periods and a question mark? Get ready!

Performances: The Tate Modern, Beyond Baroque, Bowery Poetry Project, Lakeside Theatre University of Essex and Melbourne International Arts Festival and The Armory Art Fair (AC’s Live in the Limo).

The Platforms Project NET is the first interactive, independent Art Fair in the world.
AC has teamed up in the past two years to exhibit work by Jeanette Doyle (2018), John Neeson (2019) and Elizabeth Grower (2019).

The objective of the project is to map artistic action as it is produced in the context of collective initiatives by artists who decide to join forces in seeking answers to artistic questions by creating the so-called platforms.

“The Silence Drew Off, Laughing With Medusa” (2019-2020) by Holly Crawford is being exhibited by Five Years & Darling Pearls & Co Collaboration. This is a series of 200+ watercolors dealing with ideas of power and abuse.

Geof Huth

Geof Huth creates poems out of text, object, paint, sound, pixel, voice, ink, body, data, and refuse. Much of his work is available in various corners of the Internet. His full-color book of essays and photographs, The Anarchivist, will be released by AC Books in the coming weeks, and a book of his selected visual poems is due out from Timglaset of Malmö, Sweden, later this year. Starting two days after this performance, he will begin a yearlong project during which he will write a 60-line poem every day to someone he knows, and then mail it to that person. He performs any poem of his only once. He lives at the very bottom of Manhattan.

His poetry performances almost always include the recitation of textual poems, the interpretation of unreadable texts, acting, the reading of visual poems created upon or within objects, and singing in a language that does not exist. During this performance, he will likely read a poem about the coronavirus pandemic, a few poems that carry no textual meaning, a poem affixed to a sea lion skull, and a number of one-word poems resting in glass vials.

For his podcast, click here.

Minus plato

Minus Plato (Richard Fletcher) escapes Ohio 2020 for Athens 2017, with a Zoom reading of his daily diary from his book No Philosopher King: An Everyday Guide to Art and Life under Trump (AC Books 2020; distributed by SPD). Encountering the interplay of ancient ruins and contemporary artworks at documenta 14, a collective subject (a 'we') emerges that forges a new form of resistance out of the devastating present moment under Trump.

the aesthetics group

The Aesthetics Group (re)presents a collaborative research poem: Performing a List … From A to Z and back again, first performed at the AC Institute, New York City, in April 2019. The performance was an integral part of the events associated with Jeanette Doyle’s exhibition From A to Z and back again. Both the exhibition and the performance were supported by Culture Ireland.

Reading, Writing, Performance.

The Aesthetics Group is a research group affiliated with The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM). The group include researchers and practitioners from a variety of backgrounds including philosophy, visual art, digital media, theatre and performance. Since 2012, the group has collaboratively engaged with aesthetic theory, practice and policy to develop new critical positions in aesthetics and related fields. An important outcome of this research involves performative pedagogy: the group collaboratively write texts around which performances are enacted. This method of ‘pedagogical performance’ serves to explore the potential of performance as a vehicle for mobilizing philosophic and artistic languages and forms as research.

Cathy O’Carroll is a lighting designer whose work has engaged with performances locally and internationally. Recently she has extended her lighting practice, using written text and scenographic performance, to interrogate the interactive potential of scenography.  Her current artistic research explores the constitutive role of technologies of performance; focusing particularly on the interrelation of scenography, techné and practices of the ‘amateur’.

Mick O’Hara is an artist, writer, and lecturer in Fine Art at TU Dublin. He is an Associate Researcher at GradCAM with the Aesthetics Group and Digital Studies Seminar group. He is also the workshop manager at Firestation Artists Studio. He has published and exhibited nationally and internationally and is currently completing his PhD at GradCAM, TU Dublin. He has published work subjects such as the philosophy of technology, the aesthetics of the post-digital, and the aesthetics of football.

Dr. Connell Vaughan is a Philosopher and a Lecturer in Aesthetics and Critical Theory in the TU Dublin School of Creative Arts. He is an associate researcher with the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM) and committee member of the European Society for Aesthetics. He received a PhD in aesthetics from UCD in 2010.

Jeanette Doyle is an artist and Fiosraigh scholar with GradCAM, the Graduate School for Creative Arts and Media, Dublin. Doyle's work has been exhibited at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, PS1 MoMA, The Andy Warhol Museum, Location One NY, The Research Pavilion Venice and the Beijing Biennale. Doyle is also a member of The Enquiry which is hosted by the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Her most recent exhibition in NY was entitled 'From A to Z and Back Again' at the AC Institute which was supported by Culture Ireland.

Roderick Coover and Krzysztof Wołek including Ewa Wójtowicz

A surreal, lyrical cinematic art experience for 360 cinema, domes and other immersive formats.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/438841198

Media artist Roderick Coover and composer Krzysztof Wołek are joined by discussant Ewa Wójtowicz in presentation of The Key To Time, which  is an imaginative, immersive, cinematic art experience designed for 360 cinemas, domes, and other immersive formats. The Key To Time offers a surreal and lyrical, dream-like experience that bridges early cinema and virtual reality.

Filmed at the CeTA Studios in Wroclaw, Poland, and created using 3-D 360 degree cinema technologies, the experience plunges viewers into a dreamlike adventure inside mechanisms of time and cinema itself.

The Key To Time occupies a space between media arts, sound and cinema. Song and dialog elements layer over cinematic sequences filmed silently both in green screen studio settings and natural settings.

The dreamlike story follows Tanek, a scientist who is trapped in the future due to a time-travel accident. His only hope is to travel through dreams. In addressing time, technology and environmental catastrophe, it also echoes themes of classics of early cinema like Arrival of a Train (at Ciotat) and Metropolis. 

The design offers viewers a playful encounter with media forms and their meanings.  The characters hover between natural and animated selves - some drawn in cartoon form and others natural as they past through times and places.

The adventures take place in real and virtual settings. Dialog and song are layered upon the dramatic action performed by award-winning vocalists and actors including Joanna Freszel, Emily Albrink, Katherine Calcamuggio, Chad Sloan, Jesse Donner, Natalia Kalita and Paweł Smagała.  

 This presentation will include the screening of a 10 minute sample of the work, and a discussion about making immersive cinematic projects for large formats, methods of collaboration, and engaging topics of climate, time, and technology through immersive narrative arts, song and sound. This project is one of the +100 works sponsored by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute (IAM).

It was primarily filmed in the green screen studios at CeTA Audio Visual Technology Center in Wroclaw. Additional support was provided by TR Theater Warsaw. Temple University and Louisville University.

Roderick Coover (b. 1967) is the creator or co-creator of vanguard works of digital, interactive and emergent cinema, virtual reality and digital arts such as Altering Shores, The Key To Time, Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project, Toxi•City: A Climate Change Narrativeand The Theory of Time. 

He is also the maker of interactive, documentary films and installations such as Unknown Territories Project,  From Verite to Virtual: Conversations On The Frontiers Of Anthropology And Documentary Film, The Language of Wine: An Anthropology of Work Wine And The Senses and Cultures In Webs: Working In Hypermedia With The Documentary Image. His work is internationally exhibited in art venues and public spaces such as the Venice Biennale, The Nobel Peace Prize Forum, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, and Documenta Madrid and he has received Fulbright, Mellon, Whiting, Spire and LEF awards, among others. He lives in the USA and France.

Krzysztof Wołek (b. 1976) is a composer, improviser, and installation artist. He is currently working as an Associate Professor of Music Composition and a Director of Digital Composition Studies at the University of Louisville. 

He received commissions from the Warsaw Autumn Festival, the Siemens Foundation, SCI/ASCAP, among others, as well as awards, grants and stipends from the University of Chicago, University of Louisville, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Kentucky Arts Council and Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.  His compositions received various awards such as the Prix for Mobile Variations at the Concours Internationaux de Musique et d'Art Sonore Electroacoustiques, Bourges, 2007. Krzysztof's works span a broad spectrum of works from purely acoustic, improvisational and electronic to various forms of multidisciplinary collaborations. They have been presented at various festivals of contemporary music and art in Europe, North America and Asia.