Wednesday, April 16, 5-8 p.m.
Friday, April 18, 3-6 p.m.
Black Room Screening: Blackboxing, 2007
by Mariana Castillo Debal
Video projection
30 mins.

Music: Time rehearsal, Santiago Santero; Mambo 27, Perez Prado.
Voice: Nawroz Abbany and Seamus Cater

Mariana Castillo Debal's video takes the concept of "blackboxing" as its point of departure. This term refers to the way scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success. When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one need focus only on its inputs and outputs, not on its internal complexity. As a result, the more science and technology succeed, the more obscure they become. "Blackboxing" is the process that makes the joint production of actors and artifacts entirely opaque. Castillo Debal is interested in devices, individuals, and events that evade this effect: unfinished stories, ambiguous characters, incomplete objects and so on. These elements typically belong to a process from which they were excluded, or their interests and links belong to different categories, making it impossible to fix them in a specific place. In her work, these fragmented pieces of imaginary machinery lead to chain reactions, as if each part might be trying to find a connection, a tiny place to settle for a while.

Thursday, April 3, 6:30 p.m.
RIOT SHOW

Critic and art historian Julian Myers will present audio and video recordings of so-called “riot shows,” rock concerts when the audience actively intervenes in the performance, forcing the band to end the show unexpectedly. The presentation will include disrupted performances by Suicide, Black Sabbath, Cabaret Voltaire, Morrissey, Public Image Ltd., and Guns 'N' Roses, and will incorporate brief descriptions of the circumstances and particularities of each event. Strange, funny, boring and scary in turns, these recordings allow us to perceive certain intensities and instabilities the heart of the rock concert, and perhaps in spectacular entertainment in general.

Julian Myers
is the author of numerous articles, including "The Future as Fetish" and “If it need be termed surrender, then let it be so,” appearing in publications such as Documents, October, Afterall, frieze, and elsewhere. His published works include Ellsworth Kelly in San Francisco (2002), Sightlines (2005), Super-Pride and Super Prejudice (2005) and Zoe Crosher: Out the Window (2006). He has held teaching positions at the University of California, Davis, San Francisco Art Institute, and University of California, Santa Cruz. He received his PhD in Art History from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2006. Julian Myers is currently an assistant professor at California College of the Arts.

Julian Myers, Riot Show (Guns 'N' Roses, St. Louis, 1991)

Saturday, April 5, 5:30 p.m.
Mirror-Travel in the Motor City: A conversation between Edgar Arceneaux and Julian Myers

Artist Edgar Arceneaux and writer Julian Myers will present for the first time in New York their ongoing investigation of subterranean Detroit, including discussion of Michael Heizer’s 1971 Earthwork Dragged Mass; the buried basement at Clairmont and Rosa Parks Boulevard where began the urban riots of 1967; Etta James and Sugar Pie DeSanto’s 1966 single “In the Basement;” and “The Submerge’d,” afro-futuristic worlds of Underground Resistance and Drexciya. The first conversation of Mirror-Travel in the Motor City was presented in 2007 at New Langton Arts in San Francisco.

Edgar Arceneaux
Los Angeles-based artist Edgar Arceneaux has had solo exhibitions at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects (2006); REDCAT, Los Angeles and Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz (2006); SFMOMA, San Francisco (2005); Kunstwerke Museum, Berlin (2005); Galerie Kamm, Berlin (2004); Witte de With Museum, Roterdam (2004); Kunstverein, Ulm (2003); Frehrkring Wiesehoefer, Cologne (2003); and The Studio Museum of Harlem, New York (2002). Recent group shows include Whitney Biennial (2008) Tomorrowland: CalArts in Moving Pictures, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006); Uncertain States of America, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Art, Oslo (2005); Quicksand, The Appel, Amsterdam (2004); True Stories, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2003); and Social Strategies: Redefining Social Realism, University Art Museum, Santa Barbara (2003). Arceneaux received his BFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California (1996) and his MFA from the California Institute of Arts in Valencia, California (2001). Arcenaux lives and works in Los Angeles.

Saturday, February 16, 5:30 p.m.*
Lofty Pursuits video and conversation with Rosten Woo
*Please note that participation for this event is limited to 24.

As part of On Being An Exhibition, a group exhibition at Artists Space that explored the reciprocal relationship between artists and the infrastructure of the art space, The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) organized a talk-show style event in November 2007 entitled Lofty Pursuits. Taking a step back from the microcosm of the exhibition, CUP poses questions about artists' involvement in the urban ecology, implicating the exhibition and gallery as a capsule of culture that can inflect the value of a neighborhood.

On Saturday February 16th, Artists Space curator Joseph del Pesco will host a follow-up conversation with CUP's Rosten Woo after a video screening of documentation from the Lofty Pursuits talk show event.

With Lofty Pursuits, CUP staged a conversation between urbanist and sociologist Sharon Zukin and real estate developer Jed Walentas, vice-president of Two Trees. Zukin has published several books examining urban culture including "Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change" (1982), a landmark work on the transformation of SoHo from manufacturing space to cultural locus to residential lofts. Ostensibly taking cues from this history, Walentas and the Two Trees corporation began their own project of transformation, changing Brooklyn's post- industrial waterfront into a residential neighborhood. During their conversation Zukin and Walentas discussed culture, capital, and real estate from SoHo to DUMBO.

View video of the conversation part 1 of 3

View video of the conversation part 2 of 3

View video of the conversation part 3 of 3

View video of the discussion

Saturday, January 26, 5:30 p.m.
A history of performance in 20 minutes:
A conference by Guillaume Désanges

View video of the conference part 1 of 3

View video of the conference part 2 of 3

View video of the conference part 3 of 3

A history of performance in 20 minutes is a conference that aims at dividing the history of performance into 10 gestures:

1. Appearing, 2. Receiving, 3. Holding back, 4. Escaping, 5. Aiming, 6.Falling, 7. Crying, 8. Biting, 9. Empting oneself, 10. Disappearing, discussing very subjectively those 10 gesture in a rather performative form.

Guillaume Désanges (born in 1971, lives in Paris ) is curator, critic, and co-founder of Work Method, a Paris based agency for artistic projects. A member of the editorial board of Trouble Magazine, he collaborates with the magazines Exit Express and Exit Book ( Madrid ). He has coordinated projects such as Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers between 2001 and 2007, and worked with Thomas Hirschhorn (the 24h Foucault project, and Musée Précaire Albinet). Désange is currently an invited curator at Centre d'Art Contemporain La Tôlerie and teaches at Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Clermont-Ferrand.

Saturday, January 12, 5:30 p.m.
Ebb and Flood: Three lectures on Currency

Ebb and Flood is a series of three short lectures addressing issues of currency. Discussions include:

Marie Lorenz: Hell Gate
Hell gate, a narrow strait at the convergence of the East River and Harlem River, has the second fastest tidal current on the planet and is the site of the second largest civic disaster to happen in New York City (in terms of lives lost). Marie Lorenz will talk about the current in Hell Gate and how to swim out if you find yourself there.

F. Math Lorenz: Case Studies in Currency Events
A monetary unit is a thing of value in more ways than one. Money can be treated as legal tender, a historical document, as well as a tool of utility. The notion of "relative rarity as a value index" will be discussed along with specific case studies that illustrate the fluid nature of currency.

Melissa Brown: Power Ball
Is it possible to 'beat the system'? Melissa Brown will talk about methods to chart, tally and capitalize on idiosyncrasies within the New York Power Ball game.