CLUI exhibition: THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE: Streams of Transit in Southern California's Great Pass

New exhibit at the Center for Land Use Interpretation's Los Angeles location:


THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE: Streams of Transit in Southern California's Great Pass
Exhibit open from April 23, 2010

The mountainous passage that separates the great population of Southern California from the rest of the state is a zone of transit, from one epic region to another. Located at the collision of the San Gabriel and Tehachapi Mountain Ranges, this steep and convoluted terrain lies between the northern edge of the Los Angeles megalopolis and the depopulated place known as Grapevine, at the southern end of the Central Valley. Layers of traffic, water, and energy move like a braided stream through the mountainous terrain, connecting here to there.

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This exhibit is made possible by a grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles and the CLUI Remarkable Roadways Program.

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The Center for Land Use Interpretation
9331 Venice Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232
310.839.5722 office
310.839.6678 fax
clui@clui.org
www.clui.org

Exhibit is open 12 - 5 PM, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, or by appointment.
Admission is free.

Directions

A High Desert Test Sites Lecture & Workshop Series: The New Everyday Life


A High Desert Test Sites Lecture & Workshop Series


HDTS Headquarters
6470 Veterans Way
Joshua Tree, CA 92252

ANNOUNCEMENT

Join us for our premier pilot weekend of The New Everyday Life, a lecture and workshop series that will commence Saturday May 1st-Sunday May 2nd 2010.

In keeping with the HDTS mission to create truly alternative spaces for art that challenges traditional conventions of ownership, presentation and patronage, The New Everyday Life will bring together guest artists and participants whose talent and knowledge varies widely but who all share a desire to approach daily life with a blend of both experimental and practical thinking. For our weekend-long symposium that includes four workshops and an open-air dinner, we will enroll twelve students in an immersive suite of 2 hour classes held in special locations in and around the Morongo Basin.

The New Everyday Live is an endeavor designed to both stimulate conversation and catalyze action by considering overlap between contemporary art and craft, sustainable living, survival skills, ecology and earth science, and cultural variation. Each participant in The New Everyday Life will leave with a new set of skills and inspirations, after intimately experiencing the Mojave desert’s unique context for life and living.

ITINERARY

Saturday May 1st

12:00. Meet for introduction and driving maps at the HDTS Headquarters in sunny downtown Joshua Tree.

12:30 – 2:30 Visit Wells Pollock in his school bus leather working studio encampment on the edge of the marine base and learn how to do bootleg leatherworking using readily available household tools and implements.

3:30 – 5:30 Hang out with Trinie Dalton at A-Z West Cabin and practice bookmaking stitches to make a book about your experience of the desert. (Note: Dalton will contact participants in advance about prep, supplies, and other details to maximize stitch-learning time. Beginners to advanced bookmakers welcome.)

6:30 – 9:30 Travel to section six with Chantale Doyle to learn more about how she lived for one year in her vegi-oil powered VW Vanagon while supporting herself by selling on ebay.

Dinner. Chantale will fix everyone an exotic fish taco dinner on her van's cookstove.

Sunday May 2nd

12:00 – 2:00: Meet on the patio of A-Z West for a beer-making workshop with Katie Grinnan and a goodbye toast with her special honey basil, peach, and ginger brews.

PRESENTER BIOGRAPHIES

Chantale Doyle is an artist who lives in the Mojave desert near Joshua Tree. In 2007 Doyle spent a year living and traveling in a Volkswagen van powered by waste vegetable oil, which she learned to collect from dumpsters and filter to use as fuel for her vehicle. While traveling through twenty-four states and three provinces, Doyle created an exhibition of drawings that was shown in Japan, Canada and California in 2009. Doyle is now at work on a book about her experiences and continuing her efforts to live in a manner that nurtures creative independence. She owns Mt. Fuji General Store, next door to the HDTS headquarters.

For more info: http://web.mac.com/chandoyle/Site/Events/Entries/2009/10/18_Chantale_Doyle.html

http://www.chantaledoyle.com/


Wells Pollock was born on a Minnesota commune. Before moving to Joshua Tree to start a goat farm, he lived in New York City, the Mississippi River Valley, Spain, Holland and San Francisco, organizing experimental film screenings and music events. As a performance artist he once threw a year-long conceptual art and psychic orgy in Iowa City. He’s done everything from renovating a 16th century goat shack in southern Spain to cooking on a squatted boat in Amsterdam. He learned leatherworking at an S&M factory in San Francisco. Of this he says, “Leatherworking is one of humankind's most basic crafts. Unfortunately, most of it now doesn't match up with anybody's visions. My goal is to help people realize their dreams of belts, collars, wristbands and so much more. I like making things that are beautiful, functional and that my friends can still afford! Most of the leather I use is salvaged and I am working on designing my own hardware.” Pollock lives in a renovated school bus on the Copper Mountain Mesa.

Trinie Dalton has authored, curated, and/or co-edited five books: Wide Eyed (Akashic), A Unicorn Is Born (Abrams), Dear New Girl or Whatever Your Name Is (McSweeney's), Mythtym (Picturebox) and Sweet Tomb (Madras Press). Her books vary between pure text and experiments with art + image. She teaches bookarts at NYU and Pratt, and exhibits or builds lectures around her handmade books’ subject matter. Her most recent event/exhibitions were at Deitch Projects in New York for Gelatin’s PIG Sunday School series, and at Las Cienegas Projects in Los Angeles. Her next book will be published by Ecstatic Peace Library.

For more info: http://sweettomb.com/

Katie Grinnan is an internationally exhibiting artist from Los Angeles. Her work focuses on using imagery and physicality to exploit the alchemical nature of perception and space. Her interest in making beer began by happenstance, stopping into a beer making shop and realizing that beer is a sort of homespun alchemical process. It's everyday magic. Her beer is called Wizard Brew.


LOGISITICS

Cost:

The cost is $120 per person for the weekend that includes Chantale's fish taco dinner. All proceeds are used to cover basic event expenses and to pay the speakers.

Enrollment:

Due to the intimate nature of this event the group will be limited to twelve people. No application is needed, but spaces will be filled on a first come first serve basis. If you would like to enroll please email info.hdts@gmail.com – you will be emailed instructions so that you can pay via Paypal, the first 12 people who pay will be signed up for the course.

Lodging:

A limited amount of campsites are available on Zittel’s property, and can be pre-arranged with the host on a first come, first serve basis. Alternately, camping in Joshua Tree National Park or staying in a local hotel are excellent options. For lodging recommendations please visit the HDTS website’s Directions page.

For future updates and event listings for future incarnations of The New Everyday Life email us at info.hdts@gmail.com

EXPERIENTIAL GEOGRAPHY 101

New Works: Experiential Geography 101

EXPERIENTIAL GEOGRAPHY 101 is a journey deep inside KARL CRONIN's idiosyncratic research, presented with footnotes and nerdy flare. A mash-up of performance, natural history lecture, and cognitive science experiment, this is dance masquerading as a graduate seminar. Through movement, spoken word, and film, the beauty of our natural world is revealed one layer at a time.

http://experientialgeography.com/

KARL CRONIN is a NYC-based movement artist who is creating and performing a Somatic Natural History Archive of the USA. Each day he spends time with a different plant or animal species, and then brings his experiences back to the studio where he creates a movement sketch. New archive entries are presented in a weekly, free performance offering. This work is a direct result of creative research support provided by the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art Nature and Dance (iLAND- NYC), Movement Research (NYC), and the Santa Fe Art Institute (NM).

MEREDITH JAMES AT Marc Jancou Contemporary

MEREDITH JAMES
ESPALIER
APRIL 17-MAY 22, 2010
OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, APRIL 17TH, 6-8 PM



ennouncement Featured Image
See-Through, detail


Marc Jancou Contemporary is pleased to announce Meredith James' first solo show in New York, Espalier.

Meredith James' videos and sculptures engage architectural space and sequential narrative through a series of inversions and perceptual events. Shot in an abandoned subway station, Six uses simple in-camera techniques to recast the spatial and temporal coordinates of the experience of a passing train. Not unlike early experiments in film, James' work tends to lay bare its mechanism, preferring to acknowledge the perceptual shifts even as they occur. Carefully structured time lags are distributed between moments of recognition within the narrative structure of a video or the spatial arrangement of sculptural elements.

James' use of unconventional viewing apparatuses compounds the experience; videos are rear-projected inside homemade TVs and sculptures sit behind walls. See-Through is a tubular knot constructed of found windows, which are fit together, and then built into a temporary wall. As in her videos, James reveals the structure of the piece by creating alternate vantage points and entries into the work. The diorama titled "A stand of roadside cholla against which small birds had been driven by the storm and there impaled" may be seen either through a tiny peephole or through the prism of windows in See-Through.

Born in 1982, James lives and works in New York. She received her MFA from Yale University, and her BA from Harvard University. Recent group exhibitions include Symbol Rush, Newman Popiashvili, New York; Experiment, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Kings County Biennial (curated by Kidd Yellin and James Fuentes), Kid Yellin, New York; People Weekly (curated by Linda Norden), The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York; Careerists and Visionaries (curated by Jacques Louis Vidal), Marc Jancou Contemporary, New York; and Labyrinthitis, Rivington Arms, New York.

For more information please contact Kelly Woods at kelly@marcjancou.com.


Marc Jancou Contemporary
NEW ADDRESS
524 WEST 24TH STREET
New York, New York 10011
T 212 473 2100 F 212 473 2222
WWW.MARCJANCOU.COM
info@marcjancou.com

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE CONSTRUCTED ENVIRONMENT


INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE CONSTRUCTED ENVIRONMENT
Venice, Italy
17-19 November 2010
http://www.ConstructedEnvironment.com/conference-2010/

This year's conference will be held in Venice, Italy alongside the 12th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. The Constructed Environment Conference is a place to explore the forms and functions of the constructed environment during a time of dramatic and at times disruptive change. The conference is a cross-disciplinary forum that brings together researchers, teachers and practitioners to discuss the past character and future shape of the built environment. The resulting conversations weave between the theoretical and the empirical, research and application, market pragmatics and social idealism. In professional and disciplinary terms, the conference traverses a broad sweep to construct a transdisciplinary dialogue which encompasses the perspectives and practices of: architecture, anthropology, business, design, economics, education, engineering, environmental design, industrial design, interior design, landscape architecture, sociology, town and regional planning, and transportation.

As well as an international line-up of plenary speakers, the conference will also include numerous paper, workshop and colloquium presentations by practitioners, teachers and researchers. Participants are invited to submit a presentation proposal for a 30-minute paper, 60-minute workshop, or a jointly presented 90-minute colloquium session.

Presenters may choose to submit written papers for publication in the refereed International Journal of the Constructed Environment. If you are unable to attend the conference in person, virtual registrations are also available which allow you to submit a paper for refereeing and possible publication, as well as access to the journal. We also encourage you to present on the conference YouTube Channel. Please select the online sessions link on the conference website for further details.

The deadline for the next round in the call for papers (a title and short abstract) is 13 May 2010. Future deadlines will be announced on the conference website after this date. Proposals are reviewed within two weeks of submission. Full details of the conference, including an online proposal submission form, may be found on the conference website at http://www.ConstructedEnvironment.com/conference-2010/ .

Contact:
Prof. Jeffery S. Poss
School of Architecture
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
For the Advisory Board, International Conference on the Constructed Environment and The International Journal of the Constructed Environment

RESIDENCY APPLICATION: PLAND, Practice Liberating Art through Necessary Dislocation

Be a Resident at PLAND!

Residency Overview and Application Form


APPLICATIONS DUE: MAY 10 at pland.info@gmail.com

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PLAND, Practice Liberating Art through Necessary Dislocation, is an off-the-grid residency program that supports the development of experimental and research-based projects in the context of the Taos mesa. PLAND finds its inspiration in a legacy of pioneers, entrepreneurs, homesteaders, artists, and other counterculturalists who – through both radical and mundane activities – reclaim and reframe a land-based notion of the American Dream. While producing open-ended experimental projects that facilitate collaboration and hyper-local engagement, PLAND is a constantly evolving, art-informed rural outpost in the New Mexican high desert. Through project-based residencies and work parties, residents are encouraged to marry survival-based goals with big ideas and experimental methods. Without expectations about prescribed outcomes, PLAND privileges process over product. We believe that people that can do amazing things when supported and encouraged in new contexts and there is no context like that of the Taos mesa. Part alternative school, part laboratory, part homestead, part art studio, PLAND is an active solution for merging art into life.

Download the RESIDENCY APPLICATION FORM:
Word
or pdf

Who may apply:
If you are a worker, maker, thinker, or doer who brings self-awareness, experimental processes and creativity to what you do – and PLAND sparks some ideas for you – then you are eligible to apply for a residency.

What it means:
PLAND is a burgeoning program – an idea associated with a specific location and new forms of production. We believe that a place is made by living in it and we want you to help us make PLAND by being here, by living it. Through an active reinvestment in daily life and by collaborating with amazing people, we aim to not only cultivate PLAND but also to test new ways of being in the world. That said, we invite you to propose a project that will involve some level of collaboration with us and with the place. While we don’t expect you to be familiar with the Taos mesa in detail before you arrive, the most successful project will be site-responsive in that it considers localized geography, history, culture, language, architectural traditions or otherwise. We are interested in proposals that might problem-solve our water situation or result in a garden, but we’re equally as interested in pairing you with our neighbor Bob (who has woven homes out of willows) or facilitating a collaboration with the local community center. For us, building community is as important as building shelter.

Prior to your arrival, we’ll have on-going conversations about your residency at PLAND. We’ll let you know when we score some second-hand windows, how we managed to buy the chain saw, who we met that reminded us of you… you’ll basically become part of it all so that when you arrive you’re ready, you’re here, you’re home.

What to expect:
PLAND has only just begun! In 2009 we purchased 1.25 acres of high desert at a land auction. The land is raw – no electricity or water and the road is rough but short. Situated approximately 40 miles northwest of Taos, PLAND is a rural outpost on the edge of the ever-nearing grid. As we draft this call for proposals, the land sits under a new covering of snow and until the ground thaws and we’ve relocated our lives to the mesa, the building has yet to begin. Never fear! By the time you arrive, we’ll have an outhouse, a way to cook and clean, and some form of shelter in which to sleep. Be aware that this is not the residency during which you will make paintings or write novels. We do not have studio spaces nor is this residency about working in isolation. Although humble, rugged, and not without its plentiful share of hardship, we offer you the opportunity to get in touch with the basics. Water, shelter, fire, weather, dinner, blue, people, time and space – all of these elements become the daily luxuries in which you’re invited to indulge.

We provide:
- a compelling context
- localized access to neighbors, materials, possibilities
- loads of local secrets like where to get a shower, where to find wild asparagus, how to battle the heat
- opportunities to collaborate with locals and with us
- outings into town for laundry, cuisine, nightlife, internet, etc.
- outings into the wilds for foraging, hot springs, recreation, etc.
- (wo)man power! We will help produce and build your project. Yes, that means we’re working side-by-side, day-by-day
- a growing library of manuals, almanacs, maps, novels and children’s books
- the tools we have on hand
- the materials we’re able to gather
- shelter
- water
- first-aid kit
- collaboratively cooked dinners
- conversation
- presentation of your work on our website
- a trickle of fascinated and fascinating visitors, all willing to help out
- transportation to Texas for a report to our funders, the Idea Fund
- contextualization and amplification of your project to a broad audience
- modest stipend for materials, travel, tequila, whatever

You provide:
- transportation to Taos
- food
- basic survival stuff (canteen, flashlight, work shoes, etc.)
- ideas and inspiration
- a good attitude
- flexibility regarding your proposal – everything might change once you arrive!
- a continuous 2-4 week commitment to being at PLAND
- means of documenting your work
- a waiver stating that you come to PLAND at your own risk

Application process:
First let us state that although we can only choose one resident, we hope to receive a lot of proposals so as to assess the broad appeal of PLAND. Based on your proposals, we’ll know who is interested in this place and why and, henceforth, how to plan our future around a set of collective interests.

By May 10:
1)
Email completed application form, with additional pages and supporting materials as necessary, to pland.info@gmail.com

2) Send $15 application fee/gesture of support:

via PayPal:
click on the “Donate” button at the top right-hand side of this webpage

OR

via postal mail: please note that this is a P.O. Box, so please do not send large packages
Nina Elder/PLAND
423 State Road 150
El Prado, NM
87529

By May 31:
We will contact you to let you know if you should start packing.

Why an application fee?
Part of the experiment of PLAND is about resource sharing. While we could make excuses about administration costs, we prefer to think of the application fee as a statement of support. Your fees will go directly into building PLAND, both physically and conceptually and will signal that you believe in what we’re doing. We’ll put your money towards something we really need – like firewood or a cistern or a generator or a chain saw – and we’ll list you as a supporter on our website.

Another part of the PLAND agenda is to forge alternative and hybrid economies, so know that we’re open to some non-monetary methods of support. If you prefer an alternative, simply choose something that you think we’ll need, or check our website Wish List, and send it to our physical mailing address. Be sure to specify your method of contribution in the email application form.

Got questions? We’re sure you do! Just ask ‘em at pland.info@gmail.com