Hello all! I'm gearing up for another Shine A Light evening at the Portland art museum this October. Last year I created a card game called Apples to Apples/Art and Labor (pictured here.) This year I'm facilitating a "Teaching Collection" and I can't do it alone. I need your help! Here is what I'm looking for...
Wanted: Locals (Portland area) to participate in a project titled “The Teaching Collection”
What your participation would entail:
1.) Visiting the Portland Art Museum with me (no cost to you) to explore their collections.
2.) Have a discussion with me about an object/s in the collection that have meaning for you; or the lack of an object with meaning for you.
3.) Select an item from your home that has meaning for you.
4.) Give me permission to photograph and display your object in the Portland Art Museum for one evening.
5.) Approval of or collaboration on an interpretive text that will accompany your object, and appear in a catalog of the project.
6.) Attend Shine A Light on Friday evening October 15th and tell people about your object.
Please contact me if you are interested, or want more information.
lendmeanobject@gmail.com
Thanks!
My intention is multifaceted. Conceptually I want to point to the fact that the majority of objects/works in the museum's collection once lived in someone's home, were part of someone's life/culture and had a personal meaning and function for that person. We look at these objects in a museum often to learn about how life was lived in a certain place and time, however we rarely know the relationship the original owner had to the objects we see.
I would like to honor the importance of our (everyday contemporary people) objects and the roles they play in our lives. It is my intention that the objects lent to this project will teach us something about one slice of one life right now in Portland. By putting participants objects and information about those objects within an institution I hope to inspire others to consider differently the things they live with and learn from.
I am also personally excited about what I will learn from this project.
I have no preference as to the type of object, it could be the most mundane, the most precious, or anything in between.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Lend Me an Object?
Friday, July 30, 2010
Boycott Polls?
Boycott polls?
I have long considered polls to be pointless at best and evil manipulations at worst, but I participate in them out of morbid curiosity. Long gone is the day when I thought I was helping to shape the public discourse by virtue of my participation. Now I participate in order to experience an unhealthy sort of pleasure from criticizing a polls design and guessing at the agenda behind it.
On the face of it taking a poll seems neutral enough; answer a few questions, the same questions that everyone else is answering. But the questions often (almost always) offer false or impossible (impossible to answer honestly) choices, either by the allowed responses, or the vague wording of the questions themselves.
“Should the government pursue the common good by limiting certain individual freedoms” is one question I was asked on a poll yesterday. This question is in itself a definition of government. The question is meaningless unless I know what is the definition of common good we are referring to, or what certain freedoms are being limited. How can I honestly answer Yes or No to such a vague question?
“Should the government address climate change by establishing a cap and trade on carbon emissions?”
“Should the government protect Americans by holding terrorist suspects indefinitely with out charge?”
Both of these questions are more specific questions that fit within the one actually asked and both are more likely to cull an actual opinion.
Quoting existent reality in the form of a question without acknowledgement, and with out offering nuanced options for response signals to me an unspoken agenda.
I have no idea how this data is being used, or what context the results will be made public. I can assume however that the results will be embedded in a context other that a complete record of all the questions and the data they generated.
A poll I participated in a couple of years ago asked many questions about the role of prisons in Oregon, offering reasonable options for response. The main thrust seemed to be gauging attitudes along a continuum of a strong belief in rehabilitation and discretionary sentencing, to a strong belief in punitive and mandatory sentencing. There were also some relatively subtle questions about the division of limited resources, how much for prisons and how much for education. I was thinking that it was one of the better polls I had participated in until the last question. I can’t remember the exact wording of the question but it was rather sly. Hidden within a lengthy scenario describing prison reforms, was a small statement about victims’ rights (the only mention of victims’ rights in the entire poll.) When I asked the pollster to repeat the question it became apparent that the real question was about diverting money from rehabilitation to a victims’ rights program.
I believe this poll was set up for the sole purpose of getting an affirmative response to this last misleading question and was commissioned by supporters of a related initiative on an upcoming ballot.
This last example is a variation on the classic “push poll” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_poll
It is time for me to forgo my morbid curiosity and “just say no” to polls. It wasn’t that I learned something new from the poll I participated in yesterday rather; I realize that if I keep participating I will continue to be part of the problem.
I am taking the pledge to give up participating in polls. I guess I’ll have to find another satisfaction for my morbid curiosity. Suggestions?
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Tuesday, April 6, 2010
An update of recent goings on....
Hello strangers, I’m just checking in to tell you all what I’ve been up to. First, since last April, I’ve been working with Project Grow, which is an amazing shared studio and organic urban farming program in North Portland. I get to work with my colleagues,all artists and farmers on various projects, curate shows and generally learn about life and meaning from some of the best teachers I have ever had! LINK
I went to NYC in February with Laurel Kurtz to participate in The Incidental Person at Apexart. Laurel and I did a new version of Public Speaking, we collaborated this time with Dale Blagrove from Pride Toastmasters which is based in district 46, as is the gallery. Laurel and I spent our days gathering words in response to the question: What’s on your mind, and our evenings/early mornings typing up transcripts of gathered words. The speeches, the words, were presented at Union Square subway station over two hours on a Friday afternoon, we even had a guest appearance by a local Portland Toastmaster, Barbara Berger (Barbara was our mentor in the Civil Tongues toastmasters club, she just happened to be in town).
We also spent a lot of evenings hanging at Daddy’s which became our local in Brooklyn (right down the street from where we were staying with Ken Butler.) At Daddy’s we also met some wonderful people who contributed to our project, and generally made us feel right at home for the week we were there. We started our mornings at The Bean Bar, a great coffee shop also near us that had free wi fi and a wonderful cast of regulars.
The Curator of The Incidental Person was Antony Hudek, Antony is also one half of the independent publisher: Occasional Papers There was so much going on and we were so busy with our project that were barely able to participate in much of the larger project. Some highlights for me were: The panel discussions between Claire Bishop, Noa Latham, Julie Martin, Barbara Steveni and Stephen Wright and the skype discussion with Barbara Stevini facilitated byBasekamp, Philadelphia, hosted by Scott Rigby, Stephen Wright. And the Incidental Pancake celebration that capped the entire show at Bubby’s (a Hannah Jickling and Helen Reed project) was truly wonderful.
In December I was part of a group residency at Betonsalon in Paris. As a group we did an alternative Info Point for the new ZAC district that is being made. We basically met with local people and assisted them in creating something like a science fair exhibit that they would present to visitors on the occasion of the “opening.” This info point was a place to learn a little bit about the knowledge base and interests of people who live and work in the community. I worked with an amazing woman, Claire Chomasse, we met randomly and were able to work together sans translator because we both speak broken Italian as a second language. Claire could have chosen to present on any number of topics as she is a passionate participator in many areas, but she chose to focus on her work with the Non La Pub campaign. This is a campaign to raise awareness about abusive advertising and its effects on civil society.
While in Paris I also worked with Association Aurore, and Project Grow to facilitate a long distance dialogue between the artists at Project Grow and Parisians. This project was done with invaluable collaboration from Laurel Kurtz and Mark Johndahl in Portland. The result was an edited video of conversation back and forth over three weeks. The video screened in Paris at the Betonsalon opening inside of a tent situated just outside the gallery. The tent titled Space Comune was a collaboration with Ana Monteiro an intern at Betonsalon. Ana and I had a conversation that led us to agree that what this new community lacks is a place to be, intimate public space. The tent was our gesture towards providing an intimate public space, and to my mind illustrated the need. The tent moved around the area near the gallery and Paris 7 University, there was a map of possible tent locations available at the gallery and inside the tent.
I also got to teach a class at PSU last term (winter) Intro to Drawing. I loved it, a lot of work in a way, such a diverse group of students in terms of background and ability, it was a challenge to connect with each of them where they are, but I loved it, and by and large the students were great.
I am teaching this term at PCC Cascade which is amazing. When I first came to Portland in the early 80’s I took some classes at Cascade Campus, and again in the 90’s when I decided I needed to get some “marketable skills”. I feel really attached to and supportive of the mission of PCC, and one of the things I perceive that mission to be is ACCESSIBILITY! Had I not had my experiences at PCC I can pretty much guarantee that I never would have felt able to pursue a University program. So, this is a beautiful opportunity to give back, and also a lot of pressure: Can I be a difference to students the way that some of the faculty at PCC were for me? I’m hoping I can, and I am stunned by the poetic symmetry of this situation.
Type rest of the post here