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tnekoradio · 8 years

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五日台北

KMD 與新竹科技大學合作舉辦一場講座，

去香港之前也需要回去一趟看看家人，

決定衝了。

DAY 1 家人陪伴日

到家後散步出門買飲料，經過了小學，和畢業時沒什麼兩樣，不同的是教室的座位少了很多。以前一班有四十幾個人，現在看上去最多二十人。

然後陪阿母到市場買菜，沈浸在叫賣聲和食物的氣味之中。

DAY 2 加國友人感恩局（同步FB）

特別感謝 CW 安排的半日行程，完全開啟了台北藝文冒險的大門。先去了 DigiLog 聲響實驗室聽鬍子店員介紹各種電子音樂器材和Demo，一邊想像認真開始學習之後在SoundCloud上傳自己作品的模樣。

接下來衝傳說中蛋糕很好吃的 Flügel Studio。雖然店裡不能拍照但有人還是偷拍了幾張。也驚奇的在這裡收到了禮物 package: Hatcham Social 的 You Dig the Tunnel, I'll Hide the Soil CD 和一本台北藝穗節活動詳細列表。

快閃的下午茶局之後打Uber前往 Taipei Contemporary Art Center 聽演講。來接我們的車感覺很衝。四面貼滿黑玻璃，車牌上貼了周子瑜的照片，一打開門就飄出電音。司機在短短的路程，和我們分享他經營地下賭場失利之後來開Uber的起伏人生，還有載到的各種怪奇客人。

到了人擠人的演講現場，一邊飆汗，一邊玩Instagram的新功能，一邊聽著 Whitney Vangrin 的表演歷程。因為沒先看過她的表演，一直在恍神，但耳朵還是被 "表演的意義"，“這個夏天的各種國際事件讓很多人傷心”，"我在紐時身邊總是充滿著啟發我創作的夥伴"，"1:1工作室是不以金錢為目的存在“ 等片語抓到了些共鳴。

晚食路癡們決定進擊寧夏夜市，在最熱鬧的地方吃著臭豆腐聊著農曆七月的禁忌獵奇話題和分析某神秘人士的星座走勢盤。最後以公車坐過站結束這回合。

總之發現了台北有這麼多新奇的活動可以參加，接下來開始期待下次回來 FabLab 的參訪和各種藝穗節的節目了。

DAY 3 學術日

一早搭高鐵去新竹，看到了北門的建築，比想像中的小了好多，誰可以告訴我到底是不是，對我懶得查 Google Map

下午到了學校，台下台上都看到了許多熟悉面孔，還有 T 醬！

對了，話說.....算了說了都是淚

在新竹一泊之後和好久不見的菲沙豆腐姐弟吃飯，豆腐弟在新竹開了一家素食餐廳混的風聲水起。

DAY 4 鼎泰豐之日

鼎泰豐是每次回台的固定行程了，永和徐老闆爽快答應陪吃。菜肉蒸餃和豆沙小包絕對是味覺的SPA，大滿足。

DAY 5 再見台北

一早前往機場，一往匆忙，see you Taipei。

#nomad

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riotofperfume · 11 years

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INTERVIEW Jarrett Earnest, Leigha Mason, Alex Sloane, and Whitney Vangrin of 1:1

1:1 is a new project space in New York’s Lower East Side founded by artists Jarrett Earnest, Leigha Mason, Alex Sloane, and Whitney Vangrin. Since celebrating its opening on March 10, the space already boasts an impressive and diverse schedule of exhibitions, performances, and collaborative events.Riot of Perfume visited 121 Essex Street 2nd floor to discuss 1:1’s development.

Desi Gonzalez: I love the part of your mission statement in which you describe your space as “welcom[ing] contradiction.” I think this is a great place to start. Can you tell me more about how 1:1 welcomes contradiction?

Leigha Mason: The foundation of 1:1 is the social possibilities of a physical space, which I think is inevitably full of contradictions. We aren’t trying to deconstruct something in order to install a solution, but more to excite a series of activity. It isn’t a pessimistic project, but I don’t believe in utopia either. We aren’t interested in policing ourselves.

Jarrett Earnest: “We welcome contradiction” refers to how we’re treating the space in the way we frame it, both in language and the way we organize events. We’re advocating for certain artists or practices, and we stand behind what we believe in, but that should never be hammered down. To be against contradiction in that sense, or even simply “changing your mind” would be castrating and very conservative.

Alex Sloane: We really are a whole mix of contradictions. None of us have the same idea of what this place is, and that’s kind of what makes it work.

Gonzalez: How did 1:1 come together? When did you four first conceive of the space, and when did it finally open?

Sloane: Our grand opening was on the eve of March 10. We moved in on March 1 and only had a 9 day turn-around for the actual space in terms of cleaning it up, painting, installing the show, etc. But the idea to open a space as an art project had been brewing in each of us for months. We had all sorts of ideas, this desire for something different.

Whitney Vangrin: It wasn’t just a desire – it was a necessity.

Mason: Yes, I found it impossible to exist in the presented, systematic way of living. It was totally necessary for me to carve out my own space, or else I was going to die.

Earnest: Putting up shows is always, inherently, making an argument, even if it is indirect. The things that you show, the way that you show them, the whole framework is an argument. I was seeing a lot of arts institutions being hesitant to make judgment calls or advocating strongly for positions. Yesterday, Whitney and I saw The Ungovernables at the New Museum, which is almost like a sociological or half-anthropological view.

Sloane: It’s so removed.

Mason: A survey of neutrality.

Earnest: We’re interested in sincere and playful ideas.

Gonzalez: How did the name 1:1 come about?

Earnest: Our location is 121 Essex Street—one two one. But then we arrived at this image of the proportion 1:1; it encapsulated a lot of things we wanted to do with the space.

Sloane: We had different conceptions of what the ratio represents; Genesis & Chaos, one to one intimate personal interactions, a pouring ratio to mix silicones, it’s infinite!

Gonzalez: How do you all know each other, and how did you come together in establishing this space?

Mason: Whitney, Jarrett and I met when we were 16 and living in Oakland. We all moved to New York at separate times and intersected.

Vangrin: I moved to New York first. I hadn’t seen Jarrett in years, and when he came, we went to see the W.A.C.K. show at PS1. We were both absolutely in love with a lot of feminist artists, and we had such an intense connection over the work. Then Jarrett went back to the West Coast and I didn’t see him, but the following year, Leigha showed up in New York.

Mason: We ran into each other in an elevator.

Gonzalez: That’s amazing.

Vangrin: And then we met Alex, who was coming from across the ocean, and eventually we went back over the ocean—

Sloane: Leigha and Whitney saw a performance that I was workshopping at the time, and they were all brutally honest. Leigha actually attacked me with confetti in the middle of the performance. I was so upset, I broke picture frames and started yelling and bawling. We somehow became friends! Leigha and Whitney were in a show at ICA London last summer, and came to stay with me in Gloucestershire. It was a part of my life in New York coming to see my life in rural England.

Mason: We’ve been together through a lot of intense and stressful situations.

Gonzalez: What are your backgrounds as artists? Whitney, you’re starting a performance here next month, right?

Vangrin: I work as a performance artist but also as a sculptor. The sculpture is always intertwined; it’s something I don’t think will escape my performative work for a long time. I’m interested in the relationships between the performer, the “prop”, and the audience. My last long-term performance was based around Joan Of Arc and Maria Falconetti. I’m attracted to what film actresses experience: the idea that you’re performing but you feel “authentic” and painful emotions at the same time. I also come from a catholic family. In The Joan Cycle, I knelt on a slate slab for nearly 2 hours (among other self-inflicted regimentation). It was a painful thing, but I think there is something in the consciousness of presenting a live female body in pain to an audience and considering what the reaction and responsibility of the audience might be. It’s about what happens to your body when you’re watching another body. I’m now working on a performative triptych that is a sort of continuation of my Joan of Arc work. The first section will be a SWEAT PIECE that I present in April here at 1:1.

Sloane: My performances are also concerned with the complexities between the experience and depiction of the female body. My performances and photographs come out of a very traditional approach to artmaking, I used to do an awful lot of still life paintings. I happen to really love still life paintings, I still do. I think that the still life still holds significance for contemporary art. We all do, 1:1 is actually constructing a massive still life in the Banquet for Artaud here on April 7. Anyways, I moved from painting to making tableaux utilizing my body; there’s generally no movement happening within them. It’s a visual still life with living elements. I’m also very concerned with the distinction between performance for the camera and performance before a live audience, and how this generates different reception.

Mason: I started out doing a lot of image-driven paintings, things about disease, and their political context. Then I got really disillusioned by the idea of making what I felt were passive objects, so I started doing really aggressive performances where I was disrupting lectures, things like that. I was against these factories of role-making. After being involved with some of the Occupation, I realized that actually representation plays a crucial role in protest, and in ‘action’ in general. I’ve been trying to come to terms with recent political implications of modes of representation by making film, since they are, in a way, images and objects but they’re also not.

Gonzalez: Right, they’re not so static.

Mason: Yeah. The work that I have up now at 1:1 is a film I’ve been working on for a while based on a Brecht narrative of BAAL, which is a name that is separately used to communicate both demon and deity. There are some personal experiences that play into the film as well. Even though I’m working on a lot of other things, 1:1 is the most important and lively “work” for me right now.

Gonzalez: I’ve noticed that—how in this space you don’t just produce discrete projects. There is a thread of thought running through all exhibitions, performances, and events. Especially in the way that you incorporate your own work into the space.

Mason: We’re really event-driven. It’s important that we have active bodies that have to navigate the space, and have to navigate each other and various other practices.

Earnest: Obviously the body and performativity are something we’re all very involved in. That’s what connects our work. The public-facing work I do is primarily writing, both in an academic context as a doctoral student in art history, and in criticism for the Brooklyn Rail and other magazines, but I also make performances and draw. I do performances that are based on taking other forms, especially artist talks or lectures, and trying to explode those. The last big one I did was about Dolly Parton and performativity and psychoanalysis.

You mentioned that we incorporate our own work into the space. We’re showing a lot of people who might be our friends, but are also the smartest or most interesting people we know. And necessarily, there would be no reason to do the space if I didn’t feel so strongly about the work of these three women I work with. It would be a crime not to include their work.

Part of what we like doing is taking hero figures, like Genesis P-Orridge, or who are now dead, like Pasolini or Brecht, and recontextualizing their practice in the contemporary moment, while at the same time contextualizing our work and the work of our peers. We hope to articulate alternative lineages in relationship to others.

Gonzalez: Okay, so this neighborhood: you’re in the Lower East Side. Why did you choose this location for the space, considering three of you live in Brooklyn?

Mason: There are a lot of spaces in this proximity that we respect and want to be in dialogue with.

Gonzalez: Which spaces?

Mason: Participant Inc., Reena Spaulings, CAGE. These are people that have been really helpful, that we want to do things with, and be in dialogue with.

Vangrin: We are also aware of a constant relationship to history, and how things that have happened can leave spaces or neighborhoods psychically charged. There’s an embedded history on the Lower East Side.

Mason: 1:1 is haunted.

Gonzalez: Do you have any other relationships with institutions or individuals that have been instrumental in founding 1:1?

Sloane: We were really lucky to get access to Materials for the Arts, which we gained through our association with Franklin Furnace and [its founder] Martha Wilson, who we knew—she’s utterly fantastic.

Gonzalez: Do you work with her?

Mason: Well, Franklin Furnace accepts tax-deductible donations on our behalf. Martha had been really helpful in terms of giving us advice.

Gonzalez: How do you know her?

Mason: Whitney, Alex, and I used to workshop performances with her. She’s been something of a mentor for all three of us.

Vangrin: The power of this woman who’s always supported artists in so many regards and [her power] to continue to be so supportive of our project, is something that I am in awe of and extremely grateful for.

Interview by Desi Gonzalez Photographed by Gregory Aune

#1:1 GALLERY #jarrett earnest #WHITNEY VANGRIN #leigha mason #desi gonzalez

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