Archive for April, 2012

Imagining Ourselves Into The Virtual: A Visit to the Penn Museum’s Archives

April 27 2012

post by Rachel Pastan

“Where is this?” Ingrid asks.

“This is Mexico. 1933,” Kate says. On the computer screen, women scrub clothes on the banks of a river. An old trolley rumbles by, scarred with graffiti. Palm trees wave.

We are looking at film from the Watson Kintner collection on a computer in the archives of the Penn Museum of Archeology and Anthropology with film archivist Kate Pourshariati. “The reason that it looks so great is that it’s Kodachrome,” she says. It does look great: the rushing water, the blue sky, oranges ripening in the sun.

This visit grows out of ICA’s Jennifer Burris’s interest in contemporary artists working with archival footage, together with Kate’s desire for artists to work with the Archives’ material. More practically, we hope to learn from Archives’ experience with digitizing material, storing it, and making it available on the web, a project ICA is also embarked upon.

At the Archives

The Archives’ material, of course, is quite different from ours: drawings by archeologists in the field, maps, notes, photographs, and these extraordinary 16 mm films—close to a century’s worth!—documenting daily life, clothing, dwellings, and the manufacture of artifacts and implements in over 30 countries around the world. They also have 25,000 lantern slides, many of them hand-tinted, of American Indians, scenes from the Ottoman Empire, and many other subjects. Kate has pulled images from the Philippines for us to look at.

Kalinga group

A group of Kalingas from Northern Luzon, ca. 1910. Penn Museum image no. 219041.

Some of these are faked, intended to make people look more primitive than they were—too primitive to rule themselves—in a propagandist attempt by Dean C. Worcester, an infamous character, to justify the continuation of colonial rule. He also made a 1913 film for the same purpose, which Kate is working to repatriate.

Kalinga girl

D. C. Worcester or C. Martin, Kalinga girl, ca.1913. Penn Museum image 219033.

Even though ICA is focused on the art of today, we don’t want to lose our lively and significant history—ground-breaking exhibitions that helped propel many important artists to wider recognition, including Andy Warhol’s first museum show. As a non-collecting museum, we rely on catalogues, installation photographs, and various ephemera like exhibition cards and posters (also blog posts) to document the work we do. There’s lots of this stuff in flat files and cartons in our archive room, and much more in Penn’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, which people can look at if they go over there, know basically what they want, and fill out a request form.

But what if you’re in Omaha, or Oslo, or Osaka? What if you’re just in Manyunk but don’t want to bother crossing the river into West Philly? What then? We’d like you to be able to go to our website and access our wonders from there.

Damian Ortega

Damián Ortega Untitled, 2002 courtesy of the artist, galeria kurimanzutto and D'Amelio Terras

Polly Apfelbaum

Polly Apfelbaum, 2003 Installation, Institute of Contemporary Art. Photo: Aaron Igler.

Dirt on Delight

Photo: Aaron Igler/Greenhouse Media

Charline von Heyl

Photo: Aaron Igler/Greenhouse Media

ICA is currently working on a new website, to be launched for our 50th anniversary in fall 2013. Part of the idea is that the site will be a living archive: a rich, emergent territory with portals to past shows and programs where people will want to spend time exploring, and where even those who never physically come to ICA can participate in the ICA experience. We envision the website as a real expansion of our physical space into the fluid world of the virtual, propelling us to the acute edge of what’s contemporary: a museum without boundaries.

Heady stuff.

The visit to the Penn Museum’s Archives is both an inspiration and a wake-up call. On the one hand, here is this extraordinary collection of over 700 reels of film from all over the world, available at the click of a mouse. As Senior Archivist Alex Pezzati says, “In the 1980s, when everything went to video, all the film became totally inaccessible. You couldn’t even project it, it was too delicate. Now, what was inaccessible has become our most accessible collection.”

On the other hand, the organization that digitized this material and put it online, the Internet Archive, won’t be doing another project like that anytime soon. After the tour, we sit around the big table talking about digital asset managers and format issues and standards for file naming and image management systems. (“Do your images first,” Alex advises. “Documents are complicated.”) Alex and Kate are full of information, opinions, and experiences both cautionary and otherwise. It’s sobering to realize that, even with all their expertise, their advice can sometimes sound like this: “Nobody really knows what to do.”

Meanwhile the lantern slides sit in the middle of the table, glowing faintly yellow and red. Kate has explained to us that, before motion pictures, people would crowd the museum’s auditorium for illustrated travelogues. Picture a time when lantern slides were the latest thing, the YouTube of the age! People sat together, straining to imagine themselves into distant countries—unknown worlds.

Hemp cart in Philippines

A hemp cart in Albay, Luzon, ca. 1910. Penn Museum image no. 219115.

I like to think that’s what we’re doing now at ICA as we plan our new website: imagining ourselves into the unknown world of the virtual.

* * *

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Stuff to Art: A Conversation with Alex Da Corte

April 20 2012

post by Rachel Pastan

At the opening of First Among Equals earlier this month, a pink Boticellian Venus—a living statue—pushed a rolling piece of chain link fence right up against Alex Da Corte’s installation, SCENE TAKE SIX, then stood nearby on her half shell for a couple of hours. When she left, the fence remained, jutting into Alex’s piece: an ambiguous guest.

Venus with Scene Take Six

photo: Constance Mensh

“When Kathryn Andrews first came here and said she was going to make a big fence and put it in front of someone’s work, I said, ‘Me first!’” Alex says. “There’s nothing to be gained in a group show by people’s work sitting politely and not looking at each other.”

We’re at ICA’s spring Free For All event, where later this evening there will be pistachio doughnuts, ice cream sandwiches, and a band. First, though, there is this tasty conversation hosted by two members of ICA’s student advisory board, David and Julie, who pose questions about how First Among Equals came about, how Alex thinks about making art, and how his work will exist after the show ends.

photo: William Hidalgo

The fence intervention—and the living statues that periodically move it around the gallery—comprise a piece by Kathryn Andrews called Serial Killer which vividly dramatizes many of the issues the show explores: What happens when artists work together? Where does cooperation end and competition begin? What does it mean when one artist uses other artists’ works of art as material for their own?

This unlikely sounding situation can be found in many forms in First Among Equals, including Alex’s SCENE TAKE SIX itself, a two-sided installation that uses works by six artists on one side and six on the other to make a new whole—almost the way a group exhibition, organized through a curator’s vision, makes a new whole. Alex, though, takes marvelous liberties it’s hard to imagine a curator taking. He has fashioned a microphone for Sam Anderson’s bust of Aretha Franklin, for instance, and piled works by Anna Betbeze, Paul Thek, and Karen Kilimnik on top of each other. Some of the works have been borrowed from collectors for the run of the show. Others, which Alex calls dedication monuments, are recreations he built himself with direction from the original artists. Which are which, though, he’d rather not say: “I don’t want to say if it’s real or fake, because in my mind it’s all real. I was thinking that all these materials are equal, even if some have a greater monetary value.”

Among other things, SCENE TAKE SIX is a kind of meditation on memory. Black-and-white on one side, color on the other, the two sides formally mirror one another; but since you can’t look at them both at once, all the time you’re looking at one side, you’re also thinking about what’s on the side you can’t see.

The black and white side

photo: Alex Klein

Alex relates this constant presence of absence to the nature of the scavenged materials he often uses as material: “Most of the things I scavenge are missing parts, and I don’t know what they are.” A little later he says, “My work is just stuff—just a bunch of crap piled together—but the minute it’s in a white cube being photographed…” He trails off.

It becomes art, he means, that trailing ellipsis alluding to the moment of transformation without naming it. Another missing piece, though this time we can see what it is.

Stuff to art: when exactly does that happen? I was in the gallery last month watching as Alex put SCENE TAKE SIX together: spray-painting vitrines, twisting branches, nailing painted flowers to the wall. Was I there for that elusive, magical moment? Did I miss it?

A little earlier, talking about all the disparate elements that go into a work of his, Alex said, “It’s a bit like a dream where your mother, your pet dog, and Johnny Depp are all there.”

And what of Kathryn Andrews’s fence? Is that too part of the dream? Or is it, with its bright steel bars, the ringing alarm clock that threatens to wake us from the dream? Or perhaps it’s the ringing alarm clock that we, unwilling to wake, incorporate into the dream so that we may sleep and dream just a little while longer.

Venus pushing the fence

photo: Constance Mensh

* * *

The next living statue, an evergreen tree, will move the fence on Saturday, May 12th at 2:00.

First Among Equals is open through August 12.

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Alpine Sheep in the ICA Meadow: Honoring Karen Kilimnik

April 13 2012

post by Rachel Pastan

“I’m not sure what table size you need,” Eric says. “I did the ultimate. If you get 250 people at this party, you can fit them in.”

We all look down at the sketch of possible table arrangements while Eric, who runs the interior design firm Fury Design with his partner Jim, talks about birch trees and the mise-en-scene he envisions for the center of the space. “My idea is that they’re going to hover. I’ll have nine-foot saplings that they’ll cut early.” He has plans for real sod growing with rye grass, for glitter sprayed lightly through the branches as though the wind has blown it there, and for seventy yards of white scrim fabric to be drawn dramatically back when it’s time for the dinner to begin. A glittering ball will hang above the birches: an indoor moon.

“You don’t see any live flowers?” Sam asks.

“Not enough impact. But if we knew anyone who had ten little French chairs! Or those gold ballroom chairs people rent.”

“I have a lot of those,” Hilarie says. “Like a hundred.”

This is a meeting of the décor committee for ICA’s 2012 spring benefit, our big annual fundraiser at which we honor a significant member of the museum community. This year the honoree is Karen Kilimnik, whose mid-career retrospective—curated at ICA by Ingrid Schaffner—traveled the country in 2007, exposing thousands of new admirers to the artist’s work in photography, installation, drawing, and painting. A native Philadelphian, Karen Kilimnik explores perceptions of glamor and fantasy from Kate Moss to ballerinas, from Madonna to Diana Rigg in The Avengers.

From the moment she agreed to be honored at this event, we have been imagining how to shape the Benefit around Karen’s distinctive sensibility, which draws on the romantic tradition and pop culture, on nature and history. I’ve heard the look we’re going for described variously as “whimsical and glittery” and as “decrepit elegance.” The pale pink invitations, designed by Ominvore, boast two gold Ks intertwined to form an elegant chandelier. How to translate this into tablecloths and centerpieces is, however, still an open question.

Karen herself, when asked about the evening’s look, suggested an alpine, winter, farm animal motif. She even made a new artwork—a small pastel of two alert, pinkish sheep in a greenish meadow—for the invitation. The original pastel will be raffled off to a donor at our Golden Muse donor level. (A Charline von Heyl print will be given to donors at both the Golden Muse and the lower-tiered Muse level, permitting many guests to go home with more art than they had when they arrived.)

At the décor meeting, the talk turns to candles: simple glass votives lining the tables, enhanced here and there, perhaps, by a leaning chandelier.

“I’m happy to have a big chandelier leaning against the dessert table as though it fell out of the ceiling,” Eric says.

“That’s very Karen,” Babs says. “People are going to feel they’re walking into a different space than they’ve ever walked into before.”

The committee discusses about the dessert table. Cupcakes are suggested, decorated with sheep reproduced in icing from Karen’s pastel. (“Half the people don’t eat dessert,” one committee member warns, but another says, “They’ll eat cupcakes.) From cupcakes, the conversation turns (naturally) to chocolate farm animals and marshmallow Peeps.

“Peeps are made locally,” Eric observes, gathering up color samples as the meeting winds down.

“Yes,” Babs agrees. “They’re made in Philadelphia.”

Just like Karen Kilimnik.

* * *

Sheep image above: Karen Kilimnik, Sheep in England, 2012. Courtesy of the artist and 303 Gallery. photo: Simon Greenberg

For more information about Benefit 2012, click here.

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Man of Your Dreams: Installing First Among Equals and Stefan Sagmeister The Happy Show

April 6 2012

post by Rachel Pastan

In the second-floor gallery, some of the crew are working on the sugar cube installation. Stacks of cubes of different heights spell out “Step up to it,” one of the truisms, or rules to live by, that anchor the new ICA exhibition, Stefan Sagmeister The Happy Show, which is a romp, and a serious exploration of happiness and the human condition, and a glimpse into the mind of one of America’s leading graphic designers all at once.

Sugar installation

Elsewhere in the gallery, other people are busy with other happiness installations. The exercise bike is being hooked up to light a neon sign if you peddle hard enough. The interactive spider web video is being fine tuned. Sagmeister himself is busy with a black marker, writing on the walls. He looks busy and full of energy. A couple of days ago, when I got into the elevator to go home, I found him in there writing on the interior doors.

Stefan writing

“How are you, Stefan?” I asked him.

“I’m having fun!” he said.

There’s a lot to be done before the show opens 25 hours from now. Luckily First Among Equals, the exhibition in the big downstairs gallery about ways artists work together, has been unofficially open for a few weeks, so that part of the museum is calm.

Of course, the last few days before First Among Equals opened, its doors were busy too. That busyness had a different rhythm, with little pockets of activity blazing up around the gallery as various artists came and went. Then, on the last afternoon before the show opened, everything in the gallery came to a stop when the Paul Thek sculpture showed up. Alex Da Corte, whose SCENE TAKE SIX installation incorporates works of a dozen or so artists, had received permission to use a small Thek as part of his piece. It arrived in an array of custom-made crates which the crew lined up on a table.

“A beautiful packing job,” Paul says as Mary Grace begins untaping boxes. One crate has lots of small ceramic pieces—green and blue and brown—embedded in cradles of foam. A second crate reveals a big conch shell with a plug and a light bulb. Mary Grace checks what’s in the crates against pictures, and she makes notes, documenting the condition the pieces are in when we receive them. Shell generally abraded and built out of dirt and grime, she writes. Light in shell not secure. The rest of us wait, trying not to crowd her.

“This is so terrifying,” Alex says. “It’s like meeting the man of your dreams and knowing it.”

“I remember when I had to condition check the Damien Hirst shark,” Mary Grace says. “And the cow head with the flies. We were sitting there counting all the flies and the larvae.”

Paul, wearing white art handling gloves, begins placing pieces into a terrarium. Mary Grace stands nearby and hands them to him one by one. “This one goes in there,” she says, but it doesn’t fit where she points. They consult the pictures and try again.

Installing the Paul Thek

Photo: Alex Klein

Brendan, another artist with work in Alex’s installation, comes over. “Does it feel soft?” he wants to know.

“No,” Paul says.

“Does it feel brittle?” Alex asks.

“Yeah,” Paul says.

“Is this the first time you’ve ever handled a Paul Thek, Paul?” Alex asks.

“Man, do I enjoy this part of my job,” Paul says.

Standing nearby with my notepad, scribbling, I’m thinking the same thing.

Looking at the Paul Thek

Left to right: Robert, Paul, Rachel, and Alex. Photo: Alex Klein

* * *

First Among Equals and Stefan Sagmeister The Happy Show are open through August 12.

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