If you are interested in collaborating or know particular people around the world that may want to participate, please contact the artist.

Here is a very early remote video, prior to the Rhizome Commission.

A decade in the making and, at the time, the most expensive film ever made in France, Playtime is indeed a cinematic masterpiece, and it indeed ruined Tati financially. He would go on to make two more films, Trafic (1972) and Parade (1974), but neither would come close to touching the achievement of Playtime and its simple, yet profound, observations of human life in the increasingly alienating modern world. READ MORE HERE

By roberta

May 5, 2012   ·   1 Comments

Imagine you’re a college soccer player at a small private school outside Philadelphia. It’s mid-March and out of the blue, you receive an email from the college art gallery inviting you to play in a skee-ball tournament, in the gallery, as part of an art project titled And The Winner Is…. You have not been selected because you are an athlete. But in fact, your name has been entered as a player in the tournament along with every other member of the Haverford College community — all 1,920 students, faculty and staff.

This March madness event — with bracketology and sweet sixteen and final four and all — was an experiment in social practice conceived of jointly by Haverford Campus Exhibitions Coordinator, Matthew Callinan and John Muse, visiting Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Exhibitions Faculty Liaison. The tournament, which ran from March 16 – April 20, also involved ancillary programming of lectures by artists like Sal Randolph, Lee Walton and Hank Willis Thomas, whose art involves social practice.

Many ideas fueled the project, including the idea of competition on the Quaker campus where community is the watchword, and it’s frowned upon to talk about, much less brag about competing for grades.  There was also the idea of hierarchy in an academic environment which is pretty stratified, and the question of how or whether people would cross strata and play person to person, faculty versus staff, student versus teacher.

So the quick play-by-play is that right off the bat, people poured in to the gallery in unprecedented numbers. And while a few of the 1,920 invitees were peeved by having been unilaterally inserted into the game, Muse said that was the exception.

This being art, there was interesting stuff to look at — of course the skee-ball machines, and the specially-designed vinyl wallpaper for the tournament walls, which laid out the tournament brackets to be filled in by hand as games got played and winners advanced.

And since participation and competition were watchwords of the entire event, the gallery team responded to its need for music and a software management program by issuing competitions in those two areas (see projects page on the website). Music could be uploaded to Spotify and would be selected (or not). Software could be submitted to manage the scores and scheduling, and it would be judged and one software designer would be chosen.

729 people played skee-ball in the first weeks, on machines set up in front an audience sitting on bleachers. And among those who advanced to the sweet sixteen were 13 students, 3 staff members and one faculty member. The final game saw sophomore Nick Kahn, a double major in English and French face off against Haverford Director of Communications and alumnus, Chris Mills ’82. And the winner is Nick Kahn! For his prize, he was flown to Greensboro, NC, for 6 hours of fun, to be feted by artist Lee Walton (who had been a part of the ancillary programming for the show) and friends. Kahn, it turns out, has a grandmother in Greensboro, and he asked whether she could join him for the celebration.

There’s a nice video of his 6 hours in Greensboro, which included a winner’s ceremonial walk around town accompanied by a saxophone player playing a wonderfully loopy jazz improvisation; a frisbee game on the lawn at UNC, while being serenaded by a bagpiper; a deep tissue massage; a donut party; a special pizza; a tour of the Weatherspoon Museum; a portrait sitting and more — an action packed day.

When I went out to Haverford the day of the final tournament, Kahn had just won, and they had just changed the name of the project from “And the Winner Is” to “And the Winner Is Nick Kahn!” and wrote his name into the show’s title on the gallery wall.

To say that curators Muse and Callinan (both of whom had played in the tournament, of course) were enthusiastic and exhausted that day doesn’t begin to cover it. Callinan said by the way that they chose skee-ball because it was a family member’s favorite game. Muse added that it was close to bowling, without being bowling. (They could not have turned the gallery into a bowling alley).

What I think is that everybody won, including Haverford Art Gallery, which set a new record for attendance — 4,200 people in the gallery during the show’s run (117 per day).   Congratulations all you winners!

“Intervals was shot around Venice during the Biennale, the film showcases the tendencies around which Greenaway has gone on to build his entire body of work: an attention to architecture; an attraction to historic centers of European art; an inclination toward schematic structures based upon numbers, alphabets, and music; and a desperate desire to escape the confines of narrative.”

….continue reading and see more at OPEN CULTURE

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New Approaches in Public Art: Performance Art, Music and Dance

The Expo is a day-long event that provides creative individuals and business
owners a “one-stop” opportunity to learn about various business services and
programs that can help stabilize their creative enterprises and plan for the
future. Workshops are led by experts in the fields of marketing, business
planning, finance, media relations, legal issues, as well as offering business
support in music, film, public art, fine art and more.

5 lanes. 1,920 players. 11 tournament rounds. One winner.

As a prize, Nick Kahn, aka “The Winner” received a free trip to Greensboro, NC to spend 6-hours with Experientialist Lee Walton and local friends. Arriving at 11am and returning at 5pm… An itinerary has been created, but must remain secret. If you are in Greensboro and would like to meet The Winner, please send
WINNER OF THE HAVERFORD SKEE BALL COMPETITION!

Visit Fritz’ Website

1. Do you now or have you ever considered yourself a performance artist?

Sure! Plus anything else people might want to call me.

If so, when did you begin to identify yourself as a performance artist?

When I read it in the newspaper.

2. What was the first performance art you ever encountered in your life?  How did you respond?

Probably in school? I recall a project involving all of us licking candy off the body of a classmate during a group critique.  Developing an interest in architecture at a young age, my curiosities began to expand beyond the confines of that discipline by the time I reached my early 20’s. All of my friends were artists, actors, and performers, those were the people that I wanted to be with. I mostly took art classes during my last year of college in which some friends were experimenting with performative work.  I would also go to the drama department’s student plays. I was especially envious of  the “dramats.” When I had a flash of inspiration in my architecture work, it might take hours, days, weeks or months to express it. Even then it would only be in the form of drawings and models, representations of the ideas, never fully realized as actual experience. In the professional practice of architecture this process can take years, and when it is received by an audience you are not even there. Those dramats, on the other hand, could have a complete complex thought, act it out, and immediately receive a live response – all in an instant. There was something so alive and immediate about it that I was missing at my drafting table.  Architecture is slow, which can make it a satisfying pursuit to age into through a lifetime, but  it can also make it very removed from the moment. I suppose this is what I was missing most.

3. Do you make distinctions between performance art and other forms of performance?

I am not interested in pure forms. I am interested in the opposite of purity. Regarding the topic at hand: Can gardening be both architecture and performance?  Can a casual and conversational lecture be a performance with out being performative?  What is it called when we put on our warm-up clothes and get ready to move together as a group?

4. What makes a performance successful, in your opinion?

The most ambitious approach, the ultimate path of freedom, the essential truth of our moment, and the only direction worth pursuing, is to begin each endeavor with the assumption that it is ultimately doomed to fail. Then we ask ourselves “how amazing, ecstatic, alive, and revelatory was our failure?”

5. Who is your ideal audience, or, rather, how do you construct your public?

If I am making a garden, the neighbors on the street might play the role of the impromptu, unsuspecting audience.  If I am organizing a workshop or conversation there is no audience, just curious and dedicated participants.  If I am making an urban animal home, the wildlife I may never see or interact with will be a very active audience.  If I am giving a talk, the audience is very clearly defined, somewhat passive, and typically self- selecting.  If I am making a book, the audience might have a very solitary and intimate experience with the work.  If I am making a website, the audience could be fleeting, distracted, lost, confused, or very focused, and maybe just seeking certain information.  If I am making a video, the audience might be together for a social experience in a public screening, or alone at their computer.  If I am making a parade, those in the parade might be an audience for the people that have come to watch them.

6. Have you found support in the art world, or other worlds, for the development and presentation of your work?

Yes, no, and sort of, but all of my best opportunities were those that I created for myself.

7. What did you study in school?

Architecture.

Did you have mentors?

Yes, but I never met most of them, and if I did, I received much more from their example than from any personal conversations we may have had. Ant Farm (Chip Lord), Mel Chin, Buckminster Fuller, Anna Halprin, Mierle Laderman Ukeles,Gordon Matta-Clark, Helio Oticica, Yvonne Rainer, Andy Warhol, Meg Webster, andAndrea Zittel are those that immediately come to mind.

8. Who/what inspires your most recent body of work?

Fresh home-made local food and the daily routine of stretching, warming up, exercise, and especially the accompanying work-out clothes: stretchy, tight, comfortable, flowing, baggy, loose, casual, ready to move…that is all I want to wear.

9. How important is your body to your work?

It is becoming more important and interesting the older I get.  I never exercised or thought about what I ate when I was younger.  Now I’m vegan and my daily schedule is built around yoga class and swimming. They are very personal decisions about my own body, but also political and extremely social as soon as I step out my door. It’s about health, but for me it has more to do with pleasure, and of course it is inextricably related to my recent work with public food production and group movement.

What do you want the viewer to feel/think in relation to that body?

To begin to remember that they have one too.

10. Have you been encouraged by recent developments in public discourse around performance art?

Yes!

Discouraged?

Yes!

What is the worst development in recent years?

As everything accelerates, so does the rush to judge and evaluate. You could argue that the conventional forms of painting and sculpture are slow, and performance is fast, amplifying the urgency for quick judgment and dismissal.

11. What does your family think about your work?

When I moved to New York City from an Italian farmhouse in 1994, instead of returning to the sort of architecture office day jobs I had since high school, my father tried to convince me to get a day job as a waiter, and make art at night.  A few months ago he asked me with a puzzled and concerned look on his face, “so, are you a performance artist now?”

12. Is performance art a medium, like painting?

It depends on whether you want to curate it, sell it, organize it, study it, pursue it, understand it, or participate in it….

Photographs, digital images, video and sound (2010 and ongoing)

Improvising with materials close at hand, Seat Assignment consists of photographs, video, and digital images all made while in flight using only a camera phone. The project began spontaneously on a flight in March 2010 and is ongoing. At present, over 2500 photographs and video, made on more than 70 different flights to date, constitute the raw material of the project.

While in the lavatory on a domestic flight in March 2010, I spontaneously put a tissue paper toilet cover seat cover over my head and took a picture in the mirror using my cellphone. The image evoked 15th-century Flemish portraiture. I decided to add more images made in this mode and planned to take advantage of a long-haul flight from San Francisco to Auckland, guessing that there were likely to be long periods of time when no one was using the lavatory on the 14-hour flight. I made several forays to the bathroom from my aisle seat, and by the time we landed I had a large group of new photographs entitled Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style. I was wearing a thin black scarf that I sometimes hung up on the wall behind me to create the deep black ground that is typical of these portraits. There is no special illumination in use other than the lavatory’s own lights and all the images are shot hand-held with the camera phone. At the Dunedin Public Art gallery, the photos were framed in faux-historical frames and hung on a deep red wall reminiscent of the painting galleries in museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

WEBSITE HERE: