Uta Barth’s Distrust of Narrative/Cause and Effect

Writing is most alive when directly engaged in the experience—as a cartography of an encounter or inner space. Recently I stumbled across an interview with photographer Uta Barth where she was asked why narrative annoyed her. Barth’s response captures a lot of what I’ve been thinking:

Narrative holds out for a certain inevitability, it places deep faith in cause and effect. Narrative is about reconstructing a chain of meaningful events based on a known outcome. I’m curious about visual art that’s about the visual. Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees is the title of Robert Irwin’s biography. Originally, it was a line in a Zen text. Narrative in art makes us think about all sorts of interesting things, but it derails the engagement with a visual experience.

Thomas Hirschhorn’s Monuments and Displays

Thomas Hirschhorn’s work parallels elements of a project I worked on and developed for a number of years called the Tollbooth Gallery. The Tollbooth was a reclaimed hunk of concrete in a public space that housed a twenty-four hour outdoor video galley and paper-based installations (video, audio, and paper) in an urban setting. The exhibitions changed every six weeks and featured work from artists from around the world. One of the most exciting aspects of the project was the precariousness of the materials and equipment that were left in public spaces even in the most extreme weather. The project was always in danger of vandalism, theft, or weather failure, but that became part of the work and how it was received. In order to succeed the project had to create a relationship where it trusted in the casual passerby and chance encounters. Like the Tollbooth, Hirschhorn’s work often consists of hewn together spaces in public locations that house an idea or event.

Hello Central, Give Me Heaven, Hello Central, Give Me No Man’s Land

Hello Central, Give Me Heaven, Hello Central, Give Me No Man’s Land was a collaborative new work that combined video images from the ‘between the wars’ years with audio clips from notorious and anonymous figures of the era, then set to an original musical composition. Original prints and etchings created a panoramic scroll of architecture and gesture.

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Bridget Irish at the Tollbooth Interview

Continuing the wrap-up of interviews from the first year of the 24 hour outdoor video project the Tollbooth Gallery, here is an interview with artist Bridget Irish. Her Tollbooth Junction 11th & Broadway was a collection of various subway rides the artist took over the past several years, and filmed on Hi-8 video. Featured subway routes, shot when traveling above ground and during the day, included: NYC’s D-Line Brooklyn to Coney Island route and back, Chicago’s downtown loop from the Green Line, and Boston’s Blue Line from downtown to last stop Wonderland. These videos are as much studies in motion, form and light, as they are travel diary excerpts.

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Wynne Greenwood of Tracy + the Plastics talks about her installation at the Tollbooth Gallery

“How do you map a hope, a flower, a muscle, a gaze, a breath, an exhaustion, an attempt, a history, or your community? You are here.” Originally from Washington, then Brooklyn based Wynne Greenwood returned to the Northwest to premiere her piece, Maps to Radical Imagining, specifically created for the Tollbooth.

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Interview with Tim Sullivan about Perfect Entrance

Here we are again with the interview series. Perfect Entrance by San Francisco-based artist Tim Sullivan was, at its core, a commentary on the art world’s hyperbole regarding notions of ‘emerging artists’. Sullivan tackles the thin line between comedy and tragedy, impending doom, horror, slapstick, and vulnerability. Sullivan also talks about his then collaboration with George Kuchar to reproduce Chris Burden’s SHOOT piece.

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My Interview With Artists Delta Camshaft Collective

Rorschach Notions, a collaborative installation featuring the work of a group of artists going by the name of the Delta Camshaft Collective, was part of a larger event entitled Scattered Ephemera,which culminated in city-wide exhibitions and a performance by NPR commentator author, Andrei Codrescu.

Rorschach Notions took its name from late 19th Century Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach who pioneered the usage of inkblot tests in modern psychological analysis. The exhibit consisted of a video screen flashing period photos of Tacoma while two ‘subjects’ interpreted the narrative. On the reverse side of the kiosk was an interactive paper installation of antique wall paper, artist drawings, and prints that implored the viewer to remove and explore, thus creating their own modern ephemera.

Read interview here.

Rising Up

Portland based filmmaker and artist Vanessa Renwick collaborated with the People’s History Poster Project and audio artist Donovan Skirvin to create an installation entitled Rising Up at the Tollbooth Gallery. Renwick’s filmmatic subject matter ranges from gray wolves to library books, obsessive collagists to pro-life advocates, and the lives of truckers to her own bare-foot hitchhiking. Her work has been described as “delightfully idiosyncratic” and “rigorously experimental.” What follows are excerpts from an interview with the artist about her work, and her intentions with “Rising Up.”

Read interview here.  

My Art Interview with Denise Smith

Denise Smith is a visual artist who did an early installation at the Tollbooth Gallery project. She was heavily involved with Toby Room and contributed to ArtRod’s ongoing touring experimental film/video series Don’t Bite the Pavement. Here’s an entertaining interview I did with Smith that was part of the Tollbooth interviews. Her topics range from the Dalai Lama, Paris Hilton, and designing outfits for  bad public art.

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Interview with me about SSSLHH

This interview was part of the same series and is about Some Say She Lost Her Head, which I recently sold to a museum. It was the first show at the Tollbooth and this shows a little about what the project was like early on.

Read interview here.