6th Annual Transmodern Festival - Live.Art.Action

By Grant Kester, University of San Diego, California, 2004

From  Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985, edited by Zoya Kucor and Simon Leung (Blackwell, 2005)

Full article -  http://digitalarts.ucsd.edu/~gkester/Research%20copy/Blackwell.htm
 
Excerpt -

Empathy is, of course, subject to its own kind of ethical and epistemological abuse. However, I also feel that a concept of empathetic insight is a necessary component of a dialogical aesthetic. Further, I would contend that precisely the pragmatic, physical process of collaborative production that occurs in the works I’m discussing (involving both verbal and bodily interaction) can help to generate this
insight, while at the same time allowing for a discursive exchange that can acknowledge, rather than exile, the non-verbal. This empathetic insight can be produced along a series of axes. The first occurs in the rapport between artists and their collaborators, especially in those situations in which the artist is working across boundaries of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality or class. These relationships can, of course, be quite difficult to negotiate equitably, as the artist often operates as an outsider, occupying a position of perceived cultural authority. This second axis of empathetic insight occurs among the collaborators themselves (with or without the mediating figure of the artist). Here the dialogical project can function to enhance solidarity among individuals who already share a common set of material and cultural circumstances (e.g., work with trade unions by artists such as Fred Lonidier in California or Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge in Canada). The final axis is produced between the collaborators and other communities of viewers (often subsequent to the actual production of a given project). Dialogical works can challenge dominant representations of a given community, and create a more complex understanding of, and empathy for, that community among a broader public. Of course these three functions—solidarity creation, solidarity enhancement, and the counter-hegemonic—seldom exist in isolation. Any given project will typically operate in multiple registers.

ALTERED STATES considers a renewed interest in the aesthetics and performativity of mysticism. Of particular interest are induced states of ecstasy or transcendence in a ritual context, and through appropriation re-imagining shamanism and new age sensibility.

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Arriving in Baltimore circa 2005, Theresa Columbus had already been delighting and confounding friends, acquaintances, and audiences around the US for quite some time.  Upon meeting Theresa in Ch-Harm City, I (Catherine) found her exuberance and optimism almost too painful to behold.  Social norms and conventions almost always prompt most functional adults to eventually flatten their affect and rather put a lid on it for grown-up discourse.  Theresa Columbus, thankfully, does not obey these rules.  Read the rest of this entry »

An essay from the Dia Foundation regarding this genius and kindred spirit:
http://www.diaart.org/exhibs/darboven/kulturgeschichte/essay.html

“From the moment in the mid-sixties when she moved to New York City after a highly academic training at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, Hanne Darboven’s work has been allied with conceptual art practices. Based by the late sixties on various forms of numerical and mathematical writing, her systematic work securely occupied in the realm of abstraction and universality: “I only use numbers,” she explained, “because it is a way of writing without describing…. It has nothing to do with math-ematics. Nothing! I choose numbers because they are so constant, confined and artistic. Numbers are probably the only real discovery of mankind. A number of something (two chairs, or whatever) is something else. It’s not pure number and has other meanings.”1″

As “moderners”, busy people, our private times can and should be revelatory.  Rarely, if never, are our perceptions as clean, our considerations as lucid, and our inner mechanics as empty of noise as when in those moments, for most of us once per day, when we sit alone in small closed rooms, barren of nothing more than the perpetual motor of consciousness and the barely intrusive neuro-muscular activities of the viscera.  Currently there exists a crisis in utilization because most people abuse their daily sanctuary of calm by passing it’s minutes reading gossip columns, horoscopes, sporting event recaps, stock reports or other banal information that hardly ignites the tinder of the unencumbered, thoughtful mind.  And worse, they devalue the fortunate circumstance by insisting on brevity.  Likewise, the same people approach culture and art, the very nourishment of the mind, in mobs, at concerts or art openings where solitude and stillness of mind are impossible.  It could even be said that art and culture themselves lose their meanings when they are perceived in herds, wastelands of consensus mentality and gridlocks of noise that they are.

Seemingly a contradiction, the fact remains that solitude itself can be the great motivator of culture as the individual herself should use the sanctuary of daily respite to define her singularity, that perspective which distinguishes her from any living thing. In doing so the individual should unconsciously define the true mosaic that is all culture, making the parts of the whole each as glorious and the thing itself.

Consider then, that we have a responsibility as humans to refine our minds whilst alone each day, nestled into the cubicles of our private-most metabolic processes. Consider that we can use our organs and orifices in unison, and quite effectively with utmost willfulness.  Please enjoy these selected works we’ve assembled, all made by sincere artists, and please enjoy the surroundings, claustrophobic though liberating in their potential for ephemeral rapture (and base purging).  Above all relax yourself, put on the headsets, perceive things, thoughts, and of course try the complimentary snacks.

http://theperfecthumanbeing.blogspot.com/

“A community is a group of interacting organisms sharing an environment. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.”

This is an open call for inspired individuals who have something to offer, This is your opportunity to perform and participate in my experimental family similar to the “commune”. For practical reasons and the pursuit of ones previous commitments, we will remain and uphold our lifestyles and responsibilities. You will contact me and set up a friend date, with a specific activity in mind, We will meet, experience that activity together, document it with a photo, and then write a reflection. At the end of my experiment, I will collect all the photographs and reflections and publish a book. My intent is to embrace the ideas of community in a managable way, through a structured art experiment.

Panel Discussion on Transmodernism with James Mahoney, Department of Visual Arts, UMBC, Catherine Pancake, Independent Filmmaker and Musician, Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall, School of Art and Design, University of Illinois, Chicago.Moderated by Preminda Jacob, Department of Visual Arts, UMBC

Transmodern is a term that came into use in the early 1990s to denote emerging attitudes, values, and aesthetics that seemed to move past postmodernism’s canon of critique into more intriguingly open areas of cultural inquiry and practice. The rise of the Internet has networked a transmodernity that includes green perspectives and liberation theology, alternative music, multiculturalism in every form, and a re-engagement with the question of symbols in art, etc. In essence, the transmodern is a proactive recasting of the primal modernist condition, one in which, as Karl Marx said, All that is solid melts into air.