Tribe.net. Local Connections RealGirl http://tribes.tribe.net/bigmonkeybusiness/thread/b9c2a3fc-b3c2-4568-9d2d-6ab02572dcaf 2008-03-31T17:40:18Z 2008-03-31T17:40:18Z

<div>BRAF hopes to exhibit Homouroboros, Peter Hudson’s incredible zoetropic sculpture, first seen on the play in 2007, for one month beginning May 15 in downtown San Jose. We can only do this with your help. It breaks and requires fixing. Its affordances are arcane when you first approach the work, and you have to experience it differently from day to night. On the playa this is to be expected. But out in the world where people are not typically invited to engage with art or each other in this way, it will require *your* facilitation. Many of you have given your gift of time, energy and experience to each other for projects associated with Burning Man. I am asking you to extend that generosity to San Jose residents and visitors for one month. I am hoping that you will be willing to spend a few hours in May or June helping strangers have a fantastic experience with a wonderful work of art and to come away changed because you were there to help them. After they meet you at the artwork, they will feel differently about art and community. <br/> <br/>Hudson’s whimsical take on creation first engaged many of us who saw it on the playa with its visual and phenomenological joke. When activated by our drumming these charming, slightly absurd stuffed monkeys (reminiscent of carnival prizes from another time) were transformed into a form of 3-D because of something called the Stroboscopic effect which causes us to perceive the many monkeys as one and motion as stillness. Perhaps the most important requirement of the work is the social interaction it needs --- if only exchange of delight the monkeys and serpent provoke when they come alive for us. Whether we were setting it in motion or simply observing it I’ll bet many of us worked together or had many a conversation about the nature of its mechanics and effect. <br/> <br/> Highly interactive artworks like Homouroboros are rare in the public art arena, although San Jose does have several interactive fountains, which is a testament to some forward thinking people in the community. There is a prosaic, invisible (and sometimes painful, even humiliating) navigation of city officials required first. More importantly it doesn’t happen because this art requires a different kind of civic interaction between people once it’s up. They have to work with each other and talk with each other and this ends up creating expectations in their audiences and they change their minds about what is possible. Placing these kinds of works in public contexts, even for short periods of time, generates dialogue about the meaning of art and its contributions to community vitality. <br/> <br/>But these artworks often generate natural fears amongst stakeholders. They are thought too risky --- what if someone gets hurt? What if someone damages the work, what about gangs? I argue it’s actually rarer than we perceive, but believe this is why things like this only happen inside of museum walls or inside of orange trash fences. There the experience can be carefully controlled and the admission prices eliminate some of the “risk” associated with it. But maybe someone should try it. Let’s do the experiment. Because the only way to make things like this happen in a wider arena is to use the intelligence and will of a community of people like you who already know how to makes things like this happen. But you do. <br/> <br/>I think this project is important because it will introduce you to a whole new group of people. These people will see you inviting them to experience something, caring for an artwork, having a fantastic time with each other and with strangers in a community park and this will do something important. We will create expectations. The expectations it will create will have to do with what kinds of art should come to their community, how they might interacted with one another in their civic spaces and most importantly about the value of people giving to one another for that sake. <br/> <br/>I love Peter’s artwork. I wouldn’t want to take this on with anything else. But the exhibition of the artwork is only partially what this is about. This project is about you and our extended community. The project asks, can we extend the gift of the playa to our hometowns and will it change those hometowns so that they are just slightly more like what we value about the playa ---which is, after all, art, community and participation. <br/> <br/>Homouroboros is a different kind of work. It requires people to participate in its operation and creative vision to be complete. BRAF was created to work hard to promote a spirit of experimentation and connectedness beyond the playa. I can’t think of a better way to do it than involving all of you in this. Please consider volunteering to support Homouroboros, either by helping to refurbish it and prepare it for safe and free public exhibition in the most ethnically and culturally diverse city in the Country, by working as an ambassador on site to greet people and help them interact with the work, or by lending your technical expertise to maintaining it while it is on exhibition. <br/> <br/> <br/>Melissa Alexander <br/>Executive Director <br/>Black Rock Arts Foundation <br/>1900 3rd Street, 1st Floor <br/>San Francisco, CA 94158 <br/>00•1•415•626•1248 <br/>melissa@blackrockarts.org <br/> <br/>To volunteer: BigMonkeyBusiness-subscribe@yahoogroups.com <br/> <br/></div> <div> posted in <a href="http://tribes.tribe.net/bigmonkeybusiness">BigMonkeyBusiness</a> - 0 replies </div>

RealGirl 2008-03-31T17:40:18Z