“Concerned artists exhibit work to help ‘terror raid’ defendants”

More than 50 artists from around New Zealand will be exhibiting their work in Wellington at the start of next month to raise funds and public awareness for the arrestees of the 2007 October 15 “terror raids.” Exhibited works range from paintings, sculptures, and animation, to a reproduction of the assassination device police claim ‘terror raid’ arrestees planned to use – a catapult designed to launch a bus onto the head of former US president George Bush.

According to contributing artist and spokesperson Lance Ravenswood, the charges against the 18 arrestees of the October 15 raids are “just silly. Any sensible person should feel that the police and courts need a good telling-off about the way they’ve been behaving.” A number of prominent figures have also spoken out against the handling of the case, including civil rights lawyer Moana Jackson and Professor Jane Kelsey.

“Why have these people been denied a trial by jury? Why is there so much secrecy surrounding the legal proceedings? The police seem to be equating legitimate political and environmental activism with terrorism,” says Ravenswood.

Richard Meros, author of On the Conditions and Possibilities of Helen Clark Taking Me as Her Young Lover, will be exhibiting a piece in a similar tone, entitled Your Honour We Eat These Charges For Breakfast, featuring berry-soaked strips of the 2002 Terrorism Suppression Act (TSA).

“This muesli celebrates the afternoon the Solicitor General’s office struck down the use of the TSA against those arrested on October 15, 2007, reminding bowels and brains that the charges of terrorism were not even strong enough to be presented to a court” says Meros.

The exhibition will open at the Garrett Street exhibition space on Friday June 3rd at 4:30pm, followed by a screening of Errol Wright and Abi King-Jones’ documentary about the October 15th raids, “Operation 8: Deep in the Forest”. Viewing will continue over the weekend.

“We’re concerned about whether justice is being done here. Lots of people in the community have questions about this case – we want them to get together, experience some great art, and talk about what’s going on,” says Lance Ravenswood. “As artists, we want to do what we can to help 18 New Zealanders who are being punished, before the trial even takes place, by an immense financial burden in a drawn-out battle against extremely questionable charges. That’s why we’re donating our work, to raise funds to support the defendants and their families through the trial.”

The Concerned Citizens exhibition will feature work from up and coming as well as more established artists, including Peter Madden, Roger Morris, Bryce Galloway, Arlo Edwards, Kerry Ann Lee, and Tao Wells, creator of the controversial Beneficiary’s Office installation in 2010.

For more information about the exhibition, please visit www.concernedcitizens.co.nz

Contributing artists:

Tao Wells
Dick Whyte
Bryce Galloway
Robyn Kenealy
Roger Morris
Peter Madden
Kerry Ann Lee
Richard Meros
Campbell Kneale
Stephen Templer
Ellen Rodda
Jeff Henderson
Ryan Bennett
Hannah Salmon
Arlo Edwards
T.R.A.P.
Sam Ovens
Kim Gruschow
Richard Dennis Bartlett
David Alphabethead
Zachary Jordan Penney
Blake Dunlop
Carlos Patino
Jacob Carlson Sparrow
The Screamer
Tui Effie Harrington
Brendan Olphert
Fredd Marshall
Lance Ravenswood
Benjamin Michael Knight
James Quick
Hywel Thomas
Danny Dowling-Mitchell
Regan P Bailey
Rhydian Thomas
Ana McGowan
Georgie Brown
Rhiannon Beckett
Gene Van Der Zanden
Kelly Spencer
Ash Jones
Andy Macready
Tali Williams
Jon Coddington
Esther Lewis
Adam McCalley
Alex Meagher
Chloe Rose Purcell
Dominic Studer
Aidan Griffin
Louis Klein
Hayden Currie
Alex Mitcalfe-Wilson
Zaou Vaughan

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WELLINGTON musicians are rallying support for 15 people arrested in the 2007 Urewera ‘terror raids’, who will now be tried by judge-alone, at the High Court in Auckland on May 30. Charges made under the Terrorist Supression Act were dropped in 2007, but firearms and organised criminal group charges remain. Last week, the Court of Appeal upheld Justice Helen Winkelman’s decision to deny the 15 a trial by jury.

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Local musicians, including members of Little Bushman, The Phoenix Foundation, Jessie James and the Outlaws, Fly My Pretties, Woolshed Sessions, Electric Wire Hustle, Trinity Roots and The Nudge, have signed a letter to Minister Simon Power and Attorney-General Chris Findlayson, calling for trial by jury.  “I am firm in my belief and understanding that the accused in this case are not terrorists, do not belong to a criminal gang, and do not, as the public has been lead to think, stash guns under their beds. Rather, this bunch consists of some of the most intelligent and respected people in New Zealand, who consistently stand up for human and animal rights, the environment and tino rangatiratanga,” says musician Jessie Moss.

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“The whole terrorist premise is just another example of how individuals’ basic rights are being undermined and disregarded in the name of national security,” says Rio Hemopo, of Trinity Roots. Publication of the reasons behind the judge-only decision is forbidden, so defendants and supporters can only speculate. “If, the Crown has a solid case to put forward, why will they not let a jury see it?” asks Moss. The right to trial by jury is not absolute, under section 361D of the Crimes Act, amended in 2008, a judge may order trial without jury in cases “that are likely to be long and complex”.

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Moss says: “This trial’s set to take 12 weeks. So many cases have gone beyond that, but were still tried in front of a jury.”

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In early 2007, well-known Wellington activist Valerie Morse released Against Freedom: The War on Terrorism in Everyday New Zealand Life, a book about what she saw as the role of government and media in the ‘war on terror’. Just months later, Morse was arrested in the raids.

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“At 5:45am, there was a swarm of police at my door. A woman detective told me that I would be charged with ‘participation in a terrorist group’. I almost laughed at the time because it was the most absurd thing I had ever heard. But they took us to court that afternoon, and refused to grant us bail. That is when it really hit home: we weren’t leaving anytime soon. Indeed, we went to solitary confinement at Arohata prison,” she says.

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Morse will be tried by judge-only, for both firearms and organised criminal group charges.

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“Trial by jury is one of the pillars of the Western legal system. It is one of the key differences between places like New Zealand and many dictatorial regimes. The resources of the State in pursuing a criminal prosecution are almost limitless, while for a person accused of a crime, their resources are very limited,” she says.
“The high public interest in the case means that a jury trial is the only valid option.”

Being jobless has benefits

Controversial beneficiary artist Tao Wells has unveiled his latest installation in Dunedin.

The work titled 6% forced unemployment. Fakes job competition. Stops wages rising protests the manipulating of unemployment by the Government.

“A minimum of 6% of the workforce are being forced to be unemployed. Unemployment is being manipulated to keep inflation down,” Wells (38) said.

The Wellington artist, who says he has been “off and on” the unemployment benefit since 1997, promotes the lifestyle of unemployment and challenges the perception long-term beneficiaries are opportunists who exploit the welfare system.

His previous projects include a “Beneficiaries’ Office” in Wellington, which advocated the virtues of being unemployed and encouraged people to abandon their jobs, rather than “suffering eight hours a day of slavery”.

The project was heavily criticised by former minister of finance Roger Douglas and led to Creative New Zealand being forced to defend a $3500 grant for the performance.

Work and Income cut off his benefit when it learned of the controversy.

However, Wells remains unrepentant and has recently trained as a benefit rights volunteer.

“We need to work less, so we consume less. The average carbon footprint of the unemployed person is about half that of those earning over $100,000,” he said.

“We should never be forced to take a job. If you’re forced to take a job it’s a punishment.”

Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson
Horpma
Carrier Records

Release Date: May 10th, 2011
Price: $12 for CD’s, $5 to download
Website: www.carrierrecords.com

Horpma, by Icelandic composer Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson, is a pair of two pieces for 27 plucked and hammered string instruments, which together fuse into an imaginary 54 string instrument (one string for every bead of the rosary). Each string of this meta-instrument is tuned according to just intonation, with an emphasis on narrow––or smaller than normal––intervals.

A new rhythmic ideal is the foundation of this music. The rhythms are not conceived or communicated through a traditional grid structure. Instead, Guðmundur has created epistemic tools to work with rhythm that reflect traditional Icelandic prosody. This principle of rhythm does not fit neatly into standard notation. Instead, the performers follow highly specific instructions that flow across a computer screen. To be able to execute such a score in real-time, Gunnarsson sought out performers from various musical discourses, each of which has in the past proven to be highly capable of embracing new ways of performing such as improvisation veterans Charity Chan and Kanoko Nishi, and Múm guitarist Róbert Reynisson.

To quote the composer: “By intently focusing on small differences, both in rhythm and pitch, the ear gets tuned to a microscopic mode of listening. When things then open up, a new sense of variety is gained.”

The recordings were made over a period of time in CCM in Oakland, California and at the Swimming Pool in Iceland.

NewIdeas MusicSeries 8
Sunday 4.17.11
9PM @ Pianos
(158 Ludlow / Stanton)

Mario Diaz de León

David Galbraith

M.V. Waller – HIGHLAND (for the afterlife)
for bagpipe duo + tape
with:
Matthew Welch
David Watson

Wolfgang Gil + Alfredo Marin

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HIGHLAND (for the afterlife) is a new composition written for Matthew Welch and David Watson: a bagpipe duo in Just-Intonation Mixolydian. The exploration of specific tunings and spectral phenomenon actualize the process of expanding and collapsing harmonic space. The resonant harmonics are layered in an “out-of-sync multiplicity” as the enveloping rhizomic-form magnifies the superimposed partials and sonic experience.

MUSIC / DANCE / INTERMEDIA

SUN MOON & STARS

by Elaine Summers and Pauline Oliveros

09 APR 2011 (Sat), 19h00 – Auditorium

Sun Moon & Stars at St. Marks Church/Danspace on March 18th, 2010 for Platform 2010, curated by Juliette Mapp.

Choreography, video: Elaine Summers; Music composition, V accordion: Pauline Oliveros; Spoken word, voice: Ione; Video, production design: Taketo Shimada; Violin: Jason Huang; Dance: Kiori Kawai; Dance (via skype from Rotterdam): Thomas Körtvélyessy; Live camera images from Rotterdam: Adolfo (Gatto Estrada); Coordination in Rotterdam: Marina Breton.

The opportunity is rare to come across a project that brings together such exponents of feminine contemporary culture as Pauline Oliveros, Elaine Summers and Ione. Oliveros and Summers, and Oliveros and Ione, have collaborated in the past, but it is nevertheless a special privilege to welcome the trio in ‘Sun Moon & Stars’, a show that is a milestone reference of the trans-disciplinary creativity born out of the experimental burst of the 1960s. Each one of these outstanding artists has created their own concept, namely those of Deep Listening

(developed by the composer and improviser/accordionist), Kinetic Awareness (developed by the choreographer and filmmaker), and Dream Community (developed by the poet, playwright, performer and director). Two factors unite them and override everything else that may set them apart: the same belief in social and political feminism and the marked spirituality of their respective attitudes, as they combine magic paganism, Christian ecumenism and pan-African mythology.

Rui Eduardo Paes

WORKSHOPS

INFORMAL PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS

Free Admission

Elaine Summers

10 ABR 2011 (Sun), 19h30

Participants: Eva Ângelo, Filipe Moreira, Isabel Pinto Ferreira, Joclécio Azevedo, Manuela Campos, Manuela São Simão, Né Barros, Rute Esteves, Teresa Prima, Vera Mota.

Serralves Auditorium

Deep Listening Intensive by Pauline Oliveros

11 ABR 2011 (Mon), 19h30

Participants: André Abel, António Augusto Aguiar, Dimitris Andrikopoulos, Fábio Videira, Gustavo Costa, Hugo Carvalhais, Igor Silva, Isabel Azevedo, Isabel da Rocha, Joana da Conceição, João Alves, João Ferreira, João Pedro Coimbra, João Ricardo, Jonathan Saldanha, Marta Ângela, Miguel Carvalhais, Nuno Costa, Pedro Tudela, Telmo Marques.

ESMAE (R.da Alegria, 503, Porto)

Cultivating the Individual Improviser by  Jason Hwang

11 ABR 2011 (Mon), 22h00

Participants: Eleonor Picas, Filipe Silva, João Martins, Jorge Queijo, José Miguel Pereira, José Miguel Pinto, José Valente, Tiago Morgado.

Passos Manuel (R. Passos Manuel, 137, Porto)

CINEMA

12 ABR 2011 (Tue), 21h30

Serralves Auditorium

Free Admission

Cine-dance: the films of  Elaine Summers

presented by the director

Judson Fragments, 1964

Another Pilgrim, 1968

Absence and Presence, 1968

Ford Foundation Garden, 1971

Iowa Blizard, 1973

Two Girls Downtown Iowa, 1973

Windows in the Kitchen, 1976

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Elaine Summers – Coreografia, vídeo; Pauline Oliveros – Composição musical, acordeão V; Ione – Spoken word, voz; Taketo Shimada – Vídeo; Jason Huang – Violino; Kiori Kawai – Dança; Thomas Körtvélyessy – Dança (participação via Skype a partir de Roterdão)

Poucas vezes há a oportunidade de encontrar num mesmo projecto figuras tão exponenciais da cultura contemporânea como Pauline Oliveros, Elaine Summers e Ione. Já antes Oliveros e Summers e Oliveros e Ione haviam colaborado, mas é um especial privilégio recebê-las às três neste “Sun Moon & Stars”, um espectáculo que ficará para a história como uma referência da criatividade transdisciplinar nascida com a explosão experimental da década de 1960.
Rui Eduardo Paes

Adquira já o seu bilhete para o espectáculo Sun Moon & Stars aqui.
Bilhetes também disponíveis na recepção de Serralves.

ProgramaÇÃo associada:

ApresentaÇÕes pÚblicas informais do resultados dos
Workshops Sun Moon & Stars
10 e 11 ABR 2011 (Dom e Seg) – Serralves/ESMAE/Bar Passos Manuel

Por Elaine Summers, Pauline Oliveros e Jason Hwang
Entrada gratuita

Cinema
12 ABR 2011 (Ter), 21h30 – Auditório de Serralves
Programação: Ricardo Matos Cabo

Filmes de Elaine Summers, apresentados pela realizadora.
Judson Fragments, 1964
Another Pilgrim, 1968
Absence and Presence, 1968
Ford Foundation Garden, 1971
Iowa Blizard, 1973
Two Girls Downtown Iowa, 1973
Windows in the Kitchen, 1976

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Entrada gratuita mediante levantamento de bilhete na recepção de Serralves.

Sarah Frost
Arsenal

 
April 14 – May 14, 2011
Opening Reception: April 14, 6-8pm

P·P·O·W

535 West 22nd Street
3rd Floor
New York, NY 10011

P·P·O·W is pleased to present our first solo exhibition with Sarah Frost, Arsenal. Frost recently discovered and focused her attention on a community of boys who self-publish instructional YouTube videos for making paper guns. Learning this craft, Frost has amassed a comprehensive arsenal – from handguns to elaborate Halo-inspired assault rifles – to create a monumental installation.  In its variety of form and configuration, including suspended objects, floor works, ammunition piles and other accessories, Arsenal reveals the intensity of the boys’ pursuit, Frost’s curiosity about it and her obsessive fascination with object-making.
 
Shown only once before at the Great Rivers Biennial 2010 exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis, Arsenal extends Frost’s interest in constructing immersive environments.  She has said “…my recent works rely on scale to create a sense that the viewer is within a larger framework.  I often employ hundreds or thousands of similar units in an installation; together these units create a space that contains the viewer.” Interested in the history of objects, Frost collects found or discarded objects and repurposes them into built environments. She chooses objects for visible evidence of their use, social value and what they imply about the people who used them; in the past she has worked with materials as diverse as telephone cords, appliances and keys taken from computer keyboards, referencing a desire for the personal in the masses of forgotten objects. Arsenal combines this interest in the readymade with a passion for the well-crafted, as she methodically created hundreds of provocative gun forms found online.
 
Initially, Frost was attracted to the ingenuity of the homemade videos and guns but simultaneously stunned by the knowledge the boys had about the workings of the guns. She responded to the idiosyncrasy of the videos, such as an account of shooting Grandpa’s snub-nosed revolver or using 1,400 sheets of paper to make a M134 Vulcan with tripod, and to the inventiveness of the gun forms. Their simple materials – paper and tape – belied their sophistication, as most shot paper darts through blowtubes, and many had moving parts: spinning chambers, folding or extendable stocks, pump-action barrels etc. For Frost, this simultaneous attraction to the workmanship and discomfort with the subject matter was fascinating. Like an anthropologist, in Arsenal she re-presents found forms; because they are found, they are inherently reflective of their context and society. While the installation evokes questions  – of meaning, politics, fragility, the need to communicate and so forth – above all it is a distillation of form, construction and the placement of objects within a space.
 
Sarah Frost was born in 1967 in Detroit and lives and works in St. Louis.  She received a Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture and painting from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from Washington University in St. Louis. Frost has exhibited her work regionally, including at Laumeier Sculpture Park and Museum, St. Louis; Regional Arts Commission, St. Louis; and Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, Mt. Vernon, IL and nationally in New York, Miami and Palm Springs, California. She has also received numerous awards and grants, including the inaugural Riverfront Times Visual Arts Mastermind Award, St. Louis in 2008 and grants from Arts in Transit, St. Louis and the Missouri Arts Council. Most recently she won the Great Rivers Biennial 2010, a grant funded by the Gateway Foundation and solo exhibition at Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis. She previously exhibited QWERTY in the group exhibition, Debris, at P·P·O·W in 2010.

一天悠長 ONE LONG DAY: La Monte Young’s The Well-Tuned Piano

Soundpocket

Hong Kong

Jasper Johns Oval Office by Jon Rafman

PEPSI THROWBACK LABEL ON A NEW COKE CAN

f/ works by: AARON GRAHAM, HammerLord, CHRISTIAN MEGAZORD OLDHAM, JON RAFMAN, TABOR ROBAK, SHAWN C. SMITH, & Themaxleydog

curated by Edward Shenk

@ Reference Art Gallery:  2/18/11 – 3/11/11

There was once a code I found for GameShark that would allow you to play multiplayer in Nintendo 64’s GoldenEye 007 as Frasier and Niles Crane, characters from NBC’s hit show Frasier.  I have since lost this code and cannot find it anywhere.
This show is curated around the idea of game modding, of seeing familiar characters, vehicles, objects, in a platform not originally made for them, and the slight off-ness that accompanies this.
In the works of Aaron Graham and Shawn C. Smith, Photoshop is used not because it must be, but rather to compose very possible, near-mundane scenarios in both found and taken photos.  There are no explosions or aliens, but rather a Snickers is inserted onto a table, a snake is placed in a field, the viewer tipped off only by a drop-shadow or an awkward angle.  The results are beautiful.  In The Mona Lisa Is Replaced By A Thomas Kinkade Painting Hanging The Wrong Way by Christian Megazord Oldham, this is now the slightly tweaked scene in front of which Eminem is getting his cellphone picture taken.
Jon Rafman’s Brand New Paint Job’s feature famous works of art now understood as textures or wallpapers on vehicles or people or other 3D model scenarios.  Already established images now blanket the entire scene in each of these new moments.  A flat image finds space to exist as a Starbucks counter or a miner’s pickaxe.  The Paint Job’s culminate in the beautiful realm that is BNPJ.exe, an interactive game world made by Rafman and Tabor Robak, available for download here.  Also included in the show is a specifically made BNPJ of a work by Aaron Graham.  The original work by Graham is also featured in PEPSI THROWBACK.
Alongside these works are two YouTube videos of mods for real video games.  In one a baffled Ernest P. Worrell wanders into a wrestling ring.  In the other, a Jurassic Park Ford Explorer drives around Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas accompanied by Plain White T’s’s “Hey There Delilah.”  These works are by HammerLord and Themaxleydog, respectively.
-Edward Shenk

LIVE FEED from ARTSPACE, AUCKLAND
Contact Performance
Part one, Computer Dance Saturday 5 March 2011, 6pm
Part two, Parangole Capes Saturday 12 March 2011, 6pm
Part three, Body Articulation/Imprint Saturday 19 March 2011, 6pm
Main lecture theatre, Architecture School of Art and Design, 139 Vivian Street, Te Aro, Wellington.

In 1974 Jim Allen presented the performance Contact at the Auckland City Art Gallery. Famed for its dramatic focus on live action rather than the static object, Contact is acknowledged as a pivotal work in the development of post-object art in New Zealand. The work elaborates a release from social alienation through collective activity whereby performers move within a structured framework, shifting from tentative interaction to cooperation to possible transcendence. Re-performed at ARTSPACE in Auckland as part of the Auckland Festival over three weekends in March 2011, Contact will be simultaneously re-presented as a ‘live feed’ in Wellington via the capabilities of the internet.

FORTHCOMING EXHIBITION
Points of Contact: Jim Allen, Len Lye, Hélio Oiticica is an exhibition that traces the historical and conceptual connections between New Zealand artist Jim Allen (b.1922), a significant figure in the development of post-object art in New Zealand, and two of his key contemporaries: expatriate experimental filmmaker and kinetic sculptor Len Lye (1901-1980) and Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica (1937–1980).

Organised and toured by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with assistance from Creative New Zealand and Michael Lett and curated by Tyler Cann and Mercedes Vicente, Points of Contact draws together bodies of work which share certain material and conceptual qualities, most especially their engagement with light, movement, colour, and the body.

Central to this exhibition is the reconstruction of Allen’s pivotal 1969 Small Worlds exhibition at Barry Lett Galleries in Auckland, one of the earliest instances of environmental sculpture to be presented in New Zealand.

These installations are joined by other works by all three artists that are variously originals, reconstructions and photographic documentation. This re-staging enables viewers to dwell on the challenges and possibilities posed by the re-presentation of ephemeral or conceptual works of art, and therefore to explore the complex legacy of the ‘post-object’.

This exhibition presents Hélio Oiticica’s work for the first time in New Zealand.

Points of Contact joins a number of recent surveys that challenge the European and North American art historical paradigm, proposing and examining instead parallel and specific art historical trajectories outside these centres, in both their local and global dimensions.

The exhibition will be presented at the Adam Art Gallery 19 March – 22 May 2011.

A public programme of artist talks, discussion and ‘live feed’ performances has been designed to provide a platform for critical discussion and to enhance engagement with the exhibition.
Check http://www.adamartgallery.org.nz/calendar

Save The World (performance by Yan Jun and Mian Mian aka Kika)
 
 
 
Yan Jun Interview on Afterall Online
 
 
White Fungus Editor Rudolph Hudsucker has interviewed Beijing artist Yan Jun for Afterall Online. Yan talks about the development of the Chinese experimental music scene. You can read the interview here. http://www.afterall.org/
 
Yan has just arrived in New York for a three-month residency. You can see his US concert schedule here. http://mu.subjam.org/yanjun/archives/2515