Artists Meeting - gumbo@dumbo

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gumbo@dumbo - essay

Written by G.H. Hovagimyan

Tuesday, 04 March 2008

Artists Meeting started in April of 2007. The initial idea to create an artists meeting group came from a discussion between Daniel Blochwitz and G.H. Hovagimyan. Daniel, who is from (former) East Germany grew up with a notion of socialist collectivity. Through his active participation in the reform movement of 1989/90 this notion was radicalized, but ended up disappointed with the socio-political failure of the movement. Only through art collectives, like the FLEAS (e.g. at Utopia Station in 2003) he started reviving his collaborative impulses. G.H. had been involved in artists groups and collaborations throughout his life. Daniel had attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and decided to invite several artists from the program. G.H. invited artists he had met in various circumstances such as former students, thing net volunteers, and members from [PAM] Perpetual Art Machine and the artists consulting group NSUMI.

Artists’ media ranged from painting to video, performance, photography, installation, computer art and sound art. The initial meetings were about what direction the group should go in, trying to define goals and what the purpose of an artists group might be. The discussion about group objectives and possible project was lively and organic. It eventually culminated into the idea, proposed by Ursula Endlicher, to pursue an open and transparent process as well as subsequent collaborative projects, including the formation of the group in itself.

For one of the early meetings, each member of the group presented and discussed their work. Although the styles and forms were quite diverse, there was a commonality and overlapping of ideas amongst the presented works.

G.H. And Daniel started to document the Artists Meeting using video and still photography. The group set up a yahoo groups web site to have an online discussion in between meetings.
(These types of documentation constituted raw material for the formation of the group as an artwork in and of itself.)

Some of the online discussion and the group discussion centered around the idea of an exhibition of some sort. Everyone was asked to propose their ideas for shows. Part of the discussion which is still ongoing is whether each artist can act as a sole voice curator using/inviting the members of the group to create an exhibition based on their theme or is it more appropriate to create works in a true collaborative manner.

Leesa & Nicole Abahuni suggested the group propose a work for the dumbo arts festival that happens in September. The group decided to do a projection piece. When the dumbo arts festival accepted the groups proposal the group began to focus on the content. It was decided to use all the documentation for the basis of the projections and in addition each artist was asked to contribute video or still photos to be edited together.

GH had suggested that once the material was gathered, the final edit would be executed by a random selection program. Optimally this program would select the individual clips of video and still photos and serve them to the data projector in real time. This would create two interesting circumstances; the computer would act as the arbiter of choice that would belay any aesthetic assembly created by the editing process and the juxtaposition of various elements would cause new meanings to be revealed in the final edit.

At this point the group proposed to project the video onto the side of the Manhattan Bridge. There was no vehicle for the audio portion of the program. Leesa & Nicole Abahuni suggested that instead of using a sound system the group use small battery powered mini-ampifiers that were used by guitar musicians and would clip onto a persons belt. Instead of a six channel surround sound system it was agreed that the group use six separate practice amplifiers and have six people walk around with the sound playing through the amplifiers. This was named “surrounding” sound and became a separate performative element. Indeed during the actual festival, Leesa & Nicole took the group with the sound work through the streets and into several art openings and events.

Lee Wells was able to acquire two 30,000 lumins projectors for the three nights of the festival performance. Chris Borkowski created a computer program using Max msp and Jitter for a live video and text improvisation. The two projections were placed one atop the other. They were each 30x40 feet and very impressive. The bottom screen played the assembled clips and the top was a remix with additional video clips. What occurred was something akin to a Guy Debord situationist style event. The videos presented a sort of media landscape and the sound performers functioned as an updated example of situationist Dérive. This is how Guy Debord defines Dérive in his 1958 essay;

“One of the basic situationist practices is the dérive [literally: “drifting”], a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psycho-geographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.” -Theory of Dérive by Guy Debord

What is apparent is that various mediums such as still image, text, video, sound etc.. can be used in a performative manner. This cues into a re-contextualization of the media forms that are the control systems for global capitalism. Part of the new critique or re-use of these media is a sort of transparent documentation of the process of trying to collaborate. One of the more interesting video projects for the Artists Meeting gumbo@dumbo was a bocce ball game organized by Leesa & Nicole Abahuni. The artists in the group played the game on a lawn at Liberty State park which is between the two bridges where the arts festival occurs each year. The ball game was not just another home video although that is what it looked liked to the casual observer. What really occurred was a rather interesting discussion and a group consciousness between the various members of Artists Meeting. This then points out the subversive nature of a seemingly benign activity that is hidden in plain view of a recording video camera. Indeed much of what happens with the Artists Meeting group occurs in the meetings or in an group activity such as the sound swarm or even a “pot-luck” meal. Indeed, the process of creating a group or collaborative art work, is the art work. The various incidental products such as videos or performances or websites are incomplete media representations of the dynamism of this process.

The gumbo@dumbo did engage the audience in a number of ways that one could to the idea Dérive. The drift of both the casual stroller and the moving sound performers create that awareness of a psycho-geographical effect while breaking up a traditional relationship between artists and fixed product, audience and art work and even between projected image and sound space.