CIVIC MATTERS
International Exchange and Residency Project
Organized by Brett Littman, Irene Tsatsos, Veronica Wiman, and
Zandra Ahl
/ Craft In Dialogue.
15 – 29 January 2006
PRESS CONTACT: Carol Stakenas, 323-957-1777 x15 and carol@artleak.org
(Los Angeles, 12 December 2005) Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) is pleased to present Civic Matters, a two-week cultural exchange and residency project, that brings together an international curatorial team with a diverse group of artists and collectives from Sweden, Finland and Los Angeles to explore the complex roles of art, craft, design, architecture, and community in contemporary society. Civic Matters will raise questions about the production of art, craft and design as it relates to the distinct cultural histories and traditions found in the United States and in Scandinavia, and will provide an opportunity for participants to explore the dynamics of artistic collaboration.
Civic Matters is organized by four guest curators: Zandra Ahl / Craft In Dialogue , a Swedish artist and project manager of Craft In Dialogue at IASPIS in Stockholm; Brett Littman, deputy director of PS1 in New York, Irene Tsatsos, a Los Angeles-based independent curator and former Director/Curator of LACE; and Veronica Wiman, an independent curator based in Stockholm. Wiman is currently a visiting curator at LACE. Civic Matters participants – visual artists, craft artists, writers, architects, graphic designers, public planners, curators, and more – include: Bicycle Kitchen (LA), Mike Blockstein (LA), Jeff Cain (LA), Fallen Fruit (LA), Sundown Salon (LA), Hjärta Smärta (Sweden), IC-98 (Finland), Journal of Aesthetics and Protest (LA), Otto Karvonen (Finland), LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design (LA), Muungano (Sweden), Outpost for Contemporary Art (LA), r a k e t a (Sweden), ROR (Finland) and Sissi Westerberg (Sweden). While the creative work of the participants varies greatly, all share a demonstrated interest in producing work that engages with an audience in a manner that is social as well as aesthetic.
Among many artists, designers, and craftspeople today, collaboration and participation are now the operative terms, and the demarcation lines between art, architecture, design, fashion and other media are becoming obsolete. Many are banding together in collectives to share community and the common goal to create a visual language that reflects the post-industrial, urban, heterogeneous world they live in. The result is that the field is more innovative and vibrant than ever.
Reflecting this vibrancy through their creative practices, this group will develop a range of ideas and projects – from object prototypes and media campaigns to social interventions that explore the dynamics of artistic collaboration within the context of LA’s cultural landscape by responding to its charms and social challenges. Additionally, Civic Matters proposes a unique model of cultural tourism for our guests and residents alike. Through a series of expeditions and social encounters, the group will mutually construct a most atypical investigation of Los Angeles – its neighborhoods, art world, strip malls, culture, nature, clichés, and more.
Civic Matters was developed through a series of local meetings, online dialogues and international visits to create an atmosphere of collective culture and exchange between local and visiting participants. The curatorial team has met periodically through the support by Craft in Dialogue/IASPIS since June 2004 to plan the project. Subsequently, a series of social gatherings and structured meetings has occurred in Stockholm, Helsinki and Los Angeles between the participants and curators over the past five months. A blog was established to capture this process. To date more than 50 entries have been posted between the curators and the participants tracing the arc of the project. The curators and participants will organize and host a diverse series of scheduled and spontaneous public and private events, meetings, performances and lectures at LACE and around the city. To access the blog and listings of Civic Matters programs will be available and updated regularly on LACE’s website:
www.artleak.org/civicmatters.html
Civic Matters Participants
The Bicycle Kitchen/La Bicicocina is a non-profit, volunteer-run
bicycle repair and educational space in Los Angeles dedicated to improving
the lives of Angelinos using the bicycle as its tool. They offer what no other
bike shop can offer in the greater Los Angeles area: a space for all bicyclists
to repair or build their bicycles from donated and recycled parts, to meet
other cyclists, enrich their lives through bicycle awareness and find new outlets
for bicycle culture. Kelly Martin and Jimmy Lizama are Bicycle
Kitchen’s representatives for Civic Matters.
www.bicyclekitchen.com
Mike Blockstein is a visual artist and educator in Los Angeles working in community-based art that explores the intersections of artistic process and civic engagement. His interdisciplinary projects utilize a “sense of place” as a mechanism to address social, cultural and built environments. He has developed public art and education programs projects bringing together multi-service agencies throughout the U.S. Among many other current projects, Mike is leading cross-disciplinary art and community-building projects working with youth and young adults in projects that explore neighborhood history, character and context.
Jeff Cain is an LA-based artist who investigates cultural, technological, and natural systems and creates work that intervenes and remodels these structures. His work has been presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Musee D’art Modern de Ville de Paris, Track 16, LAFreewaves, Leefalshalong at the New Chinatown Barbershop, CalArts, the Armory Center for the Arts, and other Southern California venues.
FALLENFRUIT is an online project run by Dave Burns, Matias
Viegener and Austin Young. They spearhead an ongoing community activist artwork
that maps all the fruit trees growing on or over public property in Los Angeles
and other American cities. First published as an artist’s project in The
Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, FALLEN FRUIT has been included in a
variety of art gallery shows.
www.fallenfruit.org
Hjärta Smärta is a graphic design and illustration collective
consisting of Samira Bouabana and Angela Tillman, both living
and working in Stockholm, Sweden. Hjärta Smärta, which translates
as “Heart” and “Pain” mostly works with clients, such as advertising firms,
magazines and various cultural institutions in Sweden. Other work often emerges
from ideas or opportunities that emerges outside of these client relationships.
The collective has produced graphic design in various sizes and material, including
books, furniture, graffiti wallpaper, and interior design.
www.woo.se
IC-98 (”Iconoclast 1998”) was founded in 1998 by Visa
Suonpää and Patrik Söderlund as a reaction to the restrictions
of academic writing. Based in Turku, Finland, IC-98’s working
methods are often interventions in public spaces to construct situations
and create social frameworks. Increasingly, their projects take book form
and are distributed for free in public. Past publications include: Theses
on the Body Politic, Forays, RUN AND DIE, and A Monument for the
Moments of the Living Present (A Proposal), among many others.
www.socialtoolbox.com
Journal of Aesthetics and Protest is a Los Angeles-based
artist’s collective. The magazine sits at the discursive juncture of fine art,
media theory and anti-authoritarian activism. They sculpt projects that
challenge hegemonic representations of knowledge, art, activism, and spark
situations for community-based social change or creation. They work collaboratively
with individuals and collectives on several continents. LA Editorial Team: Marc
Herbst (co-founder), Robby Herbst (co-founder), Cara Baldwin, Ryan
Griffis, and Christina Ulke.
www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org
Otto Karvonen is a visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland. Otto’s artistic work consists mainly of temporary performative actions and sculptural installations that are situated in public space. His ideas often start from small, everyday observations. Through discoveries and discussions held along the way, each project follows its own unexpected path. He focuses on the project’s context to explore how well each work responds to the physical, social and political space and time it occupies.
LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design was founded in
1987 and plays a vital role in Los Angeles by initiating and supporting events,
publications, and symposia in this city and beyond. The Forum has produced
lecture series, special events, a theory reading group, a quarterly newsletter,
nine pamphlet-sized books and initiated a number of book projects published
with major presses.
www.laforum.org
Muungano is a Stockholm-based collective of 15 people with
different backgrounds ranging from engineering, philosophy, economy, design
and architecture. They use design as a social and aesthetical activity in relation
to commercial and material conditions. Their name means “alliance” or
“union” in Swahili since they use apparent contradictions to create new forms,
strategies and situations.
www.muungano.com
Outpost for Contemporary Art is a non-profit organization
founded in 2004 by Julie Deamer. Their mission is to cultivate
creative exploration, international cultural exchange and a social setting
conducive to lively discussion. Outpost assists artists in developing
interdisciplinary projects that are speculative in nature, where process is
emphasized over end result. In seeking to build energetic relationships among
diverse communities, Outpost functions as an accessible and informal
meeting ground in Los Angeles, where artist and audience alike can engage in
dialogue.
www.outpost-art.org
r a k e t a is a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration
and experiments within art, design, architecture and digital media. Based in
Stockholm, Sweden, Raketa creates spaces outside ordinary art venues.
By using public space for their projects and inviting other artists to participate
in their efforts, they open up the possibility for new autonomous artistic
activity.
www.raketa.nu
ROR is an artist collective based in Helsinki, Finland. Its
members are Klaus Nyqvist, Karoliina Taipale, Panu Puolakka and Jiri Geller.
Since 1998 ROR has hosted a countless number of guest artists in their shows.
The works of its members and guests represent a variety of arts like knitting,
electronic music, motorcycle design, textual publications, technological inventions
and other visual arts. ROR also acts as a curatorial collective in
the spirit of traditional avant-garde groups, the circus and rock'n'roll spectacles. Karoliina
Taipale is ROR’s representative for Civic Matters.
www.ror.fi
Sissi Westerberg is based in Stockholm, Sweden. She
has studied metal-craft and jewelry-art. Sissi’s interest for body-adornment
has shifted to include experimentation with video, installation and sculpture.
Her objects, jewelry and photography aim to imbue a feeling of intimacy and
belonging by using body-like shapes in connection with conservative values.
In her various collaborative works, she investigates processes and the language
of material culture to engage the public in the dialogue of design and mass-production.
www.sissiwesterberg.com or www.s-u-b.se
Sundown Salon started in 2001 as a casual forum for bringing an extended group of friends together to share work. On periodic Sunday afternoons the house of Fritz Haeg becomes a gathering place for the free exchange of ideas and art through events, happenings, meetings, pageantry, performances, shows, stunts and spectacles. The activities are framed and affected by the unique house which includes a subterranean cave-like space, a geodesic dome on top, surrounded by garden spaces. The Salon celebrates the truly engaged human, responding to their time, environment, community, friends, neighbors, weather, history, place.
Civic Matters Curatorial Team
Civic Matters has been organized by Zandra Ahl / Craft In Dialogue, project director of Craft In Dialogue, an ISAPIS project, Stockholm; Brett Littman, Deputy Director of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, a MoMA affiliate, NY; Irene Tsatsos, writer and independent curator; and Veronica Wiman, an independent curator based in Stockholm. Civic Matters originated in Miami in 2002 as a result of a discussion between Littman, who was then Executive Director at Dieu Donne in New York, and Tsatsos, who was then LACE’s Director/Curator. Littman had been developing an exhibition on contemporary Scandinavian design, which appealed to Tsatsos because of the strong history of design in Los Angeles and the influence it has had on so much contemporary artwork being produced locally. To develop the project, Littman brought in Stockholm-based curator Veronica Wiman and artist/curator Zandra Ahl into the discussion. Through their input, along with Tsatsos’, Littman’s original exhibition grew into what is now Civic Matters.
CIVIC MATTERS SUPPORT
Project support for Civic Matters comes from The American Scandinavian Foundation, Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, Consulate General of Sweden in Los Angeles, Craft In Dialogue/ IASPIS, FRAME, Mann Brothers and Benjamin Moore Paints, and Scandinavian Airlines.
Support for Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and its programs comes from Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, California Community Foundation, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Community Foundation, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, LLWW Foundation, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Morris Family Foundation, and the members of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions distinguishes itself by serving as a laboratory for artistic research and unfettered, positive creative expression, where artists—including newly-emerging and under-represented artists as well as more established artists—have the freedom and the opportunity to take risks. The organization originated in 1978 from a need for a Los Angeles venue that supports, exhibits, and advocates innovations in art-making. Since its inception, the organization has presented the work of over 5000 artists in over 3000 exhibitions, performances, screenings, and works of public art.
Admission to Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions is free with a recommended
donation of $3.00 ($2.00 students, members free). Gallery hours are Wednesday
– Sunday 12 - 6 pm, Friday 12 – 9 pm. Call 323.957.1777 for parking information,
directions, and additional information. For more information about Los Angeles
Contemporary Exhibitions and its programs please visit
www.artleak.org
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