The First Annual Otis/Sandberg Institute Exchange Program Exhibition

Kathrin Burmester was born in Flensburg, Germany and currently lives in Los Angeles. Her multimedia art practice examines the aesthetics in core power structures, primarily those found in her chosen medium. Her project, titled Tour, employs a one-channel video projection and sound installation, which engages the viewer’s relationship to packaged travel tours complete with guided narrations that broadcast and disseminate information meant to promote location as a consumable product. The projection is a 55-minute video of a guided tour that highlights passing sights with a steady camera view shot straight from the deck of a floating boat. There is one sound component in which the female voice of a travel guide runs with a self-reflective commentary related to the sights and surroundings. The audio continually points to itself in the same way voices in a human head loop around in a whirlpool-like fashion rehearsing their mockup narrations with continuous self-questioning that specifies introspection amid the chattering masses and the oppressive multinational organism. In the second part of Burmester’s installation, postcards with the same English text taken from the boat tour narrative fragments mimic the style of art fair promotional material. The souvenir cards transmit their propaganda to further extend in silence the theme of packaged sightseeing.

Anthony Carfello is a performance artist whose practice involves researching the traditions, lifestyles, habits, likes and dislikes of regional cultures only to digest and restate them through his own socially biased filters. A measure of Carfello’s commentary is devoted to both opposing and reveling in individualist philosophies, and to a great extent his artwork revolves around the improper application of romanticized or predictably critical conformist beliefs that are often celebrated by a region or country. In his project, Carfello sets out to learn Dutch, a language that is foreign to him, from passing citizens in Amsterdam where English is not the first language of the people. He has prepared a monologue written in English and set up a visitor’s station with a sign that reads, “I only speak English. Please help me learn Dutch.” The sign is written in Dutch, English, French and German. Willing participants will translate the monologue line by line from English to Dutch as Carfello solicits help with the correct pronunciation and wrangles with the new language. After he learns the entire monologue through meetings and evaluations with the locals, he will perform the Dutch version from memory in an impromptu performance that will address the experience of travel, the difficulty of learning new things, and the resistance to cooperative group efforts usually displayed by agents of his home country.

Sojung Kwon is a performance artist based in Los Angeles. Originally from Seoul, Korea, she often positions herself as an outsider in both eastern and western cultures while investigating the rational and linguistic inconsistencies in each. For her project, the artist has set up an email address on the website www.rollingaball.com with the following instructions: “If you see a person rolling a ball in the street, please take a photo and send it to rollingaball@gmail.com. Within a week, you will receive an original work of email art in the form of your image, signed by the artist.” Rolling a Ball consists of three parts: a poster, a public performance and a website. The poster features an image of a person rolling a large red ball, and the ball itself advertises the website address in large white letters. The performance will take place at the same time everyday at a specified location. All photos will be posted on the website as they are received. Her project and performance invite the audience to participate in a somewhat familiar social activity while Kwon’s actions occupy spaces of obscure silent engagement. Participants can witness her spectacle involving real action, while the printed matter and virtual reality of cyberspace challenge the action with their mysterious allure that helps construct and generate the scene set for new interactions and the reevaluation of resurrected memories.

Eric Medine is a multimedia installation artist, independent curator and former Chicago-based gallery owner. Born in Tucson, Arizona, Medine now lives and works in Los Angeles. For his project, he has fabricated a modified television with a companion screen in the form of a wall of televisions with the living-dead inspired title, Zombie Television. The physical components are a battery powered wireless television set, a motion controller and a mountain of televisions that the user can, to some degree, manipulate. In essence, the operator activates an unwieldy monster-like remote control that presents an arduous experience for him to consider. In Medine’s world, the burdensome television itself becomes a giant remote. And since it is fitted with a motion sensor, which controls a software video mixer that interprets the signal of the weighty small-screen box, it can be slammed, punted, slapped, kicked and rolled around at will by the user while the activity is converted into video effects like channel and color change or 3-D effects that are sent to the wall of televisions. Reminiscent of a pile of zombies in bondage to the uncaring mastermind of their fate, the barricade of televisions becomes enslaved to the moving television remote. The audience is invited to interact with Zombie Television, experimenting by trial and error to find a motion that has an engaging effect.

Chris Oatey was born in Cleveland, Ohio and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He applies drawing in response to news stories found in print, film, television and his own environment by sometimes starting with the only existing iconic source shot that lives as a mark of the event. Combined with memories and past experiences, current events shape the content of Oatey’s work. In his project titled Painsville, he begins with the found photographic image of a well-known train wreck, and another of the earliest known gunshot wound in the New World. He extracts each image and reduces it to the entropic point of white noise by using a carbon transfer process that allows him to single out the most compelling parts then reconstruct them using a variety of drawing styles. The photographic images of a train wreck and human scull are dismantled and placed in contexts that shift readings of the key subjects. Repetition of this process further strips dramatic elements of the images from their foundations while still retaining the emblematic sources Oatey has chosen to highlight. By thinking about our bond to popular imagery, and how violent death has the ability to seduce us visually, this series of obsessive drawings compel the viewer to reconsider the value of historical evidence in our culture.

Matt Warren was born in Guernsey, Channel Islands in the United Kingdom. His work generally involves the insertion of himself in some way into already established personae, events or situations, most often those related to famous actors or other celebrities. His project, titled Casablanca, deposits the viewer as an observer of a projected, life-size image of Warren standing dressed as Humphrey Bogart watching the Hollywood version of the film. The projection emanates from overhead onto the white gallery wall, but the Hollywood film itself is offstage, not visible to the viewers. The audio presents Warren’s local room tone and sounds that give listeners the feeling they are being heard by the character they are hearing and watching. By utilizing found male-identity associations already available in the film, Warren activates multiple interpretations while updating the viewers contact with them and their context in the past. He stands nearly motionless for the film’s two-hour duration while his energy, mood and attention wane to obvious irritation and fatigue; the audience may wonder what Warren is seeing and actually absorbing as he returns their gaze. Unable to ask any writer, actor or director what they mean, or ask Warren what he means to convey, we see the film’s sole spectator observing the film as we try to unveil layers of missing purpose. Left to our own analysis, the heroes that film and media have created for us collapse and dissipate.

Bree Yenalavitch is fascinated with stereoscopic devices. Her project titled A Stereoscopic Object That Renders Perspective Askew employs four altered Tru-Vue ViewMaster stereoscopic viewers, one television monitor with an instructional DVD on a loop (sans audio) and instructional pamphlets on how to use the Tru-Vue. She has created a slide wheel of her own images to be inserted into the altered ViewMasters for visitors to the gallery. Her customized slide wheel of images allows the gallery space to be seen where the observer is looking through Yenalavitch’s selected artwork images. Each visitor is encouraged to pick up a ViewMaster and walk around the gallery with it. The person who is holding and controlling the device will be able to view the images as a curator of an exhibition might do, and look through the slide wheel to project and install Yenalavitch’s artwork in the gallery space. The users of the four ViewMasters have the ability to alter both the images in their surroundings and gallery space and determine where the artwork is to be placed in the room; therefore, participation of the audience is the key to the completion of this work. Along with the Tru-Vue objects, there will be a television monitor showing an animation of how to use the devices and an informational pamphlet that each keeper can take home with them after they curate and install their own Yenalavitch exhibition.