place: Prescott, Arizona

twoi: meet-to-delete

Julian Priest‘s TWOI project has a number of interesting dimensions: when I noticed that friends at Pixelache had jumped into participating, and, greatly respecting Julian’s work in general, I patched together a paper-shredding meet-to-delete that actually fit the bill quite well. It was, after all, staged on Satellite Court.

Prescott Arizona

07 May 2014
Time 14:30-1530 (UTC -7)
Location: -112.466932, 34.570271
1610 Satellite Court, Prescott, Arizona

051 30cm stack of my Uncle’s papers from more than seven years ago that Gladys (his sister-in-law) left in a pile to be shredded
052 Bank statements
053 Credit Card statements
054 Investment statements
055 Medical records
056 Other state secrets
057 12 year stack of 2700 gallons (US) fuel receipts from John’s recently sold Toyota Tacoma truck

Annick facilitated an event in Brussels:

Meet to Delete!

Bruxelles Event Report – Saturday April 26th 2014 – 17h00–21h00 local time – Galerie Up – Bruxelles

We had a lovely Meet to Delete event in Bruxelles at Galerie Up.

The Gallery is small 20 square meter space in the Saint-Gilles area of Bruxelles, launched and owned by Clarisse Bardiot.

On the left side of the Gallery we put a small round table with a shredder and a pot with colored pens. People could sit at the table — or stand by it -— to shred the documents they had brought or delete datas from their cell phones, in a symbolically intimate and focused act.

Next to the table, we had suspended a roll of paper onto which people could write their first name and the nature of the information they just deleted.

On the right side of the Gallery, we video-projected the orbital path of the satellite. A candle was lit in the opposite corner. A poster was displayed next to it, another one was on the door of the gallery and 3 others on the gallery window.

A 9 slide Power Point about the project was available on an iPad for people to browse.

Drinks and light snacks (chips, olives) were served.

At the end of the event, Clarisse and I took a picture of the roll of paper, then we shredded the roll and the posters, and we blew up the candle.

The meta data of the event that we shall keep are the picture of the roll and samples of shredded documents.

About 20 people attended the event, among them some children. Most of them came around the same time, which allowed for nice exchanges.

Many questions were asked about The Weight of Information satellite and the whole project.

What came out of the discussions was that we all delete stuff without necessarily thinking about it but when asked to do it consciously, and in a collective set up, it raises a different approach and feelings to the act of deleting data. Here some that were stated:
. Deleting data and information belongs to the private realm, doing it collectively is, in a certain manner, sharing some sort of privacy.
. Every one reported that they had to think about what they would delete.
. It is difficult to decide and choose what to delete [in the framework of the Meet to Delete event], it is giving a weight to something that has no —or no more— value, that we want to get rid of and in a kind of a paradox giving it, for this moment, a central place.
. The notion of loss was also mentioned.
. It takes time to delete, that is it takes our attention. There is a sort of paradox to isolate mentally oneself from the group to focus on the deleting process.

We had also many informal conversations, some related to social and political issues of (storing) digital data!

For me, the most lovely moment was when one of kid, after having understood what it was all about, deleted “2 files from his DS”.

It was a joyful and friendly event, extremely rewarding intellectually and in terms of human relations.

Thank you Julian for this beautiful project, Clarisse for having hosted it and Alexi for the caring support, everyone that came to Galerie Up and Zac for the idea of the Sprite satellites. This has allowed for a generous, sharing, poetic and light moment.
Annick

22 : November : 201311 : October : 2024

place: South Acton, Massachusetts

that day

Small memories of those ancient times. Vague memories fortified by family lore. I was at a neighbor’s house in South Acton, Massachusetts at a playmate’s afternoon birthday party as a five-year-old. The party was cut short when the news propagated across the nation. The gravity and horror of the event was evinced in the level of emotion apparent in the adults: upon returning home I came running into our split-level suburban house with the alarming report that “President Lincoln’s been shot! President Lincoln’s been shot!”

. . . when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.

(from Romeo and Juliet, a quote given to Robert F. Kennedy by Jackie and later recited at the 1964 Democratic Party Convention by Robert as the introduction to his speech about his brother’s vision.)

14 : December : 200323 : January : 2024

place: Boulder, Colorado

final 4126 supper and stream

Reviving some vintage documentary video from the final exam-supper-party-streaming performance event in 2003 with my 4126 Advanced Digital Arts class, at my apartment in Boulder.

19 : April : 19956 : January : 2017

place: Reykjavík, Iceland

Fax You catalog

Night of the Arts @ the Academic Bookstore, Helsinki, Finland, 25 August 1994

In the spring of 1995, I was back in Helsinki teaching and UIAH/TAIK (University of Art and Design) — CAP (Computer-Aided Photography) Lab, and with help from Visa and funding from FRAME, I produced a 200-page photocopy documentation (pdf download) in an edition of fifty from the incoming and outgoing works at the Helsinki end of the performance. It was distributed to all the participants as well as a number of pertinent archive sites around the world including the ArtPool Research Center in Budapest and the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. If you are interested in a copy, please contact me — I will pass one of the two or three copies that I have left along for U$D 500.00 postage-paid.

25 : August : 199431 : December : 2023

place: Helsinki, Finland

Fax You essay

Project: Classic Fax

an essay by Jan Kenneth Weckman

Complying with the well-known maxim of McLuhan, that “the medium is the message,” nearly one hundred years of Modern Art has sustained the idea of a progress towards the self-referencing of the art object.

By sending pages chosen by the public behind the window of the academic bookstore from the drawing book of my son, Jason, I have acted out this slogan as a gesture of good-will towards those artists and writers who believe that through some event where “you take something, do something with it, then do something else with it,” you will reach a new level of conceptuality and artistic energy.

There are, of course, several complications to be analyzed in this event. Since the “now” of the avant-garde transforms into other moments of “now” in materials, vehicles, models, and codes, I see the medium in this case (the material and the vehicle of the fax transmission) as a remnant of the manipulative act of painting as an art. This same manipulative act it shares with photographic, lithographic, and photocopy working.

Images are produced by different configurations of material and vehicle. Meaning is produced through an agreed-upon common medium. The agreement is a sensual as well as a conceptual (historic) precondition to communication.

As I am only responsible for the decision to take my son’s drawings and use them as eligible imagery, separating the images transmitted from the vehicle transmitting gives a visibility to the classical notions of medium and message. That all this takes place within a larger field, that is, the World of Art, is not approachable for analysis within the event itself.

Any carrier of meaning which becomes an argument through its function of displacing something from one medium to another, resides within this classicism of the avant-garde.

The event could consequently be considered as a continuation of the tradition and craft of image-making that began in the ancient times of the cave-painters, and continued unaltered through Poussin, Cezanne, and Warhol.

In this context, writing is seen as evolving from the vast resources of an explicitly apprehended world, developing into a symbolic and systematic way of producing events and meaning. Human vision and human imagery is the facade of this relatively unlimited resource, a proof of which is pointed to by the technologic event of the fax-transmission.

The historic commonality of image-making and writing is well presented with the electronic techniques of the Fax. Thus is gives a thrust towards another angle: the non-classic fax project.

25 : August : 19946 : January : 2017

Fax You performance

Night of the Arts @ the Academic Bookstore, Helsinki, Finland, 25 August 1994

The Fax You project, sponsored by The Finnish Fund for Art Exchange and the Academy Bookstore, took place in the front window of the Academy Bookstore in Helsinki and the HERE Art center associated with the Gertrude Stein Repertory Theater in New York City. One evening at the end of August is a special one in Helsinki called “The Night of The Arts” where there are a variety of cultural events, Fax You was one of them. I was invited to participate by Visa Norros, the artist organizing the Finnish end of the event. Visa is an old friend who I first met when he was a visiting lecturer at the Icelandic College of Art a few years back.

Night of the Arts audience for Fax You are engaged and intrigued by the content filling up the windows of the Academy Bookstore in central Helsinki. Starting around 1700, we established contact via fax and telephone with the folks New York and at 1800 began the project with the first documented trans-Atlantic I CHING casting. (Well, as a late post-script here, I would defer this honor to a performance arranged by Roy Ascott for the Ars Electronica Biennale of 1982 where artists in a number of locations in the US and Wales were linked with terminals. They then did a casting which signified “CHU” or “”Difficulty at the Beginning”…) We, on the other hand, alternated cities for each consecutive cast of the three coins, generating the hexagram “The Power of the Great” which energized everyone during the next six hours of hectic activity. Some of the photos below done at the Helsinki end of the event show the situation as we worked in the windows of the Academic Bookstore. In my view, one of the more important outcomes a project like this is the establishment of some kind of lasting connection — else the electronic performance be simply an act of artistic spectacle.

Participants List

Curators: Julia Kauste (New York), Visa Norros (Helsinki)

New York
Julia Kauste, Steven Johnson Leyba, John Reaves, Emiko Saldivar, David Factor, Dayle Vilatch, Christopher Barker, Adrian Klein, Patricia Tallone Orsoni, Steve Bradley, Genie Nable, Marilyn Mullen, Cynthia Pannucci, Paul Pierog, Lotte Kjaer, Sandy Spreitz, Miran Kim, Jeff Severtson, Bob Laluey, Lisa Roberts

Helsinki
Visa Norros, Andy Best, Johanna Gullichsen, John Hopkins, Anders Tomren, Jan Kenneth Weckman, Anne Tompuri, Annu Vertanen

24 : August : 199411 : October : 2024

place: Helsinki, Finland and New York City, New York

Fax You announcement

The Finnish Fund for Art Exchange (FRAME), in cooperation with the Academic Bookstore, will organize a fax art happening with artists in Helsinki and New York.

Concept and Theme

A trans-Atlantic happening in which artists based in Finland cooperate with artists based in New York with the help of telefax as a medium of communication during three hours. The goal of the happening is to promote interactive art and communication beyond the boundaries of space and place, to experiment with the communication media, and to study alternative applications of telefax.

The act of making art is part of the happening: works are to be created during the happening. Artists add on top of each others works and comment on both the individual works and the surrounding environment. Photographers, who document the happening in both cities transmit impressions of the situation and atmosphere over the Atlantic. Authors and poets who present their works during the Night of Arts are welcome to participate in the fax happening. The artists work collectively in small groups. Trans-Atlantic working groups are encouraged.

Time. Place. Context.

Thursday the 25th of August, 1994 is a special night in Finland. The Helsinki Festival organizes together with the Academic Bookstore the Night of Arts. Most galleries, museums, theaters and shops in the city center keep their doors open until late into the night. Painters, graphic and performance artists, sculptors, singers, musicians, authors and poets perform for free in the streets and in the places mentioned above. In Helsinki the Fax Art happening is organized in cooperation with the Academic Bookstore from 10 pm to 1 am. Respectively in New York the happening will take place between 3 pm and 6 pm in an artists’ studio house.

Participating Artist

Novelists and poets, photographers, and 8-9 visual artists in each location.

The Medium and Necessary Equipment

Three telefax machines, two copy machines, two overhead projectors and a computer with a fax modem. Basic equipment will be provided by the organizers, however, artists are welcome to bring their own materials.

Bulletin

FRAME will document the happening in the form of a bulletin. It will be printed in five hundred copies and distributed to selected museums and galleries all over the world. The bulletin will consist of graphic, literature and photographic art works created during the happening.

Curators

In New York: Juulia Kauste, M.A. in Sociology of Art and Culture, M.S. in Urban Studies. She works as an Executive Director for the Finnish Foundation for the Visual Arts in New York.

In Helsinki: Visa Norros, graphic artist. Studies at the A. Tuhka Printmaking School in Helsinki; and at the Graphic Studio in Jyvaskyla, Finland. Internship at the Lithography Studio of Auguste Clot et Bramsen in Paris, France.

Sponsors and Organizing Parties

FRAME, The Finnish Fund for Art Exchange, was founded in 1992 to make Finnish Art and photography better known abroad. FRAME operates under the Fine Arts Academy Foundation. The Foundation’s board consists of twelve members. Three are appointed by the Ministry of Education, one by the City of Helsinki, three by the Fine Arts Association of Finland, and one each by the Artists’ Association of Finland, the Finnish Painters’ Union, the Association of Finnish Sculptors, the Society of Finnish Graphic Artists, and the Union of Finnish Art Associations.

FRAME works in collaboration with the key art museums and galleries, art organizations,and individual artists in Finland. FRAME also carries out special projects in collaboration with foreign exhibition organizers.

The Academic Bookstore is characterized by large figures: a sales area of 2,800 square meters on three floors, 8,000 meters of shelf space, some 140,000 items, a stock of over 400,000 book titles from 23,000 different publishers in the computerized register, over a dozen different languages, more than a million books in all … All of this is managed by four hundred people. These figures make the Academic Bookstore one of Europe’s largest and most diverse booksellers.