aloha...not yet...

OK, one last thing before I go. Once I start posting things to this ole blog I can't seem to stop chatting...Today I went down to San Jose (about an hour south of SF) to meet with the curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Cathy Kimball for an upcoming group show. I know Cathy from previous exhibitions, so it was nice to see her again. The show has about 8 artists and the theme is a technology-related one (called "Next/New"), since it's actually being held in conjunction with a big San Jose tech expo the ISEA (I forget what it's an acronym for, but just imagine something techie and geekie and very silicon valley-like). The opening for the show will have the street shut down in front and a big party as it's also the ISEA's closing night--nice!

So my idea for the show is pretty funny. Knowing that most of the other artists will be making very "techie" works (trust me, back in the late 90s/early 2000s tech-related art was SUPER big here in the Bay Area--it was totally ostentatious and a complete reflection of the bloated dot-com industry--thank god it popped, but it's still around) I'm doing something that doesn't even need electricity. What? No large video-projection pieces? No flat-screen panels with dual monitors and flashing lights? Why, no!

I'm going to be searching through online vendor sites like Ebay and Craigslist to find pictures of used electronic equipment that is being sold--like car stereos, cellphones, flat-screen monitors, etc. I'm downloading (or "stealing", i guess) the photos, and adjusting them in photoshop so that they "straighten" out their perpsective. Then I'm printing them out at "real" size, cutting them out, and assembling them into 3-D shapes so that they are weird "proxies" of the actual items. The blown-out jpg-y qualities will look really awful and yucky. I'm going to amass a whole slew of them so it will look like a low-grade pawn shop, flea market sale, or "fenced" area (a place where folks hawk stolen goods). They'll be displayed jumbled about on either a large 8' x 8' raised panel on the floor (a la flea markets) or on some kind of shelving unit. The point is that these actual items may or may not be "stolen" originally--lots of electronics get sold online from shady sources. Even if the originals were "legit", my "stealing" them from the internet is trying to partake of the rampant copyright infringement that is happening online, and the work also becomes a giant physical collection of stuff being sold in remote parts of the real world.

I guess I just like the fact that it's all quite contrary to what the other works in the show will look like--mine is gonna be messy, and junky, a real anti-slick thing. Yeah, go technology! To be honest, I'm a wee frightened at my time schedule on this one. By the time I get back from Hawaii I have about 3-4 weeks to pull this baby together. I can do it, but it may just get painful in the process. Argh.

However, I'm also totally excited by what my friend Julia Page is doing for the show: she's making a giant hydroponic system that grows plants onto fiberglass armatures shaped like machine guns--a bio-ogranic arsenal of sorts. Ohhhhhh! I love it and can't wait to see it in action.

Alright, i'm really going now. Yes, finally...