Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube - Catalogue

Catalogue December 2015

Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube December 1-31, 2015 Manila, Philippines

Organized by: The Multiple eXposure Project A multimedia, multi/trans/interdisciplinary artistic practice and research-based initiative that explores the many layers of imagemaking, participatory photography, visual ethnography, and performative encounter(s) between the image and the spectator; the subject and the viewer.

Curator: Sherwin Altarez Mapanoo Website: www.multipleexposureproject.co.nr

Email: themultipleexposureproject@gmail.com Acknowledgement The Multiple eXposure Project would like to express gratitude to GFX Enterprise for sponsoring this curatorial project and Curator Space for letting us use the curator’s tool for accepting and managing applications online without any cost. We also thank the following websites for online visibility and promotion: Art Slant, Artist Marketing Resources, Art Plus, Trans Art Guide, The Art League, The Art List, and Regional Arts and Culture Council. Last, but by no means least, we are beyond grateful to all the participating artists across the globe for submitting their incredible works to this humble project.

Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube

List of Artists

Anne Murray Leyla Rodriguez Amitesh Grover Anthony Stephenson Marbella Carlos Rembrandt Quiballo Hannah Reber Geordy Zodidat Alexis Clint Sleeper Dani Salvadori Ellen Wetmore Matt Lee Mohammad Namazi Robert Rutoed Julie Dawn Dennis Maarten Tromp Anna Garrett Arturo Soto Francine LeClercq Carlos Collado

Lita Poliakova John Robert Luna Elena Efeoglou Megan Mace Lorenzo Bordonaro Solomon Eko Louise Winter Johanna Poethig Liat Berdugo Phoebe Osborne Laura Gower Dani Lamorte Veronica Bleaus DĂŠnes Ruzsa Fruzsina Spitzer Sofia Makridou Theodora Prassa Olga Guse Victoria Elle Rocky Li Jennifer Mehigan

Disclaimer: The copyright of all materials on this catalogue belong to the respective artists. All rights are reserved. Reproduction in any form requires the written permission of the copyright owner.

Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Curator’s Note:

By Sherwin Altarez Mapanoo

P

ublic Interrogation: Outside the White Cube is an alternative, traveling, curatorial project that features image-based works across different disciplines and media by emerging artists whose works discuss the notion of the “public” and its complexities.

What is public? What counts as public? The “public” is a multilayered concept defined differently depending on how the term is used and framed. It is a notion devoid of singularity and is, grammatically speaking, a terrain of contradictions. As a noun and an adjective, the public constitutes the people, masses or community, and suggests anything that is staged, accessed, or seen out in the “open.” The public can also be used as a verb to describe something one does, as in make public or publicize, suggesting the movement or shift from the inside (private) to the outside (public). Paradoxically, however, the same term also points to the limits of such openness and movement. Given that it simultaneously refers to something “involving and provided by the government”, the public is always at risk of becoming merely an apparatus of the sovereign state and its institutions, thus making the flow of its production, distribution, and consumption partial and counterproductive.

Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube seeks to re-frame the practice of curating and spectating images outside the exclusionary, institutional borders of the “white cube” or gallery space. Public spaces are used as an exhibition site to stimulate a mode of spectator experience that revolves around displacement of the passersby (public) from their “habitus” by interrupting the flow of pedestrian traffic. We alter a familiar public space and transform it into an unusual, dialogic site for image projection and exhibition, taking advantage of its accessibility and site-specificity in order to redefine the ways the spectators look at and engage with images. Adopting “guerilla urbanism” as a curatorial strategy, we make sense of the immediacy of the “public” and reflect upon its context, meanings, and intersections with representation, place, and discourse. In so doing, we intervene and reformat aspects of the urban landscapes and emphasize the “counter-spectacle” in art viewing and appreciation. This project also underlines the inherent ephemerality of an open-to-the-public display in relation to time and space. As a “traveling” exhibition which heavily depends on projection technology and public space as its “frame” or “canvas", this project celebrates the momentary nature of image-viewing, consumption, and mobility in the metropolis at a time of constant flux and transition.

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

VIDEO ARTS Borders Anne Murray (USA) The Separation Loop Leyla Rodriguez (Germany) Gnomonicity Amitesh Grover (India) 36&71 Anthony Stephenson (USA) Sully Marbella Carlos (Canada) You See Davis Rembrandt Quiballo (Philippines, USA)

Untitled (Sleeping People in a Train) Hannah Reber (Germany) Into The Labyrinth Geordy Zodidat Alexis (France) The Safest of Hands Clint Sleeper (USA) Hunt/Find Dani Salvadori (UK) Leaving My Skin Ellen Wetmore (UK) Presence of Absence Matt Lee (India) Untitled Mohammad Namazi (UK, Iran)

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Borders Anne Murray (United States)

B

orders is a video poetry piece about the relationship of the individual to the changing and shifting borders of a country and how it effects identity.

About the artist: Anne Murray creates video poetry and photographic work and is currently living as an artistic nomad, traveling from one residency to another mostly in Europe. She has both American and Irish citizenship and draws inspiration from the changing borders of our world in relation to personal identity.

She has exhibited her work in many cities around the world including: London, Paris, Shanghai, Istanbul, Los Angeles, New York, Belgrade, and Budapest. Her work can be found in various collections including the White House Permanent Collection and the Collection of Prints and Photographs at the Main Branch of the New York Public Library. She obtained a BFA from Parsons School of Design in Paris and an MFA and MS in Art History from Pratt Institute in New York City. She is also a writer and enjoys combining her written work with her photographs to create video poems. Most recently, she has been working on a new genre, docuart, with participating artists contributing in collaboration their voices to create artistic documentaries about identity in relation to changing borders.

Website: www.annemurrayartist.com

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

The Separation Loop Leyla Rodriguez (Germany)

I

n this short film, the artist aims to unravel the complicated relationship between two worlds, by trying to reconcile them.

About the artist: Leyla Rodriguez enrolled at HAW University Hamburg. Her interventions in the public space through temporary textile installations, objects and videos have been exhibited in numerous galleries and shown at film festivals worldwide. She was born in Buenos Aires and currently lives and works in Hamburg/ Germany. Recent exhibitions include MuVIM Museu Valencià de la IIlustració i la Modernitat, Valencia Spain (2015), Peruvian & Nord American Cultural Institue of Cusco, Peru(2014), Takis Katsoulidis Engraving Museum, Messini Greece (2013), Kunstverein Rostock, Rostock Germany (2013), The State Hermitage Museum St Petersburg Russia (2012), The Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena USA (2012), Tromso Kunstforening, Tromso Norway (2011) and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C. USA (2011). She was the recepient of The Kraft New Media Prize in 2011.

Website: www.leylarodriguez.com

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Gnomonicity Amitesh Grover (India)

T

he installation captures viewers’ shadows and crowds it with live CCTV streams from across the world. These web-streams are meant for private consumption, not for the virtual public domain. The two live feeds, the viewers in the gallery and the public web streams, are collated and assembled on the screen. This makes the viewers presence visible through and as an aggregate of illicitly sought surveillance streams from around the world.

As viewers walk in the room, their silhouettes move across the screen, revealing more of the surveillance image. At present, the installation is using 9 live streams from 5 different countries. A recorded narration of excerpts from Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities underlines the experience of self-similarity among locations, maps and realities.

About the artist: Born 1980, Amitesh Grover lives and works in Delhi, India. His interdisciplinary, contemporary art projects are often “performance communities”: he invites participants from a variety of backgrounds, creating special places and events that spark off speculation. In many of his projects he works transnationally and searches for events that can overcome thousands of kilometres. His works have been shown in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, England, Mexico, China, the Philippines, Romania, Pakistan, Oman and India. Recipient of numerous awards including Forecast nomination for Emerging Curator (Berlin 2015), Arte Laguna Award Nomination (Venice 2013), KMAT Residency (Australia 2011), National Award for Emerging Director (India 2009), Prohelvetia Residency (Switzerland 2008) and CWIT Scholarship (U.K. 2005). He has been jury at TheatreSpektakel’08, a guest lecturer at Cornell University, U.S. (2011) and a visiting artist at Theatretreffen, Germany (2013). At present, he is Assistant Professor at National School of Drama (India) and an independent artist based in New Delhi.

Website: www.amiteshgrover.com

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

36&71 Anthony Stephenson (United States)

I

liked the traffic markings which led to this study in abstraction via the diagrammatic in the realm of the dromoscopic: cf.

About the artist: Synthesis has been a recurring theme in my art throughout my career. But more importantly, bringing together this morphology and that ideology has evolved into not only conceptual, but sequential investigations. So while certain stylistic qualities are observable throughout my work, an evolving logic supports the content. The work has been influenced by the reading of such Continental Philosophers as Jacques Derrida, Paul Virilio, Deleuze & Guattari and others.

For example, in recent years, the work has moved from the astrophysics of “Singularity” (1996) to a series of work titled “The Ambit Suite” (2007) in which the border became the issue, to studies in value with “Trickle” (2008) and “Change” (2011). These mobile affectations have been summed up most recently in a series of videos entitled “Dromoscopic” (2015).

Website: www.anthonystephenson.org

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Sully Marbella Carlos (Canada)

S

ully is a short video where the audience is taken through very private rituals, showing intimacies of body maintenance that range from mundane to squirm inducing. Testing the line between public and private, Sully reflects the fact that every day activities are being publicized all the time. The camera is taken into the bathroom and records intimate, uncomfortable, too-close shots of the body. The piece repeatedly asks where we draw the line on what is private, asking the viewer to look at the body’s process in preparation for public viewing.

About the artist: The principal themes in my work include exploring barriers to experiencing intimacy and unpacking the social construction of love. In my practice I often use performance, the body as a vehicle, to create large scale installations, video projections, and photographs.

Marbella Carlos is a Toronto-based visual artist and educator whose practice in performance, video and installation explores themes of identity and intimacy. Marbella holds a BFA (With Distinction) from the University of Calgary a BEdrom OISE- University of Toronto. She is currently the Outreach and Education Coordinator for the National Eating Disorder Information Centre and the CLUTCH Program Coordinator at Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts and Culture.

Website: www.marbellaannecarlos.com

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

You See Davis Rembrandt Quiballo (Philippines, United States)

T

his piece consists of a twelve channel presentation of the vernacular documentation of the pepper spray incident that occurred on the University of California-Davis campus during the Occupy Movement protests. Uploads from YouTube by various individuals who documented the event with assorted perspectives and a variety of media devices are coordinated in real-time to show a synchronized, multi-view representation of the event. The fragmented view of this spectacle examines the effects of new media on public perception and consequently, the legitimacy of the grand narrative endorsed by giant broadcast corporations.

About the artist: Rembrandt Quiballo was born in the city of Manila in the Philippines. His family was compelled to leave the country amidst outbreak of revolution. After briefly living in Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands, he immigrated to the United States. He received a BFA in Painting and a BA in Philosophy from the University of Arizona. He recently received his MFA in Photography at Arizona State University. His works have been exhibited nationally and internationally including Albuquerque, Pasadena, Chicago, New York City, Cairo and Berlin. His work has been included in the Arizona Biennial in 2012 and 2014. Quiballo is the recipient of numerous awards, including the ASU GPSA Research Grant, the SPE Student Award, the Nathan Cummings Travel Fellowship and the Contemporary Forum Emerging Artist Grant. Through the moving image, his work explores mass media and its effects on social and political history.

Website: www.rembrandtquiballo.com

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Untitled (Sleeping People in a Train) Hannah Reber (Germany)

T

he experimental video deals with the difference between public by documenting sleeping people in a train in Berlin.

privacy

and

About the artist: Use the equation’s first output as its next input.

Website: www.hannahreber.de

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Into The Labyrinth Geordy Zodidat Alexis (France)

T

his work question a possible life style order by the government. The scene start again and again with slim variations. "Into the labyrinth discuss the notion of "public" with the illusion of masses and all materials, gadgets, goods available for people. The public constitutes the people but life of man should not be public.

About the artist: Geordy Zodidat Alexis is a visual artist, performer, and freelance graphic designer.

Website: www.humartlif.com

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

The Safest of Hands Clint Sleeper (United States)

F

or several years I have been repairing public property and recording the work. Clumsy and unprofessional, these garish repairs ask questions about the absent state. Even more, they ask questions about community, our collective responsibility, and if these gestures speak for me, they ask about what an artist ought to do. Less important in function or utility, the repairs serve to call attention to an overlooked, unmaintained section of public space, a place of leisure most often. These places are early victims to the plot of privatization. What would late capitalism due with a space of leisure anyway? The gesture, the repair then, the act of performing maintenance, seems to propose that we also want to maintain the very publicness of this place. If it should be public responsibility then shouldn't it remain public space?

About the artist: As a media artist, performer, and maker, my work humorously ponders an end to capitalism and seriously considers alternative possibilities for picking up the pieces and moving forward. This is a process of oscillating between old and new technologies as well as considering, in a clumsy fashion, popular or difficult philosophical positions. Ultimately, this research and this artwork reiterates a sense of responsibility while upholding a brand of humor and a commitment to performing within those demands, however naive those performed roles may seem. The resulting books, videos, interactive sculptures, and performances are shown in galleries and festivals internationally.

Website: www.clintsleeper.com

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Hunt/Find Dani Salvadori (United Kingdom)

L

ife lived on the streets and underground trains of London. What is public? When do you hide in plain sight?

About the artist: Dani Salvadori is a mobile photographer and video maker based in London. Her photographs have been shown in galleries in London; Vermont, Oregon and Ohio in the US; Porto, Portugal, Paris and Florence. She has been highly commended in various photography awards including the IPhone Photography Awards (2012), the Mobile Photography Awards (2012 and 2014), USA Landscape Photographer of the Year (2014) and the Mira Mobile Prize (2014).

Website: https://www.flickr.com/photos/danisalvadori/

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Leaving My Skin Ellen Wetmore (United States)

A

n ambivalent spectacle.

meditation

on

escaping

the

self,

society,

the

About the artist: Ellen Wetmore is a multi-media artist who is busy conquering motherhood, the humor and horror of aging, and an overwhelming number of bright, promising students. Her current artwork examines the perks of motherhood; ancient Roman photorealistic paintings, how many party balloons it would really take to lift a body off the ground, and how to tune a radio with plants. Past work has included a talking carpet, big bugs, and mutant vegetables. Wetmore’s video projects have been featured in screenings at the Sandwell Arts Trust in the West Midlands, UK, Ciné Lumière in London, the Decordova Museum in Lincoln, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina, in Novi Sad, Serbia, and the Armenian Center For Contemporary Experimental Art. Her work is in the collections of the Boston MFA and the Polish National Audio Visual Institute. She is a 2012 School of the Museum of Fine Arts Traveling Fellow and a summer 2015 Visiting Artist at the American Academy of Rome. She lives in Groton, Massachusetts and is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

Website: www.ellenwetmore.iwarp.com

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Presence of Absence Matt Lee (India)

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resence of Absence is a series of images and a video animation that features an ambiguous black shape moving very slowly through a residential estate in Bangalore, South India. The black shape/ object/ void cuts into reality and a non-linear narrative begins to emerge – the black shape moves in and out of the frame, sometimes it is overt, at other times it exists on the periphery and through the sequence the shape begins to develop its character and meaning. The work acts as a response to Henri Lefebvre’s assertion that “we are surrounded by emptiness, but it is an emptiness filled with signs”.

About the artist: I am an artist, illustrator and educator from the UK. I have lived and worked in Bangalore since 2007. My work has featured in The Guardian, The Independent, FT, Time Out, NY Arts Magazine and Creative Review, as well as Illusive 2 and Fully Booked published by Gestalten. I have exhibited in Canada, France, Japan, UK, Germany, USA, Netherlands and Sardinia. For my 'Nonsense and Play' project, I received an Arts & Humanities Research Council award in 2010. While in 2011 a video collaboration with artist Smriti Mehra, entitled 'Ink', was featured as part of 'Images de l'Inde’ at Centre Pompidou, Paris. I hold a BA (Hons) in Design: Illustration from Plymouth University and an MA in Visual Arts: Digital Arts from Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London.

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Website: www.matt-lee.com

Untitled Mohammad Namazi (United Kingdom, Iran)

T

his project investigates in daily food shopping as a key element for public interactions, the politics around food and the sociopolitical aspects of food consumption in general.

Attributes such as; the sound of the environment, spontaneous dialogues and the code of behavior in the queue creates a unique situations that highlights an specific social interaction familiar to the consumerism culture. Here the cashier’s conveyer belt functions as a canvas for food consumption documentation and the social public behavior around it.

About the artist: Mohammad Namazi (b. 1981 Tehran) is a conceptual visual artist based in London. Namazi’s work comprises trans or multi-media characteristics of visual expressions that have commonalities with the vocabulary of site-specific installations, public participatory activities and design practices.

The temporal tensions between transience and permanency, or kinesis and stasis, have been a constant area of research, exploring polarity subjects such as rights of individuals, consumerism, the political exchange of power and hospitality. This is often reflected through the production of sculptures, drawings, moving image, sound installations, graphic design, photography, internet based artworks, workshops and performance.

Namazi received his MA from the Royal College of Art in 2009. He is a recipient of the MAN Drawing prize (2009) and the MFI residency at the Flat Time House (2013). He is a doctoral researcher at the UAL Research Centre in London.

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

STILL IMAGES/ PHOTOGRAPHS Right Time Right Place Robert Rutรถd (Austria) Peripheral Strangers Julie Dawn Dennis (UK) de Staat (The State) Maarten Tromp (Netherlands) Ruinophilia Anna Garrett (UK) Circling the Square Arturo Soto (Mexico) The Spectator, the Viewer, the Observer and the Perceiver Francine LeClercq (USA) Magic Rooms Carlos Collado (Spain)

Date of Consumption Lita Poliakova (Finland) Street Photography John Robert Luna (Philippines) Walls Elena Efeoglou (Greece) Fitting Room Megan Mace (South Africa) Street Art You Can Take Home (For Free) Lorenzo Bordonaro (Portugal) Victim Solomon Eko (Nigeria)

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Right Time Right Place Robert Rutöd (Austria)

B it

eing at happiness the wrong turns out

the right place at the right time is usually associated with and success. But what happens when we are at the right place at time? Do we even know that this is the right place? And what if that it is the wrong place after all? But the right time!

Whoever loses his orientation over this thought will get a feeling for Robert Rutöd’s latest pictures. The Vienna-born photographer wandered for five years through Europe and has proven to be a keen observer with an often tragicomic view: The blind man who finds orientation by putting his stick in a tram track, the helpless swan that finds itself frozen to the vast stretch of ice, or the amputee operator of a shooting range set up in a ruined building. It gets macabre with the portraits of the Pope, Hitler and Mussolini decorating the labels of wine bottles.

About the artist: Robert Rutöd, born in Vienna, Austria. Photographer and filmmaker. Made numerous short feature films with screenings worldwide. Photographic work exhibited throughout Europe, the United States and Asia.Winner of the New York Photo Award 2012 in the category Fine Art. Books: Less Is More (2009), grayscales. early b&w photographs (2010), Right Time Right Place (2012), Milky Way (2014).

Website: www.rutoed.com

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Peripheral Strangers Julie Dawn Dennis (United Kingdom)

T

his project engages with the theme of public as it highlights unknown people caught in the background of family photographs. It raises questions about privacy and highlights how identities, when taken out of context, might be misinterpreted. It allows the viewer to bring his or her own personal experience to the image by forming new narratives from a fragment of a scene.

About the artist: I have exhibited at various venues in recent years including Fuse gallery Bradford, Look 13 Photo Festival parallel programme and University of Cumbria. I graduated in June 2014 with a First Class Honours degree in photography and have had work in exhibitions in Carlisle, Lancaster, Bradford, Liverpool, Manchester and London.

Website: www.juliedawndennis.co.uk

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

de Staat (the State) Maarten Tromp (Netherlands)

T

his an ongoing project about surveillance in public space. I photograph the white security booths that are popping up on more and more locations in the Netherlands.

About the artist: Filmmaker and photographer Maarten Tromp (Amsterdam, 1980) graduated at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in The Hague. His short films and photographic series show collections of people and encounters - by day and by night - telling stories about distance and commitment. Maarten finds his inspiration in the streets and on his travels across the globe. Political and social issues constitute recurring themes in his work, with a very personal approach. He is currently working on his first feature-length film about surveillance.

Website: www.maartentromp.net

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Ruinophilia Anna Garrett (United Kingdom)

R

uinophilia features photos shot on 35mm film in Northern rural Spain in August 2015.

About the artist: Anna Garrett is a multi-media artist who received her BA (Hons) from the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham in 2014. Recent solo exhibition: Fluore$cent was shown with emerging artist's platform Footfall Art, Bermondsey (2014). Group exhibitions include Angus-Hughes Summer Salon, Angus-Hughes Gallery (2015), A5, Lubomirov-Easton, Art Athena, Athens (2015), Zeitgeist Summer Exhibition 2015, Bond House Gallery, New Cross (2015), Pretty in Pink, Roper Gallery, Bath (2015), Graduate Show Highlights, The Lightbox, Woking (2015), Make/Believe, James Hockey Gallery (2014), doors in the wall, BEARSPACE and Number 3 London, Deptford (2014). Anna has also been a finalist in prizes Ranger House Student Art Prize (2014), Hans Brinker Budget Trophy, Amsterdam (2013), Rising Stars, New Ashgate Gallery (2013), as well as being long-listed for the Signature Art Prize (2015). Anna currently works as Gallery Coordinator at the Riverside Cafe Gallery, Farnham Maltings; and has previously held the role of Gallery Coordinator at Oxford House, Bethnal Green.

Website: www.annagarrett.co.uk

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Circling the Square Arturo Soto (United Kingdom)

M

odern cities are incommensurable places, and the challenges of representing them only increases with their size. Exhausting the myriad possibilities of a city like London is surely impossible, nothing short of “squaring the circle”.

Consequently, it made more sense to circumscribe my documentation to the particularities of my everyday experience, with the pictures as a condensed representation of my yearlong stay. This psychogeographic approach focused on my daily route from home to school, with most of the pictures tracing the twelve-minute trajectory between Cartwright Gardens and Gordon Square. The route eventually expanded when I moved to Marylebone and then further out to Battersea.

The series originates from a need to deemphasize the importance of events, turning that attention instead to the sites where experiences take place. Paul Virilio has stated that cities have no voids, since everything in them is suggestive of meaning.

This does not mean, of course, that everything is equally interesting in visual terms.

Even if photography is a useful tool to understand how urban spaces shape our everyday experience, the artistic gesture consists of arranging that surplus of signs into visually compelling ways, unhinging them from the present, and transfiguring them through the technical means of the camera into images worthy of attention.

As one of history’s primary stages, the streets tend to give an impression of authority and permanence, when in fact, public spaces and the objects they contain do not remain unaffected for very long. Time here is every bit as important as in socalled decisive moments: the weather, technology, legislations and the endless drive for renewal affect the constitution of the built environment, not to mention human traffic, which leaves its mark on even the most reluctant of surfaces.

About the artist: (b. 1981, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico) Arturo Soto holds an MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts, an MA in Art History from University College London and undergraduate degrees in Film and Photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design. He has exhibited internationally, and is the recipient of two FONCA grants and a Jumex scholarship.

His work is represented by Arredondo/Arozarena in Mexico City. He currently resides in Oxford, where he is a DPhil candidate at the Ruskin School of Art. Website: www.arturosotophotography.com

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

The Spectator, the Viewer, the Observer and the Perceiver

(

Francine LeClercq (United States)

...) Who is the Spectator, also called the Viewer, sometimes called the Observer, occasionally the Perceiver? It has no face, is mostly a back.

In times, he stumbles around confusing roles: he is a cluster of motoreflexes, a wanderer, the vivant in a tableau, an actor manquĂŠ (...)

The Ideology of the Gallery Space-Brian O'Doherty

In 2011, I participated in an exhibition: Francine LeClercq, Andy Warhol, Pauno Paujolainen/The Last supper in Turku Cathedral. Part of the installation was an IP camera which recorded over a period of 80 days, hundreds of images of visitors to the exhibition.

About the artist: Francine LeClercq completed her education in interior architecture and fine arts with honors from the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg/ France. Recipient of the Ritleng Prize, she was invited to collaborate on works with the International architect/artist/designer Gaetano Pesce in New York. Her art work is grounded on the thematic of perception and the tectonics of painting and has been exhibited in galleries and museums in Europe and the United States. She has had the privilege to see her work selected by eminent curators such as Peter Blum/Peter Blum gallery, James Cuno/Art Institute Chicago, Lynne Warren/ Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, Maxwell Anderson / Whitney Museum, Janne Siren/ Albright-Knox Gallery and Perttu Ollila, to mention a few. She has lived in New York City since 1992, where aside from painting, she practices architecture and design with Ali Soltani.

Website: http://francineleclercq.blogspot.com

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Magic Rooms Carlos Collado (Spain)

I

t moves me to observe people looking at something or someone. Perhaps it is because I identify with the person that stops to contemplate that which has caught their attention. I find that the attitude of observing the unknown and following it with the gaze reveals individuals as they truly are, stripped of their emotional armour and identifying clothes. Magic Rooms is my first photographic incursion on this theme and a small ode to contemplation.

This series of photographs is situated in a singular context: a fair of video art exhibited in the rooms of a hotel (Barcelona, 2009 and 2010). A labyrinth of corridors and bedrooms submerged in the darkness required for displaying the work. An enclosed space whose only windows to the exterior are fictions of light and movement. And it is that veil that separates fiction and reality that fades until it disappears into the shadows that envelop everything. The privacy associated with the idea of a bedroom contrasts with the presence of a public that circulates freely into every corner of the hotel. The spaces are shared and the concept of intimacy is redefined. Ultimately, the visitors are strangers that find themselves in the same bed, sharing a sofa or hiding in the same bathroom. Everyone visible under the half light of the video projections. Everyone submerged in the contemplation of the works.

About the artist: Carlos Collado (Barcelona, 1977) is a photographer that specializes in audiences and his main interest focuses on the consumption of culture in contemporary societies. He uses photography as an expressive tool to research how do we relate to and experience knowledge. In 2009 he was awarded a grant to participate in workshop by Magnum in Barcelona. In 2011 his series Magic Rooms was selected to participate in Festival EMERGENT (Lleida, Spain), and one year later it was exhibited in EnArt Foto&co (Lleida), Loop Fair (Barcelona) and in REGARDS Reencontres de Photographie (Perpignan, France). Contemplatio project was shown for the first time as a photo installation in the Museum of Ceramics of Barcelona (2012) and later in Gat Point Charlie (Berlin,2014). Recently in 2015, his work Tangibles, that got a grant in 2013, has been shortlisted in the BIPA (Barcelona International Photography Awards) and selected for Descubrimientos PhotoespaĂąa, Belfast Photo Fringe and AtlĂĄntica colectivas of Fotonoviembre.

Collado is based between Barcelona and Berlin.

Websites: www.carloscolladophoto.com and www.contemplatio-project.com

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Date of Consumption Lita Poliakova (Finland)

I

have surveilled us for 3 years. Webcam pictures – two-dimensional evidences of our journey, which was distorted by inner prisms. The project is based on documentary materials complemented with common ideas of relationships. It combines private and public, real and desired. How do we construct interaction with a partner? How do we bring the images in our heads to life? To what extent do we overwhelmed by illusions?

About the artist: I am interested in a wide range of topics. Equipollence of people, their diverse nature that allows one to consider them as the higher animal, both aesthetically beautiful, and cruel and abhorrent creature. Physiological human nature and its inevitable impact on the person. The study of pain as an integral part of life, aspects of human co-existence in their physiological cover, corporeality that may be perceived as the standard of beauty or piece of rotten flesh, which is exposed to criticism from outside and own physical changes. At the same time I consider the man as the «homo sapiens», regardless of gender, race or other social or cultural characteristics. This division still leads to discrimination and infringement in the society.

The problem of definitions and view of things “as is”, as opposed to customary names. Formation of conventions and rules governing the life of an individual and taking it under control as an artificial enclosure, which hides the nature. This includes study of relationships between the animate and soulless substitutes, reconsidering of definitions and stereotypes.

Website: www.litapoliakova.com

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Street Photography John Robert Luna (Philippines)

B

lack and white pictures from public places in Jakarta, Bandung and Manila. To show what I perceive as interesting through my lens.

Everything is open to the interpretation of the viewer/public.

About the artist: j.luna is the alter-ego of John Robert Luna. A member of the Innovative Noise Collective (INC), he is currently the vocalist of the PostMetal band, Gonzo Army. As a “performance artist”, j has teamed with The Brockas and Khavn Delacruz (“Tonight, I Will Love You Forever, installation/performance” and as an actor in “Ang Paglilitis ni Mang Serapio”); and with Ian Madrigal and Mitch Garcia ("Placenta: Repression/Salvation" and "Souls For Sale") for Tupada's Inter-Aksyon international performance art event in 2010.

His music reviews, articles poems and works of fiction have appeared in The Philippines Graphic, The Philippines Free Press, Fudge Magazine, Playboy Philippines, Monday Magazine, KM64's Tulagalag poetry project, Paper Monsters Poetry Pamphlet 1 and 2 and the anthology, A Treat Of 100 Short Stories (De Lasalle/Anvil Press 2011)

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Walls

Elena Efeoglou (Greece)

T

he external walls of the cities are a key part of the public space reflecting cultural and aesthetic choices and at the same time bring up the traces of the action of subjects using them and change them. The external walls separate the inside from the outside, expressing the limit from the private to the public.

About the artist: Elena Efeoglou was born in Drama, Greece. She is a visual artist and photographer based in Greece. She studied Painting in School of Fine Arts, Faculty of Visual and Applied Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece and she has an MFA in Photography at University of Belgrade, Serbia. Her artistic interests are in the fields of social photography, architectural photography and memory.

Website: http://elenaefeoglou.weebly.com/

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Fitting Room Year Megan Mace (South Africa)

“Our identities are always in negotiation, always in the process of being formed and re-formed through our encounters it others” - Jean-Luc Nancy

T

his series acts as a mini collection and diary entry of rethinking the experience of being a voyeur within Johannesburg’s (South Africa) cityscape. The series consists of 28 images. Through various encounters and engagements within a city, the voyeur becomes a character on a stage and adds to making up of a collection. Without any performers contributing to a city’s landscape, the city stands as theatrical set without any action.

For the creation of this series, I adopted a methodology of exchange to allow a displacement of the role me as artist and questions being able to access someone’s personal space and their role within the infrastructure of the city’s stage. I started to question how I could fit into this collection, and whether I could momentarily fit into the place of another individual (whilst they acted as photographer). With every walk that I took asking, what became apparent was how identities are shaped and viewed. From a physical being reduced to a label and then to an object.

About the artist: Megan Mace has an identity like most humans. She fortunately / unfortunately went to art school and other places. She now spends most of her days thinking, breathing, sleeping, eating, occasionally checking her emails and looking for 'funding opportunities'. Mace’s work has featured in places such as the family dinner table, the bar at a usual Thursday evening exhibition opening reception, conversations and in everyday situations of her life.

Website: http://grumpmissmace.tumblr.com/

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Street Art You Can Take Home (For Free) Lorenzo Bordonaro (Portugal)

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t a time when street art and urban art are becoming increasingly hegemonic, monumental, celebratory and backed by local governments and art galleries, the project ‘Street art you can take home (for free)’ I carried out in Lisbon, Portugal in the summer of 2015, proposes to question the relationship between urban art, its public and the art market. I have increasingly felt that most cities considered major hubs for street art, are becoming open-air museums for star-artists to expose their commissioned works. Paradoxically, street art and urban art are becoming ‘public art’ in the old meaning: art supported and commissioned by the power for people to stare at. In my project I created during one month a number of works on mobile supports (wood panes, cardboard, etc.) and subsequently abandoned them in visible public spots of the city, with no indication whatsoever. What happens to an urban art that can be touched, moved and eventually destroyed? I expected that the trash would be their fate. As a matter of fact all works were readily appropriated and taken home by passers-by: they all disappeared in a few hours. Even the larger ones.

Actually, the anonymous space of the town allows the artist to address an invisible public, and the public to manifest its eagerness to ‘appropriate’ and ‘privatize’ an object which is – despite its clumsiness – immediately recognised as an object of aesthetic (and who knows economic) value. Urban art is out of the box: we should be cautious for it not to fall inside the white cube.

About the artist: Lorenzo Bordonaro (MA Philosophy, 1997; PhD Anthropology 2007) studied visual art at ArCO (Lisbon) and MArt with Paulo Brighenti and André Almeida e Sousa. He has conducted research in Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Portugal and Brazil on childhood, creativity and urban marginality.

He lectured anthropology at grad and post-grad levels in Portugal, Cape Verde and Brazil. As an anthropologist and an artist he is presently exploring the intersections between public art, ethnography and urban intervention. He carried out and coordinated several artistic interventions in Cape Verde and in the Greater Lisbon Area among which the NOOR – Mouraria Light Walk (2013) and the Passeio Literário da Graça (2014). He is founding member and president of the EBANOCollective.

Websites: www.bordonaro.eu and www.ebanocollective.org

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Victim

Solomon Eko (Nigeria)

V

ictim is a multi-layered performance and conceptual photography project focused on the abducted school girls by the Boko Haram terrorist sect. It is aimed at showing the present socio-cultural challenges confronting the girl child in North-eastern Nigeria.

In this part of Nigeria and perhaps some other parts, the girl child’s view of the world is limited, causing a sensory deprivation of the girl child. They are victimized socially by not allowing them to have access to education and they are denied certain basic human and child rights. These are facts of current situation of things.

This work depicts a skewed perception of the girl child in North-eastern part of Nigeria and other part of the country where similar ideologies are held. The girl is blindfolded to show a victim of an abuse, crisis, denial, sensory deprivation to the world around her, burden, negotiation, oppression and politics. All these heightened by the activities of the Boko Haram group. The main goal of the work is to spark conversation among Nigerians and create change in our immediate socio-cultural boundaries. This work further depicts the fate and struggles of the girl child in many parts of Nigeria especially in the North-eastern part in obtaining meaningful education due to the constant threats and dangers from Boko Haram.

This work is a call to all Nigerians, especially the government to devise means of educating and empowering the girl child in Northern Nigeria despite the social threats and barriers they face at the moment from the insurgency of the Boko Haram group.

The work is also a general call for all Nigerians to make efforts to relieve the plight of the girl child, as most girls are constantly at risks of all kind of abuse, burden, denial and child rights violations. It is to point to us that then issue of the girl child has to be taken more seriously.

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

PERFORMANCE VIDEOS/ PUBLIC INTERVENTIONS Balloon Performance Louise Winter (UK) Somarts Mural Dance Johanna Poethig (USA) Unpatentable Multitouch Aerobics Liat Berdugo and Phoebe Osborne (USA) Disclaimer at Manchester Art Gallery Laura Gower (UK) Sustaintability Dani Lamorte and Veronica Bleaus (USA)

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Balloon Performance Louise Winter (United Kingdom)

F

or 'Balloon Performance' I was interested in how we respond to the context of the gallery. When we enter the white cube we encounter a predetermined set of circumstances in which the viewer is given certain clues as to what a piece of work is about [via gallery descriptions and artist’s statements] which we must decipher in order to understand the work.

In a sense we are playing game.

With the balloon video I decided to make up my own game, and, as with any games there are rules. The rules I made for myself were that I had to go outside and follow a balloon until it was no longer visible or unable to move if it bursts or is carried away by someone. If any of these happened then I would blow up another balloon from the point at which the last one disappeared.

I was interested in the absurdity of the act and its potential to interrupt the daily routines of those who encountered it. In many cases the balloon served as a catalyst, eliciting intuitive responses from members of the public in the form of a counter-spectacle. The art object is also dematerialised. What is it? A balloon that could burst at any time! Of course at the time of filming the object or the focus of my attention was the balloon itself, now the video has become the object.

About the artist: Louise Winter is a visual artist, curator and writer based in Newcastle, UK and a studio holder at The Newbridge Project.

Website: www.axisweb.org/p/louisewinter

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Somarts Mural Dance Johanna Poethig (United States)

W

hen I work on large-scale public projects I am immersed in the site and the physical challenge of executing monumental paintings on the street.

It becomes a performance for several months for anyone passing by. One day years ago I decided to dress up and dance on my scaffolding. I found this old footage and created this video. The mural in these video is Artifact and was painted on the South of Market Cultural Center in San Francisco. I am now almost 60 years old and still climbing scaffoldings. One of the most difficult sites was the Manilatown Heritage Center on the International Hotel in San Francisco where I painted the I-Hotel Mural honoring the Manongs of this 3 decade housing struggle.

About the artist: I am a studio and public artist who has exhibited internationally and has been actively creating public art works, murals, paintings, sculpture and multi-media installations for over 25 years. My paintings, sculpture, video and installations explore surfaces, symbols and artifacts of culture, history, archeology and futurist narratives, human nature, political satire and the colonizing metaphors used by consumerist, capitalist marketing. I believe that the integration of art in our social and physical environment is key to the health of our society. The problem solving of complex artistic processes that involve site, scale, social interaction and materials is creatively compelling. My public artworks can be found in parks, schools and universities, redevelopment projects, freeways, hospitals, youth centers, housing projects, urban and residential areas. I have extensive experience working collaboratively with communities, architects and designers for existing spaces or from the beginning stages of the building planning to its completion. As a public, community, studio artist I have been working throughout my career to cross the boundaries of so called “high” and “low” art forms. One of my interests is to identify the ways artistic forms relate and overlap from different points of time and culture. In both my public and studio work I explore symbols and artifacts of culture, recontextualizing them to elicit new meanings.

Website: www.johannapoethig.com

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Unpatentable Multitouch Aerobics Liat Berdugo and Phoebe Osborne (United States)

I

n the face of relentless privatization, and capitalism's extended reach into our homes, friendships and psyches, it feels as if the last frontier is the body itself. Yet technology and its devices teach our bodies new gestural lexicons we are zooming, swiping, and flicking our way into a new era. But Apple, Inc. is “indisputably striving to corner the market on how we move our fingers across screens,” noted Alexander Provan, citing the company’s most recent win of a patentinfringement lawsuit against Samsung for its multitouch gestures. These gestures are new social codes. These gestures have an owner: every time you slide two fingers up and down a trackpad, you’re leasing your movements from Apple; and they, in turn, are owning a little part of you. How are we to re/act in the face of the commodification and privatization of our own bodily gestures? This performative lecture and workshop tackles the anxiety of body ownership in the face of technology.

About the artists: Liat Berdugois an artist, writer, and curator based in Oakland, CA. Her work strives to create an expanded, thoughtful consideration for digital culture. Berdugo has been exhibited in galleries and festivals internationally, and her new book, The Everyday Maths, was published by Anomalous Press in 2013. She is the video art curator for Print Screen, Israel’s international festival of digital art, cofounded the Bay Area’s Living Room Light Exchange, and collaborates widely with individuals and archives. Berdugo holds a BA in mathematics and philosophy from Brown University and an M.F.A. in Digital + Media art from the Rhode Island School of Design.

This fall she will be joining the faculty of the Art and Architecture department at the University of San Francisco.

Phoebe Osborneis a movement and performance-based artist currently based in Brooklyn, New York.

Websites:

www.liatberdugo.format.com, www.digikits.ch and www.phoebeosborne.com

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Disclaimer at Manchester Art Gallery Laura Gower (United Kingdom)

T

he text was appropriated from outside "Lies, Inc.", an exhibition of work

by Eva and Franco Mattes at the Site Gallery in Sheffield, summer 2011.

Here it is performed outside Manchester city art gallery.

About the artist: Artist, photographer and filmmaker based in Manchester. Graduated from the University of Salford in 2012 with a degree in visual arts. I continue to exhibit in the UK and abroad. My work explores many forms of human exchange and interaction and the observation, documentation and recontextualisation of these. I am particularly interested in people's reactions to art and intervention and the social role and perception of "the artist".

Website: www.lauragower.co.uk

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Sustaintability Dani Lamorte and Veronica Bleaus (United States)

S

ustaintability is documentation from a live, guerilla performance staged

by Dani Lamorte and Veronica Bleaus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Part of our “Drive By Drag” series, “Sustaintability” focused on aesthetics of queer reuse and recycling, including camp. The hour-long performance, which spanned two city neighborhoods, was edited down into this short video and set to the music of Diana Ross and the Supremes. The video includes footage of reactions and interactions with passersby whom we encountered during the performance.

About the artists: Veronica Bleaus is the self-proclaimed Worst Drag Queen in the Midwest, currently based in Champaign, IL. She has been doing drag poorly since 2005. The ongoing public performance project, Drive By Drag, was created in 2009 by Veronica and her longtime collaborator Dani Lamorte to make the world a queerer place. Miss Bleaus invokes the worst aspects of camp and spectacle to transform her into an ultra-queer Muppet. She frequently collaborates with other visual and performance artists, and has appeared in work that has been screened in such places as Rapid Pulse Performance Art Festival in Chicago, IL and the Anthology Film Archives in NYC. She is also a contributor to Vym: The Drag Magazine. She is also sometimes John Musser, a PhD student in English at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who is currently writing a dissertation about Divas.

Dani Lamorte is a Tucson-based artist working in video and performance. Its research and artwork considers the usage of language – from the tiniest of sounds to the heaviest of rhetorics – in society and culture. Dani has performed and exhibited work in the United States and Canada, including the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Whippersnapper Gallery in Toronto; and a guerrilla performance series at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It has collaborated with John Musser (Veronica Bleaus) since 2009, including their work on Drive By Drag (2009 - Present).

Website: www.danistuchel.com

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

ANIMATIONS / DIGITAL Job Interview Dénes Ruzsa and Fruzsina Spitzer (Hungary) In Between Sofia Makridou and Theodora Prassa (Greece) Decadence of Nature Olga Guse (Russia) AsianGirl N40°42'54.488" W73°59'30.313" Victoria Elle, Rocky Li, and Jennifer Mehigan (USA)

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Job Interview DĂŠnes Ruzsa and Fruzsina Spitzer (Hungary)

I

n this rushing world personality disappeared. The potentials of the public and individual will change. In the near future robots will ask the 50 common job interview questions. How do the robots detect humans applying for the job advertisement?

About the artists: DĂŠnes Ruzsa and Fruzsina Spitzer working together since 2006. They have been making short films and documentaries. Their films have screened at over a hundred film festivals worldwide, amongst others, in Germany, Austria, Croatia, Italy, Greece, UK, France, Russia, Canada and USA. From 2007 they have been making films commissioned by artists, museums and art galleries. They also work as a photographer for books, catalogues and art magazines.

Website: www.dokuweb.hu

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

In Between Sofia Makridou and Theodora Prassa (Greece)

T

he video with the theme (in between) has to do with the intermediate of ourselves with the other elements of our environment. As intermediate we chose reflections generated between light and ourselves. This results in creating various abstract elements, relationships and forms, transforming games with the space and they create a visual character. Although these relationships that are created are natural events such as air or accidents like fire. The result is abstract and has to do with how we perceive things and at the same time with our involvement in them.

About the artists: Sofia Makridou was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1992. She entered the School School of Fine Arts, Faculty of Visual and Applied Arts Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She is in the 5th year of her studies with teachers, Georgios Golfinos, Georgios Divaris, and Lampros Psyrrakis.

She has done drawing lessons for 2 years with Savvas Poursanidis. She has participated in group exhibitions.

Theodora Prassa was born in Volos, Greece, in 1993. She lives and works in Thessaloniki. 2010 she entered in the School of Fine Arts, Faculty of Visual and Applied Arts Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, as a talent. She is in the 5th year of her studies with direction Drawing. She is also occupied in Etching and Digital Image.2014 (April- July) University of Hildesheim in Germany (Hildesheim Universit채t) she has participated to the exchanging Erasmus program. She has participated in 15 group exhibitions, in festivals and workshops in Greece and abroad.

Website: www.behance.net/theo_prass8b7

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

Decadence of Nature Olga Guse (Russia)

E

arth pollution is increasing at an alarming speed. Fantastic creatures, animals-people try to survive in the new conditions. On the one hand, they suffer from pollution, on the other they continue to sail on the waves of consumer society.

About the artist: Born 14.01.1981 in the city of Saratov, Russia. Since 2003 lives and works in Germany, Dresden.

Since 2015 director of International Experimental Animation Festival BEAR in Dresden, Germany.

Creator of many animated films participated in different international art and film-festivals.

The largest of them: XXVII Festival Les Instants VidĂŠo (Frankreich); 17th International Art Exhibition NordArt (D); 8th The Digital Graffiti at Alys Beach Festival (USA); 8,9th OSTRALE international panorama exhibitions of contemporary arts in Europe (D); 7th INCUBARTE International Art Festival (Spanien), Aurora Arts Festival in Dallas (USA). Awards: 8th The Digital Graffiti at Alys Beach Festival (2015; Panama City Beach, USA) Honorable mentions Award.

Website: www.olga-guse.wix.com/guse

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

AsianGirl N40°42'54.488" W73°59'30.313" Victoria Elle, Rocky Li, and Jennifer Mehigan (United States)

O

riginally developed as part of a physical installation at Chinatown Soup (New York), AsianGirl N40°42'54.488" W73°59'30.313" is a multimedia artpiece created between New York, Singapore, and Ireland through an online collaborative process.

A .gif format display that integrates film photography, 3D graphics, and the written word, the project seeks to enunciate a spatial consciousness around the collision of physical geography in cyberspace, juxtaposing the shared spaces in online culture across medium and format against the arbitrary delineations of public physical spaces across geographical, national, and racial lines. It was shot in various locations around the historic neighborhood of Manhattan Chinatown (the artist and model’s residence), in a further exploration of their roles as transnational citizens in the struggle between growing cosmopolitanism and irresponsible urban gentrification.

About the artists: Victoria Elle was born in Singapore; she currently lives in New York City.

Rocky Li was born in Toronto; he currently lives in New York City.

Jennifer Mehigan was born in Ireland and raised in Singapore; she currently lives between the two.

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Public Interrogation: Outside the White Cube Catalogue

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