Off Center

Sarah Michelson

Yesterday, winding my way through the new Walker, I witnessed what must’ve been choreographer Sarah Michelson’s dancers rehearsing for the performance of Daylight (For Minneapolis). As Michelson is notoriously tight-lipped about revealing details on her performances beforehand, I can’t give anything away. But expect surprises (and perhaps a stone-still dancer with a Walker Shop bag over her head). Still, as the description of her September 15-18 performances leaves just about everything to the imagination–”a dance/installation experience inspired by the design of the Walker’s new building”--perhaps a look at her earlier works can offer an inkling.

In a 2003 performance at the Kitchen, typical audience/performer relationships were reversed. Viewing bleachers were on stage, facing out, and when the performance began, the house lights went up, not down. Artforum describes what happened next: “[T]he doors to the Kitchen swung open instead of shut, and all the way, across the street, two spotlit dancers in bright yellow tunics walked in unison down three steps of the building opposite and danced, in small side-to-side motions, into the performance space itself.”

For Part I of Daylight, presented at PS 122 in June, she placed “the audience in a kind of box, with the musicians behind them, and leaving a performing space that was only about twelve feet deep,” wrote Joan Acocella in The New Yorker. “This show was one of the strangest things I have ever seen. The four dancers entered through an upstage passageway that looked like something from Dr. Caligari's house. They then launched into a carefully rehearsed, largely unison dance that was traditional in one sense--it was done on the music--and in no other.”

And in a choreographic commission for Baryshnikov and his White Oak Dance Project, Michelson “costumed the ballet legend in Velcro handcuffs, gold chains and an ankle-length, see-through Chanel skirt, and set him to dance on a stage carpeted in bubble wrap. Such is her eclectic idea of elegance, never too pristine,” wrote Art in America.

Parker Lutz

Or maybe her personality, or as much of it as comes through an eight-question artist questionnaire, can offer some ideas about what to expect. In the September issue of Walker we ran our usual 8-ball Q&A with her. Here’s another eight:

What's the last (or favorite) book you read?
Experience by Martin Amis

If you could throw a dinner party for anyone in the world, who would you
invite?
Tonight? Parker Lutz [a dancer in Michelson’s company].

How do you like to unwind/relax?
Bath, sleep.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Cellulite. My bank balance. My loneliness.

What artists are you most interested in at the moment?
How does one answer a question like that?

What is your favorite euphemism?
Bathroom.

Who is your favorite villain of fiction?
Keith Talent [Protagonist in Martin Amis’ London Fields]

What question do you wish we asked you?
The answer is: grace is crucial.

No closer to understanding? Me neither. I guess we’ll have to show up and see for ourselves…

I’ve heard it called the flying moustache, a disembodied sideburn, the Pentagon (aerial view), a blackbird in flight, an abstraction of the state of Minnesota, a paper airplane. While art is all about the viewer’s interpretation, I’ve gotta ask: what is that thing at the center of the mnartists.org logo?

Actually, that thing is things, a constant shapeshifter that morphs from Groucho eyebrow to attacking crow to Nevada, all day long. But what does it mean? Robin Dowden, director of New Media Initiatives at the Walker, explained in a white paper presented at the 2003 Museums and the Web conference:

All Web developers know that delivering dynamic, up-to-date content is key to maintaining visitors’ interest. mnartists.org has taken this concept to a new level by making member-generated content the most visible element on the site. The home page, discipline “browse pages”, and each individual artist’s home pages are constantly changing, reflecting the most recent work uploaded by the membership. The images appearing on these pages are time dated, revealing exactly when the content was created. Reinforcing this concept, mnartists.org’s logo includes a polygon whose points and rotation change daily, reflecting visitor page views (the rotation) and uploads (distance of a point from the center) within the five disciplines in which registered artists are grouped. The strength of this design concept cannot be overemphasized. The idea of getting your work on the home page motivates artists and organizations to post new material and provides the general membership -- the art enthusiasts -- with a constant source of intrigue.

Confused? I was, so I asked for an explanation from new-media designer Eric Ishii Eckhardt, who came up with the system collaboratively with typographer/designer Alejandro Quinto (with oversight by design director Andrew Blauvelt). He says it’s not necessarily meant to be a direct gauge of site statistics, but serves as an active representation of how users shape the site’s content. (Which makes sense: from the start, the Walker and the McKnight Foundation wanted a dynamic and democratic community, driven by its members.) But there are direct metrics involved: on the site, the polygon at the center of the logo rotates throughout the day, like the hands on a clock, in direct response to the number of page visits. And its shape morphs based on how much work is uploaded onto the site in each of five broad artistic disciplines. Imagine a centerpoint; the distance from that point to the farthest edge of the shape represents one of five discplines, probably Visual Arts (the other four general categories are Design/Architecture, Literary Arts, Media Arts, and Performing Arts). Upload more images of scrimshaw or found-object sculpture and Nevada turns into California–voila!

It’s an apt symbol: the site has grown from an image database of multidisiplinary art in 2001 (it launched as Minnesota Artists Online, but perhaps the unfortunate acronym MAO, part Mall of America, part Chinese communist, prompted a name change) to today’s media-rich site offering mp3s, movie clips, original articles, a mix CD of music from across the state, arts news, online forums, radio interviews, and more. And one measure of its success is the geographic reach and diversity of its membership base–more than 6,000 artists from all over Minnesota.

Calling the logo both polymorphic and ambiguous, recognizeable and readable, Eric says, “Unexpectedly our design has invited a lot of conversation about this shape but I enjoy seeing that because conversation is really a good starting point for any strong community.”

Planning a trip to Europe, I started a list of items to pack. The first handful is digital in nature:
• A digital camera (which comes with an extra battery pack and memory chip and a plug-in charger),
• An iBook (with its cord, plug, USB mouse, and protective case),
• An iPod (with its cord, earbuds, docking plug, and cute knit sock),
• A cellphone (with two forms of charger), and
• A minidisk recorder (with a microphone, extra MDs, cord, plug, VoIP adaptor, iMic adaptor, and headphones), plus
• European power adaptors for ‘em all.

I picture myself, like a new father, tottering toward the departure gate with my luggage and a baby bag in tow filled with all the accessories I’ll need should I wish to call/charge/upload/email or otherwise put a layer of interface between me and the world I’m experiencing.

Given the excessiveness of it all, maybe there’s one more device I need: a piiPod. Designed by the Dutch sculptor Pii, the piiPod is the size, shape, and feel of Apple’s famous mp3 player, only it’s constructed of hardwood and is “specially designed to be unable to play music and sound files.” The piece is on view September 1-17, along with Pii’s installation of 12 bronze laptops filled with genetically modified rice and corn, at London’s Spectrum Fine Art.

While the wood iPod might be a symbol of my willing (and blissful) enslavement to mediating technologies, Pii has another message, it seems. He says:

I am trying to make people think about what they are missing out on by spending their free lives and transportation periods--travel--locked into their own musical worlds. People do become addicted and dependent--whether there are really health problems or not. It is a basic part of treatment for any serious addiction to attempt to provide a substitute of some kind.

And his grain-filled notebook computers critique the position many westerners take on genetically modified grains: putting grain inside a symbol of our luxury “reminds people of our good fortune to be able to make judgments and have debate on a full tummy”--while we type away on our laptops, pondering the long-term safety of GMOs, people are starving.

To digress a bit: I find his argument simplistic. We already produce enough grain to feed the world without the yield-enhancing boost of genetic engineering; transport is the problem. Further, as a recent report by Third World Network-Africa found, “The answer to Africa's poverty and food shortage problems does not lie in biotechnology. GM crops do not offer any answers to soil fertility, resistance to genes by pests… It also clear that biotechnology is not the answer to corruption, declining commodity prices, inequality in land distribution and ownership, income disparities, and armed conflicts which are some of the major cause of poverty/hunger in Africa.” (And don’t get me started on who really benefits from GMOs.)

But Pii admits that the point of his sculptures is to spark dialogue on these issues, and that’s something I can agree with. He says:

I admire the Apple design, but I also find it wonderful that we have a piece of technology here that is also named after a source of physical sustenance and food--while we use Apple computers in the west, people elsewhere have no fruit to survive. This is not the fault of Apple Computers, but should certainly encourage people to think.

Talk about devotion: this tattoo of Spoonbridge and Cherry, found on the arm of an extreme-Oldenburg devotee and Minneapolis transplant to North Carolina, appears in the “Missed Connections” section of Craigslist. A lovesong by a homesick Minneapolitan, it’s also a reminder to get out there--the Sculpture Garden, the Fair, whatever--before the snow pins you in (or doesn’t, as the accompanying poem attests).

Oh you.
Minneapolis.
So scary to the southern folk who lock themselves away with the threat of a single snowflake.
Waffle House cannot compare to Chipotle.
The draaaawl will never be the don’tcha know?
Sweet tea pours in gallons, where the Hamm’s beer is unheard of.
No lakes to splash in here, and salt water burns the eyes.
Ice fishing is a death threat, along with queers and democrats.
Turn signals will never be found in the city of Cary (Concentrated Area of Relocated Yankees.)
So many not even knowing where Minnesota is, along with their sense of exposure.
Please don’t call me ma’am, and that Dr. Pepper is certainly not a Coke.
This is where I am, for the time being.
And I just wanted to let you know that I miss you so very much.

--Homesick in Raleigh, North Carolina

Take that, Golden Palace Casino (who paid $10K to tattoo their URL on a woman’s forehead): we get free publicity, an aesthetically superior tattoo, and a poem, for free. But not quite: if our prodigal Minnesotan contacts us, we’ll spring for a free Walker membership, to use when you’re back ’round these parts.

(Hat tip--or rather, high five--to John Valko in Visitors Services for the find.)

I never wanted to be that guy, but there I was, in the public restroom with my digital camera. But the cause was good. Inspired by the Pulitemporary’s toilet talk, I wanted to make you privy (bad pun) to a recent accolade. Restroom Ratings gave the Walker’s bathrooms a 9 on their 10-point scale. What’s curious is that when the review came out in June, our score was a notch or two lower, and the review didn’t include the new Herzog & de Meuron-designed bathrooms in the expansion. Today’s rating is higher and mentions the new loos.

The new bathroom’s “Apple-meets-World Dryer Corp” aesthetic is described thusly: “The sleek black restrooms…with floor-to-ceiling stall doors of sleek white… are reminiscent of a first-generation iPod… And the lighting is, as it should be in a good rest room, dim enough as to not see too many details--a unique counterbalance to the bright, stark galleries.”

It’s good news, because six years have passed since our bathrooms got their last rave review: in 1999, the Cowles Conservatory in the Walker-run Minneapolis Sculpture Garden won Best Public Restroom in City Pages‘ “Best of the Twin Cities” issue.

Drop by and try them, won’t you?

In a not-so-art-related item, WiFi Art points out a Celenderesque set of scientist-themed trading cards. Einstein, Jane Goodall, the late quantum electrodynamics researcher Richard Feynman, Watson and Crick, Bill Nye: collect all 26!

I got a chance to stop in at the Seattle Public Library a couple weeks ago. In case you didn’t hear about it Seattle has a $165 million dollar library designed by Rem Koolhaas.

There are a couple good articles about the building at the Seattle Post Intelligencer and the Seattle Times. They have a ton of great pictures and floor plans. I took some photos of the signage system while I was there that I’ll put on the second page of this post. Additionally the Metropolis magazine had and article about the process of getting this library designed and built. Many of us at the Walker can relate I’m sure. The same magazine also ran a short interview with Mr. Koolhaas. (Thanks for the tip Adam)

It’s great to see another non-profit taking big risks with architecture, and judging from the amount of people using this library I guess this would be a success.

(click for more…)

Last year, artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla used micro-radio transmitters to create a re-volt. That is, by helping community members build nearly 500 micro-radio transmitters, they initiated a process by which power was redirected from the corporations who most profit from the publicly owned airwaves to individuals who can express a diversity of commercial-free viewpoints. Their project Radio Re-volt, created during a Walker residency, culminated in October with a narrowcast the length of University Avenue in Minneapolis. More than 50 micro-radio stations aired from homes and businesses along the route for the benefit of their neighbors or anyone driving the avenue with their radio on.

Now the idea is making its way to Siberia. Trans-Siberian Radio--a.k.a. The Train Station--is a low-power FM station that’ll operate on the train that runs from Moscow through Novosibirsk to Beijing, during the conference Capturing the Moving Mind: Management and Movement in the Age of Temporary War, September 11-20. Spearheaded by Natilee Harren, an alum of the Walker Art Center Teen Arts Council (WACTAC), independent curator, and grad student in art history at UCLA, the station will be a mobile lab for on-air experimentation, featuring music and ideas created collaboratively by passengers on the train and accessible to everyone along the Trans-Siberian route. As Harren writes, the ever-moving symbol of the train fits the conference’s theme: “The spirit of the conference is to cross fixed boundaries and to create an environment that is open to the ‘contaminating influences’ of the communities through which the train will pass. In fact, the point of having the conference on a train is to escape any restrictions relating to a particular time or place.” Visit the project’s site when the train is rolling to hear--and manipulate--audio clips from the ride.

More on Radio Re-volt at WiredNews. Click here to read an interview I did with Allora and Calzadilla last spring.