9 Evenings Reconsidered: Art, Theater and Engineering, 1966
Concordia University, Montreal (artpapers, Atlanta 2008)
With Anja Bock
The 1966 performance series 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering was conceived as an open-ended experiment. What would happen if artists collaborated with engineers in the early phases of a work’s production, thus giving them access to innovative technology as a new creative material? Billy Klüver, the series’ organizer, invited four dancers—Deborah Hay, Yvonne Rainer, Lucinda Childs, and Steve Paxton—as well as two musicians—John Cage and David Tudor—and four visual artists—Robert Rauschenberg, Öyvind Fahlström, Alex Hay, and Robert Whitman—to collaborate with over thirty engineers from Bell Laboratories.
[read more]
Vues de Beyrouth (Videos from Beirut)
Galerie B-312, Montreal (artpapers, Atlanta 2008)
This program of videos curated by Ricardo Mbarak and Wadih Safieddine includes work both by artist who are relatively well known outside Lebanon (such as Akram Zaatari whose work has been seen at the Sydney and Sao Paulo biennales) as well as artists whose work has not been widely circulated. Several exhibitions of the work of Lebanese artists such as “Out of Beirut” at Modern Art Oxford (UK) this year and the wide circulation of the work of Walid Raad / The Atlas Group attest to a desire for an alternate view on the events of the last decade in the middle east and in Lebanon in particular. [read more]
Vida Simon: Excavation Drawings
Performance-installation in a hotel room
(Fuse Magazine, Toronto, 2008)
Vida Simon's Excavation Drawings was a performance which took place in a hotel room over six consecutive days. An art-audience visited this space outside the normal cultural circuit, waiting in the lobby to be escorted up to the room where the artist was living, dreaming and drawing. The room’s surfaces were covered with newsprint; the floor, walls, sofa and all the furniture. On the evening I visited, a tear in this neat ‘inside skin’ makes a hole through which I could see the dresser mirror. The windows look out over downtown. If one wished one could go out onto the balcony and look down de la Montagne towards St-Catherine (around the corner is the hotel where John and Yoko conducted a worldwide media event). [read more]