Art in Odd Places: CHANCE
October 1 - October 10, 2010 | New York, New York
Artists:
Einat Amir, Liene Bosque & Nicole Seisler, BroLab, The Cunningham Repertory Understudy Group, Christopher Dameron and Annika Newell, Carrie Dashow, Mike Estabrook, Elastic City, Flux Factory, Green Map System, Heather Dewey-Hagborg & Thomas Dexter, Linda Hesh, Scott Kildall, Irvin Morazan, Simonetta Moro, Paul Notzold, Nancy Nowacek, Sheryl Oring, Jessica Ann Peavy, Maya Suess, Dannielle Tegeder, Santo Tolone, Andrew Tosiello, and Bryan Zanisnik
Co-curated with Petrushka Bazin Larsen
Overview:
AiOP is an annual festival that explores the odd, ordinary and ingenious in the spectacle of daily life. With emerging formats of communication, our culture has become a fertile ground for broad intersections between individuals, ideas and situations. This has resulted in unpredictable exchanges, relinquishment of control, surprise collaborations, and instances of spatial revelation. AiOP 2010: CHANCE intends to provide passersby with a new perspective of an otherwise familiar environment through site-specific installations, social and spatial interventions, video and audio projects, performance, new media, and other inventive practices. In addressing the distinct manifestations of chance, the festival aims to broaden the public's outlook on art, city dwelling, and social conventions.
Curatorial Statement:
Chance in the arts provides a means for escaping the biases engrained in our personality by our culture and personal past history, that is, it is a means of attaining greater generality.
- George Brecht, in: Chance-Imagery, 1966
The term "chance" instantly evokes thoughts of opportunity, luck, risk, and determinate order. An amorphous and yet intelligible idea, chance yields outcomes that are at once symmetrical and irregular. Behind serendipitous occurrences there is often veiled order, with every possibility there is ultimately a risk. Chance as an experience is therefore open-ended—leaving one to question if there is in fact structure to chaos, or true luck in probability.
Focusing primarily on performance and experimental sound-based works for their correspondence to chance operations, the participating artists explore the festival's theme in several ways. Playing off the idiosyncrasies inherent to the urban terrain, and specifically 14th Street, Liene Bosquê and Nicole Seisler, BroLab Collective, Christopher Dameron and Annika Newell, Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Thomas Dexter, Elastic City, and Nancy Nowacek reveal undetected aspects of the city, accordingly forming a distinct archive of their findings through performance, sound installations, and walks. Mike Estabrook, Scott Kildall, and Simonetta Moro map the civic plane and its inhabitants through statistical data, scientific research and observation by participatory means. Stemming from the festival's general theme, artists and performers Einat Amir, The Cunningham Repertory Understudy Group, Linda Hesh, Irvin Morazan, Sheryl Oring, Santo Tolone, and Bryan Zanisnik rely on principles of chance and randomness to give structure to their works. Elements of chance and risk-taking shape projects by Carrie Dashow, Green Map System, Jessica Ann Peavy, Andrew Tosiello, and Maya Suess, as they invite passersby to take part in an assortment of games including a scavenger hunt, Craps, and lottery. Also reliant on participation, Flux Factory, Paul Notzold, and Dannielle Tegeder bring together the diverse inhabitants of 14th Street to form a community by way of communication and exchange.
Public art as a construct submits to the laws of chance, with the viewer being given the choice to directly interact with the work as spectator or participant. Performers and observers alike are provided the opportunity to broaden the scope of their experiences, as well as the understanding of society and their environs. This year's projects emphasize the potential for dynamic exchange between public and culture, thus presenting an expanded outlook on art, city dwelling, and social conventions. Addressing the distinct manifestations of chance—the festival aims to draw connections between past and present, visible and obscured, consumer and producer. In so doing, passersby become willing accomplices in the unpredictable exchanges, surprise collaborations, and instances of spatial revelation posited by these unique public experiences.
- Yaelle Amir and Petrushka Bazin, 2010