JACK THE PELICAN PRESENTS .............................................................PROJECT IMAGES ................................................................PRESS RELEASE
sebastian,
hope all has been well since our mega email correspondence (quite an enjoyable thing, really, and so rare!). i went to visit the gallery of a friend of mine in williamsburg tonight, and he was telling me that he would either want to close the gallery for july or give the entire space to me to do whatever i wanted. this is an immense brick space, very weird: long, triangular front room, converging into a doorway to a square back room. a warehouse next door was recently demolished, but the new development won't begin until the fall, so there's also access to a multi-thousand square-foot dirt lot, which is truly a thing to behold.
the gallery is called jack the pelican; it's a very seat-of-the-pants affair, but one of the top-four williamsburg galleries and more prone to experimental fare than most (their last show will be reviewed in the summer issue of artforum, so they also attract the right cross-section of critics and curators).
anyways, given my intimate knowledge of i-cabin's practice and your own strengths at trans-national collaboration, i wondered if you wanted to develop a project for the space with me. the show would open quite soon (july 12th?) but i was thinking we could propose something that would be fruitful, durational, action-based, what have you. basically, build the nature of our transnational communication into the project (or, if you wanted, you also could come stateside, take a bed in my parents' house, and collab here). suffice it to say that this could be a great opportunity to play around with a lot of space, and to see if some of the ideas we were bandying about might evolve into something interesting (which i think they could).
anyhow, get back, as time allows, and let me know if there's any interest. i'll be going to the space to take some photographs tomorrow, so will relay those to you asap, to give you an idea. it's a marvellous venue to work with.
tyler x
--
Tyler Coburn
+1 917-270-4026
Hi Tyler,
wow, that sounds like a very very good thing to do. Thanks for considering me, Yes let us certainly work on something there.
I have looked at the website and there doesn't seem to be any pictures of the space, so look forward to seeing some.
I'll be locked up in Europe during July as I have Caleb's show here 4th - 13th and then I'm on a few Spanish Islands with my fiancé 19th - 26th, making it a full month, I won't be able to get over to NY so we'll have to work on it this way as a dialogue. As you say, I seem to be building quite a catalogue of exchanges-represented-in-my-absence, I'm working on another one for Old Gold in Chicago in November. Perhaps I could get out to the end of the show, when would it run until? I will price up flights, but I'm quite happy to work this way. In fact I am very happy.
I'll have a quick review of our recent emails and send you something to follow this.
Skype is very good for this sort of thing I am on sebcraig, do you have a contact? You are 5 hours earlier there than I am here making it 10.40 on thursday your time, I'll be on skype here of around 2 hours from now.
Thanks again, I'm sure this will be an interesting project!
Sebastian
i-cabin, Clarendon Buildings, 11 Ronalds Road, London, N5 1XJ 07813 764 937 / www.i-cabin.co.uk
These topics highlight themselves in relation to our discourse
non-art (music/?)
Margins of Art production
Trans-historical medium (which I actually misread as trans-historical museum before)
walks / architectures
show length
public archive
s.
i-cabin, Clarendon Buildings, 11 Ronalds Road, London, N5 1XJ 07813 764 937 / www.i-cabin.co.uk
hey s,
i'm gonna go take the photos now. i should be back in my studio round 2pm (7pm your time?). anyways, i do have skype - i think you can just find me via my name. i'll log on when i'm back and see if you're about. if not, i'll send you the images and type you up some stuff. we can find another time to discuss.
ok!
excited,
tyler
Great,
just before you send me any images, lets quickly consider whether I need to see the space for us to continue?
probably not actually, for safety lets keep it imagined for now.
s
i-cabin, Clarendon Buildings, 11 Ronalds Road, London, N5 1XJ 07813 764 937 / www.i-cabin.co.uk
yes, i agree. it should be imagined on your end.
i'm back in the studio for the next 3 hours. you around? i'll attempt to skype you.
hey s,
looks like i missed you, so i'll send you some thoughts. give me an idea of when you might be around tomorrow, and perhaps we can set up a time. i should be in the studio from 12pm US time to 6pm US time.
i won't tell you anything more about the space until we determine the best course of action, on this front. on a general level, as with your past long-distance collaborations, i think distance should be built into the project, as should the marked hand of the absent collaborator.
because there's not an extensive amount of time in the lead-up to the exhibition, i also wonder whether our continuing correspondence can manifest itself in a process-based fashion in the exhibition itself. i don't think that i myself should necessarily play a role in the exhibition during gallery hours (i am often skeptical of that overt staging of artist-as-performer) but it might be interesting for me to come in during off-hours and build upon the space, based on your specifications or our discussion.
there's a power relationship built into our communication that i could be interested in developing or exaggerating, particularly if you sustain a wholly imagination-based relationship to the space and the show. you, in a sense, have a certain power over the space by possessing it solely in your imagination - a power that could be teased out in the form of instructions and directives that you provide me, in relation to an exhibition that you only know from my description.
have you ever read any robbe-grillet? the way he builds total architectural spaces through banal, descriptive overload may be relevant here. i like the idea of your never seeing the exhibition throughout the course of its run, but a large part of our correspondence entailing my describing it at length to you, down to the most specific details, and you making directives or modifications based on those descriptions. this text, in turn, could enter, correspondence by correspondence, into the body of the exhibition as well, perhaps in the form of a loose-leaf folder or office binder, to which page upon page is added, in sync to the actual changes in the space, and parallel routes begin to emerge between this text and the exhibition as, in a sense, a narrative or extension of our exchange (an epistolary novel, of sorts).
i was thinking of a title: 'autobiography of an exhibition.' might not end up being what we use, but i am interested in the idea of an exhibition being a narrative, driven by the pleasure of/in the text, as well as in the idea of autobiography as a dynamic and ossifying process. an exhibition built out of our imaginative and practical correspondence could, in a way, become autobiographical: self-generating, insofar as we are so deeply embedded into its process, or in that it as an entity is wholly reliant upon our process.
there's also the case of the gigantic, abandoned dirt lot next door, which feels like an analogous (or parallel universe) space to the exhibition space proper. that space speaks to so much of the history of the neighborhood and the forces overwhelming new york, yet somehow when i walk through it all i can think about is why we build myths, and how this space needs a myth.
when new york was still a very young city, washington irving felt it needed an ancient history and, because it lacked one, he constructed it through fiction and myth: through old knickerbocker and others. in the space between an actual exhibition space and an imagined vision of, at a particularly dynamic moment when history is abandoned for the sake of capitalistic progress, maybe we need to tell a new story; a myth; an alternate account?
ideas: good and bad.
Tsc
ok, more ideas.
i've been thinking about the relationship of the decimated field/architectural ruin to the gallery interior...along the lines of a real/object space to a representational/textual space. how can the terms of one be translated into those of the other and what could be produced in such acts of transliteration?
building upon our discussion of architecture, mapping etc. it could be interesting to actually map the field, perhaps in a process-based way...set up a series of stakes and draw lines of rope between them, thereby dividing the field into a series of sub-units. the divisions could be predetermined (i.e. a grid) or could be entirely subject to the instructions you provide me. based on the laying down of new lines, specific sections of the field become demarcated by lines - certain territories are mapped and isolated from all others, but as new lines are laid every few days, no territory is stable; all are subject to the contingencies of continual remapping.
in the gallery space we install four reading desks with binders. they each begin with only one sheet of paper (documenting the laying of the first line: the first directive). the binders differ in content as follows:
binder one: each page is numbered and has the specific directive, issued by you, for the line that is to be laid down in the field.
binder two: each page is numbered like binder one and has detailed descriptions of the contents of the section of terrain the line crosses. these descriptions should be terribly banal...not lists of items, but paragraphs describing in minute detail the content of these sections of terrain.
binder three: each page is numbered like the other two binders. this binder has some aspect of imaginative production from your end, be it textual description of the field, the gallery, an architectural rendering.
binder four: each page is numbered corresponding to the numbers in the other binders. this is the narrative binder, somehow more than the sum of all the previous information, in which a story is recounted, a myth invented, an inference drawn, a web woven. the language will be obtuse, allusive, mysterious but unpretentious and untheatrical.
there are obviously many other variations to this installation, as well as supplements. things to consider:
1) should the audience have access to the field, where the stakes and rope will be mapping the terrain
2) should there be any actual photo reproduction or object reproductions or sources objects from the field in the gallery space...i incline more towards its description through your imaginary renderings and accounts, as well as my transliteration of its content into text, but i'm very open. i certainly don't want to be mark dion, though.
feel free to shoot down this idea if it doesn't seem productive. i just think the field is super strange and merits consideration as the subject of or an element of our exhibition. the mapping of its space is partly a reference to that situationist architecture group, superstudio, the bulk of whose practice took the form of open spaces mapped with lines, to be walked.
tyler
p.s. i met amanda ross-ho tonight. she says hello!
Hi Mate,
there's going to be some slinging back and forth of ideas here so please forgive me if I don't respond to each and every point below but select instead as a process of editing.
It'll be very important for me to stay focussed on the notional space. (all I have this end is different pieces/types of texts...I don't want to get lost!)
Firstly, attached is my imagined model of the space, which is subject to change as I re-imagine over time! I'll get on and use this model for everything. I totally agree with you: I want us to use the gallery as a notional studio through which to play out architectural ideas in a place for which I have no real codex (my notion of Brooklyn is through a history of hip-hop and graffiti, and a taxi journey around the edge from JFK?) These ideas should be generated by our talks and I'll record them to check back on,
it's a two man show and I'm really glad to be working with you on it. I'm going to avoid instructing you, like you mention below, if possible, because your going to the space after hours to carry out my directions sounds like a grim task for you!! (I'm really sad not to be out there).
Your idea of using this space by separating it is perfect, I have been making these string texts which are stretched across the space making a barrier to climb through (there's one at Old Gold in November) so very topical, for the first dividing I'm happy to throw out a system for you, not a text though, but a drawing.
Yes let the viewers into it, it's a playground afterall, no need to be precious.
Some will grab hold of the built environment we develop for them and interract with it.. open-source urbanism (like that of Yona Friedman)
I can imagine a beautiful exchange of us sending back and forth drawings of the changing layout, in different ways and on different software, you'll have to keep an eye on it, can you get up high enough to take photos..? (I agree with you, I don't think they should be used in the show)
NB some of the things I might suggest through use of the model will probably need some persuasion to fit the real space, which is nice for us both.
The binder system sound to me like it will take a lot of time and be quite closed, both for us and the viewers. By all means do that if you want to, (be sure to let there be some loose ends for it all)...let's think it over for a day or so. What you've written for binder 4 is beautiful, and so is the Washington Irving story. Brooklyn is only a myth to me at the moment, I like the idea of you mythologizing re a city you want to aestheticize mentally, with wanderings, I also want us to operate away from the gallery and the yard, I want to wander round the leafy areas and streets of Williamsburg making art wherever I go!
SUMMING UP - 1 I'll send you over a drawing for you to use to map onto the yard as a starting point.
2 lets chat about things of place, brooklyn, buildings, thoughts...then draw out the things to make plastic/solid/art.
OTHER - I love the phrase 'Design for Communication', it's the term they use in Universities now as the name for the course which used to be called Graphic Design, but I use the term for what I do. Therefore the work is left to communicate in my absence...but what do I want to communicate about...?...the answer is usually art.
S.
x
ps I think the title should be Woah Woah Woah here we go
i-cabin, Clarendon Buildings, 11 Ronalds Road, London, N5 1XJ 07813 764 937 / www.i-cabin.co.uk
17:21
allo?
sebcraig
18:02
hi matey, just sent you an email...did u receive??
Tyler Coburn
18:02
oh, haven't checked. one sec
18:05
lemme take a minute to sift through all this good stuff
sebcraig
18:06
cool cool, no hurry..... i'll be here
Tyler Coburn
18:14
hey i'm back
18:14
that rendering you made is great
18:14
what program did you make it on?
sebcraig
18:15
it's called 'sketchup'...dead easy!
Tyler Coburn
18:15
oh yeah, i know it
18:16
so tell me about these text string works
sebcraig
18:16
hang on i'll send a pic
?
sebcraig posted file OldGoldstring text3email.jpg to members of this chat
18:16
sebcraig
18:17
this is the drawing for old gold
Tyler Coburn
18:18
this is crazy, sebastian
sebcraig
18:18
this particular text says 'derma'
Tyler Coburn
18:18
i was thinking about us doing something VERY similar
sebcraig
18:18
oh?
Tyler Coburn
18:18
and i was playing around with word combinations, alphabet arrays, etc
18:18
my solutions weren't as elegant as this, though
sebcraig
18:19
ha ha, I see!
Tyler Coburn
18:19
the original ideas for the arrays sort of evolved into the idea of staking out the field and drawing pattern with string
18:19
what's the significance of 'derma'
18:19
as a word or combination of letters?
sebcraig
18:20
yes, the pink string I use for the texts is actually builders string for the purpose of marking out buildings on site...hence the high visibility colour
Tyler Coburn
18:20
wow. super appropriate
18:21
i think it could really come into play in this project. how would you envisage it being used?
sebcraig
18:22
(derma is also the title of a film which will accompany the text, the text being the barrier between viewer and artwork, the film being quite personal to me) I would like to stick to drawings here at the moment, feel the texts are to resolved in another direction...
18:23
I don't want to mess with that here!
Tyler Coburn
18:24
ok, sure. it just seems like the builder's tape material, at least, might be an interesting medium for mapping the field, if we chose to bring that element into play: not necessarily mapping it in text, but drawing with it atop the field. not sure if that is of interest to you.
18:25
i do like the idea of beginning things with a drawing exchange, though, as you proposed
sebcraig
18:25
yes, absolutely, be it this string or any other, perhaps a different colour to define a new use (within my work anyway!)
18:26
well the same use on a different plane!
Tyler Coburn
18:26
i think that would be appropriate, given the specific connotation of pink in your work
18:26
that's true too
18:26
if the string came into play, should it be used solely in the field? also in the gallery space?
18:26
should the drawing be process-based or predetermined?
sebcraig
18:27
hmm, i was just doing a drawing to send to you as a little starting point...2seconds
Tyler Coburn
18:27
sure thing
sebcraig
18:29
i think string could be used inside, was hearing from Geogio sadotti of Liam Gillicks string drawings...i never saw/heard of them before, invisage wall drawings! but only aesthetically...which is a bit limp (excuse the visual pun)
Tyler Coburn
18:30
wait, liam gillick's stirng drawings are only aesthetic? or ours should be?
18:30
there are some other artists who do string drawings: carol bove, jonah groeneboer
18:31
in a way, i'm interested in building analogous space, in gallery and field, that are marked by different materials.
18:31
so it might be more interesting if some of the materials we use only occur in one of the spaces
sebcraig
18:31
i mean i like the way the idea of string wall-drawings look in my head but they aren't reasoned out yet as artworks!
Tyler Coburn
18:31
the builder's tape seems particularly apt in the field because it acquires functional, graphic and imaginary meanings
18:32
i see i see
18:33
tell me about yona freeman's open-source urbanism
18:33
i'm not sute if i'm familiar
sebcraig
18:35
he's a wonderful deaf old man, google him, felt tip drawings of his designs, user-manipulated cities/ movable structures...etc...very beautiful man, saw him interviewed by Gillick & Cerith, horrible experience, cerith drunk, gillick too harsh for the old man and friedman couldn't hear a word.
Tyler Coburn
18:35
ha
18:39
(reading up on friedman)
sebcraig
18:39
how's this for a starting point drawing to map onto the yard? I'll try to mock it up onto the digital model, could it need a fair bit of editing, perhaps too fiddly...
Tyler Coburn
18:39
let me take a look
18:39
did you send it?
?
sebcraig posted file brooklyn drawing.jpg to members of this chat
18:40
Tyler Coburn
18:41
this is the overhead?
sebcraig
18:43
whats the overhead? its meant to be Brownstone houses!!!! first image google brings up of brooklyn and reminded me that the Cosby show was set in brooklyn, a far more middle class vision that mine of basketball courts and tennements, but with trees
Tyler Coburn
18:44
yes yes, of course. i get the brownstone element. but, i mean, when this is mapped out on the field, this is what the drawing wood look like from bird's eye perspective?
sebcraig
18:45
ahhh sorry...bloody internet for missunderstandings! yes yes, birdeye view
Tyler Coburn
18:45
got it
18:45
but hypothetically the lines would interconnect more, because the tape will be pulled in one continuous string like in your text piece, right?
18:46
(i can make a drawing to show what i mean, if it helps)
sebcraig
18:47
I don't think it needs to be one length of string here...that (as a rule) would really affect what we can draw.
18:48
with the texts I feel it has a rationale to be one length, ne need here
Tyler Coburn
18:48
well, i do feel like it could be good to challenge explicitly representational content - i think it could complicate/obsure what we draw in an interesting way.moving the representational content in
18:48
oops let me reassemble that
18:49
i do feel like it could be good to challenge explicitly representational content - i think it could complicate/obsure what we draw if we employ parameters for mark-making that push the image into a space between representation and architectural mapping, line drawing and rule-based design
18:50
that doesn't mean it has to be resolved by using one continuous line, of course
18:51
but maybe then the subject-matter shouldn't be as identifiably representation. i don't know.
18:51
think one of the strengths of your drawing for the other project
18:51
was that it towed that line really well
18:51
toed
sebcraig
18:53
rule-based art is a funny one isn't it? artists seem to think that it inherrently validates the work!!
Tyler Coburn
18:53
i do think a lot of very poor conceptual art has justified itself by its set of rules, yes, which accounts for how much thin stuff is out there.
18:54
i've never been that artist. i have too much pleasure in narration to allow parameters to overdetermine
18:55
maybe the words i used were incorrect, for trying to articulate this. i guess i just mean that it would be interesting to figure out a mode of drawing that subtends representation
18:55
which seems possible, given the other connotations of the drawing materials, as well as the location of the drawing
sebcraig
18:55
sure thing
18:56
what about this....
?
sebcraig posted file brooklyn drawing 3.jpg to members of this chat
18:56
Tyler Coburn
18:57
is that graffiti? the walls surrounding the field are covered with that stuff
18:57
very funny
sebcraig
19:01
i spose i'm just really lamely jotting down 'brooklynisms' , nothing more, but the drawing for the Vaasa project was what Barry Sykes called a 'shape-genarating system, but one with an internal logic' in this case we're looking for the same sort of thing...no?
Tyler Coburn
19:01
i think that's right
19:01
how did you and barry come upon your 'shape-generating system?'
19:02
was it integral to the location?
sebcraig
19:04
i generated the system through drawing the place he was in from imagination, the drawing was to be used to define/plot out visually the modifications we would make to the objects we had bought from the prison...
Tyler Coburn
19:05
ah ha
19:05
so it began with an imaginary drawing
19:05
he didn't provide you with any description?
sebcraig
27/06/2008 19:08
yes a really anecdotal one without it having any intention to be used that way, it started with the idea to act as philanthropists somehow, the drawing was initially in the margin, but it became the system as we went along...in this case perhaps i should wait for your robbe-grillet intensity descriptions...that would make my job of drawing a lot more technical...
sebcraig
27/06/2008 19:09
but a drawing of graffiti seems a playful thing which might stand some investigation, it is afterall an architectural and urban device
Tyler Coburn
19:07
because one of the things that i think might be interesting - or at least if of interest to me, as an artist - is to produce analogus but nonidentical relationships between drawing and textual description
19:08
because one of the things that i think might be interesting - or at least if of interest to me, as an artist - is to produce analogus but nonidentical relationships between drawing
19:08
and textual description
19:09
am i losing you?
19:10
(technology-wise)
19:12
i agree
19:12
i mean, an idea of how we could go about it: a drawing could be generated by your choosing a place in the field, the neighborhood, greater Brooklyn and asking me to describe it in great detail. Then a drawing is produced that's mapped into the field - it need not be explicitly representational, but it somehow responds to the condition of my description. Perhaps, in the gallery, a log of these descriptions could also be exhibited (binder or no), without explicit reference to their relationship to given drawings.
19:12
the place you choose could be deliberate, entirely arbitrary
19:13
the description could also yield something that is not a drawing, or that is not a drawing intended for the field
19:13
i'm very open to your thoughts on this
sebcraig
19:17
ha ha, I love this when the internet gets slow...what a mess of possible misunderstandings and connections!!!! I like the sounds of what you suggest, very very much, it is both research for me and mythology for you. Right, I'm going to go home for dinner with my girl, I'll email you a transcript of all this incase we missed anything,,,, think it over, will be here roughly the same time tommorrow or on email....very happy with this so far
Tyler Coburn
19:18
good good. i'll be here round the same time as well, we'll keep going with it
19:18
have a nice din
sebcraig
19:18
thanks, you too
sebastian,
thought this would be good for reference: my proposal to don from the gallery. a lot of condensing was done for the sake of making the proposal succint, and obviously nothing needs to be set in stone at this point. reformulating our ideas were definitely helpful, though, and a read-through might be of use.
until tomorrow,
tyler
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tyler Coburn < tyler.coburn@gmail.com >
Date: Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 6:02 PM
Subject: proposal +
To: Donald Carroll < Donald.Carroll@bloomingdales.com >, don@jackthepelicanpresents.com
don,
many thanks for the patience, on your front, in allowing me and sebastian some time to formulate our ideas (an ongoing process, of course). i'm sorry i missed your call; i would have called back, but i realize i don't have your number. please let me know what it is, as time allows.
it's a funny time for this opportunity to arise (and for this adjacent lot to be vacant), because i've spent the past few weeks intensively studying the history of new york, urban development, architectural theory, imaginary cities, etc. etc. etc. of particular interest has been washington irving's fictional history of new york, written from the perspective of one diedrich knickerbocker. i'm fascinated by the fact that new york, being a relatively young city, lacked an extensive history, so irving felt the need to build that history, one myth atop another. because the development impulse has so thoroughly embedded itself into the new york mindset as to seem practically primal, i've begun to wonder about what happens to the stories - real and imagined - tied up in the city's architectural ruins, and whether new myths are needed to explain a city that at times feels utterly foreign to its inhabitants, young and old.
moving along this line of thought, i've developed an extensive correspondence with my good friend sebastian craig from london. sebastian runs a notable project space there, called i-cabin ( http://www.i-cabin.co.uk/ ), which has always impressed me for its playful relationship to the often foot-in-the-grave strategies of institutional critique (you can see an article i wrote about the space, articulating that point more emphatically, here: http://www.i-cabin.co.uk/tylercoburntext.htm
i-cabin straddles the line between being practitioner and curator - what one critic labeled a 'social hub,' for lack of a better term. sebastian's practice follows suit and many of his most interesting projects involved collaborating with friends in a remote location and exploring his entirely imaginary relationship with the location of his correspondent (and the location of the exhibition). the most successful of these was a collaborative project done with a friend in finland ( http://www.i-cabin.co.uk/studiosc15.htm ). the foundation of the exhibition was a drawing sebastian produced, from his imagination, of the city (see attached). furniture from a finnish prison workshop was then sources and cut to correspond to the geometries of sebastian's rendering.
so, getting to the point: the exhibition proposal. the purgatorial state of the adjacent lot is a truly amazing and rare thing, and sebastian and i want to divide the exhibition between it and the gallery space. sebastian has never been to brooklyn - he's been to nyc and has given brooklyn a glancing hello, when he espied it between the peaks of midtown manhattan. brooklyn to him, as he told me, means little more than the cosby show, rows of brownstones, and graffiti.
sebastian has never seen the interior of the gallery or the vacant lot. nor will he see before or during the the show. his relationship to it will be entirely imaginary: this we've agreed.
what sebastian will have is information from me to produce drawings for the lot. before the exhibition (and at various times over the course of it), he will give me a site in brooklyn: a place of interest that he's never been to, or a street name or intersection he has discovered through a relatively arbitrary process. i will go there and describe it meticulously, perhaps borrowing a bit from the way robbe-grillet builds his claustrophobic narrative worlds and inhabited spaces. from these descriptions, sebastian will produce a drawing, perhaps in the fashion of the attached drawing; perhaps not. he will supply instructions of scale. i will hammer a series of stakes into the accompanying lot and run neon orange builder's tape between the stakes, producing a rendering of this drawing.
the builder's tape and stakes are key, of course. the fact that the lot is presently vacant is somewhat exceptional, in this day and age of new york, but it is nonetheless filled with that potentiality that only comes before imminent construction. rerouting that energy into our project, we will map that terrain with these drawings, using materials found on construction sites, but building notional architectures, as opposed to real ones. (see attached image for reference - this is not an actual rendering, but gives an idea).
the gallery space will function as a reading room. there will be two or three nondescript desks and chairs, each with a binder or folder. one folder will have the full records of the descriptions i've given sebastian about the places he has asked me to visit. there won't be any indication as to which description corresponds to which drawing. because the exhibition will have a process-based component (in that drawings will be added/modified as the exhibition progresses), additional descriptions will be inserted into the folder only as new drawings are produced.
the other binder will also gain pages as new drawings are installed. each page will build a myth with reference to the specific place i've visited - working through the history of the site, and using it to build an obtuse, contemporary tale, a la irving.
there may be other objects in the gallery. this is something sebastian and i are still figuring out. for the time being, we do know that we want to make the lot a 'drawing' space and the gallery a place for text, description, reading.
the lot will be accessible to the public during the exhibition. we'll have to fabricate a ramshackle door, as you proposed, to the right of the gallery entrance. there's the question of liability, of course, but perhaps it can be an 'enter at your own risk.' i don't know; let's discuss.
as to the issue of the scale of the exhibition, well, this is what i would say. if you're quite keen on making this a two-exhibition month, i think the inside portion of our exhibition should happen in the back room. that being said, if you really want to go balls-out, well, i think it would be amazing to have a very sparse install on the inside and these strange tape drawings in the adjacent lot. i think this is the sort of exhibition concept that could benefit from this type of minimalism, as well as an exhibition space whose largesse, relative to the quantity of objects on 'display,' would almost emphatically underscore some of the imaginative/potential energy sebastian and i are attempting to channel. so let me know what you think on that front.
i'll be around and on my phone tonight and daytime tomorrow, so give me a ring or shoot me a mail and we'll discuss.
what day were you thinking to open this guy?
best,
tyler
just to give you the condensed summary (because, as you astutely pointed out on wednesday, all shows must be able to be boiled down to a main point):
'a collaborative project in which new yorker tyler coburn attempts to describe brooklyn to englander sebastian craig, and craig (who has never been to brooklyn) imagines, over a series of drawings, a place of rubble, imminent development, construction tape and plywood'
--
Tyler Coburn
+1 917-270-4026
don't open the image attachment i sent to don...has photos of the site. FOR MY EYES ONLY!
--
Tyler Coburn
+1 917-270-4026
hey sebcraig,
great chat.
a version of our chat is attached (mainly your points).
here's a good site for brooklyn listings: http://www.artcal.net/allevents/15
talk soon. i'm off to look into my mobile phone situation.
Tyler
:: sketchup - you can position your drawing on google earth!
SC: what I think I should be getting you to investigate in Brooklyn, in terms of what I'm interested in...I didn't want to make any statements about Brooklyn as a place, because I haven't been there. So I worry as an artist: what's the use of me making a work about Brooklyn? It's not going to add anything to Brooklyn, in that I'm a remote viewer and have no education.
With these sorts of projects, artists always make pseudo-social studies projects based on research, which is really interesting if you do it knowingly. But I was thinking about the sorts of things that would be more useful for me to ask you to describe - it might be things I know more about, or things that are international. One thing is art...so rather than me asking you to describe a crossroads, I would ask you to describe some shows. Does that sound alright?
...
I'm very interested in invisible architectures: architectures that can be built from invisible things. So the architecture that already exists in Brooklyn doesn't necessarily have to influence us. We're really building new architectures from information and the information is going to be generated by you.
...
But the other thing that I'm really interested in is a sort of artistic intention. Something that does something, go somewhere and has an output.
...
Trying to formulate the different languages we can use [for the project]. The first one is the model, then drawings. And maybe we shouldn't be afraid of using photographs in this regard
...
It would be nice to keep this conceptually dense, but retain a certain lightness to it.
...
Maybe we can chuck everything in one binder.
Trying out a bunch of things. Very messy with a considered thread.
Maybe I should go walking first...But art is a logical starting place, in a way to separate this from a social study. This is not a hierarchical social study...
I was chatting with this guy about "history from below"...it just seemed like a really nice phrase. A social-study from below.
It could be people-based at times as well. It would be good for this to be a throwing back-and-forth of information.
The exhibitions should be in Brooklyn.
That's where the fruit of the exchange is. I'll request something of you and you'll interpret them in such a way. I imagine it will be a filmic, narrative explanation of a scenario and I'll be developing them back towards satisfying them as an artist and you'll have to reinterpret them again in translating them back into the exhibition.
In terms of what's in the gallery...I was thinking out loud that possibly I should just let you worry about what's in the gallery and I should worry about what's outside. But I don't know because there's so much scope as to what could be done here. In my head, I sort of wanted it to be done in an imaginary studio, so I sort of liked the idea of using it to experiment with ideas that might relate to Brooklyn and might relate to something else.
I would like to be discussing things in general. I'm interested in dialogues at the moment of what art should do...and I think what we've got going on in terms of the descriptions and the drawings for the space outside is a really great start.
(We agree that people should be able to come into the lot, can interact with the drawings if they want. If someone goes in there and changes it, the new drawing should be documented and the information sent to you, to filter into the project).
July 19 th for 10 days: Sebastian will be in Spain...will need to figure out other means of communication (can send multimedia files via text? Update phone! )
okay,
first description to centre on/start at the Four Walls Project space, 138 Bayard Street at Graham Avenue
I haven't seen or heard anything about it, as our concern is beyond the walls of the space at the moment, start here,
whether its inside, outside, people, work... is entirely at your discretion.
great talking to you,
look forward to reading what you do!
s.
i-cabin, Clarendon Buildings, 11 Ronalds Road, London, N5 1XJ 07813 764 937 / www.i-cabin.co.uk
oh and 4 walls is of course the paradigm of architecture, I used to teach architecture and young people think only in terms of squares,
but contemporary architectures perceived withdrawal from them seems just as childish, what is the interface of rectangles and sphere's etc.? can there be a convincing one?
Will Allsop is a very interesting guy re this, famous really for being financially unsuccessful at the business of running a business.
s.
i-cabin, Clarendon Buildings, 11 Ronalds Road, London, N5 1XJ 07813 764 937 / www.i-cabin.co.uk
thanks for the address, buddy. i'm gonna visit it later today or tomorrow and get cracking.
have you read koolhaas' 'delirious new york' ? you might want to pick yourself up a copy. koolhaas attempts to apply walter benjamin's fragmentary methodology of 'arcades project' to the history of new york, somewhat unsuccessfully, but he does have a real eye for the anecdote and concludes the book with a series of fanciful building projects for nyc (including a 'shadow UN' - an exact replica of the building to float on the east river)...here's one of his drawings, for roosevelt island: http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A1&page_number=754&template_id=1&sort_order=1
i agree with you about this shift in architecture. ben and i always joke that the problem with architects is that they attempt to produce an identical relationship, in structure, to the theories that are in vogue at any given moment, instead of meaningfully working through and translating the theories into the languages of matter and construction. so, rhizomatic, lateriality, dematerialized, blob give us many of the theoretically overdetermined structures that parasitically sprawl over out city streets.
sphere vs. cube. sphere <--> cube...it's an immense generalization, of course, but spheres, throughout the history of architecture, are always rendered synonymous with the idealistic, utopian, ethereal, imaginary, be it the hallowed domes of cathedrals (only being half-spheres to indicate that the spherical form is reserved for the high heaven, not the earthly; the 1939 world's fair sphere; geodesic spheres; planetariums (esp. the nyc natural history museum one); etc. etc.
the marriage of the sphere and cube...how to imagine? certainly allsop doesn't achieve it. i wonder whether the engagement of this question merely upholds a historical, binary relationship between these forms that needs to be rethought in a non-binary way. perhaps our thinking can be a way of working through this.
i was trying to find these renderings by a quite famous architect (whose name i cant, for the life of me, remember)...i'm not sure if he ever fabricated anything, but his drawings of almost wholly spherical structures have remained quite influential in the discourse (i think he was drawing in the late-19th/early 20th century).
a failed search. but the journey to failure yielded some other, potentially relevant source material:
friedrich kiesler's exhibition, up now at the drawing center: http://www.drawingcenter.org/exh_current.cfm?exh=461&do=vexh
the curved walls of peggy guggenheim's 'art of this century' gallery: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/graphics/2007/03/17/basurreal117.jpg
lebbeus woods' excellent drawings from his terrain project, in which representation and pure graphicality make perfect bedfellows:
this page of models of united architects' world trade center proposals. somehow works better in the virtual realm, in which the models are given equal value in the realm of possible outcomes. the sense of working-through, or multiple, compossible worlds (per leibnitz) comes across, though largely accidentally, by the contingencies of the virtual search interface: http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A1&page_number=233&template_id=6&sort_order=1
more2 (like a morandi still-life of the utmost archi-political consequence): http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A1&page_number=237&template_id=6&sort_order=1
sebastian!
had a great conversation with don about the show. he's giving us the whole gallery and seems keen to let us do whatever. i get the sense he's hoping for some visual element in the exhibition space proper, so let's keep that in mind and see how things develop on our end.
the show will open on thursday, july 10th. there's a lot to do, my friend.
on the immediate front, i've made a list of stuff for us to consider:
1) the press release/etc. i'm going to write something up for don to take a look at, along the lines of what we discussed. i will send you a draft first before sending him anything and we can work on it. perhaps expect a draft later this night/early next morn?
2) i need a short bio from you, ASAP. in the style/length of:
Tyler Coburn holds a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University, and has exhibited with The Centre of Attention, London, Galerie Ben Kaufmann, Berlin, and Gavin Brown's Passerby, New York. His debut New York solo exhibition was held at March Gallery in Spring 2008, and his videos have screened at CRG Gallery, Whitechapel Art Gallery, the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, and Ocularis, among others. Coburn is a contributing editor to ArtReview and a staff writer for Rhizome.
3) title of exhibition...gotta be honest that i'm not crazy about 'woah woah woah here we go'...other thoughts? i'm still a little partial to the 'autobiography of an exhibition,' idea, just because of how process-based things will be, but am open.
4) image/graphic to accompany email announcement of exhibition, measuring 600(w) x 400(h). let's discuss what this should be.
5) challenges specific to project (illegality given that lot is private property, what our contingency plan is if the lot is shut down. It seems there is someone who looks after the site à we need to make sure that the opening to the lot is made with the utmost discretion (i.e. perhaps the hinges to our ramshackle dooway could be covered with a fly poster...perhaps we could choose a specific image or graphic, relevant to the project, that i could have made into a fly poster, to cover the entranceway?)
6) I just got a new phone that I think will receive multimedia text messages. Try sending me something: +1.917.270.4026
more soon. i'll be visiting the gallery you gave me tomorrow and producing a text for you tomorrow eve.
tyler x
it needs our bios, but here's a go.
i tried to avoid pretension and build a little bit of narrative interest into it. we can change/modify as you see fit.
in consideration of the illegality of our drawing in the lot, the gallery asked that we not explicitly mention that part of the exhibition, so i've tried to weave it into the press release as a sort of mysterious element of the show. i think it works pretty well, but am open to suggestions.
i'll be around at home before noon tomorrow, if you want to have a little skype update. let me know, if so, and what time i should be around (i can log on as early as 9am U.S. time). that afternoon i'll be going to the first address.
Tyler
6/29/2008
Press Release: "Autobiography of an Exhibition" (Draft 1)
The first collaboration between New Yorker Tyler Coburn and Londoner Sebastian Craig, "Autobiography of an Exhibition" is an imaginary account of Brooklyn narrated in drawing, architecture and prose. Much as Washington Irving invented an extended history for the young Dutch colony, in his novel Knickerbocker's History of New York (1809), so Coburn and Craig consider the need for new myths, woven apace with the city's cycles of destruction and development. Through an ongoing, transatlantic exchange, in which Coburn meticulously describes the art exhibitions and environs particular to Jack the Pelican's borough, Craig envisages a place he has never been - and that, for him, is synonymous with The Cosby Show and brownstones. Craig's ensuing drawings, ideas and instructions are translated by Coburn into the space of the exhibition as objects, texts and propositions, caught halfway between imaginative minimalism and descriptive excess. Theirs is an architecture conceived to occupy a point in the constellation of projects drawn atop the map of the borough, but one which inclines towards the notional: offering hypotheses, not answers.
In Italo Calvino's novel Imaginary Cities (1978), Marco Polo describes to Kublai Khan the many metropolises of his empire with such fanciful language as to suggest that each place may, in fact, be one of infinite outcomes of any given city. Coburn and Craig treat this condition of compossibility as integral to metropolis and exhibition alike and imbue the conventionally static form of the gallery show with ongoing products of their correspondence. "Autobiography of an Exhibiton" thus tells the story of its life, and like a text (and like a city), its account is subject to revision and amendment, obfuscation and revelation.
Like any text and any city, the exhibition has a grain, along or against which it may be read. To read along it is to observe much of what has been described in the paragraphs above. To read against is to discover a hidden side of this story, drawn in construction materials on a site of potential architecture. To read against the grain is also necessarily to discover one's own potential to transgress the limits of the public city, in a performance of aesthetic engagement.
We invite you to read along and against.
also, of course, we don't have to use this title.
more ideas, thinking about how one's imaginary relationship to a given place is partly produced by stock images.
1) stock photos:
http://db2.photoresearchers.com/search?key=brooklyn&submit=search
http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/Search.aspx?src=quick&contractUrl=1&family=images&phrase=brooklyn
note: i'm sceptical to use these images straight-up, particularly as there are some u.s.-based artists (fia backstrom, guthrie lonergan), who have recently made some waves doing so. but i think these images could be used in some fashion, if you wanted, given how they underscore the collective myth of a place. have a think.
2) relevant furniture, thinking about how spatial dividers can come to provide dumb quasi-representational analogues to the architectural issues/locale we're working through:
http://www.straightfromthecrate.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=2770
http://www.straightfromthecrate.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=3021
--
Tyler Coburn
+1 917-270-4026
29th june 08Tyler Coburn
15:55
hey buddy, how's tricks?
sebcraig
15:56
good good thanks, am looking at your emails....you are quite prolific in this field!!!
Tyler Coburn
15:56
yeah, sorry
15:56
i know i have a bad habit
15:56
i've been restraining myself, believe it or not
sebcraig
15:57
ha ha,
Tyler Coburn
15:57
well, i'm around for the next hour and some, so get in touch whenever
sebcraig
15:59
be there in a min...
Tyler Coburn
16:40
still trekking through, my friend?
16:40
i'll prolly need to be off in 30 mins or so, but could come back around 1:30/2pm US time
sebcraig
16:41
yeh, just sending you an email now, seemed easier that way
Tyler Coburn
16:41
sounds good
sebcraig
17:15
email sent...!
right-o,
bio first as it's pressing:
Sebastian Craig is an Artist and the Director of i-cabin, which is a project space, publisher and author.
His practice is concerned with the transferral of information into architecture and the generation of an ongoing dialogue on Artistic intention. Sebastian has an MA in Interdisciplinary Design from Central St. Martins and a BA in Fine Art from Byam Shaw School of Art. Recent shows include La Commune, Serpentine Gallery, London; Satellites, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; What is it? Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge and his solo show Notional Architectures at i-cabin, London.
With regards to the title, I think 'autobiography of an exhibition' leads the viewer down the wrong road. Although the way that we are constructing the exhibition is of integral importance it isn't the main concern, which is more about the construction of a notional site through remote viewing via mythologies and types of text. The point of interest being the relationship between the present and the remote and the similarities in how a sense of authenticity might manifest itself.
So something like 'Ghostwriting Place: Autobiography of Brooklyn' or something?
That our using the site is illegal is both good and bad. By all means I applaud seizing control of the built environment for the right purposes (who decides what they are is the question!), however, if we are removed from the site we can use the digital model, which becomes the real site in any case, and has been all along from my point-of-view.
The stock images is what I was thinking about too when I sent the drawing idea, or stock mental images, but I'm really not interested in commenting on what the Brooklyn clichés are, we all know, I am interested in the graffiti and I'd like very much to push this in the hope of coming up with some kind of original thoughts... again we know the standard psychology of the graffiti critique, and it is all really great stuff of course,
a newer part of it is in relation to writers interacting with the physicality of the built environment like a giant adventure playground is something which makes me excited, as does skateboarding, and to a lesser degree city base jumping and free climbing.
Rem Koolhaus has become the trendy architect in the art world through Hans Ulrich, who is like a sort of super-sponge, and is in some way helping to lead us all away from a serious critique of anything, he is saying far too many things all of which become weightless and are simply saying all the things which are simply givens anyway.
I am very interested in Will Allsop, he's a scruffy man with big ideas, he's fucking active and perceived as a failure, the buildings are exquisite and quite original. Take Koolhaus' serpentine pavilion, a given, didn't need saying!
There's some really bad books out there by architects trying to imagine a "new type of city" using word like 'flux' and 'marketplace' and cuttings from newspapers with drawings over them along the lines of (nigel?) Coates' exctacity. Really bad, but Yona Friedman, buckminster fuller, black mountain...they had ideas, people say utopian like its a bad thing, doesn't it just mean imagining what each of them, as individuals, consider to be a better built environment?
I wonder if the guy you mention is Buckminster Fuller, yeh the sphere/cube thing means not much nor does the blob thing, it doesn't tell us anything about the idea, which is the important thing, or is it the building which is the important thing? I suppose I wanted to say that this sort of thing http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/FujiTVStudioOdaiba.jpg is really crappy.
s.
i-cabin, Clarendon Buildings, 11 Ronalds Road, London, N5 1XJ 07813 764 937 / www.i-cabin.co.uk
Tyler Coburn
17:17
i think you're hard on koolhaas. have you actually read 'delirious new york?' he wrote it long before ulrich-obrist was on the art scene, and long before he was an acclaimed architect
sebcraig
17:18
ha ha, no I never read it! goes to show, u gotta be careful what you attach yourself too later on!!
Tyler Coburn
17:19
yeah, i think there is some good thinking in it, but it's fatal flaw is that koolhaas thinks he's being benjamin and he just can't hit that level
sebcraig
17:19
oh yeh I mean Hans Ulrich is a super sponge...etc
Tyler Coburn
17:19
still, i like it better than anything he has ever built
17:19
true that
sebcraig
17:19
the pavilion?
Tyler Coburn
17:19
i'm in total agreement with your thought on ulrich-obrist
17:20
no, i like the book 'delirious new york' more than anything koolhaas ever built
sebcraig
17:21
ohhhh, i love the arcades project, i received it for my birthday a year and a half ago, great bedtime book!
17:21
and acts as a lamp table
Tyler Coburn
17:21
yep. the architect i was thinking of wasn't buckminster fuller - much earlier era - but i will have a think
17:21
it's big enough to be a table, that's for sure
17:21
i like the notion of 'ghostwriting' in relation to what we're doing
17:22
but maybe there's an elegant way to condense the title? it sounds like the title of an academic essay at the moment
17:23
i would be fine with just 'ghostwriting' or 'autobiography of brooklyn'
sebcraig
17:23
was just going to ask about that,
17:23
okay autobiography of brooklyn, it goes without saying that brooklyn didn't write it itself
Tyler Coburn
17:23
yep
sebcraig
17:24
or maybe ghostwriting brooklyn
Tyler Coburn
17:24
but it references 'autobiography of alice b. toklas'...you know, the term has become somewhat pliant
sebcraig
17:24
whadyamean?
Tyler Coburn
17:25
well, gertude stein wrote toklas' 'autobiography' from the third person
sebcraig
17:25
right right
Tyler Coburn
17:25
and the last line of the book acknowledges it
17:25
but i'm fine to scrap that
17:26
what about just 'ghostwriters' ? or something that places us in a position of agency?
17:26
i can't think of an elegant way to get 'brooklyn' in there
sebcraig
17:27
Ghostwriting: Brooklyn
Tyler Coburn
17:27
better
sebcraig
17:27
don't worry about elegance too much
Tyler Coburn
17:27
well, a good title has an effect
sebcraig
17:28
sure
17:28
but again loose ends are what makes a work relevent to the idea of a viewer
Tyler Coburn
17:29
yes yes and i think the exhibition should be filled with loose ends; i'm just not sure the title needs to be.
17:29
anyways, we have a few more days to tighten that up
17:29
i've been reviewing ny penal code
17:29
and am getting a little anxious
17:29
so let's talk contingency plans
sebcraig
17:30
ha ha, we don't want you to get arrested
Tyler Coburn
17:30
well, i could technically be slapped with class a misdemeanor, class b midemeanor and class d felony
17:30
(so i've learned from my initial perusal)
17:30
i think there are really two levels of seriousness here
17:30
sneaking in and making the drawing is ok with me
17:31
but sawing a door into the plywood might get a bit dodgy
17:31
and then having gallery-goers (at their own risk, of course) enter through it
sebcraig
17:31
ahh I see, no the door is a bad idea,
Tyler Coburn
17:32
it formalizes it somehow, doesn't it?
sebcraig
17:32
just sneak in and make the drawing, viewers can do what they think best re it
Tyler Coburn
17:32
that's good
17:32
and i'll document it, of course
17:32
that's more in keeping with the graffiti overtones, anyways
sebcraig
17:33
if you like the drawing can be controlled manifestations occurring just a few times throughout
17:33
the digital model is the studio, this can be shown inside
Tyler Coburn
17:34
i think i'll feel it out and act accordingly. certainly i will produce one for the beginning of the exhibition and, based on the repercussions, we can see
17:34
what is the digital model?
17:34
and how would it be shown?
sebcraig
17:35
I mean the 3d model/animation i sent you, i plan to work onto it throughout
17:36
i feel that it should be visible there
Tyler Coburn
17:36
how would it be shown?
17:36
and will it be developed before we initially exhibit it?
sebcraig
17:37
projcted if poss, or on a screen i would like it to be online. It will be developed throughout by me in order for you to see the drawings i make
Tyler Coburn
17:38
that could be feasible
17:38
there's the issue of a computer hook-up; i'll talk to the gallery as to whether one is available
17:39
if not, i can download and burn new dvds throughout
17:39
from your updates
sebcraig
17:39
brilliant
17:39
brilliant
Tyler Coburn
17:39
now, do you envisage the builders' tape entering into the exhibition space at all?
17:40
i found there is both neon orange and pink
17:40
at my local hardware store
sebcraig
29/06/2008 17:40
cool, i have been using pink for my other works , so orange i think!
sebcraig
29/06/2008 17:43
i did think of having traffic cones with lengths of string between the to allow for viewers to build mini architectures within the space, they'll be able to see the drawings on the model and read your texts, and interact with our architectures (if they dare to trespass) ... we discussed them altering the drawing...not sure, what do you think?
Tyler Coburn
17:44
it strikes me that given the organization of the space, if there were to be any presence of the tape, it could ideally occur in the cube-like back room, the most approximately 'white cube' area of the unsusual ehxibition space
17:45
you mean the drawings outside or inside?
sebcraig
17:48
whatever you think is fine. Our drawing will be outside, and open to be changed if someone decides to. lets leave it at that perhaps, how did you see the string being used inside?
Tyler Coburn
17:49
ok, that sounds good re: outside
17:50
to be honest, i was interested in the idea of how a room-sized string architecture can gradually be built up from the wall of a space (like the cube), over the course of the exhibition, so that by the end, the space itself is practically unenterable
17:51
but that was an earlier idea, so i'm not sure how applicable it is now
17:51
i'm not sure about the traffic cones, i'll be honest. i think they sort of collapse readings.
17:52
unrelatedly, i've also been thinking about fly posting
sebcraig
17:52
it's something I do quite a lot
Tyler Coburn
17:52
and methods of gluing up the component strips of billboards onto urban facades
sebcraig
17:53
you know the cutUp collective?
Tyler Coburn
17:53
oh, i've heard of them
?
sebcraig posted file 28 cutup fresh1.jpg to members of this chat
17:53
?
sebcraig posted file 29 cutup fresh2.jpg to members of this chat
17:54
Tyler Coburn
17:54
yeah, dunno bout this stuff
17:54
seems purely aesthetic
sebcraig
17:55
made from billboard posters cut up and rearranged to make these images
Tyler Coburn
17:56
i guess i was just thinking that it could be interesting, in the event that we use images, that they be put up in a consistent fashion, i.e. like fly posting. not to, you know, theatricalize that (or try to mimic it); more in a subtle, referential way
17:56
more on this in a bit. i have to have lunch with my folks.
17:56
will you be around in 45 mins?
sebcraig
17:56
not sure....try me!!
17:57
if not tommorrow same time ish
Tyler Coburn
17:57
ok will do
sebcraig
17:57
bon apetite
Tyler Coburn
17:57
yep and in the meantime send me thoughts on string, wall displays, your mdoel, etc.
17:57
i've got some more thoughts i'll relay as well
17:57
adios
The press release is fine,
could you change brownstones and the cosby show to 80's hip hop films, images of graffiti and the cosby show
thats more precise.
Could you to tell me about your March Gallery show, what was it all about?
I don't know anything about your films either, so it would be great to have a bit of a rundown of them.
I feel strongly that at the moment there is a really perfect combination of your literary descriptive mythologies generated by being in a place and my spatial works evolving, built on notional architectural ideas. It's as though your work is generating the work that I make here; and my absence is helping to select what you look at. There is a great deal of mileage to be made in this exchange between two artists over a month long show. I feel that it's super important for us to be functioning as two artists in this way rather than one combined artist. I know that we could find tonnes of ground that we are both interested in and agree on but I'd find it more useful as an artist to draw out things we disagree on and develop those differences in the show...
in short: lets find something to argue about! (in a good way!)
s.
i-cabin, Clarendon Buildings, 11 Ronalds Road, London, N5 1XJ 07813 764 937 / www.i-cabin.co.uk
sc,
18:59
excellent email
18:59
i will get on that this afternoon
18:59
i agree: dissonance and consonance are both needed
19:00
in the dynamic of a collaborative exhibition
attached!
a separate email will follow, in a few hours' time, with thoughts, observations, and details on the history of my work.
will make sure to be around tomorrow to chat. anytime after 9am US.
tyler x
just so you know:
1) the text was transcribed from an audio recording made, while at the site. the recording was improvised and little was changed in becoming the text i sent you.
2) i took photos of the site, specific to the way i described each thing, each angle of viewing. just so you know: they exist.
sc,
here are some things for you:
1) the press release i co-wrote for my exhibition with my friend jeff, who is not in the artworld and therefore unburdened by the practical weight of the PR. the release is a work in the show, credited to him, and is an open edition (welcome to my collection, collector!)
2) a long artist statement, outlining some of the overarching conceptual parameters framing the work, with reference to specific pieces (all available on my website) and theorists.
3) a piece-by-piece summary of the works in the MARCH exhibition, including two videos
4) the email announcement i sent when i destroyed the hallways and walls i had built for the MARCH exhibition, two weeks into the exhibition. there is almost no documentation of the second half of the exhibition (without walls) by design, but there are photos of the initial spell of the exhibition on my website. for the second half of the exhibition, i chose to keep the footprint of the walls visible on the floor and did not sweep or mop them. on a general level, this exercise in construction and destruction is indicative of a larger trend in my work: the question of how to build total installations of disparate works and how to integrate architectures that condition and promote certain conditions of spectatorship in, at times, heavy-handed or authoritative fashion.
ok, a lot to sift through. have a look and we'll discuss tomorrow when we're both up and online.
--
Tyler Coburn
hey bucko,
i'm awake and around, so find me on skype whenevs.
tsc
sebcraig
29/06/2008 19:20
hi buddy, doesn't look like i can text you
29/06/2008 19:21
we might need to arrange something for between july 19 - 26 any ideas?
Tyler Coburn
17:17
did you do 001.917.270.4026
17:17
or is it 011.917.270.4026?
sebcraig
17:18
i didn't try the second one, will do now, how are you buddy?
Tyler Coburn
17:18
i'm good. just doing the runaround: trying to get return policies from furniture stores, think about the practicalities,e tc
17:18
so we can do this guy on the cheap
17:19
what about you?
sebcraig
17:21
for real. am good thanks, have been doing some paid work today, have to shoot in a few minutes to the RCA interim sculpture, my close freind is in it. I received the text and will digest it and get on with a drawing responce tomorrow afternoon, sorry not to have time today.
Tyler Coburn
17:21
no problem. you should give me an address for tomorrow to visit, if you want
sebcraig
17:22
secondly I think I have defined a difference for us to chat about... address to come hang on
Tyler Coburn
17:22
and drop me a line tomorrow morn and let me know when might be a good time to discuss during the day
17:22
oh, what's the difference?
sebcraig
17:24
the address is 93 North 6th St., between Berry and Wythe Aves, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Tyler Coburn
17:25
got it
sebcraig
17:26
cool cool cool, i got to run, will chat 2moro, will be here about 2pm my time so 10am ish your time.
17:26
see you then
Tyler Coburn
17:26
ok i'll make sure to be around then. send me anything, thoughts, etc. in the meantime
17:26
if you have time
17:27
maybe let me know what 'the difference' is for me to contemplate
sebcraig
17:27
text still doesn't seem to work
17:27
difference will have to wait....
Tyler Coburn
17:27
ok, shoot. so we'll have to figure somethign else out
17:27
ok!
till soon
hey buddy,
working away over here.
don's going to send out a small image at the top of the e-mailer with the press release.
see a possibility attached. i think it does the job of suggesting that the show will build systems of communication between image, text, modes of representation, etc.
let me know thoughts. mailers start going out thurs.
see you at 2pm your time tomorrow? be timely - i've gotta hit the streets later.
tsc x
did lots of exploring along the strip that could be called tottenham court road of nyc. found some furniture, etc. all possible, some good options for basic desk-y stuff.
two things stuck out and made me think of the idea of 'zoning,' both as it pertains to the city and how it could pertain to the gallery. i wonder if there's a way to not-so-heavyhandedly zone some of the space.
one item that spurred the thought was a clear plastic version of the following, which is shaped to accomodate desk chair and desk:
it's a very strange swathe of floor material, built simply for the purposes of a seating area. i think it might be interesting to consider to accompany the desk area(s).
another occurence: in bed, bath & beyond there was a crude, clear tape pattern over two pieces of tile. the tape was clearly only being used to hold the tiles down, but one tile was bounded with a rectangle of tape, where the other was criss-crossed so many times as to seem decorative. because people have been walking over those tiles for ages, the tape had accumulated dirt at its edges, almost making it like drawing. this seemed another way of demarcating the territory.
more soon for our morning discussion.
tsc x
1st july 08
sebcraig
14:26
hey hey
14:26
mail out image looks nice as pie
14:26
!
Tyler Coburn
14:26
good, i'll show it to don and get the old approval
sebcraig
14:26
forgive the americanism
Tyler Coburn
14:26
no please, this is research for you
14:27
to make art among my people, you must UNDERSTAND my people
sebcraig
14:27
ha ha
14:27
whats new?
Tyler Coburn
14:27
just trying to knock out an article before getting into it. what have you been doing?
sebcraig
14:28
did you see my ad in art monthly yet?
Tyler Coburn
14:28
art monthly or artreview?
sebcraig
14:28
i mean art review
Tyler Coburn
14:28
no, not yet. i should be getting my issues this week
14:29
how's it look?
sebcraig
14:29
pretty i-cabin, it's in a pretty bad place, the next page is a thicker page so you automatically thumb straight past it!!!! very i-cabin!
Tyler Coburn
14:30
haha
14:30
well, i'm sure i'll notice it
sebcraig
14:30
page 121 by the way...
Tyler Coburn
14:30
will keep it in mind!
14:30
are you installing caleb's show now? you must be very busy yourself
sebcraig
14:31
am developing the drawing now, i know what it will be...yes have just got it how I think it should go, very happy with it, very busy yes but okay, i think it is the best show yet actually
Tyler Coburn
14:31
that's great
sebcraig
14:31
i mean caleb's show...
Tyler Coburn
14:31
i know
14:32
i will visit the next site today and get you a text
sebcraig
14:32
the drawing too is interesting for me, i'll put it in an email as there is some thoughts to go with it
Tyler Coburn
14:33
great. i'm looking forward. was the first text ok/engaging/whatever? the format of them can change as well
sebcraig
14:34
yes absolutely great, good work
14:34
must have worn you out a bit?!
Tyler Coburn
14:34
the text? no way. i just went there, improvised for 30 minutes.
14:35
i've been thinking about site performances like that for a while though
sebcraig
14:35
a lot to type up no?
Tyler Coburn
14:35
oh, it took an hour
sebcraig
14:35
ok, not so bad
Tyler Coburn
14:35
that interview i conducted with you a while back yielded 2 hours of audio. THAT was laborious
sebcraig
14:36
ha ha, I can certainly talk when it comes to cabinism...is very hot in the gallery here, have had to black out all the windows on the hottest day of the year and there's a projector pumping out warm air...bad timing!
Tyler Coburn
14:37
it's strange. the more days that go by, the more that vacant lot starts to seem like some imaginary, secret place. the more i feel like i can't return to it (not rationally or practically, of course). i wonder whether a drawing should actually be made on that lot, or whether the lot should be somehow treated as the foundation for the show and the production, but not directly engaged. the drawings occur within the space, the press release announces the hidden side of the exhibition, the gallery invites people to trespass...how is your thinking developing?
sebcraig
14:41
I am more sited in that lot than ever, the gallery feels like a site I am uncomfortable with! I think the drawing must be in the lot, however I'll be drawing in the lot and cannot actually control where you put it, however I would feel that in the gallery the architecture would be false, only in the lot or the street would it be the real architecuture which my work requires... so I think get yourself in there asap and become comfortable there!
Tyler Coburn
14:42
why are you uncomfortable with the gallery site?
sebcraig
14:45
it's a good question, not having been there I am forced to judge it on it's website and name and imagined architecture, the architecture being something I feel excited about; however the name and the website act together in me and makes me uncomfortable, I suppose I invisage this guy 'jack the pelican' (!!!) as the owner of the space! Pelicans are big arrogant ugly birds...
Tyler Coburn
14:47
yes yes, of course. what's amazing about the gallery is its total imperviousness to most thngs. they've shown some very wonderful artists and some incredibly awful ones. they boggle the mind. but most brooklyn galleries establish themselves with a built-in antagonism to an 'idea' of the manhattan art scene, and jack just does what it wants. it's strange, but somehow an ethos i can get behind.
sebcraig
14:48
depends what it wants no....?:)
Tyler Coburn
14:48
well, yes. sometimes it wants what i want, i suppose.
sebcraig
14:48
it looks a lot like the Chicago art scene
Tyler Coburn
14:49
but really it provides the opportunity to collaborate in a space, at a place people will actually visit
14:49
a bit, doesn't it?
14:49
he shows a lot of old yale art school painters
14:49
so much of it is against my taste, but, again, somehow i appreciate that
sebcraig
14:50
yes, I'm really grateful for the opportunity however
14:50
shall i crack on with this drawing and get it over to you? when are you there untill?
Tyler Coburn
14:50
i think part of my growing distance from the lot is just that, practically speaking, i don't think i should break in there until i make the drawing and that means it couldn't be until mid-next week. i just don't want to risk breaking in multiple times and getting caught
14:51
i think that's why it's moving into the abstract
sebcraig
14:54
thats absolutely fine, in that case I have some time to go over my thinking re the drawing, I feel strongly about what I have in mind, it may be the only drawing which gets transferred to the lot, which I think would be a shame for me. is it something which could be done in a park and then left there...or some other derelict site nearby, these options are of interest to me, one drawing per site...
Tyler Coburn
14:55
well, i'm open. i think a lot of it comes down to what happens to the initial drawing - how quickly it is removed, etc.
14:55
i'm open to building these drawings in other locations, barring blatant illegality
14:56
but if we start building drawings in spaces outside the gallery how, in your mind, should they be related to the space within the gallery?
sebcraig
15:00
as long as you can get a snap of it before it goes....or even get a photo of it in part-completion, that will be excellent. The second question is an interesting one: if we are using a selection of sites I will build a selection of digital models to draw onto, each with reference to your texts, the sites I am sending you to have a logic which will/may have already emerged, the gallery is really a route to the outside for me, a visitor-centre for the notional borough we are building through the texts and the drawings
Tyler Coburn
15:02
i'm getting a bit confused. can you just explain that to me via voicechat quickly?
15:02
(so many strata)
sebcraig
15:02
sure...
connections very weak right now sorry, 2 seconds
Tyler Coburn
15:03
was i coming through?
15:04
hullo?
sebcraig
01/07/2008 15:32
internet is playing up, lets think on about the images of the drawings.
sebcraig
15:33
I'm just going to have a coffee with Barry Sykes accross the road, chat in a little while?
Tyler Coburn
15:32
bas connection
15:32
bad
15:34
ok, sounds good. i'm sort of keen on having a binder just for those descriptive texts, so let's think about other ways to incorporate images or documentation or other stuff into the space
15:34
i have some ideas, which i'll send in a little
15:34
think about ideas of zoning the space as well and shoot me a mail
1st July 08.
...in which tyler coburn reveals the self-loathing at the heart of his hipster soul!
sc,
while i'm doing everything on the super-cheap, i do anticipate some costs (printing ink, spray paint, cabs for transporting heavy-duty materials) so wanted to make sure you were aware. all in, i anticipate us both spending no more than 50 quid each...is that cool? i'll let you know the costs more specifically, as the arise and, of course, you get 50% of whatever we sell and will get super press in nyc (timeout ny has informed me that we're a 'critics pick'). i'll also be bringing henriette huldisch, one of the whitney biennial curators, by, as well as loads of other curator types. in short, the exhibition will be worth your while.
tsc x
2nd July
Yes of course mr, just let me know any costs and I'll transfer into your account, and please send me copies of any press mentions etc for me' file!
Wow whitney biennial eh, big boys!
x
so we're going with Ghostwriters Tyler Coburn and Sebastian Craig ? Ghostwriting is slightly nicer in my opinion?
i-cabin, Clarendon Buildings, 11 Ronalds Road, London, N5 1XJ 07813 764 937 / www.i-cabin.co.uk
Address Number three being: 252 Grand Street (b/w Driggs and Roebling) Williamsburg, Brooklyn
i-cabin, Clarendon Buildings, 11 Ronalds Road, London, N5 1XJ 07813 764 937 / www.i-cabin.co.uk
good man. i shall visit it this afternoon.
how are things on your end?
Good good good,
Things are fine over here, I just completed the drawing for you to install next week (number 1) and number 2 is about to be started. I'll send No.1 over early next week so it's nice and fresh to you to install. and Number 2 will follow immediately... Do you think number 2 should be sited elsewhere to leave a break between entering the lot? (I think perhaps it should, then we return to the lot for number 3).
I couldn't open your link re. hardwood tiles??? not sure what you were getting at..
Also not sure what your thinking is about the 'zoning the space' you mentioned. Why zone the space - and to what end? Are you really eager to get something inside there?
I'm feeling that the projection of the animations in one room and the desk including all our conversation, your texts and anything else we generate is a fair chunk of information...
However, if anything was to be explicitly hung I feel that your texts would be perfect printed up as large bill posters (which you mentioned).
It seems very important to emphasize them...if not hung as sound works to accompany the animations perhaps.
thoughts?
s.
hey buddy, find me on skype. let's discuss these things briefly (easier than email back and forth)
sebcraig
02/07/2008 15:59
hey hey
Tyler Coburn
16:00
howdy
16:00
e sec
16:01
i think your idea on drawing order sounds good
16:02
i'm a little hesitant about including our actual correspondence in the show, though, partly because you did it with sykes and partly because the performance/text/prose things i'm generating should, i sort of feel, be the only textual component of the show. i think they speak enough to our communication and imply two parties (i.e. how i move between first and second person)
sebcraig
16:03
cool, in order to do that, give me the name of a Park in the area which is suitable... I'm becoming a remote viewer!
Tyler Coburn
16:03
mccarren park is ace
16:03
there's also one down on kent by the river
sebcraig
16:04
okay
Tyler Coburn
16:04
i'll get you that address one sec
16:13
hold on computer is driving me nuts. another question: how do we give indication of the off-site projects in the gallery space?
16:19
hey there, just sent you addresses
sebcraig
16:19
i understand your thinking on the discussion, there are some points to consider in my mind, about direction and intention, by not including the text we are purposefully reducing the level of transparency of our exchange, this raises a few things for me including- is that increasing the perceived value of the artworks as singular communcators or making the works seem more "art-like" in that art is perceived to contain a certain level of abstraction which the discussion removes. The discussion is an incredibly un-refined piece of work, in fact raw. What I know of your work is that it is (aesthetically/production wise) very refined, but I wonder how you feel about that?
16:21
re: how do we give indication of the off-site projects in the gallery space? it will all be shown in the animations
Tyler Coburn
16:23
i understand your reading and reservation. i think this is one area where we differ as practitioners. i think i'm very interested in building allusive networks of communication between modes of production, in embedding the hand of the practitioner into the methods of production I adopt. but for me, that is never in the service of building singular communicators. i think there's a certain generosity in giving a spectator a constellation of points, them knowing that these points were all arose in a collaboration, and allowing them to sift through the levels of communication and exchange
16:23
this is not to saw that total transparency is ungenerous, of course
16:23
or that, in certain cases, i wouldn't find it appropriate
16:24
but perhaps in this case, because of the strange nature of these texts i'm sending you (which are communications), there is enough
16:25
what i will say is that if you feel strongly about our incorporating our correspondence into the show, i don't think it should go into the same binder as the texts (maybe not even be presented in the same way)
16:36
you still there?
sebcraig
16:37
yes there is certainly some discussion to be had here. I feel very often that what you call allusive networks is, with many artists work, obscurity for the sake of back-patting... There are many artists whose work is deliberately left open to interpretation for the simple fact that they have no direction as artists, by visually referring to more important works of some conceptual quality they think they can cover this up!
16:39
In this case however there is a pleasing tangle between the works we are making which may not need making TOO explicit
Tyler Coburn
16:39
i agree
sebcraig
16:39
perhaps the discussion should be made available elswhere...
Tyler Coburn
16:39
i mean, if you as a visitor are presented with a series of texts describing places in the neighborhood (self-consciously directed to a receiving party), 3D models of what are evidently the gallery site and places nearby and direciton to off-site drawings, do you really think that is too allusive?
16:40
i don't think, in this case, we're risking those pitfalls you mentioned (which i agree exist)
16:40
but i like the idea of the discussion being available
16:40
how would you see it being available?
16:40
if it were available elsewhere?
sebcraig
16:41
no neither do I, it's why I would always lean towards the transparrent side as i don't think there is any deficiency to conceal!
16:42
online is a wonderful place for things of this sort
Tyler Coburn
16:42
and one more point. i agree about how allusiveness is used as a cover for many artists, but you have to understand that transparency also becomes a facile mode of criticality. when it enters the gallery space, it does so as a strategy, and so often feels pedantic
16:42
i see this so often with young conceptual artists
16:42
they show all of the production parts, yet the sum only amounts to those parts
sebcraig
16:42
you mention direction to offsite drawings.... you mean a map?
Tyler Coburn
16:42
well, i'm open to discussing possibilities
16:43
i worry that an actual map of williamsburg would make explicit what is existing between us as a largely imagined neighborhood
sebcraig
16:43
do you think they'll be around long enough to send people too, or would we send them to the site which may or may not be empty...?
Tyler Coburn
16:43
i thought about large, stencilled text on one wall: a list of the addresses (keeping it in the realm of text), which i add to as you give me more locations for drawings
16:44
i think the may-or-may-not-be-empty is part of what makes it interesting
16:44
but, practically, if i make very small drawings in remote sections of the park, they may be around
16:45
it all depends on how discreet/small you want me to be
sebcraig
16:46
sure...you last comment is true, I think you refer to those system-based artists who think that having rules validates the outcome of those rules and whose work is entirely cyclical... masturbatory and adds nothing!
Tyler Coburn
16:47
yes, those. but there are a lot of people who call themselves institutional critics who merely highlight the parameters within which they produce, in painstaking detail. just saying, transparency is not a given good, but it can sometimes be used to great ends.
sebcraig
16:47
size is a good question, I have been thinking about these drawings as architectures, this for me means of a scale which can be entered/negotiated by humans...
Tyler Coburn
16:47
yeah, that's what i thought as well
sebcraig
16:47
point taken, is worth remembering
Tyler Coburn
16:48
well, when you send me the drawings (bearing in mind issues of size), specify how i should make them: scale-wise, etc.
sebcraig
16:50
I'll send them shown on a 3d graphic model showing an imagined site, this should indicate an approximate scale, thing is the site may actually be much bigger/smaller than I imagine!! therefore translation will be a difficult and inexact science!!
Tyler Coburn
16:51
ok that's fine
16:51
i like a degree of give in the translation
16:51
into drawings
sebcraig
16:51
Tyler Coburn
16:51
practically speaking, you'll need to specify, maybe by next tuesday, as to how the animations should be assembled for projection
16:52
so just keep that in mind
16:52
i have an idea, building upon the fly poster/billboard visual language
sebcraig
16:52
The translation the other way is also based on the interpretation of the translator
Tyler Coburn
16:52
true that
sebcraig
16:52
an idea for the texts?
Tyler Coburn
16:54
not for texts, but for images. i was thinking about printing out one image from each site in halftone (like billboard printing) and assembling it from printer sheets to make 5-foot x 8-foot images (8-feet being the standard height of the plywood around construction sites). there's a way to roll and flatten the images that really fascinates me: to prop them up against the wall so the size relationship is intact, but for the images to be slivers of their original content...which some viewers might relate to the texts, or not.
16:55
for each image, i would make two of these rolls (same image with slight differences between the two) and stand them up aside one another, with a slight overlap
16:55
so they're images, but there's a strange spatial quality
16:55
as well as the referent to the billboard
16:55
with the halftone printing
sebcraig
16:56
Animation wise: if I email them over one by one would it be easy to put them together as a single film?? I'm not sure, I think i-movie should do it ok, I am very happy to do it here but it may then be far too large to email....will think on
Tyler Coburn
16:56
no, email them one by one and i can do it
16:56
you can also upload them to my website (easier for larger files)
16:56
let me know if you want to do that and i can give you my FTP info
sebcraig
16:56
yes yes, give me the info
Tyler Coburn
16:57
one sec
sebcraig
16:57
these images you refer to..are they pictures of the drawins in situ?
Tyler Coburn
16:57
they could be
