Off the Grid

March 30, 2008 – June 1, 2008
at Neuberger Museum of Art
Purchase College, SUNY
735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY 10277
http://www.neuberger.org/

Off The Grid features contemporary works which formally and/or conceptually challenge conventional and commercial infrastructures.

Checklist of exhibited works:

Matt Bua
World Grid – Square World, 2008
ink, collage, paint, pencil on paper
39 x 63 1/2 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Derek Eller Gallery, New York.

Benjamin Cohen, Dylan J. Gauthier, and Stephan von Muehlen
Mare Liberum, 2008
blueprint, distributed broadsheet, boat
broadsheet: 24 x 36 inches, boat: 12 feet
Courtesy of the artists.

EcoArtTech: Christine Nadir and Cary Peppermint
Environmental Risk Assessment Rover - AT, 2008
solar panels, recycled shipping pallets, industrial garden wagon, video projector, MAC-mini computer, GPS, WiFi, found built and natural surfaces
Courtesy of the artists.

eteam International Airport Montello, 2007-08
three-channel projection, map, figures, photographs
Courtesy of the artists.

Max Goldfarb
Ambulant Transceivers, 2008
vintage first-aid kits made into two-way radios
Courtesy of the artist.

Louis Hock
Nightscope Series, 1985-2003
digital pigment prints
17 x 24 inches each
Courtesy of the artist.

Louis Hock
Feral, 2004
two-channel video installation
sound: Louis Hock and Peter Otto
Courtesy of the artist.

Nina Katchadourian
Quit Using Us, 2002
c-print mounted on aluminum
18 x 96 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Sara Meltzer Gallery.

Nina Katchadourian
Ant Static, 2003
video loop with sound
Courtesy of the artist and Sara Meltzer Gallery.

Kristin Lucas
More Melting, 2008
wax, wick, fire
Courtesy of the artist.

Joe McKay
Hi Hat Phone, 2007
cell phone, high hat stand, wood, speakers
Courtesy of the artist.

Trevor Paglen
Workers / Las Vegas, NV / Distance – 1 mile, 2006
from the series Limit Telephotography
video
Courtesy of the artist and Bellwether Gallery, New York.

Trevor Paglen
Chemical and Biological Weapons Proving Ground / Dugway, UT / Distance – 42 miles /
10:51 a.m., 2005
from the series Limit Telephotography
C-print, 3 from an edition of 5
50 x 50 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Bellwether Gallery, New York.

Trevor Paglen
Unidentified Light Source / Cactus Flats, NV / Distance – 17 miles / 9:45 p.m., 2007
from the series Limit Telephotography
C-print, 1 from an edition of 5
30 x 36 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Bellwether Gallery, New York.

Temporary Services
Personal Plastic, 2007
photocopied and offset publications, mounted photographs, banners made from plastic
bags, unwanted plastic bags
Courtesy of the artists.

Seth Weiner
Cryptographic Payphone, 2008
interactive payphone, chaotic motion system
63 x 15 x 10 inches
Courtesy of the artist.

Bart Bridger Woodstrup
Gathering Lore, 2008
computer, custom video software, electronic sensors, weather
Courtesy of the artist.


Co-presented by the Neuberger Museum of Art and free103point9. Curated by Jacqueline Shilkoff (Neuberger Museum) and Galen Joseph-Hunter, Tianna Kennedy, Tom Roe (free103point9).

Curators’ Statements

Has humankind’s irresponsible production and consumption of energy and resources reached its peak? While regulatory agencies scramble to meet and control the demands of a wireless-obsessed market, a burgeoning urgency about the need to be ecologically responsible has emerged. Off The Grid presents work by thirteen artists examining and reacting to these currents. Works on view propose alternate territories. They repurpose, reuse, and recast communication devices, consumer byproducts, and environmental data. Our culture has long relied on creative practice to invent, innovate, and inspire. Here, the participating artists do so with works that inform, alarm, and entertain.
– Galen Joseph-Hunter

Most of us live, work, and play on the grid. The artists in Off The Grid do not present utopian solutions to complex problems (unsustainability, overconsumption, waste, alienation), but rather invite us all to reinvent, reimagine, and subvert our daily practices through accessible work completed on a human scale. I've enjoyed my conversations with the artists in this exhibition and have been reminded that cultural gridlock is best addressed not with sweeping gestures and apocalyptic arguments, but by working within, around, and perhaps a little outside expectations of art and engagement.
-Tianna Kennedy

The grid is a shifting network of power, distributing social, ecological and intellectual resources. Individuals have agency to engage or withdraw, privatize or empower, collude or disclose. By reevaluating what resources exist and how they are allocated, we redefine our collective identity and personal ideology. It is hopeful that art as activism, as intervention, can produce awareness and change.
-Jacqueline Shilkoff


For more information see:
http://www.free103point9.org/events/1678/



((((( ECOARTTECH EVENTS FOR OFF THE GRID )))))

March 27, 2008: 7 p.m. – March 29, 2008
at Neuberger Museum of Art
Purchase College, SUNY, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY 10277
http://www.neuberger.org/
http://www.ecoarttech.net/

Thursday, March 27
Friday, March 28
Saturday, March 29
Meet at the Neuberger Museum of Art at 7 p.m.

Join EcoArtTech (Christine Nadir and Cary Peppermint) for three evenings of performances with the Environmental Risk Assessment Rover–AT (ERAR–AT), a mobile, solar-powered, networked video installation that will accumulate and aggregate the environmental threats and risks that Purchase residents face everyday.

What kind of environmental risks does Purchase face? How far is the closest superfund site or nuclear power plant or agribusiness? How do the 148 industrial chemicals already in every American human body interact with the synthetic hormones and antibiotics in the dairy products we eat? How many chemicals are in human breast milk? How do the chemicals in your toothpaste interact with the pesticides on your food? Why has modernity, which was supposed to create a sense of security, produced more anxiety and threats than ever? Can scientific data and research help us understand the “riskiness” of contemporary life?

ERAR-AT performs the difficulty of perceiving, evaluating, and understanding risk scenarios and presents an assessment of its given locale by producing a unique fourteen-tiered threat level embedded live within video projections onto local natural and architectural surfaces.

“Sooner rather than later, one comes up against the law that so long as risks are not recognized scientifically, they do not exist--at least not legally, medically, technologically, or socially, and they are thus not prevented, treated or compensated for. No amount of collective moaning can change this, only science. Scientific judgment's monopoly on truth therefore forces the victims themselves to make use of all the methods and means of scientific analysis in order to succeed with their claims.”
—German risk theorist Ulrich Beck

For more information see:
http://www.free103point9.org/events/1906/



((((( OFF THE GRID: LIVE PERFORMANCES )))))

April 2, 2008: 4 p.m. – 8 p.m.
at Neuberger Museum of Art
Purchase College, SUNY, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY 10277
http://www.neuberger.org/

Curated by: free103point9. In conjunction with the exhibition Off The Grid, April 2 will feature a day of live performances by artists whose work subvert and circumvent conventional infrastructures.

4 p.m.: Radio 4x4
Four performers -- Joshua Fried, Matt Bua, Alexis Bhagat, and Tom Roe -- perform into four transmitters with performances transmitted to radios throughout the performance area. Audiences are encouraged to walk among the radios, "mixing" the collective and individual improvised performances. For this Radio 4x4, performers will all use battery-powered equipment, and all transmitters and radios will also not be plugged in. Brief explanation and discussion of Radio 4x4 with the artists after performance.
http://www.free103point9.org/transmissionprojects/

4:45: Joshua Fried, Radio Wonderland.
Fried performs his "Radio Wonderland" show with a car battery.

5:30 p.m.: Jeff Stark, Secret Dinner
The Secret Dinner project is just that. The dinners are collaborative and they happen in clandestine spaces. The first was in a grain elevator in Red Hook, Brooklyn, in 2006, and we lowered a singer into an echoey steel silo. The second was the site of the 1964 World's Fair in Queens, where we suspended an aerialist from the massive steel Unisphere. And at the third, we ate in the Freedom Tunnel, under Riverside Park in Manhattan. The Secret Dinner project was influenced by Dark Passage, a group of New York explorers, and the Suicide Club, a long defunct group of San Francisco pranksters. The project is a reaction to a culture of permission, including expensive venues, city permits, and institutional funding. It reminds participants that the most important thing is doing the thing, and that it's possible to create work that compromises only to logistics. This talk will feature gorgeous photos by Tod Seelie that document the project.

6:15 p.m.: Matt Bua.
Artist talk.

Sunrise to Sunset:
Mare Liberum workshop. Mare Liberum Sunup-Sundown Build A Boat Workshop: Benjamin Cohen, Dylan Gauthier, and Stephan von Muehlen will construct a 12' Grand Banks dory over the course of a day using materials salvaged from construction sites, basic tools and old-time intuition. The artists will be available to discuss the project over pauses for lunch, afternoon tea and dinner.

Earlier in the day:
There will be a Kites are for Peace exhibition. Kites are For Peace and Love is a one-day social engagement with the surrounding Westchester community. It is an open invitation to come together to make and fly kites in the wind and sun, all the while keeping in mind that the same wind power that fuels a kite, can also generate our electricity. Information will be on site relating to simple and effective ways that we as individuals can make a substantial difference in the path toward environmental sustainability. In addition, there will be kite-making workshops held at the Neuberger Museum of Art leading up to the event. This event is organized by John Daquino.

For more information see:
http://www.free103point9.org/events/1860/


For more information about all the "Off the Grid" shows, see:
http://www.free103point9.org/