FUTUREFARMERS ARTIST COLLECTIVE TO CREATE NEW WORK FOR GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM'S INTERVALS CONTEMPORARY SERIES

FUTUREFARMERS ARTIST COLLECTIVE TO CREATE NEW WORK FOR GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM'S INTERVALS CONTEMPORARY SERIES

Public Invited to Participate in an “Urban Thinkery” through Artist-Led Programs at the Museum and Across the City of New York

Exhibition: Intervals: Futurefarmers
Venue: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York
Location: Rotunda and off-site in several locations across the city of New York
Dates: May 4–14, 2011

(NEW YORK, NY - February 24, 2011) – From May 4 to May 14, 2011, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will present Intervals: Futurefarmers, the fourth installment of its contemporary art series designed to reflect the spirit of today’s innovative practices. For its Intervals project, the San Francisco–based art collective Futurefarmers is creating a site-specific installation on the Rotunda floor of the museum and organizing intimate participatory programs for the public in various spaces around the city of New York.

The exhibition is organized by David van der Leer, Assistant Curator, Architecture and Urban Studies.

The Leadership Committees for the Intervals series and Intervals: Futurefarmers are gratefully acknowledged.

Futurefarmers creates projects that are diverse both in terms of their production and their strategies of audience engagement. If anything typifies a Futurefarmers project, it is a balance of critical and optimistic thought with the use of inventive and pragmatic design elements. Recent works include antiwar computer games; an online registry of unused arable land sites in San Francisco that could be used for gardening and food production; and lunchboxes that incorporate hydrogen-producing algae. For the Guggenheim’s Intervals series, Futurefarmers is creating a ten-day “urban thinkery” centered around a shoemaker’s atelier consisting of a cobbler’s bench and shoe racks and installed in the Guggenheim Museum’s Rotunda. The atelier is an open interpretation of Simon the Shoemaker’s fifth-century Athens studio in which Socrates supposedly had extensive philosophical discussions with Simon and local youth.

The Futurefarmers shoemaker atelier is the anchor for a series of off-site actions and events taking place throughout the city. Three Sole/Soul Sermons, commissioned by Futurefarmers and written and delivered by contemporary writers, will be offered in the atelier. The collective will also host intimate public Dialogues with contemporary thinkers and participants in special interior and exterior spaces around the city, as well as conduct a series of Ink Gathering walks with special guests and small groups of enthusiastic visitors. During these walks, the groups collect sidewalk dirt, the main ingredient in a unique Futurefarmers ink that will be used to transcribe the Sole/Soul Sermons and the Dialogues for posterity in participatory urban actions called the Pedestrian Press. Three times during the project, passersby on the streets will be called upon to form the Pedestrian Press and help print the texts, using 36 specialized printing shoes, on long strips of paper that will be rolled out along New York sidewalks.

In addition, the Sackler Center for Arts Education at the Guggenheim Museum, in collaboration with Futurefarmers, will offer exhibition-related programs for people of various ages, ranging from hands-on workshops entitled Making Our Own Rules (in which each participant is asked to create a system of measurement—a ruler—based on the length of his/her foot) to screenings of the film Examined Life (2008) by Astra Taylor. The full schedule of programming offered in conjunction with Intervals: Futurefarmers is listed below. All programs are free with museum admission or, if held outside held outside the museum, free. Further details will be posted on guggenheim.org/futurefarmers and will later be announced via Twitter feeds @Guggenheim and #Futurefarmers.

ArtGate Gallery/ upcoming Solo Exhibition for Korean artist Park Sung Tae

Jakarta International Stencil Art 2011 “DIVERGENCE”

GRAVITY FREE 2011

LEE KNIGHT PRESENTS GRAVITY FREE 2011 THE GREAT MULTIDISCIPLINARY DESIGN CONFERENCE WONDERS OF MAGICAL THINKERS MAY 24-26, 2011    SAN FRANCISCO
		Dear Design Friends: This is the first in a series of seven announcements leading up to the GRAVITY FREE Multidisciplinary Design Conference in May – a celebration of the best in multidisciplinary design excellence and innovation – starring amazing design wizards who are changing the way we see the world.  Prepare to levitate. Lee Knight, Gravity Free, Chief Instigator Lee@gravityfreedesign.com WWW.GRAVITYFREEDESIGN.COM

White Slab Palace

Venue:
White Slab Palace
77 Delancey Street
New York, NY 1000

Art folks, before getting wrapped up in glamorous art parties and the business of collecting during New York’s Armory Week, the pulse of emerging new media arts is happening right here on the gritty grounds of White Slab Palace. Opening the 2011 Armory Week is “Sonic Architextures”, an evening of performances remixing strands of analog and digital improvisations – a balance of post-punk impulses, subliminal electronics, vinyls and harp with arty experimental films, including Rey Parla's “Rumba Abstracta” and Peter Gregorio’s “Holographic Principal Generator”. Framing the night’s performances are Maximus Clarke’s Anaglyph 3-D spectacles dubbed FREEDOM FILTERS. Audiences are encouraged to participate and have their portraits taken on the green screen for future retrospection. Thomas Watkiss opens the night with hypnotic drones meticulously composed to set the ambiance. Using dense layers of symphonic chords, composer Zach Layton performs an improvised set with special guest. Renowned as the avant-garde ensemble – MERCE is the musical vision of Maria Chavez and Shelley Burgon – creating a sonic atmosphere Chavez’s turntables culls from her “pencils of sound” while Burgon’s harp melodies unifies the whole experience. Tonight, Merce collaborates with visual artist Rey Parla, whose rigorous and experimental multimedia work is a dance of stimulating visual music.

co-presented by ARTCARDS.CC

Website:
Opalnest.com/sonicarchitextures

Is True Grit True to Women?

Is True Grit True to Women?
Expert Reveals Historic Accuracy of Oscar™ Hopeful’s Representation of Women in the Old West

Nancy Williams loved the new film adaptation for True Grit, and even though the depiction of its defiantly strong teenage girl Mattie Ross wasn’t completely true to history, she felt it was true enough.

Williams, an expert on women’s issues in the Old West, said her only problem with the character of 14-year-old Ross, as played by Oscar hopeful Hailee Steinfeld, was that she did not represent the typical young woman of the Old West.

“At first glance I would say True Grit was not very true to history,” said Williams, also a veteran staffer of women’s crisis centers and author of Hawkmoon (www.nlwbooks.com). “Frontier women typically didn’t carry a gun, straddle a horse, or talk back with such brazenness. They either kept the house, cooked and tended the children, or they were school teachers or prostitutes. The stereotypes we see in the typical western novel or movie are not without basis in reality.”

The character of Mattie Ross did, however, match up with legends of some of the few women who stood out from the crowd as strong women who straddled their horses as they rode them against the grain.

“Despite the fact Mattie was not typical of the young girl of that era, there are enough women in the history of the Old West that broke the mold to make the story of True Grit believable,” Williams added. “Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley and a particularly feisty woman by the name of Sally Skull are a few that come to mind. These women, like Mattie Ross, were tough, capable, and sometimes deadly, rivaling any man in the ability to shoot, ride, play cards and talk trash.”

While not completely true to history, the character resonates with modern audiences because of the changing role of women in America, according to Williams.

“I think the modern woman is more able to identify with strong female characters like Mattie Ross,” she added. “No longer can we relate to the frontier wife who works at home and cooks, cleans and feeds the chickens. Showcasing women who can ride with the boys is another way that will keep westerns contemporary. Hollywood does it all the time: homosexual cowboys in Brokeback Mountain, repentant killers in Unforgiven and Mattie Ross, with her undeniable grit.”

About Nancy Williams

Nancy Williams is a graduate of Allegheny College in Meadville, PA. She worked as the grant writer for Women’s Services, Inc, a domestic/sexual violence center. Nancy grew up on a farm in Meadville. She is the winner of the Paul Gillette Award in the 2009 Pikes Peak Writers’ competition for her novel Grace. Hawkmoon is her first published novel and was a finalist for the Colorado Humanities 2010 Book

Animazing Gallery

Animazing Gallery, SoHo, will present a new collection of works by renowned artist, Tom Everhart. In 1989, he embarked on an artistic journey to create a body of paintings inspired by his close personal relationship with his friend and mentor, PEANUTS™ creator Charles Schulz. This sale and exhibition of 95 paintings, entitled Crashing the Party: The Arty-Fact Paintings, will be the biggest show in the history of Everhart's artistic career. Everhart will be the guest of honor at a champagne reception on the evening of Saturday, May 21st from 6-9PM. RSVP required to rsvp@animazing.com. The exhibition is free and open to the public from May 22nd-June 26th, 2011. The gallery is located at 54 Greene Street, on the SE corner of Broome & Greene. For more information call 212-226-7374.