Notes on art by Nathaniel Katz
V and I are content producers for Pablo Helguera’s Aelia Media project, the winner of the International Prize for Participatory Art in Bologna, Italy. Our radiophonic contributions can be heard on various local radio stations as well as streaming on the Aelia Media website. You can also listen to my interview with Juan Antonio Postigo MartÃn, founder of the New Natives tribe on the curandikatz.net site on the new natives page.
In fact, this work has roots back to 2000, when I first started working as a teacher. At the time I had put aside my “artistic” work in favor of “political” work. It was difficult for me to see a potential relationship between the two. So, I spent a year in Guatemala and Chiapas working in an orphanage and doing human rights work. When I returned to New York I spent another year continuing political work within the frame of the pacifist organization The War Resisters League, and with a series of affiliations in the popular anti-globalization protests of the pre-Bush, pre-9/11 days. All of this naturally led to my seeking a teaching position in a high school in the Bronx.
For five years in the Bronx I worked as an art and computer teacher. As with my other political work, I always applied the creative sensibility of the artist, out of the fact that that is who I am, because that is the language that I speak, the education that I had, and because it was often necessary in order to survive a difficult and often frustrating situation of a public school in New York. Although I approached this job creatively, and often did some very creative things (such as co-founded a Spanglish theater company for Bronx youth) I never presented it as my artistic work. Rather, I often found myself frustrated that I was exerting so much energies (creative and physical) towards the job and that I was unable to find the time to be in “the studio”.
I finally left the school in 2005 and in 2006 started graduate school at RISD. When presenting work in grad school I often found how naturally the work of a teacher fit into the narrative of the “artistic” work that I was now doing as a graduate student. I was starting to re-evaluate and re-appreciate exactly what it was that I did for those five years on artistic terms.
As the intentionality was lacking so was the contextualization.
Two years ago I proposed the following sixth category to Alan Kaprow’s five categories of art:
Work in nonart modes and nonart contexts, do not present the work as art in nonart contexts while simultaneously presenting it as art in art contexts.
I then spent two years working as a school teacher in Italy, in the context of the school presenting it as my work, while in the context of art presenting it as my creative work.
I will try over the next few days and blog posts to write some reflections on what turned out to be, for me, a hugely disappointing failure and compromise. Both for obvious reasons, and some surprising reasons.
I was having some problems with my superdrive this week, was not able to burn a DVD of our video work and a deadline was quickly approaching. I went through about 10 DVD’s, trying first from iDVD, then from Toast, then saving a disk image and trying to burn from the finder, then lowering the burn speed. All without success. The I bought a Sony DVD instead of the generic ones that I was using and it worked by creating a disk image, lowering the burn speed to 2X and burning from the finder. I think it will probably work normally now from iDVD as it seemed to be a media problem and not a hardware problem.
But… all of this is to say that while I was looking on the internets for solutions I came across this convenient hack for making my MacBook Pro DVD player region free. Now I can watch my (legally) purchased American DVD’s and (legally) purchased Italian DVD’s on my computer without worrying about the impending lockdown.
For our contribution to the group exhibition at gallery a+a in venice, we were asked to contribute something for a public intervention in the area of campo s. margherita.
We made a letter press printing of a poster, to be hung in the public space around Campo S. Margherita. We originally printed the poster in 2009 while in Colombia in Spanish, so for this exhibition we translated it into Italian and reprinted. The text reads (in English) “I am looking for those who are looking for me. I dream of a very simple living, polyamorous, raw vegan tribe. A radically new culture. Close, warm, egalitarian, fair and overt relationships.”
The other part of our intervention is a survey, utilizing the survey that Toma Sik (the late Hungarian-Israeli-anarchist-vegan-pacifist-anti-zionist-world-citizen-communitarian) created to evaluate potential community members. We printed an edition of 50 surveys, on the front is a letter to the participant, intertwining the vision of Toma Sik with ours the artists, and asking the participants to complete the survey. On the back are the 9 scales that Sik created. Each of the 50 people that complete the survey will receive a unique drawing in return, that builds a biography of Sik. In a future (imagined/potential) time when all 50 come together in community, their drawings will together tell the life of Sik. The surveys will be available for people to complete in Campo S. Margherita.
Opening May 27. More information coming soon.
For the past three years my wife Valentina Curandi and I have been working collaboratively on artistic projects. Documentation of this work is up on our new combined website http://curandikatz.net/. The site is almost complete, but still lacking some updating.
“Toma Sik Ritual Rug”, 2011, Embroidered felt.
“Toma Sik returned to his birthplace of Hungary
with the intention of forming a vegan commune.
He died after being hit by a tractor during
an evening stroll.”
As I mentioned in the previous post, V and I hadn’t imagined placing the Love Shack in an exhibition context before. We always thought of it as being too site specific. After the installation at the Arsenale, we are both very happy with the way it plays in the space.
Two things about shacks that I think our love shack plays with interestingly:
1. The shack exists for its interior. The exterior of the shack serves the function of protecting what is in the interior. Shacks are utilitarian, and as a result are never more than their purpose. Over the past few weeks i’ve been taking inspiration from all of the shacks by the side of the train tracks on my way to Milan. Some are garden sheds, some are Roma living shacks, all have the purpose of protecting their interior. Our shack is also interior focused, the functional exterior contains a carefully curated intimacy space interior. You must enter the work and see it from the inside in order to gain meaning from it. I think this works nicely in relation to the other works in the exhibition. The other works are all very formal and very material, their appeal and their reflection happens in relation to their surface.
exterior
interior
2. Shacks lower the value of the properties around them. Nobody wants a shack nearby. I like this idea conceptually. In actuality, I don’t think the exterior of our shack is ugly, though it isn’t curated like the interior. We built a wooden frame with diagonals that create a nice rhythm (inspired by the technical advice of christopher robbins), and we made the walls from fabric that when hanging with the “good” side facing in, show the outside their backside, resembling sheets of cheap wood. Although, the exterior is not ugly it is also not refined. the wood is untreated and the fabric is backwards, so that conceptually the love shack is acting in the way that shacks act, working to protect the inside while lowering the value of the surrounding property.
This past weekend V and I were in Venice installing the Love Shack at the Arsenale.
The exhibition will open next Saturday, March 12.
We were invited as finalists for the Laguna Art Prize, an Italian based, international juried art prize. The prize is a context we normally wouldn’t find our work in, but a few months ago, V suggested that we apply and see what comes. We sent in some of our video and performance work, and as an afterthought decided to also apply in the sculpture/installation category with the love shack. So we were very surprised when it was the love shack that was invited to participate. We were also surprised because we hadn’t really considered how we would go about realizing the love shack for an exhibition. The original Love Shack was realized two years ago while in residency at CESTA in the Czech Republic. We were collaborating with German artist Sibylle Hofter on a work called Unearthing Romanticism and as part of the work, V and I renovated an old shed that was on the grounds of CESTA into a love shack, a space for intimacy. The work was very site specific, for one, it utilized a pre-existing shed, it was an homage to bohemian romanticism inspired by the location and a tribute to the anarcho-punk DIY spirit of the American founders of CESTA.
When we were asked to recreate the piece for an exhibition at the Arsenale, we panicked a bit, we did not have any of the original elements of the installation, as they were all left behind in the Czech Republic, and we would have to build a shack to contain it. At first we tried to approach it creatively, with some freedom of interpretation, but the curator of the Laguna Prize was quite clear that they wanted us to present in the exhibition what we presented in the documentation. With some technical advice from Christopher Robbins (thanks chris!) and a kind carpenter who delivered wood for us and a very kind boat man who delivered the rest of our materials, we arrived at the Arsenale on Friday and spent three days building the Love Shack. The experience of the installation was really wonderful. The site of the Arsenale (which hosts the Venice Bienniale every two years) is an incredible, vast space with terrific light that is a total pleasure to work in. It also felt great to have three days of just work, no negotiations, no compromises, just setting out to make what we want to make. In the end we took some liberties with modifying the space to be a bit more site appropriate for Venice, but the main part of the work remains the same: an intimate space and tribute to the bohemian romantic. We focused on fabric in place of wood for the walls, choosing colors and patterns that we felt stayed true to Bohemia and also invited Venice into the conversation. And while the experience of the installation was good, we also realize that the context really is not the context for us. Our work is surrounded by works that are either obsessive, material based, or craft sculptures that do not enter into dialogue with our working process. Although the themes of these works, full of violence and war (represented quite literally by an abundance of works containing bombs and guns) create a nice contrast with our little shack of love. And the emphasis of the works on the beautiful exterior is another good contrast with our work which focuses on the interior. Below are some pictures of the installation, to view the whole set go here.
arriving by boat to the arsenale
laying out the frame
v checking corners
the frame
The Love Shack
Free Love/ Romantic
map of bohemia entrance
Romantic
Romantic, hand cranked Karaoke, and straw filled lace pillow
Karaoke
Lace pillow
Hay flooring, Nomadic canvas chairs, New Natives accent wall, Astrakhan rug, Venetian boat covering ceiling
Nomadic canvas chairs, New Natives accent wall, Astrakhan rug
Venetian boast covering ceiling lets in beautiful light
Fresh flower peace wheel