Archive for the 'Ideas' Category
June 12th, 2011 by nkatz22
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.
June 12th, 2011 by nkatz22
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.
May 19th, 2011 by nkatz22
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.
May 17th, 2011 by nkatz22
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.
April 19th, 2011 by nkatz22
“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.”
March 8th, 2011 by nkatz22
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.
December 16th, 2010 by nkatz22
Finally this month in Milan an exhibition opened on the themes of school as art and alternative knowledge production. if the artistic topic finally made its way to Italy (which is quite slow in acknowledging relevant contemporary art trends) then it must be a topic that is well spent and out of date. The show of course has it’s usual cast of characters, with the grandfatherly willats and rollins and the overrated (it doesn’t really have anything to do with learning, even if it calls itself a school) copenhagen free school, and of course the necessary sidekick of a temporary library.
Thinking about it made me reflect about my work from three years ago that was dealing with topics of education, it seemed I was working on this just before the big peak of art and school in 2008-09 and at the time I couldn’t get too many curators or residencies so interested in my ideas. At first I thought to myself that maybe I just missed the trend and then I thought that actually the artistic research that I was doing at the time was on the performativity of education and the educational potential of performance (the topics of performance of self is still a primary area of focus in my work) and that the later trend of school as art that stemmed from the 2006 failed manifesta and followed into this past year of hot new york shows and free schools focus primarily on the topic of education as one of economy. A research into the performance of education has not surfaced in this wave of school as art. It came to me that the focus on economy is quite convenient for the art market, and although it is seemingly a radical proposal of alternative forms of knowledge acquisition, in reflection it seems to me as being more of a neo-conservative reinforcement of status quo. Because while artists are creating alternative models of education and knowledge acquisition as art, they are proposing the despecialization of fields of knowledge. And while most of these models bring into conversation some philosophy or some science or some craft, the truth of those fields is that they are commodifiable areas of expertise who are unthreatened by their brief free dispersal in an art context. But the creative process itself is the big loser. The artist comes out of this exercise as acknowledging within their own context the inability to place value on the creative process. This may in fact seem like a desirable statement to make until you realize that its repurcussions do not fall on the art market or on the larger market or even on the art education industry, but rather on the artist’s ability to demand some recognition of their non symbolic material value within society. So now if i want to present my skills as a teacher of creative processes I am confronted with a society that does not put as much material value on this skill as on maths or sciences (which is already a given in our culture) but also of other artists who are re-enforcing that idea that my skills don’t have a material value because they will do it for free.
September 28th, 2010 by nkatz22
On the occasion of the Art Verona Fair, Fondazione March will inaugurate the first issue of the periodical Motore di Ricerca (Search Engine), launching a new archive system of itinerant artists and curators who work with the foundation, developing workshops and different modes of discussion within diverse national and international contemporary spaces. Search Engine is a semi-annual publication that will allow the archive to become a real means of investigation and research.
The publication will focus in turn on a particular “search engine” – a kind of key word – to be carried forward through the collection of critical texts, essays, concept maps, outlines of research that activate discussions and opportunities for reflection. Each search engine will call upon one or more artists / curators who will have the opportunity to tell their own artistic research through a reflection on the topic in question.
The first issue of Search Engine investigates the spatial dimension / conceptual dimension, seen as an exploration of the concept of place and its connection with memory, aspirations, and relationship with the ‘elsewhere’, through the actions of: Cesare Viel and Nathaniel Katz and Valentina Curandi.
Art Verona will take place on October 14-18, 2010
September 10th, 2010 by nkatz22
Erich Konig’s Conference Table and Interactive World Map, Several Attempts at Drawing the Borders of Homelands and Promised Lands. Valentina Curandi, Sibylle Hofter, Nathaniel Katz, 2010.
photo by Sibylle Hofter
September 10th, 2010 by nkatz22
Instructions for the performance of Factory Working Day:
The following performance is to be enacted over the duration of two hours.
The instructions are to be taped to a wall inside of the gallery/factory.
Every four minutes the artists or gallerist will post on the wall beside the instructions a new text about a role in the factory.
After the posting of the text one person may read the text aloud. There will be four minutes available for the activation of the role before a new text is placed atop the previous one.
Schedule of postings to be generated by a randomizer:
…
Factory Roles:
1.Factory Owner: Fish auctions keep you away from home for more than two months at a time. You like to think that your factory is a family for your children
2.Public Relations: The intricacies of needle – point is a way to focus just on yourself.
3.Accountant: Each year you arrange a beautiful floral bouquet in honor of your father’s birthday.
4.Danish Ambassador: Though Ankara was a more exotic assignment, you are glad to be just a few hours away from home.
5.KaDeWe Commercial Representative: You also enjoy having your Saturday lunch at the top floor Winter garden
6.Danish Halibut Provider: you come once a year to Berlin and are sure to check on the wall display of the decorative plates you send as Christmas gifts.
7.Norwegian Herring Provider: You believe the crashing of waves on shore are the perfect metaphor for the cyclical nature of life.
8.Canadian Salmon Provider: one day you would like to cross into Europe through the Bering Strait. In the meanwhile you prepare decorative objects with the skin of the fish.
9.Warehouse manager in Hamburg: Waiting for the call from the boss, you can tell what the results of the fish auction just from the ring of the telephone
10.Driver: You spend vacations resting on the Fehmarn peninsula in the company of the migrating birds.
11.Smoker: Since the day the roof caught on fire you have been imagining an alternative way to smoke fatty tuna.
12. Woman worker #1: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
13. Woman worker #2: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
14. Woman worker #3: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
15. Woman worker #4: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
16. Woman worker #5: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
17. Woman worker #6: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
18. Woman worker #7: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
19. Woman worker #8: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
20. Woman worker #9: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
21. Woman worker #10: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
22. Woman worker #11: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
23. Woman worker #12: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
24. Woman worker #13: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
25. Woman worker #14: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
26. Woman worker #15: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
27. Woman worker #16: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
28. Woman worker #17: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
29. Woman worker #18: Your responsibilities change daily. It took some time at first to get used to switching between tasks, but now it feels better this way
photo by Sibylle Hofter