Life is sweeter than jewish wine

The Pacifist Library on Kickstarter

nkatz22 — Wed, 02 May 2012 09:42:53 +0000

We just launched our project “The Pacifist Library” on Kickstarter with the goal of raising $5,500 in order to realize the project for an exhibition at Flux Factory in New York in September.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1607552563/the-pacifist-library

We need your help! please support the project with whatever you can. The Pacifist Library is a mobile library made of recycled materials and containing pacifist texts that will travel around NYC spreading radical pacifist ideas. More information about the project and all of the great rewards we prepared in exchange are all on the kickstarter page:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1607552563/the-pacifist-library

Hope to have your backing and to see you in September in New York.

some photos from “Several Attempts at Drawing the Borders of Homelands and Promised Lands” performance

nkatz22 — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 12:39:57 +0000

Nathaniel Katz performance at the Synagogue of Pesaro

nkatz22 — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:04:30 +0000

On Thursday March 22 at 6 PM Canadian American artist Nathaniel Katz will present the performance “Several Attempts at Drawing the Borders of Homelands and Promised Lands” at the historic synagogue of Pesaro on Via delle Scuole. It will be followed at 7 PM by the book presentation of Altai by the Italian writers collective Wu Ming at the bookstore LIbreria il Catalogo on Via Castelfidardo 60.

Nathaniel Katz’s performance “Several Attempts at Drawing the Borders of Homelands and Promised Lands” attempts to do as the title suggests both literally and metaphorically through a continuous drawing and redrawing of the borders of homelands and promised lands while simultaneously recounting stories of his family’s search for the promised land. for the occasion of the performance on Thursday Katz will tell the story of the strange circumstances of his uncle’s involvement with the “Machal” in support of the establishment of a Jewish state.

The Synagogue of Pesaro is the finest example of Italian Renaissance synagogue architecture. It was built under the guidance of Gracia Mendes Nasi in the 16th century. It is currently under the directorship of the synagogue of Ancona.

Nathaniel Katz is an interdisciplinary artist, his work is realized in performance, video, and collaborative events.

Katz was born in Canada, and raised in Israel and the United States. He received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and his MFA with Honors from the Rhode Island School of Design in Digital+Media. Since 2008 he has been living in Italy and working collaboratively with his wife, the Italian artist Valentina Curandi.

Ian Berry, Associate Director and Curator of The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College said of his work: “Nathaniel Katz presents his artworks as an exchange. Katz makes art as a gift, as a component of teaching, or as an intimate collaboration between father and son. It almost doesn’t matter if we are invited in at all— imagining a practice that is private and in some critical ways counter to the structures of the dominant art world is inspiring, brave, and very effective.“

The performance is realized with the support of the Synagogue of Ancona, the Municipality of Pesaro, and the bookstore Libreria il Catalogo.

Curandi Katz at Museo d’arte contemporanea Villa Croce – Genova

nkatz22 — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 02:19:36 +0000

For the exhibition at Villa Croce in Genova, curated by Anna Santomauro, we created a site specific intervention: ADL (Activities for Daily LIving):
Taking as a starting point the idea that the museum like a person requires love and care in order to exist, the artists propose a series of therapeutic gestures to bring attention to the vital signs of the institution.

Following is the exhibition text in Italian:

25 febbraio h 18:00
Museo d’arte contemporanea Villa Croce – Genova

Per un’ecologia del museo
Artisti: Emanuela Ascari, Claire Bosi, Curandi Katz, Antonello Ghezzi

A cura di Anna Santomauro nell’ambito di Carta Bianca*

Ci si chiede quanto disagio ecologico possiamo sopportare, ma la ricerca deve passare da ciò che profondamente desideriamo. L’ecologia deve essere nello stesso tempo mentale, sociale e ambientale o non sarà nulla, o comunque poco.
Felix Guattari “Le tre ecologie” , 1989

Il concetto di ecologia ha fatto il suo ingresso nella società contemporanea negli ultimi 20 anni, accompagnato dall’ansia per il futuro del pianeta, dalla minaccia dei disastri ambientali e dallo spettro dell’esaurimento energetico. È entrato a far parte del linguaggio comune nello stesso momento in cui si sono andate smaterializzando le certezze di sopravvivenza e di rigenerazione, suonando come un monito da poter ignorare solo rimanendo attaccati al presente, o, al contrario, somigliando a una sorta di religione con relativi adepti.
Come ci suggerisce Guattari, ispirando il pensiero di Bateson sull’”ecologia della mente”, è necessario ridefinire tale concetto attraverso ciò che desideriamo, partendo dall’intenzionalità su cui poggiano i diversi sistemi etici che sono alla base della nostra esistenza.

La mostra a Villa Croce intende rielaborare attraverso una serie di gesti e interventi minimi la molteplicità di relazioni che l’istituzione innesca, interrogandole, stimolandole, immaginandole e desiderandole: in sintesi aprendo una serie di paesaggi mentali, sociali e ambientali, dentro e fuori il museo.

Ciascun lavoro suggerisce un diverso approccio, un’ecologia possibile e parzialmente realizzata: d’altra parte, etimologicamente, la parola ecologia (dal greco: ?????, oikos, “casa” o anche “ambiente”; e ?????, logos, “discorso” o “studio”) richiama l’idea di dimora che, applicata all’istituzione museale, ne ridefinisce temporaneamente le funzioni e la fisiologia.

Emanuela Ascari, Risonanze. File mp3, 12′ 15″.
Un lavoro su un territorio inaccessibile allo sguardo, oltre che al corpo, a esplorare profondità che si possono solo nominare. La lettura cadenzata di una successione di nomi di stelle a evocare quel paesaggio negato, una rielaborazione del legame con il Kosmos attraverso l’utilizzo della voce, del corpo come cassa di risonanza.

Claire Bosi, Famille Lovichi. Video miniDv, color/sound, 18’.
Banlieue nord ovest di Parigi. 111 rue de Courbevoie, Nanterre.
Togliere, scavare, raschiare, trasformare.
Prendersi cura diviene rito nel cercare tra i resti di radici ignote.
Congiungono il passato, il presente ed un futuro che deve venire.

Curandi Katz, A.D.L. (attività della vita quotidiana), 2012, intervento terapeutico per Villa Croce. Gesti (reception, finestra), animazioni video
Prendendo come punto di partenza l’idea che il museo cosí come la persona richiede amore e cura al fine di esistere, gli artisti propongono alcuni gesti terapeutici per portare l’attenzione sui segni vitali dell’istituzione.

Antonello Ghezzi, T’Oracolo
E’ un problema mai risolto, un viaggio mai concluso. Nell’antica Grecia ci si recava a Delfi per porre il proprio quesito all’Oracolo.
A Genova sarà al Museo che si troverà l’Oracolo, un T’Oracolo.
Le domande creeranno un filo di connessione tra città e Museo e tra ogni persona, ma inconsapevolmente e segretamente.

*Carta Bianca è un progetto curato da Silvia Cini in collaborazione con Francesca Serrati. La prima tappa, cartabianca_bologna, vede la partecipazione dei curatori Roberto Daolio, Massimo Marchetti e Anna Santomauro.

Aelia Media

nkatz22 — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 20:00:26 +0000

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 Martín, founder of the New Natives tribe on the curandikatz.net site on the new natives page.

Background for conclusion and conclusions

nkatz22 — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 02:47:51 +0000

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.

Conclusion of (and conclusions from) a two year durational performance

nkatz22 — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 02:46:43 +0000

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.

Region Free MacBook Pro

nkatz22 — Thu, 19 May 2011 08:00:25 +0000

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.

Toma Sik’s survey

nkatz22 — Tue, 17 May 2011 19:51:59 +0000

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.

Upcoming exhibition at Gallery A+A in Venice

nkatz22 — Tue, 17 May 2011 04:10:01 +0000

Opening May 27. More information coming soon.