The Raw Feed presents work from three artists who explore the issues of globalization and dislocation, focusing on the ways in which we are given sustenance. The project includes an interactive rice factory that examines the politics of grain production and world hunger; a multidisciplinary video installation that takes a critical look at the messages fed to us by the United Nations; and a pop-up café built on a bicycle chassis that connects food with personal narratives of dislocation through a collection of war-time recipes. The act of feeding ourselves has served as the basis of ritual, connection and artistry for as long as we've lived in societies, and The Raw Feed brings together these disparate strands of shared experience in an exploration of what sustenance means.
Super 8 is a collection of video art in multi-channel formats, selected by a peer-to-peer curatorial process. Eight artists from eight cities across the globe were invited to present their videos, and invited four other artists from their respective cities to join them.
An iconoclastic artist, Nathalie Talec moves between live performance, installation, sculpture, and painting. The One Who Sees Blindly, her first solo exhibition in the United States, brings together many of her recurring themes.
Mark Bradford transforms found material – much of it paper from sources such as billboards and newspapers – into large-scale collages and installations. Included in YBCA’s presentation is the large-scale work Detail, an ark-like sculpture reconstructed from components of Mithra, a piece created in response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Also on view at YBCA will be Bradford’s socially charged 2011 work, Rat Catcher of Hamelin, which is composed of components of 50 billboards collected from all around South-Central Los Angeles. This comprehensive survey of Bradford’s career to date is co-presented by YBCA and SFMOMA and will be on view at both venues. Please note that there are separate admission policies for each institution.
At the point where long-held beliefs fall into decline and once-esteemed notions crumble, questions arise about those belief systems. It is at this point that John-Mark Ikeda begins his exploration of the current economic climate. Ikeda deconstructs the iconic business suit — which he equates with the failed economy — stripping it down to its component parts and pinning it to the wall like a specimen, with accompanying business accessories, in an attempt to reconstitute it as a symbol of power.
The rock band on the stage, the athlete on the soccer field, the politician at the podium — all command the attention of huge crowds, not to mention cameras. Audience as Subject, Part 2: Extra Large turns the lens back on the audience, exposing the dramatic and narrative potential of the crowd itself.
By Chad Freidrichs The Pruitt-Igoe Myth tells the devastating story of the transformation of the American city in the decades after World War II, through the lens of the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing development and the St. Louis residents who called it home. It began as a housing marvel: Built in 1956, Pruitt-Igoe was heralded as the model public housing project of the future, "the poor man's penthouse." Two decades later, it ended in rubble, its razing an iconic event that the architectural theorist Charles Jencks famously called the death of Modernism. The footage and images of its implosion have helped to perpetuate a myth of failure, a failure that has been used to critique Modernist architecture, attack public assistance programs, and stigmatize public housing residents. The film seeks to set the historical record straight. (2011, 83 min, digital)