September 10, 2004 - October 23, 2004
Artists
Instant Coffee (Toronto, Canada)
MendeDesign and Volume Design (San Francisco, CA)
Neighborhood Public Radio (Oakland, CA)
Red76 Arts Group (Portland, OR)
Jon Rubin and Stephen Wight (Oakland, CA)
Stretcher.org (San Francisco, CA)
United Net-Works (Stockholm, Sweden)
Curated by Courtney Fink
Description
Southern Exposure presents The Way We Work, an international exhibition developed in recognition of its 30th anniversary and collaborative approach to working and organizing. This exhibition and series of projects takes Southern Exposure's innovative community-based working model as its starting point. The Way We Work is comprised of seven projects by artist collectives who build networks and involve a great number of communities in the creation and presentation of their work. Participants include Instant Coffee (Toronto, Canada), MendeDesign and Volume Design (San Francisco, CA), Neighborhood Public Radio (Oakland, CA), Red76 Arts Group (Portland, OR), Jon Rubin and Stephen Wight (Oakland, CA), Stretcher.org (San Francisco, CA) and United Net-Works (Stockholm, Sweden). Many additional artists and community members will act as participants in projects and events that will take place in conjunction with the exhibition. The Way We Work is an opportunity for these incredibly dynamic and often inventive groups to share knowledge with one another and Bay Area audiences, and to create new work that will involve the public in entirely new ways.
Instant Coffee, Sorry We're Open
Instant Coffee is a service-oriented artist collective whose members include Ceclilia Berkovic, Jinhan Ko, Kate Monro, Jenifer Papararo, and Jon Sasaki. Sorry We’re Open is a series of event-based projects that brings together work by dozens of artists to celebrate Instant Coffee's self proclaimed "Year of Love." Events include a Make Out Party, Slide Show, Video Screening, Stencil Cut Out Party, and late night activities (locations to be announced). For Instant Coffee, providing the content and creating the time and space for the presentation or dissemination of content does not have to be two separate practices. And as such they do not necessarily perceive a distinction between creation and exhibition.
MendeDesign and Volume Design, Untitled
Questioning the traditional approach to the gallery announcement, MendeDesign and Volume Design collaborated to create a campaign that invites the community to participate in a truly interactive, public art project. The invitation mailer is a stencil (5 unique designs) and the show catalog doubles as a poster. These posters have been hung throughout the city, inviting residents to stencil their own graphic responses to the theme of the show, directly onto the posters. This campaign attempts to recast the viewer as author, leaving the generation of the primary visuals up to the “audience” itself.
Neighborhood Public Radio (NPR), Evenings and Weekends
Oakland based Neighborhood Public Radio builds a low-band independent radio station at Southern Exposure. Evenings and Weekends serves those who live in the city and in Southern Exposure’s neighborhood. NPR will broadcast programs created by local artists and sympathetic artists from outside the geographical community. This aspect of the programming operates in contrast to most other radio stations that broadcast inside San Francisco transmitting signals well beyond the boundaries of the City. As you leave the neighborhood, Neighborhood Public Radio gradually fades from your hearing range.
Red76, PlaceSettings
Red76 Arts Group, a collective of three artists - Sam Gould, Khris Soden and Matthew Yake - respond to the fall presidential election by creating 25,000 copies of voter information in the form of a placemat. The placemats will be distributed across the country through a grassroots network of touring bands and book- signing events as well as a walking tour at Southern Exposure. By inserting voter information into non-traditional venues, Red76 hopes to create a community of politically conscious citizens.
Jon Rubin and Stephen Wight, The Conversations
For the duration of the exhibition, a digitally activated player piano will be located in the gallery and directly connected to Southern Exposure’s office phone lines. When a call is made or received, the piano translates the conversation(s) into music that is heard in the gallery. The piano reflects and foregrounds the ongoing stream of personal networking that drives the context for the exhibition itself.
Stretcher.org, Green Room
Stretcher.org, is an online publication that was founded in 2000 and is under the direction of Amy Berk, Ella Delaney, David Lawrence, Cheryl Meeker, and Meredith Tromble. Stretcher moves off the screen into "Green Room", inviting gallery-goers and selected guests to participate in live interviews on a green-screen talk show set. The project raises questions of framing, location, and reportage in relation to truth.
United Net-Works, United Net-Works on the Road 2003-2005
United Net-Works is a collaborative art project, initiated and run by Sofie Sweger, which investigates networking and social action as strategies for exchange between artists and arts professionals. The project consists of a specially designed mobile archive that contains documentation from contemporary artists, artists groups and curators from around the world. At Southern Exposure, United Net-Works will issue an open call for submissions and create the San Francisco branch of United Net-Works archive. United Net-Works will also present 15 artists who explore collaborative practices from their Stockholm archive.
