Group Exhibition
The Walls That Divide Us, apexart, New York
Opening reception: Wed., November 9, 6-8 pm
Featuring work by: Gisele Amantea, Kader Attia, Carolina Caycedo, Chen Chieh-jen, Sam Durant, Leor Grady, Ivan Grubanov, Shilpa Gupta, Alfredo Jaar, Emily Jacir, Runo Lagomarsino, Teresa Margolles, Locky Morris, Carlos Motta, Ahmet Ögüt, Anna Ostoya, Amalia Pica, Rigo 23. Curated by Miguel Amado.
In the early 1990s, Western-style liberal democracies appeared as the archetypal form of government from which a peacekeeping transnational power would emerge. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the end of the Cold War inaugurated what one hoped was an era without conflict. However, on the fiftieth anniversary of that fortification, strife is spreading worldwide. From the U.S.-Mexico frontier to Jerusalem, more and more barbed wired fences and checkpoints are being assembled, splitting communities and creating areas of exclusion. The construction of the Berlin Wall, rather than its demise, is the historical moment that encapsulates the current state of affairs. The organizing principle of present times is not the free circulation of individuals but the walls that divide them.
The Walls That Divide Us addresses the proliferation of state and city separation barriers across the globe as symbols of dissent in contemporary politics. Featured artists examine the ideology of wall building as a means of segregating populations to establish sovereignty in uneven geographies. The works in the show draw attention to the material, normative, and cultural function of barricading in zones of conflict today and the social injustice that it generates. They comment on the establishment of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the Israeli-Palestinian question, the violence in Ciudad Juárez, and the migration crisis in the Mediterranean region. They also explore phenomena such as imperialistic enterprises and contested territories, security policies and border control, revolutionary movement and mass protest.
More info here
Group Exhibition and Book Launch
The Air We Breathe at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Over the last decade, equal rights for same-sex couples — including the right to legally wed — has proven one of the country's most pressing civil rights issues. In the belief that art can lead to new ways of thinking and open up dialogue, The Air We Breathe brings together thirty visual artists and eight poets who offer their commitment and creativity to the cause of marriage equality. The show and its accompanying book — both titled after a phrase from a Langston Hughes poem, "Equality is in the air we breathe" — aim to prompt public discussion and foster ever broader understanding of a crucial issue of our time.
Visual artists in the exhibition include Laylah Ali, D-L Alvarez, Doug Ashford, Nayland Blake, Jennifer Bornstein, Andrea Bowers, Robert Buck, Johanna Calle, Martha Colburn, Sam Durant, Shannon Ebner, Nicole Eisenman, Simon Fujiwara, Liam Gillick, Robert Gober, Ann Hamilton, Sharon Hayes, Christian Holstad, Elliott Hundley, Colter Jacobsen, Matt Keegan, Carlos Motta, Catherine Opie, Nicolás Paris, Dan Perjovschi, Raymond Pettibon, Amy Sillman, Allison Smith, Lily van der Stokker, and Erika Vogt. Poets include George Albon, Will Alexander, John Ashbery, Dodie Bellamy, kari edwards (poem selected by Frances Blau and Rob Halpern), Kevin Killian, Ariana Reines, and Anne Waldman.
New York City book launch
Saturday, November 5, 6-7:30pm
White Columns
320 West 13th Street
Performa Project
"Broken English" in collaboration with Julieta Aranda for Performa 11, New York
For Performa 11, Julieta Aranda and Carlos Motta (b. 1975, Mexico City, Mexico; b. 1978 Bogota, Colombia) have invited a group of international contributors to reflect on New York City as a cross-cultural terrain and as a public space for constant cultural translations and negotiations, in a publication/supplement titled Broken English. Working with the curatorial threads of Performa 11, the supplement will act as a witness of New York’s cultural history and will present writings by artists and cultural producers that have been active in different capacities for the past 30 years, including:
Julieta Aranda, Joey Arias/Carlos Motta, Defne Ayas, Michael Baers, Sarnath Banerjee, Andy Bichlbaum, Julio Camba, Asli Çavuşoğlu, Carolina Caycedo, Samuel R. Delany, Jimmie Durham, Liam Gillick, Ashley Hunt, Adam Kleinman, Runo Lagomarsino, Yates McKee, Naeem Mohaiemen/Visible Collective, Shirin Neshat/RoseLee Goldberg, OWS Architecture Committee, Raqs Media Collective, Martha Rosler, Kim Turcot DiFruscia/Elizabeth Povinelli, Anton Vidokle/Andrei Monastyrski, Jeff Weintraub, and Carla Zaccagnini.
Treating New York City as site for all sorts of personal and collective encounters/misses/near-misses, the supplement promises to be a fertile ground for a discussion of issues of urbanism, architecture, cultural policy, art production, the role of underground etc. (The publication will focus on the suspension of individual and group ideologies, cultural behaviors, moral attitudes, lifestyles, and beliefs when faced with other people and communities in the urban environment). For the design of the supplement, Aranda and Motta will draw from Constructivist and propaganda aesthetics, featuring both new commissioned texts as well as reprints of historical texts. A public launch is scheduled for November 12. A Performa Project. Curated by Defne Ayas.
Aranda and Motta's collaboration started with Arts & Leisure, a one-time tabloid newspaper commissioned by Art in General and co-published with e-flux in 2005. The tabloid drew its title from the New York Time's cultural section making emphasis on its equivalence of arts and/to leisure. Using a journalistic style to inquire about the crisis pertaining art criticism and complacency with commercial structures of art discussion, the project presented poignant texts, articles, texts and humorous contributions (cross word puzzles, horoscope, letters to the editor, etc.) by over 20 international cultural producers.
Screening and Talk
A New Discovery: Queer Immigration in Perspective at Museum of Art and Design, New York
Saturday, October 22, 2011. 5 pm
To highlight the issues faced by queer immigrants in the United States, the grassroots organization QUEEROCRACY in collaboration with artist Carlos Motta present A New Discovery: Queer Immigration in Perspective. The event will feature presentations by leading queer immigration activists, a public conversation, and a video screening of a social intervention-based performance held by QUEEROCRACY and its allies on Columbus Day at Columbus Circle.
A New Discovery: Queer Immigration in Perspective attempts to bring attention to the way immigrant and queer politics intersect in the public sphere in ways that both confront, challenge and transform the state mechanisms that police borders and bodies in the United States. This dialogue strives to generate new ideas on how to better make a difference in the lives of queer people around the world.
Presentations and a public conversation by Felipe Baeza, New York State Youth Leadership Council; Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, Staff Attorney, Lambda Legal; Camilo Godoy, QUEEROCRACY; Jackie Vimo, activist and PhD Candidate in Politics The New School for Social Research; and a video address by Tania Bruguera, Immigrant Movement International. Moderated by Carlos Motta, artist.
Group Exhibition
The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M Hunt Collection at George Eastman House, Rochester, NY
Earlier this year The New Yorker referred to the collector as “the legendary W.M. Hunt." He is a renowned curator and dealer who has been collecting photographs for 40 years. A self-described “champion of photography,” he is well-known for his “eye” and sense of humor. Hunt describes the collection as “magical, heart-stopping images of people in which the eyes cannot be seen.”
The photographs of The Unseen Eye have a common theme — the gaze of the subject is averted, the face obscured, or the eyes firmly closed. The images evoke a wide range of emotions and are characterized, by what, at first glance, the subject conceals rather than what the camera reveals.
Panel Discussion
The Gay Generation Gap, Dixon Place, New York
Featuring Ira Sachs and Carlos Motta
To accompany his new show thirtynothing (running throughout October), performance artist Dan Fishback curates a month-long series of events about the legacy of AIDS on queer art and culture. Topics include the gay generation gap, the intersection of gentrification and AIDS, and the films of gay photographer Mark Morrisroe. Fishback will also create an art installation made of ephemera from the lives and careers of gay artists, writers, and performers who died of AIDS.
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Book Launch
LAXART, September 29, 7:30pm, Los Angeles
LA><ART is pleased to host a reception for artist Carlos Motta, whose two new collaborative book projects address the social, political, and sexual dynamics of queer affection. Motta will discuss these projects, followed by short readings from the texts by Motta, Alex Segade, Wu Tsang and others special guests. The two books, We Who Feel Differently and Petite Mort: Recollections of a Queer Public, which both include contributions from leading artists and thinkers, will be made available at LA><ART.
LA><ART is located at 2640 S. La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90034
Artist Talk
Carlos Motta: We Who Feel Differently at Pomona Museum of Art, Los Angeles
September 26, 7-9pm
Carlos Motta will discuss his most recent project We Who Feel Differently, a database documentary that addresses the politics of sexual difference and other critical issues of contemporary queer culture. We Who Feel Differently attempts to reclaim a queer "We" that values difference over sameness, a "We" that resists assimilation, and a "We" that embraces difference as a critical opportunity to construct a socially just world.
Group Exhibiton
e-flux's Pawnshop at Thessaloniki Biennial
18 September–18 November, 2011
Originally established by artists Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle in New York in 2008, PAWNSHOP went bankrupt at the beginning of the world financial crises, only to re-open successfully in Beijing and, most recently, at Art Basel.
Structurally, a pawnshop is a short-term loan business, which retains a collateral object (a camera, a ring, a guitar, a gun, and in this case an artwork) in exchange for a cash loan—a small fraction of the object's value that needs to be repaid with interest within a one-month period. If the owner of the pawned object does not return to collect it and repay the loan + interest within 30 days, the pawnbroker has the right to sell it. What is of particular interest in pawnshops is the peculiar mixture of the illicit and the desperate, futurity and anticipation. The idea that the object is collateral for cash that might be traded back for the object during a set duration, could be put in other words, that works of art and money are just dancing in a choreography in which they might just circle back and meet again, and cancel each other out, but in fact rarely do. All profits from PAWNSHOP have been donated to Doctors Without Borders.
Book Launch and Performances Series
Petite Mort: Recollections of a Queer Public at Forever & Today, Inc., New York
September 17–25, 2011. Book Launch: September 17, 6-9pm
Carlos Motta and Joshua Lubin-Levy's book, Petite Mort: Recollections of a Queer Public assembles drawings from memory of spaces in New York City where a public sexual encounter occurred, and presents contributions from an intergenerational group of over 60 gay men.Conceived as an atlas of queer affection, Petite Mort proposes a subjective blueprint of the city, one that values not simply the space "as is," but how it has been performed and engaged, highlighting the fundamental connection between public space and queer life.
