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Curators’ Talk with Constance Lewallen and Karen Moss
Saturday, September 29, 1:30 – 3:00 pm
Join
State of Mind curators Constance Lewallen (University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive) and Karen Moss (Orange County Museum of Art) for a tour of the exhibition.
All welcome. Admission is free.
To view the Curators’ Talk with Constance Lewallen and Karen Moss,
click here
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Lecture by Julia Bryan-Wilson at the Belkin
Monday, October 15, 6:30 pm
University of California-Berkeley Art Historian Julia Bryan-Wilson presents
K G A Y in L.A.: Queer Video and the Politics of Viewership.
In 1979, artist John Dorr inaugurated weekly screenings of experimental videos at the West Hollywood Community Center. Lacking a dedicated viewing space, he clustered folding chairs around a large monitor and showed a range of locally produced queer media, including campy features, abstract formal experiments and graphic porn. The screenings were such a success that Dorr soon opened his own space, called EZTV, in a nearby strip mall, which grew into a video collective that also rented out production equipment and provided tech support for queer artists. This pioneering independent video gallery – the first in the US – was not only a resource for alternative media-makers throughout the 1980s, but also became a primary site of organizing for the Southern California branches of ACT UP and Queer Nation. In this talk, Bryan-Wilson examines how the particular geography of gay male Los Angeles gave rise to EZTV as a dense and complex queer location, not least because of the intersection of Hollywood media culture, developing alternative video technologies, and politicized discourses surrounding queer gazes, representations and sexualities.
Julia Bryan-Wilson is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include questions of artistic labour, feminism and queer theory. Her writings on artists such as Laylah Ali, Ida Applebroog, Sadie Benning, Harmony Hammond, Sharon Hayes, Cristóbal Lehyt, Yoko Ono, Yvonne Rainer, Anne Wilson and Francesca Woodman have appeared in exhibition catalogues as well as in the Art Bulletin, Artforum, Bookforum, Camera Austria, Camera Obscura, October, Journal of Modern Craft and Oxford Art Journal. She is the author of Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era (University of California, 2009), which was named an “outstanding academic title” by Choice magazine, and the editor of Robert Morris, forthcoming from MIT Press/October Files series. Bryan-Wilson was an essayist for the State of Mind catalogue, as well as the project art historian for the Pacific Standard Time exhibition Collaboration Labs.
Julia Bryan-Wilson’s lecture is presented in conjunction with the exhibition currently on view at the Belkin Art Gallery, State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970.
At the Belkin Art Gallery.
All welcome. Free admission.
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Reading/Performance by Eleanor Antin at the Belkin
Thursday, November 29, 6:30 pm
To view Eleanor Antin’s Reading/Performance from November 29, 2012, click here
In this performative reading, Eleanor Antin presents chapters from her coming-of-age memoir, Conversations with Stalin. Antin’s memoir is a smart, no-holds- barred, black comedy in the picaresque coming of age tradition of Holden Caulfield, Huck Finn, Little Orphan Annie, and the irrepressible Dorothy on the road to Oz. Impatient with the timidity of the current publishing world (as long ago she was turned off by the art world gallery system and chose to send her 100 BOOTS directly to the public through the mail) Antin is bringing her new memoir directly to the public through a series of performance readings in museums, art spaces and universities.
“I was what was called in the days of the old left, a red diaper baby. My mother was a Stalinist and though I had a father, nobody ever listened to him because he was just a socialist and everybody knew they were wimps. It was hard in those days, Senator McCarthy was putting people in jail, people were losing their jobs, but we were strong because we always knew what was right. Comrade Stalin told us. Or he would have told us if he wasn’t so far away…These are my recollections, more or less, about growing up with the many romantic, economic and psychological problems young people face in our country and how by the end of the day, Comrade Stalin always solved my problems in his own inimitable way, by fucking them up.” (Conversations with Stalin)
We are excited to welcome Michael Morris in conversation with Eleanor Antin following her performance. Though they have never met in person, in the early 1970s Morris and Antin were actively engaged in The Image Bank, a system of postal correspondence between artists for the exchange of information and ideas.
Eleanor Antin works in a variety of media, including photography, video, film, performance, installation, drawing and writing. She has had many one-woman exhibitions, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum and a major retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her works are in many collections around the world including the Beaubourg, Tate Modern, MOMA, the Whitney, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Loeb Family Foundation. She has performed around the world including the Venice Biennale, Documenta 12, and the Sydney Opera House. Her cult feature film The Man Without a World (1991) was screened at many festivals among them Berlin, USA, London and San Francisco and had art house commercial distribution. She is represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York City. Her many awards include an Honorary Doctorate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2009) and a Lifetime Achievement award from the Woman’s Caucus of the College Art Association (2006). Antin is an emeritus professor of Visual Arts at the University of California at San Diego.
Eleanor Antin’s visit is supported by the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory’s Distinguished Visiting Artist Program, which is made possible by the generous support of the Rennie Collection.
At the Belkin Art Gallery.
All welcome. Free admission.
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Belkin 101
Thursdays, October 11 – November 15, 12:30 – 1:30 pm
At the Belkin Art Gallery
Belkin 101: Feminism(s) – readings and discussion open to all
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Concert at the Belkin
Friday, November 23, 2:00 – 3:00 pm
Concert at the Belkin:
UBC Contemporary Players
Join us for a concert by the UBC Contemporary Players at the Belkin Art Gallery. Ensemble directors Corey Hamm and Paolo Bortolussi present S P O T S, a program that celebrates the innovation and experimentation of 1970s California explored throughout the Belkin’s current exhibition, State of Mind.
S P O T S
UBC Contemporary Players at the Belkin
Corey Hamm and Paolo Bortolussi, Directors
George Crumb (b. 1929) – Myth (1974)
Julia Chien, Sean Buckley, Gary Wong, Chris Morano
Frederic Rzewski (b. 1938) – Spots (1986)
Michael Morimoto saxophone, Gabriele Thielmann violin, Sean Buckley vibraphone, Michael Bemmels guitar
Alejandro Golijov (b. 1960) – Yiddishbbuk (1992)
Sarah Ho and Gabriele Thielmann violins, Sarah Kwok viola, Laine Longton cello
All welcome. Free admission.
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Film Series November 7 – 22, 2012
At Pacific Cinémathèque, 1131 Howe Street in Vancouver.
For film synopses visit http://www.cinematheque.bc.ca
Here is Always Somewhere Else: The Disappearance of Bas Jan Ader
USA/Netherlands 2008. Director: Rene Daalder
With: Tacita Dean, Ger Van Elk, Wim T. Schippers, Marcel Broodthaers, Rem Koolhaus
Preceded by two films by Bas Jan Ader:
I’m Too Sad to Tell You (1970, 4 mins.) and Nightfall (1971, 4 mins.)
Wednesday, November 7 – 7:00 pm
Thursday, November 8 – 8:30 pm
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!Women Art Revolution
USA 2010. Director: Lynn Hershman Leeson
With: Miranda July, Judy Chicago, Yvonne Rainer, Yoko Ono, Marina Abramovic
Preceded by:
Near the Big Chakra
USA 1972. Director: Anne Severson
Thursday, November 8 – 6:30 pm
Friday, November 9 – 8:50 pm
Wednesday, November 14 – 6:30 pm
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Viva
USA 2007. Director: Anna Biller
Cast: Anna Biller, Bridget Brno, Chad England, Jared Sanford, Marcus DeAnda
Preceded by:
Dyketactics
USA 1974. Director: Barbara Hammer
Friday, November 9 – 6:30 pm
Saturday, November 10 – 9 pm
Thursday, November 15 – 6:30 pm
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Chinatown
USA 1974. Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez, John Hillerman, Diane Ladd
Saturday, November 10 – 6:30 pm
Monday, November 12 – 4 pm
Friday, November 16 – 8:35 pm
Saturday, November 17 – 6:30 pm
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The India Trip
Canada 1971. Director: Bill Davies
With: Albert Jordan
Sunday, November 11 – 5:15 pm
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Zabriskie Point
USA 1969. Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Cast: Mark Frechette, Daria Halprin, Rod Taylor, Paul Fix, G.D. Spradlin
Sunday, November 11 – 6:30 pm
Thursday, November 15 – 8:50 pm
Friday, November 16 – 6:30 pm
Saturday, November 17 – 9 pm
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Kristina Talking Pictures
USA 1976. Director: Yvonne Rainer
Cast: Bert Barr, Kate Parker, Frances Barth, Lil Picardi, James Barth
Sunday, November 11 – 8:30 pm
Wednesday, November 14 – 8:30 pm
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Los Angeles Plays Itself
USA 2003. Director: Thom Andersen
Monday, November 12 – 6:30 pm
Sunday, November 18 – 6:30 pm
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Rameau’s Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen
Canada 1974. Director: Michael Snow
Cast: Dennis Burton, Jim Murphy, Jonas Mekas, Annette Michelson, Nam June Paik
Thursday, November 22 – 6:30 pm
State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970 investigates Conceptual art and related avant-garde activities from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. The artists who came to California at this time were, like many other transplants, attracted by its beauty, climate and relative ease of living. More importantly, this part of the US was emerging as a leading incubator for social change and a youth-oriented counterculture, tendencies that were complementary to artists seeking alternatives to traditional modes of art making. California’s art schools, universities and artist-run spaces provided new exhibition opportunities and, additionally, the distance from the New York art press, commercial galleries and museums gave artists greater freedom to experiment as they challenged the definition of art, the role of the artist and the academic and institutional structures of the art world. New York represented tradition, California the future.
Artists working in California at this time deemphasized the art object in favour of the idea and process that went into its making. They explored new noncommercial genres: text-based works, video, sound, performance, installations, mail art and artists’ books. No longer bound by practical considerations of scale, materials, or salability, they turned to collectivity, ephemerality, body-oriented performance, the merging of art and life, political commentary and social interaction which have continued to influence generations of younger artists for more than forty years.
Organized around central themes such as mapping the environment, the street, feminism, and the body, the exhibition features approximately 150 works by 60 artists, ranging from those who became major international figures—Ant Farm, John Baldessari, Chris Burden, Lynn Hershman, Bruce Nauman, Martha Rosler, Ed Ruscha—to lesser-known artists who nonetheless made important contributions and merit renewed attention. The exhibition consists of video, film, photography, installation, artist’s books, drawing, and paintings. Additionally, there is extensive performance documentation and ephemera.
State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970 complements the upcoming exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965–1980, an ambitious project that examines similar sensibilities as they developed in Canada. In addition, several of the artists in State of Mind visited Vancouver at the time, mostly at the invitation of Image Bank and the Western Front.
State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970 is an exhibition curated by Constance Lewallen and Karen Moss and co-organized by the Orange County Museum of Art and the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The tour is organized by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, and is made possible in part by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Video Data Bank, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) and with the generous support of Robert Redd, LLC and the ICI Board of Trustees.
The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and our Belkin Curator’s Forum members.
Comments
The following comments have been entered at a kiosk available to visitors to the gallery. Only the 10 most recent comments are shown,
see more on the comments page.
thank you so much for the Fat City MFA prints.
thank you so much more for using nice paper.
gnome-panel
No response to the SaveYourself command.
The program may be slow, stopped or broken.
You may wait for it to respond or remove it.
Walking through the gallery spaces, I was excited and fascinated by the works in the exhibition. The conceptual artists had their own particular views on the world at the time and conveyed them through their brilliant pieces.
I particularly enjoyed the work of Bas Jan Ader, Chris Burden, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Barbara T Smith, Martha Rosler and others.
cool
some complementary acid would enhance the experience
I had heard about all these pieces in class and was dulled by the experiences you have with them via text and computer, but interacting with the face to face is exciting.
There's nothing like an exhibition that gives you music, film and photography.
Very well done. For some reason (I say with surprise), I was really drawn in to each piece. It hugely improved my understanding and appreciation of this conceptual art. I found meaning, which in other settings had escaped me.
I just wanted to thank you for giving my students a tour of the show last week. It was a unique and thought provoking exhibition, but it was your ability to make the work relevant to the students' practice that made it more meaningful.
I spent my high school years in California, from 1970 to 1974. This exhibit brought back a lot of memories from that time. I really enjoyed the yellow taxis, and A Trophy Atrophy.
tHIS Is <backspace?> my new favourite exhibit, which I must come back to, again and again. I liked it so much I still have hiccups. Feels like home for a Vancouver hipstyer (born n raised)
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For further information please contact: Jana Tyner at jana.tyner@ubc.ca,
tel: (604) 822-1389, or fax: (604) 822-6689
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