Tuesday, August 10, 2004
MetLife co-sponsors a show of social comment
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
One cannot help being impressed that MetLife, the major employer of the T&V Country, once the world’s largest life insurer now demutualized and slowly recovering its former status, is also a major sponsor of The Interventionists, Art in the Social Sphere, an art assemblage that attacks homelessness, genetically altered food, fashion and ridiculous social projects, in a tongue-in-cheek yet biting manner. Thinking about it, MetLife in its past incarnation has been a most effective agency of social reform, showing how industry can be the leader in creating effective habitat units by the tens of thousands, with the construction of housing in Stuy Town, Peter Cooper Village and their northern neighbor, Parkchester, in the 1940s. In essence, it led the way in pointing local governments to the planning of communities and the building of public housing. Whatever the present clashes between today’s management and tenants, Met’s historic role in social action cannot be gainsaid.
The current example of the Met’s social commentary, under the aegis of the MetLife Foundation Museum Connections Program, benefits North Adams, a mill town in the Berkshires fallen on hard times, for hours from New York. Its unique museum, Mass MoCA, is on the abandoned 27-building site of North America’s largest textile finisher, Arnold Print Works, gone broke in 1942, then Sprague Electric, gone to Juarez in 1985, the last action costing 4,000 jobs in a community of 18,000. Local and national fund raising matched, by the Massachusetts Arts Council, resulted in the creation of acres of white-washed and stripped-bricks simple museum space suitable for the invitation of modern artists with messages and followings that brought jobs and visitors to the town. Ah, the rehabilitating power of tourism!
The Interventionists’ most fascinating sub-show is the Nomads, highlighting street-level political realities. Michael Rakowitz’s inflatable shelters for the homeless (1998), made with plastic bags and tape that can be attached to the air vents of buildings, to tap free heat and provide ventilation, are almost practical. They comply with urban camping laws that prohibit domed and triangular structures over 3-½ ft in height. Kryzsztof Wodiczko’s Homeless Vehicle (1998-9) is a modified supermarket-shopping cart with sorting racks for can collectors that also converts to a shelter for the night. Those of us who are used to seeing the homeless men sleeping in cardboard boxes around St. George’s Church, across from Stuyvesant Square Park (the cardboard is folded and tucked into the park fence during the day), or observing the dwellers stretched out over the warm sidewalk gratings near Gramercy Park, cannot help being touched by these reminders.
Dre Birthenaar’s biting sarcasm goes further, bringing private events into the street life. Her Birthing Tent (2003) provides temporary shelter for labor, birth, delivery, and the celebration of life, with a bathing pool and seating for friends. Her Death Bivouac is a tent - oh, well, you can visualize. This is social planning for the future, to kick the complacent into thought. The Snail Shell System (from Denmark) is a hollow wheel with tracks, roll it to your site, then crawl in (it can also be used as a boat). It is not offered as can-collecting device – imagine the clanging along Third Avenue.
The Experimental University shows artists involved in science - biotechnology, sociology and anthropology. In a room that looks like part specimen collection, part souvenir shop, see-through plastic vials filled with debris from Mexico City, and North Adams show the difference in cultures. A collective of radical archivists/anthropologists named Spurse sends investigators who do randomized walkabout collecting, picking up whatever fragment is available and changing direction whenever a chicken crows (other sound substitutes permitted). The findings are presented in elaborate charts, photograph, interviews and computer sites. In the Free Range Grain exhibit, the CAE/daCosta testing lab was examining “organic” labeled foods for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) when the FBI raided MASS MoCA and carted off the gear, for suspicion of dangerous activities (a technician had died; see NYTimes of June 7, 2004).
The Ready to Wear sub-show has the piece-meal reexamination of the three-piece jacket by J. Morgan Puett. The latter takes reversible fragments of suits and equips them with buttons, enabling the construction of various raggy garment-like wearable clown suits in conservative colors. A semi-sincere saleslady in an almost-real tailor shop touts the product and offers fragments for sale (complete outfit is $600). An altered baseball-cap maker, Ruben Ortiz Torres, offers such items as the LA Kings hockey hat with the name Rodney added, to remind the viewer of the 1992 beating that fueled the LA riots.
Besides social criticism, MASS MoCA devotes an acre (imagine in NYC!) of factory floor to Ann Hamilton’s Corpus (closes 10/2004), with robots on rails plucking white coated paper in random sequence from stacks in the high ceiling, to flutter down to the floor, accompanied by speech defining “corpus” coming from scattered speakers, sometimes overhead, sometimes far away, and tens of light fixtures slowly dropping and rising from the ceiling. Even adults are prompted to run across the floor kicking and reaching for the snow-like light letterhead size flakes, a sheer joy. Then you enter a dark room with fixtures on rotating arms swinging around overhead, while soft minimalist music hums, almost urging you to harmonize or chant along, another joyful interlude.
Last, Matthew Ritchie, from New York, whose installation greets you as you enter, cheerful painting spreads of seemingly apples and fruit turning into eyeballs, and swirls that appear and vanish, all imbued with subatomic, mythic and biological subtexts. These rooms lead into a magic river exhibit, with huge black jigsaw puzzle pieces elevated to eye level on thin rods, like ice floes in a river that start out a n all surrounding painting covering the walls of the huge factory room and stop midfloor, a disappearing waterfall. Big Bang, risk analysis, alchemy and gambling are some more imbedded themes.
To enjoy this museum you must walk with one of their guides, whose almost serious presentation of the mystique adds an essential element to the interpretation and the show. Without her mentoring the visitor is lost.
One cannot help being impressed that MetLife, the major employer of the T&V Country, once the world’s largest life insurer now demutualized and slowly recovering its former status, is also a major sponsor of The Interventionists, Art in the Social Sphere, an art assemblage that attacks homelessness, genetically altered food, fashion and ridiculous social projects, in a tongue-in-cheek yet biting manner. Thinking about it, MetLife in its past incarnation has been a most effective agency of social reform, showing how industry can be the leader in creating effective habitat units by the tens of thousands, with the construction of housing in Stuy Town, Peter Cooper Village and their northern neighbor, Parkchester, in the 1940s. In essence, it led the way in pointing local governments to the planning of communities and the building of public housing. Whatever the present clashes between today’s management and tenants, Met’s historic role in social action cannot be gainsaid.
The current example of the Met’s social commentary, under the aegis of the MetLife Foundation Museum Connections Program, benefits North Adams, a mill town in the Berkshires fallen on hard times, for hours from New York. Its unique museum, Mass MoCA, is on the abandoned 27-building site of North America’s largest textile finisher, Arnold Print Works, gone broke in 1942, then Sprague Electric, gone to Juarez in 1985, the last action costing 4,000 jobs in a community of 18,000. Local and national fund raising matched, by the Massachusetts Arts Council, resulted in the creation of acres of white-washed and stripped-bricks simple museum space suitable for the invitation of modern artists with messages and followings that brought jobs and visitors to the town. Ah, the rehabilitating power of tourism!
The Interventionists’ most fascinating sub-show is the Nomads, highlighting street-level political realities. Michael Rakowitz’s inflatable shelters for the homeless (1998), made with plastic bags and tape that can be attached to the air vents of buildings, to tap free heat and provide ventilation, are almost practical. They comply with urban camping laws that prohibit domed and triangular structures over 3-½ ft in height. Kryzsztof Wodiczko’s Homeless Vehicle (1998-9) is a modified supermarket-shopping cart with sorting racks for can collectors that also converts to a shelter for the night. Those of us who are used to seeing the homeless men sleeping in cardboard boxes around St. George’s Church, across from Stuyvesant Square Park (the cardboard is folded and tucked into the park fence during the day), or observing the dwellers stretched out over the warm sidewalk gratings near Gramercy Park, cannot help being touched by these reminders.
Dre Birthenaar’s biting sarcasm goes further, bringing private events into the street life. Her Birthing Tent (2003) provides temporary shelter for labor, birth, delivery, and the celebration of life, with a bathing pool and seating for friends. Her Death Bivouac is a tent - oh, well, you can visualize. This is social planning for the future, to kick the complacent into thought. The Snail Shell System (from Denmark) is a hollow wheel with tracks, roll it to your site, then crawl in (it can also be used as a boat). It is not offered as can-collecting device – imagine the clanging along Third Avenue.
The Experimental University shows artists involved in science - biotechnology, sociology and anthropology. In a room that looks like part specimen collection, part souvenir shop, see-through plastic vials filled with debris from Mexico City, and North Adams show the difference in cultures. A collective of radical archivists/anthropologists named Spurse sends investigators who do randomized walkabout collecting, picking up whatever fragment is available and changing direction whenever a chicken crows (other sound substitutes permitted). The findings are presented in elaborate charts, photograph, interviews and computer sites. In the Free Range Grain exhibit, the CAE/daCosta testing lab was examining “organic” labeled foods for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) when the FBI raided MASS MoCA and carted off the gear, for suspicion of dangerous activities (a technician had died; see NYTimes of June 7, 2004).
The Ready to Wear sub-show has the piece-meal reexamination of the three-piece jacket by J. Morgan Puett. The latter takes reversible fragments of suits and equips them with buttons, enabling the construction of various raggy garment-like wearable clown suits in conservative colors. A semi-sincere saleslady in an almost-real tailor shop touts the product and offers fragments for sale (complete outfit is $600). An altered baseball-cap maker, Ruben Ortiz Torres, offers such items as the LA Kings hockey hat with the name Rodney added, to remind the viewer of the 1992 beating that fueled the LA riots.
Besides social criticism, MASS MoCA devotes an acre (imagine in NYC!) of factory floor to Ann Hamilton’s Corpus (closes 10/2004), with robots on rails plucking white coated paper in random sequence from stacks in the high ceiling, to flutter down to the floor, accompanied by speech defining “corpus” coming from scattered speakers, sometimes overhead, sometimes far away, and tens of light fixtures slowly dropping and rising from the ceiling. Even adults are prompted to run across the floor kicking and reaching for the snow-like light letterhead size flakes, a sheer joy. Then you enter a dark room with fixtures on rotating arms swinging around overhead, while soft minimalist music hums, almost urging you to harmonize or chant along, another joyful interlude.
Last, Matthew Ritchie, from New York, whose installation greets you as you enter, cheerful painting spreads of seemingly apples and fruit turning into eyeballs, and swirls that appear and vanish, all imbued with subatomic, mythic and biological subtexts. These rooms lead into a magic river exhibit, with huge black jigsaw puzzle pieces elevated to eye level on thin rods, like ice floes in a river that start out a n all surrounding painting covering the walls of the huge factory room and stop midfloor, a disappearing waterfall. Big Bang, risk analysis, alchemy and gambling are some more imbedded themes.
To enjoy this museum you must walk with one of their guides, whose almost serious presentation of the mystique adds an essential element to the interpretation and the show. Without her mentoring the visitor is lost.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 5:39 PM 
