Beeoff Tentacle TransatlanticReverb 2004-2005 installation detail
neuroTransmitter Offshore 2004-2005 installation detail
Mariam Ghani Kabul: Constitutions 2003-2005 installation detail
I was a little scared. Would I understand it? What would I say to those smart people? It seemed to be very much about technology, and I'm barely able to function as a basic blogger, even with my partner/webmaster's kind and regular ministrations. But Barry really thought we should go, and I have to admit I thought that even this klutz really shouldn't miss tonight's reception at EYEBEAM.
The event was described as an evening of tours and talks with the artists of their current installation, "Work In Process." It turned out to be great fun, and it really was a revelation. Maybe our first exposure to the six projects wouldn't have been so worthwhile without the extra help of the artists' guidance, but I know I'm going back, whether or not they'll be there next time. You don't really have to know much about what's going on behind the curtain.
The works were all beautiful, but if some were less so in what many would call a conventional sense there were great compensations in the success of some very original concepts.
Jenny Marketou uses a tiny spotter camera suspended from a red balloon to confound a world fettered by the machinery of surveillance. NeuroTransmitter investigates the history of extra-territorialism and its popular voices. The Swedish collaborative Beeoff creates tethered overhead sculptures lit beautifully from within by projectors which communicate with each other over the internet. Bec Stupak has installed her own beautiful and wacky three-dimensional concept of a DVD zine with the collaboration of more traditional paper zine artists; here technology is totally in the sevice of creative and exceptional individualities. KnoWear's attractive and very minimal installation was disturbing for its dramatization of the ineluctable personal impact of a corporate futureworld. The unfolding of a more elementally-human contemporary world, specifically the complex process of building a national constitution documented in Mariam Ghani's space brought tears of joy to my eyes; I found it almost impossible to step away from the wizardry which had recreated Kabul's 2003-2004 Loyal Jirga in a former garage on 21st Street last night.
For more information on the work of the six artists or collectives in residence who contribute to this show, see the exhibition link on the EYEBEAM site.