Concrete Complexity: When Data Visualization Gets Put to the Test of Materiality

Journal

This in an interview with Founder and former Director of the International Studio & Curatorial Program and current board member Dennis Elliott, by Director of Development and Programs Manager, Juliana Cope.

Juliana Cope (JC): Can you describe ISCP’s first Open Studios? When and where was it and why did you hold it? Who came and how did you promote it?

Dennis Elliott (DE): The first Open Studios was in the fall, 1994 at ISCP (then known as ISP) in a half-empty warehouse on Greenwich St. in Lower Manhattan’s TriBeCa.

It was memorable as there were only three artists exhibiting in their studios. With no common area to mount an exhibition, the studios seemed to be the only possible venue to present the artists’ work. Showing work in progress was a logical evolution given the mission of an artist-in-residence program.

The Open Studios were mandatory as the sponsors wanted their artists to have exposure to the New York art community. Implementing Open Studios, Visiting Critics, Salons and Field Trips were not only desirable program initiatives but were part of the contractual agreement with the sponsors.

For the first Open Studios (and for many years after), I mailed invitations with personal messages. It now seems quaint with the onslaught of social media. However, my demanding, “You must come!” on each invite actually worked. The participating artists designed the invites, which gave them more ownership of the event. The mailing list was only a couple of hundred names, compiled while I was administrating two other studio programs and with the contacts made during the first ten months of ISCP’s existence….

I would guess that about 150 attended the first Open Studios. Having hosted other Open Studios in the past, I was aware of the allure of refreshments—in my enthusiasm, I went to the absurd length of roasting turkeys and hams in my apartment the night before.

November 1994 was the beginning of my ISCP Open Studios learning curve. While this foray into inviting the public was somewhat clumsy, it was also very heady and loaded with promise….

JC: ISCP has held Open Studios in various locations as it moved from TriBeCa to Midtown to Brooklyn. Have you noticed any interesting differences based on the building and studio spaces?

DE: Physically and aesthetically, the TriBeCa and East Williamsburg buildings were similar. I was drawn to both for—among other things—the skylights allowing light and air into the central footprint, which was critical in affording more studio space and making the program viable.

Both buildings had their charm. And, both were secured in a down market with extremely advantageous leases. The real estate gods smiled on me during the TriBeCa-lease negotiation. The bursting of the dot-com bubble had pretty much emptied the building. That and an ingénue managing agent’s first negotiation were unexpected gifts that allowed ISCP to be born in an enormous top-floor with practically no capital.

Similarly, after viewing over 100 potential but unsatisfactory new homes for ISCP in 2007, a marathon lease negotiation resulted in ISCP’s move into an ideal facility in East Williamsburg. Again, favorable terms allowed ISCP to thrive. So much so that we were able to expand by developing another floor at the depth of the 2008 recession.

However, our Midtown experience was fraught from the beginning with facility and lease issues. It was a mostly difficult seven years for ISCP. The silver lining was that it forced ISCP to stand on its own, form a 501 (c) (3) and nurture the beginnings of what has become an exceptional board.

My concern for moving ISCP to Brooklyn was alleviated, once I discovered that NYC’s art community had preceded us. Being a stone’s throw from Bushwick compensated for our loss of the walking-access to Chelsea we had when we were on West 39^th St. Also, moving into much larger, less expensive facilities allowed us to dedicate a decent amount of space for common areas, a gallery and a project room, thus permitting exhibitions, lectures, panels, conferences and the ability to provide space to academic institutions and other nonprofit organizations. This added a whole new dimension to the program, increasing ISCP’s visibility and community involvement.

Acting as a community resource was not really possible during ISCP’s fourteen years in Manhattan. Of the many things that excited me about the move to Brooklyn, having a community to work with and being appreciated by it, were at the top of the list.

Our current facilities have allowed ISCP to enhance its appeal and its work. The spacious studios, curatorial offices, open and efficient office spaces for the staff, common areas, three kitchenettes, bathrooms on every floor and ample storage area have helped make ISCP a destination for art professionals from all over the world.

JC: Who were some of the most noteworthy Open Studios visitors throughout the years and what bonds were forged with them?

For me, the most noteworthy Open Studios visitors were to be found in two categories: sponsors/potential sponsors and the diplomats/bureaucrats (mostly from the consulates and embassies in NYC and Washington DC). At many Open Studios: conversations were initiated, proposals were made and, best of all, deals were struck.

Four that stood out were Anne Garneau, the great Cultural Attaché at the Canadian Consulate, who attended Open Studios many times and worked tirelessly to bring Canadian residents to the program, and who even procured funds from her communications budget in support of this initiative. Likewise, Jacques Soullilou, Cultural Attaché of the French Embassy, who deserves credit for attracting support from the French Cultural Institute for artists’ residencies at ISCP. Third, Francis Greenburger, who founded and built a major real estate company New York, has been a longtime supporter and sponsor of ISCP. Just after 2002, Francis and I even tried to initiate an ISCP outpost in Montreal, but political changes at the time thwarted our efforts. Finally, Edward Albee, perhaps my favorite noteworthy visitor, would come to Open Studios and spend hours with the artists, most of whom had no idea who he was.

JC: From your position as a practicing artist what are the greatest values of Open Studio events?

DE: Open Studios can provide much desired feedback for the artists and curators. The event provides a broad spectrum of visitors and potential for career-altering encounters. There have been multiple connections made at the Open Studios that led to inclusion in exhibitions, invitations to travel and one-person shows. Other than that, it is really motivating to have an audience for your work and the subsequent exchange of ideas that can validate your efforts in the studio.

JC: ISCP used to be called ISP. Has having curators in residence changed the dynamics of ISCP’s Open Studios over the years?

DE: I always felt that curators do the greater good. If one thinks that curators have little support now to develop their practice, back in the 90s there was none. Even our core long-term sponsors were implacable then about not underwriting curators’ residencies. Finally after much exhortation, the Netherlands took the plunge in 1999.

Having curators in residence has been a potent stimulus for the program’s synergy. Just the exchange that goes on in the common rooms, studio visits, the programmed and social events have incalculable value. In addition, there are the outside influences the curators bring to the table: their research, writings, lectures, panels and exhibitions. The program’s mission is to nurture their practice and, in return, this experience can reap benefits for ISCP through association and visibility.

Having curators make presentations at the Open Studios by giving a preview of their research brings in work of artists not in residence, which adds a further dynamic to the event and the program.

JC: Do you know the history of Open Studios in New York City? Salons have been around for centuries but the idea of Open Studios is a little different. I am curious how you have seen this type of program change since the 1990’s.

DE: The New York art community is much larger, more commercial and just different than when I started administering programs in the early 1980s. At that time, one could almost know everyone…it was like a cottage industry. But, as thousands of young artists and curators poured into the city over the years, the art community grew exponentially.

Now, arts residencies have morphed into more professional and corporation-like structures, each with their own characteristics. ISCP has persistently maintained its support of artists and curators—that may seem an anomaly to many of the other art worlds that exist in New York.

The Open Studios are the most visible component of how ISCP has grown and diversified over the last 20+ years.

Note: This interview is edited and excerpted from a longer exchange that took place by email in March 2017.

Image:

Left to right: ISCP alumna Lene Berg, playwright Edward Albee, ISCP founder Dennis Elliott, ISCP alumni Damien Deroubaix and Valérie Mannaerts in 2008. Work by Deroubaix in the background.

This is an essay by Gentiane Bélanger on the 2016 exhibition “Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens: Measures of Inequity.”

Each year, ISCP presents a solo exhibition of a current resident, which gives rise to the ideal conditions for productive curatorial collaboration. 2016 saw the dynamic artistic duo of Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens scheming together with Kari Conte, Director of Programs and Exhibitions, to create a deeply engaging onsite presentation of their sculptures in the exhibition “Measures of Inequity.” The following essay by Gentiane Bélanger was commissioned by ISCP on the occasion of the exhibition and gives a sense of the overall effect of the dense installation of 18 works, which invited sustained viewing and thinking, and reflection on the economic, national, and political implications raised by the delicate sculptures on view. Bélanger’s astute essay below is a foundational text that grounds and contextualizes the artists’ work.

Concrete Complexity: When Data Visualization Gets Put to the Test of Materiality

New media theorist Lev Manovich argues that big data visualization is to the twenty-first century what photography and film have been to the twentieth. Manovich considers big data visualization’s exponential rise over the past fifteen years as a profound epistemological and aesthetic paradigm shift, from a reductionist and linear approach to knowledge to an embrace of interconnected complexity.[1] Essentially deriving from Cartesian geometry—with most charts conceived from a plane defined by x, y, and z axes—classic diagrammatic language tends however to interpret complex phenomena in a reductionist fashion. Most current data visualization follows this principle, as evidenced by the standards established by one of today’s foremost infographics theorists, Edward Tufte. Good infographic design, Tufte asserts, is a marvel of economy and spatialization, revealing data through a minimal layout uncluttered by contextual paraphernalia. For Tufte, best practices in information design amount to an act of distillation or excavation, removing all relativist and ornamental muck—what he terms chartjunk—to get down to information’s objective bedrock. Diagrams should not be interpretive in themselves, but should rather support robust interpretation by visualizing connections between otherwise indecipherable data. “What is to be sought in designs for the display of information is the clear portrayal of complexity. Not the complication of the simple.”[2]

Tufte’s reductionist view is expressed through nine principles of excellence governing “graphical elegance”:

Show the data.
Induce the viewer to think about the substance rather than about methodology, graphic design, the technology of graphic production, or something else.
Avoid distorting what the data have to say.
Present many numbers in a small space.
Make large data sets coherent.
Encourage the eye to compare different pieces of data.
Reveal the data at several levels of detail, from a broad overview to the fine structure.
Serve a reasonably clear purpose: description, exploration, tabulation, or decoration.
Integrate closely with the statistical and verbal descriptions of a data set.[3]

But what if the reality apprehended is so intricate and complex that no distilled view can possibly do it justice? This is precisely the kind of challenge that big data presents, according to information designer Manuel Lima:

The complex connectedness of modern times requires new tools of analysis and exploration, but above all, it demands a new way of thinking. It demands a pluralistic understanding of the world that is able to envision the wider structural plan and at the same time examine the intricate mesh of connections among its smallest elements. It ultimately calls for a holistic systems approach; it calls for network thinking.[4]

In what he terms “network visualization,” Lima evokes a new visual language, characterized by cluttered, multidimensional representations focused on data clusters and their myriad relations rather than on isolated data. Relational and systemic, network visualization is more related to discourses on rhizomatic structures, emergence, and complexity and chaos theories than to, say, Cartesianism. Similarly, art historian Susanne Leeb expands the understanding of graphic design theory, and more specifically the notion of the diagram, to include another view. Some, like Tufte, view the diagram as a tool for retrospective systematization by synthesizing and ordering myriad factors into a single analytical figure. Others perceive the diagram as a prospective, relational map in constant emergence. Leeb doesn’t see these two perspectives—retrospective and systematic versus prospective and evolutive—as mutually exclusive, but rather as inherent facets of the diagram that are always in tension. In other words, diagrams can be tools of systematization, but they can also become destabilizing agents of discovery.[5] This heuristic understanding of the diagram aligns with Deleuzian thought. In an essay centred on Foucault’s philosophy, Deleuze states that the diagram never represents a pre-existing world but instead produces a new type of reality, a new model of truth. The diagram makes history by undoing preceding realities and significations, constituting so many points of emergence and creativity, unforeseen conjunctions, and improbable continuums. The diagram overrides history with new becomings.[6]

Anthropologists Anthony McCosker and Rowan Wilken consider the current fascination with big data as an expression of the mathematical sublime.[7] Within this proliferation of data, graphic designers become the new oracles, formulating graphic models that in turn shape our understanding of reality. They become the enunciators of knowledge and powerful visual rhetoricians. Just like language, data visualization can be used sophistically, tweaked into fallacious arguments. The longstanding debate around income inequality offers countless examples of such biased schematization. Take, for instance, Stephanie Evergreen’s argument on the misuse of color in data visualization and the incidental perpetuation of economic and racial inequalities.[8] By abstracting complex realities and codifying them into graphic conventions, data visualization at its best has the power to reveal intangible realities; at its worst, to inflict symbolic violence.

In the economic theories probed by Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens, diagrams reduce revenue flows, profit margins, labor forces, and the trading of resources to highly rationalized and hierarchized conceptual spaces. In economics diagrams take on a Foucauldian slant, their content susceptible to being used as a form of political technology, a device for control and governance situating subject and object in relation to one another and mapping out the shifting channels of power. Decision-making instances, for example—no longer rooted in bounded territories—now base their actions on an incommensurate heap of data denoting such parameters as gross domestic product, birth rate, life expectancy, national debt, currency value, and, of course, income disparity.

Against this backdrop, Ibghy & Lemmens give material form to charts and graphs culled from academic journals, essays, and conference proceedings in order to expose the arbitrariness of these visual languages and the extent of their power of abstraction. All that remains of the complexity of the realities represented by these charts are data that have been singled out and distributed across Cartesian grids. By questioning the strategies of representation employed by economists, Ibghy & Lemmens launch an epistemological inquiry into the construction of knowledge and the rhetorical power of data visualization. The works shown in Measures of Inequity include replicated diagrams of the trickle-down theory, disparities in access to care for selected groups, and income inequality in emerging countries. Classical economics abstractions like the Lorenz Curve, which maps out the distribution of wealth, are meticulously—albeit imperfectly—rendered using thread or color acetate fixed to wood skewers or plywood and propped on makeshift tables. The delicate materiality and alluring aesthetics of these works somehow undermine the authority of the original data, exposing their narrative construction. As Murtaza Vali explains, “These material effects seem to soften the data—it becomes palatable and possibly even somewhat pliable, making the inequities measured no longer feel irreversible.”[9]

The aesthetic connection between Ibghy & Lemmens’ corpus of works and avant-garde Modernism has been repeatedly observed. While in past projects, this citational trait suggested an overturning of the Russian Constructivist infatuation with progress and productivity,[10] in Measures of Inequity it takes on a new meaning. Productivity is a central point in the ongoing debate about economic inequality. If some politicians and economists like Newt Gingrich seem satisfied with macroeconomics, rounding off economic growth to the gross domestic product and viewing income inequality as a mere collateral effect, others instead emphasize the question of productivity. Such is the case with Nobel laureates Paul Krugman and Paul Stiglitz, both of whom distinguish between wealth generated through productive endeavour (start-ups, innovative working contexts, etc.) and what Gillian White describes as rent-seeking: “the practice of increasing wealth by taking it from others rather than generating any actual economic activity.”[11] The increased financialization of economics tilts the balance of wealth towards this register of economic activity to an unprecedented degree, to the detriment of the ninety-nine percent who are left out of the game.

Furthermore, when Stiglitz argues that income inequality creates “a society with a gaping hole, not only in its economic makeup, but in its morality,”[12] he points to even harsher discrepancies, like unequal opportunity among marginalized groups. Krugman follows his lead by factoring in privilege:

“It would be foolish to deny that some people are, in fact, a lot more productive than average. It would be equally foolish, however, to deny that great success in business (or, actually, anything else) has a strong element of luck—not just the luck of being the first to stumble on a highly profitable idea or strategy, but also the luck of being born to the right parents.”[13]

If the United States excels in economic inequality (what Krugman ironically defines as a case of American exceptionalism), the global scope of the Occupy Movement eloquently demonstrates how generalized this gap of opportunity has become. The Occupy Movement was a univocal outcry in response to the globalization and capital mobility that brought down wages globally, destroying many middle-income jobs while consolidating wealth in the hands of a few financial-market speculators. And, in an eternal return, women have recently marched on Washington, D.C., as the 45th president of the United States gets down to business at the White House flanked by his Goldman Sachs–affiliated cabinet, following a campaign bent on capitalizing on anti-establishment discourses and dismissing minority groups (if anyone other than male, white, and heterosexual can be properly termed a “minority”).

Like Donald Trump’s campaign, the diagrams craftily replicated by Ibghy & Lemmens point to the distillation of richly complex reality into a reductionist language. A sense of loss emanates from Measures of Inequity: the loss of human richness, ambivalence, and singularity. In his essay “Against Infographics,” historian Daniel Rosenberg explains this:

“Anyone who uses data knows that clarity comes with trade-offs in many dimensions
. . . . We lose embeddedness. We lose traces of intention, local connections, and clues to what was hard and easy to understand—what needed explaining in the first place. The history of data graphics is a history of legends, cribs for reading, pointers on what is foreground and what is meant to stay to the back.”[14]

Rosenberg goes on to appropriate and overturn Tufte’s principles of graphic excellence.

These détournements aptly summarize the attitude adopted by Ibghy & Lemmens vis-à-vis data visualization:

Show the graphics.
Induce the viewer to think about the substance, methodology, design, technology, and aspects of production, dissemination, and consumption.
Highlight the manipulation of data in every representation.
Present many graphic elements in a small space.
Attend to incoherencies in large data sets.
Encourage the eye to compare different visual arrangements of the same subject.
Reveal epistemological differences produced by changes of scale.
Clarify the purposes and implications of data representations.
Show how verbal and graphic devices interact in data representation.[15]

Ibghy & Lemmens take this undermining of infographics a step further by confronting visual abstractions with the stubborn presence of matter so as to reintegrate them into the complex matrix of reality. The craftsmanship and aesthetic savviness implied in these reconstitutions point to the constructed nature and rhetorical agenda of visualized knowledge. Far from merely reflecting reality, Ibghy & Lemmens reposition data visualization as a crafted conceptual apparatus able to compose new perspectives on reality and influence decisional power in tangible ways. As such, data visualization is structurally analogous to financial speculation. Both are radical forms of abstraction levelling down the world’s rich complexities, only to have greater influence on the unfolding of concrete matters. Reframing these abstracted systems within the contingencies of everyday materiality, Ibghy & Lemmens undermine their slick veneer of objectivity and expose their susceptibility to ideological bias in the form of cracks, gaps, makeshift collage, and exquisitely imperfect sculptures. The careful handling of materials, the confection of intricate and fragile forms, the aesthetic choices that are made by the artists all mirror—and undermine—the decisions, manipulations, and agendas that go into data visualization. Having passed through Ibghy & Lemmens’ hands, graphs and charts have to be taken for what they fundamentally are: elaborate, inventive, and value-laden narratives. Amazing how the mundane qualities of acetate, thread, and plywood have the capacity to annihilate the auratic authority of abstraction, and to let critical knowledge seep through their imperfect seams.

This essay is by Gentiane Bélanger, Director/Curator, Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke, Quebec.

Image: Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens, installation view of Measures of Inequity, 2016. Photo by Martin Parsekian.

[1] Lev Manovich, foreword in Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information, by Manuel Lima (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011), 11-13.

[2] Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd ed. (Cheshire: Graphics Press, 2001), 191.

[3] Ibid., 13.

[4] Manuel Lima, Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011), 46.

[5] Susanne Leeb, “A Line with Variable Direction, which Traces No Contour, and Delimits No Form,” in Drawing a Hypothesis: Figures of Thought, ed. Nikolaus Gansterer (Vienna: Springer-Verlag, 2011), 29-42.

[6] “Le diagramme ne fonctionne jamais pour représenter un monde préexistant, il produit un nouveau type de réalité, un nouveau modèle de vérité. […] Il fait l’histoire en défaisant les réalités et les significations précédentes, constituant autant de points d’émergence et de créativité, de conjonctions inattendues, de continuums improbables. Il double l’histoire avec un devenir.” Gilles Deleuze, Foucault (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1986), 43.

[7] Anthony McCosker and Rowan Wilken, “Rethinking ‘big data’ as visual knowledge: the sublime and the diagrammatic in data visualisation,” Visual Studies 29, no. 2 (2014): 155-164.

[8] “How Dataviz Can Unintentionally Perpetuate Inequality: The Bleeding Infestation Example,” http://stephanieevergreen.com/dataviz-inequality_pt1/.

The example she points to consists of a map of households with an income under a certain threshold, which coincidentally correlates with neighbourhoods of minority groups. The data are visualized as red dots, making the zones of concentrated poverty resemble bleeding wounds or disease scars on the map. What was intended as mere information emerges instead as stigmatizing.

[9] Murtaza Vali, “Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens,” Artforum: Critics’ picks, https://www.artforum.com/picks/id=63301.

[10] See Gentiane Bélanger, “Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens: Putting Life to Work,” C Magazine 131, Autumn 2016, 67-68.

[11] Gillian B. White, “Stiglitz: Here’s How to Fix Inequality,” The Atlantic, November 2, 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/stiglitz-heres-how-to-fix-inequality/413761/.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Paul Krugman, “Is Vast Inequality Necessary?,” The New York Times, January 15, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/15/opinion/is-vast-inequality-necessary.html.

[14] Daniel Rosenberg, “Against Infographics,” Art Journal 74, no. 4, Winter 2015, 56.

[15] Ibid., 57.

This is a conversation held January 24, 2018, between ISCP Ground Floor alumnus Cheon pyo Lee and ISCP Executive Director Susan Hapgood at El Museo de Los Sures about Lee’s Offsite Project Alibi of Autonomy.

Susan Hapgood (SH): Cheon, hi. You have been here in residence at El Museo de Los Sures for how long?

Cheon pyo Lee (CPL): I was in residence for roughly 4 months, from October 12, 2017, to January 24, 2018.

SH: Could talk a little bit about what you did and how you connected to the neighborhood?

CPL: When I first moved in, my plan was to host as many public events as possible on a small scale. I noticed that the space and location are good, but not enough events are happening. So, since the shutter is often down, people don’t know what the space is about although there is a big sign but it’s sometimes closed. I hosted and publicized a few events throughout the residency, but a lot of times, whenever I was in the studio working I would have the shutter up and the doors open. I also listed my studio hours in the project press release so people could just drop in and talk to me. The interesting part is that previous neighbors would just come in wanting to meet the new neighbor. So, they would talk a lot about the changes that happened in Williamsburg. And I used to have my studio in the early 2000s where the early developments are now.

SH: Where is that?

CPL: Just by the Williamsburg Bridge. There used to be a squat in the basement. There were about 50 artists living there, and many of them still live in the area now. They came in here and talked to me about the changes in the neighborhood. I would invite them back to the space when I had events, and I took their contact information to make sure they knew about them.

SH: Were there many people who live in the different housing facilities of Los Sures that dropped by to see what was happening, too?

CPL: Yeah!

SH: Do you speak Spanish?

CPL: I do speak Spanish. That probably helped.

SH: I’m curious how often you were speaking Spanish and how often were you speaking English?

CPL: I spoke Spanish whenever I got comfortable, really. I don’t want to assume that anyone speaks Spanish because a lot of younger generations –

SH: Are bilingual.

CPL: Yes, and they prefer English. But speaking Spanish definitely helps. It’s easy to connect that way.

SH: So you were here, the days were like Tuesday to…?

CPL: Tuesdays to Thursdays, from 11am to 7pm.

SH: That is an amazing amount of time.

CPL: I wanted to take advantage of the space. I was actually here more often than that to be honest.

SH: Really?

CPL: Yes. But those were the public hours that I had because sometimes I would be recording a video shoot and then I would close the door, obviously. But I felt that was a big part of the agreement that I had with ISCP when you invited me to do this, to be open and involve the people around here.

SH: Well it is a big part. I mean one of the reasons ISCP is working with El Museo de Los Sures is to activate the community with contemporary art. Thank you very much for taking that so seriously. It’s a big responsibility.

CPL: I do care. I live in Brooklyn and I do think it’s important that artists are more approachable. Surprisingly the neighborhood residents show a lot of interest. And they give you feedback which is very interesting, especially with my work, which is political and has a lot to do with geography. It was really useful to receive that feedback; the more formal comments I receive from other artists is very different.

SH: Yeah, sure. And understanding what a non-art person sees is a really valuable thing, people who don’t necessarily know about the history of art and what’s happening in contemporary practice.

CPL: Yeah, it made me rethink how I present my work and it was very humbling.

SH: Interesting. Would you say that some of the people that stopped by went away with a very different, broadened understanding of what contemporary art could be, or what it could do?

CPL: Definitely. Also, since my work is very collaborative, I think it was refreshing for them to ask: “your name is on the door but why do you have so many other artists working with you?”

SH: Because artists are supposed to be individual hero geniuses, right?

CPL: Yes, because that is the myth created.

SH: Agreed. So, how many public events did you organize during your time here?

CPL: I hosted four events. The very first one was about development–it wasn’t very complicated aesthetically. The theme was centered around upbringing and the American education system, with all male participating artists. This led to conversations about masculinity in today’s society and how fragile that is, really. Lately there is a lot of talk about feminism, which, I think, goes in part with the dialogue about masculinity. A lot of misogynists are fragile beings, mentally. I also hosted a video screening in second languages, which included performance videos and choreography. That was fun. I also curated a group show about landscape, and organized a book release. That was the last event. Some of the writers read passages and explained their project, and there was also a performance.

SH: Did you get good attendance?

CPL: Yes! Surprisingly so.

SH: Did you get a mix of art people and neighborhood residents?

CPL: Definitely many non-art attendees in the last event, probably because I had time to advertise that there would be an event happening in the area. Many neighbors came. I think the neighbors were still trying to figure out what was going in during the first couple of months of the residency.

SH: It takes time. I think that the duration of your project has everything to do with it, too. One final question: I find very interesting the way you are so loose and open about what your practice is as an artist. All of the projects you’ve done during this residency–do you consider them to be a part of your practice as an artist? And if so, how do you capture that? It’s an impossible question but I’m still asking!

CPL: As a young artist, I am still trying figure out my own language. Lately though, I do feel a sense of responsibility because of how much support I am receiving for my practice, both monetary support and the physical space that ISCP offered me here at El Museo de Los Sures.

I think a lot of artists are becoming part administrator, part teacher and still fulfilling the romantic artist role. The combination of these three roles creates important artwork. This assimilation of positions was a process through which I started understanding how to care about fellow artists, as well as realize what more there is to learn. I ran the space so it was easier for me to explain the project to a more general audience, but since I am not a trained curator or teacher, doing so was humbling. And then again, there were times when I needed to be alone to develop my projects. All these elements definitely informed my practice.

SH: So, would you say that what you just described captures the title of your residency Alibi of Autonomy?

CPL: As a contemporary artist, my understanding of art is not just formal. This entire project was a way for me to understand the context and situation in which I work, to in turn better myself.

SH: Amazing!

Journal

April 13, 2017

Interview about Open Studios with Dennis Elliott, Founder of the International Studio & Curatorial Program

by Juliana Cope

March 01, 2018