Eric Andersen : Liaison [213]

Eric Andersen, a contributor to the New York ABAD exhibition at The Emily Harvey Foundation, launches his Liaison at Nikolaj Kunsthal in Copenhagen, Denmark on Friday 15 March, 2013.

On each of the exhibition days Eric will invite everyone to a jam session (he will play an organ concert at the end of the day) beginning at 7:30 PM.

See more here: Nikolaj Kunsthal.

Brandstifter: Lost & Found in Mainz [205]

Brandstifter: Lost & Found 2012… Asphaltbibliotheque Mainz

June 06 - August 26, Main Station Square, 55116 Mainz

Brandstifter, the German conceptual artist who performed a cassette tape reading at the Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery opening of A Book About Death in 2009 has set up shop in Mainz, Germany.

The conceptual installation with lost & found sheets of paper from the streets of Mainz collected by Brandstifter are presented on the outside of an accessible wooden cube in front of main station for three months (through August)at the art in public space project by V.E.B. Freie Brandstiftung in cooperation with Kulturdezernat Landeshauptstadt Mainz.

Visitors or passerby can take part in the exhibition by submitting their found papers for the participative project in the mail box at the cube. The Asphalt Librarian will turn them into large Blow ups and integrate them into the constantly changing exhibition. Brandstifter developed his concept Asphaltbibliotheque for archiving found pieces of papers at Mainzer Galerie Walpodenstraße 21 in 1998.

Since then he collects and exhibits them worldwide for example 2009 as artist in residency at Flux Factory New York with grants by Schloss Balmoral, Stiftung Rheinland-Pfalz für Kultur. The three month exhibition will be guided by an opening reception on June 16, 6pm in the shape of an EXCHANGE BUREAU FOR LOST&FOUND SHEETS OF PAPER, a 24h performance with members of the performing arts ensemble “Raum (0)” on July 27, a FLUX exchange project arcross the river Rhine with Ben Patterson (A Penny for your thoughts) at the cube in Mainz and Brandstifter at Ben's Pavillion, Museum Wiesbaden as well as an art zine that displays the progress of the project and lost&found art that can be submitted by E-mail through brand@brand-stiftung.net

Pre-Fluxus Time Travel Circus: LuAnn Palazzo [197]

ABAD artist and curator LuAnn Palazzo opens up an exhibition at The Second Avenue Firehouse Gallery in Bay Shore, New Yokr (on Long Island) that touches upon interspatiaion time travelling: Pre FLuxus Time Travel Circus.  The international mail system, the physical world and time are the subjects of this show that features selections from the high flying art world.

The exhibition opens on Sunday May 6, 2012, from 2 - 5 PM.  The exhibition fruns from May 6 through May 28.  Call: 631.669.3236.

For more information: http://www.secondavenuefirehouse.com/

Assemblings At The Ontological Museum & ABAD [191]

Assemblings (Part One) – Inaugural Exhibition! From the Archives of the Eternal Network at the Ontological Museum (OM) in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, USA.

Opens: March 10, 2012 and runs through April 15, 2012
Location: 262 Pagosa Street, Pagosa Springs, Colorado 81147 – tel. 817-944-4000
Opening Reception: Saturday March 10, 2012 from 5:00pm – 7:00pm
Winter Hours: Tues through Saturday 2:00pm - 5:00pm

On view will be a selection of Assemblings including Franticham’s Assembling Boxes from Ireland; Art/Life Magazine, Tensetendoned - We Absorb assemblings; Fluxkits from Fluxpress Saint Louis, Bamboo Assemblings, KART magazine (an assembling publication from Australia); Fluxlist Fluxbox; Post cards from the assembling: A Book About Death; selections from the Fluxcase Micro Museum. Additional related works from the Permanent Collection will also be on view.

What are Assemblings?
Assemblings are collections or compilations of works of art, multiples, objects, writings, visual poetry and/or ephemera submitted by a network of participants to a single hub where a central editor collates one copy from each artists' edition of submitted materials into a number of portfolios. A common practice is for the editor to then send back one folio or assembling of works to each participating member. Assemblings might be in the form of a box of loose materials, a bound book or magazine format, etc. or even be a collection of sound works or short videos. On view for this exhibit are examples of assemblings in box form, magazine format, an unbound book and as collections of objects. In fact the museum itself is an assembling in its own right.

History of Assemblings
Assemblings - as shown in this exhibit - have been created since the early 1960’s as artists, writers, and small independent printers worked on developing alternative, underground distribution networks for their experimental art and literature. As the art and literary worlds came to be controlled by powerful and well established business interests that, in essence, were seen as cultural gate keepers, the creative community experimented with direct mailings and other self-initiated ways to reach out to their collaborators and extended audiences; what we would call today niche markets based primarily on networks of people with similar interests. This kind of experimentation led directly to the establishment of the international Mail Art community known as the Eternal Network which celebrates its 50 year anniversary this year as does Fluxus, an amorphous group of artists that has been highly influential in developing the Mail Art scene in the 60’s and 70’s and on through to the present.

About the OM
The Ontological Museum, established in 1994 as an experimental art museum, opens it’s new space in Pagosa Springs with this exhibition. The museum houses an internationally focused collection of art that numbers in the tens of thousands of items and growing through direct donations of works from artists. The museum collects inclusively within the parameters of its mission that includes several interrelated fields: collage, assemblage and constructive art in general as well as works from the contemporary Fluxus and Mail Art communities and the art groups: The International Post-Dogmatist Group, The Massurrealist Group, the International Society of Assemblage and Collage Artists and the Neoist Society. Also in the collection are snapshot photography, visual poetry, small press publications, artist books, and the plethora of documentation, correspondence art and ephemera related to these communities and groups.

The Ontological Museum - now open in Pagosa Springs, Colorado - has been a mobile museum keeping works in storage and using exhibition spaces in various locations including commercial art galleries, university galleries, contemporary art centers and museums around the country. The founding director, Cecil Touchon, has curated fifteen+ museum exhibitions and published more than twenty-five related books and catalogs since starting the exhibition program in 2007.
Visit online at http://ontologicalmuseum.org email: info@ontologicalmuseum.org

FluxFest Chicago [144]

Cecil Touchon, Director, The Ontological Museum, directed this photograph of participants of FluxFest Chicago, held recently in Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art.  Many participants of this festival also participated in and hosted ABAD exhibitions. The Fluxfest was spearheaded by artist Keith Buchholz. Click the photo to enlarge full screen. (It's a fisheye!). PHOTO © 2011 CECIL TOUCHON.

Fluxface in Space [93]

A Book About Death has helped in many ways to bring artists together, and the result has been a number of group projects that span the globe, tapping the enormous number of creative talents for ever new exhibitions. The most recent is Fluxface in Space, organized by artists Gary A. Bibb and Cecil Touchon.

The essentials: Create a work of art about space exploration, photograph yourself with it and upload it to the NASA web site (yes, the government web site), and then submit it to the Fluxface in Space project for exhibition. (Image, top: Angela Ferrara's poster for the event/exhibition).

Bibb and Touchon write on the Facebook Group Event Page for the project: "Gary A. Bibb in collaboration with Cecil Touchon have conceived an exciting new exhibition project for the Fluxmuseum. Using the Face In Space Program from NASA - we are organizing a 'Fluxface in Space' exhibition to be launched into orbit on the last two Space Shuttles!

"Artists are to create one original postcard sized work of art in any media (preferably collage/ photo-montage) with the themes of Space Exploration & the Arts, the Shuttle Program, Outerspace, Rockets, Astronauts, Astronomy etc . This will be a commemorative project around the fact that the Space Shuttle program is coming to an end after these last two flights."

See the Fluxface in Space Website.

Francesco Conz (1935 - 2010) [75]

Francesco Conz (1935 - 2010)

Visit Archivio Francesco Conz.

Brandstifter NYC Performance : Das Band des Todes / The Tape of Death [42]

Brandstifter's original performance, Das Band des Todes, at A Book About Death, September 10, 2009 at the Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery, NYC, NY.

Zunächst stellte ich mich allen Besuchern der Emily Harvey Galerie persönlich vor und bat sie über ein Mikrofon ihren Namen auf eine Audiokassette in meinen tragbaren Kassettenrecorder zu sprechen. Bei der Performance spielte ich dann das Band mit den vor einer Stunde aufgenommen Namen und Hintergrundgeräuschen von der Ausstellungseröffnung ab. An den Anfang der Kassette hatte ich den Hinweis, dass alle nachfolgend genannten Personen sterben werden, aufgenommen. Nachdem der letzte Name verkündet war nahm ich die Kassette aus dem Abspielgerät, drängte mich durchs Publikum, zog dabei das Band aus der Kassette und verband damit die Anwesenden. Ich weiß nicht ob jemand der Teilnehmer mittlerweile verstorben ist, aber wir werden...

– Brandstifter, New York, 10/31 2009

Brandstifter (Firestarter) is an interdisciplinary Artist and Networker from Germany, and is currently Balmoral Artist in Residence at Flux Factory, New York. Through Happening and Visual and Perfomance Art, as well as sound and music, he uses communicative means of social interaction to transform anarchic concepts from everyday life into burning-down-the-house Intermedia. See Brandstifter's website : www.brand-stiftung.net