Kristopher Swick

Working Document: An opportunity to remember, a memorial ritual for Minami Sanriku

Posted by Kristopher Swick on November 17, 2011

Nov 172011

This is a working document. Our team is developing this project and the method of its exhibition for the Zones of Emergency seminar. Team members are Daniela Covarrubias, Jenine Kotob, Adrian Melia, Micah Silver, and kswick.

Introduction:

Our team has been presented with a difficult challenge, requiring the greatest level of finesse and delicacy: we need to provide the people of Minami Sanriku a gift, a gift that would provide for them on opportunity to reflect on the tragedy they survived and a hope for the future of their families and their community.

To begin working towards this goal, we have studied lectures and texts and worked through individual design projects to better understand the unique and essential role art can play in zones of emergency. We are in a privileged position, and we must call upon our specific skills and ample resources to contribute what we can to downtrodden Japan.

Yet, we also recognize that, as American academics, we need to tread lightly when creating for a different cultural group that has experienced a tragedy we can barely comprehend. Japanese culture is rich and nuanced, and can be the subject of an entire career’s anthropological research. As a result, we commit to create a piece for Minami Sanriku that is culturally sensitive but that stands decidedly separate and independent, free of sophomoric attempts at reappropriation of local cultural symbols and complexities.

We, instead, are cultivating a project founded both in our independent research and experience and the precedents and treatises discussed in class and lecture. To begin, team members agreed upon a goal of ritualizing memory. We brainstormed individually and came upon a selection of viable options that seemed to cooperate better than expected. So we’ve determined to integrate these individual ideas into one, extended ritual.

The Project:

Ritual Outline

Part 1, Extended period of individual reflection

This segment of the ritual is an opportunity for individual residents of Minami Sanriku to reenact their life before the wave.

A base station will be established within Minami Sanriku, most likely at an administrative municipal office or community meeting space. Kept at this base will be a few large white weather balloons that are maintained and kept inflated by a local partner. They will each carry a small video camera and gps tracking mechanism and will be anchored by a weight that can be carried easily. The weight will contain a supply of pigmented biodegradable growing medium and floral seeds. Individual residents will then be invited to “check-out” an individual balloon, with the balloons being made available over a long period so that many residents have the opportunity to interact with the project.

Once an individual resident receives a balloon and turns on the video-recorder and gps tracker, they will be instructed to “reenact their life before the wave;” they have been given a supply of colorful seeds and asked to place the seeds in spots or along paths throughout the city in which they spent time. They can grab a chunk of seeds from the container anchoring the balloon and carefully scatter them close to the ground to outline their paths or populate spots in which they spend time, adding more to significant spaces. As they tour the town, they can describe their activities and share anecdotes. The camera attached to the balloon will document their path as well as these verbal anecdotes, and the gps will provide data so their path can be mapped.

After the resident has returned the balloon, the video of their experience and the gps data will be collected and submitted to our team here in Cambridge. We can then map their path and add data points that will feature their verbal anecdotes; all of which will be posted on a communal webpage available locally and abroad. We hope that this page will become a database of stories and visual representations of Minami Sanriku’s life before the wave.

Part 2, A day of communal remembrance

After the webpage has been populated with a map annotated with the individual stories, the few balloon-camera combinations will be replaced by a large collection of smaller balloons without cameras but still anchored to containers of the pigmented seed mix discussed above. Each balloon will contain a small handheld LED that will be turned on at the beginning of the festival. Also, a larger, remote controlled balloon will be provided with a more expensive specialized camera that can video the entire city from above.

Residents will gather together in the early afternoon and be asked to reenact their lives before the wave together. The balloons will be distributed and they will be asked to perform a similar procedure as described above. But instead of sharing verbal memories, they will simply be asked to visually document their activities with the pigmented seed-mix. As the sun sets, the LED lights will become more prominent.

The entire festivity will be documented from above throughout the day, documenting the movement of the balloons and the light paths created after sunset. Photos will be taken by the same module the next morning to document the distribution of the seed-mix. The video will be compiled and sped up, and will be posted in a shorter format online and also given to the community. In addition, one of the photos from the morning after will be blown up and printed in a extra-large format and framed and given to the community to be displayed in a commonspace or administrative building.

Physical Gift

The above is an outline for a series of activities, which would require a substantial investment of time and money to be realized. For the seminar, our team is working on a gift for Minami Sanriku that would provide a description of the ritual, a documentation of its development, and a physical example of some part of the ritual.

Booklet

We are planning a small booklet that would provide a detailed description of the ritual, accompanied by logistical data and images of the different parts. We will also provide images and a video of a small practice-ritual which we’ll carry out and document locally.

Balloon

The major physical element of the gift will be a large box containing a small inflated white balloon similar to the one described for the second part of the ritual, the day of communal remembrance. It will be anchored to the container of seed-mix, which we’ll design carefully to be handheld and light.

Lucy Walker #2

Posted by Kristopher Swick on October 31, 2011

Oct 312011

I’d like to reflect on the readings and promotional material about WASTELAND in two ways: focusing on its tactical framing and its meaning/message.

Tactical Framing

As Faye has introduced, one of the central intricacies of any tactical intervention is its inevitable affect on the communities in which it intervenes. Many interventions are oriented towards affecting the subject community; perhaps the intervention is meant to raise awareness about an internal problem within a community or frustrate the inner-workings of a questionable institution. Other interventions are oriented towards raising awareness about a victimized community to outsiders that might have the ability to positively affect said community; many documentaries, such as those issue by Survival International, are used to garner interest or sympathy. Survival is an interesting case study, because several of their promotional films are about “Uncontacted Tribes,” produced with the express goal of not affecting the subject Tribe. Whether the films are successful in maintaining this distance is up to interpretation.

In her Director’s Statement, Lucy Walker makes conscientious mention of this issue, which she calls the “Observer’s Dilemma.” And she declares:

I don’t believe in objectivity. I observe the observer’s paradox every moment I’m filming. Your presence is changing everything; there’s no mistaking it. And you have a responsibility.

The attention she pays to this issue sustains the efficacy of her work. She makes no airs of objectivity, of removing herself from her subject. She writes that making the documentary should be as transformative for the subject as it is for the filmmaker. If done carefully, this transformation can be long-lasting and beneficial to both parties. Because she’s chosen an artist (Vik Muniz) that is intimately familiar with Rio de Janeiro (and Brazil) and has been working in the subject community for some time, I believe that her film is successful in maintaining this rigorous attention to context and agency. The intentions of her team are clearly delineated for members of the subject community and observers alike, so they become conscious and can benefit from the film and its narrative.

Meaning

I am strongly drawn to the subject of this documentary. Waste is something every member of Modern society interacts with on a daily basis. It’s production and disposal are the subject of much legislation, billions in governmental and municipal budgets, and increasing public attention as activists and intellectuals rally to the sustainability battle-cry. As artists and architects, its an immediate concern in our work and research.

Personally, I struggle with the reality of waste in my existence: every day I consume and dispose, consume and dispose, endlessly. And I am aware of the substantial economic, social, and environmental impact of that behavior. I find myself intermittently trying to mitigate the impact of this behavior, but at the end of the day these changes create minimal affect; to truly alter the damage inflicted by this behavior, I would need to entirely detach myself from the infrastructural and societal mechanisms that sustain me. And this is a jump that is impossible to imagine.

I, therefore, appreciate WASTELAND’s tactical method of addressing this crisis: it creates meaning across a broader audience, which can accomplish substantial change with more modest but unified behavioral changes. Affected audience-members can also rally together and demand change from their legislators and governmental representatives, thereby causing change on a greater scale.

I’m excited to see the film and garner from it my own interpretation and reinvigorated dedication to both sustainability and conscientious tactical design.

[ipa] investigating crisis

Posted by Kristopher Swick on September 29, 2011

Sep 292011

contested space case study

[Quoted from previous project proposal]

http://ipacambridge.com/

Current Initiative: The Institute for Profitable Art, an art startup – residency at the CIC

Introduction:

We are happy to announce that we’ve secured our curatorial residency at the Cambridge Innovation Center! So on to the innovation!

Until the end of Summer 2011, our head curator, kswick, will be setting up shop at least once a week in the CIC’s “Co-Working Space,” a space where small start-ups can work in an office setting with minimal commitment of capital and time to establishing a permanent office; clients of this section of the CIC, also called C3, pay the lowest “rental” fee monthly but have access to all of the CIC’s resources, including the kitchen, dining area, conference rooms, common spaces, lounges, and even quick shower rooms.

As the ipa transitions into a commercial venture, we’ll be focusing and building the company and garnering profit; everything we do will be oriented towards making money (like any successful capitalist venture)! At the CIC we’ll have an excellent opportunity to experiment with installing projects for a commercial client with minimal consequences, since they won’t actually be paying us! To strengthen our organization, we’ll be able to learn the language of commerce from those who are innovating in that space and take notes on successful methods of garnering capital investment from third party entities. We’ll also learn about the dynamics of a proper and profitable relationship between client and company, and perhaps even recruit potential clients or collaborators from the ranks of the commercially innovative. And of course we’ll have a very comfortable workspace with all of the amenities we might need.

From the knowledge we gather, we’ll be able to innovate in the commercial art space and perhaps carve out a niche for the ipa as the most commercially competent arts organization!

Phases of the Residency:

We’ve divided our plan of action into phases that are centered on common key tasks of commercial ventures:

Phase #1: Advertising/Market Infiltration

First, we need to make sure that the CIC’s clients know about us! As of now, we are simply another one of the CIC’s C3 clients. But we’ve been tasked to interact with the CIC community to install a collection of work for their physical space. So we’re going to do an intervention in the form of stealthy guerilla marketing. Our first project for the CIC:

Art Objects – Art Objects is an investigation of what the common person is willing to certify as “art”; if they consider a piece as art, we also want to know what they think its worth in the currency of exchange closest to their hearts, money (as opposed to meaning, magnanimity, spiritual validation, etc.). And we want to know if we can get away with calling our advertising campaign art; we might even stumble upon a workable and conceptually strong fusion of advertising and art!

We will be creating unusable realistic three-dimensional sculptures that mimic mundane objects throughout the CIC and that bear stickers announcing “property of the ipa.” The pieces will be red-orange (to obey our promotional color scheme) cast plastic facsimiles created by thermo-forming sheet-plastic around mundane objects like fruit, silverware, coffee cups, etc.

These objects will then be placed amongst the objects they mimic so that the CIC’s clients will interact with them as they carry out their daily work routine. On our first day at the CIC, our curator explored the CIC and documented the space in a series of quick photographs and notes. The public poster designed for this project shows cartoon versions of these objects and their respective locations in the CIC.

The CIC client will hopefully discover these foreign objects placed in their workspace and question their purpose and origins: they might ponder the mundane objects they represent as interesting symbols of their work (and physical elements of their physical world) often taken for granted or they might wonder whether the pieces are a silly prank or meaningful works of art. But they will also develop an interest in the ipa, the organization that has imposed these foreign pieces into the fabric of their space.

At the end of their installation life, the pieces will be available for purchase. A catalogue featuring each piece will be published and made available once they have been installed; it will also be referenced in the project’s public posters. We’ll be interested to see whether the clients will certify the work as art and, if so, will they then have an interest in purchasing the pieces. We might also install a comments box in the common space where clients can leave notes on their responses to the intervention.

For reference, we’ll note that a precedent for this “subtle intervention” methodology is the work done by the Institute for Infinitely Small Things (http://www.ikatun.org/institute/infinitelysmallthings/), an organization that has a faux-legitimate face like the corporate ipa. Many of their projects, particularly The New American Dictionary, was developed and propagated as a sort of infiltration exercise to demonstrate a particular message. Art Objects will also call attention to mundane objects often taken for granted, often a goal of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things.

Phase #2: Market Research

From day one at the CIC, we’ve been gathering information about the space and its occupants. We will continue to observe and hopefully interview our fellow CIC clients. From the project proposal:

We’d like to know what kind of art they most appreciate and enjoy; we want to know what they’d pick to display in their workspace. In conversation with the clients, we’d also like to investigate whether art can be more than just decoration in the workplace; could it promote a healthy business community and even stimulate the commercial success of their ventures? Can they profit from the art they choose for their workplace? We’ll document the regular workday for our curator and the other clients of the CIC. We’ll also audiovisual records of any interviews and discussion we have with the clientele. Hopefully, we’ll be able to reformat and present this documentation within the CIC and beyond.

Phase #3: Experimental Project Production Phase

From the project proposal:

Informed by our interactions with the clientele and our research, we’ll then curate a selection of physical and digital works to be featured around the CIC (on the walls, in the halls and common spaces, projected in the conference rooms, on the IPads and screens mounted on the walls, etc.) To give a sense of the work we might feature, here are some ideas:

A 3-dimensional manifestation of the representational graphics and logos that the clients use to brand and promote their ventures. This could be CNC milled 3D versions of the logos, collages based on the coloration of these images, or assemblages of objects in the form of these images.
Architectural installations meant to envelop the viewer, such as wall-bound aluminum or plastic geometries and ceiling-hung sculptural work.
Compilations of audiovisual clips that document the CIC, featured on the existing set of audiovisual equipment (when not in use by the clientele) or projected onto the bare walls or floors of the CIC’s common spaces.
Kitschy prints or reinterpretations of the art that clients recommend.

[ipa] profiting from crisis

Posted by Kristopher Swick on September 29, 2011

Sep 292011

for SALE: protest kits

I’m interested in creating a “protest kit” for use in civil disobedience and selling it to protesters in upcoming protests locally. This kit will be in the same vein as DIY kits and/or instructions made available by artists, activists, NGO’s, etc.

Examples:

G20 Toronto Protest Kit

“DON’T FORGET TO BRING ALONG A FUN ATTITUDE AND TEDDY WITH YOUR TEAR GAS REPELLENT”

September 15 Protest Kit and Shop

Planning or attending a protest in your area? Here are some resources to help you make an impact on September 15.

Organize Locally	Shirts, Slogans & Signs	Synchronize

Make contact with your local organizers, or if you do not see your city on our list, initiate an event in your area and reach out to friends and local groups to join.	Order one of our t-shirts.Have a local planning event or get together with your friends to make signs and practice chants.	Contact us about your local event and join our international network.

Deployment: OccupyBoston, Friday September 30

See link below to download and spread the pdf version!

Welcome to Occupy Boston. We do not represent any one union, activist group, or organization in Boston. We are a large gathering of disaffected, angry, fed up Americans from all walks of life. We represent only ourselves- the 99%. We find it very interesting (and telling) that the mainstream media continually accuses us of being a mass of fractured, disconnected causes, yet once we come together under the Occupy banner, they call us disorganized and expect us to come up with a singular demand.