Lauren Thorson: Station Model: 10012

Tuesday January 14, 2014 – Saturday January 18, 2014

An artist residency as part of the exhibition "Being"

Lauren Thorson. “Station Model: 10012” Week 12. Being, 2014. Storefront for Art and Architecture.

 

About the Project

“Station Model: 10012” will serve as a live weather reporting station and archive based upon digital and analog collection of meteorological observations for zip code 10012.

 

For live weather plotting updates, click here.

 

About the Artist

Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Lauren Thorson received her MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. She is fifty-percent of a design studio called Studio Set, and currently a Designer-In-Residence and Visiting Faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has exhibited and lectured nationally, worked as a designer, and has been published internationally (she was recently named one of The Walker Art Center’s “Ten Artists to Watch in 2013”). Thorson has served as co-chair for the IEEE VIS Arts Program for the past two years, while actively pursuing research in data visualization with the University of Minnesota’s Interactive Visualization Lab since 2011.

 

For regular updates, please visit FacebookTwitter, and Instagram

 

@storefrontnyc @lauren_thorson

Andrew Kovacs: Architectural Cliff

Tuesday January 7, 2014 – Saturday January 11, 2014

An artist residency as part of the exhibition Being

Week 11 / Jan 7 – 11, 2014

Architectural Cliff

Andrew Kovacs

 

About the project

The ambition for the Storefront Residency is to install a ‘Architectural Cliff’ in the narrowest part of the gallery. ‘Architectural Cliff’ is a vertical architectural model that will exploit part to part relationships, formal contiguities, the everyday, and the architectural. Oscillating between a collection and a hoard, ‘Architectural Cliff’ is composed of everyday objects that have architectural qualities as well as architectural models. This collision and compaction of objects forms a 3-dimensional spatial coalition that is a proposal for a space of architectural mountaineering. Each piece of ‘Architectural Cliff’ will be documented and cataloged by their inherent architectural qualities such as form, color, size, mass, etc., before being placed into the organized spatial hoard. This grotesque vertical beast will grow and evolve over the 5 day residency period until it fully fills and occupies the narrowest space at Storefront. 

-Andrew Kovacs
About the artist
Andrew Kovacs was born in Chicago, Illinois. He has worked for RE X in New York City, OMA/Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam and Atelier Bow-Wow in Tokyo.  In 2011 Kovacs received a Howard Crosby Butler Traveling Fellowship in Architecture from Princeton University for his proposal A Tale of Two Masterplans to study the architecture and urbanism of the two major cities in Kazakhstan – Astana and Almaty. His written work on architecture and urbanism has been published in journals such as PIDGIN, PROJECT, and CLOG. 

For regular updates, please visit Facebook and/or Twitter and/or Instagram

 

@storefrontnyc @afkovacs

studio nāv: “anachronistic drift”

Tuesday December 17, 2013 – Saturday December 21, 2013

An artist residency as part of the exhibition Being

Week 10 / Dec 17 – 21

“anachronistic drift”

studio nāv  


About the project

A space comes into existence when vectors of direction, velocities and time are set in motion. Most  spaces are defined by the meeting of numerous programs and desires; few more than the metropolis. 


Following the ten day traversal of the atlantic ocean; the vast “in-between” separating our 

continental frontiers (Europe and America) – we seek to examine how (deviant) time-space could shape  and re-imagine our encounter with the city of New York. As such diffusing the borders between real, i maginary, unproductive and (ana)chronistic space. 


Storefront offers a rare physical manifestation of encouraged interactivity and unanticipated encounters  purveying the urban environment. We believe this disclosure can lower the threshold and allow for a broader audience to approach us;  not only to inform themselves, but expand our own understanding of the context we have immersed  ourselves within. 


Emphasising the potential of this space we hope to create an experience raising questions around being, time and participation.

-studio nāv

 

About the artists

studio nāv consists of Carl Fransson and Thomas Paltiel, two architects and thinkers currently based in Stockholm and Trondheim. While educated primarily at Edinburgh College of Art where they both received their degrees in Architecture, their professional and educational experience has been more widespread: from Ecole Nationale Superieure d’architecture de Paris Belleville to Charles Pictet Architects and Fantastic Norway. Most recently the studio took part in the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Triennale.

 

Exploring emotive as well as intellectual reflection, their work locates itself somewhere between socio-political constructs and abstract expressionism. Whether it is architectures of temporality or permanence, the underlying ambition is to create or make visible the potential and/or particularity of a given context. Contrary to explicating answers their projects communicate a desire to initiate a process of questions, meetings and change; corralling attention to the manifold ideas about the forces and sensibilities of living.

 

This artist in residency is sponsored in by the Norwegian Ministry of Affairs and by Norsk Form, the Foundation for Design and Architecture in Norway. 

 

 

        

 

NICK AXEL: MAKING BEING DOING

Tuesday December 17, 2013 – Saturday December 21, 2013

An artist residency as part of the exhibition Being

Week 10 / Dec 17 – 21

MAKING BEING DOING

Nick Axel

 

About the project

What is a residency for? What does one do during a residency? One works. But what is work? In this particular sense work is a verb, but an empty verb at that. Apparently ambivalent, an economic form of the market teaches us that work is anything but neutral. Instead, work is highly prejudicial not only towards what fills its emptiness, but how it digests and what it excretes.


Work is also a noun, and a proper noun if you will. We are used to having various metrics such as efficiency, operativity, or the somewhat-mystical affinity, being used to judge whether something is Work, or if it’s just something that was done. Be it economic or otherwise, we could therefore deduce that the basic condition for work is its potential for being judged as such.


This residency seeks to reveal the limits of work by performatively radicalizing a Duchampesque critique of the cultural institution and its centralization of discursive power. Within the milieu of Storefront, technically speaking, everything regarding my spatiotemporal presence, from the food I eat to the movements I make to the thoughts I think, can become work. The task at hand is therefore to exhaust my presence to its utmost capacities. Every thought, every action, every emotion, every sensation is to become manifest. I do not seek to make work per se; I merely seek to do that which can be called work.

-Nick Axel

 

About the artist

Nick Axel is an architect, critic, and theorist, currently studying at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths. His work seeks to meditate on the uniquely architectural instantiation of power as both a problem and a solution, both a question and an answer, both impossible and inevitable. He is currently researching the potential role and opportunity for architecture to act critically within the contemporary logics of oil-based urbanization in North America. 

 

Below are works produced by the artist throughout his residency.

 

On the conditions of being and the subject of the institution

A five-part tale about the traversal of territorialized space.

 

Part One

The institution institutions, as Heidegger would have said.

The institution does something.

But the institution is a noun. Then, we can ask, what is it?

The institution is the institution.

It is something. It is not something else; the institution is not a duck. Otherwise it would not be the institution – it would be a duck. 

The institution is surrounded by everything it is not.

The institution is everything except for everything else.

The institution is that. Being in the presence of that line. The binding of place.

“Ladies and gentleman, I begin by drawing a line”

The institution marks territory; it demarcates space.

The institution is registered by bodies as the bodies recognize themselves as being in the institution’s space. The institution registers bodies in its space.

The institution is not the body is not space.

But then something ontological happened. Discourse happened.

The institution became debatably not not the space became debatably not not the body.

Yes or no became maybe became yes and no.

Together with plausible doubt came zealous conviction.

Collapse happened. Not of space, but vision.

The institution is not discourse. The institution is the place of discourse.

The institution became discourse. Discourse became an institution.

But this does not mean the institution stopped institutioning; it can do nothing else.

Lines did not disappear; instead they multiplied, proliferated, procreated.

The state of matter became relative.

As it became more difficult to determine which side of the line one laid on, it became less important. 

As the institution became regarded solely for the marks it makes, they themselves became neutralized.

If the drawing of a line became itself the constitution of an institution, what became of the institution? And the body? Space?

And also, how are lines drawn anyway?

 

 

Part Two


The institution does not simply exist. But yet, somehow, institutions exist.

The institution exists somewhere, in the territory.

We can try to look at the territory, but when we focus our sight, we find that there is something else there than what and where we thought the territory was.

We cannot say what it is we see, but we can say that we see things. These things, not others.

Our sight is impressed with the image of shapely forms. Presences are suggested as intuition.

We can say that we see many things, though bound together, united by their being seen.

When we look we do not see what there is to be seen, but merely what it is we see.

 

 

Looked at or not, every thing is to be seen. Yet not every thing can be looked at nor seen.

Seeing is not the seeing of something, but instead the not seeing of everything else.

It is in this act of framing that the body and the institution are joined in difference.


The body is a space. It is a line.  The institution wants a space, needs lines to make one.

The institution lives when its lines are recognized as constituting a space.

The lines of the institution are distinct from the line of the body.

The body is a line that can draw lines.

The institution hopes these marks will remain.

The institution is a temporal technology that works on the psychic register.

The institution is a result of the body projecting outside of itself, but the institution is not the projected body.

Lines bodies draw are lines of institution.

The body inscribes the territory with the markings of that which is not there in the face of what is.

We draw because we want. But do we want to draw? Do we want to want?

What is wanted wants to be wanted, or else it would not be.

The institution is that which makes bodies draw lines for it, to want it.

The institution is vicarious.

The institution makes the body an instrument.

The body ‘becomes’ institutional.

The institution is parasitic, a livelihood which depends on its allure of bodies.

The institution is not a hungry body, but a hunger.

The institution is a ghost that never had a body, a presence that wants nothing other than to be 

present, than to haunt.

 

 

Part Three

Both the body and the institution must survive. They are alive.

Time destroys everything, caught between entropy and decay.

The space of what is lost stands to be refilled; what falls into disorder, to be ordered once again.

 

The institution is a bodies’ desire.

Bodies share amongst each other within the affinity of their desire.

The institution is a product of the imagination, an idea.

The institution is the place where desire lives.

The institution is a sign pointing towards the beyond. It makes claims of other life.

The institution is a promise, a signifying chain. It says, “your desire is here”.

The institution is a lie that we want to believe in but never be confirmed of.

The institution is an eternal questioning.

The body is an answer that can never suffice.

 

The institution establishes expectation, yet the locus of failure lays within the body.

The institution needs us to yearn for it, yet we yearn regardlessly. It needs us to want it, but we just need.

Strife wed the two.

Another institution draws the line of judgement, yet it is not that institution that is judged.

It is not that institution towards which our discontent grows, but instead that which lied.

The institution and the body become the object of discontent, even more for that they both are and continue to be.

Presence becomes the problem for its appearance as the solution.

 

 

Part Four

The institution does not determine what belongs to it.

The body determines whether it relates to the institution.

The body determines how it relates to the institution.

The institution merely determines the appearance of what is belonged to.

The institution is representational.

The institution makes claims about what lays within its space.

The institution determines the truth value of its speech.

The institution creates a space called desire, but not desire.

The institution maintains a persistence of desire.

The space of the institution and its contents bear no necessary relation.

Dissonance is a form of expression.

Dissonance speaks nothing of that which produces it. It does not touch the dissonant elements.

Dissonance is not oriented towards incongruency, but the calling of whatever congruency incongruent.

Dissonance registers on the production of desire. 

Dissonance effects not whether or not the results of congruency are desired, but whether the act of congruence itself is desired.

What is the desire, or fear, of dissonance?

Why should the institution fear a dissonant presence of the body, or the body a dissonant presence in the institution?

To fear dissonance is to act as an agent of that other institution from which discontent originates.

But dissonance is not merely incongruency.

Discourse makes dissonance a projective act.

The dissonant act interprets the relation between expectation and demand, between desire and need.

Dissonance predicts the location and appropriates the position of judgement to judge otherwise.

Dissonance is an act, trick. It creates conviction only in order to mislead it, to use it towards other ends. 

Dissonance aspires to be the biggest lie, that which we hold to be most true.

The dissonant puts their themselves  at risk, the risk of being swept away and losing ones self.

Dissonance demands a fanatic dedication to a schizophrenic sincerity.

 

Part Five
Dissonance is not satisfying.
Dissonance reveals the impossibility of satisfaction.
Dissonance does something.
Without dissonance, we will forever be condemned to being the object of discontent.
Contention is a tool, a weapon.
Being is to be at war.
We do not choose whether we fight, nor whether fighting happens.. 
Can war be fought against?
The illusion of peace is sustained by a continuous exchange.
A desire to exchange desire.
Desire must persist for it to be exchanged. 
The institution is the medium for exchange.
The institution cannot be exchanged.
The institution represents the desire of its space.
Desire is an idea.
An idea is desire.
An idea is always true.
Truth is the weapon.
Truth must be believed in.
Desire must be sought after.
We are made to act. 
If action is made, we can make action.
Yet all we can do is do. All we can do is act.
We do because we desire.
What we do represents that desire.
Bodies speak, but actions are speech.
We ourselves cannot convince. We ourselves cannot be imitated. Only what we do can.
Imitation can only be of actions.
Act rhetorically. Do to persuade
Action happens. 
Persuasive forces are at work and at play.
To not do is not to not be embattled in war.
In conflict is agency.
The dissonant acts in the context of harmony’s illusion.
Dissonance reveals the conditions of war that constitutes place.
Dissonance lays bare the territory for it to be inhabited consciously.

Miryana Todorova: Expanded Objects for Shared Living

Tuesday December 10, 2013 – Saturday December 14, 2013

An artist residency as part of the exhibition Being

Week 09 / Dec 10 – 14

“Expanded Objects for Shared Living”

Miryana Todorova

 

About the project

My project is about collapsible and expandable structures that can flip from enclosures to extensions of body and existing architecture. Movables, hybrids, clusters, skins, shells, dwellings and parasites become the trigger for performative encounters and collaborative situations in public space. These objects open up a space for discourse about spontaneous community, coming out as a result of a struggle with a structure, and challenge the boundaries of what can be shared, negotiated or exchanged.


The project focuses on utopian visionary ideas of enabling more spontaneity and risk-taking in public space, provoking solidarity patterns of behavior and interdependency that can empower people to claim and inhabit space differently. Part of Storefront will become a temporary open lab station for generating new forms, strategies and possibilities that combine architecture, fashion, product design, body politics, social mobility and hybridization.

-Miryana Todorova

 
About the artist
Miryana Todorova (b.1984 Sofia, Bulgaria) is a visual artist who lives and works between Sofia and NY. The major concern in her work is questioning the politics of public space and how people occupy it. Her projects combine painting, performance, video and public interventions to examine the body in relation to temporary structures  and potential collapse. Miryana holds a MFA Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts, NY. She has participated in numerous exhibitions both in Europe and the US including Dissident Desire: Exercises of Critical Body Building at District Kunst- und Kulturförderung, Berlin, SpaceLab at the Spinnerei, Leipzig, Movables at Frosch&Portmann gallery, NY, New York Temporary at the Center of Photography and the Moving Image, NY, Geometry of Time at the Regional History Museum, Plovdiv, The Bulgarian Pavilion at Credo Bonum gallery, Sofia, Temporary Status at Immigrant Movement International, NY, Dwelling-In-Travel part of the 16th Week of Contemporary Art, Plovdiv, Object Not Found at Parlour, Venice, Art in Odd Places Public Art festival Pedestrian, NY, and Making It at the Deutsche Bank gallery, NY. Miryana is the recipient of the Gaudenz B. Ruf Award for New Bulgarian Art, category Young Artist (2011) and was a participant and fellow at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2012) and ZK/U-Center for Art and Urbanistics Berlin (2013). 
 
 

SILVERSHED_ZELLNERPLUS

Tuesday November 19, 2013 – Saturday November 23, 2013

An artist residency as part of the exhibition Being

Week 06 / Nov 19 – 23, 2013

SILVERSHED_ZELLNERPLUS

 

About the project

What is the relationship between art, architecture and the city? Where do we draw the lines? Where do they blur? How can these terms be productively engaged to yield new ways of seeing how we inhabit our roles as artists, architects, urbanists, writers and curators.


We are two artists, one artist run space and one architect working collaboratively across our fields (art, architecture and urbanism) and across the country, in Los Angeles and New York City. 



Combining our work backgrounds and studies in art, architecture, landscape architecture and critical theory, we intend to produce a series of events, objects and writings that will raise questions around the status of art, architecture and the city. 


During the residency we intend to produce, on a daily basis, the following artifacts, writings, and performances:  


A. Artifacts: constructions, drawings, maquettes, and sculptures.

 

B. Writings: Manifestos, essays, poems, stories, and interviews.   


C. Performances: Talks, group discussions, lectures, a closing event.

 

Events

Wednesday, November 20

4-5pm

Lecture: Peter Zellner

Silvereconomies

As part of Silvershed’s residency at Storefront for Art and Architecture, Peter Zellner will present three recent projects.  Zellner will use the lecture to explore linking ordinary things “as they are” to a series of architectural causes.   In this case the things are a free standing gallery building, a series of almost temporary art structures and a family house.  The causes are an ordinary strip of commercial structures, a large industrial warehouse and a hillside property. The lecture will be conducted outside of Storefront and Zellner will attempt his first outdoor evening lecture, come attired appropriately as it will be cold.


Wednesday, November 20

5-7pm

Silvershed Reader #2 Launch

Silvershed Reader #2 Launch 

As part of Silvershed’s residency at Storefront for Art and Architecture, we’d like to invite you to celebrate the launch of the newest installment of the Silvershed Reader with us this Wednesday, November 20th. 


“Silvershed Reader #2 presents three artist-organized essays examining a selection of themes observable in contemporary art today. 

 

 

Silvershed collaboratively wrote Pro Fem, Yes Wave, and the intro and outro texts from 2011-2013. Christopher K. Ho first published The Clinton Crew online and in print as a part of his 2012 show Privileged White People at Forever & Today. 

Pro Fem both perceives and proposes a radical re-thinking of how femininity may be ethically imaged; Yes Wave examines philosophical text-based art that communicates personal truths within a larger struggle of information management; The Clinton Crew explores a sentiment sourced in so-called ‘provisional’ painting and sculpture that speaks both to privilege and ethics in the post-Clinton age; and Hashtagging outlines an ethics of collaborative labeling, sorting, and sharing, and investigates how the algorithmic juxtaposition of decontextualized pictures on the net produce both misunderstanding and new meaning.


About the artists
Yunhee Min is an artist based in Los Angeles. She is interested in painting as foremost a studio practice, where hands-on engagement with the material and the activity of making take priority. As she continues to explore spatiality ranging from the ephemeral spaces of painting to built environments, abstraction continues to be her fundamental approach both in her painting and site-projects. Rather than subscribing to the myth of abstraction as an aesthetic style of reduction, she is interested in approaching abstraction as an operation, as an ongoing process of making new relations and connections through material engagement.  
 
Patrick Meagher creates personal-history driven work about architecture, technology and economics revolving around the Internet at the turn of the millennium. His work explores transitions within the new economy concerning globalization, informatization and intercultural communication, and how digital technology affects understandings of the spiritual.
 
Peter Zellner established the award winning firm ZELLNERPLUS in 2004.  Based in Venice, California the firm’s projects include public and private art galleries, residences, and work spaces in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Mexico and New York.  Peter Zellner is a Faculty member at SCI-Arc where he coordinates the Future Initiatives program. 
 
For regular updates, visit us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
@storefrontnyc
 

Dolan Morgan and Cameron Blaylock: The Weathermen Turn Themselves In

Monday November 11, 2013 – Saturday November 16, 2013

An artist residency as part of the exhibition Being

Week 05 / Nov 12-16

The Weathermen Turn Themselves In

Dolan Morgan and Cameron Blaylock

 

About the project

The Weathermen Turn Themselves In charts a world where families are raised not in houses but hurricanes; where duplex apartments don’t sit on the street but pelt us from the sky; where finance companies operate not in skyscrapers but from the top floor of a tornado.  The Weathermen Turn Themselves In finally asks the absurd question: what if architecture and weather switched positions? By reversing the natural world with our constructed environment, we examine not only the boundaries, limitations and correlations between the two – but also between that which we can control and that which we cannot. The afternoon forecast is a 90% chance of condo squalls, and we’re advised to stay inside the comfort of our storms. Now, quick: what is an umbrella.

 

About the artists

Dolan Morgan is the author of That’s When the Knives Come Down, a short story collection forthcoming in 2014. He lives in Brooklyn and edits The Atlas Review. His work can be found in The Believer, Field, Pank, Armchair/Shotgun, The Collagist and elsewhere. 

 

Cameron Blaylock is a Brooklyn-based photographer and artist. Cameron’s recent projects include Visions, a collaboration with writer Dolan Morgan; An Apple A Day…, an art-making-on-consecutive-days project shown in conjunction with New York poetry series The Highwaymen NYC; and Typecast, an investigation into the “towers-in-the-parks” typology that was presented at the New Museum’s 2013 Ideas City StreetFest. In 2010, Cameron received a European diploma in fine arts from Bauhaus-University.

 

For regular updates, please visit Facebook and/or Twitter and/or Instagram

 

@storefrontnyc @dolanmorgan @cameronblaylock @weathersale

 

Katya Tylevich: Word bites picture

Monday November 4, 2013 – Saturday November 9, 2013

An artist residency as part of the exhibition Being

Week 04 / Nov 5 – 9

Word bites picture

Katya Tylevich

 

About the project

‘Word bites picture’ draws from my work writing about art and architecture, but subverts the idea of expository writing. For the project, I ask an artist, photographer or architect to send me an image he or she has created. In response to that image, I write a 500-word short fiction story. During my five-day residency, I will create at least one short story a day in response to one respective image. Each day, one more ‘companion work’ will join others on the wall of theresidency space, so that the works of fiction act as abstract captions to the images. Though not exactly an exquisite corpse, the spontaneous energy of the project is similar. Viewers will likely find their brains trying to make sense of the resulting art-fiction creatures. It’s necessary for these modular pieces to exist in a public space, so that they can assemble into a whole and face different interpretations. The project further addresses the cannibalism of all art, literature, and architecture: new movements do not exist without predecessors, which isn’t to say that the results aren’t entirely original. Among the people submitting images for the ‘Word bites picture’ -project are artist Michaël Borremans and Vito Acconci.

-Katya Tylevich

 

About the artist

Katya Tylevich is an arts, architecture and design journalist based in Los Angeles. She is Editor-at-Large for arts journal Elephant, Contributing Editor for architecture magazine MARK and art journal White Zinfandel, and frequent contributor to magazines like Domus, Pin-up and FRAME. Recently, Katya wrote the text for photographer Todd Hido’s book Excerpts From Silver Meadows, published by Nazraeli Press. Her interviews and essays appear in books like Pin-Up: Interviews, published by powerHouse Books, and Operations In Populated Areas, which accompanies an exhibition of the same name at the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Wrocław. She has essays on Brutalism and Postmodernism forthcoming in a Thames & Hudson book on architecture, and her short fiction story, ‘Sustained Release,’ written in response to three paintings by Michaël Borremans, will be published in the artist’s catalog, As sweet as it gets, from Hatje Cantz in February 2014. Currently, Katya is working on a book for Laurence King Publishing, which examines contemporary artworks in unexpected ways, to be published in 2015. Together with her brother, Alexei, Katya is co-founder of Friend & Colleague, a company producing original content and art projects. She was born in Minsk, Belarus and runs a website called Happy Nothing.

 

—————————

 

Boa constricted.

by Katya Tylevich

 

Michaël Borremans, The Hovering Wood, 2011. Oil on Canvas. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp. 

 

Our family was never very poor, but pretended to be, to keep the evil eye uninterested. Good health was met with knocks on wood. Bad health was welcomed like an irritating houseguest, with a begrudging hospitality. A long night’s sleep was considered suitable for cats and other indulged animals that had nine lives to waste — you know, on rapid eye movement.


The older generations in our home would point to various nocturnal creatures as fine examples of living things with proper work ethics. The daytime sleeping patterns of those animals were struck from record, in lectures meant to motivate and probably shame. I never felt humiliated, however. I was eager to follow instructions and to please, so I took the lectures at face value and tried to emulate those animals that I thought burned the midnight oil, like horseshoe crabs, rats, owls, and opossums.


In short order, my nighttime prowls grew quite intolerable for my family. What did me in, I think, were all the seed and peanut shells I’d left around the home. Also, the rustling I liked to do while everybody else was giving way to bodily weaknesses, shutting their eyes and drifting into apneas, paralyses and other forms of stinky human rest.


For those few nights that I had acted as a rodent, I’d crept around our single-family home, thinking of all the things I could accomplish in my extra waking hours. Mostly, I snacked and watched TV. As morning rolled around, I usually found myself blinking awake in front of the early news broadcast. Perhaps upon waking, I did feel humiliated, though nobody was up early enough to catch me in my disappointed state. I was disgusted by my personal failure to control my sleepy, weepy body, and its susceptibility to routine, and to gum disease, early-onset heartburn and probably, at some point, to some other sort of chronic pain.


My father told me that if my hot prowls were to continue, that in all fairness — literal man though he was, and head of a literal household (those were different times) — the family would have no choice but to treat me like a house animal and not a feral one, because I did, after all, live in their house and exterminating me was not an option. In other words, he said, they’d have to have me immunized and spayed or neutered. At that age, I had already had several vaccinations and was no pussy when it came to needles and blood. But I did have to look the latter threats up in a dictionary. I still resent you for that fucking joke, old man.


Then in an act entirely out of character, I screamed that, if that’s how they wanted it, then fine, then, fine, that I would turn myself in at an animal shelter so that a better family could adopt me there.

 

 

That may be memory playing tricks on me, actually. When and where this childhood took place, there were no shelters for used, abandoned animals, only streets and garbage dumps and alleyways and pounds. It’s probably more likely that my act, entirely out of character, was screaming that I was going to run off to the streets like an outdoor cat and wouldn’t they be sorry when I didn’t come back home that night or ever, even though I could remember our address, and would for the rest of my living days. To which my family, phlegmatic but in unison, knocked on all the wood available to them in that very wooden house.

 

——————–

 

Speak to a representative. 

by Katya Tylevich

 

Otmar Thormann. COWBOY, STOCKHOLM 1968. 


We had good reason to resent each other: our respective fantasies for how to fill the days had little in common. We were able to get a good night’s sleep every night, and they chose not to; we ate three different meals a day at regular hours, and they began their mornings with a coffee and a cigarette — they ended their nights, also in the mornings, with a coffee and a cigarette, and, this time, whiskey. We had never been in a fist-fight, and they hadn’t either, but they acted aggressively, as though they could stop clenched hands without elevated heart rates, with only a few, well placed, attractive bulging veins. We were healthy, but jealous. They were ill, but satisfied.


We decided that we would rather be ill and satisfied, too, so we invited them to join us on neutral territory — how about the woods? — for a kind of workshop, in which they could teach us how to be more like them. ‘And vice versa,’ we offered, but the bargain was declined. Our broader invitation, however, was met with an affirmative. We were surprised, and had a tough go of trying to contain our excitement.


More or less, we communicated by way of polite bows and cordial turns of ‘would you please’; we also shuffled our feet as a form of active deference. They responded with crude gestures, abbreviations and colloquialisms. One of them stuck a tongue between the index and middle fingers — you know, one of those. We tried to mimic their manners and motions, but failed to seem confident doing so. They said, ‘The woods are fine with us, but it will have to be east of the train tracks,’ a geographic symbolism that sent cold shivers down our spines, as expected, but still we nodded in agreement, not wanting to sound ungrateful or, god forbid, afraid. 


We arrived on time, and they were a no-show. We built a fire, following exactly the written instructions we had packed the night before. We made shish kabobs  (pork, chicken, and vegetarian), and cooked potatoes over an open fire. Despite our diligence, the potatoes were too raw when we bit into them, a failure that brought us all close to tears. 


We wondered aloud to each other, whether this wasn’t part of our desired learning process, this failure and abandonment, and then I did the unthinkable, by excusing myself from this passive self-criticism — ‘What is this, North Korea?’ I yelled (and some of us shrugged, because what’s from stopping this from being North Korea?) — and I tore the written instructions in two, kicked the dirt up with my feet and tried hard to lose my temper. 


That’s when they came in all swagger and cocked index fingers. ‘Lesson number one, losers! Never be on time.’ But I had already learned my lesson. I started packing my bags vigorously, so that the gesture couldn’t go unnoticed. We shouted for me to stop, while they shouted for me to keep going. I kept going, overcome by the desire to please, more than to leave. 


Naturally, I was having trouble sustaining my temper at a simmer; it usually flat-lined, as if the stove had never been turned on at all. But I was somewhat determined, so I weakly put on necessary airs: ‘My blood is boiling, everybody! Don’t make it overflow!’ I tried to recreate some of the lewd gestures that they had always made look effortless. But I probably raised the wrong fingers or had the wrong tongue. My gesture was like a starter pistol firing: As if on cue, they attacked us, we tried to defend ourselves, and in a matter of minutes, all found a singular easy target and a common ground. They turned on me with their combined list of sniveling grievances and empty threats.  I said, ‘What is this North Korea?’ They either told me I was not a patriot or overly patriotic, I didn’t ask them to repeat, and don’t care to remember.


Mostly, I was disheartened by the fact that I had no black eyes or central bruises to show for such a corporeal experience. My clothing was a bit scuffed up, but then again, I was wearing an outfit suitable for woodsmanship, wear, tear and otherwise. What was the use? I repatriated with the like-minded, but it was never the same between us again. They couldn’t trust that when I closed my eyes at night, that I was actually sleeping soundly. 

 

——————–

 

Scheduled to arrive.

by Katya Tylevich

Vito Acconci. Under-Plaza, 2010. Courtesy of Acconci Studio. 
He isn’t a nervous flier, but he is a nervous sleeper. Beyond the security gates, he faces a long flight, and he’s nervous that if he doesn’t sleep across the ocean, he won’t make it through the next day, which is an important one, having to do with reputation and capital. 

He likes to think of himself as an accountable man. He is an accountable man. He is not an accountant, but people sometimes take him for one; they stop him in the streets and ask for a free consultation, which he gives to the best of his armchair ability. When, at the airport ticket counter, he’s asked whether he had alone packed his suitcases, he answers truthfully that his significant (in all ways) other had also played a significant role in the organization of items in his bags.

Security waves him through with polite nods, but only after two fingers too many have been forced to snap the elastic of his boxer-briefs. That’s right, he’s not predictable in all ways. And yes, he’s understanding of the men and women in uniform who have to do their jobs and snap the elastic of his slim-fit wear as a consequence of his (unnecessary?) honesty.

Seated next to him in business class, his business associate, who’s also a friend — but a friend kept at arm’s length — tells him, ‘Here, have this.’ What is it? It’s a schedule IV controlled substance, which has helped countless victims of insomnia. ‘Don’t be a pussy,’ his business associate adds. 

Hem and haw. He doesn’t want to be a pussy, after all. He’s never taken this drug, or many others, aside from a dabble here and there of the usual suspects, but alright! Half a schedule IV controlled substance down the gullet and we’re ready for take-off. ‘Since I only took half, does that make it a schedule II?’ he jokes unsuccessfully, and closes his eyes to fall into a deep and restless snoozer.

Once a victim of insomnia, he now becomes a victim of rare but serious side-effects, and rises while the seatbelt sign is still on, walks without waking toward the flight deck (‘It’s the cockpit, people!’ he yells) and pushes his way toward the business class kitchenette, where flight attendants usually stir and shake ‘another gin and tonic?’ when it is safe for them to walk about he cabin. And it is certainly unsafe for them to do so now. 

‘Sir, we’re going to need to ask you to sit down. Sir, please sit down. Sir, right now, you’re in violation of federal safety laws and regulations?’ 

His fellow passengers hog-tie him while flight attendants:
a. look on, doe-eyed
b. play the hero
c. calm the passengers with ‘another gin and tonic?’
d. ‘I’ll be taking care of you on our flight, this evening.’

The pilots make an emergency landing. He wakes up. He’s horrified to find out what has happened. His business associate is horrified, afraid he’ll be accused of distributing a schedule IV controlled substance. His business associate hires an expensive attorney, but doesn’t share the legal counsel. Our would-be accountant hires a lesser-known attorney, by recommendation of a family friend. Our would-be accountant is put on trial. He’s found guilty of lesser charges. Community service. Humiliation. Significant fights with his significant other. Separation. Anxiety. A distrust of the mental healthcare system. The elastic of his boxer-briefs are permanently loose, from this day forward. 

And life’s unfair, and life’s unkind, and he is never mistaken for an accountant again. It must have been the way he’d carried himself, before. 

——————–

 

En route to a chipped shoulder.

by Katya Tylevich

 

Epsen Dietrichson. Second Construction #1.

His country of origin left something to be desired in terms of international clout, but it had afforded him an adolescence surrounded by, what might be considered (in a proverbial sense) to be ‘paradise’: warm blue skies, cold blue waters, sand dunes and cafés. He had spent his young adulthood not inhaling, cigarette between two fingers, trying to finesse a lazy dissonance.  
His proper adulthood. That one took place in a country of greater importance, but lesser natural beauty, which suited him, because he was attracted to what he’d only dreamed about when surrounded by loveliness: a harsh natural climate, a harsh social climate, a lack of space, and other brutal physical realities. ‘Come in, make yourself uncomfortable.’ And he did, settling into the routine aches and embarrassments of a grey city, in which people barked at each other and lifted their legs to piss on everything and everybody within pissing range. 
Even in an acerbic capital, he retained some of his gentle disposition. He remained sleepy in his motions. He smiled politely if he happened upon eye-contact with an approaching face and body. Once, he smiled politely at a mugger. After he was robbed at knifepoint, he wrote home that he’d ‘never felt so alive,’ a cliché to which he finally felt entitled. He mailed the letter, addressed to his country of origin, but to nobody who lived there in particular.
He found companionship in a big, brown shepherd dog that (who) ended up outliving all the other pups in the neighborhood by six years. The shepherd met old age, who introduced her to depression. A veterinarian, specializing in geriatric canine anxiety, prescribed canine benzodiazepines, electroconvulsive therapy, group sessions, and, as another humane option, euthanasia. 
Thanks for the canine benzodiazepines, doc, and he and the shepherd left with pursed lips. Four years later, still melancholy, the shepherd passed (of a broken heart). (No. Actually, of a canine heart-attack, caused by rich diet, infrequent exercise, low sex drive, lethargy, and high cholesterol.)
After the shepherd’s passing, his apartment felt empty, and he decided to experiment with some of the canine benzodiazepines. He had an adverse reaction after the first try and ended up with a bladder infection, feeling no less anxious. He was uncomfortable for the duration of his antibiotics course. During this healing process, he looked at photographs of his country of origin and wished that he had taken his dog there, so that ‘Pancake’ — a diminutive, short for Pamela — could have run on the beaches, which were all dog-friendly, because to be unfriendly seemed a waste of time, breath and resources.
He didn’t have to live alone, but chose to. There was a woman who took interest in him, but he declined the offer with a smile. There was a man who took interest in him. He was flattered, but declined the offer with a wink. He sometimes wondered whether what he felt was satisfaction or inertia. Even with a reoccurring bladder infection, existence was more or less cozy. 
You know, he took the vet up on that euthanasia offer. But when he showed up without the shepherd (dust to dust), the veterinary staff regretted to inform him that they were not accepting new or human patients. He made a pun about impatience. He tried to make a fuss but couldn’t, so he retraced his steps back home, hoping that he would be held up at knifepoint somewhere along that so-familiar route.    

Di Fang: COLUMBUS RESORT

Monday October 28, 2013 – Saturday November 2, 2013

An artist residency as part of the exhibition Being

Week 03 / Oct 28 – Nov 2

COLUMBUS RESORT

Di Fang


About the project

My project is to unfold interactions among people who engage in gambling. I am inspired by a group of retired Chinese people who get together everyday doing gambling at the Columbus Park. They use chips to bet on card game and Chinese chess. This forms an interesting phenomenon as the gambling itself servers as a channel for retired people to connect with each other in the public space.

 

My working process and the interaction with public will be uploaded to social media during my five-day residency. My project is to design the “gambling space” and develop the relationship between human and space. I will provide chips to people who come to Storefront and gambling. -Di Fang

 

For thorough project updates, please visit http://www.columbus-resort.tumblr.com.

 

About the artist

Di Fang is a Chinese artist based in New York City. His works convey not only the evolution of urbanization, but also my political attitudes. He is interested in social commentary, references to news, and views himself as a tourist in my videos and multimedia installations. His works reflect on the rapid and chaotic changes that he is involved in with today’s society. It encourages the viewer to think and question.

 

 

For more, visit TumblrFacebook or Twitter.

 

@storefrontnyc @Fang_Di

Brett Beyer: Archiphoto

Monday October 21, 2013 – Saturday October 26, 2013

An artist residency as part of the exhibition Being

Week 02 /  Oct 21-25

Archiphoto

Brett Beyer


About Archiphoto

“I see Storefront as a permeable space that is changing and expanding.   For this residency I will attempt to push my idea of what an architectural photograph can be.  I will use sculptural, photographic, and architectural methods to create works that reflect the space and my own interpretation of it.  I will create images that are real and constructed at the same time.” 

-Brett Beyer

 

About the artist

Brett Beyer is an architectural and fine art photographer based in Brooklyn, New York.  He received his degree in studio art from Bard College in 2000.  His aerial interior photography has been published by The New York Times Magazine, Cornell AAP, and Fast Company.  Some of his architectural clients include OMA, SOM, SCAPE, and Studio V.  His group exhibitions include “5 Beekman” as part of Visions, a group show at Storefront for Art and Architecture’s 30th anniversary gala.  In 2012 he was included in the photography awards publication American Photography 28.  He is currently working on an aerial photography project documenting the construction of the new World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. For more visit www.brettbeyer.com.

 

@storefrontnyc @brettbeyer