FUTURE DEFINITE
The New Administration of
a Fine Arts Education
Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven
FUTURE POSSIBLE
Last Year at Marienbad redux
Winter of Our Discontent
Why Farm?
ARCHIVE
Calling Beauty
Descent to Revolution
Agency for Small Claims
Of Other Spaces
The New Normal
To Whom Do You Beautifully Belong?
Dewey Decimal Days
Exact Imagination
Taking Shelter
Consumption Junction
Shoot the Family
Prophets of Deceit
ABOUT
CONTACT
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LINKS
February 25-April 25, 2009
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ARTISTS
Sophie Calle, Mohamed Camara, Hasan Elahi, Eyebeam R&D/Jonah Peretti & Michael Frumin, Kota Ezawa, Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Guthrie Lonergan, Jill Magid, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Trevor Paglen, Corinna Schnitt, Thomson & Craighead, Sharif Waked
CURATOR
Michael Connor
The New Normal explores the increasing exposure of the private sphere to public view, whether voluntary or involuntary. Each of these works was completed after October 2001, when former Vice President Dick Cheney described new government surveillance measures following September 11 as “the new normalcy.” At the same time telephones were tapped and airline passengers were exhaustively searched, the public began willingly to document and share online intimate aspects of daily life, for convenience and community.
Personal information has become a readily available raw material. In response to this shift, many of the artists featured in The New Normal have used other people’s private information and images—home videos, financial data, leaked documents—as the basis of their work. By doing so, they offer disconcerting glimpses into the lives of neighbors, strangers, and celebrities, while making visible the social and aesthetic conventions that lie behind these disclosures. Other artists in the exhibition adopt self-disclosure as a strategy, one that seemingly conflicts with the need for privacy. They reveal their own bodies, their consumer habits, and their domestic spaces. For some of them, this reflects the social desire to build intimacy; for others, it is framed as a gesture of defiance in response to the intrusiveness of surveillance.
Comprehensively, the works in The New Normal suggest that access to private information is a currency whose circulation is growing and evolving. We may find this exchange both frightening and fascinating, but we are inescapably complicit in its perpetuation.
The New Normal is a traveling exhibition co-organized by iCI (Independent Curators International), New York and Artists Space, New York, and circulated by iCI.
Exhibition website
View interview with Michael Connor at Artists Space YouTube page
INSTITUTION
Columbus College of Art & Design
PRODUCERS
Diana Matuszak, Nicholas Hoffman, Andrew Graham, Palmer Pattison, Nate Padavick
ECONOMY
Columbus College of Art & Design, Greater Columbus Arts Council, Ohio Arts Council, CD101, The Consulate General of France
Publication
Did you experience this exhibition? If so, please tell us what you think.
Kota Ezawa, Home Video II, 2007
single-channel video without sound, 5 minutes
courtesy the artist and Murray Guy, New York
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Sophie Calle, Unfinished, 2005
single-channel video projection with sound, 30 minutes 14 seconds
courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York
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Thomson & Craighead, Beacon, 2007
data projection with real-time Web connection, dimensions variable
courtesy of the artists
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Corinna Schnitt, Once Upon a Time, 2005
single-channel video with sound, 25 minutes
courtesy Gallery Olaf Stueber, Berlin
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Jill Magid, Lincoln Ocean Victor Eddy, 2006-07
single-channel video without sound, 12 minutes 49 seconds; three Chromogenic prints, book, stand-in bullet in bulletproof vitrine
courtesy Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York
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Mohamed Camara, Les Rideaux de Mohamed (The Curtains of Mohamed), 2004
single-channel video without sound, 65 minutes
courtesy of the artist and Galerie Pierre Brullé, Paris
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Hasan Elahi, Tracking Transience: Position and Tracking Transience: Evidence, 2007
two-channel video without sound and single-channel video without sound
courtesy of the artist
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Eyebeam R&D/Jonah Peretti and Michael Frumin, Fundrace 2008 (Neighbor Search), 2008
computer installation with real-time web connection
courtesy of Eyebeam R&D Lab, Jonah Peretti, Michael Frumin, and Huffington Post
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Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More (Assignment 50: Take a flash photo under your bed), 2005
color photographs printed from Internet project with text labels, 4 x 6 inches
courtesy the artists
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Guthrie Lonergan, MySpace Intro Playlist, 2006
two single-channel videos with sound, 8 minutes; 13 minutes
courtesy the artist
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Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Vice Presidential Downtime Requirements, 2008
installation with text and store-bought products, dimensions variable
courtesy Postmasters Gallery, New York
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Trevor Paglen, Six C.I.A. Officers Wanted in Connection with the Abduction of Abu Omar from Milan, Italy, 2007
six inkjet prints, 14.625 x 14.625 inches
courtesy the artist and Bellwether Gallery, New York
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Sharif Waked, Chic Point, 2003
single-channel video with sound, 5 minutes 10 seconds
courtesy of the artist
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Installation images courtesy of Cory Piehowicz
