archive & anti-archive

Location: 301 8th Street, Room 215, San Francisco

Members of the Nonsite Collective and interested co-participants are invited to attend an introduction to the Prelinger Library in San Francisco. We envision this as a convivial drift through a space concerned with common knowledges, collaborative archives, and other areas of overlapping concern with some of what's been articulated in Nonsite discussions to this point. Beyond familiarizing ourselves with the library and archive (and each other), there is no particular agenda for the day. Participants are encouraged to "harvest" texts and images with an eye to possible future collaborative projects.

Please use the poll on the right-hand side of this page to let us know whether you plan on attending. Once we know how many members plan on attending, we will know how many additional spots on the tour are available, and members will be invited to circulate the invitation to all interested parties until we fill up our allotted spaces.

Some background, from the Prelinger website:

The Prelinger Library is an appropriation-friendly, browsable collection of approximately 40,000 books, periodicals, printed ephemera and government documents located in San Francisco, California, USA. Read more

[Please note that these texts were offered for fair use to the Nonsite research group at the time of the event, with hard copies will also made available. Following the event, the live PDF files were withdrawn and this document changed to offer bibliographical citations rather than the texts themselves. If the Harper's article becomes available at the magazine's website, a link will be posted here].

Levy, Aaron. "Project Introduction: The Polemical Hive." from The Revolt of the Bees. eds. Aaron Levy & Thaddeus Squire. (Slought Foundation, Peregrine Arts) 2005.

an informal talk on joseph cornell
(notes by david brazil)

at the home of taylor brady & tanya hollis

in attendance --

taylor, tanya, rob halpern, lee azus, brandon
brown, alli warren, david brazil, jason
escalante

following -- a transcription of the notes
i wrote that evening -- supplemental memories
in brackets -- direct quotes indicate speech

my point of departure for conversation
was the coincidence that both brian whitener
and i, who went to see the show together,
independently found ourselves thinking of
the work of walter benjamin & specifically
of the arcades project

which led me to pose the question:
is there a theory of history in the work
of joseph cornell?

(cf. this quotation from 'the arcades project':
"method of this project: literary montage.
i needn't *say* anything. merely show.
i shall purloin no valuables, appropriate
no ingenuous formulations. but the rags,
the refuse -- these i will not inventory
but allow, in the only way possible, to come
into their own: by making use of them.")

[tanya talked about her early encounter with
cornell & its formative character -- as well
as wendy kramer's simultaneous discovery
of jess --]

[tanya also spoke of the emotional quality she
saw in cornell's work -- the boxes as a way
of communicating --]

[the conversation turned to chance]

"chance as objective hazard" [TB]

Cornell as furtive

"a set of foregone conclusions" [TH]

destroying surface

"a set of procedures that undo that
at every stage" [TH]

decollage

Duchamp v. Cage (aleatory v. stochastic)

[everyone asked TB to define 'stochastic']

[BB spoke of Rrose Selavy, the perfume bottle,
etc. as well as the curational savvy of the
Philadelphia Duchamp room as against the
facile thematization of the SFMOMA show]

[DB mentioned the 'Portrait of Ondine' as
displayed in the show, as a riff on Duchamp's
Green Valise]

"domesticated chance" [TB] Read more

an informal talk on joseph cornell
(notes by david brazil)

at the home of taylor brady & tanya hollis

in attendance --

taylor, tanya, rob halpern, lee azus, brandon
brown, alli warren, david brazil, jason
escalante

following -- a transcription of the notes
i wrote that evening -- supplemental memories
in brackets -- direct quotes indicate speech

my point of departure for conversation
was the coincidence that both brian whitener
and i, who went to see the show together,
independently found ourselves thinking of
the work of walter benjamin & specifically
of the arcades project

which led me to pose the question:
is there a theory of history in the work
of joseph cornell?

(cf. this quotation from 'the arcades project':
"method of this project: literary montage.
i needn't *say* anything. merely show.
i shall purloin no valuables, appropriate
no ingenuous formulations. but the rags,
the refuse -- these i will not inventory
but allow, in the only way possible, to come
into their own: by making use of them.")

[tanya talked about her early encounter with
cornell & its formative character -- as well
as wendy kramer's simultaneous discovery
of jess --]

[tanya also spoke of the emotional quality she
saw in cornell's work -- the boxes as a way
of communicating --]

[the conversation turned to chance]

"chance as objective hazard" [TB]

Cornell as furtive

"a set of foregone conclusions" [TH]

destroying surface

"a set of procedures that undo that
at every stage" [TH]

decollage

Duchamp v. Cage (aleatory v. stochastic)

[everyone asked TB to define 'stochastic']

[BB spoke of Rrose Selavy, the perfume bottle,
etc. as well as the curational savvy of the
Philadelphia Duchamp room as against the
facile thematization of the SFMOMA show]

[DB mentioned the 'Portrait of Ondine' as
displayed in the show, as a riff on Duchamp's
Green Valise]

"domesticated chance" [TB] Read more

Artifact Reading Series
in collaboration with Nonsite Collective
hosts an evening of improvization, performance, and reading

by

Michael Basinksi, David Larsen, and Jeanne Heuving
Saturday, May 24th
6PM doors/6:30PM reading starts

at

The Oakland Art Gallery at Frank Ogawa Plaza
199 Kahn's Alley
Oakland CA 94612

Watch for related Nonsite events and curricular materials to be announced on this website soon!

Sunday May 25th
7:00-9:00 p.m.

Please email Tanya Hollis for address
tanya@tanyahollis.com

Come meet Michael Basinksi, visual-performance-fluxus etc. poet and curator, in the wake of the May 24 Artifact reading.

Archival materials will be on display in Tanya's studio for your enjoyment--and you can touch them too! :)

Questions? Comment on this event!

My BARGE project BURIED TREASURE ISLAND opens this Saturday at YBCA as part of the Ground Scores exhibition, an off-site section of the Bay Area Now 5 show. 411 below. They'll be an online map and podcast, along with a downloadable guidebook as well - the site will be up and announced later this week. - DB

Buried Treasure Island - BARGE (the Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics)
Given Treasure Island's long and complex history as an artificial staging ground for world's fairs, military bases, television shoots, and real estate speculation, as well as being an enormous landfill of dangerous and toxic substances, "Buried Treasure Island" attempts to unearth the secret histories of the site, and explore how the landscape is transformed not only by its usage, but also by what is elided from public view. Home to some of the most stunning views in the bay (but only if you turn your back on the island itself), Treasure Island remains a site full of hidden histories, presents, and possible futures. The work is presented in several overlapping iterations: installation, guidebook, self-guided tour, audio podcast, songs, performative bus tour, staged actions and photographs, and online. That some possible Treasure Island “itself” may be buried somewhere within the constellation of these versionings, between site and non-site, realities and representations, is a question that the work attempts to confront.

more info, with downloads, at:
http://www.davidbuuck.com/barge/bti/index.html

Opening Night party Sat July 19, 8pm-midnight
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission @ 3rd St
San Francisco
http://ban5.org/

I'm still not sure what to make of it, beyond filing it under the banner of archive-fever, but in addition to a number of recent archival/art projects in the bay (Theory of Survival at the Lab and now at Yerba Buena, which I HIGHLY recommend - http://www.theoryofsurvival.com/ - the CCA storage container show, the Jonestown exhibit at MIssion17 -http://mission17.org/exhibits/JonestownHadAGarden.htm - etc etc), there have also been a number of 're-enactments', ranging from the re-staging (if that's the word) of several Kaprow happenings in LA, similar performance art "covers" in NY, and the like. Of course historical re-enactments are not new, nor are leftist historical 'legacy' tours (labor history walks in SF as part of Yerba Buena's Ground Scores exhibit, the Black Panther Legacy Tour, NY Radical History tour, the Counterpulse SF Bicycle Tours - http://www.shapingsf.org/biketours.html - etc etc), but I'm curious about the impulse to restage radical political and/or artistic "events" - Jeremy Deller's Battle of Orgreave being an exemplary project - http://www.channel4.com/fourdocs/archive/battle_of_orgreave.html - anyways... here are two local items of note:

1. The Port Huron Project is staging a reenactment of a 1969 Angela Davis speech this Sat at 6pm in deFremery Park in Oakland. http://www.nothing.org/porthuronproject/
note that the night before at the Oakland Museum Mark Tribe of the PHP will be in conversation with EMORY DOUGLAS (!) and Nato Thompson, to discuss the PHP, the BPP, and the experimental doc CHICAGO 10 -
http://museumca.org/cal-public/calendar.cgi?category=17&QueryTitle=First%20Friday%20Events (scroll down)

2. The Oakland General Strike Re-enactment Society did an event this weekend commemorating the 1946 strike, and is holding a follow up meeting this Wed. Here's the cut-n-pasted email:

Dear fellow rabble rousers, street performers, and radical
historians...

- Did you know that in 1946 there were more strikes and work Read more

http://www.ban5.org/YBCA/events/1050/detail.rol

From the city-wide cable car strike of 1907, Bloody Thursday (July 5, 1934) and the resulting general strike and march of 1934, to more recent alliances between union members and other activist movements, unions have been crucial in shaping the city of San Francisco. Syndicate will look at this history with a special focus on the role of union workers in visual and performing art spaces. In 1889, theatrical technicians in San Francisco formed an alliance with the Theatrical Mechanics Association in New York, and by 1892 Local 16 had been granted a charter with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, who are still active today in YBCA’s theater and forum and at most of San Francisco’s performance houses. In collaboration with the Labor Archives and Research Center, these artists have researched organized labor at nearby theaters and museums to create a series of sidewalk stenciled chalk paintings portraying active union members working or defending their rights. A podcast and map are provided for self-guided tours. Historian-and-artist-led walking tours of these venues will leave ybca at noon on July 26 and October 4. Reservations can be made at 415.978.2787. Audio can also be accessed by calling 415.294.3627.

Jessica Tully, Kim Munson, Wendy Crittenden, Tom Griscom, Christine Wong Yap, Greg O’Toole and the Labor Archives and Research Center