Surface Tension: Problematics of Site - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0965557049 ISBN 13: 9780965557047

Publisher: Errant Bodies Press, 2002

Synopsis

"From Gordon Matta-Clark to Lawrence Weiner, Bruce Nauman to Alison Knowles, the question of site locates itself in issues of public space, at the intersection of the imagined and the real, at the juncture of performance and architectural production. By anthologizing essays, documents, and interviews by leading critics, historians, and artists on issues of site-specificity, conceptualism, feminism, and architecture practice, Surface Tension reveals the connections between cultural production and the very spaces in which such work functions. These textual explorations are complemented by extensive documentation of related projects, both historical and contemporary, by artists, architects, and performance artists, including Coughing Piece, a never-before released 1961 audio work by Yoko Ono; an obscure audio work by Nauman from 1969; projects by Suzanne Lacy, a leading figure in the development of conceptual practice and public art; and an experimental text by Jane Rendell on psychic architectures. Conversations occur between the pages of Surface Tension, between theoretical analysis and modes of practice, that activate the publication as a site itself, one participating in a broad field of knowledge. Includes an audio CD of the sound art pieces."

About this title

About the Author

Eyal Weizman is an architect, writer and curator based in London. He is the Director of Goldsmiths College's Centre of Architectural Research and the author of A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture, which has been banned by the Israeli Association of Architects. Weizman is also a contributing editor at Domus and Cabinet magazines.

Gordon Matta-Clark (1943 to 1978) showed at the Holly Solomon Gallery during his lifetime. His first posthumous retrospective traveled for 4 years to 14 venues, exponentially increasing the number of museums to have exhibited his work. Further solo shows have since been held at Paris's Jeu de Paume, London's Serpentine Gallery and New York's Dia Center for the Arts.

Born in 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Bruce Nauman has been recognized since the early 1970s as one of the most innovative and provocative of America's contemporary artists. Nauman finds inspiration in the activities, speech, and materials of everyday life. Confronted with 'What to do' in his studio soon after graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1964 with a BFA, and then the University of California, Davis in 1966 with an MFA, Nauman had the simple but profound realization that "if I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art. At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product." Working in the diverse mediums of sculpture, video, film, printmaking, performance, and installation, Nauman concentrates less on the development of a characteristic style and more on the way in which a process or activity can transform or become a work of art. A survey of his diverse output demonstrates the alternately political, prosaic, spiritual, and crass methods by which Nauman examines life in all its gory details, mapping the human arc between life and death. The text from an early neon work proclaims: "The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths." Whether or not we--or even Nauman--agree with this statement, the underlying subtext of the piece emphasizes the way in which the audience, artist and culture at large are involved in the resonance a work of art will ultimately have. Nauman lives in New Mexico.

Michael Rakowitz's projects have appeared in exhibitions at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the Queens Museum of Art, the Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, White Columns Gallery, and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, all in New York; the Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia; the Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius, Lithuania; and ACC Galerie in Weimar, Germany, among others. He is the recipient of the 2002 Design 21 Grand Prix, sponsored by UNESCO and currently Professor of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. Rakowitz lives in Brooklyn.

Lawrence Weiner was born in 1942 in the Bronx, New York. Upon graduating from high school, he worked in a variety of jobs--on an oil tanker, on docks, and unloading railroad cars--and then traveled throughout North America before returning to New York, where he exhibited at the Seth Siegelaub Gallery in 1964 and 1965. Since the 1970s, wall installations consisting solely of words in a nondescript lettering have been a primary medium for Weiner. Solo exhibitions of his work have been mounted at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., ICA London, Dia Center for the Arts in New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others. Weiner lives in New York and Amsterdam.

About this edition

• Publisher: Errant Bodies Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0965557049
• ISBN 13: 9780965557047
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300
• Editor: Ken Ehrlich, Brandon Labelle