Cubo de memoria

Jeremy Deller

Exposición: Nov 13, 2003 – Ene 25, 2004


Para su residencia en ArtPace, Jeremy Deller ha abordado Texas, no solo el mítico estado estadounidense descrito en los periódicos, sino también la realidad que descubrió mientras vivía en San Antonio durante dos meses. Con ArtPace como base de operaciones, Deller visitó cuevas de murciélagos y otros lugares locales, viajó a la ahora famosa ciudad de Crawford y habló con un sobreviviente del desastre de Branch Davidian en Waco. Memory Bucket de Deller mezcla y vuelve a mezclar la parafernalia de Texas, entrevistas en vivo, muestras de sonido y fotografías que ha recopilado a lo largo del camino. La instalación resultante presenta un video, impresiones fotográficas, camisetas de recuerdo, koozies de cerveza y calcomanías para parachoques que aluden a los elementos sociales, políticos y naturales que ha descubierto.

Al visitar Texas, Deller se sintió cautivado por la proximidad física de dos de sus lugares más infames. Puesto en el mapa por la familia presidencial Bush, Crawford es una pequeña ciudad ganadera que representa a Texas, si no a Estados Unidos, en su forma más patriótica. Sin embargo, a solo unos minutos se encuentra otro sitio de reputación internacional: Waco. Cerca de Mount Carmel se encuentra el complejo Branch Davidian, el sitio de un asedio gubernamental de 1993 ampliamente criticado que resultó en un incendio mortal.

El componente principal de Memory Bucket es un video. El trabajo presenta entrevistas con personas de Crawford y Waco intercaladas con imágenes que se pliegan en otros aspectos de Texas. El distorsionado discurso de un representante de Alamo cuenta la «heroica historia de la última batalla» y pasa de una ciudad a otra. Los manifestantes anti-Bush en San Antonio son seguidos por secuencias de la ciudad natal del presidente.

En los momentos finales del video, Deller cambia el énfasis de la humanidad al mundo natural, de los individuos que componen el estado a las criaturas que dependen de su topografía única. Quizás esta sea una conclusión reveladora de Memory Bucket, un proyecto que, por casualidad y elección, une a las personas para contar una historia sobre Texas.

Artista

Jeremy Deller

London, England

Although based in London, England, Jeremy Deller is a constant traveler. Defying attempts at easy categorization, his work combines performance, video, sound, ephemera, and photographs into projects that excavate the history of a particular region. Deller’s process involves physically exploring a place and talking to the people who live there. The results of his research are woven into multi-media pieces that use people and their stories to depict the fabric of their land.
Deller’s last several projects have been investigations of the United States. After the Gold Rush (2002), created during a residency in California, is a tour book turned treasure hunt. The book and CD that comprise the project lead the reader/listener on a linguistic, sonic, and pictorial journey through northern California. Like the folk singers he admires, in this work, Deller spins a tale of the Golden State by celebrating its unknowns.
For This is us (2003), Deller explored upstate New York—an area, like San Francisco, with strong ties to folk culture. Working only with sound, Deller created an audio portrait of the area. He produced a CD and orchestrated a concert, bringing together various contributors to the region’s aural landscape—from a punk band and cheerleaders to birds of prey and a bluegrass group. In this and other works Deller unites diverse elements from an area, with the aim of offering a rich, albeit unconventional, version of place.
Jeremy Deller was born in 1966 in London, England. He studied art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, England, and later at University of Sussex, Brighton, England. Deller is the co-initiator of the Folk Archive. Individual projects include This is us, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2003); After the Gold Rush, Capp Street Projects, San Francisco, CA (2002); The Battle of Orgreave (2001); and Karl Marx at Christmas, Fig. 1, London, England (2000). He has been included in group exhibitions at the 50th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2003) the Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland (2003); and the Tate Modern, London, England (2001).

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Curador

Laura Hoptman

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Laura Hoptman was recently appointed Curator of Contemporary Art and the Carnegie Museum of Art and will organize the 54th installation of the Carnegie International in fall 2004.  Previously, Hoptman was the Assistant Curator of Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art, and held positions as Guest Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Curator of The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York.
Her most recent exhibition, Drawing Now: Eight Propositions at the Museum of Modern Art, Queens, New York highlighted 26 international artists. The exhibition posited that in the recent past drawing has eschewed the digitized, multimedia direction that much of contemporary art has taken, and has come to resemble more closely its pre-20th-century identity as a self-contained, finished thing.
While at MoMA, Hoptman also organized a number of contemporary art exhibitions including Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968 (co-curated with Lynn Zelevansky of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1998) and Projects #60: John Currin, Elizabeth Peyton, Luc Tuymans (1997)—each was cited as one of the 10 best exhibitions of its year by ArtForum magazine.
Hoptman has written extensively, publishing articles in Parkett, Frieze, and Flashart magazines and authoring the monograph Yayoi Kusama (Phaidon Press, 2000).

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