Artist Presentation: Alyse Emdur, by: Hannah Welter

Alyse Emdur

Prison Landscapes

A collection of photos where prison inmates create and stand in front of backdrop paintings pr photographs provided made of fantastic places such as beaches, mountains, waterfalls, etc. To Alyse, she has a history with these backdrops. Her bother was serving a sentence for drug related crime. Her brother, sister, and herself have a photo in front of a tropical beach scene.

She wanted to prospective of the families view of America’s incarcerated population from reflecting on her own photograph. “The collection was inspired by a photograph I found of myself at age five posing in front of a tropical beach scene while visiting my brother in prison. Since discovering this first portrait in my own family album in 2005, I have invited hundreds of prisoners to send me photographs for inclusion in this collection.” -Alyse (http://www.alyseemdur.com/3_prison/index.php)

Softcover, 176 pages plus 8 fold-outs, 165 x 235mm

Published: Four Corners Books, January 2013

ISBN: 978-0-9561928-6-8

USA price: $35

Geyser Girls: A Waiting Room at Crystal Geyser

She states that this was a make-shift waiting room where “While visitors waited for the geyser to blow on sofas set within cascading travertine, they browsed my collection of women's gymnast magazines.”

It was a 3 day wait for the geyser to blow at 4 in the morning and went about 10 feet into the air.

I couldn’t find much more information on this then what was on her website. The geyser is 4.5 river-miles south of Green River, Utah.

Videos

She also does a bunch of video work, titles include: Weather woman, Fountain of Youth, Something Small, How To See Aura, Kiss Me, Round Robin, Show and Tell, Tales for Tails, Be Brave, We Try, Waterfalls, Co-existence, We Love Lloyd, Healing Each other, Beginning Animal Communication, It’ Coming, and We’re a Team. A lot of these videos are either to learn about peoples daily lives, to teach ourself to heal and help one another, a open place to talk about experiences, or all of them combined.

Waterfalls

2006, 4:45

Waterfalls sets up a video camera on a tripod facing the Multnomah Falls in Oregon and documents visitors as the water gushes behind them.

It’s Coming

2005, 32:33

It’s Coming documents a child yoga class in Portland, Oregon.

Thank you

Hannah Welter

Interventionist Art Practices in Portland

What is interventionist art (my working definition): 

Public practices at the intersection of art and "direct action" activism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_intervention

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Interventionism

"(urban interventions)...are typically concerned less with representing political issues than with intervening in urban spaces so as to question, refunction and contest prevailing norms and ideologies, and to create new meanings, experiences, understandings, relationships and situations."-Professor David Pinder of the University of London

I'm looking into the Portland context of public intervention practices with the goal of connecting to local individuals and groups who have done this type of work. As a more hands-on form of research, I will also do some exploratory "talking to passersby" about the history of the Multnomah County Central Library, to get more practice being charming & asking strangers for their time. This is an important skill for certain forms of performative public interventions :)

So far I haven't found very many examples of this specific kind of work happening in Portland, so I'm including my explorations around the edges of this topic, including interventionist work in general and Portland-related art with strong connections to grassroots organizing.

General resources and readings on interventionist art practices

Books

Current organizations and training resources:

Center for Artistic Activism (Steve Lambert and Steve Duncombe)

Yes Labs (a project of the Yes Men)

Beautiful Trouble (book and workshops) Andrew Boyd

Center for Story Based Strategy (grassroots organizing/design lens)

Other online writing and practitioners:

Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (John Jordan/Reclaim the Streets/la ZAD)

https://actipedia.org/

http://destructables.org/

There is often overlap/collaboration between interventionist artists and organizations that focus specifically on spectacular direct-action protest, for example:

Ruckus Society

Greenpeace (St. Johns Bridge occupation to stop arctic oil drilling)
Mosquito Fleet—Portland or just Seattle?

Where do interventionist practices intersect with Portland?

People

Igor Vamos (Reed College grad) (Guerrilla Theater of the Absurd/guerrilla street re-naming in PDX, Yes Men, Barbie Liberation Front, RTmark.) Now teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Katherine Ball- (MFA SoPrac alum)—collaborates with Tools for Action in Europe (action inflatables) and DIY living experiments

Zachary Gough (MFA SoPrac alum)--Dentistry at the Museum, contributor to A Soft Spot in a Hard Place, investigating artists' contributions to anticapitalist movements (with Thomas Gokey, Cassie Thornton/Strike Debt and Max Haiven)

Sam Gould--Red76 project in early-2000s Portland--educational talks and gatherings in bars, laundromats, street corners. Currently teaches at Minneapolis College of Art and Design and involved in book store/publishing venue Beyond Repair

Historical-- Portland Cacophony Society?

Not directly interventionist but still good to know about

Other PSU Social Practice MFA expats

Jen Delos Reyes (Open Engagement, PSU SoPrac MFA and co-creator)
Transformazium (MFA SoPrac grads, now outside of Pittsburg PA) social practice neighborhood work

Portland art & artists with connections to grassroots organizing 

Just Seeds printmaking collective—Thea Garh, Icky Dunn, Roger Peet all live in PDX

Robin Corbo, muralist

Julie Perini--Arresting Power film with Jody Darby, also new film about Bo Brown, gentleman butch revolutionary bank robber
Don't Shoot Portland--Teressa Raiford. Article about art projects. Collaboration with Portland Art Museum

Other PDX artists with Social Justice concerns

Vanessa Renwick--experimental film 

Kaia Sand poetry
Pdx puppet show
August Wilson Red Door Project, Hands Up - public theater project about police violence
Joe Sacco - political comics journalist
Gentrification is Weird - Donovan Smith

Oral History Projects

Vanport Mosaic Project
Know Your City walking tours

Street Art

Portland Street Art Alliance (an above-board mural-painting nonprofit)
City Repair (once did guerrilla street projects; now it's institutionalized, so is it now "community arts"?)

Rock HOUNding With Fred

RockHOUNding With Fred (capitalization intentional ;)

An investigation into the unique minerals found in Oregon state leading with the question “What does only Oregon have?” Question answered using mineralized and unmineralized inquires.

I have been documenting my research (slowly) to Instagram which can be found here: @AMBSJprojects

There you can find semi extensive descriptions of my experience at The Fossil Cartel.

I went to another store called ​ÉYÈM Holistic Health Studio which I did not expect to find much about rocks, but did! And much more! I intend to post more about this visit on the @AMBSJprojects Instagram account, so check back soon!

As far as further Rock HOUNding goes, Fred had this to say about my current progress.

So, In this search I found a few mines I may be interested in visiting in the Summer Months.

The first of which is Pick and Dig Obsidian Company, which is the mine Fred insisted I find.

The second mine I am interested in seeking out is called Opal Butte, in Morrow County Oregon.

I sent Fred the Specimens I procured per the investigation of "What Only Oregon Has?"

The tight shots requested by Fred can be found in the post about the items acquired on the @AMBSJprojects Instagram.

Interviews conducted so far on this topic can be found here: Rock HOUNding with Fred (the album)

These are some sites that I have been using to further my study on this topic:
Forest Service: Public Rock Hounding Sites
Oregon Rock Hounds Online
Scott's Rock & Gem a Rockhounding Journey!

With these specifically set aside for reading by the group ;)
Geology.com - Oregon Gemstones
Innagem.com - Oregon Opal 

Gestures for/from Walla Walla

How can I encourage physical experimentation and connection within my rural community in Eastern Washington?  Join me for an embodiment experiment that uses technology to help transgress distances.

Since many of you have never been to Walla Walla, I decided to share a snapshot!  

References for this Participatory Project

I created my very first movement score accidentally... or rather before I knew what a score was and how they were employed. The result was a video installation that documented the performance process and an installation of the "props":

Since then, my use and interest in scores has evolved dramatically. I have found scores to be a great means for inspiring physical experimentation, directing a collective of movers, and most importantly as a way for me to consciously enact trust in my body as a means of knowledge production. I moved to Walla Walla a year and a half ago and have noticed that movement experimentation is rare here, especially in public spaces. I'm hoping to create a resource for educators, students and movers to share this somatic resource.

Online/Book Resources:

Fluxus Art, Wikipedia description (overview of movement at the origins of my initial interest)

Grapefruit, book by Yoko Ono (1964)

Fluxus Performance Workbook by Ken Friedman, Owen Smith and Lauren Sawchyn

School Book 2, publication by Goat Island Performance Group (2000)

Learning to Love You More, a project by Harrell Fletcher & Miranda July (2002-2009)

Draw it With Your Eyes Closed, a project by Paper Monument (book published in 2012)

The Art and Social Practice Workbook (download), a project by Guestwork (2013)

PBS's The Art Assignment, a project started by Sarah Urist Green (founded 2014)

This Very Moment: teaching, thinking, dancing, a book by Barbara Dilley (2015)

Personal Conversations/ Interviews:

Jessica Cerrulo (Walla Walla, WA) Nicole Pietrantoni (Walla Walla, WA)

Ariana Jacobs (Portland, OR)

Roya Amirsoleymani (Portland, OR)

Harrell Fletcher (Portland, OR)

PSU Art and Social Practice cohort (Portland, OR)

Tamin Totzke (Seattle, WA)

Kirsten Kosmos (Walla Walla, WA)

Terri Cotts (Walla Walla, WA)

Travis Neel & Erin Charpentier of Guestwork (Portland, OR)

Renee Sills (Portland, OR)

Class Readings for Week 9

I read over 100 scores trying to decide which ones to share with you and in the end I'm sharing two that I have been iterating in my collaborative performance practice for many years. The first two images are from a mini-book so I'm counting them as one page. :)

from "School Book 2" by Goat Island Performance Group (2000)

from "School Book 2" by Goat Island Performance Group (2000)

from "THIS VERY MOMENT: teaching thinking dancing" by Barbara Dilley (2015)

Lauren's Research References

This is perhaps more a list of inspirations and references for my final project...

The bowling alley I went to as a teenager that was torn down in 2002

This type of loss (both social and physical) led me to my interest in the built environment, and all the myriad meanings wrapped up in it.

Psychogeography gave a name to something I had been thinking about ever since I can remember.
I'm really interested in how buildings have stories to tell, as vessels of human experience. Normal Klein writes, "It seems that if you could simply rest your ear close enough to the point where the blades have sheared away the joists, there might be the faint echo of a scream..."

So I started thinking about buildings in Portland that were recently torn down, and still have stories to tell. I hope to give them a fitting tribute. Below are some screenshots from my initial Next Door posts...

After this initial phase, I started asking for stories; 

The outcome remains to be seen! In the meantime, enjoy Vanessa Renwick's short film about the Lovejoy Columns...

New School of Invisible Economics: Fishing the City 101

An inquiry into the impact of urbanization and city development via stories from people who have fished Seattle’s waterways for generations. 

References for this participatory research project

Oral histories of fishers conducted by members of ECOSS (Environmental Coalition of South Seattle)

The Seattle Times guide to urban fishing

Environmental Inequality and the Urbanization of West Coast Watersheds, Sarah S. Elkind, 2016

The Duwamish River’s Deadly Catches, Daniel Person, 2013

City of the Changers: Indigenous People and the Transformation of Seattle’s Watersheds, Coll Thrush, 2006 (Short reading assignment excerpt here)

Salmon Fishing Pier Closes in Downtown Seattle

This goodbye really hurts: Linc’s Tackle taught Seattle how to fish

Informal interviews

Interviews with fishermen on pier 69

Sophorn Sim, interviewer in fish stories oral histories and Community Outreach Associate at Environmental Coalition of South Seattle

Ronn Kess of Fish On Bait & Tackle, currently closed due to fishing pier 86's closure

Week 8 Readings - Kate Taylor

Quotes:

"The 'public' here is not some generalized amorphous mass but rather local residents and passing consumers..." (pg. 133)

"Rather than aiming for some essentialised 'truth' to emerge about the identity of the river, what emerged was a plurality of perspectives from locals reflecting on their encounters with the river in its past uncovered state, to others discovering that a river existed in the area at all, to re-imaginings of the space through dance, food, mobile gaming and live performance." (pg. 133)

"One of the aims of Underground Streams was to generate dialogue, with some aim of sociopolitical transformation, to recognize and acknowledge the way that urban transformation impacts on human/nature interrelationships and local ecologies and the changing role and identity of urban rivers." (pg. 133)

Questions:

I would like clarification on Nikos Papastergiadis' notion of "reflexive hospitality."

What are the pitfalls artists face attempting geo-ethnological work? Which techniques/scenarios promote or obstruct the ideals of "reflexive" participation?

How can I generate dialogue without it turning into a "one-way conversation" or "closed loop?"