Aufbau Journey To Kunsthal Netherlands
This springtime 2012 has been very full for me after spending nearly a month in New York City- mostly with family/friends and some brief but necessary interview work for some articles later in the year. I was delighted to see several art related events most notably an exhibition by Lorraine O'Grady at Gray Associates Gallery in Chelsea (where I had just missed Coco Fusco's recent show there but was fortunate to see here here in Berlin for s tremendous lecture she gave at the I.C.I. at Pfefferberg )
I arrived to Berlin tired and relieved after the first occasion of a New York alienation I had not known before. Much has changed in New York, and it is more beautiful, but I remain suspect at the many questionable details where the devil may lay.
AUFBAU in German means to "build up" - in English we tend to say or call the neccessary period before an exhibition opens the "installation" period. The Upcoming Aufbau of Nancy Hoffman's show would need to take priority in all my scheduled things in Berlin.
Back in Berlin my skype meetings and email correspondences with Nancy Hoffman where clear and concise with each one of us wanting to make it "easy" (but wonderful) for her upcoming project " Who More Sci-Fi Than Us? Contemporary Art from the Caribbean" at the Kunsthal Kade in Amersfoort Netherlands where I know a nice couple since last year on Terschelling Island at the Wierschuur . The title is cited from a Juan Diaz novel of a young Domincan man living in manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood (where i stayed with Thomas Spear and his partner for one night in April)
Late April and most of May 2012 has just been a laser-focus on making all the necessary elements work for the new project/commission of "Who More Sci-Fi than Us?" Within this short period of time I needed to generate a new constellation that would reflect the precise moment of Haiti's recent and devastating earthquake in January of 2010.
We also discussed creating a public project. something that could be produced at a reasonable cost and serve both the purposes of PR as well as my general interests in creating a work that is familiar but loaded with a poetic gesturet hat can literally be taken away. I proposed a "Passport" one that reflected a sense of this expansive community rooted in some way to the Caribbean. It would be created in the approximate size of a real passport 8the dutch one being a model) in similar colors and with a similar seriousness given to this document that rules the lives of billions on our planet today. The parameters of budgets being what they are - my desire for the passport "pages" to be rainbow colored did not come to fruition but they are very acceptable none the less (it was important that the pages not be white. Blue was a nice and acceptable alternative)