Meeting the Mayor: Luminaria

Sarah Fisch bartending in the CAM VIP Lounge

Here's a link to the super-flattering article that Sarah Fisch wrote on my students' projects for Luminaria, but the story that I want to tell is the one about how I met the San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger the night of Luminaria.

First, some pictures:

my kids installing their "Future Utopias" show

(L to R: Mauricio Gudiño, Derek Brown, Alyosha Burkee, Utah Snyder, Joshua Hurt)

John Mata installing his "Room made mostly of cardboard and masking tape, containing various media relating to the idea of New Media and Future Utopia"

entrance to the "Future Utopias" exhibition

the Deluminators: Utah Snyder and Michael Stoltz

Hyperbubble

Contemporary Art Month occupied the Beauty College building

Randy Wallace's striking and visceral installation in the basement of the Beauty College

Randy is quickly becoming one of my favorite artists in San Antonio

Buttercup playing at the Beauty College

back at "Future Utopias," Derek Brown's "No Borders" projection installation in the background

onlookers looking at Davis James' "Minute-ness" 2-channel video sculpture

Alyosha Burkee's "Get Schooled" video in the foreground, Utah Snyder's table of handmade goods in the background (mostly gone by this time of the night)

Jennings Sheffield "Separation of Power" in the background, and Mauricio Gudiño's 2-channel video installation in the foreground

OK, now for the story.

Roll of gaffers tape in-hand, I was running around all night closing up the seams in the pipe-and-drape that surrounded the "Future Utopias" show. There was an entrance and a flow designed for the space, but the masses wanted to find any gap and make it into an entrance or exit point. There was something interesting about these porous borders (especially within the context of South Texas), but it was more important to uphold the integrity of the space... besides, it could be downright dangerous to have everyone crashing through the walls at any given moment.

For example, around 11:30pm a couple guys came stumbling through the drape into the show, one guy grabbing onto the wavering pipe, which offered no support to counter his off-balance stance. As I rushed over to seal up the breach, I recognized that this was Mayor Hardberger, who was having a rightfully jolly time in the final half-hour of his second annual and majorly successful city-wide arts festival. I took the opportunity to introduce myself, and we chatted for awhile-- he remembered last year's UTSA New Media Studio exhibition on Houston Street, and cited two specific artworks from memory: Mike Stoltz' 2-channel installation, where a woman in a doorway greets the viewer very warmly; and Gary Wise's "Eat." I made sure that he had my card before he left, and wished later that I had taken advantage of this as a photo op, in which case you'd be seeing a picture of me & the mayor here.

Maybe next year...!

A Loose-Knit "Symposium" (mid-february)

We had a fun few days with some experimental music performances, edgy films and videos, and general cross-culture pollination on the occasion of the Bearded Child Film Festival coming to town (thanks UTSA New Media Program), the No Idea Festival just around the corner in Austin ushering in Jason Kahn (thanks also Swiss Arts Council + UTSA) and Annette Krebs, and the overlap of  John Mata's "Sala Diaz Is Open" project. 

Dan Anderson introducing his Best of Bearded Child Film Festival program at UTSA

In the same room, the night before the BCFF screening, we held the panel: "DIY and the Avant-Garde." Chris Cogburn (No Idea festival founder & director) imparted the idea that we can all encounter an experimental music set together, but essentially each one of us is also alone in our experience. This reminds me of the similar notion in experimental film, one that Dave Hickey discusses in an essay from Air Guitar about his experience viewing experimental film during his college years. In it he describes the a-ha moment while watching "Haircut," by Andy Warhol. There is the excruciatingly slow activity of the haircut, of nothing seeming to happen... for a long time, of the rise of his self-awareness as a viewer, and the discomfort of the audience. The ongoing internal dialogue in this case, and an important counterpart of the aloneness that Chris talked about, breaks into collective relief and shared joy as the protagonist finally reaches into his shirt-pocket for a cigarette. 

Annette Krebs performing at "Sala Diaz Is Open" to a packed room. We all listened intently.

Dan Anderson & Ben Judson in the big red van, transporting chairs to the Beauty College

at the Beauty College, Travis Street, downtown San Antonio

Annette Krebs and Chris Cogburn performing at the Beauty College

Annette and Chris opened for Jason Kahn. A focused quietness filled the room. One guy sipped from a pint bottle of whiskey. We were on the horse-drawn-carriage tourist ride route. The street sound-scape offered up the clomping of horses' hooves, a car alarm, (the absence of the train that we usually hear outside of Salon Mijangos), a skateboard on the sidewalk. Brakes, shoes, a honk, and revving engine. Door creek.

Annette K had her guitar on her lap, rubbing it with a steel scrubby pad. I imagined that she's had that guitar since she was 15, and in a punk band... but that's just my fantasy, she informed me later. Chris C came off as a conjurer, bringing presence to the present, creating that space for us to be by ourselves, together.

7 or 8 men entered into the space, and two of them began to whisper back and forth, sapping the fullness of this poised, riveted moment; pulling from the focal point, not consciously participating. I could keep thinking about these ideas, but after a little while whispered over to them: 'If you guys are going to talk, would you please go in the back?' One guy quips "I was waiting for them to start." I found out later that he is the owner of the Beauty College who had let us hold the event in his place. It was a culture clash with a fellow who may like the attention that art draws to his building, but may not necessarily like, or even care to understand the art itself. I'm not really sure what to do with that, other than to observe. 

Conversely, Patrick Zeller and I talked at the intermission, and he divulged that he was really working at "being open, patient, and listening." This music is certainly far outside the mainstream, and demands a different attitude from its audience-- one that Patrick nailed. Being open to an unknown experience may bring risk, but it has potential for great reward, too. It seemed like this music was a new experience for Patrick, but being an artist who travels and photographs outside of his own culture primes him for unique encounters.

Jason Kahn flanked by the Boyd Brothers, after his performance

As for Jason Kahn's set, I was struck by the physicality of the music. He played a drum, modulated by electronic implements. Fine-tuning frequency, manipulating wavelength, modulating the analog hand-signal on the drum by way of the electronic tool/control panel, like a vehicular dashboard. He transfixed the audience through a wall of sound, a physical, spatial, dynamic experience. Sound oscillating, Kahn's rocket-ship blasted the audience into orbit (like the time I saw Susie Ibarra play in the Diego Rivera Courtyard at the Detroit Institute of the Arts)-- a space-time machine. Its best to surrender.

A New Year

The Happy Buddha (2008)

Franco Mondini-Ruiz

Late into the night of Stacey Hill's housewarming party, as we stood in the driveway at her beautiful new dwelling just a mile up the road from my place, Franco and I had talked about a trade. He made it easy for me to ask by complimenting my LANDSCAPES show that was at Blue Star in September, generously saying that it was "world-class," and calling me the "technology diva of San Antonio." Shortly after that, and just prior to a week-long holiday stint in the wintery north, I'd trekked over to Franco's inspired hacienda on the west side with some DVD editions.

It was a gorgeous San Antonio December day. The place was jumping with the activity of his many assistants-- Kurt and Bryson in the studios, and Rosa in the studio kitchen. Over in the main house, we made room in a tiny office that also seemed to be a bedroom, where the tv monitor sat on a desk. As Franco lounged on the chaise, I showed him my videos, sunlight sifting past the trees and into the room through the window. He loved Michigan (Reflecting Pool) that I'd picked out for him, but really fell in love with Comic Bar Scene, saying that the former represented his ideal state of existence, but this one reflected the true energy of his operations there.

Cheery about his acquisition, we perambulated back over to the studio house, and there in the studio kitchen I was delighted to find Lisa Wolf-- she was there to show off her special reuben sandwich-- my timing couldn't have been better! I was treated to an exceptional lunch. But before food, I poked around the studios, trying to find the Franco piece for me. We already have a gorgeous large painting, Texas Tea, which Jason traded for one of his magnetic-paint-on-glass paintings... I realized that we should supplement with a sculpture.

Timing a little off here, though-- Franco has been pushing his 3D work over the holiday season, and being the awesome hustler that he is, had sold out! But... there on the tiny table crammed into the corner of the kitchen that he painted at... a cake plate was heaped with some headless figurines and a big buddha. Knowing that we share a fascination with trans-cultural fusion, and that my mom is Chinese, he suggested that he could finish this one for me!  And finish it he did, as you can see, dear reader, in the picture at the top of this post.

I love my new Happy Buddha! May it pave the way for a happier, lighter, calmer, and most harmonious 2009.

On that note, I'm in the middle of reading Three Cups of Tea, about the mountain climber Greg Mortenson.  It chronicles the saga of his self-made mission to build a school in a tiny, remote village at the foothills of the Himalayas, in Pakistan. It is a remarkable enterprise, and in the passage I read this morning, he describes the great eagerness and impatience he feels to get the job done in a culture that operates on a different sense of time. One morning, the village elder tears Mortenson away from his position as the project's forman, takes him up the mountain for some perspective, and tells him he's got to knock it off.

"That day, Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I've ever learned in my life.  We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly. We're the country of thirty-minute power lunches and two-minute football drills. Our leaders thought their 'shock and awe' campaign could end the war in Iraq before it even started. Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them." (Greg Mortenson)

I hope to be able to improve myself in this respect, particularly in my project of building the New Media Program at UTSA-- to be able to find ways to disengage from the various pressures of my job, to become a less reactive person. My other new years resolutions are: 1 - to spend more time in the physical world, especially outdoors, and 2 - to take more time just to think about things.