JHANA and the RATS OF JAMES OLDS or 31 days/31 videos

Stephanie Barber will be doing a performance installation at the BMA for 31 days. She will make as many videos in that time.










 


 








JHANA and the RATS OF JAMES OLD
or
31 days/31 videos
 
From June 25th until August 7th 2011, Stephanie Barber will be moving her studio into the Baltimore Museum of Art. There, she will create a new video each day as part of the Sondheim Prize Exhibition. 
The goal of this project, entitled jhana and the rats of james olds or 31 days/31 videos, is to create a series of short, poetic videos in the playful and serious footprints of Oulipo games and daily meditations. Her hope is that this piece will serve as both a constantly changing installation as well as a collaborative performance in which museum visitors are present as spectator and creative partner. Colliding the concepts of creation and display, product and production Barber hopes to enliven the museum with the joy, frustration and wonder of the moments before a piece has been completed. She will also share the composure implicit in the definition of "completion," as each of the videos she creates will be displayed.
"I am thinking about the emphasis given to product over production, or display over creation. The piece is a video screening and an installation and a performance–a spiritual obeisance, an athletic  braggadocio, a consideration of marxist theories of production (with the assembly line so lovingly lit). It is a funny game for me to play, an exercise in concentration, discipline and focus, an extension of my everyday. It is a greedy desire to squeeze a massive amount of work out of myself; a dare; a show I would like to see myself. It is like the back story before the story, an inversion of the way we usually experience art work. a moving from the inside out. I was thinking how the interiors of museums are really only able to share what is almost the exterior of a piece of art work–and though this colliding of the interior and exterior is fuzzy–a step towards the interior of any art piece might be the making of that piece. I am interested in the tedious and repetitive qualities of meditation and art work, the difference and similarities in these two practices. The practice and work of these practices–the dispelling of the so seductive myth of artist as creating through a vague and florid explosion of inspiration–or perhaps interested in romanticizing the effort and challenging technical, logistical, practical elements of creation. The tedious as IT. Or one of the ITs. Like all pieces of art it is accordion in its intentions, shrinking and expanding upon use." -Stephanie Barber
The Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218-3898  P: 443-573-1700 F: 443-573-1582 / TDD: 410-396-4930

http://www.stephaniebarber.com/










Copyright © 2011 s. barber, All rights reserved.