Jettison Quarterly is an arts and culture magazine based out Chicago, IL.
Opening on Sept. 6 and running through Nov. 2, CoLabratory at Columbia College’s Glass Curtain Gallery dives deep into an examination of collaborative art. Jettison sat down with the show’s curator, Annie Morse, for five questions on the subject of artistic collaboration, and the nature of collaboration between the artist and the viewer.
Jettison: In curating CoLaboratory, what impression did you want to give visitors?
Annie Morse: The formal presentation of the exhibition was a secondary consideration. What seemed interesting to the artists and to me was the structure of the collaboration—how each group would interact among themselves, and as a discrete entity in collaboration with another group. It was important to leave a lot of breathing room for the piece to evolve out of those discussions and clarifications.
Jettison: How were (f)utility projects and ED JR. selected? What about their particular styles of collaboration interest you as a curator?
Annie Morse: I knew some of the artists in each collaborative and I trusted their instincts in constructing collaborations. As a curator, one of my primary goals is to work with people who value the effort of those who support them, and this was an exhibition opportunity that allowed full acknowledgement of that part of artistic practice. Neysa Page-Lieberman and the exhibitions advisory board at Columbia were also interested in working with these artists and together we found a way to bring the exhibition into being.
Jettison: Why is collaboration in art interesting to you, both between artists and between artists and their audience?
Annie Morse: So often, Western culture presents the artist as a lone wolf, a rugged individualist, a solitary figure against the crowd—all these clichés spring from the idea that art has to confront societal expectations to be relevant, to innovate, or to bring something new into the world. My feeling is that art can do all these useful things but that artists don’t, and don’t have to, do it alone. I think that collaborations happen inevitably and fruitfully even when artists work in relative isolation—whether they are collaborating with abstract or conceptual sources of inspiration or with the person who puts a plate of food in front of them every so often. And, in my opinion, the audience is absolutely essential. I really don’t think a tree falling in the forest makes a sound if no one’s around to hear it. And I think it’s tragic when ideas don’t find a thoughtful response. So, creating points of contact between artist and audience is very important to me. That’s one of the reasons we’re having so many opportunities for people to interact with the artists and the work by painting right there in the exhibition, engaging in discussion, and making things move and change in the gallery space.
Jettison: How does the show collaborate with the actual gallery space?
Annie Morse: I don’t think there can be a collaboration among inanimate objects, but I do think the exhibition successfully engages both the way artists and visitors interact with the space, and with the expectations of curatorial authority that many people bring to an exhibition. To say that I have been a hands-off curator is an understatement; the show grew out of the interaction of the artists in the space and the specific gifts and skills they brought with them. I had no idea what would be seen on September 8 when I helped ED JR. and (f)utility projects propose the show last spring. My job has been to support Neysa, the Director of Exhibition and Performance, and the gallery coordinator, Mark Porter, by acting as a liaison, when needed, among all these parties. What we ended up with is a thing of beauty that is site-specific but also visitor-centric. Visitors will make the show happen as they interact with the space, the structures, and the projections they find in the gallery. If I were a different kind of curator I would use the word “reify.” It’s an exhibition with durable conceptual foundations but it relies on the way people will handle it, photograph it, and change it for its identity.
Jettison: Are (f)utility projects and ED JR. collaborating together with their projects?
Annie Morse: Yes, from the beginning the idea was for ED JR.’s videos to respond to the space created by (f)utility project’s site-specific structures, and vice-versa. There has also been an amazing willingness on everyone’s part to pitch in and help each other do what needs to be done to achieve the common goal. The collaborative spirit is also a spirit of cooperation, and there’s been a refreshing absence of drama or ego-driven narrative in the whole experience.
Jettison: Give us your top five collaborations (past or present).
Annie Morse: I’m interested in the theoretical context of collaboration largely because of Adelheid Mers’ longtime investigation of its potential. She’s a friend and we collaborated on an exhibition called Early Adopters at the former 3Arts Club space. I loved working on Robert Amft, Paintings for Particular People at the Hyde Park Art Center with John Corbett in 2005; we didn’t really know each other at the outset but the work was a great pleasure because we brought different sensibilities to the show and learned a lot from each other. As an instructor in the Arts Administration and Policy program at the School of the Art Institute I taught a class called The Collaborative Project and one class took that title literally and collaborated to establish a student development fund that exceeded everyone’s expectations and is still going strong. They were awesome in the original sense of the word. I feel that the work I do in Museum Education at the Art Institute is a collaboration with the public, who volunteer to join a conversation about art and seeing with incredible generosity, insight, and passion. Finally, my partner and I, like a lot of couples, are really not very good at working together, so the fact that we are still trying after 20-odd years is very encouraging to me.
Annie Morse has worked with Museum Education at the Art Institute since 1996. As Senior Lecturer in the Adult Programs Division and liaison to the academic community, she coordinates the Graduate Student Seminar and an artist lecture series, Artists Connect. Morse graduated from the Master’s program in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism at SAIC and received her MS in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is an independent curator who has worked with the Contemporary Arts Council, The Three Arts Club of Chicago, and the Hyde Park Art Center. “CoLaboratory” is her first exhibition with Columbia College Chicago.
JETTISON Quarterly is pleased to announce the release of our Fall 2011 Issue today!
In celebration we are teaming up with Longman and Eagle and Old Style for What's Happening!!, an outdoor pig roast and dance party Sunday September 4th featuring the Windy City Soul Club DJ's.
Longman will be hosting a FREE outdoor block party open to all featuring dancing, food, drinks, and all around high fives! So join us at Longman & Eagle this coming Sunday to bring in the new JQ issue and party down with the amazing community that calls the corner of Kedzie and Schubert home away from home.
This issue we've got some of our biggest stories yet. From Jessica Stockholder moving to Chicago to an in depth look at NEXT restaurant. We've also ventured to exploring some of Chicago's other creative industries such as theater with The Inconvenience and design as we explore a new furniture and design shop, The Haymaker, in Andersonville. Pick up your FREE copy at the block party and look for it at your favorite cafe, shop, bar, and gallery in the week that follows. Don't forget to check out the digital issue as well with additional content and photos.
JETTISON Fall Issue 2011 has landed! High Fives JETT Peeps!
Jettison Release Party
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A Lighthearted War from Sirocco Research Labs on Vimeo.
It’s been long journey for filmmaker Barry Ptolemy in his pursuit to capture the ideas and life of one of the United State’s most controversial and brilliant minds—that of futurist and inventor, Ray Kurzweil. Ptolemy’s film, Transcendent Man, released in 2009, will hold its Chicago premiere on the IMAX screen of the Museum of Science and Industry tonight.
The film is beautifully shot and features some of the biggest names in science, politics and entertainment talking about the man whose ideas about the future are some of the most mesmerizing of our time.
But Transcendent Man didn’t begin as a documentary about the man who would become the film’s hero. As Ptolemy originally conceived the story, it would focus on the theory that Kurzweil is perhaps best known for—The Singularity—or the moment in time when the line between humans and artificial intelligence ceases to be clear.
Ptolemy first came in contact with Kurzweil and his theories the way many people have—through Kurzweil’s 2005 book The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. To say that the book had an impact on Ptolemy would be to put it lightly.
“Immediately upon reading the first couple of chapters, I thought it could be one of the most powerful films that anybody could make,” Ptolemy said. “It didn’t dawn on us until many, many months later that we would incorporate Ray and make it a movie about him.”
Transcendent Man follows Kurzweil as he travels around the world talking about the future of humans, technology and what he believes is in store for both. Fast-paced and entertaining, it explores Kurzweil’s predictions for the future, even as it traces the inventor’s past, his critics and his relationship with his father.
“I wanted something ancient and mythical,” Ptolemy said of his search for the film’s narrative.
As much as Transcendent Man is the story of Kurzweil’s predictions about what the future holds for humans and technology, it’s also a moving portrait of a man’s relationship to his father and his belief that he can bring him back to life. It took Ptolemy over a year to gain Kurzweil’s confidence to talk in depth about his father—and his plans for his resurection.
“I remember when he first said he would take us to his father’s grave… I said, ‘we have our story,’” the director recalled.
It is an aspect of the film, and of Kurzweil’s story, that the press and the public have seized upon. A talking point of some critics who at times consider Kurzweil a dangerous nut job, is the futurist's belief that not only will he be able to live forever, but that he will be able resurrect his father Fredric, who died in 1970, as well.
“If you listen to Ray talk about it, it doesn’t seem so crazy anymore,” Ptolemy said.
One of the most interesting aspects of the film is the back and forth of Kurzweil’s critics and proponants. Kurzweil himself moves in an out of the film through years of interviews and looks calm and collected as he explains living in virtual reality, downloading a human mind, or injecting millions of nano-sized robots in your blood stream to end the aging process. It’s all as if the ideas were as simple as sending an email—but that’s precisely Kurzweil’s point. Not long ago, he regularly reminds us, today’s technological innovations would have been inconceivable. Central to Kurzweil's predictions is that they will continually be happening quicker, through the law of accelerating returns.
Although Ptolemy said that he believes in the validity of Kurzweil’s ideas, the movie was not controlled by Kurzweil in any way. He didn’t even see it until a few weeks before the film’s debut at the Tribeca Film Festival. Instead Ptolemy said he tried to poke as many holes in the theories as he could, going back to re-interview critics several times as the film progressed.
“If I could find a hole in this and bring down his theory, that would be an important point too,” Ptolemy said. “I never found an argument that was even close to suitable for my own purposes, for my own curiosity, why this could not happen exactly as Ray says it. By no measure is this promoting Ray. We were trying to get the facts straight.”
The tone of Transcendent Man is largely aided by the music of composer Phillip Glass to great effect. Both classical and futuristic, ambient and resounding, Glass’ score lends greatly to the feeling the viewer walks away with in the end.
“First of all, you don’t pick Phillip Glass, he pretty much picks you,” Ptolemy laughed. “We thought early on there were only a couple [of composers] on that list, and Glass was one of them—and he was also interested. The ideas are both vastly simple and vastly complex [in the film] and we wanted something like that. Something simple and yet complex and elegant, and no one resonates like that like Phillip Glass.”
In the future, Ptolemy said he’s probably done with documentary and would really rather never make one again.
“They’re hard in every way and they take a lot of travel,” Ptolemy said. “Narrative film is where my heart is and feature films—particularly science fiction—is where I’d like to go.”
Ptolemy is currently considering a number of topics for future films, and plans to continue to collaborate with Kurzweil on a fictional, sci-fi version of the ideas and predictions in The Singularity is Near.
“We’d like to do a science fiction film about what the future will actually be like in 25 years,” Ptolemy said. “As science fiction is written—it’s really not accurate. Even one of my favorite filmmakers, Steven Spielberg, he makes a film like Minority Report… That was made almost 10 years ago. There’s already a technology in Minority Report that we’ve surpassed. The way the future will really be will be hard to write for, but we’d like to take a crack at it.”
So, how will Ptolemy make films after The Singularity, and what will they look like in the future?
“We’ve been telling stories for thousands of years,” Ptolemy responded. “We could not have this complex civilization without all the reflection and wisdom and knowledge that is shared through the arts and particularly through storytelling.’
“If I create a horror movie in 2027… will all my psychological issues be used in it? I think things will be much more customizable… using our memories. Will we all go sit in the theater? No I don’t think it will be like that. I think it will come directly through our cerebral cortex.”
Without needing to hook anything up to your cerebral cortex, you can view the Chicago premiere of Transcendent Man at the Museum of Science and Industry tonight, at 7 p.m. Tickets are still available and you can buy them at a discounted price, here. In addition, you can get a chance to ask the film’s director a few questions too. A Q&A session with Barry Ptolemy will follow the screening.
- By Matthew Hendrickson
See the interview with Emanuel Aguilar and Meredith Weber here: http://sixtyinchesfromcenter.org/archive/?p=7704
Gapers Block stopped by our booth at NEXT and had some nice things to say. Check it out here.
That's right. Jettison now in print as well as it's beloved online format. Stop by the booth at NEXT for a free copy of Jettison's first print issue, or swing by the site for the full-length magazine which will release momentarily.
