20181104: Innere Stadt | Schaumbad

I committed a cardinal Austrian sin: I was late. Really late. An hour late. And for no good reason. I'm sure there's a word in German for this situation (arschlochspäter?)

The feeling of Sunday (because it was Sunday) took over my whole being today. I leisurely went downstairs and photographed the Priesterseminar building. I reviewed the images; I edited them; I wrote. I leisurely did some exercise in the gym. I felt my body; I got my mind inside the muscle, the movement. I leisurely prepared to film the footpath along the Mur. I set up the gimbal, I set up Magic Lantern. I leisurely ate lunch, departed and, transversing Hauptplatz, I suddenly remembered that there was something, only one thing, on my calendar for the next weeks: I had a meeting at Schaumbad at 2pm. I looked at my clock and it was already 2:38pm. Fuck. I needed a tram ASAP, but first I needed a ticket, but before that I needed exact change first. I dug in my pocket: Luck. Tram ticket, tram, I confirmed the route several times, considered an alibi or excuse, but tossed them all out. Thinking of all my friends, mostly artists, who, while traveling, had arrived an hour or more late. Considering the perspective of the artists at Schaumbad who were waiting, my heart slumped. Would they be as impatient as I have been with my tardy colleagues? Coming to terms with the reality that there was nothing I could do to not be late today, I had only to seek their forgiveness; I would be at their mercy.

But the artists were all very courteous and didn't even seem to care about my late arrival, although after my apologies, the formal introduction promptly began, so it was clear that they were waiting for me. I told the group about my project on the Speicherkanal and how it related to my larger interest in urban ecology and solid waste management; I shared the anecdote about the journey of the Mobro 4000 to dump its waste in different states and several countries, before finally returning to Long Island; I noted how New York City declares a state of emergency each time it rains due to the flooding on the impermeable concrete, and combined rainwater in the sewer system. Water management and movement have a symbiotic relationship in the city, since the surface creates a firm path for walking in a wet environment, but the water has to go somewhere and how and where it moves has often been a collision with our biological dependence on water that is hygienic.

When my introduction was over, each present artist introduced him/herself and what he had been working on. Everyone's interests were clear and appealing. I was surprised by the number of artists at Schaumbad who were working with trash, recycled materials, or environmental topics. But the exchange was rather short because the organization was in the middle of their annual programming meeting, and many people needed to leave soon. I made my exit and watched a documentary about the Mur that was on exhibit downstairs. The film structure followed the Mur from its glacial runoff to its confluence with the Drava.

20181105: Afro-Asiatische | Mur

Monday meant the building administration could fix my room's electricity.

Zihua and I went to the Afro-Asiatische Institut to collect our 850€ monthly stipend, transportation pass and cultural passes. The residency demonstrates the exceptional intra-institutional cooperation. A jury from das Land Steiermark chooses the artists and then institutions within Graz–Schaumbad, or a film, music or literary organization–bid for the selected artists. The selected artists are then given a plethora of resources and support from multiple organizations. The housing is offered within Priesterseminar owned by the Katholische Kirche, includes a museum on the ground floor, and residences for priests and seminary students but also engineering students; the financial stipend comes from the Afro-Asiatische (because both Zihua and I are both Asian?), which is an organization that started in the 1960s following the Austria's decolonization period of Africa; and the cultural passes and transport were given to us by the Katholische Hochschulegemeinde Graz located across the lobby from the Afro-Asiatische. Upon receipt of our last paperwork, we were instructed to register our presence with the city government, which was obligatory for anyone living in Graz for more than a tourist duration.

The process of registration included writing one’s name, educational title, religion, home address, nationality, residential address and whether we were immigrating or not, on a form and submit it to the authorities. Who lives where and what is their status–socially and geographically–is expected, though little corroboration is required: No return plane ticket, no license with address, no bank statement–only a signature from our host and a passport.

Reading the form, I wondered how many steps into extreme politics–right or left–would be necessary to activate this seemingly objective information to become an instruments of horrific ends. Maybe that's my American distrust for government, though I realized how a similar process exists in the U.S.: transferring one's residency is legally obligated within 30 days of moving to a state, but there is an element of class and conformity explicit in this Austrian process, a conformity that is both impressive and frightening. The utility to the notion of state, inside and outside is clear. This is for non-citizens; in terms of migration, I am a tourist, not a permanent resident or citizen.

This paperwork was submitted to the Servicestelle der Stadt Graz, which itself was a journey into the administration of administration. The address of the office on the paper is actually police headquarters, wherein an officer directs people around the corner to a door–one of many municipal offices–where one takes a number in a waiting room. Was the direction toward the police intentional? If so, for what? The correct office is situated behind a waiting room that is walled with brochures of city initiatives, more brochures than I have ever seen in my life.

Programs for recycling, electronic waste, registering your pets, senior programs, health, parking, cycling, et al. Implicit in the presence of these brochures are the jobs of graphic designers, who produce the informatics; printers; proof-readers; legislators and many others. This is an important way that the government communicates with its citizens. The information infrastructure and the expectations that people will take these brochures and read them, even keep them for reference, ultimately dispose of them; the infrastructure of recycling waste of material.

When my number came up, I met with a functionary who translated the data on the form to a computer. Almost no conversation took place, simply a "Hallo" and then he started pecking away at the keyboard. Zihua was served by the functionary beside me. He was given a welcome swag bag, I was not.

Outside of the bureau, we ran into Keyvin, an artist from Schaumbad, who runs an exhibition space on Schmiedgasse. This gave me the feeling of living in a small town where everyone knew everyone. He invited us to an upcoming exhibition opening.

In the evening I had to remind myself that one of the advantages of being in Graz is the level of public safety. Even areas that Iris felt obligated to mention were considered "bad areas" at night–the Stadtpark–I had already walked through alone and it felt very safe, quiet but with pedestrian traffic. I went down to the Mur to photograph the river at night. The Mur is an existential resource for the city of Graz. It forms the two sides of the city–the "good" and the "bad"–and a source of water for drinking, mills, and hydropower. Vito Acconci's Murinsel is the dominant visual element on the river, with changing LEDs like a UFO fishing; an outsider to whom the citizens have become accustomed.

20181107: ESC | Kork Cafe

Iris invited me to an event at ESC Median Kunst Labor that was guided by the director, Reni. ESC had commissioned British artist Kathy Hinde to create "Distant Skies: Pressure Waves," a series of large-scale origami birds, whose wings were animated by crude pistons, all hung in front of Hubble telescope images of the galaxy. Simplistically beautiful, the location in the windows provoked a window-display aesthetic one might find on Fifth Avenue. Hypnotized, I liked them.

In the front exhibition space, the collaborative work "Palimpsest" (with Daniel Skoglund) explored the different transliteration of data from drawings on the floor into sound, which are in turn used to manipulate video footage. What the visitor saw were machines that look like land-borne drones on the floor scribbling abstract designs on paper, a projection onto the machine and some nearby monitors. It reminded me of the drawings made by machines that that were popular a decade ago, back when that documentary of an elephant that could paint and whose paintings were selling made plebeians continue to ask the question "What is art?" These works don't ask this question, and for that, I'm thankful.

In the main exhibition space Hinde showed "Phase Transition," a series of three sculptures that converted data about global warming to heated lamps over ice, which, while melting dropped into a steel trough. Inadvertently, these created beautiful rust patterns in the bottom of the pan. Some audio was connected to these. As a trio of three or four of these systems, I'm not sure what the point of having more than one was, but the trend of visualizing data and reproducing it in different media is vaguely similar to the fascination of synaesthesia in the 19th Century, only the myth of the artist as neurologically unique and appreciating sensorial perception differently than most people is replaced with the myth that the artist is a mild genius who can send data that would be interpreted by one sense to a different medium to be interpreted by another sense.[1]

At ESC I met Vera, the new resident artist at Schaumbad.

Iris and the ESC gallery assistant, Fay, shortly debated the merits of artwork about climate change. During the discussion I sensed a history between these two young ladies. Later I learned that they had been students in an art history class together. Another nod toward small town dynamics.

Zihua and I went to the opening of Keyvin and saw only the closing of the event but he showed me the downstairs of the space, which functioned as a workshop or storage. The building was very old, and the basement, which required descending several narrow stone passageways, was unfinished, densely packed although the ceiling must have been 12 feet high.

We met Iris and Vera at Kork cafe near the University to see a performance by the Graz artist Stefan Schmitzer. His performance consisted of a drummer and keyboardist playing disjointed songs while Stefan read from publications by the right-leaning Austrian government. Although I didn't understand the reading because it was in German, I was impressed because by the space, which was a lively cafe with patrons enjoying beers and hanging out, while this avant gard performance occupied the place of what would be a bad open-mic (tucked into a corner, no cover fee, and people really being at the cafe to socialize, not to be entertained or see a performance) in a U.S. cafe. [2]

For the size of the population, Graz has a lot of cultural activities operating at an impressive level. While San Francisco has about 700,000 inhabitants (a few million if the greater San Francisco Area is included), at short of 300,000 people Graz and has many many more events, and higher quality of work, both on grounds of content and production value. The cultural institutions of Graz–Künstlerhaus KM, Grazer Kunstverein, and Kunsthaus Graz for contemporary art, mirror the role of San Francisco's Yerba Buena, or Berkeley's Pacific Art Museum. The Kunsthaus includes Camera Austria’s exhibition space; Camera Austria also produces a printed magazine. Graz has a plethora of smaller spaces, like Kunsthalle Graz and of course Schaumbad.

The Universalmuseum Joanneum is a massive complex of regional institutions that include natural history, artifacts, zoology, mineralogy, paleontology, folk culture and art. It actually includes Kunsthaus Graz within its network. Besides contemporary art, there are numerous religious museums and historic museums: GrazMuseum, Tramway Museum, Schloss Eggenberg (another Joanneum), Museum Der Wahrenmung, Schell Collection, Naturkundemuseum, Haus Der Arkitektur, Styrian Armoury, Palais Herberstein, a sculpture park and numerous historic and architectural sites. There are galleries, some high-end commercial, others more experimental with a non-profit model. The Diagonale film festival is an addition to the local, smaller cinemas that will screen Cannes and Berlinale programming.

By population, Graz is more appropriately compared to either Seattle or Portland, but by this metric, even the two American cities combined, there is no comparison with the cultural activity and level to Graz. The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Asian Art Museum, and the Frye inadvertently collaborate toward fulfilling the void of institutional contemporary art in Seattle. However, their collections aren’t orientated to complement this mission and much of the floorpan is dedicated to landscape painters or German Romanticists, which influence your experience seeing newer works in adjacent galleries. As the relevance of art to the Millennial audience increasingly equates to revisioned histories of truth, power, sexuality, gender and representation–across media–institutions face the reality of evolving or closing their doors. And in the last 10 years there have been occasional, and thankfully an increasing frequency of shows of international repute in Seattle–Harun Farocki at the SAM and Carrie Mae Weems at the Henry to name a few–but every time I visit I'm reminded of the tremendous wealth of the city–the numerous corporations and billionaires (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates)–and sorely surprised that only Paul Allen has seriously supported arts and culture. (Can the public visit Microsoft’s art collection?) Architecturally speaking, I prefer the facade of Experience Museum Project to Peter Cook's Kunsthaus Graz, but I've never seen an important or interesting show at the EMP, and the interior space is a tropical wine cellar: too warm to keep anything of value. Seattle has had some fledgling organizations that were promising–Western Bridge, 911 Media–but they couldn't gain the traction, years, and support needed to grow into a world class stature. The exception to this is the Seattle Sculpture Park. As a city that was the mythical center of 1990s music, Seattle could have positioned itself as a world destination for contemporary culture. Yet Seattle’s best cultural activities are found in house-show scene, cafes and restaurants.

Graz institutions achieve an international scope through introducing local and international practitioners in residencies, special exhibitions and programming with budgets. Notably, the majority of cultural institutions in Graz are headed by accomplished females. At least four of these institutional leaders were feminists artists involved in the magazine Eva & Co.

The Steirischer Herbst [1] is an important annual arts festival that been staged for over forty years. With an emphasis on new and avant-garde art, most media are included–music, films, installations, radio programs, theater, exhibitions–as well as programming for discussions and lectures. Seattle’s Bumbershoot would be a similar scale, though Bumbershoot emphasizes music and lasts only for Labor Day Weekend; Steirischer Herbst lasts for about a month.

CMRK is an evening of coordinated openings in Graz in which four institutions that support contemporary art–Camera Austria, Künstlerhaus KM, <roto> and Grazer Kunstverein–each have a reception for one hour, each occurring in succession. The event aims to connect the contemporary arts community of Graz s well as draws crowds from Vienna by offering a free shuttle bus between the two cities. [4]

The sector that I see missing most in Graz is a strong contemporary gallery district. There isn't a large, distinct arts neighborhood. And the few galleries that I visited were spread out around the city; the works were unimpressive. Here, Graz could learn from the model that Seattle developed with the Tashiro Kaplan Artist Lofts that function as anchor of the Seattle's gallery area or 49 Geary in San Francisco. [5]

In the context of connectivity to international producer, Steiermark has attracted international artists, writers, musicians, regularly through their residencies and commissions, exhibitions and talks. San Francisco's Headlands, nearby Djerassi, or Montalvo lack the exposure of residency that is located within a city and open to the public. Seattle's residency scene is small; local niche organization like, Jack Straw, mostly support local talent.

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[1] ESC Medien Kunst Labor
https://esc.mur.at/de/projekt/distant-skies-pressure-waves
[2] Stefan Schmitzer
https://schmitzer.mur.at/
[3] CMRK
http://www.cmrk.org/k_eng.html
[4] Steirischer Herbst - Festival of New Art
http://2015.steirischerherbst.at/english/Festival
[5] Tashiro Kaplan Artist Lofts
http://tklofts.com/

20181109: Stone Age | Water Age Travel

Cities are a technology of the Stone Age.

The management of rainwater runoff is becoming a central concern for many cities; climate change is shortening the duration of transitional seasons, but increasing the amount of precipitation. In one sense, stone material in cities are central to this problem, since they prevent both percolation and soil hydration. Coincidentally, they are chosen, in part, for these characteristics, in effort to secure other urban value assets–infrastructure like transportation, piping, electricity, et al. But stones are also chosen because when exposed to moisture, they erode more slowly than human life or a government. If our life span wer only 24 hours, leaves would suffice as a city floor.

While homes may be made of wood or steel, cities are made of stone. Some places have dirt or sand roads, and structures made of sticks, or just a roof, but they are limited in dimension. They may be inhabited, they may be massive conglomerations of tin roofs, or mud huts, but are they cities? (Some countries have different legal taxonomy for village, town, or city, but does the legal status change the experience or activity of the place?) And does the weather, and subsequently the materials we lay in response to the environmental conditions, change our experience or activity? If we become a globe of water, and our cities are floating consortia of boats, will they be our cities?

Austria is considered a water-rich country with mountain springs, run off, rivers and lakes. It is also stone rich. The streets of Graz show evidence of the ongoing relationship to the hallowed ground on which the city sits. Different stones connote different eras of construction–spanning centuries–for different uses and different masonry technologies. Currently, we are in the asphalt era. A black, impermeable sheet shaped to the geolocation's demands: curved, flat, roughed, smoothed. (Some new forms of concrete facilitate percolation.)

In a city the pedestrian, cyclist, and motorist all require a solid surface. In Graz, these superficies are wrought in different stone. Some stones connote a bike lane. Some a path for the blind. The Belgian blocks of the entrances to many hofs, including into the center of Priesterseminar, connote an interior public space that borders on private; the stones are laid in intersecting arcs, connoting strength. The sidewalks, streets, and curbs are all different stones.

At the first Soil Symposium, I learned that almost 80% of the city of New York is covered in an impermeable material, concrete or roofing. Looking at the aerial map of Graz, I see the pattern of terra cotta bordered blocks with a green center in the old city. Outside the old city, where smaller structures become the norm, greenery blends with concrete and homes to average a gray area. In the surrounding hills, forest green dominates. I would estimate that 50% of the surface of Graz is impermeable.