Tea, Tradition, and Tom Sachs at the Noguchi Museum

Posted on June 21, 2016 by Linnea

Installation shot, Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony, Noguchi Museum

Participating in a tea ceremony at the Noguchi Museum as part of Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony felt like a highly controlled experience from the beginning, as are traditional Japanese tea ceremonies. There were many instructions: fill out a form at least a week in advance, watch three videos detailing Sachs’ studio process (enjoyable spoofs(?) on rules: Ten Bullets, COLOR, and Love Letter to Plywood), show up an hour before the event, and then wait to see if you receive a text selecting you to participate. So for unprepared me, this meant a hurried bike ride to the Noguchi Museum on a Sunday morning and not a little bit of anticipation after such investment. “Greetings” came the text around 11:45 am: “You have been selected..”

Garden shoes for the tea ceremony performance

I had applied for a 12 pm Tea Ceremony with Johnny Fogg because it appealed to my interest in Tom Sachs and how his work would translate into this kind of event, but honestly I had no idea what was involved. As I learned, these tea ceremonies, held Tom Sachs-style and hosted by Johnny Fogg, present long-standing and complex Japanese ritual in new guise, complementing the Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony exhibition on view in the rest of the Museum. The small retrospective of Sachs’s imperfect, detailed work shows culturally appropriation run rampant with motifs of NASA and McDonalds and objects in plywood, resin, and Sharpie.

I and the other guests were invited to don a garment like a cross between a lab coat and a kimono. We surrendered our phones to a locked box. We removed our own shoes and put on tabi socks and “garden shoes” to prepare ourselves to enter the tea garden. Our host Johnny Fogg introduced himself and led us outside. The tea garden (in this case, the first semi-outdoor rooms of the Noguchi Museum) featured the clearly distinct sculptural work of Noguchi and Sachs. Noguchi is present in minimalist works made from natural materials. Sachs applied his distinctive assembly of mass materials to create a plywood shelter and bench marked United States and three angular “rocks” of grey wood coated in resin. We sat down on them, looking over at a resin-coated cardboard pagoda and lit stove with tennis balls serving as feet for the structure.

Installation view, Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony, Noguchi Museum

Johnny Fogg introduced us to what was about to happen, encouraging questions about the ritual we were about to undergo. While formal, this ceremony would not follow all the rules of a traditional ceremony and that we as guests were not expected to come to it with any degree of knowledge of how to behave. Lucky for me! He offered us ceremonial tobacco, demonstrating the beautiful ember hidden in a mountain of ash, but there were no smokers in our group. The tea ceremony attracted a small group of onlookers who followed us as we paraded across the tea garden in our white coats and strange shoes to a gate. There were also lanterns, a koi pond and, perhaps less clearly related to Japanese tea gardens, an airplane lavatory.

We were formally led through the gate and instructed in how to cleanse our hands at the hand washing station. Then we were led to the tea house. Leaving our garden shoes outdoors, we entered through the low door on our butts and sat on tatami mats in a 9 x 9 foot room. A plastic kettle, a scroll painting featuring Muhammad Ali for a small shrine called a tokonoma (reading in characters: “It Ain’t Bragging If You Can Back It Up”), and a white plywood contraption labelled with numbers were the other objects in the room. We paused to meditate, the timer Johnny set to 90 seconds ending with a loud BUZZ.

Space Suit, 2007–11, Tyvek and mixed media

Finally, after this preparation, the tea ceremony could begin, not with tea–as I expected–but with sake. It appeared on a tray through the door behind our host in neat resin cups and saucers. Next came a Ritz cracker with a smear of peanut butter (“the brown wave”). Then Johnny Fogg placed an individual Oreo on its own small platter before us (“the sun at midnight”). Each course came on its own tray and required individual presentation. Then we arrived at the matcha–matcha, fine green tea powder, is blended with hot water to create a cup for each guest. The cups were uneven, handmade white ceramic vessels with NASA across the front, not particularly matched. One was simply all black. Johnny made each guest a cup of matcha, going through several steps of dusting off the already clean equipment, pouring water, and sifting matcha. It involved many pieces of re-purposed equipment, including a Yoda PEZ dispenser. We each drank in turn. We discussed the history of tea ceremony in Japan and, for newbies, our impressions of matcha. The watching crowd dispersed over time, and the quiet sounds around the room–of birds or wind–became more apparent. I felt more open to the other participants sharing this intimate space with me.

Installation view, Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony, Noguchi Museum

Finally, we played games. This was not a competitive environment. We each raked a rock garden in turn and admired what others did before and after us. Then we were handed a Sharpie, presented brand-name toward us, and a sheaf of white paper. The game was to do whatever we wanted with these materials. I made a paper airplane, then started drawing. And kept drawing. Eventually Johnny’s voice rather than the buzzer interrupted us–he hadn’t wanted to stop us since we were all so intent, so he had turned it off. The tea ceremony was over, we exited, put back on the garden shoes, walked to the entrance, removed our gear, and said goodbye.

Installation view, Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony, Noguchi Museum

Japanese tradition and the forces of modernity appear both in the work of Noguchi and Sachs, albeit materializing in very different aesthetics. Yet it is invigorating to the Noguchi Museum to create room for such a comparison in their space. And the performative element of the tea ceremony really allowed the space itself to breath, creating an awareness of you the viewer in the space and the object before you, a consciousness that feels very in tune with Noguchi’s work.

Tea ceremonies with guest participants will be performed through July 24 as part of the larger exhibition Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony on view at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City.

Phone Tag: Interview with Sondra Perry

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Linnea

Cyborgs in Generic Windows (one of four), 2015

For the second interview of Phone Tag, I Skyped with Sondra Perry in her studio at Columbia University this past February. Since the interview, Sondra graduated with an MFA from Columbia this past May and is participating in the Core Residency Program at the Glassell School of Art in Houston, Texas. Her work often focuses on identity, its fluidity, and power structures whether through performance or new media. I was introduced to Sondra by the first artist I interviewed, Trevor Amery.

Phone Tag is a generative interview format, where I ask each participating artist five questions (plus others as the discussion meanders). At the end, I ask him or her to introduce me to a working artist whose attitude and work they find interesting and/or inspiring, who I will then interview with the same five questions.

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Linnea West: “How do you know Trevor?”

Sondra Perry: “Trevor and I went to Skowhegan together last summer. We talked a lot about whether to go to grad school or not. We were in a similar situation where we got into programs that started in the Fall. He waited a year to go back to school, and I decided I would just go to Columbia. So we had a lot of bonding moments over the anxiety of school and finances, and also really deciding how we wanted to situate ourselves in the art world through one’s program.”

LW: “Are you happy with your decision to go to grad school?”

SP: “I decided to come to Columbia, primarily because of Kara Walker, who is actually no longer here. All of my classmates are really amazing, and I think that’s a huge part of any type of program. Those are the people you are going to be in communication with for the rest of your professional life.

I do question, sometimes, my decision-making to come to a program that’s not paying for me to be there. I come from a background where I haven’t been given anything. Life has been really tough for most of it. So when I was talking to my family about it, they were concerned about the fact that I would come here and put myself in debt when I didn’t have to. Being here has really forced me to acknowledge that I am complicit in the power of this institution as well. It comes with me, and because of that I am privileged, all things that I think I knew unconsciously when I was deciding to come to this school. At the same time it’s really difficult because you have to work so much to live in New York City. So yeah, it’s like these two sides. It’s complicated my identity in a lot of ways, which is—was—already complex. I’ve been talking with a lot of people who have been in similar situations. It’s a lot of soul-searching, about power and being close to power and all of that art world market stuff.”

42 Black Panther Balloons on 125th Street, 2014 performance on December 5th, 2014 walking black panther mylar balloons between Riverside Drive and Sixth Avenue on 125th Street in Harlem, New York

42 Black Panther Balloons on 125th Street (performance walking black panther mylar balloons between Riverside Drive and Sixth Avenue on 125th Street in Harlem, New York), 2014

LW: “Well, you’re in the center of it.”

SP: “Yeah, it’s here. It’s all right here. So you can’t ignore it…and I don’t think you should. I don’t think that would have happened if I had gone to any of the other schools I was accepted to, not with the same ferociousness.”

LW: “A lot of these concerns come up in your artwork, right? Just from looking at your website, it seems very connected. Could you describe your work?”

SP: “I make a couple of specific things: I do performance and I make videos, and there is a merger between those things, and then I make digital images. I’ve always been really interested in dimensionality in relationship to identity, so thinking about fluidity in that way. Recently I like the language of dimensionality and thinking of people as existing in-between spaces as ghosts or apparitions, or existing in a paraspace or a space that is kind of undefined—or at least trying to access an undefined space.”

LW: “Is the internet one of those?”

SP: “Absolutely. I have a whole internet project I’m doing right now. Those are spaces where there is autonomy or, if it’s not autonomy, then the illusion of autonomy that I think can be very helpful to creating the self. I’m thinking in capitalist, individualistic ways, but really using self-creation as a tool for political action and personal freedom, in a sense.”

LW: “I have a friend who was telling me this weekend that she sees Ryan Trecartin’s work as working in a very positivist way in the internet, to explore how identity can be created.”

SP: “So many people in this program hate Ryan Trecartin. I don’t understand it. When I first discovered his work, it was cyber-ish, like how his setwork functions is similar to the internet overload. I thought it was really powerful and it worked. What I really love about it is that there nothing real. There’s no realness anywhere. That’s really important. He’s creating construct after construct after construct.

I’m interested in having an understanding of the constructs that you’re working within. It’s funny because the general language about the net doesn’t necessarily reflect what that space is. The things that separate spaces are all interfaces that have been created, lots of them by corporations. When we think that we are trying to express ourselves and we’re being individuals, we’re being individuals within a frame that is primarily to collect our data and sell us stuff. There is a space where that becomes really scary. I’m really interested in coding now, so I’m trying to figure out how to code, because the interfaces that we use are absolutely how our experience is formed.”

Cyborgs in Generic Windows (one of four), 2015

LW: “How would all of that relate to Mother, this project where you created cyborg versions of you? And, I don’t even fully understand what you mean. What is a cyborg?”

SP: “I use the term cyborg really loosely, as things that are an extension of biological matter. There is this program that is on the internet, a paid service called SitePal, and it is geared toward small businesses that want to have a humanist touch on their website. You can build these little boxes that pop up. You can program language in and it will greet your customer when the page loads. I wound up using that service to make these little gif images that do things, but they don’t speak. I was trying to subvert that “I’m here for you to use in some way” idea. Their function no longer works. They’re just looking at you, as things in another space looking in.

I’m really into the Mother project. I’m learning a lot through it. I was trying to find a good website name, something catchy, and mother.com and mother.org were taken, and mothermother was taken, and I decided on Mothermothermother.org. I was reluctant to do it because, as a fatbodied black woman, there’s a mammie archetype that is placed upon bodies that look like mine. That are supposed to be asexual, nourishing, mother figures. My entire life, the work that I created, I tried to stay pretty damn clear of that. And then the website happened, and I just decided I was going to jump head in. I was already peeking in that area, because of the performance work I started doing –and I thought you know, why not? It’s a great metaphor: Mothermothermother. I call it a space to explore how identity can be created, using the feminine to talk about technology, which doesn’t happen much. It seemed like it made a lot of sense.”

LW: “Who has influenced your practice?”

SP: “I have to say Kara [Walker]. I went to undergrad for ceramic sculpture and I was so gung-ho about being a ceramic sculptor. The first week of class, on a Wednesday, they showed the Art:21 episode that Kara did. I didn’t know about her work before. I had been to a museum once in primary school or something, but I wasn’t well-versed in contemporary art. I was just doing my own thing. I hadn’t realized that you could make art that impacted people. It really did blow me away. I’ll never forget that moment. I thought ‘I’m going to learn everything I can about this work and the woman who makes it,’ and a couple weeks later I learned that she worked at Columbia, and that’s the only reason that Columbia was on my radar at all, because she was there.

Who else? There’s a really great German video artist named Bjorn Melhus. I came across his work in sophomore year of college. He’s a German artist who watched American television growing up. He reenacts all of these American films. It’s totally different narratives; he plays all the parts. He’s an amazing technician.

Nam June Paik is one of my people. I went to school with a bunch of old school video artists, and I thought he was kind of a visionary in how most off his work is him speaking as an Asian man in relation to the West. There’s a piece with a violin. He’s lifting it for like 10 minutes, and at the end of the 10 minutes he crashes it on the ground and smashes it. I just thought that was so revolutionary.”

LW: “You mentioned that you used to work with ceramics, but did you always make stuff? Did you always know you were going to be an artist?

SP: “No, I didn’t. It was a weird situation. We were in Texas, and our family became homeless. I’d had a lot of anxiety throughout my entire life, and I didn’t like going to school. But when we became homeless and moved into the shelter, I had to go to school. The only thing that saved me from dropping out was art class. Halfway through that year, we started on ceramics, and I was just like, ‘Oh, I know how to work with this thing.’ The discovery was something about learning…like when you know what you want to do the learning isn’t hard. It’s still difficult, but it’s ok. We moved back to New Jersey after that stint, and everything became normalized again. Ceramics was the one thing that I wanted to do. I figured it out at 14, but I didn’t know I wanted to be an artist. I just felt like ceramics was the only thing I was good at. I don’t think I really identified as an artist until sometime when I got to school to study art. ‘Ok, well I guess I’m an artist now. All these other people are calling themselves artists.’ It all came really quick.”

LW: “That’s really interesting because ceramics is such a physical thing, with your hands and if you’re throwing on the wheel you’re whole body is into it, but now your practice has transitioned so much into this immaterial, or virtual, realm.”

Photograph of Sondra Perry & Associate™ Make Pancakes and Shame the Devil, 2015

SP: “It’s super weird, yeah. Everyone says it all comes back. It’s funny because I’m still really engaged in the body, but in such a different way. I’m curious to see what happens with it. Last year I took a wood sculpture class, and it was such a pleasure making stuff. Just nailing stuff. I forgot for so long. So back here, this a – a ‘sculpture’—”

LW: “So yeah, this is your studio. Can you tell me about it? What’s an ideal day like?”

SP: “Sure. It’s here at Columbia. We’re on the third floor. I have a pretty big studio.

So what happens here is on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays we have our MFA core classes, and then the rest of the time is for work or to make studio work. This semester I have a teaching assistantship on Tuesdays morning, and I work as a lab monitor for 6 hours and then I’m also on the team for the visiting artist committee.

But last semester it would have been totally different. I had a fellowship position where I had to work 20 hours a week for the Digital Media department. I decided–I’m not sure if this is stupid or not because this is Columbia—not to take any classes, because the last year, I hadn’t had any time to make work. Although I’m still working for the department, it’s not as many hours, and now I have so much more time to make my own work. It’s the most amazing thing. It’s the thing I thought all of grad school was going to be, and it’s just this semester, and that’s fine.

I’ll wake up, I’ll get here, I’ll answer emails, social media, read a bunch of stuff. Then I have a list of projects that I’m working on, and I’ll rotate each day. So I have a video project that I’m working on, I’ll do that for a whole day before I’ll switch over. My days are awesome. I’m so lucky.”

LW: “Do you have another year of the program left?”

SP: “This is it.”

LW: “Oh, wow. Have you been thinking ahead at all yet? Or, are you trying to not think about it?”

SP: “It’s really hard not to. Because all the applications for things are due now, so I’m working on applications, doing all of that, but trying to stay focused on this moment. But I’m not thinking about thesis yet. I have the projects I’m working on. My plan is to work on all of them until about two weeks before the thesis show. Then, figure out what’s going to happen.”

Cyborgs in Generic Windows (one of four), 2015

LW: “Do you think it is more important for an artist to be in a big city, like New York, or to be somewhere where it is affordable and you can make a living and still make work? You seem to be in a great position to speak to this.”

SP: “My plan for after grad school is to make as much work as I can. I’m giving myself a five-year window, like non-settling down, just making things, and I will go anywhere I can that will allow me to do that. That’s not New York City. There’s this thing that happens in the city: it’s connected to the money, it’s the thing that makes its really horrible for people who need to live here, or who feel like they need to live here. It is what I was talking about at the beginning: about this relationship to power. I think that’s what New York is. We can talk about the relationship to culture, but when it comes down to it the reason why the cultural centers are here is because of the long history of being a port city but also people like the Coke brothers funding Lincoln Center. I really wish that when people made a decision to stay here that they are thinking about all of that stuff too. Everyone hates Time Square, but the reason why you have all the amazing museums and stuff is because of the capital here. At this point in New York’s history, there is no Time Square without MoMA. It’s all the same money mixing into one another.

That being said, I know there’s still something to being around gallerist, and blah blah blah…but that is a specific endgame, that’s a very specific artworld, and there are many types of art worlds. I don’t think that is something that I am interested in pursuing directly. So, I want to make the work. That’s what I want to do. I think you can go anywhere, and you can make the work, and you can find communities.”

How to Drift in Daylight: My Advice

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Linnea

Dancing, acting, ice cream, the glimpse of a billboard–throw in dog walking, bicycling, camera-wielding tourists, and joggers and this describes almost any other day in Central Park in New York City. “Almost” is the operative word. Camouflaged within this green oasis are eight performative, perceptual, or participatory works of art sponsored by Creative Time as part of “Drifting in Daylight: Art in Central Park.” These new works shift the busy park from the mundane to the magical, albeit subtly and only if you allow yourself to be open to the experience.

Drifting in Daylight_map

I entered the park through the Westside 81st street entrance and followed West Drive north toward the Pool. Based on Creative Time’s map, I expected to come across Nina Katchadourian’s junk bird’s nests along the way. The refuse sculptural installations were too subtle for me, as I realized when I saw finally saw one later: black net and soccer balls dangling on high like a pair of teenager’s sneakers. I arrived at the Pool and, having missed Lauri Stallings + glo’s dance performance, was pointed in the direction of one of David Levine’s Private Moments. Royal and Etheline Tenenbaum (of the 2001 movie The Royal Tenenbaums) sauntered toward me around the lake, unremarked and alone. I continued to walk toward the actors and, as I came close, felt a sudden awkwardness. Was this definitely a performance? Should I stare and take pictures? I trailed them, listening as they recited a dialogue I remembered from the film. When they finished, they walked to a bench and I walked on, wondering if anyone else noticed this cinematic replay happening in real time.

Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos, Marc Bamuthi Joseph

I cut across to the Great Hill, as much for the restrooms as Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s performance piece Black Joy in The Hour of Chaos. The sight there stopped me in my tracks. Black bodies in red shirts occupied the highest point of the hill, alternatively singing, dancing, and speaking poetically in reference to current events. Black joy is a tough concept given the recent chaos that the country has faced. The performance felt timely and moving, not least because the audience was invited to come and help raise the performance tarp like a floating parachute in a gesture that both completed the performance and felt like an act of solidarity.

Sunset (Central Park), Spencer Finch

I again tried to find Lauri Stallings’ glo dance troop as they contorted and cavorted through the North Woods in a six-hour long choreographed loop, but to no avail. The timing seemed to only loosely match the schedule. I continued on to the Harlem Meer, where a representative of Creative Time informed me that the captain of Ragnar Kjartansson’s S.S. Hangover, an ongoing musical performance on a boat, had decided to dock because of oncoming rain. I was beginning to feel as if luck was not with me.

Walking around the Meer, I soon came upon Spencer Finch’s Sunset (Central Park). You would never guess that title corresponds not to a landscape painting but an ice cream truck, specially outfitted in dreamy pastel hues and with solar panels. I got a good look at this truck, because I waited in a half-hour line of excited children and patient parents. In terms of the pale orange scoop of ice cream churned out by the energy of the sun, it was not worth the wait. In terms of the experience of waiting, thinking about the sunset and simple pleasures, I’m not sure. Without much of a conceptual backbone, it verges on the saccharine.

Here and Now/ Glacier, Shard, Rock, Karyn Olivier

Walking with my cone on the path around the Meer, I encountered Here and Now/ Glacier, Shard, Rock by Karyn Olivier up close. I had registered this billboard as an unremarkable grey rectangle from across the Meer. As I walked up to it, I discovered it contained not one but three images. Depending on the angle I looked from, I saw a glacier, a pottery shard from a local historic settlement, or rocks like the contemporary landscape. All of these images relate to the land during different periods of time, reminding me of the long history of the place.

S.S. Hangover, Ragnar Kjartansson

The sounds of brass instruments wafted toward me. Continuing on, I spotted a white-sailed vessel near the island in the west end of the Meer—the S.S. Hangover was back in action. The small wooden boat, holding a six-piece band in formal dress, was anchored to the island. Gently swaying with the breeze, the sail flapped to reveal the blue Pegasus across it as a slow, melancholic tune spread out across the lake. I sat on a rock and listened with the others around me. Kjartansson’s work first appeared at the Venice Biennale in 2013, where the partially Venetian boat design dovetailed with the site. It bothers me that the piece is not site-specific, but rather a chunk of performative romanticism thrown into any body of water without thought to its specific relations. That said, the boat cuts a dashing figure.

And all directions I come to you, Lauri Stallings + glo

Finally, I headed back down toward the Pond. I would be early, but hopefully that meant I couldn’t fail to see to the glo dancers as they ended their performance, entitled And all directions, I come to you. I waited. Eventually one dancer came running up, under the bridge, up the steps, and away over the field around the lake, out of sight. Then one came who stopped and sat, head bowed, in the field. A magnificent spectacle. Her yellow dress draping softly over her poised body contrasted with the fresh green May grass. Dappled light filtered through old trees covered her. Central Park creates odd connections—this dancer faced an absorbed man reading in the grass further up the hill and behind her three young jazz musicians were busking at the base of a tree. No one but me seemed to be here for a performance, although an audience began to gather.

And all directions I come to you, Lauri Stallings + glo

The rest of the dancers arrived in ones and twos and haltingly converged on the space of lawn where the dancer in yellow sat. All were women wearing long, flowing dresses reminiscent both of Classical drapery and prom dresses. All making movements alternatively statuesque, feral, fast, slow, and occasionally a dance movement I was familiar with. Gradually their bodies came into harmony and they made the same movements, until one or two would break free and change the equilibrium of the line. The dresses in different single hues provided a study in contrasts, and rendered this avant-garde dance almost like a Vogue shoot, given the idyllic setting. The group left the lawn to crouch in a row on the shore of the lake, and then trickled apart and down the rocks of the nearby waterfall. Climbing, laying atop one another, pulling apart. Then, like a force of nature, they began to disperse again. Eventually I was left on the pavement while three dancers alternatively lifted one another up and laid low on the ground, legs akimbo in the sky. And then they too went away. And I went mine, out of the park, tired after four hours tracking down art installations.

And all directions I come to you, Lauri Stallings + glo

I had the wrong mindset when I approached “Drifting in Daylight.” I intended to use the map as a list, checking off works of art methodically. But this meandering experience is not easily contained—indeed I only saw a little over half the works. And my list-oriented, dogmatic self seems to have missed the point. I envy the people who suddenly stumble across a beloved movie made real, or stand in line only to be surprised that their ice cream is free and the color of the sunset. I envy those who are getting lost in the North Woods when suddenly a wild-looking sprite whispers something to them before running by and grinding strangely into a piece of earth. The unexpected mystery and joy of the project was lost on me. One can’t have it all, as I tried to. At best, one can have a small piece—a moment that becomes un-ordinary and magical.

Rather than demanding the passer-by’s attention, these works tempt people into a new openness and curiosity, a difficult task in a place as distraction-filled as New York City’s Central Park. My advice is: don’t be like me. Don’t say to yourself that you’re going to go see the new Creative Time art in the park. Just give yourself permission to take a Friday or Saturday afternoon to wander open-eyed and without a schedule. Let yourself be surprised by a world full of small, good things. Some of it might be the art. Some of it will just be life. And maybe that is the point.

On Fridays and Saturdays from 12 to 6 pm, through June 20. “Drifting in Daylight” includes work by artists Spencer Finch, Alicia Framis, Nina Katchadourian, Ragnar Kjartansson, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, David Levine, Karyn Olivier, and Lauri Stallings + glo. Learn more here.