Download our OPEN CALL

RECLAMATION is looking for artwork to exhibit during our final installation, SOLARIUM.

Download our Call for Submissions here: SOLARIUM_OPEN CALL

 

 

Teōtihuácān

Reclamation Minutes: March 28, 2011

Location: Sculpture Garden off Avenue of the Dead between Pyramid of the Plumed Serpent and Pyramid of the Sun

While discussing a proposal to include our Open Call in upcoming issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, “Grassroots Modernism”, we revisited several conceptual concerns that have arisen over the course of Reclamation’s first two years. Questions we asked ourselves include:

What does “nature” mean?

Are we hippies?

What kind of collaboration are we inviting with our open call?

Why didn’t we bring any water?

What are we trying to do by representing nature?

How does Reclamation’s practice evolve?

After several hours of meditation and deliberation, we’ve come up with a few answers we like. More soon, pending the decision of the friendly folks at the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest.

Open Call for Artworks to be Exhibited in SOLARIUM

As part of our presentation for SOMA in Mexico City today, we officially release an open call for artworks to be exhibited in Reclamation’s final installation: SOLARIUM.

Excerpt from our Open Call:

Download the application form here:

SOLARIUM_OPEN CALL

stuck in the past but looking to the future

From Saddle to Solarium

I learned how to ride on a ranch with quarter horses and cows, chickens and goats, a vegetable garden, a watermelon patch, a fishin pond, and a wolf named Dakota. My favorite thing to do was take my Western horse, Pal the Palomino, swimming in the pond where he’d lope his legs like underwater cyclones and scare the fish to flopping. Sometimes he scared me too, so I’d jump up off Pal’s back onto the floating dock where I experimented in naked witchcraft, herding tadpoles, and trying to make dragon flies have sex with mosquitoes. This has nothing to do with Reclamation but I was reminded of Pal and Dakota and the water-bugs as I cleaned out my tack trunk Monday morning.
My dad sold the ranch house, so I stopped by ol’ MFF* on the way back to LA from South by Southwest to scavenge potted trees, Indian blankets and dad’s medals from Vietnam. I had almost forgotten about the red trunk- the one I bought with prize money from my first State gold in Hunter Jumper- until I found it covered in spiderwebs and wasp’s nests in the dusty tack-room where I spent hours upon hours polishing Pal’s bits and oiling my English saddle. I expected to find the trunk as I had left it- curry comb and hoof pick on the left, Mane n Tail and helmet on the right- but instead I found it full of a toy train’s tracks and a sack of old slides. They must be dad’s, but he doesn’t know how they got in there. I held a few up to the sun and found some young men posing on boats with flags.
I figure they could find new service in Solarium?

* MFF stands for My Fucking Farm. That was what my parents chose to name their ranch. When they got divorced, they fought over it a bunch and wrote it into lots of contracts. My dad moved there until he left for India, and my mom made me plant tape recorders under the couch. Now it seems very silly to imagine lawyers arguing over who gets access to My Fucking Farm.

a side note on overlapping…

It seems that the Aquarium Garden is an excellent study for Terrarium!  I have been constructing terrariums, window boxes, pot/tank/jar/bucket gardens for years- but I’ve never worked on such a large scale before.  I’m really glad we’re doing it now and discovering all the hiccups involved in the expansion before jumping into Terrarium, which will be much grander than this garden.  There might also be an opportunity to play with light in a manner that serves not only to improve the garden but as some sort of Solarium experiment… I noticed today that the plants will only be getting a few hours of sunlight each day due to the high wall of the gallery and the equally tall fence between the garden and the neighbors.  I’d like to construct some system by which sunlight could be delivered to the plants outside the small window of time allowed by the small sliver of space.  Perhaps a solar tube?  Perhaps a mirror?  Or two?  Nothing to worry about today.  Or tomorrow.  Or anytime before the opening!!  But it might be something to consider as an activity to investigate/attempt during the life of Aquarium and its garden.  Thoughts?

on solarium: maybe piezo, maybe wind

tokyo piezo subway floors (photo courtesy of "Politics in the Zeros" http://polizeros.com)

in considering solarium, thinking of different ways to power the thing. hand crank very maybe. but also maybe piezo? essentially, piezo techology collects kinetic energy via pressure/stress on certain materials (particular crystals, ceramics including bone) to generate energy in other forms. dance clubs, gyms, even the tokyo subway have and/or plan to adopt piezo flooring technology to help run their operations, reduce their electric bills, and be green. seems simple, so why hasn’t it been adopted everywhere? in part because the most popular piezoelectric materials in the past have contained lead (however, recently uc berkeley scientists have discovered one that doesn’t contained the nasty stuff) and in part because while piezo generates voltage, it generates very little current so issues of efficiency, cost vs. return, as well as energy storage, etc.. re solarium, it’s a consideration, but it does take us away from the diy approach in making these spaces and possibly away from using recycled materials… unless we figure out a diy old stuff piezo solution. or scrap the idea and go back to handcrank. or windpower? hey, what about windpower?!

inspiring solarium: Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project

one of the many inspirations (human, not divine! but just as good, if not better to ask giants with their shoulders to pop a wheelie, so says the bastard child of isaac newton and, well, someone with a penchant for bmx) for SOLARIUM.  experienced it myself on a spontaneous visit to the uk in 2003; yeah, i wear this “i was there”  pretty happily. below, info from the tate modern site on the weather project:

The subject of the weather has long shaped the content of everyday conversation. The eighteenth-century writer Samuel Johnson famously remarked ‘It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.’ In The Weather Project, the fourth in the annual Unilever Series of commissions for the Turbine Hall, Olafur Eliasson takes this ubiquitous subject as the basis for exploring ideas about experience, mediation and representation.

In this installation, The Weather Project, representations of the sun and sky dominate the expanse of the Turbine Hall. A fine mist permeates the space, as if creeping in from the environment outside. Throughout the day, the mist accumulates into faint, cloud-like formations, before dissipating across the space. A glance overhead, to see where the mist might escape, reveals that the ceiling of the Turbine Hall has disappeared, replaced by a reflection of the space below. At the far end of the hall is a giant semi-circular form made up of hundreds of mono-frequency lamps. The arc repeated in the mirror overhead produces a sphere of dazzling radiance linking the real space with the reflection. Generally used in street lighting, mono-frequency lamps emit light at such a narrow frequency that colours other than yellow and black are invisible, thus transforming the visual field around the sun into a vast duotone landscape.

The Unilever Series: Olafur Eliasson, The Weather Project is curated by Susan May, Curator, Tate Modern, assisted by Maeve Polkinhorn, Project Assistant. Tate Modern and Olafur Eliasson wish to thank the following for their part in realisation of this installation: Dr Ing. Switbert Greiner (engineer); Alluvial Leichtspiegel GmbH; Unusual Rigging Ltd; Stage Electrics and Lightwaves Ltd. The artist is represented by Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York and neugerriemschneider, Berlin. Thanks also to the Royal Danish Embassy, London.

evolving solarium.. with slides!

slides from the sunday market in colonial roma, mexico city

after too many hours in front of the screen, edwina and i threw our computers out of the metaphorical window to wander the sunday market. where we had posoles and mole enchiladas, stocked up on groceries (zucchini flowers, prickly pear, nopales, oaxaca cheese, hibiscus flowers and chamomile flowers for tea, 1 liter each of fresh-squeezed carrot juice, tangerine juice, and grapefruit juice — but i digress), and then wandered into the area where antiques and knick-knack- being-sold-as-antiques-and-may-very-well-be-antiques-one-day are sold. where we came upon fifteen boxes of someone else’s personal slides of people’s weddings, trips to acapulco, graduation days, birthdays, just becauses, and bargained for them all for 150 pesos.  i can’t stop looking through these slides.  a good day for us — perhaps an even better one for solarium.

evolving solarium

ceiling of the gran hotel ciudad de mexico

dome of church in downtown mexico city

walking through churches, temples, antiques markets, and the like, coming upon stained glass and more stained glass, old super 8 cameras and 16 mm, decontextualized slides and photos, thinking about the reams of film and microfiche collecting dust and being dumped by the digitalized the world over, considering rather than reclaiming plexi, we reclaim footage, found, used, abandoned, orphaned to piece together and solariumize before the birds claim it for their nests, or for belts or nooses accidental or otherwise (egads – how morbid!).