The Conscientious Objector
February 3–April 15, 2018
at the Schindler House
835 North Kings Road
West Hollywood, CA 90069
United States
Curated by Francesca Bertolotti-Bailey and Lauren Mackler
Public Fiction’s The Conscientious Objector is a multifaceted endeavor that unfurls in parts from February to April 2018. It comprises a publication, a series of artist-made commercials for television, an exhibition of artworks activated by performances, and public programs.
To be an object, is to object.*
Set in West Hollywood, The Conscientious Objector considers how art and culture can establish acts of resilience through "non-participation" and elliptical routes, in contrast to more blatantly socio-political forms of resistance, as well as the ways in which they might use the tropes and platforms of entertainment, advertising and mass culture to reach its audiences. That is, without making any assumptions about who these audiences are.
The overall project is an exploration of different modes or degrees of "public address"—most obviously through a live confrontation with actors in the exhibition, at a step removed via TV commercials, more obliquely via individual artworks, and in the longer term through the publication.
About the exhibition
The Conscientious Objector at the Schindler House presents new and existing works by Sam Gilliam, Anthea Hamilton, Lucy McKenzie, Dianna Molzan, and Suki Seokyeong Kang, plus a new durational performance delivered by professional actors and directed by Todd Gray. Each artist inhabits a different room of the Schindler House, which is progressively activated by a performance that employs the publication as script and prop.
About the commercials
The exhibition is initiated via a series of newly commissioned TV commercials by artists Mohamed Bourouissa, Rosalind Nashashibi, Mathias Poledna, and Martine Syms. Following a rich lineage of art and activism works produced for public access television, these commercials are aired on WeHoTV, the City of West Hollywood’s television, as well as in museums, art institutions, cinemas, and online platforms.
About the publication
Edited by Public Fiction and The Serving Library (Liverpool/New York), and published by ROMA Publications (Amsterdam), it features new and republished work by Hilton Als, Tauba Auerbach, Claire-Louise Bennett, Octavia E. Butler, Anne Carson, Valentina Desideri & Denise Ferreira da Silva, Shannon Ebner, Chris Evans, Angie Keefer, Mark Leckey, Library Stack (Benjamin Tiven & Erik Wysocan), Marcos Lutyens, Wanda Pimentel, Adrian Piper, Jack Self (Real Review), Patrick Staff, Frances Stark & Ian Svenonius, and Martine Syms.
About the public program
February 8: Mohamed Bourouissa in conversation with Negar Azimi at the Schindler House
March 15: A performative reading of Claire-Louise Bennett’s Both Hands at the Schindler House.
March 22: Rosalind Nashashibi in conversation with Mathias Poledna at the Schindler House
April 5: Anthea Hamilton in conversation with Todd Gray at the Schindler House
April 15: Marathon screening of In the Name of the Place by Mel Chin and the GALA Committee at the West Hollywood Public Library.
The Conscientious Objector is commissioned by the City of West Hollywood’s WeHo Arts Program, with support from the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Korea Foundation, Arts Council England, British Council, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, Karyn Kohl and Silas Dilworth, Dan Avchen, Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), kaufmann repetto, Galerie Buchholz, Kristina Kite Gallery, Blum&Poe, and David Kordansky Gallery.
About Public Fiction
Founded in 2010, Public Fiction is a project space and a journal based in Los Angeles. Its program presents a series of exhibitions on a theme, each theme lasting three months and culminating into a journal. Related talks, screenings, secret restaurants, and performances are held within the installations and around the topic at hand. Public Fiction’s program is intergenerational, interdisciplinary and treats the exhibition as a medium in itself. Public Fiction is currently nomadic, hosted by larger institutions, and in this mode has staged exhibitions at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Artissima LIDO, Turin; and Frieze Projects, New York, amongst others.
About the MAK Center
The MAK Center develops local and international projects exploring the intersection of contemporary art and architecture. Established in 1994 as a satellite of the MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/ Contemporary Art, the MAK Center is a unique constellation of modern buildings designed by architect R. M. Schindler (1887–1953). It operates from the landmark Schindler House (1922) in West Hollywood and the Mackey Apartments (1939) and the Fitzpatrick-Leland House (1936) in Los Angeles. By reactivating historic properties with progressive programming, the MAK Center challenges conventional notions of architectural preservation and encourages exploration and experimentation as part of its unique contribution to the cultural landscape of Los Angeles.
About The Serving Library
The Serving Library is a nonprofit organization founded in 2011 to develop a shared toolkit for general arts education and discourse through related activities of publishing and collecting. It comprises an annual journal published simultaneously online and in print, a public program of events and workshops, and an archive of (mostly) framed objects on permanent display. The Serving Library currently resides at Exhibition Research Lab in the School of Art & Design, Liverpool John Moores University.
About the City of West Hollywood’s WeHo Arts Program
The City of West Hollywood’s WeHo Arts program delivers a broad array of arts programs including: Art on the Outside (temporary public art), Summer Sounds, Winter Sounds, WeHo Reads, Free Theatre in the Parks, Arts Grants for nonprofit arts organizations, library exhibits and programming, the City Poet Laureate program, One City One Pride LGBTQ Arts Festival, and Urban Art Program (permanent public art).
For press inquiries please contact Jessica Trent at jessica [at] trentpr.com
*This is us, paraphrasing an idea from Fred Moten’s In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, (University of Minnesota Press, 2003)—specifically the last chapter titled "Resistance of the Object: Adrian Piper’s Theatricality."
