Night School Public Seminar 8: Rirkrit Tiravanija
September 25 – 27, 2008
Museum as Hub: Six Degrees
September 25, 2008 – January 11, 2009
235 Bowery
New York,NY 10002
212.219.1222
Night School Public Seminar 8: Rirkrit Tiravanija
Thursday 9/25, 7:30PM
Rirkrit Tiravanija introduces the land with a screening of Phillippe Parreno’s Boy from Mars
Initiated in 1998, the land is the merging of ideas by different artists to cultivate a place of and for social engagement. The land is located near the village of Sanpatong, twenty minutes from the center of the provincial capital Chiang Mai. Due to floods and high water levels, rice farming had not been very productive in this area in recent years. Though the action to acquire the rice fields was originally initiated by several Chiang Mai based artists, the land was founded with anonymity and with out the concept of ownership. The land was to be cultivated as an open space, with certain intentions towards community, discussions, and experimentation in other fields of thought. The land and its topographical environment is cultivated through the philosophy and agricultural technique of Chaloui Kaewkong, a Thai farmer. The ideas around the cultivation of the topography, which is 1/4 earth (mass) and 3/4 water (liquid), is based on the composition of the human body. See thelandfoundation.org for more information.
Artist Rirkrit Tiravanija presents this project in conjunction with a screening of Phillipe Parreno’s 2003 film Boy from Mars (35 mm, 11 minutes, Dolby SR transferred to DVD).
All Night School attendees are invited to join the preview and opening reception for the exhibition “Museum as Hub: Six Degrees,” on floors 5 and 7 following the lecture.
Friday 9/26, 7:30PM
Nikolaus Hirsch, Neil Logan, Molly Nesbit, and Rirkrit Tiravanija.
Rirkrit Tiravanija, Nikolaus Hirsch, Neil Logan, and Molly Nesbit discuss self-organization, alternative living, architecture and utopia.
Following the discussion, all are welcome to stay for a live-stream Web broadcast of the US presidential debate.
Saturday 9/27, 3pm:
A seminar with Rirkrit Tiravanija
Night School is an artist’s project by Anton Vidokle in the form of a temporary school. A yearlong program of monthly seminars and workshops, Night School draws upon a group of local and international artists, writers, and theorists to conceptualize and conduct the program.
All events are free with Museum admission but tickets are required. Tickets can be reserved online or at the Museum one week before the seminar’s start; a limited number of tickets will be available one hour before each event’s start. Tickets are limited, distributed on a first-come-first-serve basis, and must be collected prior to the event’s start time. Unclaimed tickets will be released promptly at the event’s start time. Please check individual events below for tickets and more information.
For tickets see www.newmuseum.org/events
Museum as Hub: Six Degrees
Featuring work by:
Ginger Brooks Takahashi
Dave McKenzie
My Barbarian (Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, and Alexandro Segade)
Martha Rosler
Lisa Sigal
Anton Vidokle
Organized by Eungie Joo, New Museum
Please join us Thursday, September 25 for a
- Preview, 7-10 p.m., Museum as Hub, 5th floor
- Night School Public Seminar 8: Rirkrit Tiravanija, 7:30-9 p.m., New Museum theater
Museum as Hub: Six Degrees is on view from September 25, 2008-January 11, 2009.
“Museum as Hub: Six Degrees” begins as a consideration of “neighborhood”—a question of what the role of a downtown contemporary art museum might be and how the New Museum relates to its new environs, just six blocks east of its previous location, but separated from its past by time, a new building, and the changing role of art in society. “Six Degrees” refers to the angle of the Bowery off New York City’s grid—a way of considering the uniqueness of downtown and the vibrant community of cultural producers that has historically marked the Bowery and Lower East Side.
In the New Museum’s Museum as Hub project, artists use the real estate of the museum as organizing principle, departure point, vista, and classroom to imagine the changing relevance of the museum and its environs. From Berlin to Guangzhou, Mexico City to Cairo, artists and cultural producers are questioning how organizations can support the particular needs and aspirations of contemporary practices—how to support art and idea production beyond the object or exhibition as the resolution of “art.” Compelling manifestations of such investigations exist around the world—from artists’ collectives to discursive projects, from open source archives to workshops—in which artists are determining new ways of working and the methods by which their work can be considered.
Expanding the concept of how an exhibition is defined, “Six Degrees” includes artists’ projects that begin before the exhibition period and reverberate beyond the temporal and physical confines of the exhibition space to rethink how a contemporary art museum can support and present artistic practices. The project begins with Night School, an ongoing seminar series organized by artist Anton Vidokle that features artists, writers, and curators in conversation with the public over the course of the year. “Six Degrees” continues with projects by Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Dave McKenzie, My Barbarian, Martha Rosler, and Lisa Sigal that occupy and engage the neighborhood by employing nearby buildings as canvas, local artists as collaborators, and New Museum territory as meeting place, recital hall, and laboratory.
Museum as Hub is made possible by the Third Millennium Foundation. With additional generous support from the Metlife Foundation. Additional support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum. Generous support also provided by the Charlotte and Bill Ford Artist Talks Fund.
