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(24)

Dog

HD video, color, sound
5:36 min.

Video, 2021

With Ariel Zetina
Music by Bastardgeist
Footage contributed by Joel Midden

Transcript




[A black & white music video featuring collected cellphone footage cropped from its original vertical orientation to fit a horizontal frame. The footage is overlaid with yellow captions at the center, creating an original verbal translation of the music at the top, with song lyrics presented at the bottom. There are two sections to this work, the first beginning with a wide array of clips that read like a travel journal, sometimes placing the natural world against the urban. Landscape scenes of the desert and mountains, flora and fauna from various locations (including birds, deer, a snake, a caterpillar, a dog licking a hand) are placed against street signs, a busy street in Japan, and a pig on a leash. The sound quiets on a busy intersection with a police van from which heavily uniformed police hang. The second section continues with footage featuring a lot of movement, from a panning motion around power lines, to views outside the front car window on a highway. A dog chews a toy as the camera zooms closer and closer, the creature’s eyes pixelating to a hard cut, leading back to a view outside a train window. This time the landscape rushes by in fast succession creating lines and pixelations across the screen, eventually transforming back into the dog now running around outside. The dog pauses to dig a hole as the music stops and the screen goes black.]



(23)

Untitled (the ashram)

HD video, color, sound
12:42 min.

Video, 2020

Voice of Jack Marmorstein
Footage contributed by Alex Liegel, Chris Cole, David Nokovic, Katherine Bowers, Laurel V. McLaughlin, Selby Nimrod, Sergey Y. Smolin
Commissioned by Center for Contemporary Art & Culture
With gratitude to Monika Uchiyama

Transcript





[The work begins with a panning shot in a suburban neighborhood, slowly coming to a pause in front of a peachy-cream shingled house with a grey-colored roof that is slightly hidden behind trees. The screen goes black. The film culls various forms of information the artist collected from family photographs and Google street view screen recordings, to newspaper clippings and video footage sent by various participants. The resulting effect creates a kind of visual archive that both illustrates and creates associations with the dialogue. Some of the footage includes: a portrait of a young white boy with light-colored hair (the artist’s father), and then two other portraits at different stages of life; Scanned photographs marked with scratches and tears, sunbleached and inscribed on the back with fading dates and punctuated by a black screen between them; Handwritten letters in blue ink, the covers of books like the Kundalini by Gopi Krishna and Spiritual Cannibalism by Swami Rudrananda [Rudi], family photographs scanned to show fragments of bodies, limbs, and hints of domestic space, sometimes within an ashram; Screen-recordings of various google searches followed by current recordings of these places. A screen-recording then reveals email correspondence between the artist and various participants who agreed to collect footage of spaces discussed in the film. We end on a shot of the Mann House, the community and movement center in Portland discussed in the film. It is a huge red brick complex with grey A-frame roofs, peeking behind a row of trees.]



(22)

Untitled (mapping)

Digital collage (family photos, news clippings, Google Maps screenshots, stickers, postcards, manipulated publication ephemera), foamcore, wood
84 x 96 x 28 in
213.36 x 243.84 x 71.12 cm

Installation, 2020

Exhibited in and one day will tell you so many stories
Paragon Arts Gallery
Organized by Laurel V. McLaughlin
Production assistance from Aaron McKee & Shana Palmer
Photos by Mario Gallucci
With gratitude to Valentina Soto Illanes

Press


[A vertical white board on three wooden legs displays scattered snapshots, newspaper clippings, and postcards floating amongst one another and encircled and overlapped by line drawings of geometric shapes, swirls, and snaking lines.] [Through a window looking into a dim gallery, spotlights illuminate the vertical white board. The board displays snapshots, clippings, and postcards overlapped by spiraling line drawings.]



(21)

Untitled (the wars in Lebanon)

Three videos on monitor, family photos, expired Lebanese and U.S. passports, abandoned application for U.S. citizenship, Time Magazine: Massacre in Lebanon, Witness of War Crimes in Lebanon, VHS cassettes found in Beirut, Arab Image Foundation postcard, vinyl wall text by Omar Mismar

Installation, 2020

David Salkin Creative
Photos by Aron Gent

Exhibition Guide
Press


[In a bright gallery, two parallel white tables display a number of flat and stacked objects, including photos and VHS tapes. Also on one of the tables, a monitor shows two coated figures with their backs to the camera, leaning on a railing and looking out to a bright blue ocean on a sunny day.] [Official documents and an older Lebanese woman's pocket-size photo lay on a white surface. Beside an opened envelope, an unfolded paper issued by the U.S. government reads "Notice of Action" at the top. Two other small photos of the same Lebanese woman and a younger woman lay beside the paper.] [An aged, open Lebanese identification card and photos lay on a white surface. A black and white photo of a smiling young woman with long black hair lays on one of the identification card pages, and three other photos of other women of different ages sparsely surround it. In one, one of the women poses with two young children.] [A white table with sparsely arranged postcards, passports, and magazines. One postcard shows two women with long, curly, black hair embracing, and another shows a child kissing her grandmother on the cheek.] [A close-up of a white table with sparsely arranged photos, passports, and magazines. A Time magazine cover reads "MASSACRE IN LEBANON".] [Passports, family photos, and a book arranged sparsely on a white table. The white cover of the book reads "Witness of War Crimes in Lebanon".] [In a bright art gallery, a block of vinyl text on the near wall begins, "My week was a little busy. I survived a deadly blast," as artist Omar Mismar recounts his experience of the August 2020 ammonium nitrate explosion in Beirut. Beyond the wall, two tables display paper documents and a TV monitor.]



(20)

List Projects 21:
Rami George

Plywood, wood, drywall, projected video, video on monitor, art paper, black house paint, reproduced family photos, reproduced publication ephemera

Installation, 2020

MIT List Visual Arts Center
Organized by Selby Nimrod
Production assistance from Jesse Collins, John Osorio-Buck, & Tim Lloyd
Photos by Peter Harris Studio

Exhibition Guide
Press


[Adjacent freestanding walls open to an art gallery, one white and the other with its wood backing exposed. On the white wall hangs a vertical black sheet of paper with overlapping publication ephemera, family photos, and geometric shapes. On a parallel gallery wall hangs another vertical black sheet with more layered images. Beyond this, a monitor leans against another parallel wall and shows the black and white image of a white man in glasses.] Untitled (1994 amber press)[A vertical black paper sheet with frayed edges and a series of black and white anatomical drawings and infographic wheels, semicircles, scales, and charts. Two vertical, sideways snapshots of a father and child and mother and child at the center of the frame overlap the infographics.] Untitled (left, forward, front, above)[A vertical black paper sheet with frayed edges and a collaged white sheet arranged in its upper left corner containing infographics, a world map, and a skeleton sketch. A color image of a house with brown panels and white-frame windows overlaps the infographics. Offset from the white sheet, a trio of color photos from different angles show a ceramic pot with a short, floppy neck.] Untitled (Saturday, October 16, 1993), 2015[A horizontal monitor leaning against a gallery wall shows a man in a shirt and tie with reporters shoving microphones in his face.] Left: Untitled (messages volume one)Middle: Untitled (body-soul connections)Right: Untitled (dimensions, dimensional)[A row of vertical black sheets of paper on a gallery wall. On each black sheet, infographic white sheets intermingle with color snapshots of families, pets, and home interiors.] Untitled (virtues, laws and powers)[A vertical black sheet of paper with frayed edges and two vertical white sheets arranged side by side on it. The left sheet depicts a grid of numbered looping and darting line drawings, and the right sheet depicts a numbered list with the heading "VIRTUES." In the bottom right corner, distanced from the white sheets, a father holds his baby on his shoulder in a small, color photo.] [Installation view of freestanding, adjacent white gallery walls with an opening for visitors to enter. One wall shows a projection of a sunlit playground with a toy tractor sitting at the base of a slide. On the adjacent wall hang two vertical, black sheets of paper with white sheets and color photos beside and overlapping one another. Left of the black sheets and through the opening, another black sheet peaks from behind the wall. A wooden bench sits in the center room, facing the projection.] Untitled (with my father)[A projection on a freestanding white gallery wall of a child's colorful drawing of a person with yellow hair and a purple skirt. The drawing lays on top of shuffled white sheets with infographic line drawings. A wooden bench sits in the space in front of the projection.] Untitled (after the seminar room)[An installation view of a freestanding gallery wall with its wood backing and support structures exposed. To the right of the wall is a clear walkway illuminated by track lights. To the left, a wooden bench sits in front of a gallery wall with a projection of shuffled papers. Adjacent to the projection, an opening for visitors to pass through reveals a black sheet of paper hung on the wall behind it.]




























(24)Dog (23)Untitled (the ashram) (22)Untitled (mapping) (21)Untitled (the wars in Lebanon) (20)List Projects 21: Rami George  (19)Untitled (with my father) (18)brotherly love, sisterly affection (17)Untitled (Donna Mae Stemmer) (16)an ode to three (15)Inherited Premises (14)Untitled (the wars in Lebanon) (13)let every pansy bloom (12)tide/tithe (11)the mediterranean sea from the banks of lebanon, re: ali, krystel, nathalie, rasheed, visso, vrouyr (10)virtually every site one can visit virtually: gaza strip (09)my mother and her sister always argued in arabic, i never understood what was said (08)Untitled (Saturday, October 16, 1993) (07)Untitled (footnotes) (06)Untitled (Beyrouth) (05)Untitled (Samaritan Foundation)  (04)Untitled (Stanley, my second lover) (03)Untitled (two men, last scene) (02)Untitled (two men, last scene) (01)Untitled (family albums)