PEER PLEASURE 2

SAN FRANCISCO—February 22, 2006 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts presents the visual art exhibition, Peer Pleasure 2: Red76, Temporary Services and Visible Collective, curated by assistant visual arts curator, Berin Golonu, running April 7 through July 2, 2006. Peer Pleasure 2 continues the exploration of artist group activity highlighted in Peer Pleasure 1 and showcases the projects of additional artist groups working here in the US. One common approach to all of the Peer Pleasure 2 projects is an interest in forging community networks to distribute art, information and ideas. Interactive projects by Red76 (Portland and Chicago,) Temporary Services (Chicago) and Visible Collective (New York,) address a broad range of social and political issues, from life in the prison system, to the misrepresentation of Muslims in the media. Over the course of the exhibition, YBCA’s galleries will be animated with interactive displays and impromptu lectures. In conjunction with the exhibition, there will be unique off-site public events organized by members of each collective.

This show is the last of the four successive exhibitions at YBCA that have highlighted a growing trend in visual art—collaborative artist activity. Peer Pleasure 2 is also part of YBCA’s “Future Shock” series, one of the Big Ideas that guide the 05-06 programming. Work associated with the Big Idea of Future Shock, investigates reactions to a hyper-modernized world. These projects seek to engage audiences in the artistic process and in community dialogue. The thread uniting all three collectives is a desire to eliminate institutional barriers and the ability to turn the process of art making into an all-inclusive practice that transforms the passive viewer into an active creator.

“The artist collectives highlighted in Peer Pleasure 2 have relied upon one another’s support and banded together in groups to not only generate enthusiasm for their work, but to also contribute to an expanded social consciousness. They do so by spreading their messages and stories through growing networks of creative individuals,” states Golonu. Since its inception in January of 2000 in Portland, Oregon, Red76 has curated and presented more than 30 exhibitions and events, produced eight CDs and published a regular arts and culture journal titled Dis-connect. The group’s projects focus on the collaborative practice in an effort to foster grass-roots activity, to create alternative systems of information distribution and to build community. Red76’s work is deeply imbued with a sense of idealism. Through their art, the group focuses on steering social change through simple grass-roots action. For the exhibition at YBCA, Red76 will provide audiences with instructions for various “How To” projects that can be easily produced. During the run of the exhibition the collective will stage a few projects, encouraging the public to do the same. Some of the “How To” projects include instructions for holding your own Laundry Lecture by assembling a group of friends at the Laundromat to speak about a relevant social or cultural topic while doing laundry. Other projects include Protest Karaoke, which involves participants going to a karaoke bar and introducing pop songs as if they had been written with explicit political content. Three years ago Chicago-based Temporary Services invited Angelo, an incarcerated artist, to write and illustrate a booklet about the ingenious, practical and sometimes bizarre things he has seen prisoners make. Angelo generated more than 100 pages of drawings and text—representing 78 different objects to cope with life in the prison system. The collection offers a glimpse into the social environment of prison, where inventiveness and ingenuity are necessary to satisfy even the most basic human desires. This exhibition will include many of Angelo’s drawings and writings, along with facsimiles of the inventions constructed by Temporary Services. At Angelo’s request, a full-size copy of his prison cell will also be featured, constructed from his drawings and measurements. Visible Collective is a collective of Muslim and non-Muslim artist-activists who strive to create work that confronts, challenges and undermines distorted and limited images held up by the current media and government. Visible Collective will present their project DISAPPEARED IN AMERICA. DISAPPEARED is a walk-through installation that uses film, soundscape, images, installations and lectures to humanize the faces of post 9/11 “disappeared” Muslims. This project calls attention to the persecution of Muslim immigrants, who were detained after 9/11 in a security dragnet. DISAPPEARED uses art in a museum setting to deconstruct a global climate of Islamaphobia.

Red76 projects are conceived, most often, by Sam Gould and executed by a group of like-minded artists and thinkers usually consisting of, but not limited to, Matthew Yake, Khris Soden, Paige Saez, Jen Rhoads, Laura Baldwin and others.

Temporary Services is Brett Bloom, Salem Collo-Julin, and Marc Fischer.

Visible Collective is coordinated by Naeem Mohaiemen. Members are Anandaroop Roy, Jeeyun Ha, Shahed Amanullah, Aziz Huq, Krostofer Dan-Bergman, Anjali Malhotra, JT Nimoy, Vivek Bald, Donna Golden and Sarah Olson.

Pressetext

PEER PLEASURE 2
RED76, TEMPORARY SERVICES AND VISIBLE COLLECTIVE
YBCA Galleries
Kuratoren: Berin Golonu, Rene de Guzman

mit Red76 , Temporary Services , Visible Collective