|
|
|
|
|
|
Past Lectures & Events 2006 | |||
| Saturday, January 21, 12 noon CAI GUO-QIANG Artist Talk On opening weekend, Cai will speak about his installation Inopportune at SITE Santa Fe. He will discuss this work in the context of his oeuvre in general—including his explosion projects, Chinese themes, ceremonial art, and terrorism. |
 Cai Guo-Qiang, Inopportune: Stage Two, 2004 (detail) Commissioned by MASS MoCA, Dimensions variable, Courtesy of the artist |
| Thursday, February 23, 7 pm ARTFeast A Contemporary Encounter Lecture by Laura Heon: Cai Guo-Qiang in Art History In collaboration with the Santa Fe Gallery Association’s annual fundraising event ARTfeast, benefiting art programs in the public schools. Wine and hors d’oeuvres generously provided by Mu Du Noodles. Underwritten by Collector’s Guide Join us for an intimate reception and talk by Laura Heon, who commissioned Cai Guo-Qiang’s work Inopportune and authored its catalogue. Enjoy hors d’oeuvres and wine while Ms. Heon speaks about the current exhibition and its position in art history. Following the lecture, SITE educators will be available to provide informal guided tours of the exhibition. Tickets are $20 and are only available at the Lensic Box Office, 505.988.1234 or www.artfeast.com. As this event is a benefit for ARTsmart, discounted or complimentary SITE member tickets are not available. |
 Laura Heon |
| Tuesday, March 7, 6 pm ROBERT POGUE HARRISON Of Terror and Tigers: Cai Guo-Qiang’s Inopportuner Harrison focuses on what Cai Guo-Qiang’s installation Inopportune reveals about the phantom-like nature of contemporary terrorism. He argues that it is because we live in an age of terror that terrorism has the power to wreak havoc with our imaginations. In his view, Inopportune probes the deeper sources of this terror, revealing them to be connected to the drive of contemporary technology, drawing everything into its planetary network of consumption and distribution. Harrison is the Chair of the Department of French & Italian and Director of Graduate Studies in Italian at Stanford University. He is the author of Forests: The Shadow of Civilization which deals with the multiple and complex ways in which the Western imagination has symbolized, represented, and conceived of forests, primarily in literature, religion, and mythology. His latest work, The Dominion of the Dead examines the special role that the dead hold for the living, and how the connections between the living and the dead are observed, nurtured, and maintained in diverse secular realms. He contributed an essay to the catalogue Cai Guo-Qiang: Inopportune, which accompanies this exhibition. Co-sponsored by LewAllen Contemporary. |
 Robert Pogue Harrison |
| Tuesday, April 25, 6 pm MARK COETZEE & LAURA HEON The New Leipzig School: A Conversation Life After Death: New Leipzig Paintings from the Rubell Family Collection features works by a group of seven artists who chose to study at the Leipzig Art Academy in former East Germany, in the decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This was an unlikely decision at a time when the inhabitants of Leipzig were leaving in droves for the West, and when the main currents of art flowed away from painting, toward video, photography, and installation art. The Leipzig paintings are expressive of the contemporary German neologism Ostalgie, a combination of Ost (east) and Nostalgie (nostalgia), which denotes this longing for the GDR. Unready to face the new, they are nostalgic for the old, but more from habit than any affection. The untimely embrace of a shrinking East German city and conventional medium is imprinted on the pictures, but rather than buckling under the weight of place, time, and tradition, they convey something surprising and subjective. The mystery of these pictures, with their out-of-date sources and classical techniques, is their utter and beguiling singularity. The exhibition's co-curators, Mark Coetzee, director and curator of the Rubell Family Collection and Laura Heon, director and curator of SITE Santa Fe, will speak about their experience in organizing this timely exhibition. Co-sponsored by Chiaroscuro Gallery |
 Matthias Weischer, Chair, 2003, (detail), Oil on canvas, 75" x 67" Courtesy of the Rubell Family Collection |
| Tuesday, May 16, 6 pm MARK HAXTHAUSEN Gerhard Richter/Neo Rauch: Painting Media Gerhard Richter and Neo Rauch are painters born 28 years apart in the German state of Saxony, which from 1949 until 1990 lay in the communist German Democratic Republic. After creating his earliest paintings in a socialist realist style, Richter emigrated to West Germany in 1961 only months before the erection of the Berlin Wall. Rauch, born in Leipzig in 1960, lived, studied, worked, and remained in the East. Beyond their origins they are linked by their respective projects of renewing figurative oil painting by appropriating imagery from reproductive media. A comparison of these respective phases of their work, produced at different moments under drastically different circumstances, makes for a provocative case study of historical change in the political and artistic landscape of post-WWII Germany. Haxthausen is Director of Graduate Art History at Williams College, Williamstown, MA. Prior to that, he was the curator of German Art at the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University. He holds a BA from the University of St. Thomas, Houston and a PhD from Columbia University, New York. Co-sponsored by Bellas Artes |
 Mark Haxthausen |
| Tuesday, May 23, 6 pm GOOD BYE LENIN! (2003) A film by Wolfgang Becker October 1989 was a bad time to fall into a coma if you lived in East Germany—and this is precisely what happens to Alex's mother, an activist for social progress and the improvement of everyday life in socialist East Germany. Alex has a big problem on his hands when she suddenly awakens eight months later. Her heart is so weak that any shock might kill her; and what could be more shocking than the fall of the Berlin Wall and the triumph of capitalism in her beloved country? To save his mother, Alex transforms the family apartment into an island of the past, a kind of socialist museum where his mother is lovingly duped into believing that nothing has changed. Like the Leipzig paintings on view at SITE, Good Bye Lenin! examines the contemporary German nostalgia for the old life in East Berlin. Screening at Center for Contemporary Arts Cinematheque 1050 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe For tickets, please call 505.982.1338 |
 Still from Good Bye Lenin! Chulpan Khamatova as Lara, Daniel Brühl as Alex |
| Thursday, September 21, 7:30 pm ALVA NOTO - XERROX A Performance at the Lensic Theater with Special Guest Richard Devine and Scott Pagano alva noto is the stage name of the Berlinbased audio/visual artist Carsten Nicolai, whose work comprises images, installations, and music. A leading artist among current electronic sound and visual designers using art and music as hybrid tools, his works consistently captivate through elegance, simplicity, and cool technique. The compressions, multiplications, scale changes, and shifts in resolution to which alva noto subjects his sources become both the process and the content of xerrox. Nicolai’s work is featured in SITE Santa Fe’s Sixth International Biennial. Nicolai has exhibited and performed in major galleries and festivals world-wide, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; NTT, Tokyo; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; and the Venice Biennale. Nicolai won the prestigious Ars Electronica Golden Nica prize in 2000 and 2001. Richard Devine will open for alva noto. Based in Atlanta, Devine is at the cutting edge of sound design and musical composition. During the past three years he has released four full-length albums on Schematic, Warp, Asphodel, and Sublight records, remixed top Warp artists like Aphex Twin and Mike Patton, and performed his own ear-tearing music mayhem worldwide. Devine is the sound designer for Wrekage, a Keep Adding exhibition at the Center for Contemporary Arts, opening on Saturday, September 23 at 6 pm. For more information call 505.982.1338 Tickets available at Tickets Santa Fe at the Lensic 988-1234 or www.ticketssantafe.com $15 General Admission / $10 SITE Members, Students, Seniors Co-sponsored by Zane Bennett Gallery |
 alva noto (Carsten Nicolai) Photo: Uwe Walter |
| Tuesday, November 7, 6 pm ANNE PASTERNAK Creative Time: 33 Years of Experimental Public Art in NYC. SITE Santa Fe Creative Time, a New York-based non-profit organization, presents the most innovative art in the public realm. During Anne Pasternak's 12-year tenure as President and Artistic Director of Creative Time, the organization has increased its commitment to artists working with untried media and has offered established artists fresh opportunities to experiment and engage new audiences. Pasternak will discuss art in public places based on her experience working with artists who ignite the imagination and explore ideas that shape society. She will examine the dynamic connections among artists, sites, and audiences—in projects that enliven public spaces. Renowned projects under Pasternak’s artistic direction range from exhibitions and performances in the historic Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage, new sculptures in Grand Central Station, paintings in Coney Island, and skywriting over Manhattan to the Tribute in Light, the twin beacons of light that illuminated the former World Trade Center site six months after 9/11 in honor of the lives lost there. Pasternak has been committed to initiating projects that give artists the opportunity to innovate and reflect on contemporary society while engaging millions of people with art that permeates everyday urban life. www. creativetime.org Co-sponsored by Dental Design Studio |
 Anne Pasternak |
| Tuesday, November 28, 6 pm WANGECHI MUTU Artist Lecture SITE Santa Fe AA native of Kenya, Wangechi Mutu mixes her cultural heritage with Western sources that range from high fashion and pornography to the past and present history of violence on the African continent. Her intricate drawings made on translucent Mylar inscribe postmodern horrors onto African identity. The massive relocations of populations in Africa, its multilingualism, and the influence of the increasing globalizations of commerce and culture seem mirrored in Mutu’s complex, multilayered images. Recent work moves beyond the limits of drawing into three dimensions, found materials, and alterations of gallery space. These alterations may include gouging the walls or staining the floor with water and other materials. Rather than historicizing Africa and blackness as a race, Mutu envisions the existence of African elements in a future culture. In her talk, Mutu will delve into her artistic process. Mutu received an MFA from Yale University in 2000. Her work has been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Tate Modern, London; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the International Center of Photography, New York; and is part of permanent collections at such institutions as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Co-sponsored by Linda Durham Contemporary Art. |
 Wangechi Mutu |
| Tuesday, December 12, 6 pm KLAUS OTTMANN Lecture: How to Explain Art to a Dead Horse SITE Santa Fe Klaus Ottmann, curator of SITE Santa Fe’s Sixth International Biennial, will reflect on exhibitions, biennials, critics, and the art public. The current edition of SITE’s Biennial, Still Points of the Turning World, has stirred debate throughout the artworld about the basic nature of a biennial, ranging from whether an exhibition of only thirteen artists can properly be called a biennial, to a renewed emphasis on the quality of visitor experience as the legacy of this exhibition. SITE has invited its Biennial curator back to Santa Fe to address the issues generated by the press, the blogosphere, and the general public during the run of the show. Now that you have seen the exhibition, attend Ottmann’s presentation to ask your questions to the man himself. Klaus Ottmann, an independent curator and scholar based in New York, is the author of numerous articles, essays, and books on art and philosophy, including The Genius Decision: The Extraordinary and the Postmodern Condition; James Lee Byars: Life, Love, and Death, and The Essential Mark Rothko. From 1996 to 1999 he held the position of Curator of Exhibitions at the American Federation of Arts in New York. From 1988 to 1995 he was Curator of Exhibitions of the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. He is currently working on a book on the philosophy of the French artist Yves Klein. |
 Public Conversation with the Biennial artists and Curator, Sunday, July 9, 2006 Photo: Carole Devillers |