Not Public! - Point Proven!

As part of ArtistMeeting's contribution to Conflux Festival we installed the "Not Public!" barricade tape at the privately owned public plaza on 32 Old Slip today. Just after the installation of the piece, security for the adjacent building -- whose owners also own the plaza -- came out to confront us about the tape. They were very agitated and in the process proved our point that these so-called public plazas are not so public, because "you have to get papers [permits] for anything you do on this property." You can see a video of the post-installation encounter on YouTube. I would like to thank my fellow AM-members G.H. Hovagimyan and Lee Wells for keeping a cool head while talking with the guards - and for documenting the piece.

"mixed messages" in Drain Magazine

A few images from my series "mixed messages" will be featured in the up-coming Psychogeography issue of the online magazine Drain - Journal of Contemporary Art and Culture (scheduled for the end of September).

Not Public!

Although I have been busy planning my up-coming wedding in Germany (9/27), I contributed ideas, time and a project to ArtistsMeeting's (AM) group effort at Conflux Festival here in NYC. In fact, my project -- "Not Public!", red barricade tape with the before-mentioned phrase to be used to temporarily block off privately owned so-called public plazas in NYC -- is the closest interpretation of AM's initial idea for this festival (for more information, see blog entry/press release below). I will share installation pictures as they become available.


Here is my "official" blurb:

In a more critical gesture, Daniel Blochwitz wishes to point out the ambiguous nature of the privately owned public spaces or POPS. He questions whether the trading of (prime real state) space for (public) space between developers and the City really creates valuable communal and green urban areas. After all, most of these so-called public spaces seem to be dark niches, corners and alleyways dressed up with a few mall features and shrubs, and often discourage leisurely use and lingering. And as gated, guarded, and surveilled as the POPS are, one has to wonder about their role within a larger system of control. To highlight this the group will use barricade tape marked with the words “NOT PUBLIC!” to symbolically block off several of the POPS spaces.
Not Public!, Date: Sept. 11-14, Time continuous, Financial District, various locations, Artist - Daniel Blochwitz

ArtistsMeeting at Conflux Festival NYC

Artists Meeting - Public Exhibition Space @ Conflux Festival NYC
Interventions in Privately Owned Public Space
Downtown Manhattan - District 1
September 11 - 14, 2008

Brought together by chance, circumstance, and a common purpose, Artists Meeting members gather in person and via technology. Free of commercial influence, participants draw on each other’s expertise to refine concepts, further experimentation and engage each other in collaboration. Artists Meeting members participating in Public Exhibiton Space include Leesa & Nicole Abahuni, James Andrews, Daniel Blochwitz, Eliza Fernbach, G.H. Hovagimyan, Thomas Hutchison, Christina McPhee, Mayuko Nakatsuka, Raphaele Shirley, Maria João Salema, Lara Star Martini, Abigail Weg, Lee Wells and Edita Zulic.

Artists Meeting, a light hearted group of artists who have been working together for two and a half years, is presenting a series of performance / interventions in the POPS Plazas of the Financial District in Lower Manhattan. The Artists Meeting Project titled “Public Exhibition Space” is part of a larger Arts Festival called Conflux that is taking place downtown Sept. 11 - 14th. POPS plazas (privately owned public space) are plazas which real estate developers have created over the years to receive special favors from the city such as a tax abatement or the approval to build a much higher building than zoning allows. The POPS spaces have recently come under scrutiny in the press because many of the owners have reneged on their agreements and privatized the spaces making them inaccessible to the public. (see: New York Times, Real Estate Section, BIG DEAL; Home Sweet Home on the Plaza, By JOSH BARBANEL, Published: December 17, 2006) and (New York Times:NEW YORK REGION / THE CITY | May 25, 2008 East Side: A New Study Faults Plazas as Public in Name, Private in Look By GREGORY BEYER)

For more information and a detailed list and map of Conflux Artists Meeting related interventions, performances and events please goto the AM website at: http://www.artistsmeeting.org

About CONFLUX
Starting September 11th, over one hundred local and international artists will transform New York City streets into a laboratory for exploring the urban environment at the Conflux Festival. Located in Greenwich Village at the Center for Architecture (a.k.a. Conflux HQ), the four-day event includes art installations, street art interventions, interactive performance, walking tours, bicycle and public-transit expeditions, DIY media workshops, lectures, films and music.

For more information about CONFLUX go to: http://www.confluxfestival.org/conflux2008

Deborah Kelly and Martha Rosler

On Saturday night, I attended the opening reception of my friend and fellow fleas member Martha Rosler at Mitchell-Innes & Nash . Although I couldn't stay for too long, I was impressed by Martha's exhibition, Great Power. It included a batch of new anti-war photomontages, binders with newspaper clippings about the current war in Iraq, a huge moving prosthetic leg, a dance arcade game, and a turnstile at the entrance. The latter, prevented me -- at first -- to enter the exhibition, because I had no cash on me. Eventually, I had to beg for a quarter at the front desk. Martha's "show-and-tell" in the online edition of the New York Times (09/05/08): Cut and Paste.

Another friend of mine and member of the fleas, Deborah Kelly, has been invited to bring her Beware of the God project to the Singapore Biennale 2008. Deborah's work is incredibly smart and engaging, or as a press release from the Biennale states, "watch out for Deborah Kelly’s transient projection, Beware of the God, which demands that we ponder our realities and beliefs while encountering a moment of wonder and discovery."