City Beats

CITY BEATS
An exploration of the social, cultural and physical dimensions of the city
July 10 - 20, 2008

Curated by Berit Fischer

ARTISTS
Laura Bruce, Rainer Ganahl, Dryden Goodwin, Alexander Heim, Ben Judd, Stephan Pascher, Jeff Preiss, Alex Villar

Everywhere where there is interaction between a place, a time and an expenditure of energy,
there is rhythm.
- H. Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis

Rhythm concerns itself with issues of change, repetition, identity, contrast and continuity. Similar to the implications of rhythm, the pulse of a metropolis is pervaded by regulated recurring patterns and repetitions of behaviors, habits and urban rituals. Prescriptive codes that define daily life correlate with micro geographies in which the human body defines the social and biological rhythm. Exploring the social, cultural and physical dimensions of the city, the artists in City Beats apply their own sets of rules. General frameworks are decomposed and re-configured by the artist's individual tonalities. The constructed mechanisations of life and belief systems, often taken for granted, are drawn into scrutiny.
City Beats employs video to compile a cacophony of glances at non events within the urban commonplace and offers new ways of looking at the structured relationships between time and place, private and public, framework and content; it creates a temporal look at urban space and the human condition within it.

Laura Bruce - A New Day, 2003
In intense close up to the camera and extracted from the larger scope of things, a middle aged woman in her dressing gown neurotically describes in the smallest detail the course of her day. The unfolding narrative encompasses the minutia of her considerations and decisions at such a monotonous pace that they reach the extent of claustrophobia and tedium. A New Day does not only recall a journey into someone else's mind but also externalises the internal monologues of any random anonymous city dweller. The invisible and overlooked aspects of everyday realities are portrayed in a new relationship between the ordinary and the exceptional.

Rainer Ganahl - Bicycling Broadway, 2006
For more than a decade Rainer Ganahl has been racing against the flow of the city on his bicycle. Without holding the handle bar, but holding the camera, he cycles against major cities' traffic regulations around the world. Ganahl is anything but suicidal, rather he literally tries to create new ways of seeing the city. At a pace and rhythm of his own, he sets his own logic to transgress the mandatory rules of traffic that regulate our daily lives. His provocative performance reflects not only on the worldwide car culture with all its inevitable environmental concerns, but also on politics, urban planning and the position of the individual in a governed world.

Dryden Goodwin - Reveal, 2003
Contemplatively, line by line the portrait of a young urbanite is revealed through in the drawing process whilst being video-ed from the fixed viewpoint of a small camera device above the drawing board. The soundtrack of the piece are the conversations the artist has with passersby who he is asking permission to draw, the major element being a conversation with one person who finally agrees to be portrayed. Reveal does not only disclose the physical appearance of an inner-city youth but also his thoughts, which in their own manner reflect on society and its conditions. Drawn into an intimate viewing and listening process, a brief look at intimacy in urban isolation is given, contemplating our pre-conceptions of people.

Alexander Heim - Recycling Bottles, 2003
Seemingly accidental, a camera pointing towards the sky, is placed inside a box filled with recycled glass bottles, being carried to the disposal container. Rhythmic noises of the rattling bottles accompany the route. A recurring theme in Heim's work, Recycling Bottles poetically observes and captures a moment of little intrinsic value in quotidian life, like an videographic objét trouvé that generates awareness for our all-embracing visual and aural environment. "It is like witnessing an accidental piece of music, which was never written or intended" AH.

Ben Judd - The Truth Will Set You Free, 2005
A three screen triptych depicts on the one hand, speakers fervently expressing their beliefs about politics and religion. On the other hand, buskers and musicians express their supposed convictions in lyrics. At a closer look one gets to understand that the 'street-preachers' are in Central London and at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, an historic and iconic site for freedom and expression of speech. Both scenarios reflect upon the public space in which the anonymous city dweller is given a voice. The Truth Will Set You Free reflects upon the borders of public and private space, the represented and the genuine. In Judd's work these two states are interchangeable, as the heartfelt lyrics of the musicians are nothing but staged. In fact, key phrases of the 'street-preachers' were isolated and supplied to actors and musicians to be performed on stage or in public.

Stephan Pascher - Untitled (Once Around the Block), 2006
The camera points at the ground, a cigarette butt is being kicked along the pavement once around the block. The lobby of a building defines the start and end point of the walk. The length however is determined by how long it takes to kick a butt around the block on which the artist lives. When it is lost, stuck or disintegrated, the cigarette is substituted with a another stub. The self-imposed aim is to get as far as possible with the same butt, a familiar obsessive game to navigate a city. The ludicrous activity of a usual 'walk round the block' turns the familiar unfamiliar and the expected into the unexpected. Untitled (Once around the block) meditates on the definition of personal and public space, moving around and mapping a city.

Jeff Preiss - Scan Odyssey, 2005
A restless scanning camera montages a promiscuous array of international metropolises. The scan is not about one specific place but about the transnational urban, the built environment, the architectural setting that harbors society, culture and human experience. Filmed from the vantage point of the street, the camera pivots restlessly back and forth scanning the facades, the structures of a city's framework. An endless looped mechanical sound that is interwoven with eerie ephemeral voices and at a rhythm of its own, articulates the anonymous and complex atmosphere of a city to the extent of claustrophobic information overload. The images are rather exempt of people, and only occasionally allowing short references to the personal. This apparent insignificance of the personal emphasises the emptiness and anonymity of the urban landscape.'

Alex Villar - Irrational Interval, 2002
A smoker finds temporary respite in empty urban architectural pockets indulging himself in smoking a cigarette. Quietly, as if depleted of the busy flow of street life, the scene is repeated in various different architectural settings pinpointing the artificial uniformity and constitutive power of urban design. The human body, in this case the artist's own, is set between regulated codes, here the codes of workplace and architectural dominance. Villar's absurd and minor performative interventions within marginal and non-administered spaces not only draw attention to these functionless spaces, but also subtly create a critical awareness of our daily rituals in the city scope.

ZENDAI MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, SHANGHAI - INTRUDE: ART AND LIFE 366
800 Art Space, Nr.800
Guoshun East Road, 200433
Shanghai, China
www.intrude366.com

SHANGHAI ZENDAI MUSEUM OF MODERN ART - INTRUDE: ART AND LIFE 366 is an ambitious interdisciplinary and cross-cultural public art event organized by the Zendai Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, China. From January 1st to December 31st 2008, a cultural event will take place everyday somewhere in the city of Shanghai. One cultural event a day, 366 events a year, Intrude: Art & Life 366 will present global perspectives on art and culture, and bring these closer to the people of the city, intervening in their daily lives by exposing them to exceptional cultural happenings. Intrude: Art & Life 366 aims to diversify the ways in which art and culture reaches people. The aim is to narrow the gap between culture and everyday life, making art more accessible to a broader public. In order to present their work differently, artists will explore new concepts, abandoning the pristine white gallery and museum walls so that different cultural experiences can enter the public space. Intrude: Art & Life 366 was created as a long-term project, continuing beyond the 366 days of events. All of the events will be methodically archived in Zendai MoMA's archives and presented in the future as touring exhibitions. The Museum also publishes monthly magazines with interviews and essays on the projects to inform a broad range of people on the progress of the project.

For further details on City Beats please contact Berit Fischer at fischer.berit@yahoo.com
T: +44 (0) 79 3179 3315

For further enquiries on Intrude: Art & Life 366 please contact Liz Coppens at liz.coppens@gmail.com