Performa Project | “Broken English” in collaboration with Julieta Aranda for Performa 11, New York

October 14, 2011

November 1-21, 2011

For Performa 11, Julieta Aranda and Carlos Motta (b. 1975, Mexico City, Mexico; b. 1978 Bogota, Colombia) have invited a group of international contributors to reflect on New York City as a cross-cultural terrain and as a public space for constant cultural translations and negotiations, in a publication/supplement titled Broken English. Working with the curatorial threads of Performa 11, the supplement will act as a witness of New York’s cultural history and will present writings by artists and cultural producers that have been active in different capacities for the past 30 years, including:

Julieta Aranda, Joey Arias/Carlos Motta, Defne Ayas, Michael Baers, Sarnath Banerjee, Andy Bichlbaum, Julio Camba, Asli Çavuşoğlu, Carolina Caycedo, Samuel R. Delany, Jimmie Durham, Liam Gillick, Ashley Hunt, Adam Kleinman, Runo Lagomarsino, Yates McKee, Naeem Mohaiemen/Visible Collective, Shirin Neshat/RoseLee Goldberg, OWS Architecture Committee, Raqs Media Collective, Martha Rosler, Kim Turcot DiFruscia/Elizabeth Povinelli, Anton Vidokle/Andrei Monastyrski, Jeff Weintraub, and Carla Zaccagnini. 

Treating New York City as site for all sorts of personal and collective encounters/misses/near-misses, the supplement promises to be a fertile ground for a discussion of issues of urbanism, architecture, cultural policy, art production, the role of underground etc. (The publication will focus on the suspension of individual and group ideologies, cultural behaviors, moral attitudes, lifestyles, and beliefs when faced with other people and communities in the urban environment). For the design of the supplement, Aranda and Motta will draw from Constructivist and propaganda aesthetics, featuring both new commissioned texts as well as reprints of historical texts. A public launch is scheduled for November 12. A Performa Project. Curated by Defne Ayas.

Aranda and Motta’s collaboration started with Arts & Leisure, a one-time tabloid newspaper commissioned by Art in General and co-published with e-flux in 2005. The tabloid drew its title from the New York Time’s cultural section making emphasis on its equivalence of arts and/to leisure. Using a journalistic style to inquire about the crisis pertaining art criticism and complacency with commercial structures of art discussion, the project presented poignant texts, articles, texts and humorous contributions (cross word puzzles, horoscope, letters to the editor, etc.) by over 20 international cultural producers.

Screening and Talk | A New Discovery: Queer Immigration in Perspective at Museum of Art and Design, New York

October 13, 2011

Saturday, October 22, 2011. 5 pm

To highlight the issues faced by queer immigrants in the United States, the grassroots organization QUEEROCRACY in collaboration with artist Carlos Motta present A New Discovery: Queer Immigration in Perspective. The event will feature presentations by leading queer immigration activists, a public conversation, and a video screening of a social intervention-based performance held by QUEEROCRACY and its allies on Columbus Day at Columbus Circle. 

A New Discovery: Queer Immigration in Perspective attempts to bring attention to the way immigrant and queer politics intersect in the public sphere in ways that both confront, challenge and transform the state mechanisms that police borders and bodies in the United States. This dialogue strives to generate new ideas on how to better make a difference in the lives of queer people around the world.

Presentations and a public conversation by Felipe Baeza, New York State Youth Leadership Council; Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, Staff Attorney, Lambda Legal; Camilo Godoy, QUEEROCRACY; Jackie Vimo, activist and PhD Candidate in Politics The New School for Social Research; and a video address by Tania Bruguera, Immigrant Movement International. Moderated by Carlos Motta, artist.

More info here

Group Exhibition | The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M Hunt Collection at George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

October 1, 2011

October 1- February 19, 2011

Earlier this year The New Yorker referred to the collector as “the legendary W.M. Hunt.” He is a renowned curator and dealer who has been collecting photographs for 40 years. A self-described “champion of photography,” he is well-known for his “eye” and sense of humor. Hunt describes the collection as “magical, heart-stopping images of people in which the eyes cannot be seen.”

The photographs of The Unseen Eye have a common theme — the gaze of the subject is averted, the face obscured, or the eyes firmly closed. The images evoke a wide range of emotions and are characterized, by what, at first glance, the subject conceals rather than what the camera reveals.

More info here

Panel Discussion | The Gay Generation Gap, Dixon Place, New York

September 30, 2011

Book Launch | LAXART, September 29, 7:30pm, Los Angeles

September 12, 2011

LA><ART is pleased to host a reception for artist Carlos Motta, whose two new collaborative book projects address the social, political, and sexual dynamics of queer affection.  Motta will discuss these projects, followed by short readings from the texts by Motta, Alex Segade, Wu Tsang and others special guests. The two books, We Who Feel Differently and Petite Mort: Recollections of a Queer Public, which both include contributions from leading artists and thinkers, will be made available at LA><ART.

LA><ART is located at 2640 S. La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90034 

Artist Talk | Carlos Motta: We Who Feel Differently at Pomona Museum of Art, Los Angeles

September 7, 2011

September 26, 7-9pm

Carlos Motta will discuss his most recent project We Who Feel Differently, a database documentary that addresses the politics of sexual difference and other critical issues of contemporary queer culture. We Who Feel Differently attempts to reclaim a queer “We” that values difference over sameness, a “We” that resists assimilation, and a “We” that embraces difference as a critical opportunity to construct a socially just world.

More info here

Group Exhibiton | e-flux’s Pawnshop at Thessaloniki Biennial

September 7, 2011

18 September–18 November, 2011

Originally established by artists Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle in New York in 2008, PAWNSHOP went bankrupt at the beginning of the world financial crises, only to re-open successfully in Beijing and, most recently, at Art Basel.

Structurally, a pawnshop is a short-term loan business, which retains a collateral object (a camera, a ring, a guitar, a gun, and in this case an artwork) in exchange for a cash loan—a small fraction of the object’s value that needs to be repaid with interest within a one-month period. If the owner of the pawned object does not return to collect it and repay the loan + interest within 30 days, the pawnbroker has the right to sell it.  What is of particular interest in pawnshops is the peculiar mixture of the illicit and the desperate, futurity and anticipation. The idea that the object is collateral for cash that might be traded back for the object during a set duration, could be put in other words, that works of art and money are just dancing in a choreography in which they might just circle back and meet again, and cancel each other out, but in fact rarely do. All profits from PAWNSHOP have been donated to Doctors Without Borders.

More info here

Book Launch and Performances Series | Petite Mort: Recollections of a Queer Public at Forever & Today, Inc., New York

September 6, 2011

September 17–25, 2011. Book Launch: September 17, 6-9pm

Carlos Motta and Joshua Lubin-Levy’s book, Petite Mort: Recollections of a Queer Public assembles drawings from memory of spaces in New York City where a public sexual encounter occurred, and presents contributions from an intergenerational group of over 60 gay men.Conceived as an atlas of queer affection, Petite Mort proposes a subjective blueprint of the city, one that values not simply the space “as is,” but how it has been performed and engaged, highlighting the fundamental connection between public space and queer life.

More info here

Online Group Exhibition | InSite: Art + Commemoration – Ideas, LMCC, New York

September 1, 2011

September 1- October 11, 2011

As Lower Manhattan’s future continues to be rebuilt and re-imagined, LMCC invited artists to contribute to the InSite 9/11 program. They were invited to respond in the form of an observation, interpretation, or idea, which will be shared as part of an online project to inform thinking about Lower Manhattan’s past, present and future.

Double A Projects: Athena Robles and Anna Stein, Andrea Geyer, Takashi Horisaki, Yoko Inoue, Matthew Jensen, Jill Magid, Mary Mattingly, Carlos Motta and Christopher Robbins.

View exhibition here

Group Exhibiton | ¡Patria o Libertad! On Patriotism, Immigration and Populism, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto

September 1, 2011

September 9- October 30, 2011

As a consequence of immigration, globalisation and economic recession, patriotism is on the rise around the world. How we deal with love of country and nationalism is an important challenge of our time.¡Patria o Libertad! presents video works by 22 international artists, all investigating the diverse forms that patriotism embodies.

Adel Abidin, ANTUAN, Maja Bajevic, Marc Bijl, Alexander Apóstol, Iván Candeo, Emilio Chapela, DEMOCRACIA, Jen DeNike, Nezaket Ekici, Karlo Ibarra, Kaoru Katayama, Elena Kovylina, Carlos Motta, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay & Pascal Lièvre, Johanna Reich, Krisdy Shindler, Shahzia Sikander, Santiago Sierra, José Angel Toirac and Katri Walker. Curated by Paco Barragán.

More info here