Remember You Will Die

February 16–20, 2022
Co-curators: Malachi Wilson and Janessa Lewis
Venue: SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Los Angeles
Participating artist(s): Jacob Haupt and Nancy Rivera
Publication: Gallery Booklet

Humans have long grappled with a fear of the unknown—tackling the issue using narrative structures to prototype possible futures for themselves and civilization. Death, alien cultures, and illness have long been staples of art, literature, and movies. By mixing the real with the unreal, hypotheses are played out and tested on the page and screen to determine how to deal with these often terrifying scenarios.

Nancy Rivera, Silk Flowers in a Vase With a Peony and Apple Blossom at the Top, 2018, archival inkjet print, 45 × 30 in.
Nancy Rivera
Silk Flowers in a Vase With a Peony and Apple Blossom at the Top, 2018
Archival inkjet print
45 × 30 in.

In her work Impossible Bouquets: After Jan van Huysum (2018) Nancy Rivera subverts the tradition of still life, a phenomenon woven so deeply into the fabric of art history as to completely mystify a version without it. Her floral arrangements echo the historically performative nature of the still life as a tool to demonstrate the wealth of the patron and the virtuosity of the painter, while stripping it of these self-serving motivations. Rivera’s photos of artificial flowers and fruit, reference the painterly compositions of Jan van Huysum in 18th century Amsterdam. Van Huysum’s vanitas were closely related to memento mori, works meant to remind the viewer of the looming specter of death. He replicated and visually arrested the rapidly decaying flora in front of him as both a way to document the wealth of the patron who could afford the extravagant floral arrangements, and also as a reminder of the fleeting nature of life.

This echo chamber of iterative creations—Rivera’s reference to Van Huysum, who in turn references memento mori, which in turn references a struggle with death—parallels the idea of the children’s game “broken telephone” wherein each additional communication of the original idea further distorts the message and corrupts its meaning. The rich colors and plastic foliage of her photographs mask the foreboding and somber source material. In this way, her work functions as a saturated rumor of the original work, as well as its own self-sufficient series. In this process, Rivera places herself in the position of authority over the still life and its associated historical narrative in a contemporary setting.

The work of Jacob Haupt similarly focuses on reiterations and cultural investigations into the hereafter. His photographic series and accompanying art objects Did I Scare You? materialize and make tangible cinematic monsters. Following a long tradition of the animate depictions of death, disease, conquest, and human experience in the form of grotesque creatures, Haupt wrestles with death and fear using mythologies as a means to access and depict the unknown. His work disarms these monsters by using the awkward and goofy iconography that defines ’80s and ’90s B movies, children’s cartoons, horror films, and DIY halloween costumes. Haupt uses repetition of the mysterious, domestic materials, and bright colors to make the scary and mysterious, juvenescent and approachable.

Left: Jacob Haupt, Demon Chair, 2020 / Right: Window Creep, 2017
Left: Jacob Haupt
Demon Chair, 2020
Inkjet photo print
20 × 16 in.
Right: Jacob Haupt
Window Creep, 2017
Inkjet photo print
20 × 16 in.

Creatures such as swamp monsters, zombies, possessed children, and others have been used in film, television, and books to personify mysterious evils, such as death, disease, and fear of the alien. Many of these mysteries have since become better understood and even tamed on a global scale, however fear and ignorance cannot be fully eradicated. Haupt renders these historical monsters harmless while acknowledging the residual anxiety and horror.

Haupt and Rivera’s work in collaboration functions as an intricate map of historical and pop cultural references which bleed into one another, further obscuring the source of the narrative with each step. The global nature of contemporary media promotes an ever-evolving web of cross referencing ideas, images, and motifs, further distancing itself from the doctrinal canons of art—each a reflection or ghost of what came before. Despite attempts to freeze time, cure disease, and defeat monsters, the inevitability of death shadows us all.

– Essay by Malachi Wilson, Christopher Lynn, and Janessa Lewis

Purchase Jacob Haupt’s Did I Scare You? book

HC SVNT DRACONES

February 14–16, 2020
Venue: SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Los Angeles, CA
Participating artist(s): Casey Jex Smith and Amanda Smith
Publication: Gallery Booklet

The Hunt-Lenox Globe is the oldest surviving terrestrial globe that depicts the Americas. Dating from around 1510 AD, the engraved copper sphere captures the land masses commonly known at the time amid a sea of meticulously drawn waves. In the area of southeast Asia is written the Latin phrase, “HC SVNT DRACONES,” or “Here be dragons.” Perhaps a reference to Marco Polo’s ventures into the Kingdom of Dragoian (Sumatra), the phrase and derivations thereof were later used by cartographers to signal a warning against trespassing, unseen dangers, or poorly charted territories. Other maps would simply depict strange creatures near the shores or rolling in the waves—these creatures were mythical scare tactics.

The act of mapping territory is never completed. Borders and shores themselves are unmappable except as flattened abstractions. The mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot meditated in his essay “How Long Is the Coast of Britain?” (1967) and in his book The Fractal Geometry of Nature (1983) that when zooming in on a coastline, details become more pronounced. What may have been seen as a straight line, and easily measured, becomes a series of curves, articulations, and “corrugation,” each adding to the length of the border.1, 2 As those corrugations are magnified, more detail is seen and more length added. Each level of detail leads down a path of infinite length. How, then, is the infinite mapped, and what lies in the unmapped areas?

The artist couple Casey Jex Smith and Amanda Smith engage in acts of mapping and world creation. Their inexorably detailed and fantastical worlds reveal alternate realities, prototyped allegorical futures, and fictional inner monologues.

Casey Jex Smith, 2013
Casey Jex Smith
2013, 2013
Pen on paper
38 × 58 in.

Casey Smith’s Micron pen and colored pencil drawings are Boschian visions that cull inspiration from Dungeons & Dragons, Métal Hurlant, video game cartographies, the history of modern Western art, and Judeo-Christian mythology. Blemmyai wielding clubs converse over a sleek modernist structure, crashing waves of impending doom are barely held at bay by a prophet, and an overgrown greenhouse cradles monuments, statuary, and urns in its thick foliage. Each drawing resembles an isometric map, replete with monsters and border-like boundaries. Taking months to complete, these drawings are covered with minute marks akin to etching—every surface being considered and labored over. Some of the narrative vignettes in each drawing are discernible while others are buried under layers of personal or archaic symbolism and made inscrutable. The scenes spill to the edges of the paper, hinting at a sprawling universe of chaos and monstrous hybridity that is as fascinating as it is grotesque.

Casey Jex Smith
2016, 2016
Pen & ink, colored pencil, gouache, and gold leaf on paper
38 × 58 in.

Amanda Smith’s ceramic works are populated solely by young girls in smart frocks engaged in various acts of warfare. In Dragon (2019), a legion of uniformed girls wielding poison, a torch, swords, and an axe attack a blonde coiffed dragon and his minions. Tree of Social Mobility (2018) depicts various girls sitting on branches of a tree. The girls in the lower branches wear plain white clothing, while in the upper branches more colorful and ornamented clothes are worn, including a MAGA hat topping a tea-sipping maid. A girl in the upper left of the tree aims a flaming arrow at the girls attempting to traverse a ladder to an upper bough. These allegories, in the age of Trump and political subterfuge, illustrate social woes and play out fantasies of overthrowing the system and taking down the head dragon with his tousled mop of bleached hair.

Left: Amanda Smith Dark Money, 2017 / Right: Tree of Social Mobility, 2018
Left: Amanda Smith
Dark Money, 2017
Ceramic, oil paint, gold leaf, rhinestones
12.5 × 12 × 1 in.
Right: Amanda Smith
Tree of Social Mobility, 2018
Ceramic and oil paint
15 × 12 × 0.5 in.

Her executions are tightly detailed and complex, with layers of ceramic foliage framing the painted scenes. Her depictions recall Henry Darger, but without the pedophillic undertones or indecipherable personal narratives. The work revels in visual lavishness while railing against political and economic excesses and inequalities.

Amanda Smith Dragon, 2019
Amanda Smith
Dragon, 2019
Ceramic and oil paint
16 × 16 × 1 in.

Drifting in the corners of the space are piles of hundreds of thin foam characters—each lovingly drawn and cut out from brightly colored sheets of thin craft foam. Smith created these with her son and daughter over the course of years. Responding to requests from her children, Smith would render Spider Man’s entire family complete with spider wife, spider son and daughter, and spider baby, Miss Frizzle’s head on a bat’s body, Pokémon characters, and inventions by the artist herself. Over time, her children joined in on the making of the characters rather than simply petitioning. The result is a cacophonous accumulation of colors, styles, and imaginations that reflect the content of the drawings and ceramic paintings on the walls. When viewed all together—myths, parables, histories, and characters—there is a distinct sense of turbulent and childlike play as these artists make visible the manic excesses of ideas and inputs they experience. They explore and map their imagined worlds one area at a time while warning of the perils that lie inside and outside defined spaces. Here be dragons, but they can be killed.

  1. Benoit Mandelbrot, “How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension,” Science 156, no. 3775 (May 5, 1967): 636–38. [Back]
  2. Benoit Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature (New York: Freeman, 1983), 25–26. [Back]

Archipelagoes / Oceans / American Visuality

Fidalis Buehler and I were invited to co-curate a special forum on archipelagic concerns for the Journal of Transnational American Studies. Essayists were paired with imagery to bring out and align with issues around archipelagoes, oceans, and/or American visuality.
Co-curators: Fidalis Buehler
Participating artist(s): Maile Andrade (USA), Chris Charteris (New Zealand), Christo & Jeanne-Claude (France/Bulgaria), James Cooper (Bermuda), Humberto Diaz (Cuba), Yuki Kihara (Samoa), Glenda León (Cuba), Mary Mattingly (USA), Dan Taulapapa McMullin (Japan/Samoa/USA), Ibrahim Miranda Ramos (Cuba), Rosanna Raymond (New Zealand), Jamilah Sabur (Jamaica), Robert Smithson (USA), Kalisolaite ‘Uhila (New Zealand), and Juana Valdes (Cuba/USA)
Journal of Transnational American Studies, spreads of essays on the work of Christo & Jeanne-Claude and Robert Smithson
Journal of Transnational American Studies, spreads of essays on the work of Christo & Jeanne-Claude and Robert Smithson
Journal of Transnational American Studies, spreads of essays on the work of Glenda Léon and Juana Valdez
Journal of Transnational American Studies, spreads of essays on the work of Glenda Léon and Juana Valdez
Journal of Transnational American Studies, spreads of essays on the work of Yuki Kihara and Kalisolaite ‘Uhila
Journal of Transnational American Studies, spreads of essays on the work of Yuki Kihara and Kalisolaite ‘Uhila

20/20 Hindsight = 40 Years

April 20–June 15, 2018
Co-curators: Susan Channing, James Rosenberger, and Christina Vassallo
Venue: SPACES, Cleveland, OH
Participating artist(s): Artists I invited: Steffani Jemison and Steve Lambert
Other participating artists: Amber J. Anderson, Margaret Cogswell, Elena Harvey Collins, Dan Corrigan, Christa Donner, Kevin Everson, Dustin Grella, Anna Viola Hallberg, Kevin Hogan, Steffani Jemison, Ben Kinsley, Steve Lambert, Jessica Langley, Sarah Paul, Ward Shelley, Corrie Slawson, and Roopa Vasudevan.

20/20 Hindsight = 40 Years was a celebration of forty years of SPACES and was curated by SPACES Executive Director Christina Vassallo, and former executive directors: founder James Rosenberger, Susan Channing, and Christopher Lynn. Each curator selected a group of artists who defined their time at the helm of SPACES and/or whose work with SPACES propelled the artists’ careers. I curated projects by Steffani Jemison (Brooklyn, NY) and Steve Lambert (Purchase, NY) into the exhibition.

In addition, I wrote an historical essay on SPACES for Temporary Art Review, “SPACES at 40 Years,” and participated in a video interview about SPACES’ history (below).

Steffani Jemison, Same Time, 2017
Steffani Jemison
Same Time, 2017
Acrylic paint on clear polyester film, acrylic on synthetic velvet
Installation view
Steve Lambert, Why Not Ohio?, 2018
Steve Lambert
Why Not Ohio?, 2018
Installation and video
Installation view

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start

May 17–July 19, 2013
Venue: SPACES, Cleveland, OH
Participating artist(s): 0100101110101101.org (Eva and Franco Mattes), Pippin Barr, Wafaa Bilal, Mary Flanagan, Knut Hybinette, Molleindustria (a.k.a. Paolo Pedercini), and Dana Sperry
Publication: Gallery Booklet
Molleindustria (a.k.a. Paolo Pedercini), Faith Fighter, 2008, Video game
Molleindustria (a.k.a. Paolo Pedercini)
Faith Fighter, 2008
Video game (still)

Performance art is often thought to center around the artist’s body—improvising within parameters or working through a set of directions. What happens when the physical is eliminated or intentionally ignored in favor of a virtual experience. Does the physicality of a performance translate? Does it need to?

Video games manage to straddle the line between the physical and the virtual—set the stage for a dual performance of the player’s subtle physical dance of fingers across a controller and the pixelated movements of digital bodies.

Pippin Barr, The Artist is Present, 2012, Video game (stills)
Pippin Barr
The Artist is Present, 2012
Video game (stills)

Following similar avenues as traditional performance art, video games set up a framework for acting and improvising. Players can work within these programmed parameters or some have elected to hack games and gaming platforms to set their own rules.

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start1 highlighted the actions of artists, programmers and players who choreograph their own performances—including including the players. From classic console games, to artist-created worlds, these works invite viewers to see virtual and real worlds in a new light and hopefully with a little more performance.

Mary Flanagan, [borders: chichen itza], 2010, video (still)
Mary Flanagan
[borders: chichen itza], 2010
Video (still)
Wafaa Bila,l Virtual Jihadi, 2008, video game
Wafaa Bilal
Virtual Jihadi, 2008
Video game (still)
Eva and Franco Mattes a.k.a. 0100101110101101.org, Reenactments, 2009–10, Video documentation of performances
Eva and Franco Mattes a.k.a. 0100101110101101.org
Reenactments, 2009–10
Video documentation of performances
Eva and Franco Mattes a.k.a. 0100101110101101.org, Synthetic Performances, 2009–10, Video documentation of performances
Eva and Franco Mattes a.k.a. 0100101110101101.org
Synthetic Performances, 2009–10
Video documentation of performances
Wafaa Bilal, Domestic Tension: Day 30, 2007, Documentation of interactive performance, installation view
Wafaa Bilal
Domestic Tension: Day 30, 2007
Documentation of interactive performance
Installation view
Paolo Pedercini, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, 2011, Machinima (still), installation view
Paolo Pedercini
Welcome to the Desert of the Real, 2011
Machinima (still)
Installation view
Dana Sperry, First Person Shooter or New Rider of the Apocalypse, 2006, video, installation view
Dana Sperry
First Person Shooter or New Rider of the Apocalypse, 2006
Video (still)
Installation view
Arcade units playing various video games, installation view
Arcade units playing various video games, installation view
Image at top: Dana Sperry
First Person Shooter or New Rider of the Apocalypse, 2006
Video
  1. Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start, also known as the “Konami Code,” is a cheat code for some video games that allows players to immediately gain hundreds of lives or unlock “Easter eggs”—special surprises or hidden game modes. [Back]

Pull!

May 17–July 19, 2013
Venue: SPACES, Cleveland, OH
Participating artist(s): William Pope.L
William Pope.L, Pull!, 2013, Graphic
William Pope.L
Pull!, 2013
Graphic

Who would pull an 8-ton truck across the city of Cleveland? It turns out that hundreds of Clevelanders would.

Internationally renowned performance artist William Pope.L asked people across Cleveland to manually pull an eight-ton truck for over two days straight, as a durational community performance piece and a testament to the power of shared labor.

Over 1,400 images collected from Clevelanders about what work means to them were projected from the back of the truck as it is pulled over twenty-five miles through the city. Pull! defied the persistent geographic and demographic split between Cleveland’s east and west sides, traveling through a diversity of neighborhoods on both sides of town—from North Collinwood, Glenville, University Circle, Hough, AsiaTown and downtown; to West Park, Clark-Fulton and Ohio City. Residents were able to view images submitted by Clevelanders as the truck was pulled through their neighborhoods.

Pull! was a show of strength that could only happen if thousands of people literally pulled together in a massive act of shared commitment. It celebrated the labor that built Cleveland, a city with a rich and challenging industrial history. It asked every Clevelander, whether they loved or hated their jobs or just couldn’t find one, what work meant to their city.

Pull! took place on June 7-9, 2013, as part of Present & Accounted: A Celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Cleveland Performance Art Festival (1988–1999).

William Pope.L, Pull!, 2013, Photo documentation
William Pope.L
Pull!, 2013
Photo documentation
Photography by Paul Sobota, courtesy of William Pope.L and SPACES
William Pope.L, Pull!, 2013, Photo documentation
William Pope.L
Pull!, 2013
Photo documentation
Photography by Paul Sobota, courtesy of William Pope.L and SPACES
William Pope.L, Pull!, 2013, Photo documentation
William Pope.L
Pull!, 2013
Photo documentation
Photography by Paul Sobota, courtesy of William Pope.L and SPACES
William Pope.L, Pull!, 2013, Photo documentation
William Pope.L
Pull!, 2013
Photo documentation
Photography by Paul Sobota, courtesy of William Pope.L and SPACES
William Pope.L, Pull!, 2013, Photo documentation
William Pope.L
Pull!, 2013
Photo documentation
Photography by Paul Sobota, courtesy of William Pope.L and SPACES
William Pope.L, Pull!, 2013, city routes
William Pope.L
Pull!, 2013
Routes through the city of Cleveland

EVENTS

Community Forum on Work
Thursday, May 30, 6:30–8:30pm
Neighborhood Leadership Institute
5246 Broadway
(2nd floor of Broadway United Methodist Church Building)
With the Neighborhood Leadership Institute, Policy Matters Ohio and Neighborhood Connections

Pull!
Friday, June 7, 9:00 p.m. – Sunday, June 9, 9:00 pm
From the Beachland Ballroom to Market Square Park

Pull! Launch Party
Friday, June 7, 7:00–9:00 pm
Beachland Ballroom
15711 Waterloo Road
Featuring the Revolution Brass Band
Pull! Joins Parade the Circle
Saturday, June 8, 12:00–3:00 pm
Wade Oval
10820 East Boulevard

Pull! End Party
Sunday, June 9, 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Market Square Park
West 25th Street and Lorain Avenue
Featuring Passport Project and the Neil Chastain Quartet

William Pope.L in front of the Pull! truck
William Pope.L in front of the Pull! truck

Pull! is made possible by generous support from the 2012 Joyce Awards, the George Gund Foundation, the John P. Murphy Foundation, Neighborhood Connections, Speedpro Imaging, Good Greens, the Distillata Company, Jakprints and FORM, and is produced in partnership with the 25th Anniversary of the Cleveland Performing Arts Festival, 2100 Lakeside, the Beachland Ballroom, Berea Moving & Storage, City Rising Farm, the Cleveland Memory Project, the Cleveland Print Room, Cleveland Public Library, the Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization, Famicos, Neighborhood Connections, the Neighborhood Leadership Institute, Northeast Shores, Ohio City Incorporated, Parade the Circle, Policy Matters Ohio, St. Paul Community Church, and Tenable Protective Services.

The Foreigner

February 1–March 29, 2013
Venue: SPACES, Cleveland, OH
Participating artist(s): Jon Rubin and Felipe Castelblanco
Publication: Gallery Booklet

Imagine a freckled 14 year old girl at the mall who approaches a stranger and asks, “What is the weather like where you are?” The bewildered stranger cocks an eyebrow and replies, “It’s pretty cold and snowing.” The girl states, “It is 11 degrees Celsius here in Tehran.” Thoroughly confused, the stranger narrows his eyes and furrows his brow. The girl goes on to explain, “I am sitting in my home in Iran, listening to you through my computer and speaking to you through this girl in front of you. I am a 30 year-old man and a musician. What kinds of music do you like?”

The brainchild of artists Jon Rubin and Felipe Castelblanco, this scenario will play out a number of times at different locations in Cleveland as part of The Foreigner. The project employs simple mobile technology that allows Clevelanders to act as physical avatars for Iranian citizens, thus enabling the general public in the mall to meet and speak to someone living in Iran through the body of a local citizen.

The Foreigner presents an uncanny circumstance where the separation between self and other, local and foreign, is collapsed and confused, and the geopolitical distance between the United States and Iran is made personal and local.

Jon Rubin and Felipe Castelblanco, The Foreigner
Jon Rubin and Felipe Castelblanco
The Foreigner, 2013

Events with Avatars

Opening at SPACES
Friday, February 1, 6:00–9:00 pm
Other events
Saturday, February 2, 10:00 am–1:00 pm
Saturday, February 9, 10:00 am–1:00 pm
Sunday, February 17, 10:00 am–1:00 pm
Saturday, March 9, 10:00 am–1:00 pm
Saturday, April 6, 10:00 am–1:00 pm

Capitalism Works for Me! TRUE/FALSE

August 26–October 21, 2011
Venue: SPACES, Cleveland, OH
Participating artist(s): Steve Lambert
Publication: Residency Catalog

Steve Lambert‘s Capitalism Works for Me! TRUE/FALSE is a 20-foot long lighted sign that allows viewers to vote “true” or “false’ through a kiosk and accompanying LED scoreboard. The sign was first shown at SPACES, then traveled around Cleveland before touring to Boston, Santa Fe, Los Angeles and other cities in the U.S. and beyond.

Steve Lambert, Capitalism Works for Me! TRUE/FALSE, 2011
Steve Lambert
Capitalism Works for Me! TRUE/FALSE, 2011

The word “capitalism” is anathema to conversation—its introduction to social situations is often a cue that things will start to get uncomfortable. At the same time, capitalism is discussed every day in our culture using euphemisms like “jobs,” “job creation,” “the business climate,” and discussing whatever “crisis” is deemed relevant: a housing crisis, financial crisis, job crisis, or fill-in-the blank crisis. These are pieces, but the whole is rarely a topic of frank discussion, much less any mention of alternatives or meaningful reform of the sacred cow.

But what to do? Start a conversation about capitalism and friends edge away slowly, and strangers even faster./p>

Make a game of it. Through Lambert’s bright, glitzy sign that borrows its aesthetics from the trappings of capitalism, discussions of capitalism aren’t framed as awkward party conversation or polemic political dogma, but as simple benign votes that are catalysts or gentle primers for discussion. The space around the sign becomes a zone where conversation of economic structures is welcomed and fostered.

Steve Lambert discussing Capitalism Works for Me! TRUE/FALSE at Creative Time Summit 2012

Lambert says of his work, “For me, art is a bridge that connects uncommon, idealistic, or even radical ideas with everyday life. I carefully craft various conditions where I can discuss these ideas with people and have a mutually meaningful exchange. Often this means working collaboratively with the audience, bringing them into the process or even having them physically complete the work.”

The project/sign will be on view at SPACES August 26–October 21, but will travel around Cleveland to see how the conversation changes. Here is a schedule for the sign’s travels outside of the gallery space:

Friday, August 26, 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 pm
Downtown Farmers’ Market at Public Square
Across from Old Stone Church
Cleveland, OH

Saturday, August 27, 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 pm
Open Air at Market Square
Across from the West Side Market on Market Avenue
Cleveland, OH

Saturday, August 27, 8:00 – ?? pm
Beachland Ballroom
15711 Waterloo Rd.
Cleveland, OH

Monday, August 29, 6:30 – 9:00 pm
Capitol Theatre
1390 W. 65th St.
Cleveland, OH

Tuesday, August 30, 4:00 – 7:00 pm
Tremont Farmers’ Market
Lincoln Park, on W 14th St. between Starkweather and Kenilworth Avenues
Cleveland, OH

Friday, September 16
Ingenuity Fest
Detroit Superior Bridge, lower level
Cleveland, OH

Saturday, September 17
Ingenuity Fest
Detroit Superior Bridge, lower level
Cleveland, OH

Sunday, September 18
Ingenuity Fest
Detroit Superior Bridge, lower level
Cleveland, OH

Steve utilized Kickstarter.com (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/slambert/make-capitalism-work-for-me) to raise money to help get the sign made and travel around the U.S. Thanks to the 434 individuals who donated to the cause.

Steve Lambert was SPACES’ 34th artist in residence as part of the SPACES World Artists Program (SWAP). SWAP is a residency initiative begun in 2002 that invites national and international artists to spend significant amounts of time in Cleveland. SWAP supports the creation, presentation and discussion of artwork while facilitating collaboration among audiences.

Image at top: Steve Lambert
Capitalism Works for Me! TRUE/FALSE, 2011
Initial mockup of the sign

The Vault

November 19, 2010–July 19, 2013
Venue: SPACES, Cleveland, OH
Participating artist(s): David Wojnarowicz, Deborah Stratman, Gili Avissar, Guy Ben-Ner, Kate Gilmore, Ben Hagari, Gilad Ratman, Elham Rokni, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Steven Cohen, Matthew Barton, Anna Bojic, Berni Searle, Lerato Shadi, Penny Siopis, Chris Coleman and Michael Salter, Paul Edmunds, Simon Gush, Pieter Hugo, Susan Krueger-Barber, Jennifer Levonian, Michael MacGarry, Nandipha Mntambo, Andrew Putter, Eric Rippert, Dario Šolman, Brian Sabalausky, Cigdem Slankard, Doron Solomons, Karel van Laere, Nanette Yannuzzi and Arzu Ozkal, Ghosh, J. Makary, Sarah Paul (Little Miss Cleveland), Nathaniel Whitcomb, Davor Sanvincenti, Marko Tanic, Petra Zlonoga, Elena Harvey Collins, Michelle Fried, R. Eric McMaster, Eric Rippert, Ben Kinsley and Jessica Langley, Alexis Gideon, Cleveland Performance Art Festival Archives, Scorpion Dagger, and Dan "Daino" Torres.

In SPACES’s location at 2220 Superior Viaduct, in the front gallery space, there was a false wall behind which was an old vault that was original to the building. It is where we stored our electronics when not in use in the gallery. I proposed repurposing it into a digital flat file. We could install a small media hard drive and give visitors the remote control to peruse through dozens of sound and video files rather than being at the mercy of an endless loop of material. Work was added to the The Vault on a rolling basis where it would remain on view for approximately six months and then rotate out. I actively programmed content for The Vault from 2010 until 2013, bringing in dozens of time-based works.

Collage of work from The Vault
A collage of many of the works that I curated into The Vault over the years
Image at top: Ben Hagari
Invert (still), 2010
11:03

The Plum Academy

An Institute for Situated Practices
September 11–October 23, 2009
Co-curators: Julia Christensen and Saul Ostrow
Venue: SPACES, Cleveland, OH
Participating artist(s): bbob Drake, Elaine Hullihen, Tom Orange, Sarah Paul, Lucy Raven, Eric Rippert, Kristin Rogers, Maria Samuelson, Deborah Stratman, Peter Tabor, and Laila Voss

Throw away the canvas. Let the brushes dry out. Grab a #2 pencil (but you may not need it). This fall, SPACES will be host to The Plum Academy: An Institute for Situated Practices, an experimental school. Rather than house a traditional exhibition of objects, SPACES is choosing to organize a school-as-exhibition. Concepts and ideas will take the forefront, rather than materials, styles and conventional aesthetics. Specially selected facilitators from the regional community and beyond will lead forums that approach topics obliquely, find unique entry points to ideas and challenge the established structures of education. (To assist in taking a different look at education, we use the terms “forum” and “facilitator” rather than “class” and “teacher”, respectively.)

The Plum Academy title wall, and circuit-bending workshop
The Plum Academy title wall and bbob Drake’s circuit-bending workshop, 2009

Forum subjects will be unexpected. The student-teacher relationship will be questioned and the school itself will function as a large, collaborative performance. Forum subjects will be unexpected. The student-teacher relationship will be questioned and the school itself will function as a large, collaborative performance.

This is not an “art school” per se. We are not offering art classes. We do offer a variety of forums that tackle contemporary thought on a number of topics and disciplines-that challenge traditional educational systems, are out-of-the-ordinary, outrageous, educational and entertaining. Forums will be solo presentations, workshops, open discussions, field trips, etc.

Elaine Hullihen, Float, 2009
Elaine Hullihen
Float, 2009
As part of Thee Plum Academy
The Plum Academy, Frosting Graffiti Workshop with Maria Samuelson
The Plum Academy, Frosting Graffiti workshop with Maria Samuelson
The Plum Academy, Paradigm Race competition with Laila Voss. Competitors had to race stationary biicycles while reading from dense rat theory texts. Any long pauses resulted in disqualification.
The Plum Academy, Paradigm Race competition with Laila Voss. Competitors had to race stationary bicycles while reading from dense rat theory texts. Any long pauses resulted in disqualification.
The Plum Academy's sound forum with Eric Rippert
The Plum Academy‘s sound forum with Eric Rippert