{"id":158508,"date":"2020-04-12T15:09:50","date_gmt":"2020-04-12T06:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.adfwebmagazine.jp\/?p=158508"},"modified":"2020-04-12T15:09:50","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T08:02:39","slug":"what-has-only-now-become-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adfwebmagazine.jp\/en\/art\/what-has-only-now-become-possible\/","title":{"rendered":"WHAT HAS ONLY NOW BECOME POSSIBLE?"},"content":{"rendered":"

WHAT HAS ONLY NOW BECOME POSSIBLE?<\/h3>\r\n

\"W<\/span>elcome to our first virtual \u2018Sculpture Dialogues,\u2019\u201d Adrian Wong, assistant professor of sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago(SAIC)<\/a>, says to the small audience that has gathered on the Zoom call, mostly SAIC faculty and graduate students from the sculpture program.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"adf-web-magazine-zhu-<\/a>

Zhu Jinshi, \"Wave of Materials (2007)\". Installation view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, image \u00a9 Museum Associates\/LACMA.<\/p><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n

I\u2019m standing on the back porch of my parent\u2019s home in the sloping, glacial hills of rural, Southeastern Michigan. My phone is at 11%, but the six-inch power cord isn\u2019t long enough for me to place my phone on the railing, so I have it lying face up on the ground below me. I\u2019m trying to enjoy the last bit of sun on this warm, spring day. A crescendo of croaking chorus frogs echoes from the dismal swamp just beyond the tree-lined edges of the yard. Several of my parent\u2019s chickens are clawing through the piles of leaves that my sisters and I raked the previous evening, searching for whatever bugs didn\u2019t flee overnight.<\/p>\r\n

Shyly, I mute both the audio and video for the call, preferring to be an anonymous participant\u2014one of the few perks of virtual events that is starting to grow on me.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cSorry, I\u2019m a little more nervous to be talking at my computer than I expected,\u201d Orianna Cacchione, curator of global contemporary art at the Smart Museum of Art, says as she tries to figure out how to screen share her slideshow. She has set her Zoom background to an installation image of the Smart Museum\u2019s The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China<\/em><\/a> exhibition, so that she appears to be standing in the gallery with the artwork.<\/p>\r\n

Her presentation, titled \u201cAdapting Exhibitions: A COVID-19 Case Study,\u201d details the complex process of planning and abrupt closing of The<\/em> Allure of Matter<\/em>, which was scheduled for a four-city national tour with exhibition dates at LACMA, the Seattle Art Museum, the Smart Museum of Art, Wrightwood659, and the Peabody Essex Museum. The exhibition debuted at LACMA last year, but was cut short during its Chicago run when Wrightwood659 and the Smart Museum of Art announced that they would be closing to the public on March 16 due to the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe. <\/p>\r\n

Orianna describes how she had a \u201cprofound and excruciating experience of grief\u201d in the aftermath of closing the exhibition.<\/p>\r\n

I start pacing back and forth on the porch while listening to her speak. Her statement reminds me of the Harvard Business Review article<\/a> about the anticipatory grief most of us are experiencing. Everyone that I\u2019ve talked to in the past few weeks shares similar sentiments. The overwhelming sadness and despair for the ways of life that felt so certain before. Overnight, we have all had to adjust to radical changes in our lives with little time to process.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cWhy are we doing these virtual experiences? Why are we so compelled to translate the work into a virtual format?\u201d Orianna asks. Her tone is reproving and dissatisfied as she details the Smart Museum\u2019s efforts to foreground pre-produced digital content on their website, organize virtual talks, and produce \u201cweekly visits\u201d with objects from the exhibition. She observes that there is \u201csomething so deeply unsatisfying about [virtually visiting exhibitions],\u201d adding that the exhibition\u2019s website traffic has decreased by 60% since the museum\u2019s closure.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"adf-web-magazine-xu-bing-1st-class\"<\/a>

Xu Bing, \"1st Class (2011)\". Installation view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, image \u00a9 Museum Associates\/LACMA.<\/p><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n

Yet, she ends her presentation by reading aloud a score prepared by dancer and choreographer Irene Hsiao for a performance planned for Wrightwood659, allowing Irene\u2019s poetic interpretation of the exhibition to help us look at the exhibition in a new way. \u201cMaybe what works best is not what seems obvious,\u201d Orianna says, speculating about how we can innovatively document exhibitions in the future to encourage imagination and active audience engagement.<\/p>\r\n

Her presentation is followed by a short Q&A, interrupted when Adrian has to step away for a \u201cchildcare handover issue.\u201d He laughs it off and describes how he was teaching earlier that morning and his daughter sternly told him, \u201cbe quiet. I\u2019m trying to paint.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

I cannot help but laugh loudly and then nervously check to make sure that my audio is still muted. These personal moments have been such a small pleasure during self-isolation, such as my co-worker's kitten mercilessly climbing into her lap and meowing to get her attention during a conference call, or another colleague\u2019s son interrupting a check-in to show us his hand\u2014unknowingly holding it too close to the webcam for us to see\u2014and giddily telling us about his recent birthday.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"adf-web-magazine-headpiece-by-bun-stout\"<\/a>

Headpiece by Bun Stout. Photo courtesy of the artist.<\/p><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad to have this interspatial moment,\u201d Bun Stout<\/a>, one of the two presenting graduate students, says as they introduce their mixed reality poetry reading. I unplug my phone and use my hand to shield the glare from the sun so that I can see.<\/p>\r\n

They begin to read the first of two poems. Suddenly, I notice a figure sitting behind them in the room, reclining gracefully. I squint and hold my phone close to my face in an effort to determine if it's a sculpture or a person. The figure moves, making me realize it is a person, and then disappears from the screen. The door behind them opens and Bun\u2019s partner peers into the room for several seconds. The screen flickers. Now there is a figure sitting in front of the webcam, wearing what reminds me of a diver\u2019s helmet. The headpiece is brightly colored, decorated with Bun\u2019s signature, decadent appliques, and features a phone mounted where their face should be, playing what appears to be a video of the artist.<\/p>\r\n

I scribble down one of my favorite lines from Bun\u2019s first poem in my notebook: \u201cIt\u2019ll be a good life if we live long enough to sue another landlord.\u201d By now, it\u2019s clear to me that they pre-recorded this performance using Zoom. They\u2019ve started to read their second poem, titled \u201cTHE DEATH OF FOMO.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

I recognize the baby blue facemask from their Instagram post<\/a> announcing the Zoom event, hovering in front of a green background that looks like grass. The mask is made from a silicone keyboard cover and is held in place by delicate, floral bands; the faint letters are barely visible because of pixelation.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"adf-web-magazine-artist-bun-stout-poses\"<\/a>

Artist Bun Stout poses in Chicago\u2019s Grant Park. Image taken by Atticus Bikos.<\/p><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cWhat has only now become possible? I walked naked past Buckingham Fountain,\u201d They both ask and answer during \u201cTHE END OF FOMO,\u201d alluding to photos that they posted earlier in the week on their Instagram.<\/p>\r\n

In both images, the artist poses naked in front of the North Rose Garden of Chicago\u2019s Grant Park with the skyline of high rise buildings behind them. The photos remind me of Boticelli\u2019s The Birth of Venus<\/em>\u2014if Boticelli was genderqueer and painted the image after a debaucherous night of huffing poppers, guzzling shots of vodka, and throwing dollar bills at drag queens during Drag Matinee at Berlin Nightclub. The subtle allusion suggests the birth, perhaps not of a mythological deity, but of new possibilities as the ongoing global health crisis undoes our current ways of life.<\/p>\r\n

On their Instagram, Bun asks again, \u201cWhat has only now become possible?\u201d<\/p>\r\n

This question, rooted in optimism and not despair, is one we should ask ourselves as we look to find new, relevant methods of creating and documenting our work during uncertain times. Nothing is certain about our future and that means anything could be possible. Or, as Bun jokes, \u201cmaybe in three weeks we\u2019ll all be looking back and saying, \u2018remember when we used Zoom for everything.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"adf-web-magazine-artist-bun-stout-poses-2\"<\/a>

Artist Bun Stout poses in Chicago\u2019s Grant Park. Image taken by Atticus Bikos.<\/p><\/div><\/article>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WHAT HAS ONLY NOW BECOME POSSIBLE? elcome to our first virtual \u2018Sculpture Dialogues,\u2019\u201d Adrian Wong, assistant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":158474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"\"WHAT HAS ONLY NOW BECOME POSSIBLE?\"\r\n#chicago #chicagoart #SAIC #COVID-19","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[6],"tags":[54,64,83,115,121,326],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.adfwebmagazine.jp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/adf-web-magazine-zhu-jinshi-wave-of-materials.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adfwebmagazine.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158508"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adfwebmagazine.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adfwebmagazine.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adfwebmagazine.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adfwebmagazine.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adfwebmagazine.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adfwebmagazine.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adfwebmagazine.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adfwebmagazine.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adfwebmagazine.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}