Audrey Chan.

Notes Toward an Exhibition
Audrey Chan

galerie de l’école régionale des beaux-arts de Nantes
(Gallery of the Nantes School of Art, France)

Opening reception: Tuesday May 12, 2009 at 6:30 p.m.
Exhibition dates: May 13-27, 2009
Gallery hours: Tuesday-Friday, 2-6 p.m.
Special open hours during L’Art prend l’Air, Saturday May 16 and Sunday May 17, 2-7 p.m.

During her residency at l’école des beaux-arts de Nantes (Nantes School of Art), Audrey Chan has occupied the roles of artist, researcher, teacher, guest, and American foreigner. Her research into the relationship between art, society, and politics in France has been shaped by months of dialogue and immersion in the city of Nantes. This exhibition concerns two related themes: the politics of representation and the representation of politics in art.

“Notes Toward an Exhibition” features an installation of hand-drawn posters (affiches), made in collaboration with students (Mélanie Dautreppe-Liermann, Nina De Angelis, Benjamin James Marteau, and Martina Öttl) from l’école des beaux-arts de Nantes that employ language and the process of automatic writing to articulate the boundaries and conventions of political expression. The exhibition invitation card and an installation of the official portrait of President Nicolas Sarkozy consider questions regarding the ownership of a public image. The exhibition also features a video interview about the relationship between art and law with philosopher and lawyer, Bernard Edelman, specialist in authors’ rights, the rights of personality, and the rights of the press.

Chan’s artistic practice developed during the two presidential terms of George W. Bush (2000-2008). During this time, she has addressed subjects that impact our daily experience of citizenship and power through social commentary, video, writing, performance, pedagogy, and appropriation. Her manner of working employs art as a means of social engagement and participation in civic life.

Audrey Chan’s residency is part of the Pensées Archipeliques (Archipelic Thinking) research project initiated by art historian Emmanuelle Chérel.

Download a PDF (6.9 MB) of the press release in French and English.

RELATED EVENTS

Palissades #2 : Audrey Chan

Opening, Wednesday May 13, 2009 at 7:30 p.m.
Parvis de Onyx, St-Herblain/Atlantis
1 place Océane, Zone Atlantis, 44800 St-Herblain, France
02 28 25 25 00 www.onyx-culturel.org
tram ligne 1, direction F. Mitterrand, arrêt Schoelcher
périphérique ouest, sortie 33 porte d’Armor, Atlantis

Onyx, the cultural center of St-Herblain, was designed in 1988 by architect Myrto Vitart for Jean Nouvel & Associates and is located at the heart of the Atlantis shopping center. Les palissades d’affichage (the poster fences) were installed in December 2008 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Onyx. It is a continuation of previous projects by graphic designer Nicolas Gautron, interfacing between cultural structures and their surrounding environments. Each month, an artist is invited to investigate this surface and to conceive and install ephemeral posters at this site. The posters will be subject to the weather and reactions of passersby and will be posted over after 15 days of exposure.

Project initiated by graphic designer, Nicolas Gautron, and artist, Marie-Pierre Duquoc.

Juste à côté de L.A.: CalArts Video, 2005-2007

Contrechamp, Monday May 25, 2009 at 9:00 p.m.
Le Cinématographe, 12 bis rue des Carmélites, Nantes, France

The Contrechamp series presents a carte blanche to Audrey Chan, American artist and writer, currently in residence at l’école régionale des beaux-arts de Nantes (Nantes School of Art). As a parallel program to her exhibition at the school’s gallery, “Notes Toward an Exhibition”, she is presenting a program of videos made by young artists who studied at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), where video is employed as a fluid medium that engages with such practices as performance, painting, sculpture, writing, socio-political critique, and racial and gender deconstruction. Program duration: ~60 minutes + discussion with the artist.

PROGRAM
CamLab (Anna Mayer & Jemima Wyman), Critical Field Craft: Apex Cryptophores, 2007
Audrey Chan, Untitled: Soliloquy in Blue, 2005
Bianca D’Amico, Moneyshot, 2006
Trulee Hall, For Snowball, 2005
John Hogan, Give Thanks, 2004/5
Elana Mann, Embroid, Embroil, 2007
Emery C. Martin, Death, Destruction, and the Weather Coming Up Next, 2006
Theresa Masangkay, May Your Days Be, 2007; Untitled: Hollywood Hills Forest Lawn, 2007
Akosua Adoma Owusu, Revealing Roots, 2007/8

Contrechamp is a monthly program dedicated to art, film, and video, organized by artists Patrick Bernier, Christine Laquet, Olive Martin, and Stéphane Pauvret.

Exchange Rate: 2008 from Elana Mann on Vimeo.

How to Make Global Art from Audrey Chan on Vimeo.

“How to Make Global Art: A Lecture” (2009) is a Power Point lecture in English with French subtitles by Audrey Chan originally presented at the symposium, “Où les mondes se touchent” (”Where Worlds Meet”), at the École des Beaux-arts de Nantes in France on March 4, 2009. The lecture was inspired by Allan Kaprow’s recording “How to Make a Happening” (1966). Translation by: Benjamin-James Marteau, Estel Fonseca, and Emmanuelle Chérel.

(Follow the jump for the English and French texts.)

Read more »

From March 2-13, I am writing as a guest blogger on the Art21 Blog. My posts will be about my experience teaching two courses at the École des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, “Contemporary Art in the United States, 2000-Today” and “Workshop: I am curious…(The Artist as Ethnographer).” Here’s a link to my introductory post (pictured above).

Special thanks to Marc Mayer (Art21 Program Coordinator) and to Kelly Shindler (Art21 Director of Special Projects and editor of the Art21 Blog).

The Exchange Rate: 2008 book is now available for purchase and download at lulu.com!

This book is a document of a community of artists who came together to make performances in response to the 2008 Presidential Elections. The resulting performances and directions were funny, melancholy, impossible, and practical. Chan & Mann were thrilled to be part of the action.

“This book documents an international performance exchange organized by artist Elana Mann in response to the 2008 US presidential election. Thirty-eight artists living in sixteen different countries participated in the project. With the aid of the project website exchangerate2008.com, participating artists produced, exchanged, and interpreted performance directions related to the election campaign. Artists include: Adam Overton, Aiste Ptakauske, Ana Fernandez , Bruce Conkle, CamLab, Chan & Mann, Danielle Adair, Dorit Cypis, Elana Mann, Emery Martin, Eric Lindley, Ernesto Salmeron, Eva Jung, Jason Kunke, Jean Pierre Lapeyre, Julie Lequin, Karen Atkinson, Kelly Kleinschrodt, Kevin Jamieson, Liz Glynn, Lora Ivanova, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Maile Colbert, Marc Lewis, Marssares, Melissa Wyman, Michael Lazar, Pablo Rasgado, REP, Rui Costa, Sara Roberts, Sibyl O’Malley, Søren Thilo Funder, Stine Marie Jacobsen,Vincent Ramos, Zackary Drucker. Designed by Roman Jaster.”

The book also includes an essay by Claire Ruud of …might be good and an interview with Elana Mann.

Check it out:
Interculturality in the 4th Dimension
asianjew.wordpress.com

Come for the tesseract, stay for the posts.

Last week, I participated in émission n°5 — Rencontre avec la troisième fille [listen] with artist Cécile Paris, poet Pierre Giquel, the students of the Radiœuse Workshop (Miia, Morgane, Louise, Antoni, and Olivier), and fellow interviewee Anaïs Myako (a.k.a. DJ Myako). It was a spontaneous bilingual interview that took the form of a breakfast conversation. We talked about our biographies, cheerleaders, and spiritual leaders over coffee, tea, and a delicious orange cake (thanks Morgane!). DIY Artist Radio, love it.

A French translation is now available of my essay “I am here because of Ashley: Obama and Piper on the Rhetoric of Race”, originally published in …might be good on 31 October 2008.

Adrian Piper, Cornered, 1988 (Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Bernice and Kenneth Newberger Fund) © 1988 Adrian Piper

Je suis noire. Maintenant, traitons à la fois le problème de la réalité sociale et le fait de définir cette réalité. – Adrian Piper, Cornered (Coincée) (1988)

Cet essai est issu de ma propre résistance lancinante à l’idée de considérer Barack Obama comme un messie. Je voudrais que les bannières d’“espoir” et de “changement” soient mises à l’écart rapidement. Elles me rendent nerveuse. Elles sont trop emplies de potentiel et de rêves différés. Cela rend l’instant trop fragile. La chose la plus importante que nous pouvons demander à un dirigeant est d’être responsable devant son peuple.

Ce texte se concentre sur la rhétorique et le pouvoir de persuasion du langage sur un auditoire. En prenant les cas d’Obama et d’Adrian Piper, j’espère pouvoir tirer des leçons de leurs approches rhétoriques respectives des questions raciales, un sujet qui va prendre de nouvelles dimensions dans un avenir proche. La question de la race s’articulera entre une lutte, qui se caractérisera par un conflit entre espoir généreux et foi en l’humanité et une profonde ironie qui s’adaptera à l’analyse de la situation sur le terrain.

Lire la suite »

This coming year, I will be working on “Les pacotilleuses” - a research project concerning identity, migration, community, and exchange with Emmanuelle Cherel (art historian), Georgia Nelson (artist), and Armand Morin (artist) of the Nantes School of Art. “Les pacotilleuses” will take place in Miami, Florida during Winter 2009. For more information, view the project brochure (PDF) in English/French/Spanish: