among friends

Robin, myself, and my good friend Cubby went to the Guggenheim museum this past Sunday to see the exhibit theanyspacewhatever. The exhibit is a sort of survey of/comment on art as dynamic process that often utilizes audience participation. This genre of art (if you can call it that) is also known as relational art. Check it out on Wikipedia if you feel (I did), but I guess you kind of need to be there and experience it for yourself (yuk yuk).

I’d like to talk about one work in particular.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hi there,

My name is Eli. Along with Ali King I’m working for William Pope.L. Today, I was walking through downtown Amherst when I noticed a sign for a new store I had not seen before. It read: “World Apart Games.” While I’m sure the store had hoped the name would conjure exotic images of foreign worlds, all I could imagine was two people standing on tiny Petit Prince-sized planets, staring using space-binoculars to see each other through the void of space. The sign made me think of the degree to which people don’t bridge the voids between us in our daily lives. I’m thrilled to be working in the service of art that uses provacative, surprising, or downright strange images to break down such distances between people. Over the next several weeks, Ali and I will be writing posts that may seem esoteric at first, but we ask you to trust that there is in fact a pattern to the madness. In the meanwhile, I hope you enjoy our interesting and informative posts.

Today, I invite you to the come on a journey to the town of Webb, Mississippi.

– Come visit the Magnolia State . . .>

Hi, I’m Robin, and I’ll be working with Nao Bustamante along with Jane.

John Muse, the professor who conceived this wonderful “among friends” project, has been treating us lucky “friends” to a chain of emails with links to art blogs, sites, and exhibits. One in particular caught my eye, a piece at the Whitney by Corin Hewitt.

hewitt.jsp

This is no ordinary exhibit. Corin Hewitt is living at the Whitney every weekend until January 4th (I will refrain from making an artist-in-residence joke). Read the rest of this entry »

Hey guys-

I’m Jane, and I’ll be working for Nao Bustamante along with Robin Riskin for the among friends symposium. For now though I’d like to discuss another woman: Susan Sontag. Sontag was an American critic and most of her stuff got published in and around the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Socially, she was a quite the scenester and a wunderkind of 16 when she started at UC Berkeley. Her obsession was culture – absorbing it, interpreting it, writing about it, living in it. She wrote about photography, interpretation, AIDS, pain, camp, and today we get a chance to see her look at herself.  I just got her recently published journals and I feel like they should have a place in the among friends blog. Click the link and we can read these together.

Let’s go to something really personal: Read the rest of this entry »

My name is Sam Kaplan. I’m interning for Harrell Fletcher, along with Duncan Cooper.

This video has been on my mind the past day or two, for a variety of reasons:

First of all, great song. But more importantly, I’m intrigued by its use of photographs, especially with regard to the title of this blog/symposium/thing: “among friends.” Read the rest of this entry »

Hey all, I’m Ali and I’m excited to be helping with William Pope.L’s performance shoot on campus next semester.

My first post, I think, will be a history lesson. I don’t think Pope.L will mind.

How much do you know about the Mississippi River Flood in 1927?

Exactly. NPR knows something though. Have a listen. Interview with author John Barry

This photo shows flood victims of Arkansas City, Arkansas, camped on a levee.  www.hq.usace.army.mil)

My dad took this photograph at a Vietnam War protest in Philadelphia. The guy six rows back, with his fist raised in the air is my uncle. Every time I look at this photo on our kitchen wall, I think of how valuable coming together can be. Martin Luther King once said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." This photograph is really such a great example of people expressing themselves and working together to do so. That guy, front and center, isn't too bad to look at, either.

Hi, my name is Julia and I will be working with Jennifer Delos Reyes along with Charles.

“among friends”  will test a possible model for future collaborations between Haverford students and visiting artists.  Each artist will work with a paid intern (or two) who will be his or her majordomo/team-leader/resident expert.  Initially contacting the artists in mid December, these majordomos will have several months to prepare the ground for the residencies: working with John Muse, they will come to know the artists’ bodies of work, will locate the relevant communities and their skill-sets and available resources, and will scout sites and complete other pre-production work.