Home
the Reverend
of Nano Bio Info Cogno
The Multispecies Salon originated in San Francisco when artists came together in 2008 to give a presence to parasites, weeds, and laboratory animals--creatures that were thriving in the shadows of human worlds--as well as endangered species that were failing to flourish in the built landscape. In November 2010 a collective of six people from the East Coast, the West Coast, and the Gulf Coast, brought together a multitude of creative agents for Multispecies Salon: SWARMin New Orleans. The swarm is a network with no center to dictate order. Swarming became the tactic, rather than a
theme
, of the Multispecies Salon.
More than
one hundred artists
--hailing from the far reaches of the United States, Europe, and Australia--have animated the Multispecies Salon shows. Rather than being a static exhibit, the show has started a new lifecycle of growth and decay. Six of the best artworks from previous sites are now being shown by appointment at an undisclosed location in Brooklyn.
For an appointment please call 212-817-7094.
Artists
Kathy High (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute-RPI, New York)
Rat Models and Intimate Views--projects with genetically engineered rats that were created to suffer with human diseases.
Paranoia Bugs
Marnia Johnston (California)
The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2005 prompted Marnia Johnston to start making Paranoia Bugs. "The paranoia of the U.S. was a kind of swarm," Johnston said, "where fears fed and bred upon each other, crawling and overtaking everything in their path."
Thneeds Re-Seed
Deanna Pindell (Olympic Peninsula, Washington)
This sculptural remediation strategy uses discarded sweaters to create habitat for
Bryum argenteum
moss in clearcut forests.
Anti-Rabbit Art
Cameron Michel, Vashti Windish, and Eben Kirksey (NYC)
This collage, made with images produced by anti-rabbits and the blood of actual rabbits, illustrates the spectacular multispecies relations fueling the dreams and schemes of biocapitalism.
Zoosphere
Allison Hunter (Houston, Texas)
Against the backdrop of a rapidly shifting ecological landscape in which species across the globe are threatened with extinction, Zoo-space reconnects humanity with the beauty and wonder of the animal kingdom and forces us to examine our relationship with and responsibility to it.
Thneeds Re-seed
by Deanna Pindell
Anti-Rabbit Art
Alzheimers Portraits
Andre Brodyk
These paintings were made with a new transgenic organism as the medium--a strain of
E. coli
bacteria that Brodyk himself created by mixing genes for a glowing molecule from jellyfish (green fluorescent protein) along with human genes connected to Alzheimers disease.
Landscape and Mammary/Raw Assmilk Soap.
Karin Bolender
This is part of a body of performance work (or "ontological choreography") involving a companion species: the American Spotted Ass.
Bryan Wilson (New York City)
Monument To The Future (Specimen 1): cast and carved glass within a wooden box.
Ryan Burns (Oregon, courtesy Barrister's Gallery)
Rubbings from clearcut stumps in an old growth forest from the Pacific Northwest.
Sourdough Cultures
Jake Metcalf (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Sarah O'Brian (New York City)
This multispecies assemblage crossed the Oregon Trail in a wagon in the 19th Century and then began propagating itself on the internet at the turn of the 21st Century.
Human Cheese
Miriam Simun (New York City)
Disturbing visions of the future (or the present) may be abstracted, rationalized, swept aside. By serving human cheese, Simun asks people to grapple with pressing technological and ethical issues.
Forgotten 20th Century Knowledges--the
Xenopus
pregnancy test
Comming Fall 2011
Eben Kirksey (New York City)
Past Shows
New Orleans - November 2010
In New Orleans
over 70 artists
addressed a series of interrelated questions about nature: Which species flourish, and which fail, when natural and cultural worlds intermingle and collide? What happens when the bodies of organisms, and even entire ecosystems, are brought into schemes of
biotechnology
and dreams of biocapitalism? And finally, with particular relevance to New Orleans: In the aftermath of disaster--in a
blasted landscape
that has been transformed by multiple catastrophes--what are the possibilities of biocultural hope?
San Francisco - November 2008
Visitors to the Multispecies Salon II, at the 2008 meetings of the American Anthropological Association in San Francisco, could hear the twitter of live cockroaches mingling with recorded sounds of chimpanzees screeching for meat. A video installation juxtaposed images of whooping cranes following ultralight aircraft on annual migrations with footage of humans playing with dolphins in captivity. Experimental organisms, fruit flies, and pictures of transgenic
E. coli
bacteria shared the space with apparently everyday household artifacts. One installation featured milk cartons and junk mail picturing missing amphibians in the place of missing childrencreatures such as the golden toad of Monte Verde, Costa Rica, now presumed extinct. The piece asked, Have You Seen Me? Craig Schuetze, Christopher Newman, and Patricia Alvarez have written a preliminary ethnographic account of gallery happenings for the website of
Cultural Anthropology
.
-
Multispecies Salon 3: SWARM
Who We Are
Multispecies Salon: Curatorial SWARM
The swarm is a network with no center to dictate order. It involves a multitude of different creative agents. Collective intelligence emerges in the swarm through communication and cooperation. Swarming has been the tactic, rather than the theme, of our exhibit. In New Orleans the core of our curatorial swarm involved
Myrtle Von Damitz lll
(New Orleans),
Marnia Johnston
(Rubys Clay Studio, San Francisco),
Nina Nichols
(The Black Forest Fancies, New Orleans), Amy Jenkins, and
Eben Kirksey
(CUNY Graduate Center, New York). We also drew on the creative impulses of Karen Kern from the Arts Council of New Orleans.
Christopher Newman
,
Patricia Alvarez
, and Craig Schuetze--all who have ties to UC Santa Cruz--have been working to produce a multimedia film and digital media project about the Multispecies Salon since the 2008 exhibit in San Francisco. Nick Shapiro (University of Oxford) helped coordinate a multitude of visiting anthropologists who became para-ethnographers, art critics of sorts, who helped document the 2010 events in New Orleans.
For more information contact:
Dr. Eben Kirksey, ekirksey (at) gc.cuny.edu, 212-817-7094
