Synthetic Ritual | Pitzer Art Galleries, College Gabi Scardi | Ciara Ennis
Mounira Al Solh, Meris Angioletti, Beatrice Catanzaro, Marcus Coates, Joel Kyack, Lawrence Lemaoana, Yoshua Okon, Adrian Paci, Marco Rios, Kara Tanaka, Carlin Wing and Amir Yatziv
Curated by Gabi Scardi and Ciara Ennis
Synthetic Ritual September 28- ISBN: 978-0-9829956-2-4 December 9, 2011 Pitzer Art Galleries, Pitzer College Tel: 909.607.3143 Pitzer Art Galleries, www.pitzer.edu/galleries Pitzer College Mounira Al Solh, Meris Angioletti, Beatrice Catanzaro, Marcus Coates, Joel Kyack, Lawrence Lemaoana, Yoshua Okón, Adrian Paci, Marco Rios, Kara Tanaka, Carlin Wing and Amir Yatziv
Curated by Gabi Scardi and Ciara Ennis
September 28-December 9, 2011 Pitzer Art Galleries, Pitzer College Maravilla Handball Court. Archival inkjet print, 8 x inches. Courtesy of the artist and Anthony Greaney, Boston. Carlin Wing, Ball Portrait #26 (2011). made by workshop participants as part of Hitting Walls: Making a Ball at the
Table of Contents
Jennifer Doyle Ritual and Routine 5
Gabi Scardi Rituals 13
Ciara Ennis The Sawdust Trail 33
Artists’ Biographies 62
Exhibition Checklist 70
Curators’ and Contributing Writer’s Biographies 72
Acknowledgements 74
Synthetic Ritual 1 artist and Kaufmann Repetto, Milan. Yoshua Okón, Parking Lotus (2001). Photographic installation (detail). Lightjet C-prints, 40 x 30 inches. Courtesy of the Yoshua Okón, Parking Lotus (2001). Photographic installation (detail). Lightjet C-prints, 40 x 30 inches. Courtesy of the Yoshua artist and Kaufmann Repetto, Milan.
1 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 2 Lawrence Lemaoana, Fortune Teller #5 (2008). Cloth and thread, 62 x 43 inches. Courtesy of the artist and James Harris Gallery, Seattle.
Ritual and Routine Jennifer Doyle
How do you know when a routine is a ritual? When is habit compulsion? When does something you like to do every morning, like go to the beach, become something that makes a morning feel like a morning—just as going to church makes Sunday into Sunday? What makes the sea become “a part of my eyes,” more necessary than the woman who is “the veins in my body,” as declared by one of the sun-baked subjects of Mounira Al Solh’s Paris Without a Sea.
Paris Without a Sea and The Sea is a Stereo are portraits of men who go to a Beirut beach every day. Undeterred by weather and war, they are pulled to the water’s edge as if they themselves were moved by the tides.
One must wonder how Al Solh integrated herself into this homosocial community; how much time did she spend with them to have gained entry into their circle. These works are shaped by a dynamic specific to the outsider who finds herself in an impossible circle of intimacy. She is Whitman’s twenty-ninth bather, peering at “28 young men” who “bathe by the shore”:
Which of the young men does she like the best? Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
Where are you off to, lady? for I see you, You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.
Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather, The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.
Synthetic Ritual 5 Synthetic Ritual 7 (2007-08). Two-channel video, 50 minutes. Courtesy of the video, 50 minutes. Not Swim Then! (2007-08). Two-channel Mounira Al Solh, The Sea is a Stereo, Let’s Gallery. artist and Sfeir-Semler
Mounira Al Solh, The Sea is a Stereo, Let’s Not Swim Then! (2007-08). Two-channel video, 50 minutes. Courtesy of the 6 Synthetic Ritual artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery. The poet sees her [“for I see A security guard makes people feel safe, but how? By standing there like an you”] and she is transported into installation and being (or looking) vigilant. Mere presence. In most cases, they are the water—an invisible guest, living scarecrows: with no training and little to no authority, they appear to watch over all of a sudden, swimming a space that belongs to someone else. Their labor is hidden within the radical passivity alongside the men, as if she, of their mandate. Parking Lotus asks what kind of service might support men who are too, belonged there. paid not to move. What kind of training would a mode of work requiring a presence of body and an absence of spirit. The camera gives the artist access to a space of relaxed Work like this demystifies social ritual—the synthetic ritual of Parking Lotus is not male intimacy. The men are the meditative lotus pose, but the use of these men as talismans to make a space gentle in their interactions with feel safe. her; they seem soft. Or is that an impression left by her voice, Lawrence Lemaoana also redeploys and scrambles rite and habit, routine and ritual. with which the interviews are His works revise the kanga, popular colorful patterned rectangles of fabric originally dubbed? The sea and her worn by women in East Africa. A kanga has a message—a proverb, usually, like “A Mounira Al Solh, The Sea is a Stereo, Let’s Not Swim Then! (2007-08). camera bring these body- Two-channel video, 50 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and Sfeir- person who wants you out of the house won’t say it in words” (but they will show it in proud mermen together for us Semler Gallery. their actions), or “A habit is a skin” (meaning, habits are hard to shake). Lemaoana’s and pull something sweet from them. All the while, the only thing we get from her kangas tease out the traces of proverb in the tabloid, surfacing a confluence of is her voice and the bemused affect of the men as they engage her. patriarchal patterns of thought, behavior and feeling. Lemaoana works with what Kobena Mercer describes as “pop vernacular”—surfacing the complexity of the way These works honor the importance of their relationships to the world and each other, that local communities live with, are made by and remake mass media. Lemaoana’s as forged in a space not defined by work or by family (the two avenues by which men tapestries describe an exasperated melodrama and reveal the broadcasting of political are made sense of, absorbed into “society”). They are liminal in that they happen on affect as itself both routine and ritual. the edge of the city; they are foundational in that they cannot imagine life without it. As a practice of the care of the self, this is deeper than leisure. It’s a ritual of escape.
Al Solh’s works contrast starkly with Yoshua Okón’s Parking Lotus. Working as a security guard is affective labor. This is what many of the people around artists do for a living: they work in a service industry, educating, writing, selling and invigilating. The receptionist, the bartender at an opening and the person parking and guarding cars all provide services that have an affective dimension. This is what artists do as well—their work makes people feel good, smart or important (for example).
8 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 9 Synthetic Ritual 11
Lawrence Lemaoana, Team Spirit (2006). Cloth and thread, 43.7 x 93.3 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Josef Vascovitz. 10 Synthetic Ritual Repetto, Milan. Adrian Paci, Vajtojca (Mourner) (2002). Single-channel video installation, 9 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and Kaufmann
Rituals Gabi Scardi
We tend to neglect them, yet rituals are scattered across our lives, relegated to the margins, to the side, to the realm of implicit knowledge of little worth. But for artists they are dense and vital containers of need and desire, reservoirs of inherited beliefs, of personal convictions, of sensations and idiosyncrasies induced by social life. They are a way of relating to things and interpreting them. Above all, they are a field of expression of extraordinary metaphorical value.
It suffices to consider the Lebanese artist Mounira Al Solh, who, in an ironic and enthralling video, presents a series of men in Beirut who each day for years now, despite all odds, alone or in small groups, take a swim in the sea. It is not only a habit, but a choice, an effort, an act of resistance, a peaceful but determined defense of one’s own “ordinary” existence with respect to the overwhelming forces of the events in a country where normality seems impossible.
In the video Vajtojca (Mourner) by Adrian Paci, the artist narrates the detachment, transition and sense of loss of those who leave their own country; he courageously tackles the theme of the absolute journey and the invincible experience of death. Without special effects and with great dramatic intensity, Paci, through images that evoke the high points of art history, stages his own funeral. A man knocks on a door and a woman invites him into a room; he changes from his everyday clothes into something more elegant while the woman prepares a bed, and he lies down while she covers her head. He lies still as she groans quietly. The woman is a weeper asked to mourn him, but at the end of the weeping, the man gets up, embraces the woman
12 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 13 and then exits. Difficulty, failures, offence, wrongdoing, solitude before oneself: not only the great pain of death, but the small mournings we encounter could lead us to give up every day. Resisting the temptation of withdrawing from the world and its contradictions and resuming our path is a confession of hope, but it is also an intentional choice and act of strength.
The Israeli artist Amir Yatziv also sees in the aesthetic dimension of the ritual a tool aimed at exorcising the anxiety of death without removing the thought of it, actually turning it into a generative element of new narrations. In the video Compressed Ceramic Powder (The Battle in the Orchard), Yatziv gives voice, through a series of interviews, to the imagery relating to death in battle on the part of many young soldiers; thus he allows the still widespread myth of heroic self-sacrifice to emerge. Instead, for Kara Tanaka the reference to death and its accompanying rituals allows her to investigate the distance between the biological and metaphysical beings.
The theme of the ritual permits us to initiate a dialogue with the world where human beings can relate to their own everydayness as well as with the inalienable forces and fears that populate the depths of the psyche.
Marcus Coates welcomes the challenge; dressed in deerskin like a shaman, the artist meets with elderly locals in an ordinary room on a residential block in London that is intended for demolition and performs an energetic Yakut ritual. They laugh, but the viewer also feels an understandable sense of extraneousness and unease. Marvelously incongruous and disorienting, Coates’ dance weds vital force and monstrosity, inviting us to explore ourselves in search of that which has been removed, the other and the insuppressible “supporting role” that lives inside of us and accompanies our every move. Thus the video speaks of sidereal, distant cultures and languages, but also of needs profoundly rooted in the human soul.
Yoshua Okón’s characters, like Yatziv’s, carry weapons, but the artist attempts to portray the difficulty in managing them, bound as they are between social role and
subjective need. With great humor, Okón asks a series of Los Angeles security guards Rios, Moving Equilibrium (performance documentation) (2006). DVD, 5 minutes, 7 seconds. Courtesy of the artist Marco New York. Gallery, and Simon Preston
14 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 15
Repetto, Milan. Repetto,
(2002). Single-channel video installation, 9 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and Kaufmann Kaufmann and artist the of Courtesy minutes. 9 installation, video Single-channel (2002). Paci, Adrian (Mourner) Vajtojca Synthetic Ritual 17
Kara Tanaka, The Hungry Human (Mountain Hunter) (2011). Mixed media installation, dimensions variable. Courtesy of
the artist and Simon Preston Gallery, New York. 16 Synthetic Ritual Amir Yatziv, Compressed Ceramic Powder (2007). Single-channel video installation, 6 minutes. Courtesy of the artist. Amir Yatziv, Compressed Ceramic Powder (2007). Single-channel video installation, 6 minutes. Courtesy of the artist. Amir Yatziv,
18 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 19
20 Synthetic Ritual installation, 16 minutes. Courtesy of the artist. the of Courtesy minutes. 16 installation,
(2008). Single-channel video video Single-channel (2008). Catanzaro, Beatrice THE WATER WAS BOILING AT 34° 21’ 29” SOUTH, 18° 28’ 19” EAST EAST 19” 28’ 18° SOUTH, 29” 21’ 34° AT BOILING WAS WATER THE Synthetic Ritual21
Beatrice Catanzaro, THE WATER WAS BOILING AT 34° 21’ 29” SOUTH, 18° 28’ 19” EAST (2008). Single-channel video installation, 16 minutes. Courtesy of the artist. to dedicate their lunch break to meditation sessions held in different parking lots: a above or from collectivity. We therefore tend to define ourselves in as far as we are way of channeling energy, loosening tension and letting go of frustration accumulated individuals, independent of codified habits or traditional beliefs. The trend to choose is on the job. The discrepancy between the role of controllers and the awkwardness of considered, in the west as we know it, the proof of precious independence. the individuals involved, the formal rigidity of the uniforms and the peaceful expression of the lotus position generate an effect of hilarious irony. It is an enthusiastic freedom, however, which bears with it challenges, contradictions and uncertainties. In fact, we find ourselves in the position of having to shape an The awareness of natural but hidden forces that inhabit us and with which we coexist individual order on our own. We create a system of meanings and values through is also at the basis of Meris Angioletti’s work. At the threshold of the natural and which we not only confer a moral value to existence but also keep together events and the sensorial, Angioletti finds the turnkey of every thing in the intangible energy that moments; otherwise, we risk living in a continuous present and yielding to the sense traverses the world and acts upon the living. Wanting to find this energy, being able of temporariness, fragmentation and depersonalization. to allow it to emerge or to perceive its hidden flow means working in the grooves of nature, like sensors and fine-tuning that are likened to magic. In order to take root in the present, to salvage a sense of continuity, the single individual finds himself having to adopt systems through which he enters into the relations and A true reference to magic can instead be found in the work of Beatrice Catanzaro. After dealings of power, comparing himself with time, his own passions and emotions, and meeting P.C. Sorcar JR, a magician in India who “descended from eight generations the ordinary and the extraordinary. of magicians” (among his feats is the disappearance of the Taj Mahal), Catanzaro decides to ask him to make the Padrão dos Descobrimentos, built in Lisbon under The ritualizing of our individual everyday universe, in a present world that is only the Salazariano regime, disappear. The request is a pretext for a long conversation seemingly de-ritualized, is a way of adapting to this reality, marking uniform days around the themes of magic, utopia and a universe of possibilities that opens itself or giving rhythm to our unstructured lives and facing moments of transit, disorder, beyond the physical evidence of things. As if to say the mystery is still indispensable restlessness and necessity. and that magic, in our reality, constitutes an unavoidable form of the relationship with existence and with life, as the magician emphasizes, it needs to be defended against This leads to an infinite series of practices based on the languages of behavior manipulators and exploitation. and subjective symbolism. Dense or flowing, heartfelt or detached, full of formal characteristics and different social functions, these small behaviors, as Edmund Leach For artists, rituals are ways of understanding and searching for meaning, but they calls them, are minor acts, small events that manifest themselves over the course of are also a creative field where individuality and collectivity can be expressed. In this a normal life. At times they are enacted in an unintentional way, though they are laden sense, they are profoundly consubstantial to art and contiguous with it. We live in with an emotional significance and able to modify the states of mind of those who carry worlds that are heterogeneous and in rapid transformation, characterized by social them out. These rituals, therefore, unfold in an outside dimension, in a display aimed and geographic mobility and the coexistence of languages and cultures. They are at acting upon others, but mainly they call into play minimal, intimate gestures and worlds of freedoms that have never been known before. We can adapt lifestyles we symbolic attitudes that take on the unpredictable and exorcise difficulties, responding adopt to personal inclinations and choose to accept or refuse traditional rules; we to our profound need for protection by generating positive energy. This may involve are not as obliged as before to the strict observation of regulations imposed from behavioral patterns repeated until they become habits, or even mastering thought;
22 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 23 or combined acts we resort to sporadically in times of need. The quality they share is to sediment, even on the level of micro-history, and repeat over time. This makes them reference points with respect to the linearity of individual history and the perennial, rapid transformation of every thing around us.
Reiteration and cyclical-ness render from them a springboard from which to draw the inspiration needed to face new everyday events that await us. Generally, the act of the ritual does not count in itself in so far as it is a model to follow, but as an active agent with respect to a reality that needs to be taken on: what is essential is not to repeat but to succeed. Be it bound to states of mind or emotions, ineffable private events or the way in which people interpret and assess what happens; be it tied to the human body or outside events and interpersonal relations, the ritual not only reflects social conditions and habits of the mind, but also contributes to sanctioning or creating them.
It suffices to think of the propitiatory and energizing role it may have in the field of sports—a role to which the work of Carlin Wing refers—or the micro- performances of Joel Kyack, who offers drivers stuck in traffic a chance to temporarily escape from their unbearable routines by giving back to them stimulating minutes of balance and pleasure. On the other hand the value and possible success are decreed by a correct execution of behavioral acts. Rituals, therefore, are micro-stagings. The historian
Mona Ozouf called them “elementary dramaturgies.” Joel Kyack, Local Records (Hill Street Blues) (2010). Performance. Courtesy of the artist and François Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles.
24 Synthetic Ritual Through them each of us is given the possibility of creating our own dimension. We register through the passage from everyday experience to the realm of the symbolic. In may give form to intuitions and unexpressed needs and configure values, sentiments this sense, the routine of ritual is profoundly consubstantial to the creation of art. Both and experiences by means of extreme synthesis, including the codification of are generated by autonomous suggestions even before the willingness of those who gestures or evincing objects. Small individual rituals and interpersonal practices allow formulate them, and they are both, in many ways, aspects of the same creative process. the individual to place himself in the permanent social theater of which we are all a part (the everyday balancing acts and stagings that social life obliges us to perform Like a creative work, a ritual may be a form of individual invention. It allows us to enter an are portrayed in the ironic videos of Marco Rios) and find the tools that permit us to unknown land, less bound to the rational and functional instance that normally guides salvage our own pace in existences that by now unfold within everyday challenges us, a sphere closer to profundity and magic. And it does so by means of a unique and permanent urgency. Some rituals take shape in the field of sports or are tied to language, specially created and made of references, images and signs. This language the idea of success in the realm of consumerism and the media (Lawrence Lemaoana is equipped with internal rules and complete in itself, laden with narrative possibilities uses traditional quilt techniques and fabrics that evoke newspaper pages to narrate through which we may express and investigate changing perception and reception, but the influence of the media on the history of his country, South Africa); other rituals it is also able to communicate the existence of a realm belonging to the untold. It is a ward off ill fortune in gestures that exorcise anxiety. There are rituals of presentation language that unfolds through choreography and is sealed in form, one which may open and representation of oneself, of status, of deference, of keeping the correct distance us up to others but denies itself to every univocal or too evident decodification. in all the acceptations possible, and then there are subjective rituals that fill our lives and allow us to stay in balance. Like a work, a ritual may take on greater or lesser evidence, but it is able to mediate emotions, to transmit an emotional memory, and give back to us the sense of a lived In his book, The Comfort of Things, anthropologist Daniel Miller attributes the term experience and express the magical force that reconnects us to the most poetical, “aesthetics” to the dimension in which one expresses creative autonomy, a dimension intuitive and ineffable dimension of reality. that belongs to art. Miller defines the patterns through which this tendency of ours becomes obvious as “an overall organizational principle that may include balance, The artist, a nomad amidst fields and disciplines, a flaneur par excellence, with the contradiction, and the repetition of certain themes in entirely different genres and sensibility of a seismograph and a transversal gaze, cannot but feel them close. settings,” adding that “sometimes this seems more of a process than of an order.” This process expresses vital force. Translated by Emily Ligniti
A constituent element of being, the ritual is an ever-alive category of thinking, acting and expressing ourselves; it is a way of mediating emotions, connecting to the context and relating to things, and interpreting and reorienting them. Today, joining with the spectacular and highly performative aspect of our society, ritual is also a means of revealing our everydayness and the important challenges we face in our time. Concurrently, these dramatizations provoke a momentary dislocation, a shifting of
26 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 27 Maravilla Handball Court. Archival inkjet print, 8 x inches. Courtesy of the artist and Anthony Greaney, Boston. Carlin Wing, Ball Portrait #28 (2011). made by workshop participants as part of Hitting Walls: Making a Ball at the Hitting Walls: Making a Ball at the Carlin Wing, Ball Portrait #30 (2011). made by workshop participants as part of Hitting Walls: Boston. inkjet print, 8 x inches. Courtesy of the artist and Anthony Greaney, Maravilla Handball Court. Archival
1 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 2 Maravilla Handball Court. Archival inkjet print, 8 x inches. Courtesy of the artist and Anthony Greaney, Boston. Carlin Wing, Ball Portrait #38 (2011). made by workshop participants as part of Hitting Walls: Making a Ball at the Hitting Walls: Making a Ball at the Carlin Wing, Ball Portrait #31 (2011). made by workshop participants as part of Hitting Walls: Boston. inkjet print, 8 x inches. Courtesy of the artist and Anthony Greaney, Maravilla Handball Court. Archival
1 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 2 MacGarry, London. Photo: Nick David. Marcus Coates, Journey to the Lower World (2004). Single-channel video, 30 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and Kate
The Sawdust Trail Ciara Ennis
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” 1 Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
“If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.” 2 William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Left breast exposed, right trouser leg rolled, blindfolded and with a hangman’s noose around his neck, the initiate solemnly intones his oath. By itself such a display might invite ridicule, yet recognized as an essential rite of Freemasonry, it has, if not acceptance, validity. Similarly, during the 2010 World Cup, legions of soccer fans pinned their hopes, and bet their money, based on the actions of an octopus whose reputed match-predicting prowess involved eating a mussel from one box and not another. Vast sums of money traded hands upon the result. Whether mundane or elaborately constructed, such rituals appear logical only within their strict context. These rituals are acts of faith, and that faith lends credence and acceptability to the ritualized behavior, however bizarre.
1 Carroll, Lewis. 1899. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. New York: The Macmillan Company and London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., p. 123 2 William Blake. 1973. “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. Heath William. Ed. New York: The Macmillan Company, p. 35
Synthetic Ritual 33 and free from ornamentation aside from the schematic red markings, compels the Yet, ritual and its verso, superstition, occupy an important role in our personal and players in their singular focus. Her video-loop, In the Eye of the Beholder (2009), professional lives. This may seem paradoxical in a post-enlightenment world that captures the hypnotic and repetitive action. Stripped of any incidental detail, Wing privileges science, empirical fact and concrete knowledge as a basis for judging the focuses her camera on the front wall, recording the ball as it strikes above or below the world, but perhaps it is just the certitude of such a rigid system—discrediting all that red horizontal (service) line. Installed in a peephole gallery3 resembling a birdhouse in cannot be proved, reasoned or qualified—that is to blame for our fascination with the size and construction, the viewing experience is intensified as the peephole becomes inscrutable, supernatural and inexplicable. Faith is not a fallacy, but an essential aspect a microscope, echoing in miniature the clinical allusion of watching a squash match, of our intellect; we are compelled to release our hold on logic as a testament to our separated, elevated, behind glass and in the darkness. imagination. It is no coincidence that one of science fiction’s top storytellers, Michael Crichton, was also a physician, a profession where the rigors of science hold sway. Although the recent release of President Barack Obama’s “long form” birth certificate Although faith allows us to entertain, deceive and expand ourselves through a variety has quieted some of the antagonists who claimed him ineligible for the US presidency of diversions—sports, politics and art—it exacts its toll in the form of compulsions because of his alleged foreign birth, there remains a sizable group who maintain that involving religion, magic and madness. this new document is a clever forgery and definitive proof of a government conspiracy. This is merely one example of willful self-delusion in which some fantasists enshroud SPORT AND POLITICS the president; a polarizing figure, there is little consensus on Mr. Obama and debate Baseball players in particular are known for their oddities; some seem playfully daft— upon him quickly hardens into vituperation. A similar scenario is found in the video Babe Ruth would chase butterflies away from the outfield—yet others truly sinister— works of Mounira Al Solh. Seeking common ground, a group of middle-aged Beirut New York Giants Manager John McGraw kept, for good luck, a piece of lynching rope. men swim daily, regardless of circumstance—turbulent weather or bombing raids— Some players’ habits and behaviors are so extreme that they have developed into at the same seaside location. With the backdrop of interminable conflict, their rigid serious conditions. Soccer player David Beckham and South African cricketer Neil swimming ritual provides a much-needed sense of order and becomes a collective McKenzie have both sought treatment for OCD: Beckham for his obsessive ordering act of defiance in the face of enduring chaos. Holding diverse political, religious and of objects in even numbers and rows, and McKenzie for his despotic dressing room cultural persuasions, the men avoid any discussion of their views, and the sea becomes rules—taping his bat to the ceiling and insisting that all toilet seats were down before a rare opportunity for unity as they bond over swimming goals and techniques. Let’s going to bat. Such obsession is not limited to players but shared by their fans. Chicago Not Swim Then (2008), however, records the rare occasion when they do discuss their Cubs supporter Steve Bartman received death treats from fellow fans after catching a conflicting political and religious views. It tears the men apart and forces them to swim foul ball in the stands that should have been caught by a player. Commonly viewed as alone, which is both alienating and dangerous. the turning point in the game, the Cubs went on to lose the game and with it a chance at the World Series, which they have not won since 1908. Bartman and his family Across the border, in Israel, is the location of Compressed Ceramic Powder (Battle in required police protection.
Having spent much of her youth as a professional squash player, artist Carlin Wing is no 3 Peephole gallery conceived and created by James Melinat for Michael Poppyfield stranger to the peculiarity of sports. In squash, a tall, sterile, white room, windowless Projects
34 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 35 the Orchard) (2007), a video work by Amir Yatziv. Blurring fact and fiction, the narrative As Molly McGarry writes, “This new religion’s radical renegotiation of gender was so revolves around a series of interviews with battle-weary Israeli youths heavily armed radical and pervasive that it is inseparable from the movement’s other concerns.”4 This and dressed in military camouflage. Filmed on the battlefield and accompanied by enlightened aspect of spiritualism is explored by artist Meris Angioletti’s I Describe the a sentimental soundtrack, the soldiers testify to horrific accounts of brutality and Way and Meanwhile I am Proceeding Along it (2009), conflating the work of Swedish near-death experiences. As the narrative unfolds so too does our realization that this medium Hilma af Klint with leading figures in the suffrage movement. Klint (1862- ‘theatre of war’ is just that, a pantomime of martyrdom and bravery, the equivalent of 1944), an artist and a medium, claimed clairvoyance from an early age. In the 1890s a varsity paintball match. Exploring the veracity of filmic representation, Yatziv plays she formed an occult group called De Fem (The Five), with four other women who with our shallow understanding of a country’s politics and culture that we only know sought enlightenment through art and spiritualist practice. She claimed the imagery through mainstream media. in her abstract paintings was directly informed by messages received from spirits. Spiritualism was radical in multiple ways; it was non-denominational, open to science As a symbol of national pride and accomplishment, sport is often inseparable with and new technologies, and provided women with a platform for social change. politics and followed with evangelical fervor. For years, the Springboks—South Angioletti reminds us of the radical nature of spiritualism, remembered today, if at all, Africa’s premier rugby team—practiced extreme racial discrimination; however, as quaint and comical. since the end of apartheid, the team—and by extension South Africa as a whole— became (optimistically) symbolic of racial unity and equality. Alluding to this slippery In many ways, mediums functioned as early grief counselors, acting as a symbolic and incomplete history, Lawrence Lemaoana has created his own version of The Last conduit between the living and the dead and providing solace for those unable to come Supper, with Springbok players substituting for Jesus and his disciples embroidered to terms with the death of a loved one. Another strategy for transitioning through grief— on a large silk cloth. The Last Supper’s themes of broken promises and betrayal are deriving from Biblical times—was the hiring of professional mourners to perform death familiar subjects in sports, politics and religion, and Lemaoana, suggesting only a rites at wakes and funerals. Such elaborate rituals are resurrected in Adrian Paci’s superficial commitment to meaningful change, cleverly alludes to them. Vajtojca (Mourner) (2002), a video depicting the artist returning to his hometown of Shkoder, Armenia to rehearse his own deathbed scene. Led by the professional mourner RELIGION AND MAGIC into a back room of a stone cottage, he dons his funeral suit while she prepares his bier. Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944), a Pentecostal minister, founded the Angelus Plaintive wailing ensues over Paci’s recumbent body and concludes with Paci thanking Temple in Echo Park, Los Angeles—an early prototype for the contemporary mega- her for her services to the sound of a light-hearted ditty, transforming a gravely serious church. Resembling a plush movie theater more than a temple—with choirs, brass mood to one of hilarity. Paci muses on the loss of ancient traditions and the effect such bands and elaborate sets—it could hold more than 5,000 attendees and often did an absence may have on our ability to process major events in our lives. By receiving three times a day. McPherson was one of the first preachers to build her own radio station and broadcast her sermons nationwide, making her one of the most prominent and influential preachers in the country. Holding such a distinguished role in society was highly unusual for women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but 4 McGarry, Molly. 2008. Ghosts of Future’s Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics mainstream religion was one area in which women could hold some sway—another was of Nineteenth Century America. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California spiritualism, renowned as a vehicle for female empowerment and progressive politics. Press, p. 41
36 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 37 artist and Josef Vascovitz. Lawrence Lemaoana, Things Fall Apart (2008). Textile with embroidery. Ed. of 2, 49.5 x 32.75 inches. Courtesy the (2008). Textile with embroidery. Ed. of 2, 53 1/2 x 36 inches. Courtesy the with embroidery. (2008). Textile Pride Lemaoana, Kill a Man’s Lawrence artist and Sarah Meigs.
1 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 2
(2007). Single-channel video, 6 minutes. Courtesy of the artist. the of Courtesy minutes. 6 video, Single-channel (2007). Yatziv, Amir 40 Synthetic Ritual Powder Ceramic Compressed
Yoshua Okón, Parking Lotus (2001). Photographic installation (detail). Lightjet C-prints, 40 x 30 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Kaufmann Repetto, Milan. his death rites in advance, Paci ensures his own safe passage to the other side.
Statues that weep—blood, tears or other liquids—are well known and nearly always debunked, yet despite evidence of their fakery these statues develop a following of those eager for miracles. Functioning as an extreme version of one of these is Marco Rios’ Untitled (Weeping Video) (2010), which, like many of these ‘supernatural’ statues, is low tech in production and blatant in its artifice. Projected larger than life, Rios’s video self- portrait comprises a close-up of his head, cast downwards, with gushing waterfalls issuing from his eyes. Aside from the cascading water, the image is entirely static, suggesting that his mortal body has become a mere vessel for wonderment, a self-beatification. Although miracles and magic have much in common, both appealing to our eagerness to be convinced, they differ mainly in shelf- life: miracles expect a life-long commitment while magic is often satisfied to transfix for a limited time. The Water was Boiling at 34º 21’ 29’’ S, 18º 28’ 19’’ E, (2008), is a video document of the artist Beatrice Catanzaro interviewing the artist P.C. Sorcar Jr.—one of the most celebrated magicians in India—about his legendary “vanishing” of the Taj Mahal on November 8, 2000. I Describe The Way And Meanwhile I Am Proceeding Along It—Studio (2009). Single-channel video Meris Angioletti, I Describe The Way gelatin, 5 minutes, 40 seconds. Courtesy of the artist. light, green installation, theatre
42 Synthetic Ritual Kara Tanaka’s work continues the monumental magic with her The Hungry Human (Mountain Hunter) (2011), inspired in part by Alejandro Jodorowsky’s hallucinatory film The Holy Mountain (1973) that was loosely based on Mount Analogue (1952), a novel by French surrealist, Rene Daumal. Tanaka explores the many rituals surrounding mountains and the search for enlightenment in a multi-piece sculpture, comprising a crop of variously scaled mountains. Sheathed in white diaphanous material, the translucent cloth suggests the veil between the physical and transcendental selves and our need to successfully negotiate the two states.
Though firmly situated within a mundane realm, Yoshua Okón explores the desire for enlightenment in Parking Lotus (2001), an installation of photographic portraits of parking attendants engaged in the act of meditation. Installed floor-to-ceiling in a checker-board configuration, the guards, transfixed, have ascended to another plane, far away from the drudgery of their daily existence. A detailed “Meditation Movement Manifesto” completes the installation—a text supporting the spiritual, physical and psychological welfare of the guards. Both humorous and poignant, Okón gives visibility to the plight of minimum wage workers who, though exploited, demeaned and invisible, help maintain order in Los Angeles, where the automobile is totemic.
ART AND MADNESS Regarding some contemporary art, Arthur C. Clarke’s third law, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” might be paraphrased, “most groundbreaking art is indistinguishable from madness.” Works and artists fitting this description are plentiful; Vito Acconci’s Seedbed (1971), Richard Long’s A Line Made by Walking (1967), the oeuvre of Henry Darger, Richard Serra’s molten lead “splash pieces” and numerous works by the patron saint of such confounding art, Chris Burden exemplify behaviors that, outside the realm of art-making, might result in commitment for one’s own safety. The affecting of these behaviors and abstract rules finds affinity in various psychiatric and or neurological disorders such as obsessive- compulsive-disorder (OCD) and schizophrenia, displaying similar ritualized gestures, speech malfunctions, masochistic acts, repetitive actions, obsessive ordering and
the assumption of multiple personas. The method of this madness is that these 35.5 x 24 (2008). Ink on paper, 34° 21’ 29” SOUTH, 18° 28’ 19” EAST BOILING AT WAS THE WATER Beatrice Catanzaro, inches. Courtesy of the artist.
44 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 45 behaviors are purposefully employed if not immediately understood. In their videos and performances, both Marcus Coates and Joel Kyack demonstrate such postures. Like Joseph Beuys before him—an obvious influence and reference for the artist—Coates assumes the mantle of a healer attempting to find solutions for real-world problems. His strategy involves performing shamanistic rituals in urban settings. In Journey to the Lower World (2004), Coates endeavors to assist the Liverpool residents of a low-income housing estate that has been slated for demolition. Gathered in a room on the run-down property, the bewildered inhabitants—middle to old-age pensioners— are encouraged to share their concerns with Coates. Clad in a full-length reindeer pelt, Coates descends—grunting, gesticulating and spitting—into the “lower world” to consult with the spirits of dead animals, reemerging with solutions to his audience’s questions. Although side-splittingly funny (the residents are resigned, therefore indulgent, and also entertained), Coates’ attempts are socially and politically motivated, and his desire to intervene and make a difference is sincere. Similarly, Joel Kyack engages in extreme performances that test the limits of both his and his audience’s endurance and, sometimes, patience. Often lasting 24 hours, Local Records is an ongoing series of projects where various actions are set
in a specific site and community and are based The Hungry Human (Mountain Hunter) (2011). Mixed media installation, dimensions variable. Courtesy of Kara Tanaka, New York. Gallery, the artist and Simon Preston
46 Synthetic Ritual around the number of times the action is repeated during a 24-hour period. Sometimes these performances take place in purpose-built installations. Local Records (Pitzer Art Galleries) (2011) revolves around a dysfunctional telephone—the person making a call has to shout loudly into the mouthpiece to be heard—in the Nichols Gallery at Pitzer College. Installed for emergency purposes, after Columbine-like school shootings began occurring throughout the US, the phone has remained conspicuously centered on a gallery wall. Divided into one-hour increments, Kyack conducts high volume calls in a provisional phone booth he has erected around the phone, creating a miniature theater in which he is the only inscrutable actor.
WE WANT TO BELIEVE A confirmation bias is one that allows us to selectively choose facts that support our preconceptions or twist opposing information to do so. Like a bent detective conforming the evidence to her chosen suspect or an overeager researcher skewing results in favor of his hypothesis, most of us, in varying degrees, have a standard by which all other things are measured and held accountable; many of these have little basis in fact and are often completely fabricated. Our faith can be so obdurate that it blinds us from reason and compels us to act imprudently. There are countless examples in art, literature and real-life that are a testament to such slavish compulsions. William Pope. L, belly-crawling through the streets of New York and wearing a homemade Superman costume; Shakespeare’s Othello, whose jealousy was so consuming that it led him to slaughter his greatest love and himself; in Dodoma, Tanzania, in 2009, seven people were sentenced to hang for killing a total of 50 albinos, some of whom were children, believing their body parts could be used for magic. The artists, of course, are charlatans, practicing a magic in which they do not believe, yet it is a magic from which they cannot turn away. Such afflictions are willingly sampled, but once invited they become the crack-pipe of obsession. Many of the practices alluded to in Synthetic Ritual have a similar quality, an urgency and singular focus that eschews distraction and compromise. Let them be a lesson to all of us.
A very special thanks to John Mulvany, who was the inspiration for this exhibition and
essay. (2004). Single-channel video, 30 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and Kate Coates, Journey to the Lower World Marcus London. Photo: Nick David. MacGarry,
48 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 49 Hitting Walls: In the Eye of Beholder (2007). Single-channel video installation, continuous loop. Carlin Wing, Hitting Walls: Boston. Courtesy of the artist and Anthony Greaney,
1 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 2 1 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 2 1 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 2 1 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 2 1 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 2 1 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 2 Artists’ Biographies Beatrice Catanzaro received a Masters in public art and new artistic strategies from the Bauhaus University in 2004. She has participated in a number of exhibitions, Mounira Al Solh was born in Beirut in 1978. She studied painting at the Lebanese including this year’s Land Art Biennale – Mongolia 360°. Also in 2011, she participated University in Beirut (LB) and fine arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (NL). in the Contemporary Art Festival in Faenza. In 2010, she was the Artist in Residence Between 2006 and 2008, she was a resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Her at the Qattan Foundation, Ramallah, Palestine. Between 2005 and 2010, she was work is multidisciplinary, oscillating between video, installation, writing, photography the project developer at the International Artists in Residence Program at UNIDEE, and painting. Her video Rawane’s Song was screened in several film festivals, Cittadellarte – Pistoletto Foundation, Biella, Italy. She is currently working on the amongst them VideoBrasil that gave it the jury’s prize for 2007. Her video installation implementation of the Women Centre Bait al Karama, with cultural manager Cristiana As If I Don’t Fit There was part of the exhibition titled Forward at the first Lebanese Bottigella and the Women Committee NGO Old City Committee of Nablus (Palestine). Pavillion at the Venice Biennale in 2007, and at the exhibition Be(com)ing Dutch at the Bait al Karama will be the first Women’s Centre in the heart of the Old City of Nablus Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven. Most recently, she received the Uriòt Prize from the (West Bank – Palestine), and aspires to combine a culinary social enterprise with a Rijksakademie. Mourina Al Solh currently lives and works in Beirut. center for national and international art and culture. In 2011, she was awarded the Cimetta Travel Grant for this project. Meris Angioletti was born in Bergamo, Italy. Most recently, she was represented in the 2011 Venice Biennale. She has participated in numerous solo exhibitions including, I Marcus Coates received his Post Graduate Diploma from the Royal Academy of Art Describe The Way And Meanwhile I Am Proceeding Along It at Fondazione Galleria in London, UK in 1993. He has participated in numerous solo exhibitions including, Civica, Centro di Ricerca sulla Contemporaneità di Trento, Italy (2009); Il Paradigma Urban Transformation and the Politics of Care at Serpentine Gallery in London, UK Indiziario at Careof in Milan, Italy (2009); and Ginnastica Oculare at GAMeC – Galleria (2011); Dawn Chorus at ESPAI 13/Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, Spain (2010), and d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo, Italy (2009). She has also participated at Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool Biennial (2010); Performance, A Ritual For Elephant in numerous group exhibitions including, Filiberto Menna. La Linea Analitica Dell’arte and Castle at Coronet Theatre in London, UK (2009); Performance, Marcus Coates Contemporanea at Chiesa dell’Addolorata-Complesso Monumentale di S. Sofia in at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan (2009); and Performance, Solo Screening, Dawn Salerno, Italy (2009); The Filmic Conventions at FormContent in London, UK (2009); Chorus at Venice Biennale, Italy (2007). He has also participated in numerous group Una Collezione Trasversale at Spazio Radici in Alzano Lombardo, Italy (2009); exhibitions including, Transformation at Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Japan ArcheTime: Conference and Exhibition on Time at The Tank Space in New York, NY (2010); From Ritual to Theatre at Ancient & Modern in London, UK (2010); Steps into the (2009); InContemporanea at Palazzo della Triennale in Milano, Italy (2009); Heavier than Arcane at Kartause Ittingen in Kunstmuseum Thurgau, Switzerland (2010); Adaptation air at ITCA-Prague Triennial in Prague, and Pavillon#7 at Palais de Tokyo (mezzanine) at The Power Plant in Toronto, Canada (2010); Decalogue: Films You Can Count on in Paris, France (2008). She was the winner of New York Prize promoted by Ministero Two Hands at Winkleman Gallery in New York, NY (2010); The Perfect Exhibition at degli Esteri in collaboration with Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia Heidelberger Kunstverein in Heidelberg, Germany (2010); THE BEAUTY OF DISTANCE: University and she was one of the finalists of Premio Furla 2009 in Italy. Meris Angioletti Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age at Sydney Biennale (2010); ALTERMODERN at currently lives and works in Paris and Milan. Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, in London, UK (2009); and Hamsterwheel at Arsenale - Biennale di Venezia 2007, Venice (2007). He did his residencies in Japan, Norway and
62 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 63 in numerous cities in UK. In 2009, he was awarded as the winner of the first Daiwa Alliance Francaise venues in major cities in South Africa (2007); and the David Krut Foundation Art Prize in UK; and in 2008, he was awarded the Artist Award from Paul Publications - in collaboration with Johannesburg ARTBANK at David Krut Studios Hamlyn Foundation in UK. Marcus Coates currently lives and works in London, UK. in Johannesburg, South Africa (2007). He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions including, PEEKABOO: Current South Africa at Tennis Palace Art Museum Joel Kyack received his MFA from University of Southern California in 2008. He has in Helsinki, Finland (2010); TXT at James Harris Gallery in Seattle, WA (2010); participated in numerous solo exhibitions including, Flow, River, Flow! at the NADA Art Ampersand at Daimler Contemporary in Berlin, Germany (2010); Atopia at CCCB in Fair in Miami, FL (2010); Superclogger at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, CA Barcelona, Spain (2010); Beauty and Pleasure curated by Selene Wendt and Khwezi (2010), and at LAXART in Los Angeles, CA (2010); The Knife Shop at Kunsthalle LA Gule at The Stenersen Museum in Oslo, Norway (2009); Self/Not-Self at Brodie/ with François Ghebaly Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2009); Design a Future or Fuck It at Stevenson in Johannesburg, South Africa (2009); I Love Jozi on Reunion Island (2008). USC Roski Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2008); and Proposition for a New Mountaineer He did his residencies in New York, USA in 2009; at the Prohelvitia-IAAB in Basel, at USC Roski Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2007). He has also participated in numerous Switzerland in 2008; and at The Cite des Arts International in Paris, France in 2006. In group exhibitions including, Who Is Your Audience, curated by Lorenzo Bruni, at Astuni 2008 he was awarded as the ABSA KKNK festival artist; in 2007 he was awarded the Public Studio in Bologna, Italy (2010); Not Los Angeles at Fellows of Contemporary Art Sasol Art Award 2007 in South Africa; and in 2005 he was awarded the ABSA L’Atelier in Los Angeles, CA (2009); Desert Sexy, at The Constant Gallery in Los Angeles, CA Gerard Sekoto Award in South Africa. Lawrence Lemaoana currently lives and works (2009); Material Boundaries at Deborah Page Projects in Austin, TX (2009); California in Johannesburg, South Africa. Biennial at High Desert Test Sites in Joshua Tree, CA (2008); Allan Kaprow-Art as Life, Graft re-Happening (in collaboration with Lee Lynch), at Museum of Contemporary Art Yoshua Okón received his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2002. in Los Angeles, CA (2008); The Silence of Infinite Space at Glendale College Gallery This year, he will be the Artist in Residence at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles as in Glendale, CA (2008); One Shot: 100><100 at LAXART in Los Angeles, CA (2008); part of their Hammer Projects series. He has participated in numerous solo exhibitions Host at San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, CA (2008); and 8 is Enough at including, Chille at Galería Gabriela Mistral in Santiago, Chile (2009); Ventanilla USC Roski Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2008). Joel Kyack currently lives and works in Única at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City, Mexico (2009); Hipnostasis, in Los Angeles. collaboration with Raymond Pettibon, at Armory Center for the Arts in Los Angeles, CA (2009); Canned Laughter at Viafarini DOCVA, Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan, Italy Lawrence Lemaoana received his Fine Art BTech Degree from the University of (2009); SUBTITLE at Lothringer 13 - Städtische Kunsthalle in Munich, Germany (2008); Johannesburg. He has participated in numerous solo exhibitions including, the Red MAVI at Galería Revolver in Lima, Perú (2008); and Bocanegra at The Project, New Cross Children’s Hospital Auction at Goodman Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa York, NY (2007). He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions including, O (2009); Fortune Telling in Black, Red and White at Art Extra in Johannesburg, South Riso E A Melancolia at Galeria Iberê Camargo - Usina do Gasômetro in Porto Alegre, Africa (2008); Art Extra booth at FNB Johannesburg Art Fair in Johannesburg, South Brasil (2009); Tragicomedia at Cajasol y Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Africa (2008); Positive Show at Gallery Demosniel 89 in Paris, France (2007); Players Sevilla, Spain (2009); Yoshua Okón + Barry Johnston at N.T.B.R. in Los Angeles, CA of Colour at Gallery Demosniel 89 in Paris, France (2007); Hierarchy of colour at Absa (2009); Art Wrestling at Art Basel Miami Beach in Miami, FL (2008); Amateurs at CCA Gallery in Johannesburg, South Africa(2007); Players of Colour at National Tour of Wattis in San Francisco, CA (2008); White Russians at HDTS, California Biennial in
64 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 65 Joshua Tree, CA (2008); Escultura Social at Museo Alameda in San Antonio, TX (2008); site-specific performance at Irvine, CA (2006). He has also participated in numerous Laughing in a Foreign Language at Hayward Gallery in London, UK (2008); Laugh group exhibitions including, California Biennial at Orange County Museum of Art in Track at YUM21C, Brussels Biennial Off program in Brussels, Belgium (2008); The Newport Beach, CA (2008); LA25 at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) in Believers at Mass Moca in North Adams, MA (2007); and Black Sphinx at Hammer Los Angeles, CA (2008), and at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flomm LLP in Los Museum in Los Angeles, CA (2007). Yoshua Okón currently lives and works in Mexico Angeles, CA (2007); The Whole World Is Watching at Glendale College in Glendale, City and Los Angeles. CA (2008); Et in Arcadia Ego at Estación Tijuana in Tijuana, Mexico (2008); November Again at Harris Lieberman in New York, NY (2008); Phantom Sightings at Los Angeles Adrian Paci was born in Shkoder, Albania. Most recently, he was represented in the County Museum of Art (LACMA), CA (2008); Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get, What You 2011 Venice Biennale. He has participated in numerous solo exhibitions including, Don’t See (Is Better Yet) at Five Thirty Three in Los Angeles, CA (2008); Nina in Position Gestures at Peter Blum Gallery Chelsea in New York, NY (2010), and at Francesca at Artists Space in New York, NY (2008); The Pyramid Show at Monte Vista Gallery Kaufmann in Milan, Italy (2010); Precarious Life at Istanbul Museum of Modern in Los Angeles, CA (2007); and Mini Wrong Gallery at LAX> 66 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 67 County Museum of Art (2008). Kara Tanaka lives and works in Los Angeles. (2009); Dreary structures, Dreamy structures, at Ashdod Art Museum in Israel (2009); Evil to the core at the Israeli Centre for Digital Art in Holon, Israel (2009); re-construction Carlin Wing received her MFA in photography and media from California Institute at Jerusalem Film Festival in Israel (2009); Echoes of time and space at Jerusalem of the Arts in 2008, and is currently a doctoral student in media, culture and Cinematheque in Israel (2009); Secret Art, Israeli Art at Tel-Aviv in Israel (2008); Video communication at NYU. She has participated in numerous solo exhibitions including, Zone 4 at Video Biennale in Tel-Aviv, Israel(2008); estampa 2008, video art program Hitting Walls (v.XV):Making a Ball, a workshop at Machine Project in Los Angeles, CA “Tribal Fire” in Madrid, Spain (2008); Multi-space, video project in Jerusalem, Israel (2011); Ceilings Where I Sleep: May 2005 – May 2010 at Anthony Greaney in Boston, (2008); ViP5, video art screening event at Ticho house in Jerusalem, Israel (2008); and MA (2010); Hitting Walls (v.VII) at Anthony Greaney in Boston, MA (2009); and In the TAPE MODERN #4 in Berlin, Germany (2008). Yatziv was awarded the DAAD Artist Eye of the Beholder at Michael Poppyfield Gallery in Valencia, CA (2007). She has also Scholarship in Berlin, Germany in 2010 and in 2009 he received the “Adam Mickiewicz participated in numerous group exhibitions including, Pas de Quatre, in collaboration Institute” artist scholarship from Poland, the Video Art Foundation award from CCA with Amelia Winger- Bearskin at Andrew Jackson’s estate, the Hermitage, in Nashville, Israel, and HBO Central Europe - Film Development award from Poland. Amir Yatziv TN (2009); Changement de Pieds: Facts and Fictions for the Hermitage, in collaboration lives and works in Berlin, Germany. with Amelia Winger-Bearskin at Gallery F in Nashville, TN (2009); Unusual Sympathy: a story of a Creek Indian boy in the home of a president, in collaboration with Amelia Winger-Bearskin at Gallery F in Nashville, TN (2009); and Exchange Rate: 2008, in collaboration with Liz Glynn at Sea and Space in Los Angeles, CA and at Centennial Park in Nashville, TN (2009). Her work has been exhibited at Museé de L’Elysee in Switzerland, Aperture Gallery in New York and Angels Gate Cultural Center in Los Angeles among others. Wing has presented photography, video, installation, performance, writing and lectures in national and international contexts, and has been a visiting lecturer at Harvard University, Vanderbilt University and Watkins College of Art and Design. Carlin Wing currently lives and works in New York. Amir Yatziv received his BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Arts & Design in Jerusalem, Israel in 2008. He has participated in numerous solo exhibitions including, Antipodes at Ramat-Gan Museum of Art in Israel (2010) and Arbeit Macht Frie at Appendix2 Gallery in Warsaw, Poland (2010). He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions including, MOIRA RICCI / AMIR YATZIV at La Veronica Arte Contemporanea in Italy (2011); OVERVIEW, Israeli video 2000-2010 at Haifa Museum Of Art in Israel (2010); TATE FILM, Trembling time: recent video from Israel at Tate Modern in Britain (2010); RE-CONSTRUCTIONS, film programme at Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands 68 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 69 Exhibition Checklist Mounira Al Solh Joel Kyack Yoshua Okón Kara Tanaka The Sea is a Stereo: Let’s Not Swim Then!; Local Records (Pitzer Art Galleries) (2011) Parking Lotus (2001) The Hungry Human (Mountain Hunter) (2011) Paris Without A Sea (2007-2008) Performance Photographic installation Mixed media installation Two-channel video Courtesy of the artist and François Ghebaly Dimensions variable Dimensions variable 50 minutes Gallery, Los Angeles Courtesy of the artist and Kaufmann Courtesy of the artist and Simon Preston Courtesy of the artist and Sfeir-Semler Repetto, Milan Gallery, New York Gallery, Beirut-Hamburg Lawrence Lemaoana Team Spirit (2006) Adrian Paci Carlin Wing Meris Angioletti Cloth and thread Vajtojca (Mourner) (2002) Hitting Walls: In the Eye of the Beholder (2009) I Describe The Way And Meanwhile I Am 43.7 x 93.3 inches Single-channel video installation Single-channel video installation Proceeding Along It – Studio (2009) Courtesy of the artist and Josef Vascovitz 9 minutes Continuous loop Single-channel video installation, theatre Courtesy of the artist and Kaufmann Courtesy of the artist and Anthony Greaney, light, green gelatin Repetto, Milan Boston 5 minutes, 40 seconds Lawrence Lemaoana Courtesy of the artist Fortune Teller #5 (2008) Textile with embroidery. Ed. of 2 Marco Rios Carlin Wing 62 x 43 inches Untitled (The Weeping Video) (2010) Ball Portrait #s 26, 28, 30, 31, 38 (2011) Beatrice Catanzaro Courtesy of the artist and James Harris Video Balls made by workshop participants as THE WATER WAS BOILING AT 34° 21’ 29” Gallery, Seattle TRT: Continuous loop part of Hitting Walls: Making a Ball at the SOUTH, 18° 28’ 19” EAST (2008) Courtesy of the artist and Simon Preston Maravilla Handball Court Single-channel video installation Gallery Archival Inkjet prints 16 minutes Lawrence Lemaoana Each 8 x 8 inches Courtesy of the artist Things Fall Apart (2008) Courtesy of the artist and Anthony Greaney, Textile with embroidery. Ed. of 2 Marco Rios Boston 49.5 x 32.75 inches Moving Equilibrium (performance Marcus Coates Courtesy of the artist and Josef Vascovitz documentation) (2006) Journey to the Lower World (2004) DVD Amir Yatziv Single-channel video installation 5 minutes, 7 seconds Compressed Ceramic Powder (Battle in the 30 minutes Lawrence Lemaoana Courtesy of the artist and Simon Preston Orchard) (2007) Courtesy of the artist and Kate MacGarry, Kill a Man’s Pride (2008) Gallery, New York Single-channel video installation London Textile with embroidery. Ed. of 2 6 minutes 53 1/2 x 36 inches Courtesy of the artist Courtesy of the artist and Sarah Meigs 70 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 71 Curators’ and Contributing Writer’s Biographies LESS#1 Alternative Living Strategies, section of Gwangju Design Biennale (2007). In addition, Gabi Scardi teaches courses on Contemporary Art and Public Art at Jennifer Doyle is an associate professor of English at the University of California, Università Cattolica, Milan; Politecnico di Milano, Faculty of Design, Milan; Università Riverside, where she teaches courses on literature, art and gender. She is the author of Bicocca, Faculty of Sociology, Milan; Domus Academy, Milan; and TSM - Trento Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire (2006) and Hold It Against Me: Difficulty, School of Management, Trento. Emotion and Contemporary Art (forthcoming from Duke University Press). She has published articles on performance art and television; gender, sport and contemporary art; abortion and feminist performance; and queer friendship in Andy Warhol’s films. Ciara Ennis is the director/curator of Pitzer Art Galleries at Pitzer College and was She curated I Feel Different for Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2009) and You the curator of exhibitions at the University of California Riverside/California Museum Belong to Me: The Ethics of Presence in Riverside, CA (2009). She was Leverhulme of Photography, particularly of Still, Things Fall From the Sky (2005), Ruby Satellite Visiting Fellow in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College in London in 2007-2008. She (2006) and Eloi: Stumbling Towards Paradise (2007). Ennis moved from London to also writes about sports and cultural politics at her blog From A Left Wing, and has Los Angeles where she was project director for Public Offerings, an international published her sports writing in The Guardian, The New York Times and FoxSoccer. survey of contemporary art, at MOCA, Los Angeles in 2001. From there she became com. She has a PhD in Literature from Duke University. associate curator at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, where she initiated the Project Room and programmed a series of experimental exhibitions with such artists as Urs Fischer, Simon Leung, Mark Leckey, Johan Grimonprez and Eduardo Sarabia. Ennis Gabi Scardi is an international curator and art critic based in Milan. She is a curatorial has been director of Pitzer Art Galleries for the past four years, during that time she has advisor for MAXXI (Museum of the 21st Century Arts) in Rome and co-curates CECAC curated a number of exhibitions including: Antarctica (2007); Narrowcast: Reframing (European Course for Contemporary Art Curators) - Fondazione Ratti, Como, Italy Global Video 1986/2008, co-curated with Ming-Yuen S. Ma (2008); Veronica (2009); and the Province of Milan. Between 2005 and 2009 she was the Contemporary Art Capitalism in Question, co-curated with Daniel Joseph Martinez (2010); and Synthetic Advisor to the Province of Milan. She has curated numerous exhibitions internationally Ritual, co-curated with Gabi Scardi. Ennis’s curatorial practice blurs fact with fiction including Aware: Art, Fashion, Identity at the Royal Academy of Arts in London (2010). and focuses on storytelling as a means to explore the fluidity and fragility of identity, At the Lyon Biennale in 2009, she organized T.A.M.A. – Project “Side Effect”, a revealing the subtleties of the social, political, and the cultural issues that impact our collaborative project examining the situation of Romas in Europe. Her other projects lives. She received her MA in curating contemporary art from the Royal College of include Yoshua Okón, Canned Laughter, Viafarini, Milan, (2009); Libia Castro & Òlafur Art, London. Òlafsson, Riccardo Crespi Gallery, Milan, (2009); The Mobile Archive, Viafarini Care of DOCVA, Milan, (2009); Marina Ballo Charmet, Parco, Triennale, Milan, (2008); Stéphanie Nava, Considering a Plot (Dig for Victory), Viafarini, Milan, (2008); Alfredo Jaar, It is Difficult, Spazio Oberdan, Hangar Bicocca (2008); Debora Hirsch, BR- 101, Fondazione Olivetti, Roma, (2008); LESS, Strategie alternative dell’abitare, PAC Padiglione d’arte Contemporanea (Pavilion for Contemporary Art), Milan, (2006); and 72 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 73 Acknowledgements Synthetic Ritual With very special thanks to: Mounira Al Solh, Meris Angioletti, Beatrice Catanzaro, Marcus Coates, Joel Kyack, Lawrence Lemaoana, Yoshua Okón, Adrian Paci, Marco Rios, Kara Tanaka, Laurie Babcock Carlin Wing, and Amir Yatziv Soo Kyung Bae Max King Cap Co-curated by Gabi Scardi and Ciara Ennis Anna Chang Gabriela Contreras Pitzer Art Galleries Staff: Joseph Dickson Ciara Ennis, Director/Curator Jennifer Doyle Anna Mendoza, Curatorial Associate Stephanie Estrada Angelica Perez, Exhibition Preparator François Ghebaly, François Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles Cheukwa Jones, Volunteer Andrew Bond Ana Iwataki, Getty Multicultural Intern James Harris, James Harris Gallery, Seattle Ana Iwataki ISBN: 978-0-9829956-2-4 Alan Jones Chiara Repetto, Beatrice Girelli and Bianca Baroni, Kaufmann Repetto, Milan Catalogue Design: Stephanie Estrada Emily Ligniti Editor: Andrew Bond Kate MacGarry, Jess Green and Susie Clark, Kate MacGarry, London Printing: Inland Group James Melinat John Mulvaney The catalogue was produced in an edition of 500 copies and is available through Simon Preston, Simon Preston Gallery, New York Pitzer Art Galleries, Pitzer College Paula Naughton, Simon Preston Gallery, New York Laura Skandera Trombley This catalogue was made possible by a generous grant from the Pasadena Art Alliance 74 Synthetic Ritual Synthetic Ritual 75 Synthetic Ritual | Pitzer Art Galleries, College Gabi Scardi | Ciara Ennis Mounira Al Solh, Meris Angioletti, Beatrice Catanzaro, Marcus Coates, Joel Kyack, Lawrence Lemaoana, Yoshua Okon, Adrian Paci, Marco Rios, Kara Tanaka, Carlin Wing and Amir Yatziv Curated by Gabi Scardi and Ciara Ennis Synthetic Ritual September 28- ISBN: 978-0-9829956-2-4 December 9, 2011 Pitzer Art Galleries, Pitzer College Tel: 909.607.3143 Pitzer Art Galleries, www.pitzer.edu/galleries Pitzer College