Image courtesy of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Archives

More on Woods’s student years from Daryl here.

Follow the Lebbeus Woods, Architect series here.

Christian Marclay, video still from <em>The Clock</em>, 2010; single-channel video with stereo sound; twenty-four hours; courtesy the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

SFMOMA closes twenty days from now and the museum is rolling out four days of festivities to mark the event, including performances, free art viewing, and one of several 24-hour viewings of Christian Marclay’s epic masterpiece The Clock—twenty-four hours of collaged film fragments that reference the time of day or night, synchronized with local time—which is serving as something of a countdown to the museum’s (nearly) three-year on-site hiatus. The museum’s progress to the finishing line finds poignant symmetry with The Clock’s hourly rhythms and crescendos. Before the clock strikes the hour in Marclay’s work, heralding deadlines, appointments, and showdowns, there is a flurry of activity: people rush to and from destinations, phones ring, and tension builds (suspenseful music gaining momentum) before dissipating at the climax. At high noon, when cowboys faceoff in Westerns, the clock seems to gong like a death knell, signaling beginnings and ends, and ushering in a new phase of the day.

In its 1440 minutes The Clock captures the frenetic pace of daily life; there are moments of reprieve—ebbs and flows—but one feels all the more attuned to the work’s motion for the lack of a cohesive plot. The momentum accrues and dissipates but reaches no ultimate conclusion, because in The Clock there is no end (or beginning). It manifests the fantasy of a “neverending movie,” as Marclay noted at the SFMOMA press preview. The cyclical nature of the film’s loop can be experienced as escapism (“When my clock stops ticking, I’ll die,” notes a character from The Twilight Zone) or entrapment (Molloy’s weary refrain, “I can’t go on; I’ll go on,” though not referenced, continually comes to mind), depending on how you look at it—either way, it corresponds to the existential angst that pervades Marclay’s work.

Christian Marclay, installation view of <em>The Clock</em>, 2010; single-channel video with sound; twenty-four hours; White Cube Mason’s Yard, London, October 15–November 13, 2010; courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, and White Cube, London; photo: Todd-White Photography; © Christian Marclay

We are slaves to the clock, both bounded by and endlessly reminded of it. Time is envisioned as a sort of preoccupying madness beneath which lurk reminders of death. Among pepperings of well-worn expressions that center on time—“to stand the test of time,” etc. — Colin Firth laments becoming a washed-up old professor, Glenn Close worries about the wrinkles in her skin, and a boy I didn’t recognize blurts out with abandon, “Don’t you know you’re gonna die?!”

But The Clock is far from being a totally morbid send-off for SFMOMA. Amid currents of anxiety, it also projects an extraordinary celebration of human activity, drama, and labor. Threads of narrative are picked up and fused together with seamless editing, and scenes and characters are occasionally returned to, but we linger on them so briefly that plot becomes subordinate to the overall symphony of human action. This sense of effort and drama is mirrored in Marclay’s own Herculean task of researching, organizing, and editing in order to produce The Clock, the specter of which looms large over the experience of watching it. To watch it is to marvel at the marathon three-year process (coincidentally mirroring the museum’s period of closure) undertaken by the artist to bring the work to fruition.

“Time is the essence of music,” Marclay said at the preview, shortly before or after mentioning John Cage and James Joyce’s own twenty-four-hour epic, references that point to the more life-affirming aspects of The Clock. While Marclay’s work lacks, among other elements, Cage’s preoccupation with chance and the depth, complexity, and originality of Ulysses, it captures the musicality of daily life and some of the richness of human experience that those artists absorbed into their work. The Clock represents and honors the artist’s labor (beyond Marclay’s own work, how many more thousands of hours went into the production of each film referenced?) and, with its gesture toward encompassing a complete day, provides an apt conduit for reflecting on a museum’s work in addressing and enriching human experience through the arts.

Images of <i>Episteme</i> courtesy <a href=”http://www.littlepaperplanes.com/product/4236-episteme-book-and-record”>Little Paper Planes</a>

Artists often cite one another as influences; it is easy enough to name what inspires or repels us, creatively. But the many-pronged relationships between people and objects, places and daily routine, labor and creativity—these are much more complex and harder to articulate.

—Jessica Brier, foreword to Episteme

Earlier this year two Bay Area artists (and SFMOMA staff members) John Davis and Collin McKelvey collaborated on the publication Episteme. The book includes audio and visual elements and highlights their artistic practices as inspired by their everyday work environment (our museum).

Episteme gives a behind-the-scenes glance at spaces in their soon to be under construction workspace, as seen by John and Collin, desktop technician and exhibitions technical assistant, respectively. With a foreword by SFMOMA curatorial assistant in photography Jessica Brier, the project is one part book and one part record. Photographs by John are printed alongside corresponding stills from a video by Collin, inspired by the shifting light in the current SFMOMA building, throughout the day and throughout the year, as the seasons change. They each created sound recordings inside the museum for the LP. Samples from Episteme are featured here, with field notes from John about his photographs.

Episteme Sample A and B, processed field recordings from within the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art building. (Side A sample fades into side B sample.) A. Collin McKelvey; B. John Davis

<i>Episteme,</i> by John Davis and Collin McKelvey, pages 7–8. Left: Photo by John Davis (detail); Right: Video still by Collin McKelvey

Untitled 07: This photo was taken in the conservation studio and served as a test for a pneumatic staple gun. I liked the simplicity of the staples alongside the numbers (PSI measurements), in particular the residue from people running their fingers over the surface to gauge flushness to the wall. The staples and marks are centered on the wall with nothing else around them; for me it’s an interesting tension between the aesthetically appealing and the utilitarian artifact.

<i>Episteme,</i> by John Davis and Collin McKelvey, pages 11–12. Left: Photo by John Davis; Right: Video still by Collin McKelvey

Untitled 11: Also in the conservation studio, these vials of powdered pigments with titles interested me. I enjoy the ways science and art merge in conservation, especially in an environment where highly specialized processes mingle with workspace ephemera.

<i>Episteme,</i> by John Davis and Collin McKelvey, pages 29–30. Left: Photo by John Davis; Right: Video still by Collin McKelvey

Untitled 29: This photo was taken in the lighting closet in the Installation department, located in the basement of SFMOMA.

<i>Episteme,</i> by John Davis and Collin McKelvey, pages 38–39. Left: Photo by John Davis; Right: Video still by Collin McKelvey

Untitled 38: This photo is a good example of what I was interested in investigating with many of the photographs. The scene is in the museum’s lower-level paint shop, where over time color swatches were nailed up to create an informal record of corresponding paint colors and names for various exhibitions. On their own they make for an interesting installation, but with the addition of Honky Tonk Angel—an artwork by SFMOMA senior operations technician Walter Logue—the scene shows the idiosyncratic details proliferating behind the scenes. Given that many of the staff at SFMOMA are working artists or have studied art in some capacity, visual literacy is conspicuous everywhere, as one might expect, and it is interesting to see it particularly acute in various workplace settings of the museum.

<i>Episteme,</i> by John Davis and Collin McKelvey, pages 49–50. Left: Photo by John Davis; Right: Video still by Collin McKelvey

Untitled 50: Another example of my intention with the photographs: various layers, open to interpretation, about the way people who work with and are dedicated to art mark the workplace in idiosyncratic ways, both functional and personal.

–

Installation view of Constantin Brancusi’s _La Négresse blonde_ (1926) and Charles Sheeler’s photograph _Untitled (Photograph of La Négresse blonde)_ (ca. 1945)

The premise for the day was to experience five pieces of art in uninterrupted silence for ten minutes apiece. However, I slightly augmented our proposed requirements by having our group begin at Constantin Brancusi’s sculpture titled La Négresse blonde, or “the blonde black woman.” Starting there afforded us the opportunity to also view Charles Sheeler’s black-and-white photograph, displayed in the same area, of Brancusi’s seemingly flawless, shining golden sculpture. I decided to have us experience both the photograph and the sculpture for ten minutes—taking in both the two-dimensional and three-dimensional mediums in silence.

The process of slow looking brought into focus things that I hadn’t planned to look at. For example, I noticed that Sheeler’s photograph might be as much a subtle, unwitting self-portrait as it is a documentation of Brancusi’s sculpture. I asked myself, Is that his image reflected in the sculpture’s surface and recorded in the photo? This prompted me to turn and look at the images reflected so perfectly in the surface of the blonde négresse’s face. The flawless surface of the blonde black woman’s face helped me to look at people looking into its reflective surface—an experience that I wouldn’t have had without slow, silent, prolonged viewing. Images of Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Erykah Badu, and Beyoncé coiffed in blond kept coming to mind as our allotted ten minutes came to an end and we moved on to view Mark Rothko’s No. 14, 1960 (1960).

Pop singer Rihanna

Constantin Brancusi, _La Négresse blonde_ (1926); © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

It is remarkable how the artwork being viewed can change your experience of the passage of time. Each piece was viewed for ten minutes, but in my estimation and the estimations of some of the participants, some felt longer than others. With its ambient feel, the Rothko—that artist is definitely the Brian Eno of the canonized abstract expressionist group—seemed to be just a few moments’ viewing and made for a meditative experience, while the Fred Tomaselli piece Field Guides made me feel each minute of its viewing. Not that the Tomaselli piece was any less enjoyable. In fact, I came to appreciate it more as the time elapsed and I became lost in its details. We hadn’t planned for Trisha Donnelly’s sound piece in the adjacent gallery to be such a prominent part of the experience, but it seemed to break the silence at dramatic moments in our slow viewing and made the Rothko piece, for example, feel like the sun setting over a body of water. However, the rising electronic crescendo of Donnelly’s piece made the Tomaselli seem even more manic and teeming with life.

Fred Tomaselli, <i>Field Guides</i>, 2003

As many years as I’ve spent going to galleries and museums, I’ve never had the experience with art pieces that I had while slow viewing. I’ve resolved to go back and experience other pieces that I’ve enjoyed over the years. I realize now that I rarely have the opportunity to do gallery viewing uninterrupted for several minutes in silence. And when I do, the piece opens up not just its own subtle, surreptitious minutia but also opens to other associated experiences. Full attention gives the art piece the power to become a catalyst for a larger experience.

Photo: Georgie Devereux (Artwork depicted: Henri Matisse, _Portrait de Sarah Stein_ (Portrait of Sarah Stein), 1916)

What’s your name?

Monica S.

Where are you from?

Originally from Chile, just moved to San Francisco

What brings you to SFMOMA today?

I am a glass artist, came for inspiration.

Lebbeus Woods, <i>Concentric Field, from the series Centricity</i>, 1987

In 1960, a 20-year-old Lebbeus Woods arrived at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to pursue a master’s degree in architecture. Already a highly skilled draftsman, Woods began to offer his illustration skills to scholars for their academic papers. One of Woods’s clients was Dr. Heinz von Foerster, a Viennese-born physicist, mathematician, philosopher, magician, and creator of second-order cybernetics. The little-known connection between these two men, documented in letters now held in the University of Illinois Archives, suggests intriguing correspondences between the careers of the experimental architect and the pioneer of cybernetics.

Lebbeus Woods’ business card,1970. Image courtesy of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Archives.

In 1958, von Foerster founded the Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) at UIUC, with support from the Office of Naval Research. Between 1958 and 1975, von Foerster and the BCL self-published hundreds of publications; attracted leading minds in the sciences, humanities, and arts; and produced a number of machines that are among the earliest parallel computers.  A venerable cybernetics think tank, the BCL took on the understanding of systems theory, and specifically self-organizing systems, with a disregard for disciplinary boundaries and a zeal for tough epistemological questions.

Characteristic of the cybernetics movement of the 1960s, the BCL operated largely in a theoretical space, without concern for conventional research practices and practical solutions. Perhaps most illustrative of this approach were the “machines” developed at the BCL as part of its research on self-organizing systems. Aided by bright graduate students, such as Murray Lewis Babcock (pictured below), von Foerster developed machines modeled on natural phenomena. Building on neurophysiology, the Adaptive Reorganizing Automaton (1960) was made up of a series of interconnected components that would “evolve” certain patterns of behavior as information (i.e., signal energy) passed through its self-contained system. As an instrument, it did not measure or accomplish anything; instead, it can be seen as a metaphor for or illustration of von Foerster’s ideas on the self-organizing system, or as a step toward a better understanding systems theory.

Though the work of von Foerster and the BCL can be cited as a precursor to current efforts in bioengineering, cognitive science, art, technology, and artificial intelligence, the field of cybernetics and the BCL have since been eclipsed by fields yielding more direct applications and commercial potential. In 1975, following the Pentagon’s 1970 decision to limit military spending to projects bearing directly on military operations, von Foerster succumbed to the BCL’s hopeless financial situation and retired to California.

Von Foerster (left) and Babcock demonstrate the dynamic signal analyzer. Image courtesy of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Archives.

But the BCL was still in its heyday when Woods was a student at UIUC, and von Foerster would make a strong impression on the young architect. Years later, Woods wrote on his blog:

In the 60s we had a working relationship, as [von Foerster] asked me to make illustrations for several of his scientific papers, which meant that he had to explain to me his ideas, which he did with remarkable simplicity and clarity. I learned a lot in our conversations, and it has echoed down through the years in my work. Heinz always called me an “epistemologist,” a high compliment coming from him. From time to time, I would send him publications of my projects and he would always comment.

Woods was also a classmate of von Foerster’s youngest son, Andreas von Foerster, and the two of them took to using the von Foerster basement as a sort of architectural studio. It was during these years that Woods and Heinz von Foerster developed a relationship of mutual respect and admiration. In their correspondence, von Foerster praises Woods’s talent, ambition, and critical mind. In a letter recommending Woods for a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1968, von Foerster recalls the basement days:

Under the leadership of Woods, [Andreas, Lebbeus, and two of their colleagues] aimed at exposing traditional teaching of architecture as being shallow, irrelevant and commercial. In contrast, however, to the standard mode of expressing dissatisfaction with academic procedures and standards by impeding this process, they chose to demonstrate the alleged deficiency by working twice as hard. To almost all problems and projects which were part of the curriculum, they delivered two or more solutions. One was the “required one” which fulfilled the posted conditions, the others were their reinterpretations of the project, produced in cooperation or individually. . . . I have for Woods the deepest respect for his uncompromising attitude to be true to himself. . . . It is his relentless search for truth and for the syntax of his self-expression that persuaded me to submit his name to the Foundation as a potential fellow. 

It is tempting to try to piece together a narrative of Woods and von Foerster’s relationship and to trace threads of influence throughout Woods’s prolific later career. Indeed, both men held a common concern for difficult questions of epistemology, the agency of the observer, and the organization of systems. They both applied unrelenting creativity and a disregard for predetermined boundaries to the advancement and exploration of their respective fields.

Front (left) and back views of Babcock’s adaptive reorganizing automaton. Image courtesy of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Archives.

However, perhaps the most potent issue to consider is that of legacy. How do we remember a career that did not leave behind a canonical trail? How do we fit the machine designed to illustrate a philosophical idea into a history of computing, or fit the plans for a city that can exist only in the imagination into a history of architecture? Von Foerster and Woods’s greatest accomplishments came in the form of ideas and spirit, of metaphors and what-ifs.

To say that Woods and von Foerster did not aspire to create real-world solutions would be false. Indeed, both men grappled with some of the most complicated and relevant topics in contemporary life. But von Foerster’s “machines” and Woods’s invented worlds are not artifacts of problems solved. They are open-ended heuristic tools, invented to aid exploration of large, complex issues. Designed to adapt to circumstance and to empower users, the objects that von Foerster and Woods produced are necessarily open. To deem this work a relic would not only be an injustice, but would also signal a fundamental misunderstanding. In his first monograph, OneFiveFour (1989), which he dedicated to Heinz von Foerster, Woods asks, “Are we prepared to construct an architecture without function, a way of life founded on continuous invention, the invention of reality?” Or, he asks, “will we deny the imperatives of these understandings and sink back into the illusory comforts of mere history?”

Thank you to my former UIUC professor Kevin Hamilton, who has made several projects about the BCL and who helped guide my research.

Daryl McCurdy is architecture and design department assistant at SFMOMA.

Follow the Lebbeus Woods, Architect series here.

photo: Dana Cohen

What’s your name?

[indecipherable but cute baby noises]

Eva’s mom: My name is Maralee B., and her name is Eva L., after Eva Hesse.

Where are you from?

[more indecipherable baby talk]

Eva’s mom: We live in the Mission in SF.

What brings you to SFMOMA today?

[Eva smiles]

Eva’s mom: Our SFMOMA trip was all about Eva. She played on the geometrical cushions in the Koret Center, then toddled over to the arts and crafts room to see all the time-themed dioramas, then with cautious excitement she crossed the see-through bridge on the top floor. And even though she is just 15 months, she has on all trips to the museum enjoyed the paintings and installations. Today, she particularly loved Murakami’s Supernova.

Al Wong, _Twin Peaks_, 1977; 16mm transferred to video, sound; 50 min.; photos: courtesy the artist; © Al Wong

Tanya Zimbardo: You received a grant in 1975 from the American Film Institute in association with the NEA to create Twin Peaks. How did the concept for the film develop?

Al Wong: It developed from making Same Difference (1975), filming my kitchen window over an entire year. I believe it was shown at SFMOMA [Exchange: DFW/SFO, 1976]. I had one person, Ursula Schneider, sitting there in a particular position so that while the sky and seasons are constantly changing, she appears to hardly be moving. We got so good at it that when I said it was time to shoot she was able to just hop right up to the table and fit right in, perfectly. She was so kind to help me with this. I had the camera literally gaffer-taped onto the floor so it wouldn’t move. We had to walk around it every time we went in the kitchen. I had to be very careful changing each roll of film. Terry Fox made the soundtrack by looking out my kitchen window and drawing his violin bow over the edge of a large bowl that he had found on Market Street. It was beautiful.

Same Difference made me really look at what was out there. I could see Twin Peaks through that window and wanted to get closer. It is a truly magical place. I’m sure you’ve seen the fog rolling down Twin Peaks like a volcano erupting. I slowly gathered material and started to see all the natural elements — the sky, the earth, the water in the distance. It was then obvious that I had to get the sound of the ocean. One of my favorite places is Baker Beach, so the soundtrack was recorded there. It has this wonderful, deep breathing that keeps changing. If you’ve meditated, you notice that your breathing changes, and if you try to make it consistent, you may be forcing it.

Al Wong, _Same Difference_ (still), 1975; 16mm film, color, sound; 17.5 min.; © Al Wong

TZ: There is a meditative quality to Twin Peaks, and you’ve often stated the importance of Zen Buddhism in relation to your later work. How did this film dovetail with your own meditation practice?

AW: I started meditation around 1969. Unconsciously though, I was choosing the balance of elements, the soundtrack, and when I would go shoot. The whole thing was intuitive.

TZ: The absence of any ambient or driving noise, and only the sound of the breaking waves, also reminded me of focusing on one’s own breathing rhythm or pulsating blood during silence. We’re directly observing the environment from within the moving vehicle, but I felt this sort of detachment and an auditory sensation that my attention was simultaneously turning inward. You’ve also mentioned the role of repetition and the unique feature of the figure-eight Twin Peaks Boulevard.

AW: Yes. It is like life. We go through this pattern all the time. It is a form of infinity — waking up, brushing our teeth, getting on the trolley. The infinity loop road representing this continuous pattern of life. There are certain sequences in the film where it appears that the parts of the road aren’t meeting and it isn’t a single road anymore. The road is shifting. Life is like that. It shifts and it makes you feel off-balance at times. You have trouble, and then you try to slip back in. And your breathing is still going.

TZ: Could you describe your technical setup within the van?

AW: I was driving. I had to maintain 15 mph. Behind me was a two-by-four with a camera clamped on it. I marked everything so if it moved I could place it back in the position. The camera was there for the whole year in the bus. For the splitting illusion in the window, I simply attached a black, matte cotton cloth right onto the center where the windshield has that divider. When I pulled the cloth back to the camera, I would block one side of the window and the camera would only record the other side and vice versa. You probably know this process, but as a filmmaker, you put the A roll and B roll together, then have it printed, and you take a look at what you have. You notice the two views sometimes appear to really be in sync, but it wasn’t intentional. I figured out the night shots by putting a marker on the tire so that every revolution of that marker, my left hand that is not on the steering wheel, could feel a particular point, pointing upward at 12 o’clock, which meant one revolution. At that marker I would expose the camera from one, two, or three seconds, counting verbally to myself. Then I would move one revolution. It took four hours to shoot 100 feet of film. It was kind of crazy because of the traffic, especially when I’m trying to get across the intersection. After the night sequence, the film comes to an end as the sun has risen and overexposes the film.

TZ: How often did you drive up there? Were you prompted by certain weather conditions?

AW: It varied. It depended on what material I already had. Other moments surprised me when I looked through the binoculars. I thought, I’ve never seen this before. I better go. Hopefully, I would get up there in time. I’m glad I had the binoculars because I had to feel like I was there, not just looking out from my kitchen in Potrero Hill at the time.

TZ: You also used the yearlong parameter for your installation Sunlight (1979). Could you describe that work? Did anyone experience it with you?

Al Wong, _Sunlight_, 1979; sunlight, frankincense smoke, mirrors, objects; Minna Street studio, San Francisco; © Al Wong

AW: The building at Minna Street and Fourth was from the Redevelopment Agency and had been a newspaper printing place and a dentist office. I pretty much blocked out everything from the windows and left a small opening where a mirror could be placed. That mirror would shoot a beam of light. For instance, a funnel would be turning around with a pie pan underneath it with magnets and frankincense. The magnets would help move the funnel in a gyration form. The incense created shapes when the light hit it. The funnel had small holes I had drilled in it. The first beam that comes in, where the funnel is, there was another mirror that shoots back to almost where the mirror in the window is that is capturing the first light from the sun. It was tilted, and another beam would shoot up to the ceiling. And then there was a fish-eye mirror that would open up or flare the light. With the smoke, it created a dome shape within that space. I was really pleased by that. I didn’t know what it was going to do.

Terry Fox would come over. We spent hours watching it. He was only a block away, and we would go back and forth looking at each other’s work. We did some interesting things just walking back and forth. Down from where the museum is now, there was a hotel that was abandoned because of a huge fire. Terry and I got in by climbing through a window from the roof of MOCA (Museum of Conceptual Art). It was almost like a museum of how people had lived there.

TZ: Tell me a bit about Corner  (1977), the double film projection of you and Stephen Laub in your Minna Street studio.

AW: The light from the windows was behind us. What we were trying to do was stay close to the wall and relate to the wall space. We would toss objects back to each other and tried to bend a big piece of board. Finally we move to each camera, rotate in opposite directions, and then go in the reverse direction. What happens when it is projected on the corner is that it appears that the images are merging or being swallowed up by the corner seam — sucked in or pushed back out. It was very sculptural.

TZ: I’m thinking of your use of the seam or dividing line in Twin Peaks during those out-of-sync moments when the two landscape views are colliding into each other.

AW: It’s true. I wasn’t aware of that.

Al Wong, _Corner_, 1977; double 16mm film projection on wall corner, black-and-white, silent; 16 min.; © Al Wong

TZ: In the 1970s there were several key figures here, such as Stephen Laub and Jim Melchert, primarily working at the intersection of performance and slide projection — a different time-based medium — in particular, sharing a similar interest with you in creating an interplay between real and filmed components. I’m wondering how much dialogue in general there was between artists and filmmakers about investigating nontraditional projection surfaces in the gallery context. It seems like you were involved with both a group of conceptual artists approaching projection often as an extension of photographic or sculptural concerns, as well as the experimental film community engaging with expanded cinema.

AW: I knew Jim. Stephen and I were friends, and I really loved his work. In terms of other people working with projection, perhaps the best answer was that there were different groups of people hanging out with their own groups, and they didn’t always know what the others were doing. When I was teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute, I taught for many years a class called “Alternative to Film” to encourage students to try to think outside of the box.

Page from _Four and Seven: 26 Artists/26 Days_, 1977;  San Francisco Art Institute, guest curated by Al Wong

TZ: One of my favorite experimental film catalogues is that pocket-size publication that was produced for the show Four and Seven that you guest curated in 1977 at SFAI. It featured a daily rotation of artists’ films, such as Anthony McCall’s solid-light film Line Describing a Cone (1973). In your introduction, you write: “The organization of this exhibition is an attempt to take film out of the movie theater format with its entertainment associations, preconceived barriers, and its limited audience — to become simply an equal medium used in the aesthetics of art. The work presented gives an overview of a range of possibilities involving film.”

AW: Anthony was using film in a nontraditional way. I chose a lot of others who generally didn’t identify as so-called filmmakers, but as artists. I was trying to demonstrate to the public that all of these people they knew would use film because their ideas needed that particular medium, but they were not necessarily caught up by the film medium or any other. They used the materials that were needed to make art. That was my motivation. A film showing in a gallery setting, not in the auditorium.

TZ: You’ve integrated your shadow and the silhouettes of other people in several film-based performances and installations. I’m thinking of the ephemeral figures in silhouette, including yourself, performing tasks or interacting with an actual object in the space. The illusion becomes grounded with an everyday item, a human figure, or the space itself. For example, the luminous paint-covered chair in Shadow and Chair (1979) or the spot-lit microphone in Moon Stand (1980).

L to R: Al Wong, _Shadow and Chair_, 1979; 16mm film installation, black-and-white, silent; 10.5 min.; 1981 performance at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. _Moon Stand_, 1980, 16mm film installation, black-white, sound; 14 min.; 1981 performance at Atholl McBean Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute; photo: Darryl Lee. © Al Wong

AW: Part of the reason why I used my own shadow was that in the early days — well, you don’t even know what I used to do with film! I used to have a whole crew of people in my Volkswagen, and costumes, you name it. It was a crazy party. I finally said I can’t do this for practical reasons. I am the perfect tool for this, and I am here. I’m glad I was able to evolve from a more traditional way.

When I’m doing zazen, usually I have my back toward the morning sun. It casts my shadow on the floor. That shadow brought about other work — for lack of a better word, film installation. It was there for so many years, and I started noticing how wonderful it looked and how much a part of reality it was in the space versus making a narrative movie. So when I’m doing zazen, I’m looking at it in some ways like a projection. Why not film this and project this? I feel it is like a residue of someone’s shadow or my own shadow. I could place it any environment that I wish. If I was projecting an image of myself instead of my shadow, it is more about the illusion of an image.

TZ: I believe that a major characteristic of the Bay Area in the 1980s was this exciting, proliferated activity of live cinema, performance, cinema sculptures, and related experimentation with camera obscura installations and mechanical apparatuses. If you take a few examples from 1984, for instance, you were in the group show Lite/Site/Projection at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, along with a few fellow SFAI colleagues, like Janis Crystal Lipzin and Tony Sinden. The multivenue Perforated, organized by SF Cinematheque, included a program series cosponsored at New Langton Arts, which featured your Moonlight, and other evenings of installations by Michael Rudnick, Jan Novello, among others. Philip Whalen (1981) was shown as part of the Polyphonix 8 festival copresented by SFMOMA, SFAI, and Intersection. Another example, SFMOMA’s SECA Film as Art Award broadened the criteria to include film-based installation and performance (1st prize: Michael Naimark). What are some of your recollections of work from that period?

AW: It bloomed and opened up. At the San Francisco Arts Commission what I did [Around the Gallery, 1984] was film from the street walking into the space, capturing what was in the show, and walking back out. I projected the loop onto a double glass mirror, so when it rotated the image would continue. The projector would project the loop onto a mirror, which had a motor attached to the ceiling, used for store displays, that I found at Goodwill. I had done a similar early mirror piece at the SFAI Annual (1976) that was presented that year on 16th Street, one artist every week. It was an image of me walking around the storefront that could fit into the space as it rotated. There were two storefront windows that I painted white to become like a screen. Imagine that the projection is fitting within one window and what is being projected is the room rotating and at a certain point also recording the rotation of the mirror.

Al Wong, _Light Clouds_, 1994; Ceramic frit marquee glass and Plexiglas lanterns, Fire Station #2, 1340 Powell Street, San Francisco; 42 x 7 feet; Commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission on behalf of the San Francisco Fire Department; © Al Wong

TZ: You made other pieces and organized group shows in storefront windows for an audience of passersby. Around that time you began site-specific public commissions and mixed-media installations. You applied paint to hardware netting to investigate various interrelationships and formal oppositions, the shift between the lights turning on and off, or the transition from daylight into evening. Figures disappearing with the light and revealed in the darkness. Your 1984 exhibition in the WorkSpace series at the New Museum refers to these works with netting as shadow or spatial drawings. It strikes me that they synthesize your training as a painter and your ideas of projection.

AW: Yes, both. I was thrilled that I didn’t need to use a projector anymore to get a shadow form. The film projector always used to bother me because the sound was distracting. There is of course movement with natural light because the sun is moving subtly. At the fire station [Light Clouds, 1994], sunlight comes into the canopy and casts light forms or changes because there is a cloud or fog. The forms appear and disappear again. It is similar to my recent works on paper that use back-lighting.

Al Wong, _Each Time I See You, I Feel It Could Be The Last Time_, 1966–86; acrylic on fiberglass netting, with table, tablecloth, aluminum cane, lighting, TV monitor, and color video with sound; 90 min.; 60 x 120 x 24 in. (152.4 x 304.8 x 61 cm); © Al Wong

TZ: Your 1988 show at the Whitney Museum of American Art featured several installations, including Each Time I See You, I Feel It Could Be the Last Time. A silhouette of your father, Willie Wong, is standing by a television set that plays your home movie-style footage spanning 1966 until his death in 1986. It is culled from hours of your film, video, and photos of your family. You also visited China to film where he had lived before he immigrated in 1917. How did you decide to start filming him and your stepmother? At what point did you know you wanted to turn it into a piece?

AW: A year before he died. I wanted to capture his shadow. I had him stand there. Normally I take a 35mm slide and shoot it from waist level. I draw the outline on paper and paint the netting on top. From the beginning, for my love of my father, I just wanted to record him. I just wanted to keep him, as a son who loved his parents. I shot many good events and difficult real-life situations.

I was late going to his little apartment. A one-room in Chinatown in a five-floor building; each floor might have maybe 30 or 40 rooms with no bathroom, only one down the hall. He had a sink and one hot plate. Because he was a chef and went to culinary school in Chicago, he made wonderful food for us on that one hot plate. I got there an hour and a half late. Pop had had a stroke. He was still holding his newspaper. After the funeral, I started writing notes in a journal about what happened. I recorded shining a flashlight on that page. That appears in the video.

Twin Peaks is dedicated to Pop and Laura.

Al Wong (b. 1939, San Francisco) lives and works in the Sunset district. He received his MFA in 1972 from the San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught from 1975 until his retirement in 2003. Wong began showing his films in 1967 before turning to film and mixed-media installation a decade later, and then to video and works on paper since the 1980s. Twin Peaks was featured in solo screenings at such venues as SFMOMA and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His work has been the subject of solo presentations at the Whitney Museum of American Art; Collective for Living Cinema; the New Museum; Millenium, New York; Mini Galeria, Zurich; Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, Philadelphia College of Art, Philadelphia; Gallery Tamura, Tokyo; Art/Tapes/22, Florence; SITE Inc., San Francisco, among others. Wong has participated in numerous national and international film festivals, group programs and exhibitions, including at the Instituto de Estudios Norteamericanos, Barcelona; Centro Columbo Americano, Medellin and Bogota, Colombia; Emily H. Davis Art Gallery, University of Ohio, Akron; Kuntsmuseum, Bern, Switzerland; Osaka Triennale 2001, Osaka, Japan; Filmmuseum, Vienna, Austria; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Asian American Film Festival; AIR Gallery, New York; Expo 67, Montreal; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; SFMOMA; de Young Museum; San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery; Capp Street Project; New Langton Arts; Eye Music; SF Cinematheque; Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; the Oakland Museum of California Art. He has been the recipient of awards from the Flintridge Foundation, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Rocky Mountain Film Center, National Endowment for the Arts, and American Film Institute.

]]> http://blog.sfmoma.org/2013/05/al-wong/feed/ 0 http://blog.sfmoma.org/2013/05/lw-jennifer-dunlop-fletcher/ http://blog.sfmoma.org/2013/05/lw-jennifer-dunlop-fletcher/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 16:00:09 +0000 Guest http://blog.sfmoma.org/?p=50799 Lebbeus Woods, Architect is on view at SFMOMA till June 2. Open Space is pleased to be hosting a series of posts on Woods’s work and legacy. Today, please welcome SFMOMA’s Assistant Curator of Architecture and design Jennifer Dunlop-Fletcher.

Lebbeus Woods and Conceptual Architecture, New York, 1970–85

In a 1971 essay, architect Peter Eisenman asked if conceptual architecture was possible. Eisenman was the founding director of the Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS), a small New York nonprofit organization that led the discussion on rethinking education, research, and theory in architecture and design from the late 1960s to the early 1980s through publications, critical debates, and exhibitions. Eisenman’s interest in conceptual architecture was focused on what he called a post-functional approach to form. He felt that it wasn’t architecture’s place to solve societal issues, and that the practice should focus on advancing formal concerns. But as Lebbeus Woods and others would demonstrate, Eisenman’s was not the only way of thinking about conceptual architecture.

One IAUS exhibition in 1976 included design proposals by Eisenman and architect Michael Graves alongside photographs by artist and “anarchitect” Gordon Matta-Clark. Matta-Clark’s Window Blow-Out (1976) featured a grid of vandalized windows in a housing project in the Bronx. The inclusion of this work dampened Eisenman’s conceptual torch with a dose of reality. Matta-Clark further emphasized the holes in the IAUS’s navel-gazing theory by sneaking in and shooting out the Institute’s windows.

Gordon Matta-Clark, _Window Blow-Out_, 1976; © 2013 Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

In my estimate, Lebbeus Woods picked up the question thrown before architecture theory in the 1970s. Woods’s practice from 1980 until early 2012, when he completed his first built structure, was entirely conceptual. His architecture existed in drawings, models, texts, and installations. It was a practice in deep conversation with those of other architects, much like Eisenman’s had been, but it also recognized and powerfully addressed the existing built environment.

Lebbeus Woods, _Untitled [War and Architecture, High Houses]_, 1993; graphite and colored pencil on board; Courtesy Aleksandra Wagner

Lower Manhattan was common ground for a backlash against corporate culture; the neighborhood housed the Mudd Club and CBGB’s, where New York’s punk and performance scene thrived, and was the site of the graffiti art movement led by Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It was in this setting that a small storefront gallery, appropriately titled Storefront for Art and Architecture, opened in 1983. The nonprofit, independent institution was founded by an artist and architect to foster discussion, experimentation, and reflection in art and design. Its first solo exhibition by an architect was Woods’s Centers: Three Public Building Projects, which opened in November 1984. It included three projects that challenged conventional urban grids and introduced the concept of centrality in designing public spaces. Woods’s work was included in eight Storefront exhibitions over the following 10 years.

Lebbeus Woods, _Three Public Building Projects_, 1984; Courtesy Storefront for Art and Architecture

While there had been similar conceptual movements in Europe, exhibitions like the ones at Storefront were part of a significant shift in the presentation and discussion of architecture in the United States. It was a moment of experimentation in unbuilt architecture and theory, and practitioners such as Woods, Diller + Scofidio, Neil Denari, Steven Holl, and Sanford Kwinter were actively exhibiting drawings or installations and writing about works that responded to a contemporary condition, instead of pursuing clients for built work. It was a badge of honor to operate outside the system of building codes and policies.

_Future of Storefront_, 1987; Courtesy Storefront for Art and Architecture

While many of the architects who presented conceptual projects at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in the 1980s and 1990s have since expanded their practice to include built work, Woods soldiered on in capitalism’s margins. Still, until his death in 2012, his work remained in dialogue with that of many of the architects I’ve mentioned, and he may have been awed at their courage at applying many of the ideas and theories that they had proposed on paper. After hearing Thom Mayne, Steven Holl, and Neil Denari speak about their relationships with Woods, I had the impression that no matter how far into building architecture each one ventured, they retained a deep appreciation for Woods’s ethical voice, which resonates in each of their projects.

Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher is acting department head/assistant curator of architecture and design at SFMOMA and co-curator, with Joseph Becker, of Lebbeus Woods, Architect.

Follow the Lebbeus Woods, Architect series here.

Tina Takemoto is an interdisciplinary writer, theorist, and performance artist whose work explores issues of illness, gender, race, and queer identity.