PostGlass Video Festival will be screened at GAS Conference 2011

We are very excited to announce that the Post-Glass Video Festival will be presented at Glass Art Society(GAS) Annual Conference in Seattle, WA this coming June. The Post-Glass Video Festival will be screened as a part of Glass Theater.

Glass Theater at GAS Conference

Venue: Washington State Convention Center, 4C-1

Hours: 8am-5pm, Friday and Saturday, June 3 and 4

Screening time for Post-Glass Video Festival

6/3(Fri) 8am

6/4(Sat) 9am

Other featured films include:

A Not So Still Life - a documentary on the life and work of artist Ginny Ruffner

The Space of Light - a documentary on the life and work of Jaroslava Brychtova

Chifuly at the Salk, Chifuly Fire & Light

I was Dreaming of Spirit Animals - Cappy Thompson's film

Glass Art Society Annual Conference 2011

Date: 6/1(Wed)-6/5(Sun), 2011

Location: Seattle, WA, USA multiple venues in downtown area

To find more information about the conference, please visit GAS website:

http://www.glassart.org/2011_Seattle_WA.html

Deadline extended for "Call for Curators"

The submission deadline for "Call for Curators" is extended until March 1st, 2011.

For more information and guideline, please see the previous post:

http://howisthisglass.blogspot.com/2010/12/call-for-curators.html

Call For Conversation

Call For Conversation

Deadline: ongoing

h o w i s t h i s g l a s s ? project offers a platform for post-glass artists to share and exchange ideas

about their studio practices through constructive dialogues. We look for information about existing work or project you're currently working on. The outcome of the "conversation" will vary, such as featuring your work on our blog, or providing feedback to help developing your project.

To get involved:

Please contact us via email: yukanjali@gmail.com.

Indicate "call for conversation" on the subject line.

Make sure to provide brief information including the following:

*How you heard about "how is this glass?"

*Your artistic background

*How you see your work related to "post-glass" ism

*Your work information. This could be link to your website, online video, jpeg images as attachment etc. If you are submitting work in progress, please specify what kind of interaction you expect from the conversation.

The entries will be reviewed on rolling basis, and we will contact you to follow up.

Post-Glass Video Festival at Ausglass . Sydney College of Art

The Post-Glass Video Festival was screened at the Sydney College of Art during Peripheral Visions, the Ausglass conference, from Jan 20-23, 2011. Even though the video installations were unable to travel down under, the largest component of the festival, its single channel video loop, was well-received by the audience - conference attendees who spanned the gamut of artists, curators, students, collectors, gallerists and educators. The sensitivity, intelligence and fresh eyes of the artists did not go unnoticed: the diversity in vocabulary, content and insight provided by the works were appreciated and evoked strong responses from many who we met.

The screening was accompanied by the festival's catalogs as well as a lecture and Q&A session. The latter focussed on post-glass-ism, the 4 themes emerging across various works in the video festival and the future of the howisthisglass project, especially with regards to creating opportunities for artists. The festival in this way, created a valuable platform, to host a much-needed conversation.

There is a possibility that the festival will return to the city at a new venue later this year but for now, at the request of several blog followers and artists, here are some pictures of the venue and the gallery. We will post details pertaining to specific conversations that emerged at this conference soon.

PGVF@ AUS Glass Conference 20-23 Jan. 2011

We're excited to announce that The Post-Glass Video Festival is now presented in Australia.

The screenings of the video will be held at Sydney College of the Arts throughout the duration of AUS Glass Conference 2011.

For more information, please visit AUS Glass website:

http://www.peripheralvision.org.au/the-post-glass-video-festival.html

HYPEROPIA PROJECTS

Hyperopia Project is a collaborative team comprised of artists Helen Lee, Alexander Rosenberg, and Matthew Szösz. Though being educated in a material-specific program, their multi-disciplinary art practices do not comfortably fit into one genre. Glass is a material they all have in common, but rathe than using well-established glass art vocabularies they venture to experiment with a state of "superposition" for opening up new possibilities of glass in the contemporary art world at large.

Hyperopia Project has recently launched an open call for a group exhibit, Superposition which will be hosted by the Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle in June 2011. More information can be viewed on their project's website.

http://hyperopiaprojects.com/index.html

CALL FOR CURATORS

Call For Curators
Deadline to submit proposal : Jan 31, 2011
Format and timeline : variable

h o w i s t h i s g l a s s ? is an ongoing initiative that identifies and profiles new,alternative ways of working with glass. Thus far, the project’s blog and exhibition series have successfully highlighted works by post-glass artists;
ventures that speak about glass using vocabularies unexpected in the studio glass tradition : guerilla intervention, performance, digital technology. Still a nebulous trend in the contemporary glass art scene, our efforts aim to sustain this attention as the number of post-glass artists is growing.

In pursuit of active discussions about post-glass-ism, we invite curators who are interested in studying and furthering its scope. We hope to democratize the voice of post-glass, whose expanded definition and implications will be formed by the submissions received, through a network of peer voices rather than a single proprietary or critical authority. We see the curator as a “content specialist”, someone who establishes and develops information based on observation, insight and research. We are seeking innovative and critical perspectives on the phenomenology, materiality or social/personal experience of glass. Your concept must stem from either the direct (non-)experience of glass or an active investigation of specific issues and cultural connotations. In all cases, the research must call for and be manifest only through a new articulation.

For example, you may wish to record evidence of post-glass experiments hidden within conventional studio glass over the past 50 years. Perhaps you envision an exhibition that features conceptual work made by the intense pursuits of material-based artists. Maybe you feel strongly about redefining the notion of craftsmanship in light of emergent, interactive technologies. Performative acts based on the phenomena of light may be of interest to you. Or perhaps you wish to scour popular literature and lyrics to assimilate a rich dictionary of cultural metaphors associated with glass.

The topic of interest lies wide open as evident above. The expression of your research may be varied: an exhibition, a publication, a forum, a film, audio recordings, or other public events.... The outcome may be unique, insightful, critical,poetic or entertaining. You need not be a glass artist or curator to submit. If your investigation explores the main premise of the the post-glass initiative, we would like to hear from you. In turn, we offer h o w i s t h i s g l a s s ? as an open source platform for bringing attention to wider post-glass ideas.


To submit:
Please email yukanjali@gmail.com with a letter of interest that introduces your project. In the main body of the email, include a brief outline (up to 250 words) of your proposal : intent, concept, nature of working relationship being sought and outcome. Do not forget to list full contact information at the bottom of your email.
As attachments (pdf or doc), please describe the proposed research in greater detail - content, components, timeline, funding, methodology and outcomes. Basically, tell us what you envision the project as and how you intend to make it happen. Please include your resume. You may also attach media as needed, less than 10MB. Please label all attachments as follows: yourlastname_mediatype_number.fileformat (eg.genius_video_03.mov for the third movie clip sent by Jane Genius in support of her proposal).
Please note that as the initiator, you will be responsible for the vision, funding and execution of your proposed project. We provide the springboard, an umbrella of peer support and attention, and will contact you to discuss the possibilities and exact terms of a formal relationship with h o w i s t h i s g l a s s ? depending on the nature of your project.

Atta Kim: Parthenon for 96 Hours

Installations in the gallery

Brett Swenson "Dreamcast"

Installations in the gallery

Arun Sharma "(de)composition:self portrait"

Installations in the gallery

Sarah Rose Allen "cup"

Installations in the gallery

Charlotte Potter "The Opposite of Mitosis"

Installations in the gallery

Netta Bacon "Pack"

The Post Glass Video Festival opens at Heller Gallery

[Theme] On Breaking :

Post-glass artists appear to be enjoying broken glass. They undertake tasks to either break glass or make from a destroyed object. In doing so, they challenge certain fundamental notions about object-hood and our interactions therewith :

* When an object breaks, it has failed. Glass is termed fragile, and often shied away from, for this reason. * We are particularly fearful of broken glass, as it cuts deep, silently. The sound and sight of glass - crunching, shattering, grinding, imploding - is disconcerting to most people and reminds them of the dangers posed. * Breaking things is not acceptable, socially. Considered the projection of either inattentive or self-destructive human nature onto an object, surface, person or external situation, the gesture is frowned upon, if not punished. Breaking is a sign of aggression or clumsiness.

The urge for post-glass artists to work with broken glass may stem from the desire to :
* Transcend the static, pristine and cold nature of the finished object (as is customary in studio glass history) by using it (the object) as a starting point for making. * Focus on properties of the material instead of creation of a form. And finding new form from that process. * Partake in the politics and associations that the act of breaking brings about in a way that conventional glass culture does not.

There is an interest to engage moments that vanish quickly in the self-containment of glass objects. The act of destroying the object is a gesture that has no creative place in studio glass even though it is an integral part of the making process. Since video has the ability to capture such moments accurately, a number of artists, many featured on this blog, are using video to focus on the breakable nature of glass.

For example, a part of The Post-Glass Video Festival, Alana Kakoyiannis's Untitled cloaks the aggression that is needed to break a Pyrex dish in a sink. And when confronted with a shattered object the viewer is forced, rudely, to comprehend and reconstruct in her mind, the undisputed presence of that force.

Kimberly McKinnis tests the viewer's endurance of aggression that assumes the form of slow, non-vocal and painstaking destruction. The incessant grinding of glass against harsh concrete in Untitled: The Shape of an Emotion II as a beer bottle is transformed to dust is reminiscent of someone grinding their teeth in pain.

Brett Swenson's Execution begins a game of expectancy with the viewer as bullets of heat impact a clear glass surface : At what point will the glass break? What happens to the man behind the glass when it breaks?

Unlike these other works that exploit our perception of "breaking" to tell their story, Giuseppe Di Bella's puzzle-like reconstruction of a broken milk bottle in Healing reverses the object's fate and in turn, assimilates a space within which the viewer can reflect. His gesture in the video is one of tender care - patient, calm and painstaking. It speaks of catharsis.

In ways such as the above, but not limited to, post-glass artists ask : Hot glass forms, Cold glass breaks. Why not engage it? And in turn, they are seeking meaning in the destruction of a glass object.

[Theme] Of Body and Performance :

Post-Glass artists seem to be using their bodies to create works in which performative acts create intimate relationships with the physicality or metaphor of glass. This is yet another outcome of the interest to engage moments that vanish quickly in the self-containment of objects. Since video has the ability to capture such moments accurately, an intense questioning of the human body in relation to glass spills over to experiments of process in video as seen amongst artists who are part of The Post-Glass Video Festival 2010.

In The Only Thing You Can Count On Is Your Family, Andrew Salgado uses the metaphorical space of the mirror to reflect an image of the Other or monstrous. In a narrative that is very personal, and before our eyes, he transforms from what is socially and familially acceptable to what is not, what is questionable, alienated, disapproved and perhaps despised by some. By applying changes to his own body, the Other is revealed as but one of two sides of the same coin, the coin being the Self.

(de)composition: self-portrait is a meditative and profound consideration in which Arun Sharma observes the slow erosion of the human body into a haze of dust. Destruction of the substance of an earthen human form causes its surroundings, water in the box, to be full of the substance.The firmness rendered by the opacity of the medium means the absence of an object within it. Through a visual representation of the breakdown of the human form, Sharma's questions run deep : How does entropy occur in a human body? Does the invisibility mean that it is dying?

Andrea Oleniczak's Orange Tree shows the artist on a ladder, filling the arms of a tree with clear glass oranges that contain fresh orange juice. Her act leaves behind an image of the city with a fruitful tree, in contrast to the original cold, barren and colorless scenery. What is invisible to us in a traditional still life or landscape painting - breeze whistling through trees, leaves fluttering on the ground, human intervention in landscape - are made visible through her physical presence as we are witness to her process and hopeful gesture.

Alexandra Ben Abba uses fire from molten glass as her scissor, burning her hair to achieve the desired length and style in Glass Haircut. An awkward yet tantalizing choreography of what would otherwise be mundane and normal, Ben Abba ia an example of an interesting undercurrent to this theme : a significant number of artists, many featured on this blog since 2009, subject their bodies to "strange interactions" with glass... Other examples of this trend include: Solange Ledwith wraps her body, cloaked in wet newspaper, with hot glass strands. Maria del Carmen Montoya and Naomi Kaly experience glass powder as make-up on the face. Suzanne Peck attempts to swim with glass floats around her arms. Carrie McIlwain submerges herself in a bathtub filled with glass shards. Charlotte Potter tries to heal her glassblowing scars by licking them like an animal..... In all cases, the works that investigate the body in this realm of endurance or discomfort are made by women.

The question follows: why do women have the tendency to do weird things with hot glass and their body ? is it mere coincidence? Or is it because they are more aware and engaged in the politics of the body in contemporary society? Such work may also stem from counteraction to the mostly male-dominated glassblowing world. Traditionally, the demonstration of virtuoso and machismo (i.e making heavy and big objects or showing off technical expertise) marks hot glass-working. Is the work we are witnessing by women post-glass artists a divergent and reasonable way to explore the material while addressing the issues of body using hot glass through feminine acts?

[Theme] Of Perceptual Experience :

A significant number of works in The Post-Glass Video Festival use glass as a medium or tool - a lens, screen or mirror - to contemplate upon spaces and to alter our perception of them.

Like most non-glass makers, Ted Sonnenschein's relationship to glass as a material is defined by its presence in everyday objects, frequently mirrors and windows. A moving train, as Sonnenschein has discovered, indulges various optical activities simultaneously. It is a vantage point, a lens or conduit for light to pass through, a projection or reception screen. Keenly experiencing these aspects during his daily commutes, the commonplace yet unique perspective Sonnenschein adopts in this work presents the train as an object he is contained in as well as a device that captures moving image. In 6 Views of Berlin, he describes a "screen" as a hybrid between mirror and window.

Rui Sasaki's I eye I, in turn, focuses on the human eye, whose surface reflects the object it sees, but also absorbs the image. The mind in turn, becomes a sort of projection screen and its space, a camera obscura that receives an vision from outside its chamber. In this sense, our body's native video camera, the eye, brings the world that is external to our bodies, within it.

Heightened by Emer Lynch is a quiet and playful exploration of the similitude between water and glass, both clear and colorless. Floating glass objects on the surface of a water body act as lenses to pebbles that lie underneath while the water itself acts as a mirror, brining to earth the sky. Sometimes, this behavior is flipped around. At other times, interference patterns are generated between both materials. In such ways, the work explores perceptual experience through flirtations between illusion and substance.

Preview and Guide uses the Festival of Britain (FB) as an example of flowing visuality to present exactly the opposite nature of history and its consequent present. Matthew MacKisack uses the transparency of glass to present the opacity of history. In the layering of images, we see the marks of time, instead of its flow. Glass, here, has the illusory capacity to look back through time while video helps the artist do so fluidly, without friction, only to realize that a history, or the ideas it proposed, are not fluid.

Sarah Rose Allen's cup animates bubbles in the simple gesture of pouring. It attends to the movement of air during the creation of bubbles in a transparent medium, a moment that is lost when the phenomena is frozen into the glass object, and visits an overlooked gesture in the most transparent way possible : a clear medium in a clear object with neither in physical form.

The projection of one's self-image onto a copy of that image only to be confronted with a non-ideal, problematic or different one is a notion several post-glass video artists seem attracted to. This blog has already discussed the Lacanian perspective of the mirror, as well as the mirror presenting the Other. Breet Swenson does something different: he presents our understanding of the mirror as a lens that filters info and projects it, transmits it into space. In Dreamcast, the reflection of self-image (its mirror copy) is actually a clear, sculpted glass face superimposed with a digital video portrait of the same face. It is thus, subject to distortions due to transmission of light, causing the evolving image of a human is trapped and mutating within his static, ideal portrait.

As post-glass artists find ways to subvert conventional perceptions of mirror, lens, screen, video, glass..... we imagine these terms will be redefined using more complex vocabularies.

[Theme] As Membrane :

A membrane is essentially a selective barrier-cum-passage. Our skin is a membrane : it covers and demarks our physical entity like a protective case. At the same time, it allows us to absorb the outer world into our bodies. Its pores and cells provide us access to the atmosphere and one another in ways that make us feel connected to the environment around us. The Post-Glass Video Festival features some works that explore various surface techniques and layering processes to speak about the membranous qualities of glass.

Table by Betsy Dadd is stop frame animation that is generated from oil painting on glass. While thematically centered around acts at a table, the animation is just as much about the materiality of glass that allows mutating images on its surface. Glass, as a membrane that offers no texture of its own is the perfect substrate or canvas. The subjects in Dadd's paintings move and flow, meld and erase as the pigment slides on the smooth surface of glass. The work inspires unadulterated joy of an image being formed and dissolved at front of our eyes.

In Compound Focus, a series of video portraits shot through a slab of dapple-textured glass by Emma Hogarth, an interesting flip of technological sensibility occurs. She transfers the effect of a still camera to the context of a moving image. The result is a painterly effect in which the subjects move very slowly and the slight shifts in light are transmitted through the glass membrane cum lens cum filter.

Netta Bacon's Pack imparts the human hand a quality of glass by printing on transparent paper. This is merged with the appearance of the glass glove that is transparent in its materiality. By thinking of glass as a membrane, the artist captures the body within an object (glove) only to exceed its boundaries like a ghost. A single image, yet layered. In both, material and metaphorical play of transparency.

Kevin Kay uses the transparency of glass in a different manner: he plays with antiquated technologies. In Untitled, membranes of tracing paper, the glass of the TV monitor, the image being played and VCR feedback vary the level of opacity from the re-shot projection. By treating this range of glass-based or glass-like "materials" as membranes that allow other images to seep through their surfaces, he constructs a complex, layered, abstract image, a collage in flux.

BMB (can't say goodbye) by Armel Hostiou is unique in this festival for the way in which it shift the perception of glass' invisible hardness : as a one-way membrane, a secret limit that can be passed in one direction but not in the other. Hostiou uses glass, breath and water to speak of invisible barriers such as the emotion of feeling trapped, or more simply, time, as a filter for matters or actions one way but not backwards. This one-way membrane of glass weaves doubt between absence and presence to represent two states of mind, time or situation.

In contrast is The Opposite of Mitosis by Charlotte Potter, which explores the dynamic space of fusion where two fluid entities meet and meld together. Enacted through the coming together of the shadows of two molten glass bubbles, the work specifically deals with push-and-pull interactions at the common membrane. Viewed in a petridish on a steel table, the installation uses a choreographed membrane of glass to engage the psychological space of fusion, one that neither always identical nor regulated.

As seen above, post-glass artists are sensitive to the material and optical properties of glass that lend themselves to being treated as a membrane in many ways.

Exhibiting Artist : Andrea Oleniczak

In the age where digital photo frames are commonplace, the notion of a "video still life" only makes sense. The intent is poetic : the portrayal of a seemingly still landscape, knowing that no moment is still as the one preceding or succeeding it. The video begins with a still of a budding tree on Belle Isle and the skyline of Detroit behind it. Using a ladder, the artist fills the arms of this tree with clear glass oranges that contain fresh orange juice, leaving behind an image of the city with a fruitful tree.

Orange Tree is a nostalgic rendition of the notion of a still image in which, conventionally, time seemed to freeze up. In the video, what is invisible to us in a traditional still life or landscape painting - breeze whistling through trees, leaves fluttering on the ground, etc - are made visible to us in the frame of video. Here, the clouds pass. We see the painstaking and time-consuming process of placing objects in the landscape. The beautiful oxymoron lies in the impression of a still image despite all of this.

The addition of oranges - bright colored, tangy, juicy fruit - to the otherwise bland, bare and cold scenery speak s to a different kind of association in the artist's mind : " Detroit is a city of abandonment; abandoned production, homes, schools and industry....(I) create a more fruitful image of Detroit." Of course, the oranges are not real oranges that will perish. They are glass objects and will remain. They hung on the tree like Christmas balls, which they are not. They resemble fruit, signs of eternal hope and optimism in a colorless landscape. They, along with their smell, give the passerby (of the landscape) the opportunity to ponder their presence, in a way different from holiday decoration or plant growth.

As is common to post-glass artists, all this trouble is undertaken to create a few moments of experience. The glass oranges are recycled to become something else. The passerby is gone with a refreshed mind. And the viewer of the episode is left with the image of a fruitful tree in her mind. The investment here, like many post-glass artists, is in time, not in object.

Exhibiting Artist : Sarah Rose Allen

Sarah Rose Allen's interest in poetic and visceral moments held within mundane acts is evident in her video installation, cup. The work animates bubbles in the simple gesture of pouring.

Studio glass is not unfamiliar with the inclusion of bubbles in glass. In fact, it is an integral part / concern to the medium's vocabulary. While many artists take extraordinary pains to avoid and remove bubbles that may be seen as aesthetically problematic, others make works out of placing bubbles intentionally within glass to create specific optical and formal effects. Either way, the dynamism of introducing bubbles and the movement of air during their creation is lost when the phenomena is frozen into the glass object.


Allen's video focusses on precisely those moments by keeping the constant creation and disappearance of bubbles alive. By a clever strategy, the cup is always only half-full, never overflowing, causing the act to never have to end. The video projection is installed in the darkened space of a closet, sometimes an alcove or corridor end, always an incidental space where the encounter of the virtual object and its phenomenon is a discovery.

The relationship between glass and video is of an interesting nature: Glass is a good memory-keeper of marks that were left behind, of ephemeral moments. But since it records time in invisible ways, it shows no memory of the act itself. Digital video on the other hand, is an excellent and accessible medium for capturing those moments, the details that are lost to a static entity of sculpture.

From the works of post-glass artists, it seems that the study of fundamental processes and appreciation for vision is leading to the use of video because it picks up where the self-contained object fails. Keeping its integrity of attending to a mundane, ephemeral moment that we encounter frequently, cup uses the ability of video to capture an overlooked gesture in the most transparent way possible : a clear medium in a clear object with neither in physical form.