Opportunivores

http://five-titles.tumblr.com/

Mar.-Apr. 2012
A project initiated by Narrow Gauge involving a collaboration between Nayoungim & Gregory Mass, Asumi Mizuo, Layla TC, Jayme Yen, and Karen Zheng.
Dear Nayoungim, Gregory, Karen, and Asumi

We invite you to collaborate with us.

We’d like to create an exhibition in which a publication document becomes an integral component of the outcome. We’re interested in collapsing the entire creative process: the planning of the exhibition, the planning of the document, the exhibition, as well as the exchange of ideas and material between all participants.

The possibility for multiple representations of the artists being simultaneously present in the same space is another element of this framework that interests us.

Distance will be a necessary object and obstacle. The exhibition will be in Auckland. Layla, Karen, and Asumi are local. Jayme is in Seattle. Gregory and Nayoungim are in Seoul.

Let us know what you think, we’d be thrilled to have you as part of this project.

Layla and Jayme


Tumbler conversation
Questions and Answers:

Re: the physical relationship between the two halves of your work (the fruits and the jars): When you say they should be on opposite walls (and ‘a little distance is no problem’) do you mean that they could be on opposite ends of the room, with Karen’s work in-between them, or on two walls with nothing between them?

Gregory S. Maass & Nayoungim: We do not exactly know how Karen’s maze looks and functions in reality. Just in order not to confuse anybody we prefer to have a visual connection between the 2 parts of the installation, with not so much physically in between them. The 2 parts are translated reflections of each other. The chained and pierced fruits and vegetables represent a transfer from the fruit jars with labels of an let’s say unsufferable personality. The whole installation is quite intimate, but also detached, if that makes sense. The audience passes in between these two poles.

Is your method of working on this show different than what you’re used to? We mean, specifically, the fact you’ve sent us materials and instructions, but are not present yourself to install the work. How has this experience been for you so far?

GSM & N: The experience is good! Things have been very hands-on, that’s how we like it. There is only so much control one has about one’s art. Often it is pitifully little. How the audience perceives it, how it is set-up, what happens to it in the future. We counted the situation (a very long distance between us and the artwork) in, when we developed the idea, and most of the material aspects of the actual production were under our scrutiny. I mean the things were specially conceived to work properly in a long-distance relation.

You’ve said before that you consider titles works of art in and of themselves. What process did you go through to come up with the title ‘opportunivore’?

GSM & N: I like to think of the title as something which amplifies the installation. The origin is in this case fully retraceable. It is a part of an introduction to “Nature’s Spoils” by Burkhard Bilger a New Yorker writer, about edible rot from 2010, with dumpster-diving, road kill-eating “opportunivores” standing in for Benedictine sisters. A text about fermentation and food safety. “Opportunivores” relates reasonably well to the visual topic of the installation: preservation, personality, the industrial production chain and so forth.

Questions for Nayoungim & Gregory
Re: the physical relationship between the two halves of your work (the fruits and the jars): When you say they should be on opposite walls (and ‘a little distance is no problem’) do you mean that they could be on opposite ends of the room, with Karen’s work in-between them, or on two walls with nothing between them?

Is your method of working on this show different than what you’re used to? We mean, specifically, the fact you’ve sent us materials and instructions, but are not present yourself to install the work. How has this experience been for you so far?

You’ve said before that you consider titles works of art in and of themselves. What process did you go through to come up with the title ‘Opportunivore’?


Jar Shelves
Drawn by Layla and Jayme