“Urbanisms of Risk: Economies of
Technology, War and World in Art, Architecture
and The City” is based on the premise
that the city transgresses the boundaries
of the physical: moving beyond the material
city of the long-dead Main Street to the
virtual polis of the television, cell phone
and internet. This multi-media exhibition
includes paintings, sculptural installation,
photography, video and architectural and
urban schemas. Artists participating include
Jason Archer, Paul Beck, Richie Budd, Nan
Coulter, Alex de Leon, Amy Drezner, Ken
Little, Ana Miljacki, Laray Polk and John
Pomara. Curated by Charissa Terranova.
From the Curator…
Risk and the city constitute an age-old
dyad. Theirs is a dialectic in which the
forces of war, defense and trade give rise
to protective ways of living together, from
the cardo and decamanus formations of antiquity
to the star-shaped fortifications of Filarete
and Michelangelo to the Eisenhower-driven
decentralization of the American city in
the postwar era. Yet, even prior to the
rise of the city, risk is located within
the rudiments of land valuation, the very
moment that earth becomes domesticated and
rationalized, when nature becomes that which
is owned. Certainly this was the case long
ago when one risked life and limb, family
name and crest, in order to win the bounty
of land. In our own world the forces of
risk constitute the warp and weft of all
investment. Land speculation and development
are based on the careful calculation of
risk. One’s ability to make what have
been constructed as some of the most seminal
if not meaningful purchases, the acquisition
of talismanic stuff such as the car and
home, depend on the amount of risk involved
in the exchange. Can the bank handle the
risk of lending the money? What is the longevity
of this potential car- or homeowner? Do
you have the proper health insurance, homeowner’s
insurance or car insurance? Are you risk
free? Are you debt free?
The logic of “risk” is indeed
complex and many-headed. The term can refer
to forces bearing immediate destruction
or those that are merely potentially destructive,
equally the threat of belligerent infiltration
as well as the dalliance of twirling quarters
in the slots. In recent times, the subject
of risk has evolved into a full-fledged
discourse known as “risk theory.”
Writers such as Anthony Giddens, Scott Lash
and Ulrich Beck have given form to a new
descriptive ontology – a means by
which to explain and understand the political
economy of the world in which we live. Risk
theory, for these thinkers, explains a world
characterized by ever-increasing self-reliance
brought on by a rise in the number of global
participants. Risk theory helps us to understand
how it is to live in a world where the support
of the state, what we once simplistically
understood in terms of government, welfare
and regulation, shifts and transforms in
order to compete with diverse non-state
actors – corporate, terrorist and
otherwise.
To couple “risk” with the
plural noun “urbanisms” is to
remind that, far from being sheerly economic
in nature, risk registers in matter as urban
form. In turn, the term “urbanisms”
reinforces the plural sense of the city
in the present– that urban exchange
occurs in the liminal zone of the digital
and invisible. Urbanisms of Risk is premised
on a notion of the city that transgresses
the boundaries of the physical: moving beyond
the physical city of the long-dead Main
Street to the virtual polis of the television,
cell phone, and internet.
Urbanisms of Risk: Economies of Technology,
War, and World in Art, Architecture, and
the City is a show that seeks not just representations
but embodiments of our current condition
of risk. The show gives form to what the
sociologist Ulrich Beck has called a "risk
society" – a social condition
in which a new phase of modern logic has
brought forth a world of greater connection
and less security, what evinces itself according
to the "post": post-industrial,
post-fordist, post-Keynesian and post-traditional.
It is a multi-media show with embodiments
in the form of paintings, sculptural installation,
photography, video and architectural and
urban schemas.
About the Artists…
Native Texans, Jason Archer and Paul Beck
are visual artists and Grammy winning directors.
They have combined their talents to complete
a series of socio-political films, artworks
and a several music videos. The film list
includes The State of the Union and The
Homeland Hodown which was chosen to be included
in the British band Radiohead’s TV
DVD. Other shorts include Kenny and Jesse.
They directed and animated Molotov's Frijolero
which garnered them a Video of the Year
award by MTVLA and a Latin Grammy award
for Best Music Video. Other videos include
La Paga for Juanes featuring the Black Eyed
Peas, David Byrne's The Great Intoxication,
and Molotov's Hit Me. Both worked on Richard
Linklater's Waking Life.
Richie Budd is currently pursuing an MFA
at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
He has had two solo shows in San Antonio,
one at Gallery 4, Blue Star Contemporary
Art Center and another, Meta-Melt, at Gallery
E, University of Texas. He has also shown
in his work in numerous group shows.
Nan Coulter was born in Detroit in 1943
and studied photography and art history
at Southern Methodist University in Dallas
(1980-1983). She began working as a photographer
in 1983. Her work has appeared in The Dallas
Morning News, The New York Times and The
Boston Globe. She has had solo exhibitions
at the Cleveland Museum of Art and The Carpenter
Center for Visual Arts at Harvard University
where her work is included in their permanent
collection. She lives in Dallas.
Alex de Leon was born in Edinburg Texas
in 1959 and grew up in San Antonio. After
graduating from the Kansas City Art Institute
in 1983 he returned to San Antonio. With
a degree in screen-printing he established
himself as a professional printer. As a
counterbalance to the daily grind, he created
art from personal experiences that made
pointed social commentaries. The graphic
quality of this work made the art accessible
to a broad and diverse audience. He now
works in media other than the printed image.
Most recently he has concentrated his efforts
in ceramics and painting. Even though the
media have changed, he continues to make
social commentaries through his work. His
latest pieces combine sculpture and video.
Homelessness is at the heart of this latest
work.
Amy Drezner has received grants for her
work from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation,
NYC, AMI NYC, The Colman Foundation of Boston
University; NEA/Massachusetts Arts Lottery
Grant, Art Council Grant; Petit Fellowship
grants UCLA. Drezner has received two UCLA
Regents Fellowships from the Graduate Department
of Fine Art 1994, and the Department of
Architecture + Urban Design where she received
her Masters degree in architecture in 2002.
Drezner's work has been included in such
exhibitions as Site Sante Fe, The Santa
Monica Museum of Art, Marc Foxx Gallery
Los Angeles, Lance Fung Gallery NYC. Drezner's
work is in many permanent collections including
MIT's List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge
MA, Brandeis University, MA, The Peter Norton
Collection, Los Angeles, CA, and California
State University. She is currently a practicing
architect in Los Angeles.
Ken Little has been a Professor of Art
at the University of Texas at San Antonio
since 1988. He received an MFA from the
University of Utah in 1972 and has maintained
an active national profile as an exhibiting
and reviewed sculptor for over thirty years.
His work has been featured in over 35 one-person
exhibitions and over 200 group exhibitions.
Little has been the recipient of many prizes,
honors, and grants including two major individual
Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment
for the Arts in 1982 and 1988. During 2003,
Little received the Presidents Award for
Outstanding Creative Achievement from UTSA.
A major retrospective exhibition of Little’s
work opened at the galleries of the Southwest
School of Art and Craft in June of 2003
and has since traveled. A sixty-four-page
catalog with essays by Kay Whitney and Dave
Hickey is available from the Southwest School
of Art and Craft in San Antonio. Professor
Little is continuing his work with a broad
range of sculptural processes. His artist’s
web site is found at www.kenlittle.com.
Ana Miljacki was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
She left the country in 1991, just as the
decade of the Balkan wars was beginning.
Her first stop-motion animation was screened
at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts in 1998.
Since then, her animations have been screened
in Boston within the Balagan Experimental
Film Series and in both the New England
Film Festival and the Boston Underground
Film Festival and in several programs organized
by Low Fi in Belgrade, Serbia. Her current
projects include curating and designing
a video installation dedicated to communist
parades and the events of 1989 as part of
Bruno Latour's exhibit "Making Things
Public" at the ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany.
She is also researching, photographing,
and designing a documentary exhibit entitled
"The Architects of Our Happiness,"
on the current state of the housing stock
in the former Eastern Bloc, at the University
of Michigan, with Lee Moreau, Luke Bulman
and Kimberly Shoemake. Miljacki is a PhD
candidate in Architectural Theory and History
at the Harvard Graduate School of Design
and is a partner in the New York based architecture
firm Project Open. She currently teaches
architecture at Columbia University.
Laray Polk is a multi-media artist and
political writer. She currently lives in
Dallas, Texas. She has recently completed
her first book, Gaza Zoo. An exhibit based
on this book ran from August 27- September
25 of this year at UTD. Polk received her
MA and MFA from the University of Texas
at Dallas. Research for various projects
have included travel to the Navajo Nation
to interview Code Talkers, the Cornell Library
to view Cambodian palm leaf manuscripts
with Sos Kem, and the Yucatan Peninsula
to interact with the Maya communities in
the Calakmul Rain forest.
John Pomara received his BFA from East
Texas State University in Commerce in 1978
and completed his MFA there, in conjunction
with the Studio Arts Program at Empire State
University in New York City, in 1980. Described
as a new abstractionist painter, Pomara
combines a digitally inspired visual language
with image repetition to reference technology
and mass media production. His process-oriented
paintings have been exhibited widely throughout
the world over the past ten years. In 2001,
he was featured in a solo exhibition, Solo
Concentrations, at the Dallas Museum of
Art. Pomara has participated in many group
shows, including one at the Contemporary
Museum in Korea. His current work is conceptual
abstraction featuring a connection to media
culture and computers. For this show, he
created large scale digital photographs
that deal with architecture. Pomara has
been a faculty member at the University
of Texas at Dallas for seven years. |
