Artist: A. BONNEL

Project Title: MAKING MR. SOFTEE

Size: APPROX 4’ X 5’ PROJECTION

Cost: $1.75 PER CONE AFTER THE FIRST 100 CONES

Medium: INTERACTIVE PERFORMANCE VIDEO

Ingredients: VOLUNTEERS/ICE CREAM CONES

Bio:

A. BONNEL is a Brooklyn-based artist working primarily with video. She conceives each project as a singularity that can be presented in a number of ways i.e. installation, performance, etc., depending on environment. Her subjects are diverse and sometimes reactive whether it is to other artworks or to ideologies. Thematically, she explores fantasies of death, psychological theories, and the metaphysical, but she also enjoys using Pop and Punk elements of humor and irreverence in relation to topics that she considers superficial such as mass consumption and commercialized sex. Drawing from classic and experimental filmmaking, she embraces current and past technologies and challenges herself to combine disparate media into traditional forms [text + performance + video = drama; video + headphones + booth = peepshow; architecture + video + podcast = public art/sculpture].

Interpretation:

MAKING MR. SOFTEE is an interactive performance/video projection that hyperbolizes the act of absolute consumption. Amidst a social setting, volunteers are videotaped within a specified frame as they devour ice cream cones of various flavors and toppings. The live video is projected in real time to emphasize the tactile acts of licking and mastication, commenting on the obsessive and sensual nature of eating. A simple pleasure-desire, to eat ice cream, is hampered by choice [which flavor? what toppings?]. That choice is further complicated by the submission/permission to be recorded in a specified construct [the frame]. Finally, the volunteer is temporally faced with the iconic self in the immediate presentation of his own consumption thereby presenting identity as action.

MAKING MR. SOFTEE embodies the “making of” approach to DIY creation. Part of a larger work, The Last Supper provides the opportune place and time to record footage needed for a future, edited piece wherein the recorded images are sped up, reversed, and sequenced so as to appear that the cone is eaten and regurgitated in an endless, yet ever-varying loop.

Artist: Shelly Sabel
www.shellysabel.com

GRAND PRIZE WINNER – 2010 GSS Jell-O Mold Competition

Title: Aspic Ascension – Tastes Like Heaven

Mold: Food grade Silicon and Algene

Flavors: Bloody Mary—the flavor profile is classic and spicy, with beet juice for intense color.

A classic Jell-O dish, tomato aspic, made modern and irreverent by casting an effigy of “The Madonna” in full 3-D for a delicious boozy Bloody Mary.

Bio: Shelly Sabel is an independent lighting designer based in New York. She has designed lighting for high-end retail display; theater production; and art and design installations. She also serves as an adjunct faculty member at NYU and Hunter College.

Director: Chris Cassidy

Title: Dennis and Lois Clip

Genre: Documentary

Length: 5 minutes

Interpretation:

Once referred to as “caring, sharing Americans” by Mark E. Smith of The Fall, Dennis and Lois have been immersed in the Rock n Roll scene for the last 40 plus years together. Meeting at a Ramone’s show in the 1970′s, they are still regulars to the scene in 2010. Enjoy a glimpse into the life of Denis and Lois as they continue to pursue their love of music and the raw energy of live shows.

Bio:

Chris is a Brooklyn based filmmaker that has directed over 25 music videos, 2 feature length documentaries and the award-winning MTV documentary short, “Dear Barbra…” He is currently working on his third feature doc about the unique relationship between a Brooklyn based indie-rocker named Vic Thrill, and a young Hasidic Jew named Curly Oxide, who was drawn to Vic’s free spirited lifestyle.

website: http://www.casspix.com/

Title: DiscoBike/(Documented interactive performance)

Size: 7′ x 63″ x 30″

Media: bikes, six speaker stereo system, mirrors, bones, clock parts, LED lights.

“DiscoBike/(Documented interactive performance)” will be an installation as well as an ongoing mobile public interactive performance. Throughout the course of the show DiscoBike will go on adventures around NYC inviting people from the street to participate in making live music performances with the ipad. These adventures will be documented and shown at the gallery throughout the show. This one of a kind, self-made bicycle, will travel around the city encouraging people to explore their creative ‘self-made’ natures.

Justin Riley was born in Arkansas, and has a BFA in sculpture form Kansas University. During college he explored many interactive projects that used technology as a means of communication and interaction. After graduating he moved to Amsterdam and worked as a disc and interactive video jockey. He is currently attending the Performance and Interactive Media Arts program at Brooklyn College. He is interested in the relationship between the artist and the audience. What role do these two groups play, and what connections can be made between them? Combining technology, installation, and performance broadens the scope with which to create these interactive qualities. His work investigates the blurring of boundaries between life and art. From an existential perspective, he connects the thinking observer with their creative energy through an interactive experience. Through shifting focus from the object to the interaction, I facilitate the potential for people to be creative. I shift control away from my own definitions to the definitions of others. This allows for the viewer to fully participate; they can become an integral part of the evolving piece. The end result is the creation of a social dynamic that challenges and connects people into a physical thinking space.

Artist: Jason Huff
Title: Snow Globe (accessed March, 25 2010)
Size: 5.5” x 5.5”
Medium: Glass, Water, Rapid Prototyped Letters, Acetate

Artist Statement:
Snow Globe (accessed March, 25 2010) is a readymade snow globe with self-defining contents. Printed inside are all 419 characters and three photos that define a snow globe on Wikipedia. This snow globe acts as a unique object that has encapsulated its own definition from an online dynamic source, forever freezing an instance of its mutating online identity.

Bio:
Jason Huff was born in the Atlanta suburbs in 1981. In 2004, he received his BFA in New Media at the University of Georgia. Upcoming shows include Pixilerations in downtown Providence, RI and Americana at the Gelman Gallery at the RISD Museum in Providence, RI. His recent project AutoSummarize was blogged about in The New Yorker. He currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island where he is completing his MFA in Digital Media at the Rhode Island School of Design (2011).

Artist: Joshua Spodek
Title: Szilvia
Size: Dimensions variable
Medium: Linear Zoetrope

Artist Statement:
Spodek’s work was inspired by the zoetrope, a 19th century seminal
animation device, which he reinvented and reinvigorated with 20th and
21st century technology unimaginable more then a few decades ago, such
as laser-cut steel and extremely high-resolution video converted to
precision-placed still images. An avid Free Software user and supporter,
he developed all the required software using Free tools, working with
the Free software community to create necessary new tools. An avid
French New Wave film fan, the novelty of his medium creates images
improvising with available equipment and subjects on personal themes.

Bio:
Joshua Spodek, is an artist, entrepreneur and former physicist. He
works in a medium of his own creation that uses the viewer’s motion to
animate still images. Besides a public piece now in Bryant Park, he has
shown at Lincoln Center, the Museum of Sex (Manhattan), Art Basel Miami
Beach; galleries in Manhattan, Miami, Santa Fe, and more. His commercial
works show motion pictures to subway riders moving between stations. He
holds a PhD and MBA from Columbia University. Esquire Magazine named him
Best and Brightest in their 2003 Genius Issue.

Writer: Andrianna Natsoulas

Title: Food Voices: Stories of the Food Sovereignty Movement

Farmers and fisherfolk across the Americas are embracing a new political and economic system to feed and strengthen their communities.
They are collectively creating a regime change by sowing the seeds and pulling the nets to ensure their communities have healthy and culturally appropriate food. “Food Voices: Stories of the Food Sovereignty Movement” captures the stories and images of people working towards and living a just, sustainable and sovereign food system. They are indigenous peoples, urban farmers and migrant workers. They are men and women, young and old. They are Haitian, American, Latino and Brazilian. They are creating a self made food system.

Bio: Andrianna Natsoulas has been an environmental and community activist for two decades. She has worked at various organizations from Greenpeace to Public Citizen to the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance. She has coordinated with the global food sovereignty movements to protect local food production and distribution, fight trade agreements and build alliances. She has participated in protests around the world from Washington, DC to Cancun to Geneva to Hong Kong and has stood shoulder to shoulder with farmers and fisherfolk to defend their rights to provide local and culturally appropriate food for their communities. That is where her passion lies – in the global fight for food justice.

Excerpt “Food Voices: Stories of the Food Sovereignty Movement”

Dena grows beans, corn, tomatoes and an array of produce, while also raising lambs, chickens and pigs. She and her husband have been farming in Glendive, Montana since 1981.

Food sovereignty is something I never named. It is something I grew up with and thought that is the way life should be. My grandparents came from eastern North Dakota. We always ate out of Grandma’s organic garden.  It was always my intention to feed ourselves as much as possible, the way my Grandma fed us. She is the one who taught me about food preparation, canning, soap making and about being self-sufficient.

All I wanted to be was a farmer. While raising my children, we had at least one garden, and we hunted and fished. I taught my kids and they are self-sufficient. I thought most people lived the way I did from their gardens and the land. And then I found that even my farm neighbours weren’t living that way. The farm agencies told them it was not efficient to grow their own food, milk a cow and it was much better to buy it at the grocery store.  That was in the late 70’s and I started to question the whole system.

Now you read reports that nutritionally, food is much poorer today than it used to be.  We don’t pay attention to healthy soil, and then we don’t have rich soil full of nutrients.  Soil is becoming a medium to hold plants upright, and not a living entity in its own right.  If we are looking for the earth to feed us, then we need to take care of it.

Unfortunately, it takes dead bodies and people dying from e coli and listeria to see that the food supply is not as safe as they think it is.  Because of convenience, people have given up their responsibility for a safe and nutritious food supply.  Now that food nutrition deficiencies, like obesity and diabetes, are an epidemic in this country, people are beginning to pay attention.  But the infrastructure is gone, and so are the people – the family farmers and fishermen. The corporate food system has destroyed the small infrastructure.  They pay off Congress to pass rules in the guise of food safety, but it is really about getting rid of competition- small producers and small processors.

………………

Carlos has been organizing migrant agricultural workers since 1977 in South Texas, the Río Grande Valley, and now in the border area between the United States and Mexico.

In 1992, I was mapping the field in Southern New Mexico for a labor stoppage. While I was there, people arrived to test the field, the chiles, and the crop. Suddenly the owner and farmer of the field arrived.  When he saw me, he knew he was the farmer who was the target for our labor stoppage. I asked him, who are those people? He said they were the owners of the crop.  They were there to check the quality of the chile, to check whether the chile was ready for harvest.

At that point I realized the farmer did not have control over production or the price. He was also a victim of the food system controlled by a few corporations and food processors who set the rules of the game. At that time we changed our attitude towards producers and realized they were not the enemy. At the beginning of the year the farmer signed a contract with the company to set the price, what to grow, when and how.  The contract clearly specified the quality of the product and told the farmer what kind of seeds to use, the fertilizers and the chemicals. Everything was imposed upon the farmer.  I started to dialogue with this specific farmer and realized there was no margin to increase salaries and improve the working conditions in the field. We started to understand the plight of the agricultural worker in a bigger context. We were so focused on the conditions of the farm workers that we did not realize that it was a system.

One of the new programs at the 5^th Annual Last Supper Salon will feature an architectural installation, designed and built by young emerging designers in New York City. Come meet one of the 100+ artists in the AURAL GARDEN. This outdoor space features a parabolic canopy that plays on the use of pattern, light, and surface. The AURAL GARDEN will be home to the outdoor music area and animated by visualizations from selected animators and filmmakers, creating a synthesis of the mediums and demonstrating the transformative effects of architecture.

Collaborative Installation designed by Ryan Lewandowski, Daria Supp & Lili Trenkova

Produced by Dyami Allen & Thomas Newman

Sponsored by

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