AN IMAGE BANK FOR EVERYDAY REVOLUTIONARY LIFE
Guest curators: Lauri Firstenberg and Anton Vidokle
February 3-April 3, 2006
Admission to the gallery is always free
http://redcat.org/gallery/0506/bank.php http://www.e-flux.com/siqueiros/ Tickets & Information: 213 237-2800
Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater
631 West 2nd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
An Image Bank for Everyday Revolutionary Life is a multi-phase project that begins as an online photographic archive, making available to the public over ten thousand 20th century images for the first time. The source for this material is the collection of Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, who compiled the photographs over the course of his own extraordinary life. This archive can now be viewed at
http://www.e-flux.com/siqueiros As Siqueiros wrote, "Nothing can give the [artist] of today the essential feeling of the modern era's dynamic and subversive elements more than the photographic document." The archive -- unique in structure, content and intention -- was meant for the use of fellow artists as a means of inspiration and a source of found imagery. The contents of the archive, images from the 1930s to the early 1970s, offer cultural and social portraits of different eras and nations. The collection contains photographic documents that capture a range of events from political protest to film and theatre performances, from anti-fascist demonstrations in New York and riots in Los Angeles to moments in the Russian stage and Mexican cinema. As the title of the project suggests, the archive offers a politicized vision developed in the context of revolutionary struggles in Mexico and abroad.
The original archive from which An Image Bank for Everyday Revolutionary Life is drawn, is housed at Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (SAPS) in Mexico City. In the 1960s, while Siqueiros was engaged in both art and activism, he converted his house in the Polanco district of the city into a public art space. The house now functions both as a museum for Siqueiros' work and a contemporary art venue. The SAPS archive will serve as the point of departure for the second phase of the project, in which an international group of artists and writers will be invited to work with the archive's material to extend the useful life of its photographs.
The traveling exhibition begins at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) in Los Angeles. As a venue for experimental curatorial practice, REDCAT supports provocative new projects that showcase the work of artists practicing around the globe and down the street. In keeping with this engagement with the life of the city, artists have been invited to make proposals for new works that will be presented in the gallery as well as public interventions to be presented billboards across the city. The original archive project and its reuse by contemporary artists will thus be integrated with the dynamism of Los Angeles in a fulfillment of Siqueiros' goal to combine the historical, social and artistic.
An Image Bank for Everyday Revolutionary Life is a collaboration with Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros and is made possible in part by the generous support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Etant Donnés, the French-American Fund for Contemporary Art, e-flux, and The Puffin Foundation.
AN IMAGE BANK FOR EVERYDAY REVOLUTIONARY LIFE
Guest curators: Lauri Firstenberg and Anton Vidokle
Opening reception: Friday, February 3, 2006, 6-9:00 pm
Exhibition dates: 4 February to 3 April 2006
Gallery hours: noon to 6:00 pm or curtain, closed Mondays
Upcoming In 2006:
Solo exhibitions with Mathieu Briand (April-June 2006) and Andrea Bowers (June-August 2006)
A River: Charles Gaines and Edgar Arceneaux (September-November 2006)
Admission to the gallery is always free
Visit www.redcat.org or call +1.213.237.2800 for more information
