Sundown Salon #06: INSTANT INSTALLATIONS
April 13th, 2003, 2:00 – 9:00pm
curated by:
Pipilotti Rist
organized by:
Skylar Haskard
Asdis sif Gunnarsdottir
installations by:
Krysten Cunningham
Kirsten Everberg
Asdis sif Gunnarsdottir
Skylar Haskard
Marcus Herse
Dawn Kasper
Shana Lutker
Lauren Lavitt
Pipilotti Rist
Angie Waller
music by:
Mike, Oscar & Estas
Pipilotti Rist and her graduate fine art students from UCLA descend on the Sundown house and gardens for some instant installations…
Krysten Cunningham tethers copulating foam figures to bouquets of helium balloons, one of which escapes into the sky.
Kirsten Everberg installs three spectacular show-stopping paintings of white house interiors (red room, green room, blue room) in the cave.
Asdis sif Gunnarsdottir screens her videos in the cave and does performances in the garden in collaboration with a drag queen.
Skylar Haskard creates an elaborate installation in the cavernous garage made entirely out of the junk he finds there.
Marcus Herse presents his larger-than-life California Rolls and Cupcake in the garden.
Dawn Kasper simulates a violent death in the garden, she is in a red bathrobe face down in the pond for hours.
Shana Lutker provides a walking tour of the gardens related to the interview dialogue of a tour of George Bush’s Crawford ranch.
Lauren Lavitt takes over the sleeping hole in the cave and installs a scene of characters in bed watching her video.
Pipilotti Rist installs her collection of clear plastic containers to the deck over the garden, they flutter in the wind and reflect the light.
Angie Waller stays up all night preparing ravioli that eventually covers the kitchen table.
INTERVIEW: CONFLICTING SALON MEMORIES
Skylar Haskard: Lets try and remember how all this happened.
Asdis sif Gunnarsdottir: The first thing I remember is that we wanted to make a collaborative installation. At the same time you had met Fritz and he offered you to make a salon.
SH: We were also in Pipilotti’s class at UCLA and had the idea of involving the class in the salon. That’s how it started.
AG: Then we started to argue! You said that we had to plan and control what people were doing beforehand and I got upset because I wanted the show to be chaotic where people could do whatever they wanted without planning.
SH: I wanted to be a curator!
AG: I think that night we decided nothing was going to happen.
SH: What was our class about?
AG: Pipilotti had asked us to realize impossible works in places that were beyond the art context i.e., not galleries or museums.
SH: Then we proposed the idea to Pipilotti to make the salon using the members of the class.
AG: Yes although we disagreed on how to make a show we still agreed to do it. And then we introduced Pipilotti and Fritz when the three of us went to Fritz’s house and all became involved in the making of the show…
SH: We ended up rethinking the class too. Still using the same pretense of impossible works in other places but now the “place” became Fritz’s dome house.
AG: At that point Pipilotti was disappointed in some of the fantasies because she was interested in helping people to realize art works outside of museums and galleries but it turned out that usually young artists have fantasies of showing in the art world! And then the fantasies that were outside of it were so big! I remember I wanted to have an exhibition in a cinema, one of the big cinemas on Sunset! Takes a while to get that though. So the salon was a perfect solution.
SH: It transformed the class, the class was kind of falling apart because people were finding it difficult to realize their ideas, I remember Pipilotti worrying about her capabilities as a teacher and the outcome of the class. After visiting the house we broke down possible sites for installations within the Haeg compound. Then we asked the class to think of works that would fit in these sites.
AG: It ended up suiting everyone.
SH: Yes. We were both satisfied that both sides of our argument were realized. There was control within the structure of the show and spontaneity in the time limitations. We only had the weekend to install, so the work was made to be easily installed and removed. A lot of it was site specific, like Shana’s tour of the Presidential Ranch adapted to Fritz's garden, Angie’s Ravioli table in the kitchen and Dawn’s performance in the pond. What do you remember of the work that was made?
AG: You made your installation rearranging the garage and using Fritz’s car to screen a porn that was shot in the house. I did a performance about an abusive relationship in collaboration with the transvestite Kitty Lu who played a guardian angel helping me out of an abusive relationship. We performed on the balcony and what we called the “Eden platform” in the garden. The rest of the art was spread around throughout the whole house and garden. Lauren projected her video in the bedroom and I projected in the bathroom.
SH: Krysten had sculptures tied to balloons that she set free off the balcony. Marcus had installed a giant muffin at the gate and some large sushi rolls in the garden. All this while Dawn was lying dead in the pond. We also had Antonio’s and Kirsten’s paintings in the “cave”. Pipilotti also made an installation of clear plastic containers hanging from the balcony. I called this her anti art piece. There was music, cake and whiskey too.
AG: Do you think in the end people realized their fantasies and the class achieved its original objective?
SH: I think so. The very short time between the execution and showing of the work was a big bonus. There was immediacy in the response to the work, whether it was critical or just being seen. I think everyone learned a lot from this process. I also was happy that the show was not confined to an art context but in a house/home. Although a very designed space we still used it as a home and fit the art into it. The house remained a house.
AG: This idea of making instant work really came through and Fritz’s idea of a salon where artists could exchange ideas worked very well for the class. This is not something that usually happens and I recognized how important it is for the artist to curate shows. It saves the art world. Artists have curated the best shows I have seen. I think it is funny that this began with a fight but we still both got what we wanted out of it.
SH: The three of us worked well together. In the beginning we were very ambitious. Pipilotti was very good at making our ambitions more realistic. Transforming them into something very quick, practical and effective. That is also how we came up with the title “Instant Installations”.
SALON MEMORIES #06
it was the day after my 30th birthday, 2003. i blacked out in my car the night before and smashed into a wall. so i was in a pretty freaky mood when i went to the salon the next day. i made these foam people having sex and attached them to helium balloons and i think we put them in the dome. they kept getting out, flying away, getting caught in trees etc. then the kids started playing with the ones that floated to the ground. they loved them. i could teach sex ed. in elementary school with these pieces. somehow. - Krysten Cunningham
Kitty Lu, “Get rid of that Lover”!— Wouldn’t we all want to have a Guardian Angel? My fantasy was always to have a guardian angel that’s a transvestite that makes the right decisions for me and we solve problems over the phone when she dramatically tells me what to do. On the day of the Sundown Salon that fantasy came true. With the help of Fritz, Kitty Lu appeared the day before the performance and stepped into the planning with me. I had picked out a song by Depeche Mode and had pictured that she would come out of nowhere and slap me in order to wake me up from being stuck in a bad relationship. Kitty Lu made this action verbal and totally wrote down a whole play that we practiced and performed twice at the Sundown Salon. Kitty Loo did not only bring herself but also a brilliant body costume of a female body. I think I gave her a black long-haired wig to wear. I think that we were a perfect match on stage, I was wearing a boa and some striptease stockings and sunglasses because in the play I had been hit by my lover and like Kitty Lu said take the L out of lover and it’s over! I think the performance affected my reality so it ended up being a spiritual comedy performance. Doing a comedy in the art world I realized is an absolute taboo, because people came to see me weeks after to tell me that I had been totally off. I can’t help it but still today when I watch it I still think it’s probably the best performance I’ve been involved in, or most definitely the most memorable one...and that’s what it was all about that day, to make fantasies come true and to happily make “mistakes”. - Asdis sif Gunnarsdottir
This afternoon was a lot of things. I mean there was just a fuck-load going on. As I remember it this was the afternoon my band xVOYx got started. I had been playing a lil’ music with Michael Bauer on the side and today he was playing with Oscar Santos in their guitar duo the TWO. They set up on a rise in the garden and started to play to a loud and disinterested crowd. Grad students can be so self-interested, proud, blind and dumb. I could see from the balcony the whole scene. Pipi was leaning in, out of maternal guilt, to try and hear them. Afterwards, discouraged by a shitty gig, we decided to form a danceable threesome and Bauer called up “voy.” I'm pretty sure that was the TWO’s last gig. The moral is sometimes wonderful starts come from really crap crowds. - Tom Texas Holmes
From: Lotte <water@pipilottirist.net>
To: fritz haeg <fritz@fritzhaeg.com>
Subject:
Re: ...
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 22:42:50 -0800
Hi Lord Fritz Haeg.
The salon, the salon,
... the stars, the stars, stars, ...
the socks the socks, the socks.
The plants, the plants, the plants.
You’re really cool.
Thank you so much!!
Pipilotti
** Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir graduated from UCLA in 2004. She is based Iceland where she performs through Skype online every week. Her past web performances were exhibited at the live art series "It´s not hard" at CCA, Glasgow, Scotland. In 2006 at the "Sequences" Reykjavik festival she did a performance in the cinema before a movie played were the audience were not expecting to see a performance. At the festival "Núna" in Winnipeg, Canada, she did a performance on stage in a concert hall before the band "Weakerthans" played.
** Krysten Cunningham combines traditionally feminine arts such as sewing, weaving and knitting, with typically masculine arts such as steel and woodworking. Her sculptures are grounded in hand-work and ways in which high concept is translated into everyday life. She has exhibited at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, the Hammer Museum and Sandroni Rey in Los Angeles, RitterZamet in London, and DaimlerChrysler Contemporary in Berlin. She is represented by Tom Soloman in Los Angeles.
** Skylar Haskard received his MFA at UCLA and his BA at Glasgow School of Art. Skylar is a Los Angeles-based artist working in video, installation, sculpture, and photography. His work was the subject of solo exhibitions at Anna Helwing Gallery in Los Angeles and Transmission Gallery in Glasgow and has been included in group shows at New Langton Arts in San Francisco, Thrust Projects in New York, the Kunst Pavillion at Innsbruck and the MAK Centre, Los Angeles.
**Dawn Kasper is a Los Angeles-based performance and mixed media artist, actively exploring the connections in the woven web of questions that are the meaning of life and death. She has exhibited at the Migros Museum Für Genenwartskunst in Zurich, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and at Art Basel Miami Beach. She has also shown work at Art in General and Newman Popiashvili in New York, Copy Gallery, Philadelphia, and Cirrus and Anna Helwing Galleries in Los Angeles.
** Shana Lutker is based in Los Angeles. Her work, in a variety of mediums, questions the invention of history, the real and surreal. Lutker received her MFA from UCLA in 2005. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the 2006 California Biennial, Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art in Lisbon, Artists’ Space in New York, ART2102 in Los Angeles, and the Wattis Institute in San Francisco. She is an editor at X-TRA magazine and a consultant to LAXART.
** Pipilotti Rist burst onto the international art scene with visually lush video works and multimedia installations. She gained a following in the mid-1980s as a member of the Swiss experimental post-punk pop group Les Reines Prochaines, for which she made some of her earliest video works. From her earliest tapes through her recent multi-media installations, Pipilotti has crafted a body of work in which she explores the intersection of sexuality, technology, and pop culture. Pipilotti was born in 1962 in Grabs, Switzerland and currently lives in Zurich.
** Angie Waller and her online presence, couchprojects, document cultural interventions in shopping and social networking. Her book Data Mining the Amazon aggregates customer recommendations from amazon.com to find relationships between books listed under profiles for political figures and the CDs bought in conjunction with these purchases. Angie’s projects have included: an installation about the celebration of conspicuous consumption in Chinese real estate marketing, a video exploring the insider network and technologies of the armored car industry, a social networking web site for people who only pretend to like people, and a mobile phone messaging service that uses clip art animations for conveying taboo topics.