. . . . . . it's all happening, right now . . . .. .
listen
to nugget rock
!!! COME ON DOWN TO THE SPACE FOR POKER, POTLUCK, LIVE MUSIC,
LAPTOP DANCES, AND MORE !!!
LAST CHANCE!! ..... POTLUCK THURSDAY NIGHT !! CLOSING PARTY SATURDAY 7-10 PM
!!
STRIP CLUB
A Piece of Art and a Piece of Work ...or...
Birthing a Back-Story: A Celebration of Labor ...or...
Advanced Strategies for the Counter-Rehabilitation of Delusional
Entrepreneurs ...
Now playing: Trrriple X and the Heavy Metals: Who Needs a Punk Panic?
Valuation Exposed: The Opening that was Mistaken for the Show ...
a collaborative installation performance by Matt Blake, Jon Brumit,
and Enis Sefersah
with special thanks to Daniel at Technological
Artisans and John Hobbs at the Riviera
Gallery
Opens March 23, from 7 - 11 pm, last day of the show is April 8, closing at
6 pm
with live art / performances daily from 3 - 7 pm, March 24th to March 29th
welcome to strip club - an reconstructive intervention drawing inspiration from
sales showrooms, strip clubs, night clubs,
the concept of 'socializing a concept' (a term, borrowed from a friend in the
consulting industry, used to describe the formalized yet casual method of gauging
response to ideas or concepts in development as a means to assist development
in a focused way), and an interest in being a performing counterpoint to a highly
crafted object in the same show or gallery. the club idea came about as a way
to do several things at once: (1) replace a stripper with an equally desirable
fetishized object- allowing or forcing us to reconcile our expectations of either,
(2) present the structure or process of 'stripping' a major work of art by selling
shares to multiple buyers while simultaneaously transforming it to a barter-based
system of valuation and negotiation, (3) give myself the dubious job of negotiating
my various performance roles during a scenario that very closely and very intentionally
reconstructs and resembles a party- or at least an enjoyable live critique of
the institution of the 'art party' by way of the alternating transparency or
opacity of my various roles within the installation
additional photos
by Hazel Vonna Blake and John Hobbs! thanks!
Riviera Gallery
103 Metropolitan
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Opens March 23, from 7 - 11 pm
with live art / performances daily from 3 - 7 pm, March 24th to March 29th
thanks again to Daniel and Technological
Artisans !
Press release:
We're installing fog machines, laser & dance lights, live sound, and personnel
(combination-doorman-salesman-storyteller-dj) in order to transform the Riviera
Gallery into a 'strip club'. In this particular case there is no pole and no
live dancer, and in place of a stripper and 'lap dances', there will be a multi-faceted
sculpture and offers for 'laugh dances', 'laptop dances', frosty libations,
and a chance to invest in the art and own a portion of a large work at no cost.
Visitors will be encouraged to sponsor a facet of the sculpture, by way of a
barter system - trading-in alternate back-stories or future-stories for the
sculpture (or other creative or unrelated narratives) for a photo of them with
their facet and the addition of their name(s) to a wall plaque or binder to
accompany the sculpture, becoming another facet of the piece in perpetuity.
Conversations and other events will undoubtedly reshape the look or feel of
the project from day to day and collaborations with visitors, friends, and strangers
will be sought and encouraged both inside and outside the space.
alternate titles....
The Back Story Unfolds
or
Labor's Finest Hour
or
Night Moves
INVESTMENT TRANSACTIONS
michael, facet 123
marc, facet 43
katina, facet 149
sean, facet 13
elanor, facet 11
eric, facet 17
discotürk, facet
12
space+sound, facet 100
jon, facet 1
ben, facet 32
gavin, facet 66
gavin green worksheet coming soon,
facet 66
if i gave you one of these stickers
....
..... please send
me a story!!
even if you didn't get a sticker
during a visit, you can still trade for a facet, just drop me
a line and we'll get you set up!
------------______________-------------------------____________________--------------------------------------
'Strip Club'
Welcome to "STRIP CLUB', a live and local value-added art showcase enterprise.
For this project, the club's 'Talent' has been created collaboratively by Matt
Blake and Enis Sefersah, with the club's 'Client Relations' designed and provided
by Jon Brumit who will act simultaneously as 'Doorman', 'DJ', and 'Sales Representative'
during the first week of the exhibition. Scheduled events for the opening reception
cannot be revealed at this time. Suffice it to say that this 'Strip Club', complete
with fog machines, dance lights, live music, and a meditative yet energizing
ambience, offers visitors an opportunity to engage with every facet of the work
within a casual and collaborative program.
Imagine bartering for a 'Laptop Dance', or just sitting and pondering the sculpture
while travelling in your mind to the drone of sales spiels and art speak over
the murmering din of live electronic music. Collaborate in the production of
live music, contribute to an evolving re-presentation for all subsequent visitors,
invest in the art using a barter system, or just converse or collaborate with
the club's operators on any related or unrelated topics or enterprises.
I am, as a collaborator in the installation and self-appointed salesman for
the collaborative sculpture on display as well as the cutting-edge-art-sales
franchise opportunity, offering an incentive for potential buyers of the sculpture
or the sales concept by way of a limited time offer of a video in which I disrobe
to a reading of a passage from Nicolas Bourriaud's "Relational Aesthetics".
A strip club featuring art instead of the usual half-nude women? Yes, the sculpture
is that sexy, and the performance is every bit as exciting and imaginative as
one might expect of anything not good enough for its own reality television
show.
Matt and Enis will have a collaborative sculpture on display in the gallery,
and having been invited to exhibit or perform with them, I developed a piece
/ project in which I could work in response to and in collaboration with their
piece. That said, my project reframes the presentation of the sculpture within
the context of a 'strip club' styled 'auction house' or 'sales showroom' wherein
visitors are confronted by the spectacle of live art marketing, a small-scale
model of one of the most prevalent conceptual endeavors tody - the marketing
of art as well as the production of 'value-added' features as an aesthetic practice.
The installation / situation is designed to 1. direct one's attention simultaneously
toward and away from the highly crafted work on display, 2. present the sculpture
and the venue as inter-dependent variables within a dynamic system of production,
valuation, and dissemination, as well as 3. debut a spectacular art sales concept
mechanism available as a franchise, and 4. present a dynamic system for individualization
and customization of specific value-added features deemed valuable or of interest
by the host's community.
Taking cues from the lap-dance,
the sculptural piece's many facets will be made available, by the sales representative,
for investment purposes, although not for sale by conventional means. The general
public are encouraged by the sales staff to share stories or ideas in exchange
for the 'rights' to a facet of the piece, in essence 'sponsoring' a facet in
perpetuity - solely or collaboratively - with others present or others in the
future wishing to invest in the same facet. All stories, ideas, thoughts, and
otherwise will be compiled into a binder or book of some fashion to live on
as a document of the more ephemeral social and cultural concerns related to
the piece and the various people surrounding it through the course of its life.
The book will become a part of the sculpture on display, another facet of the
work in which the labor of presentation and the social function of the work
on display become apparent in physical form as a value-added feature.
POKER NIGHT
everyone's a winner, although not everyone wins money!
2,380,616
visitors so far
Good luck! Hope to see you at the show! Come on down and jam!
---
ben maddox solos for the 'nugget' using my super portable pancake drum set (fits
in a rolling samsonite / throne!)
---
associated and contributing notions - as yet unclear and potentially much better
and easier on the eyes
abstraction
affects petals, lumenstrations
anti-fashion, social distortion
avoidance of being ironical if clarifyication is necessary
celebration of labor
entrepreneurial / institutional critique
facet washers, tankless water heaters
fog machine / barking spiders
hang dance lights
interactive live art as a means of creating something unglobalizable,
intervention for & respite from the narcotic blight that is popular culture
and mass-media
laptop dance
liminal hoedown, sublimanal clown rodeo
majestic and pathetic
poetheory smoker
prog & fake rock installation & demonstration
promotion, local motion,
animation
rodeo clowns / satie's 'entre act' / intermission / superbowl commercials
simultanaeity, dually, hilly-billy
situationism
text-induced erectile academysfunction
trying to avoid nihilism, dude, the big lebowski, boombox in the face, charles
bronson, death wish,
ubiquitousness of the non-taste paradigm's formlessness & eventuality
walking close to the edge, yes, devolutionary laptopia
value-added
xxxperimental theater
Any and all comments
welcomed. Hope to see you at the Riviera
during the project.
This is a working text for the project and is under development, updated 3.14.2006.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
original proposal sent to matt, enis, and john at riviera...rejected by all
of us!! but here it is in all of its delusional glory....
so i was thinking of starting a company based on your sculpture (to matt blake
and enis sefersah)
1. i start a company / campaign based on the sculpture, but i think it's a meteorite
and start a foundation to save / restore it / put it into the smithsonian or
some kind of research center
2. at the same time i try to make money off it but try to pass it off as trying
to save or restore the meteorite, raise ethical issues and suspicion and doubt
of my character
3. discover / create backstory of you two discovering it, sculpting it, transforming
it into sculpture and not telling anyone about it being a meteorite of such
importance that it needs to be restored and put into the smithsonian, included
in the backstory would be research done about the title of the piece, where
it was shown before, and why nobody else ever figured it out before, specifically
i claim it to be the meteorite that landed in siberia in 1908 killing 1500 reindeer
and knocked a man unconscious, and i link this to your trip to bosnia (and serbia
- mistaking it for siberia, adding to my character's stupidity)
4. i call the media about the cover-up, hold a press conference, explain that
you're trying to get rich selling the piece and that the people whose reindeer
were killed lost their contract with santa claus or something and should be
honored with a portion of the sales
5. i start a sponsorship program to save and restore the meteorite: every sponsor
gets 'rights' to one of the meteor's facets, have their photos printed onto
a piece of paper the same shape of their facet and i build a maquette of the
meteor with the prints, and each sponsor gets mentioned by name in any appearance
of the meteor in the media and is also notified of where their facet appeared
and when, also i try to get / propose that money earned trough sponsorship will
help restart the reindeer farm in siberia
6. mural paper backdrop for tourist photo opportunities as though the people
are with the meteor in its original landing site before it was discovered and
ruined
7. try to sell rights to the meteorite for healers, doctors, tv and radio commercials
and try to make money off the photo studio and other projects
8. organize and curate a big group show of small works on the theme of the meteor
and reconnecting with the past
i don't know how big the space is but i'd need room for a desk and chair (makeshift
small office) for me and also i don't know how you guys feel about having mural
paper somewhere around your piece and all of this weird recontextualizing..!?
seems like a good way to do a lot of things at once:
1. perform / install / work in some kind of harmonious or purposeful way with
your piece
2. constantly shift public focus between the object, my confused efforts, and
the overall piece, entrprenuerial practice, marketing and sales as performance,
drama, media,
3. deal with your piece / work in a way that references a kind of amnesia and
a scramble to create drama and hype, try to make money with art, but not with
the actual art object but with all kinds of activity around the piece, by loading
onto it an exorbitant amount of baggage / lineage / backstory / drama
4. present a kind of problematic model of current media, the art market selling
shares of famous paintings, and the disconnect between genres of work and also
the disconnect between generations of contemporary artists, openly contradict
that artists are special, that they can't indeed actually make anything but
are always trying to pass of found objects as contemporary art work
5. a very weird intense look into instant amnesia and bulimic media practices
and the probablility that it's pervading and shifting our perception of ourselves
and the importance of 'our time' as opposed to us being part of a space-time-continuum
so to speak!!
what do you think?? i'm into it but let me know!
ooh! sexy!
©2007
- JON BRUMIT - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - CONTACT
FOR TERMS OF USE