Amber Ginsburg and I have been collaborating since 2007. Our individual practices are vastly different from one another, yet we share interest in material histories and labor with a special fondness for the rich history of terracotta. Ceramics as material and process is tied to patterns of performance and community through shared labor and movement dictated by the processes of preparation, production and use. We draw much of our inspiration from Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics as our projects expose material and labor in a social sphere. Our audience is made to be a part of the conversation as they help define the experience and potential of the work.
Weapons Project is an international collaborative performance and exhibition with Rodney Harris and Amber Ginsburg. Amber and I have imported weapons/seed shakers produced for FLO(we){u}R and Rodney has exported weapons of mass contradiction within the space and throughout Bristol, UK.
The Looking Glass gallery was turned into a site of production and participation, which evolved over the two week exhibition, as production sprouted. The audience was invited to make, disperse and transform the outcome of these objects.
FLO(we){u}R focuses on a little known history. In 1918, the Northwestern Terra Cotta Company of Chicago was commissioned to make 25,000 ceramic bomb casings, which were used to practice aerial shelling. Theses bombs were filled with household baking flour so as to leave a white trace to calibrate targeting. In a playful exercise of impossible labor combined with an experiment in repositioning, Amber Ginsburg and I have attempted to reproduce the 1918 commission.
Our new factory space was setup at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis. Over the month long exhibition, Amber Ginsburg and I lived and worked in the factory reproducing terra cotta bombs. Click here to see a short documentary on the project.
This project with Amber Ginsburg evolved from a residency at Rutherfurd Hall in Allamuchy, New Jersey. Treacle is one of several site interventions we enacted in this historic space over the course of two summers beginning in the summer of 2013.
To view a short video trailer of Treacle click here
