Alter/Abolish/Address

LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) presented Alter/Abolish/Address: 5 site-specific commissioned projects throughout Washington, D.C. as part of 5×5:2014, a District-wide program of 25 contemporary, temporary public art projects dedicated to exploring new perspectives on the city through the lens of 5 curators, presented by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. The exhibition opened to the public on Saturday, September 6, 2014 with bus tours to all 25 projects throughout D.C., followed by LAND’s opening reception at artist Glenn Kaino’s installation at Naval Building 170, 200 Tingey Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003 from 5 to 8PM.

Alter/Abolish/Address confronted and explored the evolving landscape of Washington, D.C. by highlighting the dichotomous notion of historical permanence and temporality, where innovative contemporary art can have impact in concert with this formidable history, allowing past and present to live together. Artists Diana Al-Hadid, Dan Colen, Brendan Fowler, Glenn Kaino, and Marianne Vitale often use materials directly drawn from built architecture and urban structures such as bridges, walls, window boards, steel railroad ties, plywood and studs, underpasses, and so on. In varied ways, each artist played against the monumental architecture, urban planning, and sense of formalized, preserved history with projects that use unnoticed spaces or humble materials, seemingly modest or ephemeral gestures, and evoke evolution and change.

The title Alter/Abolish/Address intends to evoke this shifting and changeable world – both literally and conceptually. The words “alter” and “abolish” figure in the most well-known paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, denoting our sovereign right/responsibility to change and make better our government to serve the people, while “address” works concurrently as a noun (an address, or specific location) and a verb (to address, to speak to, to communicate).

Alter/Abolish/Address Programming Weekend

ARTIST EVENTS WEEKEND: SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2014 SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2014

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2014

4PM (e)merge art fair Pleasant Plains Workshop Booth Capitol Skyline Hotel 10 I Street, SW Washington, D.C. 20024

Discussion with Artist Diana Al-Hadid and LAND’s Director and Curator, Shamim M. Momin

Diana Al-Hadid and LAND’s Director and Curator, Shamim M. Momin, participated in a conversation about Al-Hadid’s installation, Interior Sketch, as part of Alter/Abolish/Address.

6 – 9PM St. Elizabeth’s East Gateway Pavilion 2700 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE Washington, D.C. 20032

Opening Reception and Performances for Rock512Devil, Our Union: the Second Iteration of Brendan Fowler’s Walls at St. Elizabeth’s.

Artist Brendan Fowler handed off the second curatorial iteration of his six freestanding wall sculptures to Baltimore-based collective, Rock512Devil, as the sculptural walls became a platform for their artist selection and a series of performances, music, and screenings. For this installation, the boards had been rotated, allowing for a new surface for the artists to work on, and a new collaborative artist/curator/artist creation. Participating artists and performers included Peggy Chiang, Bryan Collins, Max Eilbacher, Amanda Horowitz, Kelley Mcnutt, Sexoesthetic, and Marisa Takal. The artists involved are friends and past collaborators with the members of Rock512Devil, bringing together mutual friends and acquaintances is a union characteristic of the project space itself.

Rock512Devil is a collaborative project between Chloe Maratta, Flannery Silva, and Max Guy. For a year Rock512Devil existed as a project space on 512 Franklin Street in Baltimore, MD. Rock being the name of the bookstore, and Devil the name of the curatorial project. The two projects retained unique characteristics, co-existing in an overlapping program of experimental performances, readings, screenings and exhibitions.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2014:

3PM Garfield Circle 90 Maryland Avenue SW Washington, D.C. 20002 Dan Colen’s Performance, Livin’ and Dyin’

LAND invited the public to Livin’ and Dyin’, a performance by artist Dan Colen that took the form of both monologue and dialogue simultaneously. The audience was invited to follow Colen, Roger Rabbit, the Kool-Aid Man, and Wile E. Coyote as they walk edthroughout the National Mall testing the power of clichés and other pop cultural referents in much the same way that one would test a battery or an apparently unresponsive body for signs of life.