Edited for flow and clarity. Open Window Theater moved further down where it fit in better
Okumaya devam et...
← Previous revision | Revision as of 00:49, 28 April 2024 |
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| In another form of convergence with their environment a couple years later, Lalalandia integrated recycled materials from the local factories into a richly woven, “omnisensorial”<ref name=":10" /> night space called El Sensorium. Yvette Helin, who explored relationships between her street performers, The Pedestrian Project and their urban environment, opened up a performance space with Rube Fenwick whose very name, the Green Room, evoked a relationship with nature. Gene Pool, Miss Kitty and Medea de Vyse, some of the solo performers who made the entire neighborhood their stage and often attended local environmental protest marches and community meetings, would make the Green Room one of their bases. Given that their industrial world was coping with toxic waste and economic decline, more astringent terms for extended being also emerged, including “illbient”,<ref name=":20">The Williamsburg Avant-Garde: Experimental Music and Sound on the Brooklyn Waterfront by Cisco Bradley, Duke University Press, 2023, p. 45</ref> coined by Lalalandia member, Gregor Asch, and Laurel Casey's phrase, “sacred dump”.<ref name="casey" /> Echoing Asch and Casey, the cartoonist Tony Millionaire brought a wry sense of humor to the discourse, titling one of his comic strips on the industrial neighborhood “Urban Pastoral.”<ref name=":51" /> | In another form of convergence with their environment a couple years later, Lalalandia integrated recycled materials from the local factories into a richly woven, “omnisensorial”<ref name=":10" /> night space called El Sensorium. Yvette Helin, who explored relationships between her street performers, The Pedestrian Project and their urban environment, opened up a performance space with Rube Fenwick whose very name, the Green Room, evoked a relationship with nature. Gene Pool, Miss Kitty and Medea de Vyse, some of the solo performers who made the entire neighborhood their stage and often attended local environmental protest marches and community meetings, would make the Green Room one of their bases. Given that their industrial world was coping with toxic waste and economic decline, more astringent terms for extended being also emerged, including “illbient”,<ref name=":20">The Williamsburg Avant-Garde: Experimental Music and Sound on the Brooklyn Waterfront by Cisco Bradley, Duke University Press, 2023, p. 45</ref> coined by Lalalandia member, Gregor Asch, and Laurel Casey's phrase, “sacred dump”.<ref name="casey" /> Echoing Asch and Casey, the cartoonist Tony Millionaire brought a wry sense of humor to the discourse, titling one of his comic strips on the industrial neighborhood “Urban Pastoral.”<ref name=":51" /> |
| As a philosophy of extended being, creative immersion in their environment was not limited to the streets and crumbling waterfront. Experimental media groups emerged in the 1990s that immersed audiences in a hybrid of media sharing rituals and sensual, physical activity. These groups included Fake Shop and Nerve Circle, The Outpost media collective’s rooftop gatherings, Floating Cinema’s film screenings from a barge on the East River, Mustard and the Ocularis Collective’s screenings on the roof of Galapagos Art Space. Even more traditional theaters like Open Window Theater drew its audiences both onto and into its sets. One such production, The Hunger Artist written by Franz Kafka, involved a structure built by David Brody who later oversaw video systems for Organism with Carlton Bright.[[File:Sculpture by Ladislav Czernek, Epoché, Williamsburg, Brooklyn 1989.tif|thumb|371x371px|<small>'''Ecopod''': Immersive and environmentally connected sculpture by Ladislav Czernek, Epoché arts space, 1989</small>]] | As a philosophy of extended being, creative immersion in their environment was not limited to the streets and crumbling waterfront. Experimental media projects emerged in the 1990s that immersed audiences in a hybrid of media, social ritual, and sensual, physical activity. These groups included Fake Shop and Nerve Circle's media events, The Outpost media collective’s rooftop gatherings, Floating Cinema’s film screenings from a barge on the East River, and the Ocularis Collective’s screenings on the roof of Galapagos Art Space. [[File:Sculpture by Ladislav Czernek, Epoché, Williamsburg, Brooklyn 1989.tif|thumb|371x371px|<small>'''Ecopod''': Immersive and environmentally connected sculpture by Ladislav Czernek, Epoché arts space, 1989</small>]] |
| It is important to emphasize that the Brooklyn Immersionists were not simply surrounding audiences with entertaining spectacles. As their extensive commentary in local zines like ''Worm'' and ''Waterfront Week'' indicate, sharing their creations, events and media with their neighbors and other artists helps to nurture ecological relationships between the audience, the artists’ imaginative unconscious, and their shared urban ecosystem. An editorial in ''Worm'' by Stavit Allweiss and Lauren Szold in 1991 described this process as a "venture into the waters."<ref name="ReferenceD" /> Other terms for ecological immersion appeared in the neighborhood literature like Jessica Nissen’s “circuitous systems”<ref name="nissen" /> and Nerve Circle's “web jam.”<ref name=":18" /> These were participatory strategies set in stark contrast to a corporate system of media delivered to passive viewers. Corporate media was vividly eschewed by Rob Hickman and Kit Blake in an early Immersionist street action, Glow Nighttime which involved the tossing of five televisions and two mock satellites off a roof on South 11th Street in 1991. The large street crowds witnessed the event to the sound of live drums and projections provided by Ilene Zori Magaras and Richard Posch. In ''Domus Magazine,'' the architect Suzan Wines maintained that Williamsburg's creators of “immersive environments”<ref name=":43">{{Cite journal |last=Wines |first=Suzan |date=February 1998 |title=Go With the Flow: Eight New York Artists and Architects in the Digital Era |journal=Domus Magazine}}</ref> were challenging 20th century existentialism's fixation on the isolated psyche, and offered a “vital antidote to the dogma of modernism”.<ref name=":43" /> In 1998, she invokes the Surrealist term [[exquisite corpse]], which refers to a collective creation, and expands the circle of participation to include the environment:<blockquote>“During the early 1990s, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, located directly across the river from the popular East Village, was home to New York's most vibrant art scene... their work integrated the raw material of Williamsburg's industrial wasteland with its inherent human diversity (mainly Hispanic, Polish, Hasidic and Italian) to create a living, breathing exquisite corpse constantly responding to new input.”<ref name=":43" /></blockquote>One of the largest Immersionist gatherings in the early 1990s, Organism turned nearly all of the Old Dutch Mustard Factory into an experiment in organic interconnection. Conceived by Ebon Fisher as an ecological “web jam,”''<ref name=":43" />'' the 15 hour creation involved a weave of systems cultivated by 120 artists, musicians and architects in collaboration with their environment.''<ref name=":43" />'' As stated in the program notes, "The Organism is an attempt to push the idea of linkage, collaboration and interaction to its mellifluous, weblike extreme."<ref name=":23" /> A deliberate cultivation of an emergent biological system, the event incorporated over 2000''<ref name=":10" />'' visitors into its formation and was characterized by Wines in [[Domus (magazine)|''Domus'']] as “a symbolic climax to the renegade activity that had been stirring within the community since the late eighties.”''<ref name=":43" />'' Underscoring the biological nature of the web jam, she described it as “breathing and transforming for fifteen hours in an abandoned mustard factory.”''<ref name=":43" />'' | It is important to emphasize that the Brooklyn Immersionists were not simply surrounding audiences with entertaining spectacles. As their extensive commentary in local zines like ''Worm'' and ''Waterfront Week'' indicate, sharing their creations, events and media with their neighbors and other artists helps to nurture ecological relationships between the audience, the artists’ imaginative unconscious, and their shared urban ecosystem. An editorial in ''Worm'' by Stavit Allweiss and Lauren Szold in 1991 described this process as a "venture into the waters."<ref name="ReferenceD" /> Other terms for ecological immersion appeared in the neighborhood literature like Jessica Nissen’s “circuitous systems”<ref name="nissen" /> and Nerve Circle's “web jam.”<ref name=":18" /> Even a traditional theater like Open Window Theater drew its audiences both onto and into its sets. One such production, The Hunger Artist written by Franz Kafka, involved a structure built by David Brody who later oversaw immersive video systems for Organism with Carlton Bright. |
| All of the Immersionist theatrical events involved participatory strategies set in stark contrast to a corporate system of media delivered to passive viewers. Corporate media was vividly eschewed by Rob Hickman and Kit Blake in an early Immersionist street action, Glow Nighttime which involved the tossing of five televisions and two mock satellites off a roof on South 11th Street in 1991. The large street crowds witnessed the event to the sound of live drums and projections provided by Ilene Zori Magaras and Richard Posch. In ''Domus Magazine,'' the architect Suzan Wines maintained that Williamsburg's creators of “immersive environments”<ref name=":43">{{Cite journal |last=Wines |first=Suzan |date=February 1998 |title=Go With the Flow: Eight New York Artists and Architects in the Digital Era |journal=Domus Magazine}}</ref> were challenging 20th century existentialism's fixation on the isolated psyche, and offered a “vital antidote to the dogma of modernism”.<ref name=":43" /> In 1998, she invokes the Surrealist term [[exquisite corpse]], which refers to a collective creation, and expands the circle of participation to include the environment:<blockquote>“During the early 1990s, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, located directly across the river from the popular East Village, was home to New York's most vibrant art scene... their work integrated the raw material of Williamsburg's industrial wasteland with its inherent human diversity (mainly Hispanic, Polish, Hasidic and Italian) to create a living, breathing exquisite corpse constantly responding to new input.”<ref name=":43" /></blockquote>One of the largest Immersionist gatherings in the early 1990s, Organism turned nearly all of the Old Dutch Mustard Factory into an experiment in organic interconnection. Conceived by Ebon Fisher as an ecological “web jam,”''<ref name=":43" />'' the 15 hour creation involved a weave of systems cultivated by 120 artists, musicians and architects in collaboration with their environment.''<ref name=":43" />'' As stated in the program notes, "The Organism is an attempt to push the idea of linkage, collaboration and interaction to its mellifluous, weblike extreme."<ref name=":23" /> A deliberate cultivation of an emergent biological system, the event incorporated over 2000''<ref name=":10" />'' visitors into its formation and was characterized by Wines in [[Domus (magazine)|''Domus'']] as “a symbolic climax to the renegade activity that had been stirring within the community since the late eighties.”''<ref name=":43" />'' Underscoring the biological nature of the web jam, she described it as “breathing and transforming for fifteen hours in an abandoned mustard factory.”''<ref name=":43" />'' | |
| [[File:Crash Worship Crowd at Mustard, 1993.jpg|thumb|390x390px|<small>Crash Worship event at Mustard, 1993. Photo by PoGo.</small>]] | [[File:Crash Worship Crowd at Mustard, 1993.jpg|thumb|390x390px|<small>Crash Worship event at Mustard, 1993. Photo by PoGo.</small>]] |
| Citing the large "immersive environments"''<ref name=":43" />'' in the abandoned warehouses, and an array of social-environmental experiments by Nerve Circle, Lalalandia, Fakeshop, Floating Point Unit, Ovni and Ongolia, Wines notes in ''Domus'' that an innovative sensibility had emerged in Williamsburg that involved the cultivation of living systems and experiences rather than solid works of art and architecture.''<ref name=":43" />'' While the notion of nurturing into existence a collective being that extended out into its environment was fairly radical for its time, such a continuum of mind and ecosystem began to be embraced years later by art theorists using terms such as [[Social practice (art)|social practices]] and [[Relational Aesthetics|relational aesthetics]]. In a similar shift, psychologists began using the terms [[embodied cognition]] and [[extended cognition]] as a new framework for understanding the interplay between the mind and the surrounding world. A discourse on relational aesthetics and environmental poetics continued to emerge as late as 2023 in books such as The Environmental Unconscious by Steven Swarbrick.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Swarbrick |first=Steven |title=The Environmental Unconscious: Ecological Poetics from Spenser to Milton |publisher=The University of Minnesota Press |year=1993}}</ref> | Citing the large "immersive environments"''<ref name=":43" />'' in the abandoned warehouses, and an array of social-environmental experiments by Nerve Circle, Lalalandia, Fakeshop, Floating Point Unit, Ovni and Ongolia, Wines notes in ''Domus'' that an innovative sensibility had emerged in Williamsburg that involved the cultivation of living systems and experiences rather than solid works of art and architecture.''<ref name=":43" />'' While the notion of nurturing into existence a collective being that extended out into its environment was fairly radical for its time, such a continuum of mind and ecosystem began to be embraced years later by art theorists using terms such as [[Social practice (art)|social practices]] and [[Relational Aesthetics|relational aesthetics]]. In a similar shift, psychologists began using the terms [[embodied cognition]] and [[extended cognition]] as a new framework for understanding the interplay between the mind and the surrounding world. A discourse on relational aesthetics and environmental poetics continued to emerge as late as 2023 in books such as The Environmental Unconscious by Steven Swarbrick.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Swarbrick |first=Steven |title=The Environmental Unconscious: Ecological Poetics from Spenser to Milton |publisher=The University of Minnesota Press |year=1993}}</ref> |
Okumaya devam et...