Week 1 in New York

Throughout this week I began my physical research and media capture. Throughout this week I visited several museums, visited the archive, and began to capture media around the city.

MoMA

The first exhibition I viewed was New Order: Art and Technology in the Twenty-first Centuryat the Museum of Modern Art. This exhibition took works from MoMA’s permanent collection that dealt with the ways artists are experimenting with technology (both in correct uses of materials as well as misuse) to challenge the ways people currently use and experience these technological forms. 

Photo by author.

Photo by Author.

Photo by Author.

The works in this exhibition ranged from a self-playing and generating video game, to a simulation presented as a 16mm film video and a work that examines the history of video and sound mediums as a way of exploring infrastructure and the ways technology influences the collective understanding of time. Overall this exhibition is an interesting way to see how artists are currently pushing the boundaries of technology.

Guggenheim

At the Guggenheim I viewed the exhibition Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now. This exhibition is first and foremost a retrospective of Mapplethorpe’s work. It includes pieces throughout his entire career and includes not only his photos but some of his constructions as well.

Photos by author.

NYPL

In commemoration of the Stonewall Riots, the NYPL has the exhibition Love & Resistance: Stonewall 50. This exhibition presents items from LGBTQ history as well as photographs from the library’s archives to show how Gay Liberation exploded. 

Photos by author.

Archives

This week I visited the archives at the New York Public Library Schwarzman building. In this visit I specifically focused on viewing materials about masculinity, sex roles, and other related topics. This archive has some of the most extensive collections in not only physical documents like ephemera, photos, and ads, but also video, interviews, and scholarship. Overall this visit gave me a different perspective to look at the topics I am dealing with in my art. 

Media Collection

Throughout this week I also began collecting media for the creative portion of the project. Overall, due to the sheer amount of changes in NYC from the last time I went (read gentrification) I am not finding the amount of media that I would like so I will be also adding materials from rural areas as part of my project to provide that final part of the contrast and strengthen this work.

Photos by author