Michael Damm : incidental films for an accidental audience

Description

Presented by David Cunningham Projects
in association with Christian L. Frock/ Invisible Venue, Oakland
part of: suddenly: where we live now (a set of art exhibitions and public events curated by Stephanie Snyder)

December 10 – December 21, 2008 | 5 - 7 pm daily | visible during evening commute hours after dark
Opening Reception December 13, 7-9 pm | DCP Project Space - 1928 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
A gathering to view the projections in Oakland will occur on the Platform of West Oakland BART at 6pm, Dec. 13 (see IV website)


DCP (David Cunningham Projects) is pleased to announce Michael Damm: incidental films for an accidental audience,
a set of site specific projections visible to the public from various Bay Area transit corridors on both sides of San Francisco Bay.

This project is presented in association with Invisible Venue, and includes projections visible in San Francisco on Folsom Street (between 15th and 16th) and in Oakland from the western end of the West Oakland BART platform (San Francisco bound side), and from passing trains northwest of the station. In addition, a third and unscheduled ‘performed’ component of the project will manifest on the 80/ 880/ 101 freeway loop during this twelve day period. The DCP Project space will be open during the hours listed

With incidental films for an accidental audience Michael Damm extends his earlier examinations of urban space, and in doing so poses the question - what is the structure of a glimpse? What do we see when we’re not really looking, in transit and in passing, and can the slight flicker at the corner of one’s eye be an interstice from which to re-perceive and reinterpret. Michael Damm’s most recent films are addressed to an audience in transit. Islands (shown at David Cunningham Projects and visible on the 1900 block of Folsom Street during commute hours on a screen built into the opening of an unused garage door), was filmed with a car mounted camera while conducting an automotive derive´ across the network of cities that ring the Bay and form a larger urban expanse that Lewis Mumford once dismissively described as the archetypal “road-town”. The film explores a fluctuation between specificity of place and seriality of space; it blurs the distinction between urban and suburban locations, proposing instead an invented and indeterminate psycho-geography of "where is this?". Addressed to a mobile audience commuting through an anonymous traffic corridor in San Francisco, it is intended to reactivate consideration of place and the boundaries of what we think of as local.

In tandem with the fixed projections at DCP and IV Damm will ‘perform’ a new piece 80 to 880 to 101 (islands) at an undisclosed time during the run of this project. Extending the notion of site specificity Damm takes re-edited footage from the fixed garage door projection on Folsom Street and sets it adrift on the very freeways that are it’s own subject. Functioning as the ‘dispersed mobile second channel’ to it’s fixed twin – this re-edited footage will be played back on a screen installed in the back of an enclosed truck (rear-projected from inside) while navigating a route from San Francisco to Oakland to San Jose and back to San Francisco. The piece is directed to an audience of other drivers, designed as something to be glimpsed in passing. This act of playing the freeway back to itself, of offering an anomalous or enigmatic event to other drivers in a passage through “nowhere”, is intended to re-activate perception and temporarily propose the freeway as a kind of social space – ultimately as a means of re-examining the built environment and what we think of as “city”.

This project is part of suddenly: where we live now - a larger set of exhibitions and public events curated by Stephanie Snyder. suddenly is a book, a set of exhibitions and a series of public events concerning the new shape of cities. suddenly began in Portland, Oregon this Fall, and will continue to transpire in many places around the world. Stephanie Snyder is John and Anne Hauberg Curator and Director of the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland.

Michael Damm is an artist and organizer based in Oakland, California. His videos and photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Galeria Sztuki Wspolczesnej in Opole, Poland, the Belkin Satellite Gallery in Vancouver, Canada and on the BBC Big Screen in Manchester, England. He is part of the exhibition suddenly: where we live now – which originated at the Cooley Gallery at Reed College in Portland, OR, and will travel to the Pomona College Museum of Art in 2009. He was the founder/director of the acclaimed San Francisco alternative space Victoria Room, and received an MFA in Inter-media from Mill’s College in 2004.

For information on the Oakland projections and attending the gathering at West Oakland Bart please visit - invisiblevenue.com
For additional information on suddenly please visit - suddenly.org

For more information/ images please contact
[email protected] | tel:- 415.341.1538 | http://www.davidcunninghamprojects.com

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