Thursday night! BUREAU Artist in Residence Danielle Abrams curates a night of performance at New Orleans’ threepalms after a tip that it’s the hottest place to be plus there’s a tiki bar!
In her own words: “I’ll be performing my new piece ‘Shades of Gras.’ Think Elia Kazan’s Pinky meets Brad Pitt for a plaçage arrangement on a 300 year-old float, but only after getting some red beans and rice and a blessing from Tremé‘s eponymous Uncle Lionel Batiste! I’m so proud to be on deck with a crew of immensely talented Bostonites—artists Angela M. Counts, Ryan Leitner and Robert Fieseler, author of the newly released book Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation. It’s free, it’s outside, it’s the most adorable patio you could imagine, great food, good drink, people who smile at you, excellent vibes!”
Left: Cloud operator shredding a customer’s money, BUREAU of CHANGE’s black cloud Micro Ichi interface at Yami NYC 2, Nov. 2016.
Right: Rhizome and exonemo’s micro-edition of the Internet Yami Ichi at NADA, March 2018.
Rhizome transforms BUREAU’s Micro Ichi New Orleans concept, a performative intervention emphasizing collective ownership and anti-commercialism, into a boutique of internet-inspired wares at NADA art fair in New York City.
In 2015, BUREAU popped up in the neutral ground of the New Orleans’ St. Claude gallery district to hawk our internet-ish things. Organized and produced with Caroline Sinders, we staged a “micro” version of the Internet Yami-Ichi, a global underground art event created by IDPW. The following year, BUREAU travelled to the Knockdown Center for the Yami in NYC 2, the biggest meetup of Internet Yami-Ichi venders from New York and around the world, and vended from from our handcrafted black cloud interface embellished in glitter, silver and gold.
Rhizome and exonemo, an artist duo behind IDPW gatherings, commercialized the concept originated in New Orleans for the 2018 New Art Dealers Association art fair in New York City. “While the Internet Yami-Ichi is usually vast in size,” writes Rhizome’s Laura Studabaker, “Rhizome’s edition–like the ‘Micro’ event held in New Orleans–brings together a curated selection of 50 products on display in a small booth.”
Rhizome, a New Museum affiliate and anchor tenant of the incubator NEW INC where exonemo also is member, has been following the history of the Internet Yami-Ichi.
Since its founding in 2012 by IDPW and Exonemo, Internet Yami-Ichi has generated fervent crowds to sample cottage-made, tangible WWW goods and services in cities across the world: Basel, Berlin, New York City, Sapporo, Tokyo, and beyond, including a curated micro-edition in New Orleans in 2015 staged by Bureau of Change.
Writing for Rhizome in 2015, Lucas Pinheiro called the platform “a gripping example of recent artistic experimentations with the materiality of the web.” The following year, a Rhizome Commission supported an edition of the event at the Knockdown Center in Queens.
Net art objects and ephemera have a long history: Mouchette advertised her first public appearance via flyers on Amsterdam streets in 1996 and Rhizome founder Mark Tribe curated an exhibition of net art ephemera at Moving Image Gallery in 2002. Printed or zazzled, watermarked or hand-stitched, this edition of Internet Yami-Ichi is for net art that continues in this vein, circulating through physical networks of exchange.
For various reasons—which we see as rooted in cultural economic and philosophical difference related to the NADA fair project aims—BUREAU works by New Orleans artists and technologists were not hawked in the NADA Internet Yami Ichi booth.
BUREAU’s Scott Sullivan presented in the “live arts magazine,” Antenna::Signals, Issue 007, at Paper Machine in New Orleans on January 24, 2018.
Ulay Deux (Scott Sullivan) in Antenna::Signals at Paper Machine
In celebration of the opening of Antenna’s Paper Machine print center, Signals presentations and performances examine the theme Papers. Papers explored the myriad uses of paper – a medium at once literal and symbolic, malleable and dogmatic, portable and burdensome – to translate and regulate life. The event will explore the connotations of the theme from a number of specific angles, including immigration papers, the Green book (guide to safe road tripping for African Americans in Jim Crow America), Storyville blue books (catalogues for New Orleans’ famed red light district), and rolling and hemp papers.
BUREAU’s Scott Sullivan, an international law and foreign affairs professor at LSU and occasional artist under the pseudonym Ulay Deux, presented on several document-performance works, including the CIA’s experiment in training cats and Osama bin Laden’s English language bookshelf confiscated by the U.S. government at the time of his killing.
The CIA’s “Views on Trained Cats” from Ulay Deux (Scott Sullivan)’s document-performance in the Micro Internet Yami Ichi New Orleans, 2015.
Presenters and performances included:
Katrina Andry
Pamela D. Arceneaux
Vanessa Centeno
Ulay Deux (Scott Sullivan)
Rick Kasini Kadour
John Lawrence
Lydia Y. Nichols
Bob Snead
Dave Sobel
Rodrigo Toscano
ABOUT ANTENNA::SIGNALS
Conceived as a “live arts magazine,” Antenna::Signals is a variety show-styled event from the artists and writers of Antenna. Each “issue” of Antenna::Signals features a spread of 6-8 local artists, writers, musicians, scientists, activists and scholars whose practices relate thematically. The live magazine drops 4 times each year, accompanied by the release of a two-dimensional print publication.
ABOUT BUREAU of CHANGE
BUREAU of CHANGE is an education-centric lab for real art practice in New Orleans. We create, curate and exhibit socially and politically engaged work. Our process commissions artists and non-artists to collaborate on creative works aimed at inciting institutional change while studying social technology, digital media theory, interdisciplinary research and artistic production. We present our work at art institutions and community-accessible physical and digital spaces, as well as US|IS, our public art space at Gravier & Magazine Streets in downtown New Orleans.
ABOUT ANTENNA
Antenna is a New Orleans-based Non-profit organization committed to being a vital participant in the life of the city by creating and supporting artist- and writer-driven programs.
BUREAU of CHANGE, with Prospect New Orleans, presents two installations in P.S.4 at Urban Sidewalk Installation Space (US|IS), 441 Gravier Street at Magazine Street.
The exhibitions opened November 18, 2017 and continued for the duration of Prospect and beyond. Wombs Are the World closed on May 8, 2018 and BUREAU of CHANGE: Social Services is ongoing.
BUREAU of CHANGE: Social Services (P.S. Prospect)
Conceived in conversation with Prospect New Orleans, BUREAU of CHANGE will present a new installation in our evolving series Social Services.
Set against a backdrop of simmering international criticism of art festivals and biennials, layers of text will pose questions about the role of artists and their institutions—small to large, shoestring to rich, obscure to “famous”—as mediators or arbiters of history, culture and conflict.
Seen from the street, the newest version of Social Services aims to turn topsy turvy who we consider artists, art stars and prospects.
By design and resulting from its interactive, participatory qualities, BUREAU of CHANGE: Social Services is an ongoing project. It has exhibited at US/IS continuously since October 2014.
Nikomia Henry debuts her first solo exhibition at Prospect New Orleans
BUREAU of CHANGE delivers a fresh face to P.S.4 with Wombs Are the World.
New Orleans native Nikomia Henry debuts Wombs Are the World at Urban Sidewalk Installation Space (US/IS). In her first large scale public project, Henry collaborates with BUREAU’s Paige Allyn and 010her0 to bring one of her character portraits into three dimensions set to a soundscape, “A Song for Her,” by New Orleans singer-songwriter Caren Green.
Like much of Henry’s painting and drawing, the project is influenced by Black women in pop culture, R&B musicians and body symbolism in Hindu deities.
Installation view, Wombs Are the World at US/IS, November 18, 2017 – May 8, 2018
Wombs Are the World is a project of BUREAU’s interdisciplinary apprenticeship program in partnership with Delgado Community College. More information on how we work here.
441 Gravier Street at Magazine Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
BUREAU of CHANGE is proud to present Reverberations, a series of lectures, workshops and performances on local acts and global impacts. Organized by BUREAU founder Margot Herster, in collaboration with the LSU Law Center and Ogden Honors College, the series brings together socially engaged practitioners in law, journalism and art to present recent work.
Reverberations is a a three-part series, taking place at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge on March 29, April 3 and April 7, 2017.
Past Due: Costs and Consequences of Charging for Justice
Mathilde Laisne (Vera Institute) & Jennifer Hull (Orleans Public Defenders)
Wednesday, March 29, 2017; 3:30 PM
LSU Law Center, Room 106
Every year, government agencies in New Orleans collect millions of dollars in the form of bail, fines and fees from people involved in the criminal justice system and, by extension, from their families. Millions more are transferred from the pockets and bank accounts of residents to for-profit bail bond agents. Some view these costs as a necessary way to offset the expense of operating the criminal justice system. But because many “users” of the system have very low incomes or none at all, there is growing concern that charging for justice amounts to a criminalization of poverty.
Join us for a conversation on the cost and function of criminal justice in Louisiana featuring Jennifer Hull, a felony trial attorney at the Orleans Public Defender’s Office and Mathilde Laisne, a senior program associate at the Vera Institute for Justice.
Mathilde Laisne is a senior program associate with the Vera Institute of Justice’s New Orleans office where she works with local partners to develop initiatives that improve fairness and efficiency in the city’s criminal justice system. In 2017, she co-authored a report that looks at the use of bail, fines and fees in New Orleans and the resulting incarceration and costs. Mathilde holds a masters in international security from the Paris School of International Affairs with a concentration in human rights law. Prior to that, she studied political science at the University of Sciences Po in Paris and sociology at the Humboldt University of Berlin. While in school, Mathilde interned with the Office of the Prosecutor at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in The Hague, Netherlands.
Jennifer Hull is an attorney in the trials division of the Orleans Public Defender’s Office (OPD), where she represents indigent clients who are charged with felony crimes. Prior to working for OPD, Jennifer worked for Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, a 503(c) non-profit, providing legal representation to indigent clients in civil matters. There, she worked predominately in the domestic unit, litigating family law, child in need of care and domestic violence matters. Jennifer graduated from LSU Law in 2011. While at the law center, she worked as a student practitioner in the Immigration and Juvenile Criminal Defense Clinics, served as the Pro Bono Chair of the Public Interest Law Society and was the recipient of the Ginger Berrigan Award.
Anguish, Rage and Mercy
Kevin Sack, New York Times
Monday, April 3, 2017; 3:30 PM
LSU Law Center Auditorium
“In an extraordinary culmination to the federal death penalty trial of Dylann S. Roof, 35 family members and friends of his nine African-American victims confronted him directly at a sentencing hearing on Wednesday. Some forgave him with Christian grace. Others damned him to hell. But almost all proclaimed defiantly that his murderous church rampage had failed in its mission to sow division and racist hate.” -Kevin Sack, “Anguish, Rage and Mercy as Dylann Roof Is Sentenced to Death,” New York Times, January 11, 2017.
Join us for a lecture and conversation with Kevin Sack, who covered the trial of Dylann Roof for the New York Times, about the interaction of community and legal process in the aftermath of racist violence at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Kevin Sack is a senior writer, based in Atlanta, who produces long-form narrative projects for the investigations team. He has written broadly about national affairs for more than three decades and has shared in three Pulitzer Prizes.
During more than 20 years with the Times, he has served as bureau chief in Atlanta and Albany, covered health care for the national desk, and reported extensively on race, the South and domestic politics. His interests over the years have ranged widely, from kidney transplantation to the assimilation of refugees to the intersection of race and faith. A native of Jacksonville, Florida, he is an honors history graduate of Duke University.
It’s amazing we don’t have more fights
Chloë Bass, Artist and Public Practitioner
Friday, April 7, 2017, 11:00 AM
Ogden Honors College, French House Grand Salon
NOTE: EVENT CANCELLED DUE THE ARTIST’S FLIGHT CANCELLATION FROM INCLEMENT WEATHER IN NEW YORK.
This workshop investigates appropriate social distances within the context of institutional behavior. Schools and courtrooms are sites of both formality and great intimacy between people and their colleagues. As we navigate our personal, pedagogical or professional desires, we are often swept up in crowd management, or guided through procedures by structured choreographies. Inspired by the sociological field of proxemics (the spatial requirements of human beings and the effects of these requirements on society), Chloë Bass will bring participants together to turn distance into story, and teach new ways to read a room. Expect some engagements of intimacy, some instances of performance, and some participatory writing. Measuring devices and other materials will be provided; the systems we design to use them will be all yours.
The workshop is part of the fourth chapter of The Book of Everyday Instruction, Bass’ ongoing project about one-on-one social interaction. Chapter Four is focused on the accidental and incidental choreographies created by engaging with other bodies in space. The chapter’s title (“It’s amazing we don’t have more fights”) is a paraphrase of a quote from the artist’s mother about successful social behavior on New York’s subways and buses.
Chloë Bass is a conceptual artist working in performance, situation, publication, and installation. Her work addresses scales of intimacy, where patterns hold and break as group sizes expand, and daily life as a site of deep research. Her current project, The Book of Everyday Instruction, is an eight-chapter investigation into one-on-one social interaction. Chloë is a 2017 – 2018 Workspace resident at the Center for Book Arts, and a 2017 studio resident at Triangle Arts Association. Her projects have appeared in recent exhibitions at CUE Art Foundation, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Project Space, The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, the James Gallery, and elsewhere. Her forthcoming book will be published by the Operating System in December 2017; her writing is most often found on Hyperallergic. She is an Assistant Professor in Art and Social Practice at Queens College, CUNY.
Image credit: BUREAU of CHANGE: Amazing Grace (ft. Barack Obama), 2016. Video installation.
Rebecca Lee Reynolds describes BUREAU’s “Amazing Grace” in relation to U.S. history and 2016’s whirling images of tragedy, scandal, political maneuverings, and reimaginations of iconic symbols of civil and human conflict:
“This past year has provided plenty of material: Alton Sterling and the cops killed in Baton Rouge, the Confederate Monuments being voted for removal, the massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the approaching end of Obama’s presidency, Hillary vs. Bernie, the rise of Trump.”
Inside the small gallery by the elevators, I was drawn to Amazing Grace (ft. Barack Obama) (2016), a video work curated and directed by Margot Herster for the collective “Bureau of Change,” a kind of think tank dedicated to using art to create institutional change. The video features an African-American man wearing a Statue of Liberty costume—the character, played by Jason Brye, is a walking advertisement for Liberty Tax Service. The pale green robe is simply thrown over his jeans and sneakers when we meet him on a random New Orleans street, walking towards the camera and presumably to his job, holding the tax placards loosely in his hand. We watch this black Statue of Liberty doing his work on St. Claude Avenue at the base of the bridge to the Lower Ninth Ward, and then we follow him as he walks past the Jefferson Davis monument—a subtitle refers to the City Council’s vote to remove Confederate monuments from the city, listing this one as “scheduled for removal, date TBD.”
The walking tour is interspersed with footage of other Confederate monuments in town and protests, beginning with a Jan. 2016 protest at Lee Circle and ending with a July 2016 Black Lives Matter protest at Lee Circle after the Alton Sterling video was released. In between we see images sourced from public records: a still photo of Walter Scott in North Charleston, video of Tamir Rice, a historical photograph of the Emanuel AME church in Charleston, cropped photographs of the eyes of each victim of the Emanuel AME massacre. The graininess and poor quality of these last photographs is distracting, but it refers to their source in public records and the collective’s commitment to using public sources to expose problems. The intentional strategy includes the title’s reference to President Obama singing “Amazing Grace” during the eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of the victims of the Emanuel AME shootings in Charleston. Another performance of the song serves as a soundtrack to Brye’s walk through this landscape of racial violence.
As the video concludes, the screen goes black and transitions to Brye posed against a white background. Holding the plastic torch out in front of him like the actual Statue of Liberty, he slowly turns, as if shedding the light of liberty on his audience. There’s a sad irony to Brye’s character, performing the icon of liberty while we watch protests against the reality of a lack of equality. The hopefulness of the statue falls apart in face of this fake version, played as an advertisement, devoid of actual liberty or equality. And Brye’s eyes seem vacant as well, his body going through the motions. There’s an emptiness to the statues too, often ignored until protests this past year reinvested them with new emotion. The audio counters all of this coldness. The rap narration by K.G. fills in the blanks by expressing the lack of equality, while a beautiful rendition of “Amazing Grace” (credited to K.G.’s mom) counters that anger and frustration with a promise of redemption.
BUREAU of CHANGE & PhotoNOLA Festival of Photography Present:
BUREAU of CHANGE: Social Services (Revelry)
Viewable daily, 24/7
Street Dance Party December 10, 7PM to 9PM
New Orleans, Louisiana – BUREAU of CHANGE, in partnership with the PhotoNOLA Festival of Photography, is proud to announce the newest version of the ongoing interactive installation, BUREAU of CHANGE: Social Services. To experience how New Orleans does “revelry,” we invite you to our public art space, Urban Sidewalk Installation Space, during PhotoNOLA, the annual festival of photography produced by the New Orleans Photo Alliance.
On Saturday, December 10 from 7PM to 9PM, BUREAU of CHANGE is hosting a pop-up happening on the street in the form of an impromptu sidewalk party. Please come for drinks, music and street dancing.
By design and resulting from its interactive, participatory qualities, BUREAU of CHANGE: Social Services is an ongoing and evolving project. It has exhibited continuously since October 2014. Previous versions of the installation focused on pain, trauma, violence and bystander effects.
BUREAU of CHANGE: Social Services is an interactive intervention. It reframes internet-sourced images and reflects the interplay between what we are shown and what we see. Installed at US|IS, a series of false storefronts that act as containers for integrating art into the street life of the city, Social Services generates its own records. Visitors who choose to participate reflexively respond to selfie-ready mirrored windows, rather than any specific instruction, and photograph their own acts of observing to post to social media.
The newest version focuses on photographs that document and react to “revelry” as defined by New Orleans imagemakers.
ABOUT BUREAU of CHANGE
BUREAU of CHANGE is an education-centric lab for real art practice in New Orleans. We create, curate and exhibit socially and politically engaged work. Our process commissions artists and non-artists to collaborate on creative works aimed at inciting institutional change while studying social technology, digital media theory, interdisciplinary research and artistic production. We present our work at art institutions and community-accessible physical and digital spaces, as well as US|IS, our public art space at Gravier & Magazine Streets in downtown New Orleans.
ABOUT PhotoNOLA
BUREAU of CHANGE: Social Services is an official PhotoNOLA 2016 exhibition. PhotoNOLA, the annual festival of photography in New Orleans, proudly celebrates artistic excellence by bringing together photography enthusiasts, artists, and photography professionals to discover the best in world photography in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. PhotoNOLA 2016 will include 40 exhibitions featuring the work of more than 100 photographers along with panel discussions, artist talks, photographic workshops, portfolio reviews, and the PhotoGALA at the New Orleans Museum of Art. The PhotoNOLA Festival takes place Thursday, December 8 – Sunday, December 11, 2016. www.photonola.org
BUREAU of CHANGE brought our Micro Internet Yami Ichi, in a black cloud-inspired interface, to the Internet Yami-ichi NY 2 on November 6, 2016 at the Knockdown Center in Queens, New York.
Our goal was to spread light to the people on the beautiful dangers of the internet. BUREAU analytics show that that we reached that goal. We broke the internet, ate the misfortunes, cut the money, blocked the popups and didn’t give a f–k.
“My fear was that I would get lost, and that no one would ever hear from me again.”—InfraRedd, cloud operator and network security, BUREAU of CHANGE
“The energy was busy, the people were colorful, and the projects were cutting edge.”—Steven, cloud interface maker, BUREAU of CHANGE
It wasn’t all beats and bruises though, as we also sold scented retweet hearts. And after all, the people really needed them; we sold out.
At the BUREAU of CHANGE cloud interface, there was a lighthearted yet comical feel about it all. It was like window shopping, and Yami-ichi shoppers were scared but those who engaged with our black cloud market discovered so much more than tangible products.
One thing we sold was a wish. Participants inserted a dollar into the cloud to get amazing things. Gloved hands reached out of the cloud then pixelated the USD with shredder scissors and returned it to it’s owner. Some people were concerned about the legality of destroying the dollar. We anticipated this, so we had attorney services on hand to ease consumer concerns. Compared to the sadistic commercialism we engage in everyday on the internet, destroying the dollar seemed innocuous.
Logan Blake created a T-shirt that gave you a message to give a f–k. We’ve all been there, working on something important and there it goes, press “OK” to continue. What if you don’t want to say okay? What if you just want to say f–k? We thought this was a lighthearted way to show our dismay towards the “OK” button.
BUREAU of CHANGE was invited to show a selection of our work at NOLATech Weeks’ 4th Silicon Bayou Startup Showcase on October 14, 2016.
BUREAU of CHANGE showcased video and animation projects, as well as some of research and technology-based works from our flatfiles. We engaged in a lot of conversations about community problems and solutions related to our most recent video, Amazing Grace featuring President Barack Obama. Amazing Grace is a rap gospel that memorializes black lives lost to killings motivated by racism and addresses the role of social media in the Black Lives Matter movement.
We also exchanged ideas about economic stimulus disappointments and prospects of the tech industry in Louisiana related to our 2013 animated documentary, *EDUCATION NOT GUARANTEED. The video, created by Louisiana State University faculty, students and alums details student cost of financial and curricular fraud in higher education, in particular unfulfilled promises of the digital media program within the context of Governor Jindal’s economic and workforce development initiatives and the national education crisis.
Conceived as a science fair-style networking event, the showcase was a great way to share what the BUREAU of CHANGE has been working on and make connections with other New Orleans tech organizations. The other startups in the showcase were Concierge Solutions, Limited Times, Locally, PatentDive, Shiftgig, Vaunt 3D. We had the privilege of meeting a few of the other participating startups Vaunt 3D and PatentDive. Vaunt 3D is a 3D scanning and print house located in New Orleans. They provide high quality photo-real 3D renderings for architects, investors, and interior designers. PatentDive builds software to help builders protect their products. The company’s products help inventors and attorneys create better patent applications.
We would like to give a huge thank you to everyone who attended the event, as well as NOLATech Week and The Landing Zone for hosting the 4th Silicon Bayou Startup Showcase.
About NOLATech Week
NOLATech Week is a weeklong, citywide, unconference, bringing together art, food, music, urban development, environmental and education communities. All events are intended to educate, engage, facilitate collaboration, or grow awareness for all businesses, organizations, and members of our community.
About BUREAU of CHANGE
BUREAU of CHANGE is an education-centric lab for real art practice in New Orleans. We create, curate and exhibit socially and politically engaged work. Our process commissions artists and non-artists to collaborate on creative works aimed at inciting institutional change while studying social technology, digital media theory, interdisciplinary research and artistic production. We present our work at art institutions and community-accessible physical and digital spaces, as well as US|IS, our public art space at Gravier & Magazine Streets in downtown New Orleans
Image credit: Installation view, BUREAU of CHANGE, Amazing Grace (ft. Barack Obama), in Louisiana Contemporary at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, 2016 (left); Old Glory Holes and Pussy Riot by Dan Tague (right)
John D’Addario talks to curator Bill Arning, Director of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston about top picks, including BUREAU’s Amazing Grace, for Louisiana Contemporary, which A’ddario defines as “the Southern-inflected version of New York City’s Whitney Biennial: an opportunity to examine the currents of the regional art scene through the lens of a particular curatorial eye.”
Arning says what he calls the “unlikely relevance of abstraction” and “obsessiveness and the power of accumulation” are two more common themes which links several of the works on display.
With dozens of works by nearly 50 artists, there’s a lot to take in. But Arning has some advice for visitors wanting to make the most of their visit to the show.
“Take the time to watch the two longish videos,” said Arning. “Both Xavier Juarez and Adrione Domino are gifted filmmakers and use their performers for great emotional effect.”
“BUREAU of CHANGE’s short video comments on the hope and frustrations of the Obama years, in which the president’s inspiring voice is countered by the horror of so many young black men either killed or incarcerated. On a more positive note, Paul Rizzo, Max Sizeler, Peter Horjus, Brian Barbieri, Chris Berntsen and Arthur Severio depict the joy of queer lives today and exploring so many new possibilities.”
