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Currently Pitzer College is taking submissions for a rather large site specific text piece for the staircase in the Nichols Gallery.  Having really enjoyed the little staircase or nook gallery, as I like to call it, that is at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, I wanted to make sure to submit something.  Now, I misread the requirements as 400 words rather than 400 characters.  What started off as a long discussion about the design, function and social conventions of staircases, with attention to typographic layout has resulted in what I’d almost call the twitterized version of itself.  That result being an abbreviated end user license agreement for using the staircase itself.  Which makes me think that I may have a new guerrilla public art project on my hands.  It might be fun but we’ll see what happens.  Until then please observe the following when you are climbing the stairs.

The Exchange Rate: 2008 book is now available for purchase in soft cover or as a free downloadable PDF.  I was very happy to see that the book is using a Creative Commons license and to see my screenshot from GTA make the cut.  The book looks great, thanks to Roman Jaster who did the design work for it.  The book includes the original copies of all the performance scripts and descriptions about them, the documentation of the performances, an essay by Claire Ruud, and a interview of Elana Mann about the project.  All in all it is 144 pages long, pretty hefty.  The official description of the book is below and you can purchase or download a copy here at http://www.lulu.com/content/5656529, enjoy.

This book documents an international performance exchange organized by artist Elana Mann in response to the 2008 US presidential election. Thirty-eight artists living in sixteen different countries participated in the project. With the aid of the project website exchangerate2008.com, participating artists produced, exchanged, and interpreted performance directions related to the election campaign. Artists include: Adam Overton, Aiste Ptakauske, Ana Fernandez , Bruce Conkle, CamLab, Chan & Mann, Danielle Adair, Dorit Cypis, Elana Mann, Emery Martin, Eric Lindley, Ernesto Salmeron, Eva Jung, Jason Kunke, Jean Pierre Lapeyre, Julie Lequin, Karen Atkinson, Kelly Kleinschrodt, Kevin Jamieson, Liz Glynn, Lora Ivanova, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Maile Colbert, Marc Lewis, Marssares, Melissa Wyman, Michael Lazar, Pablo Rasgado, REP, Rui Costa, Sara Roberts , Sibyl O’Malley, Søren Thilo Funder, Stine Marie Jacobsen,Vincent Ramos, Zackary Drucker. Designed by Roman Jaster.

The Exchange Rate: 2008 Election Night event was I’d say a smashing success.  People came out, saw the performances but best of all Obama won.  It was a momentous night and I’m glad I had a chance to take part in it as an active participant.  Of course we now have to see what Obama will do while in office but maybe just maybe we will have some change as trite as that sounds.  That aside here are some pictures from Jason Kunke’s performance of my performance script, Ammunation and of my performance of Jason Kunke’s script, Political Speech for a Hydra.

I finally have gotten a chance to start gathering the documentation from the various events I participated in this fall.  Therefore, first up the great installation from Not An Alternative in conjunction with Paper Tiger TV and Deep Dish TV, that was a part of the 2008 NYC Art Book Fair put on by Printed Matter.  My animated short, “Death, Destruction and the Weather Coming Up Next,” was part of the curated video program, as a part of their city-scape that was designed to reference, “language of mass production, advertising, commercialism, and info war.”  For more images, please visit the following links. Final installation and construction.

My first solo show, Business is Business: Emery C. Martin, A Solo Show, will be opening this week at Sea and Space Explorations gallery in Los Angeles, CA.  Press release and details below.

“Since computer games are a socializing force both directly and indirectly “Business is Business” begins to deconstruct and forefront the ideology presented by the game, “Command & Conquer: Generals” (2003), in relation to another often seemingly benign socializing mechanism, the language learning course. The result is a language learning course that begins to reveal clashes between these two socializing devices, there similarities, deficiencies, and the lack of access to a broader understanding of the Middle East within the American everyday.”

November 29th – December 7th, 2008
Reception: Saturday, November 29th, 8 – 11 PM
Location: Sea and Space Explorations
4755 York Blvd
Los Angeles, CA
For more information please visit http://www.seaandspace.org/

Death, Destruction and the Weather Coming Up Next (2006) is going to be screened along with many other video works at the Printed Matter NY Art Book Fair. It will be part of the FRIENDLY FIRE curated portion of the show, as part of an installation by Deep Dish TV, Paper Tiger Television and Not an Alternative.  Details are below on the fair and FRIENDLY FIRE.

FRIENDLY FIRE, a curated section of the Fair featuring thirty-one independent artists and art collectives in three galleries, including a video room programmed by Deep Dish TV, Paper Tiger Television and Not an Alternative.

Printed Matter’s annual fair of contemporary art books, art catalogs, artists’ books, art periodicals, and ‘zines offered for sale by over 140 international publishers, booksellers, and antiquarian dealers. Admission to the fair is FREE.

LOCATION
Phillips de Pury & Company
450 West 15th Street at 10th Avenue, 3rd floor, NYC (map)

FAIR HOURS
Friday/Saturday, October 24 & 25, 2008, 11am – 7pm
Sunday, October 26, 2008, 11am – 5pm

Admission to the NY Art Book Fair is free.

http://www.nyartbookfair.com/
http://deepdishtv.org/
http://www.notanalternative.net/
http://www.papertiger.org/

The web exhibition portion of, OURS: Democracy in the Age of Branding, is up and available for viewing by anyone with an internet connection here at http://www.branding-democracy.org/?q=node/63.  The full description of the online portion of the show is below.

An interesting paradox informs the online works of OURS. Network culture has given us new challenges to our civil liberties—illegal government surveillance, increased censorship, retrograde copyright enforcement, linguistic hegemony—and, at the same time, provided us with new tools for combating these challenges. The question of branding is a perfect point of entry for such an enterprise. What is branding if not a highly-mediated, visually-based form of communication whose rhetorical and psychological impacts are just as precisely calculated as the military’s psychological operations (PSYOPs)? The Internet makes the “source code” of these missives transparent and editable. Taking this DIY political aesthetic into their own hands, the Web-based works in OURS reflect on contemporary politics—whether it is the state of things in the U.S. or abroad.

The description for the online portion of the show I believe is rather accurate and powerful.  The usage of branding in a networked online space as a tool for challenging hegemony is and has been critical to the creation of The Neighborhood Network Watch.  In addition the project was designed to yield the largest psychological effect upon its audience by making use of language, methodologies, and tactics typically reserved for the government and the military.   The co-opting of these tactics and techniques should not be taboo but rather they should be embraced by activists and artists and used to their fullest potentials especially in the times we currently are and have been in.

I am taking part in the Exchange Rate: 2008 an international performance script exchange in response to the U.S. elections, organized by Elana Mann.  I will be performing a script written by L.A. based artist Jason Kunke, entitled Political Speech For A Hydra on November 4th, at Remy’s On Temple.  The speech is primarily comprised of the voices of people who were present during assassinations or attempted assassinations of U.S. Presidents, including the following: James G. Blaine, Floyd Boring, Jim Brady, Anton Cermak, John Connally, George B. Cortelyou, David Crockett, Albert H. Martin, Henry Rathbone, Mikheil Saakashvili, Oliver Sipple, as well as a description of a college football game between Auburn and Arkansas from October 29, 1994.  In turn Jason Kunke will be performing my script entitled Ammunation Script, that contextualizes commercials from the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas within the current political climate of the elections.  Details on the project and the performance are below.

Announcing an election night event on Tuesday, November 4, 2008 from 7-10pm at Remy’s on Temple, 2126 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, CA 90026. The event will feature performances from Danielle Adair, Camlab (Anna Mayer and Jemima Wyman), Chan and Mann (Audrey Chan and Elana Mann), Zackary Drucker, Lora Ivanova, Jason Kunke, Sibyl O’Malley (with Caitlin Lainoff and Kari Rae Seekins) , Emery Martin and Adam Overton. Karen Atkinson will be exhibiting a curated slide show of election themed images from over 100 artists and presenting a special election reception. The evening will also include live coverage of election results. Presented by Trade&Row with additional sponsorship from Company Wide Shut, Side Street Projects , GYST Inc and Chesed v’Tov Foundation. Suggested $5 donation at the door. After party 10:30pm at WILDNESS, the Silver

Platter, 2700 W. 7th St., LA, CA 90057.
Date: November 4, 2008
Time:7-10pm
Place: Remy’s on Temple
Address: 2126 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, CA 90026

http://www.exchangerate2008.com/

The Mediatopia project sounds like it went well.  I got to watch some of the 24 hours, however of course missed my work being part of it.  Robert Dansby however sent me this picture of Death, Destruction And The Weather Coming Up Next being shown/remixed over at the Gallery Theatre at the National Museum of Singapore.  CPT and Dialogues in Command & Conquer Generals: Unit 30were also part of the Mediatopia project.