Jason Moore’s Neighborhood

Casa Blanca 2 presents Make Them Love You, a series of hand-painted signs exhibited throughout the city of Chennai that explore the negotiation between interior desires and exterior space.

Exhibition dates: 18 May - 13 June, 2009
Opening: Saturday,16 May, 2009, 6:30-9:30

Art World Gallery
12,Ganeshpuram
3rd Street, (Off Cenotaph Rd.)
Teynampet, Chennai
044 2431 5371

Postcard

For us, the sign clusters that punctuate Chennai’s landscape seem to turn the city inside-out - masking the container (the building) while revealing its contents (the businesses inside). The signs, in a constant state of becoming, compete for attention to fill the negative space of the city’s built environment with unregulated explosions of internal desires.

Make Them Love You uses the sign clusters as an exhibition space to display the artwork of ten participants who were asked to design a sign advertising a personal interior/exterior dialectic exploring notions of celebrity, sacrifice, development, and narcissism.

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“We Intend to be Happy” by artists Roberto Freddi & Jason Moore, presents the artists themselves dressed in camouflage in front of the British flag. This self-portrait is a nod to their heroic overcoming of the strenuous administrative process, enabling them to enjoy a cup of tea while living together, as a couple, in London. The camouflage and dog tags evoke the larger debate of homosexuality and the military while also playing with the material function of camouflage. They transform the composition of flat shapes without foreground or background (camouflage’s primary function: to absorb one into the background) into a mechanism to project them and their story into the foreground by exploiting its use within popular culture. The Kollywood film actress and director Revathy presents an actual-size autograph of ‘Asha Kelunni’, her real name. And Bangalore-based artist, Prayas Abhinav’s, piece states “Now Food is Within Your Reach”, is a promotion of his current work on urban gardening while also presenting a possibility of how art can address the needs of his country.

The participants were asked to design a signboard exploring an interior/exterior dialectic and the designs were then hand-painted by a team of Chennai-based sign painters offering an additional layer of interpretation between the artist, the environment, and the exhibition.

Artist/architect Teddy Cruz confirmed his participation in the exhibition but didn’t produce a piece - so we made one for him. The artist is seen imposed on the landscape in view of the sign painter. A virtual playback of an interior desire held by the gallery projected through the perspective of the sign painter himself. The poor quality photo taken with a mobile phone camera while eating lunch in San Diego is reinterpreted, shifting both the quality and the context of what is familiar and what is foreign.

Artists Roxanne Borujerdi and Postmasters Gallery explore the ambiguity between two-dimensional and three-dimensional spaces as an impression of worlds within-worlds. And the work of Jessica Wallack and Sarath Babu, points to the transition from private to public and back again, playing with the external as both nemesis and ally. While, the piece made by residents and staff of The Banyan present handwritten statements and images of embroidery, interweaving the physical and the psychological into blindspots of perception.

Chennai-based artist and sign painter, S.A.V Elanchezian, will not disclose details of his sign at this moment, saying, “It’s my problem, if I just want to just put one letter, I’ll do it”.

Hanging the artworks within sign clusters around Chennai is an effort to evoke the relationship between place and self. Make Them Love You recognizes that desire is externalized in the very formation of place and that place itself is lived as much internally as externally.

The artwork will be on display at Art World Gallery on the 15 & 16 May before we hang them amngst the sign clusters on Narasingapuram street (off Anna Salai, maps provided at the opening).

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Casa Blanca 2: New No. 16 is an art gallery based in the city of Chennai, India. We have no physical space of our own, but rather we borrow public space for exhibitions. This effort is to raise a dialogue about access and agency to view and make art, while charging the ordinary proximity between people and place.
 
For more information contact Shannon Spanhake +91 90 0325 8086.

Sponsor of Make Them Love You: CSO Partners | www.csopartners.org.in

I am very excited to invite you all to Make Them Love You, "a series of hand-painted signs exhibited throughout the city of Chennai that explore the negotiation between desires and exterior space."

My husband Jason and I created a portrait of ourselves called "We intend to be happy" where we appear in camouflage outfits sharing a proper English breakfast tea in bed. We thought it was the least we could do after after having fought against the immigration laws of three different countries in order to have our rights as a couple recognized! Our inescapable need to love each over the years faced an indiscernible force of three governments with their border agencies, a dozen of churches and family organizations and those 7,001,084 Californians who wanted to void our marriage when they voted for proposition 8 last November 2008.

We created this commercial sign to promote our couple and the possibilities of love to overcome geopolitical borders and the definitions of terms such as partner, family member, couple, loving relationship that border officers utilize in entry clearance forms.

Please read the attached press release for a more clever description of the show and of our project

I brought Jason to see Dirty Projectors' concert at Scala last Thursday. I shall not say anything about them because we all know that Dave Longstreth is a genius and that their music is the best thing coming out of Brooklyn at the moment.

Instead, I am posting a video of Lucky Dragons, the collective from Los Angeles that performed before DP.
If you do not know them, here is their bio.

I loved the Native American vibe that they brought to London in a warm spring evening. I felt like I was walking in the Navajo Desert with husband on my side, peyote in my stomach and many many miles to go..

The belly of the beast

"No I don't think it is a "brilliant" idea! I hate that word! In fact, I think it is a horrible idea, up there with the Segway...and do you have any idea how ridiculous all these beanbag chairs are?!

No, Tricia and Joanne, I didn't say this outloud... I just thought this as I sat across from a Google guy.

Was he serious when he said "wiki"?! And did he say "wiki" within the context of the future?! Yup, he said it, and he was as serious as those beanbag chairs weren't cool. WTF IS UP WITH THESE BRIGHT COLORED LUMPS AND MULTICOLORED WALLS? ITS LIKE A MONTESOORI SCHOOL FOR SOCIALLY CHALLENGED ADULTS!! In the abstract I sent, they were prepared to hear me discuss "E-Governance Part III" a call to action for data to be made reusable, with interoperable standards, and regulated for co-ownership. However, by the time I got there my talk had become, "Technology and Development: The Engineer's Dilemma", this talk highlighted the conflict of priorities between development and engineering, showing examples of the 'Faster, smaller, more powerful model' failing when deployed as a development solution (Think: OLPC). Towards this I presented the dark underbelly of the entire data enterprise and how this opened up, what I think to be, the most interesting space in development for engineers to be working - that of problem identification.

That, before we deploy another water treatment facility, or write another education policy, or make another mashup, we should think FIRST about the quality of the data we are basing our decisions on. With a closer look, we see that the technology and methods used to collect this data are old - determined in a time when the composition of the human population was less diverse, less mobile, and with a different kind of relationship to the environment. And that we as engineers have the unique opportunity to develop new tools to collect more representative data.

That, Google, yeah you...it doesn't matter if you have all the data in the world, you can give access to it, make it reusable, and legible - but it is still BAD data and your wiki won't change that. Your maps, and mail, gadgets, and search engine won't change the quality of the data. Now you may say, "this isn't our job". But I would disagree by saying, "It may not be your 'job' but it is your 'responsibility' as you hold a position of power within society and the data you present is stamped with authority and it is BAD! UGLY! And bears little resemblance to that which it represents. The promise of this wiki that you speak of reminds me, as I laugh silently, of all those fabulously mis-targeted inventions conceptualized in the name of the future - rocketbelts, Dimaxion self-cleaning plastic houses, aerocars, and of course...robots.

Fist pound to the California Court of Appeals who fabulously and unanimously ruled that Santa Clara County must make public its GIS parcel basemap, which shows real estate boundaries, appraisals, and other property data. The court rejected all arguments that Homeland Security regulation and Copyright Protection are more important than a public right to information protected under the California Public Records Act. GO CALIFORNIA COURT OF APPEALS!!

Parcel Basemap

This landmark case County of Santa Clara v. California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) has potentially far-reaching implications. Could this decision apply to any government database that was created with public funds?

CFAC court ruling

California 1st Amendment Coalition

There are not words to describe my love for Ricardo Terfry aka Rich aka Buck 65.
Last September, Rich started this show on CBC Radio2 which really rocks and that, of course, it is not only about hip hop. I am learning a great deal from Buck 65 and his guests, check it out and let me know if Buck is not the wickest man of Canada.

Buck65

If you do not know Buck 65, watch/listen to these two classics and love him forever: 

Two days before my actual birthday, a quite handsome UPS man delivered a package from SAN DIEGO to my door. Although I had to pay 55,94 pounds of bloody taxes to bail it out, I was simply in ecstasy when I opened it.
The sender, Mr.Jason Moore, was able to put together in only one present my love for maps, my addiction to electro/experimental/anticon music and my desire to own BOSE QC2.
My man is awesome and I am a lucky motherfucker I know...
UUUUUuuuhhhhh happy birthday to me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!       

Music Included:

Tape/Luminarium
Near The Parenthesis/L'Eixample
Eero Johannes/Eero Johnannes
Dosh/Wolves and Wishes

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Dan le Sac Vs Scroobious Pip teamed up with De La Soul’s Kevin Mercer (also known as Posdnuos, Mercenary, Plug One), to make this rework of Thou Shalt Always Kill a force to be reckoned with. Thou Shalt Always Kill was the duo’s debut release back in April of 2007 that reached a very respectable No.34 in the Uk Singles chart. The original is good, the rework is better. Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip have managed to create their own sub genre of Electronic/Hip Hop/Breakbeat music that appeals to a very wide audience.(Source: altsound)

Remeber The Knife right?Karin Dreijer Andersson has a new project called called Fever Ray, their (self titled) debut album will be out March 24th. The video for “If I Had A Heart” is released January 6th, is directed by Andreas Nilsson, and is creepy and beautiful. Enjoy!

About a month ago, my friend Edoardo Zamuner, a Reserch Fellow at the Laboratory of Neurobiology of Professor Semir Zeki (UCL), invited me to participate to an experiment in Neuroaesthetics.  As described in Wikipedia: Neuroesthetics investigates the structure and activity of the brain in response to experiences of esthetic phenomena. This relatively young discipline take advantage of neuroimaging tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and in genetic analysis which makes everything more interesting from a visual and semiotic perspective.

The particular project that the lab of Prof. Zeki is working on at the moment is about romantic love and obviously has something to do with face recognition of the loved one. The group is interested in scanning the brain of eterosexual and homosexual subjects in a love relationship from 1 month to 5 years.
This is how the experiment was intorduced to me:

"Love is one of the most overwhelming sentiments in human experience. Understanding what happens in our brain when we see our lover is of great benefits to society. If you agree to take part in this study you will be invited to a laboratory visit. You will be asked to provide photographs of your lover and also other people of the same sex for whom you have natural feelings. We will scan these images and return the photographs to you directly. You will also fill out a questionnaire about your feelings toward your lover. 
The scanning of your brain will last about one hour. During the scan you will see the faces of your lover ad the neutral people repeatedly. You are asked to press a button when you see a particular visual prompt. We will monitor your heart rate, breathing and skin conductance by instruments attached to your body. Directly after the scan you will fill out the questionnaire about your feelings a second time."

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I did the lab visit last week and yesterday I did the brain scanning. It was a tremendously interesting experience. Not only because I think this project is amazing and because all the people involved are highly qualified and inspiring individuals but also because of my interest in data visualisation in the art-formerly-known-as-new-media-art.

At the end of the experiment John Romaya, the computer programmer who coordinated the scanning of my brain gave me a software application to explore the regions of my brain. The images I am posting here are from a structural scanning, from a side, back and zenithal point of view.

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Oh and the reason why they are not looking into individuals in a relationship longer then 5 years is because it seems that after only 1 year..the brain does not react to the sight of the loved one in the same way anymore..This is a sad and not very surprising fact.

I am looking forward to the paper that will examinate the results of the empirical data, which is supposed to come out sometime in 2009. If you live in London and you would like to volunteer for this amazing research project please contact Doctor Edoardo Zamuner at e.zamuner@ucl.ac.uk. At the particular stage of the project they are particularly interested in scanning the brains of homosexuals subjects and of people from ethnic minorities.

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