Monday, February 18, 2013

Artist in residence at Windward Los Angeles, CA





Windward Mapping Project - Los Angeles 
Made possible by a grant from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation.
Exhibition / Lectures / Performances
Project Piertopolis Data Visualization Series
Mapping Urban Scapes & Building Orb Observatory
PIERTOPOLIS /ピアトポリス

January 7 – February 14, 2013
Reception: Wednesday, February 6, 2013, 12-12:45pm
The Visual Arts Department at Windward School presents The Installation Project at Windward, a unique opportunity for installation and new media artists to create artwork in an exciting educational setting.  Artists are invited to work with students and share their working processes and ideas with teachers, parents, and the entire Windward community. This year Windward School is pleased to announce an installation by international artist Antonio Jose Guzman.  Based in Amsterdam, Dakar, and Panama City, Guzman’s multimedia installations explore migration, diasporas, and the moving, mixing, and clashing of world cultures.  His installations research transatlantic movements, global networks, and the impulse to create an international collective memory.  They also explore the mechanisms of power and violence inherent in the ongoing and open confrontation between different worlds, connecting our global experiences to the political present as well as to unresolved issues of the colonial past.

In his project Piertopolis, Guzman uses the pier as a symbol of arrival and departure, a dreaming and gathering point, as well as a launching pad for journeys and new opportunities.  It is the transmigratory flash point where cultures meet and mix it up.  Through DNA research, data analysis, and alternative mapping strategies, Guzman attempts to reimagine ethnic and cultural identities and societies, using the pier as a place to envision an ideal global society.
At Windward, Guzman will create the Windward Mapping Project, an analysis of psychogeographic social interaction and spatial mobility.  He will work with our students to create a mapping of their identities from the physical and mental geographies they traverse in their everyday lives.  Using the classic film The Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames as a model for broadening our understanding of where we exist in the universe, students will explore and aesthetically reimagine what it means to be a global citizen.

Held and Bordy Family Gallery
Windward School
1350 Palms Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90066
Tel.: 310-391-7127