Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof, OK artists

The Zero.1% for Art Commission
GUS, PIFAS (The Gallery Under the Stairs at The Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study)


The Zero.1% for Art Comission as it was displayed in GUS.

Libby Rosof and Roberta Fallon are predominately known as art writers and the creators of the internationally recognised artblog; fallonandrosof.blogspot.com. Lessor known is that they also have a history of making art themselves, some of which is currently on view in a small little box, usually located under the stairs in Ramsey Arnaoot's studio, but which was conveniently placed on the table during the opening for The Zero.1% for Art Commission Reading Room and Fire Sale.

The Zero.1% for Art Commission is a project started by Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof in or around 1998. Their mission is " to put art in the hands of 0.1 percent of the population of Philadelphia . . . reestablish[ing] a critical lost link between the general public and art." (quoted from fallonandrosof.com). The art created to give away, were "bags o'art" , clothespins (yes, passed out by the Claes Oldenburg) that question some preconceived notions of art ("is bigger better?", is one of the questions, which is especially funny considering the Claes Oldenburg's proximity), pocket-sized paintings, and tools for blocking out art that is offensive to the eye.


Bad Art Tool by Libby Rosof and Roberta Fallon

Their art is rather like their blogging; it is unpretentious, frank, optimistic, relies heavily on public interaction, and has a modest opinion of itself (their brand is "OK artists" because as Libby mentioned in an interview I did with the duo for The Vulture a year or so ago "[. . .] in terms of art we're not geniuses, but we think we're pretty smart on other things."). It is also free for the taking and given out generously for everyone to enjoy. Most notably, their art, like their art writing, inspires conversation about art.


Let the Dawn Only Come! mural by Ramsey Arnaoot.

Libby and Roberta's opening marks the last exhibition for the GUS that will be curated by PIFAS faculty member Ramsey Arnaoot, who is moving to Syria and might already be gone. His final exhibition, a mural, light installation, and a collection of drawings he has traded for via the mail for the past (?) years, collectively titled Let the Dawn Only Come was also on view. Ramsey increased the cultural capital of Philadelphia and will be sorely missed. This blogger wishes him the best of luck while looking forward to the future of the spaces he created under the new directorship of Constance Mensch, pictured below:

EVERYONE SHOULD GO TO THE PHILADELPHIA INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY ON SUNDAY. Everybody!!!!

The Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study

April 27: GUS (Ramsey's tiny Gallery Under the Stairs) Opening: Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof
The final GUS opening of April - Sunday, April 27th, at 7pm, GUS presents a collection of tiny paintings by Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof.

Reception begins at 7pm.

April 27: International Noise Conference

The Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study hosts the International Noise Conference, beginning at 7PM and continuing into the evening. Numerous acts; short in nature.
Donations Welcome

April 27: Let the Dawn Only Come!
Going away show for Ramsey Arnaoot, who is moving to Syria in May. Drawings, paintings, light sculptures.
Opens at 8pm.

GIVEN ENOUGH EYEBALLS: RAMSEY ARNAOOT

A screen shot of the Audio-Video Sampling Synthesizer.

Ramsey Arnaoot is a philadelphia-based artist and faculty member of The Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study, which we call pifas for short. I wrote a blog a while back on Ramsey's artist residency program here.

His piece for Given Enough Eyeballs is an Audio-Video Sampling Synthesizer , and has the distinction of being the only project in the exhibition that actually utilizes open source technologies. At it's simplest the Audio-Visual Sampling Synthesizer is a machine that will create a mixed-up version of anything you put inside of it, a tool for creating new data out of old. At it's most complex it gives us a behind-the-scenes look at digital media that we often take for granted, making the technologies of the image transparent.

The source code for Ramsey's project and notes on how he created the program are all openly available to the public on The Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study's web-site.

Scenes from the Flux Space and a studio visit with Joe DiGuiseppe

Joe DiGuiseppe's back. As I take more pictures I get increasingly shy of asking people to let me take their picture. Therefore, expect many images like this in the future.


I visited Joe at the Flux Space on Wednesday, December 12th, three days before their major Oliver Herring opening (which I could not attend due to a very important poker tournament), to gain some further knowledge of his own work and ask him to be a part of a show I'm curating for the Esther M. Klein Gallery in March of next year.

The show is going to be about open source technology, and how it or it's concept can be applied towards the creation of art, and will be titled Given Enough Eyeballs in reference to Eric S. Raymond's essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar (abbreviated CatB). The full quote it's taken from being "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"--my simple summary of the concept being that if all of us have the access to information and the ability to process it then we'll be able to work out any problem we come across. In defense of this thesis I'm going to point to Wikipedia.

Joe and I shared some internet site favorites, including his own website:

Put things in my pussy! by Joe

Joe's site

many ones dot com a site by Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung that is truly a work of art.

You be the Man Now Dog. A site of strings of animated gifs and manipulated jpegs.

Also I enjoyed a video night and the Flux Space's scenery:


The Flux fridge


One of Joe's plans for a future art installation.


A very old dictionary that still believes computers are people who compute.


A scene from Joe's studio.


A scene from the FluxSpace.

Also in the open source exhibition so far are Yoshi Sodeoka (New York), and Ramsey Arnaoot (The Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study). If you have any thoughts on open source/systems or how an exhibition about them should be run or, if you have a computer you could donate to the cause please leave your information.

The Residency at PIFAS to cat-people in four points

K-Fai's installation at PIFAS

This post could get complicated so I'm going to try and make it as simple as possible:

1. The Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study (PIFAS), basically a warehouse full of artist studios on 2nd and Cecil B. What sets it apart from most such warehouses is it's concentration on sciences, languages, clubs, and other kinds of think tanks--it even hosts a residency.

2. The Residency is called The Eric James Johnson Memorial Fellowship and it (quoted from the website) "provides a living space, a studio, a bicycle, and a computer for one month to qualifying artists with projects they wish to complete in the city of Philadelphia. The program is completely free and comprises no stipend; however, fellowship recipients are automatically considered for the Benjamin D. Letzler Genius Grant, awarded to scientists and individuals deemed to have made an indelible contribution to the discipline of public education." A conversation with Residency Coordinator Ramsey Arnaoot lead to the discovery that the Benjamin D. Letzler Genius Grant is really $36 and the bike provided is a folder but that is not the point.



Past Eric James Johnson Memorial Fellowship recipients Ursula Böckler and Georg Graw created a Drive-In and screened films of their own making.

C. The point is that this residency has been bringing some far out people into Philadelphia, people as far out as England or Germany and they have been using their month in Philly to create some interesting projects (not only art but music, writing, or whatever.) It is a great program aimed at demystifying residencies and helping free-thinkers get the time to think.

4. Recently I attended a video viewing and installation exhibition by resident K-Fai Steele who draws cat-people.


Othello, cat-people style.

I must admit that I didn't really get the cat-people adaptation of Othello that was on view, I thought perhaps it was supposed to be some absurdist play on the shakesperean tragedy but couldn't really make anything out of it. The installation of life-sized paper mache cat people was more compelling, but I admit, just as mysterious. It all seemed kind of whacky and I almost dismissed the whole thing but something made me visit K-Fai's blog and ask her a few questions. It turns out the cat-people are all actually self portraits and that I actually feel a comraderie with a lot of her drawings:

"The first questions that people generally ask are "why cats?" and "why self-portraits?"  When I was a kid, I drew myself and my family members as people with cat heads.  I'm not sure where I got this idea from, I would love to say it was divine inspiration, but it must have originated directly from me imitating Gary Larson or Richard Scarry.  I realize now that drawing myself as a Cat-Person allowed me to draw without the shame and luggage that traditional figure drawing demands.  Also, cat faces translate to the human face better than, say, dogs or alligators, and cats were the only pets that my parents allowed for us to have--"have", meaning we fed them and they roamed around our barn pissing all over my parents' carefully collected antiques."



A detail from a drawing called "In Every Cry of Every Man, In Every Infant's Cry of Fear, In Every Voice, In Every Ban, the Mind-Forge'd Manacles I Hear". See more pics by visiting K-Fai's blog.