AIR PORTUGAL II Nov 17 - Dec 16, 2001 Opening reception Friday Nov 17, 6:30 - 9:30 pm The London Biennale was born when renowned Fluxus artist David Medalla invited cutting edge international artists to the UK. Suddenly, London became a meeting spot for ground-breaking artists from around the globe. In particular, the attraction to experimental forms and culture shared by both Portuguese and Bay Area artists established a strong liason between the two countries' underground cultures that continues today. Air Portugal II is a new media exhibition that continues this cultural cross fertilization and furthers the ideas first initiated at the London Biennale. With a primary focus on digital technology created by both Portuguese and Bay Area artists, the exhibition highlights the similarities and dissimilarities between two close-knit communities working and expanding emergent interdisciplinary technologies. Portuguese Artists: Tiago Batista - video Pedro Cabral Santo - video Alexandre Estrela - video Susana Guardado - video Eva Mota - video Joao Simoes - video Miguel Soares - video Bay Area Artists: Sue Costabile - photogtraphic media + video Chris Musgrave - Video Scott Pagano - video installation Phoenix Perry - Video Seed () - Live Video CLICK HERE FOR PICS OF BAY AREA ARTIST'S WORK. Sue Costabile (b. September 1, 1974) Title: still.not.still. (in five parts) Media: black and white photos, paint pens, letter transfers, laptop still.not.still takes frozen moments in time and transforms them into moving pictures. the role of the movie still is reversed and things which were once stationary are no longer so. photographic images are sequenced through a digital video camera and also by a scanning mechanism inside the max/msp software environment. sequences of images are then processed in the computer: adding, subtracting, multiplying, and delaying them with themselves. Contact: [email protected] sco++ pagano (b. November 10, 1977) Title: landscape no.2 (i don't remember everything that happened) Media: video installation with 2.25" monochrome lcd screen & looping dvd playback highway architecture re-mapped as broken surveillance for destinationless travel. Contact: [email protected] | www.interrelatedarts.org Phoenix Perry (b. January 11, 1975) Title: The Shadow of Digital Living Media: dv.circuit bent videomixer.broken dv camera The future pases us. At the end of 2001, an injured body looks at the failed fantasy of the digital revolution. Contact: [email protected] | www.form8.com Christopher Musgrave (b. May 03, 1969) Title: Untitled [Breach] Media: text* with audio, video, lcd panel, binocular microscope, headphones The enormous scale of the problem makes it difficult for people to grasp. "Small corruption is easy to understand and, for politicians, usually fatal," said Ted Van Dyk, a longtime Democratic strategist, "Big corruption is seldom fatal because it is beyond most people's comprehension. People can't understand a $200 billion loss. Contact: [email protected] seed() (b. 1999(plant) 1974(human)) Title: sem eu (without me) Media: plant/human/computer process During the opening night, a plant will be connected to a hacked human biofeedback system in order to reroute its signals into various computers triggering real time image and sound generation. The goal is to use the same technology employed by the military-entertainment complex and modern product peddlers to eavesdrop on the biosignals of a plant (processing an unfamiliar live environment) in order to remap its experience into output that falls within the human sensory spectrum. The live video output of the plant's graphics system will be recorded during the duration of the opening event and edited thereafter into static media to be projected in the gallery space. Contact: [email protected] Tiago Batista (b. Lisbon, 1967; lives/works in Lisbon) An ongoing inquiry and search for the ideal characterizes Batista's strong political stance, evidenced in gestures such as the appropriation of revolutionary texts taken from the Portugese Nobel Prize Writer Jose Saramago or his transformation of the gallery space with masking tape into an ideal space. Batista received his BA in Painting at the Lisbon Technical University Faculty of Fine Arts. He is both an artist and a curator, and is the co-founder of "Autores em Movimento." more info: www.00351.org Alexandre Estrela (b. Lisbon, 1971; lives and works in New York and Lisbon) Alexandre Estrela's newest work explores the fragmented stances of both the viewer, experiencing wonderment at artifice, and the maker, attentive to the dialectic between concentration and chance. Estrela is the Exhibition Curator and director of the Hi8 short video festival. He received his BA in painting, Lisbon Technical University Faculty of Fine Arts and his MFA in Fine Arts, School of Visual Arts, New York. more info: www.00351.org Susana Guardado (B. Lisbon, 1971; lives/works Lisbon) Besides their characteristic appropriation of contemporary machines and devices, Guardado's continually investigates the physical and conceptual space between modernity's accoutrements (such as creating a non-stop closed-circuit between two vacuum cleaners). A curator and artist, she is the founder of "Moviment'Art". more info: www.00351.org Eva Mota (b. Lisbon, 1971; lives and works in Lisbon ) Through body language and the vocabulary of video and photography, Mota's self-portraits publically disclose highly personal moments. She has exhibited work at the Imperio Contra Ataca (Lisbon, Barcelona), the Bienal de Maia 99, and works as a VJ at Lux (Lisbon). more info: www.00351.org Pedro Cabral Santo (b. Lisbon, 1968; lives/works in Lisbon) As a curator over the past ten years, Santo has produced exhibitions outside the regular circuits and has been intergral in providing a place for a handful of artists that fit peculiarly within Portugal's generation of artists of the 90's. As an artist, Santo's highly politicized work reacts to the utopian idea of the united, strong, and prosperous Europe and presents instead as series of endemic conflicts. In his most recent video work, Santo explores what it means to humanize the fantastical (Emmanuelle as embodiment of Eros, superheroes, etc.) Santo received his BA in Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts-Lisbon Technical University. He is the member and co-founder of "Autores em Movimento" and a member of "Pogo-Teatro." more info: www.00351.org Joao Simoes (b. Luanda, Angola, 1971; lives/works LIsbon) Curator and artist in the first >Air Portugual Exhibition (London Biennale, 2000) From his first exhibition, at the Modern Art Museum of Paris ARC to his work with Michelangelo Pistoletto at the Architektum Centrum in Wien (presented at the IX Documenta Kassel in Pistoletto's space) or his own-wordless Master degree thesis, Simoes' creative process is an attempt to find in anything something else (e.g., in "Fromage de Femme", Soares made cheese with a woman's milk; in "Thing Honey" bees were made to produce honey from the sugar in coca-cola). Simoes received his BA in Architecture from various places � Lisbon, Milan, Mantova, and Paris and his Masters Degree in Contemporary Culture at CCCB in Barcelona, Spain. more info: www.00351.org Miguel Soares (b. Braga, 1970; lives/works in Lisbon) Soares' combination of photography, industrial design, and 3D animation invents a full-dimensional reality (entitled x-city) in which objects' uses are redefined (e.g., a cellular phone is transformed into a lamp) and digital images transport the viewer into another world. By defining its spatial, narrative, and imagistic-retinal terms, Soares providesthe vocabulary for a futuristic and allegorical imaginary. Soares received his BA in Industrial Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Lisbon Technical University and has studied photography in Lisbon. more info: www.00351.org articles from freize, clamor, and The san francisco cronicle coming soon.