I am keeping a blog while I am in Iceland, which is part travel, part project updates here.

Part of “Boston’s Best 40-ennial”, a 19-minute historical and totally unauthorized exhibition in the bathroom of the MFA Boston organized by Greg Cook on June 20th, 2011.

Transgender Bathroom Dedication is a project that dedicates the men’s room at the MFA Boston to Dean Spade who was arrested in 2002 for using the men’s room in Grand Central Station and dedicates the women’s room at the MFA Boston to Chrissy Pollis who was the victim of a transgender hate crime in a Maryland bathroom in May 2011.

These two new works are gifts to the MFA Boston on behalf of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things, and have been archived by the MFA Boston.

New dedication plaques will begin traveling on temporary loan to various museums beginning in January 2012.

]]> http://www.enginesofthefuture.com/projects/transgender-bathroom-dedication/feed 0 http://www.enginesofthefuture.com/projects/the-failure-support-group http://www.enginesofthefuture.com/projects/the-failure-support-group#comments Sat, 02 Apr 2011 21:54:42 +0000 jaimes http://www.enginesofthefuture.com/?p=177
Art projects fail a lot, particularly those that are participatory, public and/or social. They fail for different reasons and cause myriad revelations. Nevertheless, the structures that we use to talk about these works and contexts where they are presented often don’t leave room for discussing the failures plainly and objectively.

We’re interested in failure– in its relationship to creative production, artistic rhetoric and public presentation. We’re also interested in making work that does not fail as often by sharing our failures, and hearing yours through our Failure Archive and our Support Groups.

The Failure Support Group project is run by members of The Institute For Infinitely Small Things. This project is inspired by a Failure Support Group event produced by Platform2 in Boston in 2008.

To get more information,  browse/contribute to the archive of failure, inquire about hosting a Failure Support Group and more, visit www.thefailuresupportgroup.com OR www.thefailuresupportgoup.com

This piece was performed on April 30, 2010 as a part of Hell, No!, curated by David Louis Fierman and RJ Supa at the Convent of St. Cecilia in Brooklyn, NY.  Visitors to the convent were greeted at the entryway to the chapel by a docent who gave them a card with the following text: Cut Piece With Transgender Body (dedicated to Yoko Ono): Please use the scissors at the altar to cut his clothes away.

Artist video available for purchase.

Video and stills courtesy of Angie Young.

Accumulation/Temporary Occupations is a gallery installation and an organized series of events taking place from April 8-24, 2010 at University of Maryland, Baltimore County for my MFA Thesis Exhibition. In the gallery, stationary bikes were used to produce electrical power in the gallery that both illuminates a marquee sign and charges a battery. The battery, as an accumulation of power, was used to provide energy for a series of public, outdoor events that took place in the immediate area of the CADVC, and were organized by artists that I invited to be a part of the show.

A Drill For Reimagining Wall Street was a participatory drill at Conflux City that sought to reimagine the     best-case scenario for Wall street both as a concept and a physical space, and to temporarily intervene with the tourist activity in the area.

This project is also featured on this website.
Special thanks to Shannon Allen, Liz Knafo and Liz Hodgson.

 
Things That Have (Probably) Never Been Done Before was an experiment and open invitation to create new behaviors for the gallery space at Delaware County Community College.
In an attempt to intervene with social behaviors in a gallery environment, participants were asked to create and document everyday micro-actions that they believed had not happened in the space before using index cards, a set of wireless surveillance cameras and recording device.

Whether or not these actions had or had not occurred in this place is inconsequential- there is no way to prove or disprove the occurrence of these everyday actions previous to their documentation. Micro-actions that were submitted range from “No one has daydreamed here before” and “No one has looked to the future here before” to “No one has picked a wedgie here before”. What I find most interesting about these micro-actions is the wide range of personalities that are evident in each action. Some actions are only documented by the index card that was left behind, while others are documented on video as well. Some have a slapstick humor sensibility, while others are more contemplative. Some are everyday actions, some are not. To me, all of these actions reflect against my own expectations of what I (and I imagine most people) expect of typical gallery behavior: people may daydream, but only when viewing art work, people pick wedgies, do handstands or “crazy dance”.
Taking inspiration from Erving Goffman’s ideas about everyday life, I believe that for every space, whether public or private, we share a different set of coded behaviors that for the most part, is shared among the people that are in the space.

Presented at Articulture at Delaware County Community College.

From July of 2008, to July of 2009, Shannon Young and Jaimes Mayhew recorded responses from people in Baltimore to four questions that were displayed in various neighborhoods in public spaces. An archive of the phone calls that we received is below.

What’s after capitalism?

What is terror?

Why do we sing, anyway?

When are you the most afraid, and why?

A Corporate Command is an instruction work, a call to action in the form of an imperative: “Just Do It”, “Turn on the Future”, “Live without Limits”, “Tap into great taste”, “Think different”, “Ride the light”.

It is the hypothesis of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things that these commands, largely and consciously ignored by a public over-saturated with advertisements, function very effectively as infinitely small things.

By compiling, tabulating, concretizing and enacting these commands in the International Database of Corporate Commands, the Institute for Infinitely Small Things seeks to better understand the mechanisms behind this deployment of power and its larger cultural ramifications.

The Institute for Infinitely Small Things uses these commands to conduct research performances- performances in which we attempt to enact, as literally as possible, what the command tells us to do and where it tells us to do it.

Project website: www.corporatecommands.com

Things That Might Have Happened is an exploration of the past, present and future of the Chelsea Piers, specifically Segment 4, from Horatio Street to Clarkson Street, including the highly contested Pier 45, or the Christopher Street Pier. As part of the Conflux festival exploring psychogeography in New York City, Richard James Supa Jr. and James Mayhew chose to explore the uses of the pier, both past and present, and how people feel about the changes being made and what, if any changes should come to the area. Things That Might Have Happened is a self-guided audio and visual tour allowing each participant to delve into various possibilities, suggestions, ideas and thoughts on the future of the piers. The viewer participant is even asked to suggest their own ideas as to what they believe are necessary for their enjoyment of the public space. Over 20 new proposals were made for the area and were hand drawn on transparancy paper with a correspdonding photo beneath the drawing to act as a map to different areas in and around the pier. Things That Might Have Happened hopes to become on ongoing discussion through the internet with space available for posts and blogging.

History

The piers near the West Village have had a great significance in the history of the GLBTTSQQ community. From the boom of the Gay Liberation movement in the late sixties to the renovation of the pier in the mid-nineties, to now, this space has always been a place that has been used primarily by certain sectors of GLBTTSQQ people. In more recent years, the pier and the immediate area around it have become a contested space, pitting the people who hang out at it and the people who live near it against each other. TTMHH will provide a tour of things that may have happened with this space, and will make proposals for use of the piers at present through a historical perspective. Through images that are juxtaposed over the space at the speculation on what could have happened at the Christopher Street Piers from the angle of the various groups that have affected the history and use of this space. Who controls, or gains control of public space? How have the piers changed? Why? And When?

The Institute was commissioned to do a work for a public video screen in Harvard Square, an outdoor mall in Cambridge, MA. The resulting work is a video guidebook for tourists in Harvard Square which instructs them in 57 things they can do for fun, leisure and entertainment without spending any money.

To watch the video, visit the project website.

Grocery Art Gallery/Used Car Lot was a collaborative performance piece by Austin Plann-Curley and Jaimes Mayhew. In the Fall of 2004, we placed our A-sign outside of the Safeway on Broadway Avenue in Seattle”s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Jaimes gave tours of the grocery store, framing it as a series of installations, sculpture and performances of “workers” in the store. Austin attempted to sell cars that were parked in the grocery store parking lot to passersby. The performance lasted for about one hour.