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Saturday, September 28, 2019 from 4–6pm
as part of
Experiments in Disintegrating
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Experiments in Disintegrating
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A conversation between artist Erik Smith and Ivan Seal, Jaro Straub and initiator Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez. The discussion centered on both of Smith’s works presented as part of the first installment in Changing Room’s “Experiments in Disintegrating” series: ACIINTT – slow listening berlin, Smith’s three-hour “decelerated” listening performance at Changing Room on September 20 and AABBCCDV, shown at Kunstpunkt Berlin within the framework of the exhibition re-space and on view through October 13. Both works are representative of Smith’s site-focused practice, which takes an urban-archeological approach to exploring specific transformations of the built environment. Central to this is the combining of sculptural and acoustic means to bring to light not only the specific histories embedded within the sites, as a return of the repressed or forgotten, but also to convey their dissolution over time as a consequence of urban development and renewal, forces currently at work remaking the cities and settings for Smith’s projects here: Berlin and Miami. A shorter half-hour performance of Smith’s ACIINTT – slow listening berlin was also presented as a part of the talk.
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AABBCCDV
at Kunstpunkt
as part of ”re-space”
Netzwerke freier Berliner
Projekträume und -initiativen,
Schlegelstrasse 6, 10115 Berlin
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AABBCCDVcenters on the 2012 demolition of a Miami FL arts building and former home to DimensionsVariable (DV), an artist-run project space that was forced to vacate the premises to make way for new development. Smith’s work presented for (re)space as a model of CHANGING ROOM is the third iteration of a scale suburban house found inside the DV building prior to demolition. Recreated as a floor work, the footprint of the house has been cut out of the surfaces of the plot and its rubber top layer compressed to fit the overall 1x1 m dimensions. Combined with the 12” record edition of the DV building’s demolition, the work juxtaposes the disintegration of the suburban model with the destruction of the arts building, setting up oppositions of presence/absence, support/collapse, weightiness/dematerialization.
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Erik Smith (b. Boston US, lives and works in Berlin) has studied visual art and comparative literature in the US and Italy before moving to Berlin, Germany in 2003. Solo exhibitions include Errant Sound, Berlin; Counterpath, Denver; FRAGMENTA/Valletta 2018, Malta; Locus Solus, de Appel Contemporary Arts Centre, Amsterdam NL; Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum, Berlin; DimensionsVariable, Miami FL; Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA. His work has also been shown in numerous group exhibitions internationally including SculptureCenter, LIC, NY; BBB centre d’art, Toulouse, FR; Arsenic, Lausanne CH; Pierogi, Leipzig; Kunstpunkt, Berlin.
