Rainier Square

images courtesy Lead Pencil Studio and Lawrimore Project

RETAIL/COMMERCIAL

LEAD PENCIL STUDIO 

February 6th through March 14th, 2009 

Rainier Square Shopping Center 

411 Union Street (Between 4th and 5th) 

Seattle, Washington 

Hours: Fridays/Saturdays 1-6pm 

Project Summary: Retail/Commercial is a site specific installation that responds directly to a 4,300 SF former Italian men’s clothing retailer. The site was selected for its proximity to the thriving and continually regenerating retail core of the city and for its adjacency to the exclusive shopping boutiques surrounding the store. Within this retail environment, there is nothing for sale. Instead, the artists present only the armatures used for the sale of goods and the interior surfaces that contain them. 

The project deploys the sectioned spatial configurations of three retail environments overlapping within the shell of an existing musty fourth. With the exception of some new material for the shell re-configuration, the primary material for the exhibition was sourced from neighborhood dumpsters and “going out of business” liquidation sales that occurred during January 2009, most within a two blocks of the site. 

The artists are principally interested in the architectural section as a full scale method for analysis and as a means to quarantine individual spatial environments. Other interests in evidence include a pursuance of color across space, architectural phase changes, incongruous formal collisions, observations on the disquiet of architectural influence and emptiness or the lack thereof. 

This project was made possible by the generous support of UNICO Properties, The Mayor’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, King County 4 Culture, Creative Capital and Artist Trust. 

Here is a link to Jen Graves' article on the Slog, describing the project and the really strange opening night.

Also, here is a link to a podcast interview that the artists did with The Stranger in 2006, after being award their Genius Award. 

Where Is My Proposed Land Use Action Site?

Please post your answers as comments to this post.

Image courtesy vintageseattle.org

Discussing The Mezzanine

Here's the questions we generated during yesterday's class, to give us some starting points when discussing The Mezzanine. As you're reading, let me know if there are additions (or subtractions) to this group? Do some chapters suggest only one approach for us in our discussions? 

How is time explored in the book? Is the narrator recognizing a generation gap; is he aware of a "timelessness" to the objects and experiences, and how does he experience their disappearance? Are these anachronisms? 

How is regionalism addressed? Is the book written in a dialect or with a certain inflection? Are there scenarios that only happen in certain areas of the country?

How difficult is the reading, and does the (your) level of engagement change throughout your reading of the text? 

How transparent are the author's intentions? Where is he going with this?

How is The Mezzanine informing your own research and writing practices?

How are the experiences derived from childhood? Does he suggest that the past is better?

What were his major advances (into adulthood), and what are your major advances? Are they mirroring one another or separating?

When does the writing occur? Is this memoir or fiction? How is trust built with a narrator?

Here is an interview with Baker that addresses some of the topics we described. 

Art, Theatre, Design, Rusty Trombone?

I LEGO N.Y.

So this project, like everything else we do, can (and hopefully will) have a vital interdisciplinary part to it. Here is an example of work from Christoph Niemann.

Semester project

As we’ve been discussing, and as Heather Sheppard outlined during her research presentation (using Ballard Denny’s as a model), all of the writings for the rest of the semester will be considered as ONE PIECE. While some weeks will be prompted, others will be self-directed. Formats and responses will be different—some weeks you’ll write poetry, essays, short stories, scripts, blocking notes, proposals, forms, drafts, and notes. All of these writings (along with your notes from class and observations from the field) will be submitted periodically throughout the semester (see below), along with a bibliography. The bibliography is a cognitive map of your investigations during this course. It will record the places you go, the books and articles you read, the images you see, interviews you conduct, tours you take, films you watch, music you hear, conversations you hold. The semester will see this writing project grow organically.

While the first three weeks have been focused on The Reverse Charrette Project, the next several weeks will be focusing on four discrete but potentially interconnected things:  Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine, the homeless population that shares our city with us, the waste stream moving through Seattle, and your work identifying locations you’ve passed, been curious about, fear, love, hate, or know already. We’ll begin by casting a wide net, looking at several sites, getting a feel for what kind of writings will work, and then slowly focus, narrow down a group of sites that may have commonalities, significant differences, or nothing in common at all. 

To begin, we’ll look at your writings weekly (2-3 pages recommended per person, every week), in a series of peer-review sessions; sharing approaches, reading works for content and form. We’ll integrate textual analysis, research methodologies, and conceptual approaches to a potentially wide range of places around town.