Kickstarter

For the 2010 NADA Art Fair at the Deauville Beach Resort in Miami, Humble Arts Foundation affiliated curators Joy Drury Cox and Nathaniel Ward propose to present a one-night exhibition and event that blurs the lines between art viewership, visual spectacle, minimalist performance, and a damn good party. Manual Transmission I was a group exhibition and rooftop event presented on July 31, 2010 in Brooklyn, NY where curators Joy Drury Cox, Nathaniel Ward and Patrick Amsellem commissioned 10 artists to each create a unique artwork comprised of 36 exposures from one roll of 35mm color slide film. An extension and distillation of Manual Transmission I, Manual Transmission Miami will present five of the original projects simultaneously on separate 8 ft-wide screens surrounding the pool area of the Deauville Beach Resort. In a nod to the projects reliance on analog process and the manual transmission of information, the slides will be advanced by a single individual moving from projector to projector for the entire length of the event.

We plan to use the funds that you donate to present Manual Transmission to an international viewing audience during Miami’s week of contemporary art fairs. In addition to production costs and manpower for the night of the event, we will use your generous support to pay for shipping of the artwork and promotion for the artists involved in the exhibition. Work by Ben Alper, Matthew Gamber, Rachel Herman, Jeff McLane, David Smith will be included in Manual Transmission Miami.

Manual Transmission is a curatorial response to a digital culture of isolated viewers flipping through single images online. There is still great potential in the unique aesthetics and collective experience of the traditional slide show. Further, in focusing on a photographic technology that has seen its heyday come and go, we are reminded that the current methods of digital art production and web viewership will also eventually exist as obsolete and anachronistic. Humble Arts Foundation presents each carousel as an individual artwork to be experienced by a community of viewers. Manual Transmission Miami is an attempt to move the creation and dissemination of new photography out of an isolated digital space into a more tangible and communal one, even if only for one night.

Curators: Patrick Amsellem, Curator of Photography, Brooklyn Museum, Joy Drury Cox, Artist, Nathaniel Ward, Artist & Curator, Special Projects, Humble

Manual Transmission Miami Artists & Projects:

Ben Alper: Memento Mori

I projected, and subsequently photographed, 36 found slides into contemporary domestic environments—in essence collapsing time and presenting two disparate histories simultaneously. The transparency of the projected slides mirror the way in which memories lose distinction and meaning over time. By situating these bygone images in contemporary settings, I aimed to make relevant photographs that address personal and collective identity, memory and history in a decidedly modern context.

Bio: Ben Alper graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design with a BFA in photography. In 2005, he co-founded The Exposure Project, a photography collective designed to facilitate collaboration across the medium. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Jeff McLane: In 2007, the city of Los Angeles had over 900 medical marijuana dispensaries open for business. A combination of lack of police enforcement, and city management politics, gave way to an initial surge of dispensaries. On June 7th, 2010, the majority of these were forced to close, leaving an estimated one hundred and fifty-eight legally open.

For this project, I ventured through the city, found remaining dispensaries, and photographed them. The final display of the project creates a seamless presentation of the exterior characteristics of the dispensaries which are now part of the public community.

Bio: Jeff McLane is an artist living and working in Los Angeles, California. Born in Oklahoma, his photographic works have focused on rural land function, urban landscape and image capture technology. He received his BFA from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), and is an active contributor to the Los Angeles based art collective From Here To There.

David B. Smith: Continuous Loop

In Continuous Loop, I circumvented the camera by shining various small colored lights directly on the the strip of film in a pitch black room. The film is then processed and cut into slides and mounted in the order of the original strip. Each slide is an organic, colorful, and entropic record of the marks that resulted from the chemical reaction between the light and the silver salts in the film.

The notion of a film strip divided into sections is not applicable in digital photography, as each file represents a single image - isolated from the image recorded before and after. The images in this piece can be read both as individual photographs and as fragments of an extended compositional matrix (the roll of film). The narrative of the slides viewed in order will highlight this duality - the temporal re-constitution of the film’s overall nature, and of the reflexive desire of the viewer to read meaning and representation into the individual frames.

Bio: David B. Smith makes post-minimal conceptual photographs, video, sound, and mixed media work that often result in immersive physical experiences. He seeks to illuminate hidden hierarchies of value and connoisseurship in art and culture – particularly related to the creative process and display practices. Through his work, he attempts to bridge the gap between academic and intuitive art forms. He has shown and performed in places like PS1, Exit Art, Location One, ABC No Rio, Envoy, HQ, John Connelly Presents, and Heist galleries.

Rachel Herman: Meet Me at Sunrise

When the Humble Arts Foundation invited photographers to propose what they would do with a single roll of slide film, I claimed that I would use it to fall in love, to see if the traces of new love could be made visible on film. I was selected, which meant I had to go through with it. In short, they called my bluff.

So, I went out with 18 people in one month. The catch was that we had to meet at dawn. I figured if someone was willing to get up early, we were off to a good start – a winnowing process, if you will.

I took a picture of my date. My date took a picture of me. Then we continued walking, talking, getting to know each other. I asked out fascinating people I’d met who lingered in my mind. I allowed my closest friends to play yenta. I confessed crushes I’d had for years. I met a handful of perfect strangers. I went out with one handsome man twice.

Keeping with the spirit of ‘Manual Transmission,’ I did not use the internet to find people. Meeting someone for the first time pre-dawn is a revealing exercise, so I went out with people who could be vouched for by people I trusted.

Starting with the naïve assumption that people would say yes to an unexpected romantic adventure, the project hopefully ends up revealing an early morning vulnerability along with a first date’s hopeful awkwardness.

Bio: Rachel Herman holds an MFA in Visual Arts from The University of Chicago, and a BA in English Literature from the University of Michigan. Her work has been exhibited nationwide, including a recent solo show at Light Work in Syracuse, NY and group shows at Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle, Dolphin Gallery in Kansas City, and Gallery 400 in Chicago, among others. She was an Artist-in-Residence at Anderson Ranch and participated in Review Santa Fe. She is currently an adjunct photography instructor at Columbia College in Chicago.

Matthew Gambler Experimental Documentary of Leopold Mannes (Co-Inventor of Kodachrome)

In 1930, Leopold Godowsky Jr. and Leopold Mannes, childhood friends and professional musicians, were invited by Kodak continue their ongoing research on color photography in their Rochester-based labs. Based on the success of their early experiments in subtractive color photographic processes, their research was realized as Kodachrome. This series is an experimental documentary related to the life of Leopold Mannes.

Historically, mounted slides have been used for both instruction and collecting family keepsakes–making them both a didactic tool, and a site for nostalgia. Capitalizing on the conflicting effect of how color slides are read, this project is a synthesized history on Mannes that is as allegorical as it is factual. The documentary is a compliment of strategies: photographing places where Mannes has lived and worked throughout his life, and reproducing documents created by Mannes himself (e.g. letters, patents, musical scores). The final form is realized in projected 35mm slides–a format Kodak helped popularize nearly 80 years ago.

Bio: Matthew Gamber earned an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University. He is currently an imaging technician with Preservation & Imaging at Harvard University, and Editor-in-Chief of Big RED & Shiny. He has taught at Savannah College of Art & Design, Art Institute of Boston/Lesley University, College of the Holy Cross, and Massachusetts College of Art & Design.