Jill Conner has an interview in WhiteHot with Jeff and Alana Bliumis about their current installation, “Cultural Conversations.”
via http://whitehotmagazine.com/
Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
Jill Conner: What was your motivation behind the installation at Black and White Project Space? It’s not just a static installation but one that grows over time and involves the community, right?
Alina and Jeff Bliumis: “Casual Conversations in Brooklyn” began in 2007 as both an investigative and anthropological-based look at the “New Americans”: people who have recently immigrated to this country. Initially we conducted a number of public interactions that looked into today’s shifting notions of the “American Dream,” focusing on the place and importance of cultural identity in our community.
We wanted to ask in which way those symbols of American society are still relevant today and how they have changed over time. The residents who live within the Russian-Jewish neighborhood, located around Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach, have served as our primary subject due to the fact that we had an advantage speaking Russian and, therefore, gaining some degree of access into this community.
We started by going to public spaces, asking strangers questions and photo documenting their answers. In a Russian language bookstore, for example, we asked strangers to write out his/her own “American Dream” onto a large voice bubble, typically seen in cartoons. At another location we asked residents to choose and hold a sign that reflected their own choice of self-identity. With the support from the Six Points Fellowship, we concentrated on those kinds of interactions over the last 2 years.
When Black and White Project Space chose us as finalists for its inaugural exhibition, we wanted to stay true to the spirit of “Casual Conversations,” and not treat this space as a commercial gallery but, rather, concentrate on the process of social interaction. We have approached the space as a new apartment, in a new country that felt unfamiliar. For the opening we brought in only bare necessities: “Dream-Be Happy,” an outdoor site-specific installation made of green astroturf that is based on a girl we met at the bookstore in Brighton Beach; “Memory,” a rack of postcards that reflects our own photo documentation made from previous public interactions over the last two years; and “Knowledge,” a collection of suitcases and stacks of books and dictionaries. However all of the books were cast in foam and carry such titles as “Non-Sense,” “Blah-Blah-Blah,” and “Oops,” along with dictionaries and manuals that have been used to suggest either cultural translations or misinterpretations. We also added “Mood,” a sound installation located within the gallery’s bathroom and plays a recording of different people singing.
Our goal over these 3 months is planning to make this space our own, by filling it with a collection of objects, sounds and video that speak to our collaborative aesthetic. Each month we also host a gathering of invited and uninvited guests for “Let’s Talk. Lets Drink. Free,” to investigate the significance of social interaction, suggesting that it may not be a purely plastic performance.
“Casual Conversations: Let’s Drink. Let’s Talk. Free,” at the Black and White Project Space
483 Driggs Avenue
Brooklyn, NY, 11211
March 7 through June 14, 2009
