The Art Bus outside of Volta. Photo AFC
My second post of the day at Art in America. This time, I travel on the Art Bus to LIC.
“Is there anywhere you could possibly feel smaller?” video artist Phil Collins said recently of the commercial art world, “It’s the only place where you give away free booze and no one turns up.” Perhaps then it’s a small measure of success that at approximately 20 people took the free Art Bus Tour on Friday evening, a laid back event curated by Art in America’s Raul Martinez (who has done so for the past four years). Run concurrently with the fairs, the Art Bus Tours schedule that day not only provided an in house screening program titled Specters: Video and Social Memory, but took riders to P.S.1, Dorsky Gallery, and Deitch Projects LIC.
Decked out Los Vegas-style, the Art Bus might better be described as the art limo, as it includes a bar, florescent lights and a video screen at the back of vehicle. Probably the best part of the experience came in the form of an LED sign running above the eleven artist video screening randomly generating holiday messages such as “Happy Easter!” “Merry Christmas!” and the periodic Pac Man plug. This seemed particularly appropriate over the film, Baraka by Fernando Sánchez Castillo, in which the artist asked palm readers to read the unidentified bronze cast hands of former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Both the readers and LED lights would create stories that matched their subject, but more often than not the text was just absurd.
To read the full piece click here.
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