MTAA ‘IOI’ — Nov 2013

Desk Mod #4. Station IOI or Some Thoughts on Isolation, Observation and Ice, Installation View (desk)
Intro Text Prints - With Charles Orr, inkjet double layer prints with metal hanging clips
IOI Media Shelves - with Charles Orr, books, CDs and DVDs
IOI Performance Box: A Very Very Cold Martini - with Elaine Tin Nyo , mounted box with snow camo collages, xylene transfer drawings and objects
IOI Performance Box: Group Assembled Klondike Solitaire , mounted box with snow camo collages, xylene transfer drawings and objects
IOI Performance Box: Music for IOI (Live) - with Aviram Cohen, mounted box with snow camo collages, xylene transfer drawings and objects
IOI Solvent Transfer Maps: The United States of America, xylene transfer drawing on paper with metal hanging clips
IOI Station Caps - with Colleen Smiley, snow camo hunting hats with paint

Auxiliary Projects reopens on November 15, 2013, with an exhibition of objects and collaborative performances by MTAA. There will be an opening reception on November 15th, from 7-10pm, and the exhibition will continue through January 5, 2014.  The gallery is open Saturdays and Sundays from 1-6pm, and by appointment.

MTAA, known for new media conceptualism for over 15 years, presents an intervention into and radical redecoration of Auxiliary Projects. MTAA overlays a fictional identity onto the space, aesthetically and metaphorically reimagining the gallery as a camouflaged quasi-military outpost in an isolated environment. Echoing a cold war aesthetic even as the repercussions of Edward Snowdon cascade, MTAA imagines the elements of isolation, observation, and ice as the defining elements of this bleak, inhospitable place, inhabited by the few and visited by the brave.

Isolation: What materials of culture would we need to survive alone?  MTAA provides the answer of a few carefully chosen books, movies, and CDs, precisely stacked in duplicate on shelves as though not to be touched. Among them: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Jerry Thomas Bartenders Guide, a deck of cards, the movie Rear Window.

Observation: Camouflaged, those inside the gallery persist as if in a hunting blind, quietly poised for visitors to make their innocent approach, filmed, seen. At MTAA’s instruction, collaborators will record the smallest activities in the environment, surveilling the bleak view from the gallery’s barred windows, noting changes in the weather or the activity of pedestrians. The work of the record-keepers will be presented as a collaborative drawing; relics of performances will be presented in camouflaged boxes.

Ice: Winter is just beginning but the darkness comes early to Bushwick, the wind growing fierce between the low industrial buildings, under an often grey sky. Ice appears in drinks to a warmer welcome. We will consult the Bartender’s Guide. MTAA will foster conviviality within and from a stark environment.

Performances included:
Live Dramatic Reading (Disconnection of HAL 9000’s Higher Functions)
A live reading from Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001:A Space Odyssey”
Saturday, Dec 7, 4pm- Music for lOl (Live)- with Aviram Cohen

MTAA and Cohen perform a live remix of field recordings from the IOI opening

A Very Very Cold Martini-MTAA and Elaine Tin Nyo will make and serve you a very very cold Vesper Martini

Group Assembled Klondike Solitaire-MTAA will play a hand of Klondike solitaire as a group performance

Collaborators for the exhibition include Charles Orr, Colleen Rae Smiley, Raphaele Shirley