March 11, 2006

"Smart Ass" at Southern Exposure (March 10-April 15).

I spent the day walking around San Francisco with artist Eric King checking out galleries. The San Francisco Performance Museum (on the fourth floor of the same buildng as the SF Arts Commission Gallery) has a collection of 40-50s jazz era photos. It's nice to see a youngish Coltrane, but I somehow thought this museum was going to be an archive of performance art in the city. There really should be one.

Full afternoon short: I'm confused at the Lab's current show: "National Psyche: Feminine Vision, Thought, and Action During Wartime." Mainly with the wartime tag. Only one piece in the show evoked a response to war: the video with the stuffed animal heads attached by the tongue and boxing gloves. For everything else, if there was a connection to the war, it was very tenuous. This is not to say that there weren't some strong pieces [the megaphone piece for example (I'm being this vague with artist names and titles because the handouts were this vague and the website isn't helpful)]; it's to say that the show appeared much more random than the title seems to lend itself to.

The highlight of the afternoon was definitely at Southern Exposure. Shannon Plumb's silent videos were completetly enthralling. Whereas other silent filmic ventures fall utterly falt, Plumb's understanding of the physicality required to pull off a silent film (let alone a series of two to five minute clips) made each episode something to look forward to. Check out "Roller Coaster" (2002).

Virginia Kleker's "Luggage." If you believe the narrative, she stole a piece of luggage from an airport "without eye contact," rummaged through it, assessed the person via his luggage, then returned the luggage again "without eye contact" to the same luggage carousel. She put a statement the suitcase (like the kind you get when your luggage gets torn apart by machinery or when the feds want to look through your underwear) saying that this was an exercise in non-contact contact.