RepoHistory presents CIRCULATION, opening Thursday, February 24
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 2, 2000
Media Contact: Katherine Gass
T/F: 914-690-0245
Egangass@worldnet.att.net
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REPOHISTORY LAUNCHES CIRCULATION
A MAPPING OF HUMAN BLOOD IN NEW YORK CITY
New York City REPOhistory, a ten-year-old art collaborative that maps forgotten events, people, and sites through public art projects around the country, announces CIRCULATION-an ambitious, city-wide project of progressively occurring, site-specific events and exhibitions that will commence February and progress through the Spring of 2000. Work will be mounted and mailed throughout the city and posted on an interactive web-site (WWW.REPOHISTORY.ORG) with a corresponding project map available free to the public detailing CIRCULATION events, sites, and a brief history of blood. The project will be officially launched Thursday, February 24, 2000, with events scheduled at EXIT ART/THE FIRST WORLD and PRINTED MATTER BOOKSTORE.
CIRCULATION investigates the economic, historic, and cultural significance of human blood and the layers of social meaning that it engenders. Through the project, REPOhistory seeks to address issues such as the commodification of blood (which if sold by the barrel would go for $20,000. compared to the $28 per barrel price of crude oil); the changing social perceptions and ideologies associated with blood from the distant past to the current AIDS era; the transportation and distribution systems of blood to and from the city's blood banks, hospitals and clinics. The aim of CIRCULATION is to focus public awareness about this essential human resource and the unseen urban systems connected to it; and to explore the ethics surrounding the emerging field of biotechnology.
REPOhistory invited artists, educators, students, health care workers, and activists from around the country to participate. Using Manhattan as the primary site, CIRCULATION transforms the city into a corporeal host through which magnets, art objects, stickers, and postcards flow and collect in select public spaces. Items will also mailed to targeted individuals. In order to invite a new awareness of the intricate and social dynamics associated with blood, the most vital and commercialized of human organs, these works will be disseminated via the city's various public transportation and information systems, including the United States Postal Service, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, health care facilities, designated streets and avenues where blood transportation takes place, and high school classrooms.
CIRCULATION features an interactive web-site (WWW.REPOHISTORY.ORG) which functions both as public art installation and the digital heart of the project by inviting participants world-wide to contribute texts, information, ideas, and images. Through this web site, which will be launched on February 17, 2000, REPOhistory seeks to create and build a global discourse on human blood which will allow for an indefinite expansion of the project while preserving its intensely collaborative nature. All of the works created for CIRCULATION include a web address, and digital art work will be created specifically for the web-site.
CIRCULATION also involves two public high school collaborations by the Institute for Collaborative Education and City as School in conjunction with the 1199 Health and Hospital Workers Union. Through these collaborations, students and educators have created video projects, art works, web-sites which will be linked to the CIRCULATION site, and published essays focusing on the word "blood" and its associations in youth culture.
Conceived by REPOhistory Project Director Greg Sholette, CIRCULATION encompasses works and projects by contributing artists and REPOhistory members. Along with the new web-site conceived by Jim Costanzo and Cynthia Liesenfeld, CIRCULATION includes a project map detailing events, locations and historical facts about blood by Janet Koenig; portraits by Tom Klem linking photography and blood typing; works focusing on racial contagion by Miguelangel Ruiz & Leela Ramotar, Keith Christensen and Carola Burroughs; works investigating medical research by Kevin Pyle, work about government categorizing of immigrants based on race by Jenny Polak; and commentaries about the blood banking system by Jenni Sorkin. High school collaborations have been organized by Oscar Tuazon, Andre Knight and Meryl Meisler. A window installation currently on view at PRINTED MATTER BOOKSTORE by Lisa Hecht, a performance work scheduled for the launch at EXIT ART/THE FIRST WORLD by Trebor Scholz, and additional projects by George Spencer, Ivan Navarro, and Jasmine Gartner, Jayne Pagnucco, David Sansone, Sharon Denning, Russet Lederman, John Menick, Xochitl Dorsey Marilyn Perez, Brian Hand, Chris Pietrapiana, and Sarah Vogwill,
CIRCULATION has been made possible in part by grants from The National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts, the Gunk Foundation, and The Puffin Foundation.
A public reception to celebrate the launch of CIRCULATION will be held at EXIT ART/THE FIRST WORLD, Thursday, February 24, 2000, from 5 to 7 PM, and at PRINTED MATTER BOOKSTORE, from 7 to 8 PM.
For further information, a timeline of events and exhibitions, images of works created for CIRCULATION, or descriptions of past REPOhistory projects, please contact Katherine Gass at 914-690-0245, or email Egangass@worldnet.att.net. ____________________________________________________________________________