Event this Thursday curated  by k8 hardy….

S A L O N
January 31st, Thursday, 7pm - 10 or 11
at UnionDocs, 322 Union ave, Williamsburg

M A L I N A R N E L L (berlin/stockholm)
performance

D O N N I E & T R A V IS (brooklyn)
new paintings

H E A T H E R M C N A U G H E R (pittsburgh)
poetry

Malin will perform “I’m Not There Yet - a travel journal”
A lecture on a journey in the footsteps of Valerie Jean Solanas (1936 - 1988)
Author. Prostitute. Lesbian. Beggar. Feminist Theorist. Genius.
——–
Donnie & Travis will have their new work hanging in the studio.
Ephemeral, cosmic faggotry, a consciousness of photography
meditations and realness into abstraction
——-
Heather will be reading a few poems from her new book, Panic & Joy
like living in a house vibrating with presence
——
seriously, where else people? we’ll hang out a bit with the lights on, you might byob or bring a friend. it’s casual. miss you.

Downtown Community Television Center (DCTV) is having an Open House event this evening from 6-11pm.

Jem Cohen, who was at UnionDocs in December, will be speaking!

Sample workshops on Final Cut Pro 6 and the HVX200, HD Camera demos, food and drink will all be offered.

For more info go to DCTV

A few days ago, I saw the exhibition, Archive Fever, at the International Center of Photography. The show is a meditation on the various conditions of the archive. One of the most essential functions of the archive is its rendering of and subsequent destruction of collective memory. In the moment that the archive creates collective memory, it replaces the actual event with the constructed memory of the event. There is an interesting passage in the essay by Okwui Enwezor in the catalog for the ICP show that I thought others might enjoy:

“this relationship between past event and its document, an action and its archival photographic trace, is not simply the act of citing a preexisting object or event; the photographic document is a replacement of the object or event, not merely a record of it.”

Oh yeah, and one other thing. For those of you who are coming to the UnionDocs screening of Bill Daniel’s film, Who Is Bozo Texino?, on Feb. 10th, here are a few rambling thoughts on the film and its exploration of the archival impulse:

The central character in the film, Bozo Texino, never appears on screen in flesh and blood. He is only ever revealed as an indexical chalk drawing on the sides of boxcars. The drawing looks like this:

Using his 16mm Bolex, Daniel interviews various hobos and railworkers about Bozo Texino, and each person gives a different answer regarding the identity of the mythical hobo. Most agree that he is a legend who is kept alive at the hand of boxcar graffiti artists.

In the case of Bozo Texino, individual identity is replaced by collective memory, which is generated by a simple chalk drawing on the sides of trains.

That’s all.
Have a nice weekend!

There are two openings in the UnionDocs Residency Program starting March 1st. Review the details here and apply now!

Kerstin Brätsch and Adele Röder were part of UnionDocs in 2005/6. They left a big legacy as the artists behind the wheat-pasted staircase facade on the front of our building. Now, they’ve got a show up in the Lower East Side at Smith-Stewart Gallery.

This song is an invite.