PROJECTS: 2020–1994
All the light that's ours to see, 2020
For when all that was read was … so as not to be unknown, 2012
From Receiver to Remote... Channeling Spain, 2010
Study for the Mirror and Garden. Redux 2007, 2013
Border Stories, Working Title, From One Place to Another, 2000
Consigned to Border: The Terror and Possibilities in the Things not Seen, 1997
a/drift: Scenes from the Penetrable Culture, 1996
ALL THE LIGHT THAT'S OURS TO SEE
First exhibited Lumiar Cite, Lisbon, 2020
All the light that’s ours to see is an elegiac meditation on our changing viewing habits and how we are being transformed by the evolving forms of media surrounding us. The displacement of Mr. Kim’s infamous New York video stores and his quest to find a home for his 55,000 films is the catalyst for this two-channel installation that explores how architecture, the long history of technological inventions, as well as art and media histories have affected us and the ways in which we engage with media, and by extension with each other.
Visually, this project is a palimpsest of images presented across two screens that cinematically interrogates viewing spaces from the medieval period to present-day media environments. The physical array of the cinematic surround and its location-specific installation allows the viewer to slip between these historical moments and question the changing social situations they have encouraged, alongside the relationships among lost media histories, and ever-evolving emerging audience behaviours.
Two channel video – sound installation with custom tables, photographs, and books
Dimensions variable
First exhibited Lumiar Cite, Lisbon, 2020
Related publications:
Cinema and Space(s)...Judith Barry, DA2
Catalogue, Kate Linker, Download Link
Brooklyn Rail, Judith Barry, Download Link
Jornal Publico, Luisa Soares, Download Link
Umbigo, Barbara Valentina, Download Link
TV-Europa, Download Link
DIS-PLACEMENT
Untitled: (Global Displacement: nearly 1 in 100 people worldwide are displaced from their homes), 2018*
First exhibited Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston 2018
Photos of people fleeing war, drought and famine have been circulating on-line, haunting me for years. Looking up, these asylum seekers greet the drone with a mixture of relief and elation – even though the drone is unmanned and not human, and even though the resulting encounter is no guarantee of a rescue or entry into another country. This is especially poignant given that a drone sighting is often a harbinger of death. To me these images function like a banner when hung vertically, a beacon. Hopeful images of people transforming as they blend into the sky, becoming even more visible at the golden hour as day turns to night. So many faces in the clouds, they look just like you and me, beckoning us to a place beyond….
Printed banner on vinyl, 36 feet x 16 feet.
Related publications:
The Boston Globe, Cate McQuaid, Download Link
Wonderland, Greg Cook, Download Link
ArtDaily, Editors, Download Link
Artwork detail
Installation view
Artwork detail
FOR WHEN ALL
For when all that was read was …
so as not to be unknown
Kassel, Germany, 2012
For when all that was read was … so as not to be unknown is Judith Barry’s guidebook to the “Brain” section at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Germany.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, artistic director of d(13),
thematized this rotunda space as the international exhibition’s through-line: a curated “paradox, a space of many secrets, a space of violence, and a space of potential healing.” The guidebook, which uses its unique paper architecture to remap the associative histories and labyrinthine nature of the “Brain,” takes the form of a series of pages, an artist’s book, and also a sculpture. Contained yet expansive, it is printed as a poster but may, alternatively, be folded into a legible, three dimensional object; exhibition materials are presented in a non-hierarchal, non-linear array, as if to suspend its contents in a recursive space.
Offset printed lithograph
23.5 x 31.5 in. (poster),
5 x 5 x 5 in. (polyhedron)
Edition of 200
Produced with Project Projects
Related publications:
Mousse 34, Judith Barry Download Link
Brooklyn Rail, Judith Barry Download Link
Exhibition Prospectus, Judith Barry Download Link
View showing “Brain” section from entrance
View of folded watercolor version of the book
View showing “Brain” section from entrance
…CAIRO STORIES
…cairo stories, 2011
Sharjah, UAE.
…Cairo stories, continues an on-going series of ‘as-told-to’ recorded stories, based on personal interviews. Initiated in 2003 at the beginning of the Iraq War, the project explores the many different ways that Cairene women negotiate the ideological, cultural and economic conditions that are specific to Cairo. Drawing on hours of recorded interviews, Barry filmed actors recounting extracts of individual narratives. The project premiered at the Sharjah Biennial in six sites around the city of Sharjah in March 2011 and continues to tour today.
Installation
First exhibited at the Sharjah Biennale
March 16 – May 16, 2011.
Project Website: www.cairostories.com
Related publications:
Artforum, Kathe Burkhart Download Link
Glasstire, Download Link
Said Said..., Judith Barry Download Link
ArtForum, Murtaza Vali Download Link
A Window Into the Lives of Women Living in Cairo Download Link
Interview, Katja Horvat Download Link
Installation views: Galerie Karin Sachs 2011(left), Sharjah Biennial 2011(right)
Night time projection Munich 2011
CHANNELING SPAIN
From Receiver to Remote...
Channeling Spain 2010
In 1990 Judith Barry and Ken Saylor designed the exhibition From Receiver to Remote Control: the television set for the New Museum, New York. In more than 20 period rooms, from the 1920’s to the ‘90’s, playing appropriate television programming, they traced how television transformed the social space of the home and family relations in the US.
In Barcelona, Spain, for Arts Santa Monica, Barry, Saylor and Project Projects have updated their earlier exhibition and research by comparing some of the differences and similarities in television history between Spain and the US in relation to ‘participatory democracy’.
While television is often considered a monolithic entity, it differs from culture to culture. Tele-visual space produces personal and collective identities across ‘national’ and global boundaries where the viewer is implicated in questions of how media is democratized.
The installation consists of a US zone, a Spanish zone, and a collective zone with longer programming from both countries. A timeline comparing the history of television in Spain and the US corkscrews 360 degrees throughout the entire installation that invites the spectators participation.
Judith Barry | Ken Saylor | Project Projects
Installation with Spain and US timelines + TV programming, 91 Photographs, 10 Flat screens with audio, Dimensions variable
TV/ARTS/TV, Arts Santa Monica, Barcelona
Press:
Brooklyn Rail, Judith Barry, Download Link
Detail of the Spanish zone with news program from Catalunya circa 1975.
Exhibition over-view: the 3 zones and the 360 degree time-line with TV programing and period television photographs
View of the US zone. US television was most overtly political was during the Civil Rights Movement and Vietmam War era.
Detail of the Spanish zone with news program from Catalunya circa 1975.
MIRROR AND GARDEN
Study for the mirror and garden. redux, 2003
Installation
2 channel video sound projection with mirrors, dimensions variable. Originally produced by Museum Jose Guerrero, Granada, 2003. Redux 2007.
This installation uses video and special effects along with architectural mirroring to evoke the secret gardens, hidden meanings, and picaresque narratives of the “converso” tradition in Spanish literature and culture, which allowed banished cultures to survive by hiding in plain sight. At first the story seems to turn on mistaken identities, but as time ruptures & slips and characters morph into cultural archetypes, it becomes an investigation of the origins of our desire for the irrational to erupt into modern narrative space. See Judith Barry, Study for the Mirror and Garden, Museum José Guerrero, Diputación de Granada, 2003.
Related publications:
Judith Barry, Michael Newman, Download Link
Cinema and Space(s) in the Art of Judith Barry, Kate Linker, Download Link
BORDER STORIES
Border Stories, Working Title, from One Place to Another, 2000
Installation
4 channel video sound projection. Dimensions and configurations variable. First exhibited at INsite2000,San Diego/Tijuana, 2000
“There is nothing so _______ as that border in the mind” This project, an ‘ambient network’ of short stories, identity graphics and artists projects about life along the border between San Diego and Tijuana, raises questions about what media might be other than television or advertising when it appears unbidden within a cityscape. Designed to function somewhat like the ‘situationist’ notion of a “detournement”, it was sited across several consecutive windows as an invisible border between the new sanitized tourist-friendly downtown and the old seedy port city of San Diego.
Related publications:
Exit Art, Michael Newman, Download Link
Space that Art Makes, Judith Barry, Download Link
VOICE OFF
Voice Off, 1999
First exhibited Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing, France, 1999
How might the voice might be represented visually? A room is divided into two identical halves and the wall separating the room is the projection area. The videos on either side of the shared wall explore what the voice is in terms of possession and loss; presenting the viewer with two metaphoric narratives that unfold simultaneously. On one side a dream-like sequence enacts the personal, intimate and interior encounters that one has with the voice. On the other side, a man trying to work grows increasingly distracted as he tries to locate the source of the sounds he hears.
Installation. 2 channel video – sound projection.
Dimensions variable.
Related publications:
Voice off, Michael Newman, Download Link
Voice Off installation view of the ‘dream-like’ sequence representing the voice at the Berardo Museum, in Lisbon, Portugal
Video still of the listener entering the dream sequence
Voice Off installation view of the ‘dream-like’ sequence representing the voice at the Berardo Museum, in Lisbon, Portugal
SPEEDFLESH
Speedflesh, 1998
First exhibited Wexner Center, Ohio, 1998
This interactive 360 degree surround theater, also often shown on a large curved screen as it is here, allows the viewer to experience the last 5 minutes in the lives of 5 characters who are somewhere along the spectrum between human and prosthetic. Three dimensional effects place the viewer in the center of the space such that the point of view shot becomes the most potent and only locating device—similar to the space of video games. This project explores how an immersive space might flatten narrative effect such that to engage with the work, the viewer must inhabit the center of this space as an all – seeing eye.
Installation. 4 channel interactive video-sound projection, dimensions variable. A collaboration with Brad Miskell.
Related publications:
The Dynamics of Desire, Sarah Perks, Download Link
Future Cinema, Jeffrey Shaw & Peter Weibel, Download Link
Space that Art Makes, Judith Barry, Download Link
Installation view, curved screen showing video game wheel in foreground
Installation view, close up of curved screen showing one of the stories
CONSIGNED TO BORDER
Consigned to Border: The Terror and Possibilities in The Things not Seen, 1997
First exhibited inSITE97, San Diego 1997
This set of 5 interlocking images poses questions of landscape and land use across the shared and identical geography of Tijuana and San Diego. It uses the violence of collage (video graphics) — in particular, it’s ability to radically rupture and transform an environment — to foreground the differences in infrastructures, flows of capital, and culture between these two sites. The T-shaped structure sets up a number of antinomies or contradictions that might be provoked by comparing the various landscapes.
Installation
5 channel video-sound projection on a T shaped sign. Dimensions variable.
Related publications:
Space that Art Makes, Judith Barry, Download Link
THE HUNT FOR LANGUAGE
The Hunt for Language, 1996
First exhibited Xavier Hufkens, Brussels 1996.
3-D animation produced 2003.
First exhibited Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles, 2004.
A shapeless blob occupies the center of a room. As you walk near it, it begins to move, flapping or stretching, trying to fly. As it moves, letters seemingly tumble out from its center, striking the 4 walls around the room, forming words which do not linger in a ‘hunt for language before it is born on the tip of the tongue…. (after Theresa Hak Kyung Cha).
Installation. Sculpture with 4 channel 3D video projection. Also shown separately as a 3D animation. Fabric, steel, fans, 4 video projectors, 4 DVD players, synchronier.
Related publications:
Liminal Zones, Judith Barry, Download Link
AU BOUT DES LEVRES
Au Bout des Levres, 1996
First exhibited, Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, 1996.
These pieces use projection/animation to question the difference between language (as what can be said or written) and the visual (that which can not). Each sculpture presents the viewer with a set of references whose rebus-like meanings become clearer as the viewer interacts with them. Is the increasingly liminal status that might be ascribed to the object the result of the de-materialization of the object or merely the effect of the insistence of the visual as it coheres around the object? Presented here are five sculptures each of which raises that question in a different way.
Sculptures with video projection, plastic, motors, 3.5’ x 1.5’ x 2.2’, 1993 to present.
A/DRIFT
A/Drift: Scenes from the Penetrable Culture, 1996
New York 1996
A/drift presented the work of 92 artists and seemed to recall the Situationalist project (1957-1972), “the apparent celebration of intellectual vacancy in the work of many contemporary artists… as well as their relationship with contemporary popular culture…” Invoking two Situationalist strategies, ‘detournement’ and the ‘derive’, the exhibition design literally ‘cut through’ the exhibition walls, making the space porous and using various kinds of media to allow the works to co-mingle, producing both a complete break-down of the space as well as fostering exchange. See A/drift catalogue, Bard College, 1996.
Exhibition design. Collaboration with Ken Saylor. Curator: Josh Decter. Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York 1996
Installation shot
Installation shot
ALT.YOUTHMEDIA
alt.youthmedia, 1995
New York City 1995
An exhibition on the development of fanzines and studentproduced videos and which simultaneously turned the New Museum into a Do-It-Yourself production studio for ‘zines and music. The long graphic wall showcased ‘zine examples from many sources, while the do-it-yourself area included computers, copiers, a recording and mixing studio and production materials for producing ‘zines. Upon entering the exhibition, each visitor was given a pair of headphones which could then be plugged into the many themed stations around the space of museum. Additionally, the show included graffiti and skateboard material.
FLOATING RED LIPS
Floating Red Lips/Blissfully Unaware, 1994
Fashion Institute of Technology, NYC, 1994.
How might meaning might be constructed if an image moved at the speed of thought? Initially derived from Christian Metz’s notion of the ‘filmic syntagma’ as the smallest unit of meaning in a film, these two pieces are also paeans to other artist’s work. Floating Red Lips is my oblique homage to lipstick and Linda Benglis while Blissfully Unaware is my tribute to Chantal Ackerman’s film, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles. Each piece tries to condense as much meaning as possible into the shortest period of time as one narrative, no matter how short, always implies another and another…
Exhibition design. Collaboration with J. Abbott Miller. 3 channel video projection on scrim. First exhibited Fashion Institute of Technology, NYC, 1994.
Related publications:
ARE YOU READY FOR TV?, Judith Barry, Download Link
HA®DCELL
Ha®dcell, 1994
Thread Waxing Space, NYC 1994.
A crate seems to have fallen from the sky, spilling its contents, mostly ‘dead technology’. As you approach, it seems to move and shift slightly as though sentient. Looking inside, various parts seem to activate as you come closer. Gradually, you realize it is one organism, trying to re-animate using a humorous and low tech version of the ‘bottom -up’ approach to producing artificial intelligence.
Sculpture/installation.
Collaboration with Brad Miskell. Crate with ‘dead tech’ coaxed back to life: computer discards, 3 video monitors, surveillance camera, 3 video projections, 37 various other technological devices, programmed ‘random motion’ board, sound. Wood, paint, mixed media. Dimensions 6’x 6’x4’. First exhibited Thread Waxing Space, NYC 1994.
Related publications:
Village Voice, Kim Levin, 1994, Download Link
New York Times, Holland Cotter, 1994, Download Link
Art in America, Eleanor Heartney, 1995, Download Link
Sunday Courier-News, Ralph Bellatoni, 1995, Download Link
Christian Science Monitor, David Sterritt, 1995, Download Link
New York Observer, Grace Glueck, 1995, Download Link
New York Times, Charles Hagan, 1995, Download Link
The Star Ledger, Patricia Turner, 1995, Download Link
GEOFFERY BEENE
Geoffery Beene, 1994
Fashion Institute of Technology, NYC, 1994
For a retrospective of the fashion designer Geoffrey Beene, I was commissioned to produce a video installation that could perform two functions --- modelling the clothes and animating the tall black oblong box that is the FIT exhibition space.
Dancers, choreographed modelling the clothes, were projected to the height of the exhibition space, twenty-four feet. Three transparent screens installed full height caught the dancers movements as they seemingly traversed the space, bringing the space to life.
3 channel video installation Fashion Institute of Technology, 1994 (Designed in collaboration with J. Abbott-Miller, choreography by Linda Haberman)
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