Deadpan Exchange

For those who haven’t seen the deadpan video-screening yet, please stop by at the exhibition site, Koh-i-noor (Copenhagen) on thursday the 6th of December 2007 at 7 pm. First, there’ll be a guest-performance by Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld (DK) and then afterwards, we’ll watch the Deadpan Exchange II video-screening, which were shown for the first time in superbien! this summer.

It will be possible to buy Glögg and other Danish Christmas goodies. Hope to see you for a nice time in Koh-i-noor together with some deadpan “entertainment”.

Video-artists: Jens Axel Beck (DK), Matthew Hughes Boyko (USA), Melissa Day (USA), Morten Dysgaard (DK), Morten Espersen (DK), Rosa Marie Frang (DK), Kara Hearn (USA), Stine Marie Jacobsen (DK), Ina Viola Blasius (DE), Dagmar Krøyer (DK), Kristin Lucas (USA), Mads Lynnerup (DK/USA), Cally Malinda Martin (USA), Tine Oksbjerg (DK), Susan O’Malley (USA), Dan Rees (DE/UK), Will Rogan (USA), Tina Scherzberg (DK), Tim Sullivan (USA), Anne Walsh (USA), Lindsey White (USA), Søren Assenholt (DK) og Marie Kolding Lund (DK)

More info, please contact: heidihovepedersen@gmail.com

Koh-i-noor, Dybbølsgade 60, DK-1721 Copenhagen V.

On the 31st of October 2007, The Deadpan Exchange II video-screening from superbien! was shown at the Biffen - Art Cinema in Aalborg (DK). This event was organized by the artists, Tine Oksbjerg (DK) and Svend Allan Sørensen (DK). I also went to Aalborg to introdue the video-screening - and the whole event went very well.

For the Danish readers here’s the press release

Heidi

In september 2007, Jonn Herschend (artist and co-organizer of The Deadpan Exchange) was invited by the Koh-i-noor (DK) to show his video, Everything is Better Now at the Koh-i-noor booth at the Alternative Art Fair in Copenhagen.

Everything is Better Now is a 16 minute infomercial that falls apart. It begins on a sound stage with two video hosts who promise to fully explain the importance of ambiguity by offering a step-by-step plan complete with examples. However, the hosts’ examples—an incident in a video store, a car accident, an altercation on a city bus, an argument about a phone message and a symbolic shoe tossed into the street—slowly begin to break down and become more absurd, personal and confused as they move further from the sound stage and out into real life. In the end, Everything is Better Now, becomes the very thing that it sets out to explain, asking us to see the importance of confusion in our daily lives.

Usually it’s a really hard one - to show one semi-long video at an art fair - but a lot of people sat down and watched the whole thing - and got really excited! Below are a few images from the art fair.

Heidi

Here is the first attempt at documentation for the Deadpan Exchange (festival), which took place throughout the evening of June 13th at super bien! in Berlin. I should begin with a disclaimer: this blog entry does not represent all the performances and projects that took place on that fateful day, but it’s a start. As time goes on and we sort through more and more of the documentation, we will keep adding to the blog. So keep checking back.

It should also be noted that this event would most certainly not have taken place had it not been for the quick wit and fleet footedness of super bien! artist/curator Carlos Silva, who jumped in for super bien! artist/curator David Keating (who was summoned to Munich in sort of kafkaesque way at the last minute). It also should be noted that the event most definitely would not have happened without the small army of Danish artists who descended on super bien! via train, plane, and car (one of which had a giant tree strapped to it, and was not pulled over the entire way down by the German authorities… amazing!) to set up the installation. And finally, had it not been for Heidi Hove Pedersen’s Dad, there would have been no tent or car to strap the giant tree to. So thanks, Mr. Pedersen.

The festival was kicked off with a deadpan chainsaw intervention and ended at around 11:00 PM with the screening. Following this, everyone went off to Dr. Pong’s for beers and ping pong until 6:00 AM. Here’s a PDF of the events
and the projects in the courtyard .

Here’s what happened in between:

While much of Deadpan Exchange more or less invented itself as it went along, there is another project that will launch this summer that has been in the works for the past year. This project is called Galleon Trade, and it is being organized by the amazing artist (and good friend) Jenifer Wofford. This project is working to create a grass roots, sustainable, cross pollination of artists in San Francisco, the Philippines and Mexico. There is an incredible group of artists and writers involved in the project. And I’m crossing my fingers that the Galleon Trade SF show might happen at around the same time as the Deadpan Exchange SF show. Here’s a bit of info about the project, but be sure to check out the website.
Galleon Trade is a series of international arts exchange projects, focusing on the Philippines, Mexico, and California. Taking the historic Acapulco-Manila galleon route as its metaphor of origin, these exhibitions seek to create new routes of cultural exchange along old routes of commerce and trade.

Galleon Trade should not be seen as a single exhibition: it is entirely about reciprocity and gathering momentum, to create a road map that will make future arts alliances and exchanges like this much easier. Starting in Manila, but continuing to California, Mexico and beyond, Galleon Trade will facilitate further discussions between artists, curators, gallerists and scholars from all 3 places to explore strategies for sustainable exchange.

The official reception took place at Koh-i-noor on the 8th of June. The incomparable Brian Enevoldsen and I performed a presentation entitled “a short history of deadpan,” and then we all drank beer. The crowd was great. I was expecting the sort of walk in and walk out, hang around and talk to your friends crowd. But this crowd was really into sitting down and watching the videos or standing in front of the paintings and installations (but looking at them) for some time. It was a pleasant shock. I haven’t seen that sort of thing at an opening… I don’t think ever. There was also a lot of serious discussion about the work followed by some serious beer drinking at a beer garden that Jacob Borges led us to. At the beer garden, we all watched as a man and a woman wrestled. It looked like they had come from work and stayed until around 2AM. The man didn’t really want to wrestle, but the woman did… and so did the crowd. Some one handed me another beer and the man and the woman ran off into the bushes. Later that evening, everyone in the beer garden watched two lovers roll around in the grass (not the wrestlers). There was much discussion and gesturing toward them. It clearly seemed to be something in the air… or the beer. But during all of this, their backpacks were stolen. It was the perfect diversion. Someone slipped in and took the back-packs while all eyes were on the lovers. Later that evening… and I mean much later, we watched as an entire bench-load of beer drinkers slowly fell backwards on to the people behind them, a sort of perfect slap-stick moment with which to cap the night.

The show is up and running. And some good news has come our way. The Deadpan Exchange series has just received a very healthy grant from the Danish Arts Council. And the lab in San Francisco has agreed to host the San Francisco Deadpan Exchange show. We are currently working out the dates for this show, so expect more info on this as we go along.

Tonight is the reception for the Deadpan Exchange show, and I’ll be performing a presentation in collaboration with Brian Enevoldsen entitled “a short history of deadpan.” We’ve been rehearsing it for past three days, and we are happy with the way it’s going. I’ll get some more photos up of the opening and maybe the performance.

There was a big group Dim Sum brunch in San Francisco about two years ago where I first met Heidi Hove Pedersen. Then, almost a year later, there was a discussion about a show in Copenhagen at Koh-i-noor. There were a handful of artists here in the bay area whose work seemed very deadpan in one form or another (both comic and tragic). And we were interested in working together in order to further explore this aesthetic. So it just made sense to pitch this to Heidi and Koh-i-noor. Out of this came Deadpan Exchange 1. And then there was an invite to do some sort of something at Koh-i-noor’s Berlin “office.” We tossed around some ideas of doing a sort of screening there, and then this turned into an e-mail discussion with David Keating, who is one of the founders of super bien! in Berlin (and whom I met in 05 when the two of us were in residency in Norway at LKV). Out of this there evolved a sort of Deadpan Festival (complete with sausages and beer) and a flood of amazing artists from Denmark (thanks to Heidi), the US and Germany (and one from Spain and another from Canada). And then there’s this amazing website, which was made on the fly by Max La Riviere-Hedrick. And finally there is Deadpan III, which will be taking place in San Francisco in the fall or spring of 07 or 08 with the artists from the Koh-i-noor collective who will be creating works that are reactions to the SF artist’s work in Copenhagen .

So that’s the background. I’m about to get on the plane on Friday to go over and help install Deadpan 1 and work on a performance piece for the opening. I’ll be checking in here and there and providing what photos I can, but (if this is supposed to work correctly), there will be a few others who will be contributing to this blog, including Heidi.

It’s also important to note there will be another blog, which will serve as an art piece for the Berlin show. This blog is by Morten Kaer, and you can find it at deadpanexchange2superbien.blogspot.com

That’s all for now,

Jonn Herschend