Ourchive

Throughout the week in New York

the notion of remembering the past

as a way of moving forward

was a recurring idea that permeated our collective experiences.

Whether it was viewing the Panorama of the five boroughs

created for the 1964 World's Fair in Queens

or understanding the importance of sampling

in the process of Reenactment in the 2010 Whitney Biennial

it became very apparent that the idiosyncratic nature of our

voyage was greatly informed by the years

of art making that preceded it.

While it was reassuring to note that we have not

divorced ourselves completely from the art that makes

up our collective history, my experience of Art

(with a capital A)

during the trip made me question the role of archiving

documentation

and recollection.

While I don't believe that contemporary artists have

run out of novel things to say--

why do so many of them resort to recreating the

paramount projects of the past

as if nostalgic middle-aged housewives

reminiscing upon their halcyon years?

Has the art world out-shocked itself?

And yet, how is it that the Marina Abramovic retrospective

removed from its contextual space in time

is still effective at making one's passage through

a couple of naked bodies uncomfortable?

More specifically, while pictures add to the

source of our collective memory

there is a certain artifice that exists

in the pictorial tradition

that fails to capture the essence of a shared moment

and thus, creates a specific unilateral memory of the past.

All this to say, with such a rich landscape of past

art movements, happenings, moments of genius,

I wonder what has fallen by the way side

and what would have remained if the gatekeepers to this art

had themselves been different?

Thus, as we assemble Ourchive

I add merely a glimpse of an exceptional trip

that far exceeded my expectations of "immersion"

and only worked to solidify my love for New York.

The following is a video focusing on the gestural exchanges

that occurred throughout the trip

By obscuring most of the identifying features of the people we met

and juxtaposing subway strangers and NYC elite alongside

Stanford students

I hope to offer a portrait of a city that is at once diverse and common

stripped of language and context

a certain humanity persists in palms and fingertips.