Javier Tellez, One Flew Over the Void (Bala Perdida), 2005, performance intervention for the bi-national two-city event, inSite: Art Practices in the Public Domain, at the Mexico-United States border. Photo courtesy Figge von Rosen Galerie.

Note: Look for Kristin Juarez’s column The Fringe, now appearing at a new time on the second Wednesday of every month!

During my trip to Los Angeles for Christmas, I was once again reminded of the goal of this column, to share my views from the perspective of an outsider. Being in a place with a radically different physical and social landscape reinforced my interest in how the cultural production in Atlanta fits into the larger art context.

With the start of 2011, I am looking forward to opportunities that place Atlanta within an inter-city and international dialogue. While it is certain there will be artists, curators, and writers who will visit from out of town to give lectures and conduct workshops, it is less clear when artists will be invited to stay for an extended period of time to create work and engage with our city, its history, its neighborhoods, and the social and political tensions that are understood but often go unspoken. Artist-in-residency and exchange programs offer such opportunities, but, because there are so few in Atlanta, I began to consider where these programs could be implemented or funded.

I recently discovered Atlanta’s Sister Cities Commission which has developed a strategic plan to develop “economic, humanitarian, and arts and culture” bonds with 18 sister cities. From the oldest sister city, Brussels, Belgium, to the newest, Fukuoka, Japan, these relationships are supposed to increase knowledge and goodwill through exchange. They are also meant to “expand Atlanta’s position as a cultural and economic leader and world-class city.” While the language is a little outdated, I do believe in the creative potential possible through these established relationships.

Though the commission’s outlined plan for the cultural development is pretty standard (including travel coordination for arts youth groups), there is room for adding innovative programs for contemporary art. Since the commission strongly values sustained relationships, an international artist-exchange or artist-in-residency program would suit its mission nicely. This would encourage career development for the artist, gain exposure for both artists and audiences, and promote site-specific work that reacts to the environments of each sister city.

Jason Kofke shoots photographs with fellow artist Hiroshi Kehara at KEK-B Particle Accelerator in Tsukuba City, Japan, during a recent artist-in-residency program. Photo courtesy the artist.

What kind of fresh perspective would an artist from our sister city of Salcedo, Dominican Republic, bring to Atlanta? How would Atlanta appear to them? How would they engage with the people, artists, and history of this city? Likewise, what would happen if an artist from Atlanta traveled to our sister city of Taipei, Taiwan? Would the content or style of the artist’s work change? Would they experiment beyond what they have known?

Jason Kofke is a locally based artist who has completed residencies in China as well as Japan and makes the search for residency programs a monthly routine. The immersive experience has profoundly affected his life, reifying his decision to make art.

“The residency experience is building,” Kofke explained by email this week. “But it builds by destroying ideas and perceptions that I once viewed as paramount.”

In terms of Kofke’s art practice, residencies have affected how he conceptualizes his audience, broadening it from local peers to a world audience. Maturity has also been a bi-product of his travels, prompting his practice to be less informed by the studio, and requiring his experimentation to be more deliberate. During these residencies, he saw that his work became reliant on a specific project at a specific place, echoing Miwon Kwon’s  theory of site-specificity that describes art as an intense engagement with the outside world and everyday life.

During his residency in Japan, Jason Kofke repurposed aspects of his art practice, including his "Everything Will Be OK" slogan, for a new audience. Photo courtesy the artist.

Drawing a tongue-in-cheek analogy to TV hero MacGyver, executing a work was sometimes about reprioritizing material things, in order to solve problems within the parameters of a proposed project or specific community. Though he remarked on the alienation he has felt upon returning to Atlanta, his experience in residencies has been overwhelmingly positive, inspiring, and productive.

The residencies that Kofke has participated in exemplify a well-tested model that might appeal to the city’s Department of External Affairs. However, there are other forms that residencies can take.

Twin Kittens is a nonprofit art gallery whose mission is to provide thought-provoking and compelling work that has both an entry-point for non-artist audiences as well as seasoned patrons. Their commitment to encouraging artists to take thoughtful risks is executed by providing a space that is unencumbered by the pressure of the market. Bob Butler, executive director of Twin Kittens, envisions an artist-in-residency program that furthers their aim to connect artists directly with patrons and the viewing public, without the politics (or commissions) of a gallery.

During a phone interview, Butler described their upcoming residency program as a perk for artists who have been selected to show in their space. Throughout the timeframe of an exhibition, artists would have the option to live in the apartment above the gallery, and enjoy the experience of sharing their work in person. Artists would be given the opportunity to engage directly with the public and the ability to conduct workshops and host lectures.

This is an exciting prospect that would further distinguish Twin Kittens from the traditional gallery model. By empowering artists who are committed to having an extended dialogue with their audience, they would transform the gallery into an interactive and discursive site.

Residency programs can also be linked with exhibitions that revolve around themes of place and exchange between cities. The reoccurring exhibition inSite: Art Practices in the Public Domain took place intermittently between 1992 and 2005, across locations in both San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico. With works and interventions that revolved around the United States-Mexico border, artists tested the physical, social, and conceptual parameters of this contested site. As a result, the exhibition also examined community-based practices, site-specificity, and public art as evolving genres.

As part of inSite_05, the invited artists, architects, and curators were required to have residencies along the border, in order to develop a project that resulted from sustained engagement with the region. The residencies were crucial to the exhibition, conceptualized as a more productive entry point (as opposed to biennials) for cultural producers to create work within the exhibition. The drive for specificity was to create real situations with local impact, by creating the platform where daily interpersonal exchange could occur.

The inaugural event was the intervention by Javier Tellez entitled One Flew Over the Void (Bala Perdida). An artist who regularly addresses the marginalization of mental illness as well as institutional dynamics, he created a spectacle event that pointed both to the politics of the border and pathology. Working with a mental institution in Mexicali, the event began with a parade of patients wearing animal masks and holding signs speaking against racism and discrimination. The parade culminated on the beach where the border fence that divides Mexico and the United States drops into the ocean.

Following a circus act performed by the patients, David Smith, the human cannonball, was shot from Tijuana into San Diego. The intervention highlighted the liminal space of both the border and the divide between what is considered normal and pathological. The act of the human cannonball crossing the border fence becomes a metaphor, expressing the desires for crossing the boundaries that define the mentally ill.

One Flew Over the Void was rooted in collaboration between Tellez and Smith, and the residents of the mental institution. The intervention was developed over two years of workshops and meetings in order to determine the details of the event. While Tellez was familiar with working with people who are institutionalized, One Flew Over the Void created a multitude of meanings that were specific to inSITE and the relationship he manifested with collaborators through the residency.

Although Atlanta is not a border city, there are certainly points of tension, fragmentation, and dynamics that constitute our social, civic, and cultural lives. While it is not impossible for artists based in Atlanta to address these issues, the perspective of an outsider can often disrupt our understanding of the culture that’s around us every day. Visiting artists promote a greater understanding of others and ourselves.

What can we hope to gain from such continued engagement with artists from abroad? Looking again over my notes, I think Jason Kofke says it well: “The effect on a place is cumulative, unpredictable, and qualitative.”

Kristin Juárez is a recent transplant from Los Angeles conducting a fellowship at the High Museum of Art. This column maps her exploration of Atlanta’s art scene as a newcomer. With one foot testing the water of local arts practice and the other firmly planted in a greater landscape of cultural production, Juárez uses both to gauge the potential of the visual arts to impact our lives. How can art provide meaningful, sustained discourse that will help us articulate, and be held accountable for, what is at stake in the world today?

Check BURNAWAY to read The Fringe on the second Wednesday of every month.