Untitled Document

/// 43.5 Actions in Usonia

435 is the current fixed number of members of the United States House of Representatives. Each state receives representation in the House proportional to its population but is entitled to at least one representative. By adding a decimal to 435 it becomes: 43.5 Actions and Performances in Usonia [1]. These are a series of art actions that deal with current sociopolitical issues.
43.5 is a Floating Lab Collective project. This project takes as a source of research the social and economic dynamic of the periphery in the beltway of Washington DC. Some areas in the beltway become a symbolic geographic landscape of exclusion, as the power is geographically located in the center without equal participation and access. Some areas in the periphery have large concentrations of immigrant communities, day labor workers, economically deprived and/or underprivileged communities. The project explores a dialogue of relational aesthetics with various communities around the beltway. We understand relational aesthetics as "a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space." [2]
In relational art the audience is envisaged as a community and meaning is elaborated collectively, rather than in the space of individual consumption. The outcome of the project will be 43.5 art actions addressing the sociopolitical issues of the periphery. The Floating Museum, a step van that will be converted into a museum, will serve as the venue and will travel in the periphery, displaying art work in parking lots or hosted by institutions in the beltway. The Floating Museum then become a vehicle for dialogue where “many are talking to many”.
[ in progress, to be presented in September 2008 ]
_____
[1] Usonia is a word used by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright to refer to his vision for the landscape of the United States, including the planning of cities and the architecture of buildings. Wright proposed the use of the adjective Usonian in place of American to describe the particular
New World character of the American landscape as distinct and free of previous architectural conventions.
The word Usonian appears to have been coined by James Duff Law, an American writer born in 1865. In a miscellaneous collection entitled Here and There in Two Hemispheres (1903), Law quoted a letter of his own (dated 18 June 1903) that begins "We of the United States, in justice to Canadians and Mexicans, have no right to use the title 'Americans' when referring to matters pertaining exclusively to ourselves."
[2] Bourriaud, Nicholas (2002). Relational Aesthetics, English edition translated by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods, France: les presse du réel, p. 113

Nuevo proyecto / New Project	_ FLC _(e) xperiments _
[+] Project intro ] [+] Blog / project_in_progress ] [+] Archive / previous_work ] [+] Contact ]	/// The Floating Museum The floating lab museum, is a moving museum created from a transformed “step Van” (1) (2). This moving museum will act as a platform to link the periphery with the center. For that purpose some contemporary issues are emphasized, such as access--in the sense of exclusion and inclusion; a critique of the role of the art institution as the exclusive delivery platform of art; and the construction of images from the standpoint of how we create an image that is relevant to the discourse of the social fabric in the suburbs. The idea is to work in parking lots in the suburbs. The reason to work in these spaces is because parking has become a “nomadic space”, as Deleuze described: “The organization of a nomadic group is not imposed from above by a transcendent command. So we can consider Nomadic Space, not as a space with intrinsic properties that then determine relations, but as a space with extrinsic properties; the space is produced from the movements that give that space its peculiar quality.” In that context parking lots around the suburbs have become serialized and active common ground for a diverse population, parking lots are a landscape for subgroups to meet. One example is the food service step vans that park in some parking lots in Manassas and Langley Park (3) to sell food for a period of time, then move to a different location. The van makes several stops in the periphery, normally where there is a major concentration of Latino population. This project will also absorb various visual references found in the city landscape, like the people on the corner distributing announcements (4), the sandwich board people (5), and flower sellers at stop lights (6). All these jobs are normally executed by minorities. This placard will become a canvas to re-articulate discourses and construct collective meaning.



		(1)	(2)

		(4)(5)	(6).
	/// 43.5 Actions in Usonia 435 is the current fixed number of members of the United States House of Representatives. Each state receives representation in the House proportional to its population but is entitled to at least one representative. By adding a decimal to 435 it becomes: 43.5 Actions and Performances in Usonia [1]. These are a series of art actions that deal with current sociopolitical issues. 43.5 is a Floating Lab Collective project. This project takes as a source of research the social and economic dynamic of the periphery in the beltway of Washington DC. Some areas in the beltway become a symbolic geographic landscape of exclusion, as the power is geographically located in the center without equal participation and access. Some areas in the periphery have large concentrations of immigrant communities, day labor workers, economically deprived and/or underprivileged communities. The project explores a dialogue of relational aesthetics with various communities around the beltway. We understand relational aesthetics as "a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space." [2] In relational art the audience is envisaged as a community and meaning is elaborated collectively, rather than in the space of individual consumption. The outcome of the project will be 43.5 art actions addressing the sociopolitical issues of the periphery. The Floating Museum, a step van that will be converted into a museum, will serve as the venue and will travel in the periphery, displaying art work in parking lots or hosted by institutions in the beltway. The Floating Museum then become a vehicle for dialogue where “many are talking to many”. [ in progress, to be presented in September 2008 ] _____ [1] Usonia is a word used by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright to refer to his vision for the landscape of the United States, including the planning of cities and the architecture of buildings. Wright proposed the use of the adjective Usonian in place of American to describe the particular New World character of the American landscape as distinct and free of previous architectural conventions. The word Usonian appears to have been coined by James Duff Law, an American writer born in 1865. In a miscellaneous collection entitled Here and There in Two Hemispheres (1903), Law quoted a letter of his own (dated 18 June 1903) that begins "We of the United States, in justice to Canadians and Mexicans, have no right to use the title 'Americans' when referring to matters pertaining exclusively to ourselves." [2] Bourriaud, Nicholas (2002). Relational Aesthetics, English edition translated by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods, France: les presse du réel, p. 113