In conjunction with AxS Festival 2014 | Curiosity, Big City Forum will host a conversation with artists Connie Samaras and Soo Kim on the theme of curiosity and a changing landscape. Big City Forum is currently in residence at Armory Center for the Arts.
Capacity is limited. We are offering limited priority seating, please RSVP to reserve guaranteed admission. Limit 2 per person. The remaining seats are offered on a first come, first served basis.
Connie Samaras lives and works in Los Angeles. She was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Working primarily in photography and video, she employs a variety of interdisciplinary frames and aesthetic strategies in developing projects. Her ongoing interests include: the variable membrane between fiction and real world; political geographies and psychological dislocation in the everyday; speculative landscapes and architectural narratives; science fiction genres and future imaginaries; the legacy of U.S. social change movements in a shifting global economy; paradox and the political unconscious; desire, popular culture, feminist and queer theory; art as historical artifact, the aesthetics of time, and differing systems of cataloguing history. In addition to an extensive record of art exhibitions, lectures, reviews, and awards, she’s also published writings, narrative and critical, on a range of topics.
Visit Connie Samaras’ website: conniesamaras.com
Image Credit:
Connie Samaras
Runway
after Spaceport America series
2010
Centering on the subtraction of visual information from the picture plane through the techniques of cutting and layering photographic prints, and introducing areas of absence or disruption, Soo Kim attempts to address issues of photographic transparency, ubiquity, and the rapid consumption of images. Through these cuts and subtractions, there is a “slowness” in the reading of an image that makes evident the materiality of the medium as well as the time of labor and deliberation, marked by imperfection, that works against the speed and perfection of changing technologies.
Kim is an artist and educator whose work has been exhibited internationally. Her works are in many public and private collections, including the Getty Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and The Broad Foundation, among others. She is represented by Angles Gallery, Los Angeles, and is the Director of the Photography program at Otis College of Art and Design. She received her BA in Art from UC Riverside, and her MFA in Art, Critical Writing, and Film/Video from the California Institute of the Arts.
Visit Soo Kim’s website: anglesgallery.com/ssp_director/artistgallery.php?id=129#1
Image credit:
Soo Kim
The woman bows, smiles, and leaves
2013
Big City Forum (BCF), founded in 2008 by Los Angeles-based artist, educator, and activist Leonardo Bravo and co-directed with artist/graphic designer River Jukes-Hudson since 2013, is an independent, interdisciplinary project that explores the intersection between design-based creative disciplines within the context of public space, the built environment, and social change. Big City Forum’s 15-month residency at Armory Center for the Arts is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Visit the Armory’s website: armoryarts.org/bcf
Visit Big City Forum’s website: bigcityforum.blogspot.com