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CCA Wattis Institute Presents *The California Files: Re-Viewing Side Effects of Cultural Memory*

Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007, by Brenda Tucker

The CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts presents The California Files: Re-Viewing Side Effects of Cultural Memory, an exhibition that investigates the abstract idea of California by bringing together artworks and archives that focus on idiosyncratic details of Californian culture. Organized by visiting curator Ariane Beyn, The California Files is on view April 19–June 23, 2007, in the Logan Galleries on the San Francisco campus of California College of the Arts. The exhibition is free and open to the public.The CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts presents The California Files: Re-Viewing Side Effects of Cultural Memory, an exhibition that investigates the abstract idea of California by bringing together artworks and archives that focus on idiosyncratic details of Californian culture. Organized by visiting curator Ariane Beyn, The California Files is on view April 19–June 23, 2007, in the Logan Galleries on the San Francisco campus of California College of the Arts. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

Featuring artists who use archival materials in their work or whose documentary practices echo an archival approach, The California Files examines how the use and reuse of documents and artifacts allow cultural attributions to shift, exposing less-obvious aspects of cultural memory. Also incorporated into the exhibition are a number of California-based archival initiatives whose collections concentrate on cultural production at the fringes of public awareness.

By assembling a variety of documentation practices and methods, The California Files shows how archival materials can be reinterpreted within a different context and how this activity fabricates a new image of California. "The different thematic threads that surface in this exhibition propose a relational but not coherent topography of the idea and reality of California as a place without a fixed identity that is constantly occupied with its own history and reinvention," says Beyn.

Artists and archives in the exhibition include Craig Baldwin, Sandow Birk, Andrea Bowers, Kaucyila Brooke, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Abigail Child, Sunah Choi, Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda, the Mayme A. Clayton Library & Cultural Center, Harun Farocki, Jill Godmilow, Jack Goldstein, Karl Holmqvist, William E. Jones, Helen Kim, Nina Könnemann, Jesse Lerner, Jenny Perlin, the Prelinger Library & Archives, Miljohn Ruperto, Susan Schwartzenberg, Allan Sekula, Danh Vo, Clemens v. Wedemeyer, and Christine Würmell.

To receive a free copy of the exhibition booklet, email your name and mailing address to californiafiles@cca.edu.

About Ariane Beyn

Ariane Beyn is an art historian and independent curator based in Berlin. She has published numerous essays on contemporary art and film and has taught at the Universití¤t der Künste, Berlin. She has curated several exhibitions, including Hearing Aid (about the sound work of Michael Snow) at Galerie Klosterfelde and Kunst-Werke, Berlin, in 2002, and the group exhibition Transatlantic Impulses at Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, in 2005. Beyn was an assistant curator for Utopia Station at the 2003 Venice Biennale. In 2007 she will curate exhibitions in Germany at Kunstverein Braunschweig and Atelier Frankfurt.

Lead sponsorship for The California Files is provided by the Fleishhacker Foundation. Founding support for CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts programs has been provided by Phyllis C. Wattis and Judy and Bill Timken. Generous support provided by the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, and CCA Curators Forum.

About the Wattis Institute

Established in 1998, the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts serves as a forum for the presentation and discussion of leading-edge local, national, and international contemporary culture.

Through exhibitions, the Capp Street Project residency program, lectures, symposia, performances, and publications in the fields of art, architecture, and design, the Wattis Institute fosters interaction among the students and faculty of California College of the Arts; art, architecture, and design professionals; and the general public.

About CCA

Founded in 1907, California College of the Arts is the largest regionally accredited, independent school of art and design in the western United States.

Noted for the interdisciplinary nature and breadth of its programs, CCA offers studies in 20 undergraduate and six graduate majors in the areas of fine arts, architecture, design, and writing. The college offers bachelor of architecture, bachelor of arts, bachelor of fine arts, master of architecture, master of arts, and master of fine arts degrees.

With campuses in San Francisco and Oakland, CCA currently enrolls 1,600 full-time students.

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