CCA News
Graduate Nightlight Exhibition Illuminates, Builds Social Awareness
Posted on Thursday, March 11, 2010, by Jim Norrena
Seven graduate students from CCA’s fall "Magic Lantern: Projected Image and the Construction of Space" seminar joined forces at the end of the semester to shed some light on CCA—literally.
The Nightlight exhibition, which took place December 7, was a cross-disciplinary exhibition of photography, video, film, and light in the context of performance or installation. The exhibition was visually and intellectually illuminating. (Watch the accompanying Nightlight slideshow at right, as well as see additional images at the CCA SnapShots page on Flickr.)
The artists, representing CCA's Graduate Program in Fine Arts, Media Arts, and MBA in Design Strategy programs, used the architecture of the San Francisco campus as a collaborative element on which to display their work.
Under the guidance (and participation) of Media Arts and Graduate Program in Fine Arts professor Jeanne C. Finley, the following second-year Graduate Program in Fine Arts students (unless otherwise indicated) collaboratively shaped the Nightlight exhibition into an interpretive installation of light, messaging, sound, and architecture that promoted awareness of social issues right here on campus:
- Zarouhie Abdalian
- Kathryn Hautanen (MBA in Design Strategy)
- Anna Ludwig
- Rebecca Ora
- Ruth Robbins
- Ashley Lauren Saks (Media Arts)
- Wafaa Yasin
"CCA's San Francisco campus is rich in history and evidence of the shifting social dynamics of the Bay Area," said professor Finley. "Surrounded by vacant lots, dilapidated buildings as well as high-end design outlets and designer lofts, several of the featured artists used their projection to highlight the ironies and contradictions embedded in the campus's position within the city."
Second-year MBA in Design Strategy student Kathryn Hautanen filmed the more impoverished elements of Hooper Street, closer to 7th Street, during a Sunday afternoon when no one was around. "Right next door [to CCA] is an abandoned lot, graffiti, pollution, homeless and day laborers all trying to survive. I wanted to juxtapose these two elements—the sun shining on the burned-out buildings and homeless and bring that to the front of Hooper where it can't be ignored." Kathryn projected her film on the southern wall of the Graduate Center building on Hooper Street.
MFA candidate Anna Ludwig's project, People's Park, featured a looped series of 80 images projected in quick succession using an automatic Kodak carousel slide projector. She used watercolor-painted images on clear film, which were then cut and fitted into a 35 mm slide mount. "The energy of an event leaves a stain, faint, even invisible, on the place where it occurs," she explains. "I investigate sites loaded with residual energy of resistance to power—places that were active in the Bay Area during the 1960s. People's Park uses the outdated technology of the slide projector as a vehicle for ephemeral paintings that reference shared cultural memory and the subjectivity of history."
In addition to the challenge of interpreting the relationship between light and architecture, professor Finley also commented on the more mundane challenges of merely having to build outdoor installations: “Although San Francisco had had very little rainfall, the day before the exhibition one of the biggest storms of the fall slammed into the city. We were watching the satellite maps to know if the show could go on. As the afternoon approached, the clouds cleared, and despite the drop in temperature to record lows, rain did not fall. The artists dressed in their warmest clothes because they had to stand outside for hours, never leaving their equipment.”
To encourage viewers to brave the frigid temperatures and find all the projections sprinkled throughout the San Francisco campus—the Graduate Center, the Writers' Studio (195 De Haro at 15th Street), the Carmen M. Christensen Production Stage (within the main San Francisco campus building at 1111 Eighth Street), and outside the main campus building entrance—each station served chocolates. And for those who had their exhibition invitation hole-punched at all stations, a glass of wine to warm the spirit, if not the hands, was served to grateful exhibition attendees.
"None of this could have been accomplished without the support of CCA's San Francisco Media Center," Finley added, "in particular Jennifer Rarick and Rebekah Eisenberg, who allowed the projectors to be checked and unlocked from their carts. Also, they provided hundreds of feet of extension cord. And thanks to everyone who helped and supported this show."
About Magic Lantern
"The Magic Lantern: Projected Image and the Construction of Space." This graduate critique seminar is designed for Fine Arts and Architecture students who are interested in working with projected light and imagery to shape and redefine images and the objects/structures that reflect them. Students working with photography, video, film or light in the context of performance and/or installation will have the opportunity to work with the technical and theoretical tools necessary to create a series of new projects in the course. Projects address questions of site-specificity as students choose to work with projection in public and intimate spaces alike.
Additionally, we look at the work of artists and architects who have worked with projection from as early as Louis Daguerre to Aether Architecture, Anthony McCall, Elaine Buckholtz, and Tony Oursler, among many others. Through the creation of their projected works, students explore the relationship of one's physical presence and experience of light-constructed spaces to questions of site, history, narrative, permanence, illusiveness, and desire.