elsewhere events’ Neighborhood

elsewhere everywhere (californiwhere)

after six weeks at elsewhere, I came back to the bay area with my collaborative spirit in overdrive. the day after i got back, i left for a farm in the woods in Mendo, where my great friend Eli had organized the amazing Invisible Ocean Festival, and I appointed myself as a super-charged volunteer. One of the first projects I took on on arrival, was the literal sprucing of the port-o-potties.

it was a beautiful day of people coming together to set up this outdoor space in all kinds of aesthetically sensitive ways, and it made me think about the convergence of the art and music scenes here more and more and how we can mesh up together.

i later found that i have great promise as a sign painter, as I spent about seven hours making signs for parking, beer, recycling receptacles and so on. I think it could be my new calling, but in the spirit of Elsewhere I will just share my rad skills without pay.

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cleaning times...

2009 (597 of 780)

1 comment

hi there, it has been about a month since i left elsewhere. i had some decompressing to do, and some money to make back in california, but now i am in a quiet place again, making my own elsewhere for a month in Portland, Oregon. Helena and Emma and I are working on a collaboration where the three artists live in three different countries and time zones. we want to keep Elsewhere Cleaning Inc. going, in some way or another. It was in intense two weeks, talking about the project and spending an average of 14 hours per appointment cleaning and re-ordering other people's collected belongings. We had three appointments, with follow-up interviews, and we have a lot of documentation to sort through and more talking to do- i am glad i am back in internet territory with my trusty old laptop.

today is the day

today is my day to finish my residency and leave. that means i am collecting and distributing documentation photos and videos, cleaning and putting away things, desperately looking for things, and saying goodbyes.

i have a lot of updates on the projects i did here to add before i can call my elsewhere blog complete, so expect to see those cleaning service pics rolling in among other documented exploits.

2009 (294 of 780)

re-imagined: Elsewhere Cleaning Inc.

Eliza Fernand
Aug 19, 2009
1 comment

Jingle

I am working on a new collaboration with very fabulous Irish artists Emma Houlihan and Helena O'Connor. Until they leave on tuesday, we are running a service called Elsewhere Cleaning Inc. using resources and theories adopted from Elsewhere. Here is our radio jingle, our invitation to members, and our flier image. If you know anyone in the area that is in need of our services, please pass it on!

Elsewhere invites you to participate in a unique Elesewhere everywhere opportunity. Visiting artists Eliza Fernand, Emma Houlihan & Helena O' Connor (collectively known as Elsewhere Cleaning Inc.) are offering their cleaning and curating expertise; bringing Elsewhere to your very own home.

Elsewhere Cleaning Inc. was born when the three artists met while participating in the Elsewhere residency program. Working within the museum context of Elsewhere, the artists found themselves obsessively cleaning and rearranging items within the collection. Inspired by the Elsewhere ethos of approaching everyday things as art objects, the artists would like to bring this curatorial idea to the larger community. Elsewhere Cleaning Inc. wants to come to your house to clean, rearrange, and curate your objects.

Upon your request for services, a date and time for the cleaning appointment will be arranged. (PLEASE RESPOND QUICKLY: This opportunity is only available now until next Tuesday August 25th.) Elsewhere Cleaning Inc. will conduct a brief interview with you on arrival; after which we will clean, rearrange and curate one room of your choosing. Upon completion you will meet with Elsewhere Cleaning Inc. to discuss the results. The intention of the project is to help people consider themselves as curators and artists in their everyday life, and to re-imagine your living space and inspire you to curate other areas in your home.The artists are especially interested in learning more about incidental collections, unplanned conjunctions, and how we create narratives around and place importance on our belongings.

E-C Inc FlierWEB

elsemations

Elsemations

here is the montage of projects i am still developing here, with sound as presented at my artist conversation, minus the performance element.....

the big night! (one of many)

my artist conversation event went swimmingly, thanks to the amazing awesome teamwork of the elsewhere crew.

i am super-excited about the things that came out of the evening and the things i threw together for it.

in the front window, we hung all the sandy swim suits from vacation, and set up a fitting station where I crafted matching accessories for visitors and elsewherians to wear for the night. i took down two bolts of fabric from the attic- one jazzy florecents-on-black number, and an earthy-toned flowered print. with these two patterns as my palette, i conducted five-minute-fittings of customized accessories. Depending on the subjects' dress and form, I made them capelets, ponchos, bow-ties, aprons, and whatever came to mind. Let me just say, they all looked damn fine.

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at the kitchen table, we set up a drawing station, where visitors could find an object in the space that triggered a memory for them, draw it, and write down the story behind it. we pinned them up on the wall for the night, and my plan is to collect more and bind them in a book that can still be added to after i am gone.

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then... halfway through the night, folks gathered around the tent, where I have installed the nuggets in their tubes to make a kind of cave space, and i was waiting there in my pile costume to perform along with my animations. i sang a song that was composed of quotes from the memory object interviews i have done thus far, with video of the garden behind me. after the performance, i conducted a very fun Q&A session, where we discussed the psychology of playing dress-up, the personality of chicken mcnuggets, and the suggestive nature of the tubes they are living in...

so, it was great. since i was kind of holed up all week, sort of working in secret on my laptop through the nights, the project was sort of a surprise, and the conversations i have had since presenting it have been revealing and inspiring. little did i realize the significance my attraction to mustaches, or the ways in which the physical details of toys do or do not influence the projection of your own personality on them. since the event was so specific and contained, i am taking a moment to reconfigure all the elements, which were essentially congealed pieces of many in-progress projects, and seeing how they will develop now as separated entities.

lots of new work developing...

i have been so busy in the past week, that i neglected to update my bloggy with snippets of what I was so diligently working on, so here are some bits from the process:

the chicken mcnuggets i adopted form the toy bin have become a big part of my elsewhere-centric project, and i have taken a liking to one suave nugget with a stash:

Datey

I am also making new living spaces for the nuggets, in an installation in the tent. they all get jazzy tubes to hang their eyes out of:

Tubing

the artist conversation is an event that happens here just about every friday night, featuring a different resident artist each time. as the featured artist, i am organizing all aspects of the event, which is meant to be interactive with the public. i even get to make the playlist for the night and decide what theme i want everyone to wear. the project is materially temporal; involving a sewing station, drawing station, performance and video; but it is completely site specific to elsewhere. i am working with the nuggets & fry guy, collection fabrics, the wardrobe, the garden, paper fro the archive, sounds recorded from elsewhere toys, spaces in the building, and stories collected from people here reacting to objects here.

i took a weekend trip.

I took a brief trip away from the bubble of elsewhere, to another city in North Carolina called Asheville. This city is famed for craft, art, liberal feelings, some famous people live there, it has green hills all around, and i ate some very good food there. i briefly joined my friends on their national tour- Songs For Moms, from Oakland. They played here and I got the honor of making their show poster, and giving them the tour of elsewhere. Once in Asheville, I hooked up with a friend that I have not spoken to since we graduated high school eight years ago, we went on walking adventures of downtown and were trapped by torrential rains in an antique mall where I played house and had a tea party. It was very refreshing to take a break from the residency, and while i was lying on my hostess's new massage bed I came up with so many plans for my quickly approaching 'artist conversation'.

working on this...

i have been doing some interviews with people at elsewhere, asking them to tell a story about an object they encountered here that triggered some forgotten memories. this is the research that is fueling my projects here- animation, performance, drawings, it is manifesting in these many ways.

i am collaging together some quotes from the interviews to write a song....

Elsewhere stories

sensual eating afternoon event

Eggs

i coordinated a small community event at elsewhere today. i guess i was inspired by molly's interest in a kiddie pool party in honor of her departure, but the pool and cocktails didn't get themselves together in the last minute hustle, and my giant communal sushi roll and litter of deviled eggs became the experience.