Carren's Pitch

Here's my humble addition to GOOD's Guide to Slowing Down.

Fil-Am artist Stephanie Syjuco takes back the personal in the realm of the public
Text by: Carren Jao
Photographs courtesy of the artist
Additional photograph: Carren Jao
Published in an altered form at MEGA December 2009

Fil-Am Stephanie Syjuco is an artist of her time. Unafraid to swim in technology, she refers to Google Images as “kind of my best friend,” downloading content off the internet and incorporating it into pieces. Similarly, her work flows with the concept of open source – development through public collaboration. Far from linear development – at the mercy of a centralized governing body, closed to new ideas - open source (as the term suggests) opens itself to users, allowing them to mold a project to suit their purposes. In a world of monotonous mass production, her work asserts the personal and customized.

Internationally acclaimed visual artist Stephanie Syjuco’s body of work reflects a logic of personalization in a world increasingly reliant on efficient streams of production. Using the internet as a starting point for many of her sculptures and installations, Stephanie recreates something - intentionally misappropriating and mistranslating icons to reveal friction. She refers to this process as making a “cover, taking the original form and adding to it,” as opposed to outright copying. Her work is an ongoing dialog, attempting to present the complex intersections of life today –– globalization versus local production, reality versus high ideals, public versus private.

Personalizing production
Stephanie does not hesitate to acknowledge her own work’s political bent and attributes this to an early experience. “My mom moved [to the U.S.] as a 19-year old single mother. We were on welfare. That probably informed some of my outlook… Around high school or college, I got an awareness [of] being an immigrant in the U.S…. class differences, who has money, race issues, social issues. That started my being political,” she shares inside a quiet library café on Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) grounds. As an erstwhile Kraus Visiting Assistant Professor, she is light years away from her days living on a $10 budget and dumpster diving behind the bakery while taking the New York Studio Program in 1994.

Receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts from The San Francisco Art Institute and her Master’s Degree from Stanford University, she has gradually found the logic in her work, moving from personal themes to more global themes. She gravitates to ordinary material, eschewing traditional media. “I am more interested in the everyday kind of low-end [material], nothing too special – something that’s easy to get a hold of and doesn’t carry a lot of baggage.” Materials like an architect’s foam core or simple contact paper, often used on household projects, are prevalent in her studio.

Her most celebrated work to-date has been the Counterfeit Crochet Project (Critique of a Political Economy), which has been shown around the globe - from the United States to Istanbul to the Philippines. Soliciting the help of crocheters around the world through the internet to hand-counterfeit designer bags, Stephanie delved into the process by which people “make the world for themselves,” inserting their work in the world’s stream of commerce. After producing some sample works herself, she then organized the whole affair, even borrowing a few finished products for shows around the world.

“At first, I did not want to call it an art project,” says Stephanie, preferring to keep the air of excitement typical of the pseudo-backdoor economic setting she was creating. Labeling it an art project would have legitimized it and tempered its effect on the makers themselves. Though the end products succeeded in achieving brand recognition, they could never duplicate the same lustful effect of the real designer bags, something Stephanie can happily live with. “It was production in a society that prides itself on being correct… In the end, it does become new, even if it was a copy…[There is] skill that goes into the attempt and that’s what is the source of its beauty.”

Another running inquiry attached to Stephanie’s art practice is her Anti-Factory fashion label, essentially a one-woman business selling one-of-a-kind, handmade, environment-friendly garments online. In a term she coined “upcycling,” versus recycling, Stephanie breathes new life to garments by reworking them to suit contemporary fashion tastes. “I wanted to see if it was possible to make a kind of artisan business amidst manufacturing models today,” explains Stephanie. True to an artisan business model, Stephanie is involved in all parts of the process- from web design, production, shipping and handling. “Anti-Factory gives me a chance to handmake something and have a direct exchange with someone,” says Stephanie, striving to appropriate the production cycle to allow personal contact.

Tackling identity
Perhaps it is Stephanie’s own experience being Filipina in a foreign environment that makes her sensitive to global phenomena. She is constantly straddling two worlds, yet confesses to having made peace with this discord. “I used to feel marginalized. I don’t know how to speak Tagalog, so I’m not Filipino enough and my mother assimilated [the American life]. But there are so many other people who are in the same situation, we make a kind of community.” Rather than ignoring her Filipino background, she lets it inform her practice. In her latest solo show at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, three of the five installations delve into cultural identity.

Towards a New Theory of Color Reading began from Stephanie’s own frustration at her limited understanding of English language Filipino newspapers. “It was a whole other language almost,” she explains, referring to the myriad of cultural references and acronyms that pepper the ethnic paper. Combining this frustration with the Bauhaus Color Theory, a movement in the 1930s that attempted to create a universal understanding of art through color, Stephanie replaced key portions of newspaper with a pre-assigned block of colored paper: yellow for text, black for newspaper information, cyan for photos, and red/magenta for advertisements, creating a different kind of informational journal. “It is a way to appreciate the content in a different way,” she says with a smile.

In Body Double (Platoon/Apocalypse Now/Hamburger Hill), Stephanie attempts to reconnect to her homeland. Downloading famous Hollywood Vietnam War movies shot in the Philippines and cropping out all war-related dialog, viewers are left with idyllic landscapes full of skies, rivers and mountains. Bereft of cinematic gore and drama, the work reveals a much more personal drama, a vision of Stephanie's homeland unfolding.

In The Village (Small Encampments), Stephanie investigates her two homes – her apartment and her homeland – by downloading tourist photos of the Philippines, cutting them down to Lilliputian height, and placing them strategically around her apartment. Thus, she presents both her private abode and her fictionalized idea of homeland. “I wondered how much is complete fiction of the identity that we construct for ourselves.”

Bridging the gaps between her real and ideal personality, she herself has formulated her own theory of her identity. Stephanie shares, “I read somewhere that ten percent of the entire Filipino population is living outside of the Philippines. Then perhaps being Filipino has nothing to do with cultural ties. [This phenomena has] made the Philippines a larger place – a reverse colonization, if you will.”

Glocal citizen
To describe her body of work, Stephanie again coins the term “glocal”. “I [wanted] to talk about global issues on a local level.” As one surveys her enormous output in the last decade, one cannot help but assent to her success. Political in nature, yet friendly in presentation, Stephanie’s work makes itself accessible to the public, opening the lines of communication with countless viewers.

Adhering to the tenets of minimalism, Stephanie’s work is outwardly pleasing and, over time, thought provoking. By bringing large, global issues to the personal level, propagating “little hiccups to the regular flow of things,” she invites her viewers to situate themselves in the world’s big picture.

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Keep up with Stephanie through her online website, http://www.stephaniesyjuco.com and view her Anti-Factory pieces at http://www.anti-factory.com.

Written and Photographed by: Carren Jao
Edited by: Judith Torres
Additional images courtesy of:
New Museum: Dean Kaufman
Published: Bluprint December 2009

Seeing the proliferation of alternative spaces in the 1970s, Maria Tucker, a curator without financial resources nor collection, saw the need for a new kind of museum—one unlike institutional museums, that could cultivate “new art” and “new ideas.” To this day, these four words make up New Museum’s mission.

Until its ground breaking at the Bowery, New Museum was never associated with a particular structure. Its previous locations were an office space, a gallery space inside the New School, and storefront loft space on Broadway in SoHo.

After 20 years, the New Museum found itself facing a crucial turning point. To survive, the museum needed a better gallery space, a stronger public profile and a wider audience base. It was time yet again for re-invention. Thus, the decision to invest in a structure came about.

Because the museum valued its grassroots spirit, it wanted to convey flexibility and openness, even as a building would institutionalize it. In response to this delicate balancing act, the New Museum had a two-pronged rejoinder: it would be built in Manhattan’s gritty Bowery neighborhood; and architects who echoed the profile of their featured artists—talented and relatively unknown in the Manhattan arena—would design the building.

During the time of their search, the Bowery was a neighborhood forgotten by progress. In another lifetime, elevated trains that towered above the people darkened its streets. But when the tracks came down in the 1950s, the Bowery also became home to great artists like Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and Roy Lichtenstein. This history was what drew the museum to the location.

The New Museum board eventually chose a parking lot on Prince Street as their final location. While non-descript, it offered a central location close to SoHo, Nolita, East Village, NoHo, Chinatown, and Little Italy.

Out of 45 firms worldwide, Tokyo-based SANAA won the bid to design the New Museum building. According to the museum, their design best captured the museum’s mission and program objectives.

“The New Museum is not a normal museum—it’s something in between a gallery and an event space. It is experimental, and its architectural identity must also be experimental,” said SANAA architect Kazuyo Sejima.

The New Museum building stands out amid the commercial buildings beside it. Its structure, like large blocks stacked by a child, somehow imparts a sense of dynamism. Wrapped in mesh aluminum, the building gains a luminous porous quality, reflecting the light differently during the course of the day.

“The double skin creates a much richer experience, but in a subtle way. The impression of the building can be very different depending on the time, or depending on how you move. I think this sense of transparency allows us to get away with the large, windowless surfaces, without seeming heavy,” said SANAA architect Ryue Nishizawa.

On its outer ledge is a colorful installation by Ugo Rondinone screaming, “Hell, Yes!” two words that capture the spirit of inquisitive fearlessness the New Museum wishes to cultivate.

At street level, a fifteen-foot tall clear glass pane separating pedestrian and visitor continues with theme of openness. For those inside, the street life seems a part of the contemporary artwork being shown at the gallery. For those outside, the museum seems to invite them in with its brazen exposure of heavy concrete floors contrasted with light industrial mesh installed on the ceiling. “The sidewalk seems so part of the building,” said Nishizawa.

Inside, the stacked boxes created a differentiated space. Skylights appear where the boxes are stacked irregularly on top of each other. No gallery space is the same from floor to floor, prompting the visitor to investigate each space anew. The museum makes use of each nook and cranny and nowhere is this more evident than in “the shaft,” a small leftover space the designers found during development. Only a few feet wide and 30 feet tall, it is now used as a micro-gallery.

Though permanently housed along Bowery, the New Museum continues to embody the audacity that gave it impetus. Its willingness to experiment led them to architects ready to take risks and into a neighborhood that needed a reminder of its greatness.

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Written and Photographed by: Carren Jao
Edited by: Judith Torres
Additional images courtesy of:
The Porter House: Seong Kwon
Published: Bluprint December 2009

Just a block from the High Line rises an unmistakable black building cantilevered eight feet from the original yellow brick warehouse below it. It grabs attention not only because of its precarious position, but also due to its stark contrast in architectural style to the building below it.

On top, we have the sleek contemporary style building rendered in chic black zinc panels and laced with vertical lights that give off a cool glow in the evening hours. Below is a carefully restored 1905 Renaissance style warehouse that once stored everything from wine to hard wood furniture. This strange symbiosis of the two buildings is known as the Porter House, a $22 million 10-storey residential project on 9th Avenue and 15th Street.

The Porter House was named after a cut of meat, acknowledging its place within Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Incidentally, the porterhouse cut of meat was itself inspired by eateries called “porter houses”, that served steak and ale to passing stagecoaches in the 19th century.

Unlike most real estate endeavors, this condo building was not only designed but co-developed by its architectural firm, SHoP Architects, named after the last names of its five principals: Christopher R. Sharples, Coren D. Sharples, William W. Sharples, Kimberly J. Holden, and Gregg A. Pasquarelli.

In the past decade, SHoP Architects have been known for avant-garde design that makes financial sense. This constant search for new answers led them to investigations that have won them accolades such as the Emerging Voices Award by the Architectural League of New York, the Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Museum of Modern Art’s P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center Young Architects Award.

SHoP works with new materials, collaborating with material manufacturers and trade contractors at the early design phase to avoid costly mistakes or proposals. In designing the Porter House, this process resulted in the use of zinc, pre-weathered to suit practical needs while still evoking a sense of modernity. At night, lights installed at the variously sized windows turn on, mimicking the hum of activity around the neighborhood.

Famed for their use of technology, SHoP employed a computer program that allowed it to fabricate 4,000 pre-numbered panels of zinc for the Porter House, vastly simplifying construction. The tolerance provided per panel allowed the overall façade to be installed to an accuracy of + or – a ¼” over the length of the building.

Without compromising the Porter House’s historical context, SHoP has successfully created a new landmark in Manhattan architecture. Rather than sweeping away the old or radically clinging to the past, SHoP has found a happy medium that allows architecture to innovate for the future while celebrating the past.

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The Porter House
366 West 15th Street/60 Ninth Avenue (the corner of Ninth Avenue and 15th Street)
porterhousecondo.com