City-to-City

Visit city-to-city.net

2011

Google Earth, Internet Browser, Interactive Installation

TheWall-TheWorld transposes a 15-mile segment of the planned over 400 mile long wall in the West Bank upon any city a viewer choses.

In the left window, the segment of the wall appears in its original location between two Palestinian towns–Abu Dis, in the south, and Qalandiya, in the north.

In the right window, the wall appears within any city a viewer choses.

Viewers can use navigation tools in Google Earth to explore the spaces in parallel.

• ISEA (Belgrade, Ireland, 2009)
• Interactive Futures 09, Emily Carr University, Vancouver, BC
• LA RE: Play, University of California, Los Angeles
• Conney Conference

• MIT6-Stone and Papyrus – Storage and Transmission
• Conney Conference on Jewish Arts: Performing Histories – Inscribing Jewishness (2009)
• Photo Alliance
•  San Francisco Art Institute, CA (2009)

• Video: Original footage taken of monument and cultural sites in Jerusalem matching corresponding 19th century stereogram views.
• Text: Historical events taking place the year of the stereogram and 100 years later; selections from The Jew as Pariah by Hannah Arendt.
• Stereogram Images: From Underwood and Underwood Publishers.

Christopher Zimmerman

Paul Rademacher (Gulf Coast Oil Spill)

signature

2006

Prints (seismographs/pendulum graphs), Maps ( Contemporary Santa Rosa showing neighborhoods and streets as a 5’x5′ map and digital projection), DVD (photographs and film documenting aftermath of the 1906 in the greater Bay area), Audio-Visual Simulation (reimaging of the 1906 quake).

The word, “signature,” is most commonly thought of as an individual mark made by hand on paper.  However “seismic signature” is a seismological term sometimes used to describe characteristic waveforms of a seismic event.  Signature brings together both references – hand written words and seismograms—as well as recordings of earthquake survivors to create a portrait of seismic history as it intersects with local lives and landscape.

At the heart of the installation is a digital image of the city of Santa Rosa that seems to ripple and dissolve each time an earthquake sound is heard.  The sounds are audible translations of seismic graphs from the 1906 Bay area quake.  Both the projected map image and sound of the 1906 quake are controlled by Global Positioning Satellites that trigger sound and disruptions of the image each time a satellite passes overhead. With each sound, the surface of the city ripples erases the familiar and visible landscape, replacing it momentarily with a view of the Rogers Creek Fault that lies beneath the city.

Like history that repudiates the past, Signature marks the movements between what is past and present, visible and invisible, as each refuse to remain conveniently fixed in place.

Selected Exhibits

• Force of Nature : Centennial exhibition commemorating the 1906 Bay area fire and earthquake, Contemporary Project Space, Sonoma County Museum, Santa Rosa, California April 22-July 9, 2006

Reviews

• “Santa Rosa-1906 Earthquake,” KQED, NPR Public Broadcasting, Interview with Scott Schafer, April 12, 2006
• “Santa Rosa in the 1906 Earthquake,” The California Report, NPR Public Broadcasting, Interview with Jason Margolis, April 12, 2006
• “Traces of Presence” by Gretchen Giles, The Bohemian Review, Sonoma, CA, April, 2006

References

• Seismograms from The California Earthquake of April 18, 1906 Report of the State Earthquake Investigations Commission, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1908. Pub. no 87, vol. I, Reprinted 1969.
• Film documentation of the 1906 aftermath from The Prelinger Archives and the U.S. Library of Congress 
• Photographic documentation of the 1906 aftermath from The Sonoma County Museum, Collection, Jack London’s Journals of the 1906 Quake
• Audio recording of 1906 Bay area survivors from the The Sonoma County Museum Collection

Thanks

• Mapmaker: Mark Chambers
• Paul Spudich (Western Earthquake Hazards Team,USGS)
• Terry Wright (Geologist/Professor, SJSU)

sound of the 1906 quake simulation

as if the laws were malleable

Visit as-if-the-laws-were-malleable.net

1999 – 2003

Mixed Media

As if the laws were malleable is a collection of over 100 book works each using the bible as the subject and location for investigations and interrogations relating to Judaism, the law, Jewish culture, politics and practices. Produced between 1992-2003, each piece was a bible that served both as the site and subject of a dialogue. Some addressed the law in relation to the body; others were made in response to current political events particularly within the Middle East.

Once described as “a feminist-dada-practice”, as if the laws were malleable are conversations, commentaries and dialogues on matters of Judaism and everyday life.

While some of the works are in private collections, many no longer exist as the materials used were non-archival. However most of the works in the series are documented on the site, as if the laws were malleable.

Selected Exhibits

• This is Not a Book, Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA (Curator: David Pace)
• Women of the Book: Traveling exhibition of book works by 96 Jewish artist (Curator: Judith Hoffberg)
• Access, Southern Exposure Gallery, SF CA
• Articulated Silences, The Victoria Room, SF CA
• Faculty Show, Art Department Fine Arts Gallery, San Francisco State University
• Revolving Histories/Elusive Script, Camerawork Gallery, SF CA

The Bible Battery is included in CHEMISTRY AND ART, Aesthetics and Visualization in Chemistry , a net exhibition, CD-ROM and journal publication through HYLE- Internation Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry (Curators: Tami I. Spector and Joachim Schummer).

References

• Women of the Book: Jewish Artists, Jewish Themes. Ed. Judith Hoffberg. Friends of the Libraries, FAU Library, 2001
• Access, Southern Exposure Gallery, 1995
• CHEMISTRY AND ART, Aesthetics and Visualization in Chemistry (CD-ROM)

Branded, 2003
In response to growing conflicts and deaths taking place in Israel/Palestine, the Hebrew word for life, ”chaim,” is seared into a Koran with a branding iron, and its corresponding Arabic word, ”hayat,”seared into the Torah.