Born in 1955 in Newark, New Jersey
American visual artist
Known for his preformance art, although he has also worked in painting, photography, and theater.
Has recieved several grants, awards, and residencies, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004.
"My work is not glamorous yet it is ambitious in its feeling. It seeks a visceral, bodily, material "explanation" for human desire writ large in human action." -William Pope.L
Has had several preformances, including Milk Pour, New York, and The Black Body and Sport (crawl), Berlin, Prague, Madrid, and Budapest in 1999, The Hole Inside the Space Inside Yves Klein's Asshole, VAV Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal, Eating The Wall Street Journal, Mobius, Boston; Sculpture Center, New York, and Selling My Grandmother, Yard Sale, Lab School, New York in 2000, Bringing the Homeless Back to Shinjuko, Shinjuku Station, Tokyo, Shopping Crawl (crawl with balloon), Yoyogi Park, Shibuya, Tokyo, and I Love Japan and It Loves Me, Wenz Studio, Tokyo in 2001.
He also held several preformances for his 2000-2005 Community Crawls, which were group crawls in collaboration with host-communities, and took place in Boston Commons Crawl, Boston, MA, Portland Maine Crawl, Freedman's Town Crawl, Houston, TX, and Cleveland Free Clinic Crawl.
One of the most highlighted preformances is his The Black Factory, which ran from 2004-05. It was "mobile installation performance on the themes of blackness, difference and capitalism." (FCA). In 2004 it had a small tour and stopped at Bates College, MASS MoCA, Berkshire Mall, Bard College, Northshire Bookstore, and Tang Art Museum. Then in spring 2005 it had its national tour where it made 14 stops in 13 different states, beginning in Maine and going out as far as Kansas.
"The Black Factory, [was] a mobile art performance installation [that] require[d] the participation of an audience to do its work. Typically the Factory arrive[d] at a city or town and sets up its interactive workshop on the street. People [brought] objects that represent[ed] blackness to them. The Factory’s workers use[d] these objects in tightly rehearsed but loosely performed skits to stimulate a conversation — a flow of ideas, images and experiences. Most objects [were] photographed and made part of the Factory’s virtual library, some [were] housed in the Factory’s archive for later use, and some [were] pulverized in the Factory’s workshop to make new products available in the Factory’s gift shop." (CAML).
In the words of Pope.L, "The Black Factory does not make blackness, it makes opportunity; the chance to imagine a future we’d like instead of one imposed on us. The Factory is a conversation piece on wheels. It’s a chance for folks to open up their hearts and minds, laugh and talk freely, maybe even disagree about what brings us together as well as what divides us." -Willian Pope.L
THE BLACK FACTORY
POPE.L
(This one was taken on his The Great White Way preformance ^)
Sources:
http://www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org/grant_recipients/popel.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Pope.L#cite_note-6
http://www.contemporarystl.org/pro_blackfactory.php
Images:
http://sfworldsfair.org/img/popel.jpg
http://sfworldsfair.org/img/popel.jpg
http://www.artnet.com/magazine/picturepostcard/Images/popel5-20-1.jpg
http://thinkingaboutart.blogs.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/bf_1.jpg
By Amanda DiMartini
I really liked the idea of the Black Factory when I read about it, so I tried to focus a little on that in my report. :)
ReplyDelete-By Amanda DiMartini