Call for Works

Instructions for Initial Conditions

Deadline: November 3, 2010    Exhibition: November 5 – 29, 2010

Drift Station Gallery and Parallax Space are pleased to announce a call for artworks for their upcoming exhibition “Instructions for Initial Conditions.” In Chaos Theory, the initial condition refers to a simple starting point that, when the system is set into motion, is radically transformed into an unpredictable result. The exhibition will consist of instructions shown as artworks that describe the initial condition by which something (a work of art, or something other) can be made or enacted. The audience may participate or not; directions can be towards present actions, future gestures, thoughts of past events, or impossible actions; participation can be individual or group. The instructions can describe works that use traditional or non-traditional materials, are performative or socially integrated, are text- or sound-based, are purely poetic and only to be realized mentally, or take another unforeseen form. The pieces need not be actually realizable; in other words, they can be impossible or purely conceptual.

Guidelines: – Fit on an 8.5 x 11” sheet of paper with at least 1/4” margins; larger images will be scaled down – Instructions will be printed in black and white on a high-quality laser printer – You may include your name on your score if desired; a key to the participating artists will be created so signing your work is not required – Files must be in PDF, Word, Adobe Illustrator, or image file (png, jpg, gif, etc) formats – Resolution should be high enough to print; files that are too low quality will not be included. Email your instructions to mail@driftstation.org

Started by Angeles Cossio and Jeff Thompson in the summer of 2010, Drift Station acts as a non-traditional curatorial platform for innovative exhibitions, art, music, and performance based in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. Parallax Space, started by Marissa Vigneault and Bill Graham in August 2010, is an exhibition space in Lincoln, Nebraska, devoted to thematic presentations of contemporary artistic production in a variety of media.

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First Friday Inaugural Opening

And it was a great success! We had an impressive and supportive crowd come out on a beautiful fall evening to watch and listen to some experimental projection and sound. The space works amazingly in terms of viewing positions and auditory absorption, and I look forward to many more shows featuring similar artistic investigations.

I was thoroughly fascinated by Angeles Cossio’s projections of static and shifting materials, which continuously captured my vision. Cossio, in her artist’s statement, writes: “In my current body of work, I explore what happens when I insert something into or obstruct something in a pre-existing system or operation and see how it readjusts itself to the change. I am in constant interplay with the world, and my work is an active collaboration with these natural processes.” Her work on Friday night operated on this level of the alchemical and the natural, and the space in which they interact.

Mike Burton created a live paintamation, which absolutely intrigued the audience, who spent most of the performance crowded around his work table. Burton worked alongside The Mighty Vitamins, whose experimental sound production played back and forth with the layered videos of Burton’s paintamations projected on the wall behind them.

Jeff Thompson’s performance is still haunting me, one of those inescapable revenants which lodges itself into your subconscious. If you haven’t watched Zardoz (1974), do so now. It is an experience, although it will never match what I saw and heard on Friday night.

I’m already looking forward to our next First Friday, which will be on November 5, 2010. Thank you again for all of your support!