Installation view

In the Pull/Out of the Loop, an installation that is part of a curated exhibit titled State of the City: In the Loop at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center, Rochester, NY, August 5 – September 25, 2011.  B+M experimented with movement, speed, and bodily engagement for their investigation of Rochester’s Inner Loop (inner city expressway).  B+M also investigated nonhuman agents that qualify this urban infrastructure as a unique urban/natural environment. This installation consists of environmental samples in the form of video, specimen photographs, and nonhuman drawing.  It is a glimpse into the space of the Inner Loop from the hybridized perspective of the human and nonhuman.  This project was made possible with the assistance of Jim Downer , a film maker from the Rochester, NY area.  Read a review  of this exhibit in Rochester’s City Newspaper.

Collection 1 and 4 from the Inner Loop

Detail of collection 1

Image sample, Collection 1

Image sample, Collection 1

Detail of collection 6

Image sample, Collection 6

Detail of collection 6

Image sample, Collection 3

Detail of drawing machine video and drawing machine drawing

The drawing machine was placed in the bed of a pick-up truck which was driven on the Inner Loop at various speeds derived from eight elevation points pulled from its geographic footprint.  The different elevations were converted to speed differentials, which in turn affected the qualitative outcome of the drawing, e.g., line length, line bleed, line direction, etc.  The drawing machine video is an experiment with a perspective that captures the forces affecting an event; two cameras were used, one to record the road surface and the other the action of the drawing machine.  The two views were synchronized to produce a strangely abstract, yet completely literal narrative of the Inner Loop.

Driving map and collection key

Collection points were based on pulling vectors between public parking areas in and around the Inner Loop and where these vectors intersected its path. A total of eight collection points were produced for this project which produced 175 individual organic and inorganic specimens.

Morphology Field Station, in the Dewey Gallery of the deCordova Museum

Stratimentation: investigations of a metamorphic landscape is an exhibition at the deCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA from November13, 2010 to April 22, 2011.  This exhibit  presents 1-1/2 years of field collecting on the deCordova site as an archive of more than 500 specimens accompanied by environmental audio and video, tree drawings and microbial drawings.  The conceit of this project centers on an experimental engagement with an urban site; to locate in it variations of scale, difference, time, and material relations for both the human and nonhuman.

Stratimentation: investigations of a metamorphic landscape, Installation view

Stratimentation, Geologic sample, Collection #6-292

Morphology Field Station for Sensing Place

Morphology Field Station for Sensing Place, a 1-1/2 year installation by Bartow+Metzgar at the DeCordova Sculpture Park+Museum in Lincoln, MA, August 2009 to September 2010.  This installation was utilized as a provisional research space where environmental samples collected from the DeCordova site were processed and registered into an archive for the study of human and nonhuman agents. 

Morphology Field Station, Interior view

Spatio Geographica, installation view

Spatio Geographica: an experimental archive of human and nonhuman agents in North America, an exhibit in the Tyler Galleries (South) at SUNY Oswego, NY.  The urban samples represented in this exhibit were collected from Spring 2007 to Summer 2009.  Collections were pulled from Troy, NY; Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC; Miami, FL; Commerce, TX; and Oswego, NY.  This exhibition is an experimental production of an urban research archive of the human and nonhuman.  The exhibit is color-coded to the USGS Divisions of Geologic Time.  Each collection’s geographic origin is associated with its respective geologic time period.  Three geologic periods are represented by the five urban collections: Pleistocene, Paleogene, and Ordovician.  The height of each collection’s staging corresponds proportionately to the elevation of each collection’s geographic origin.  The exhibit layout corresponds to the Divisions of Geologic Time (for the three geologic time periods mentioned above) as mapped out across the eastern portion of the United States and Southeastern Canada.  See exhibition map below.

Spatio Geographica, view of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC collection.

Spatio Geographica, view of Rice Creek Field Station (Oswego) collection.

Spatio Geographica, view of Commerce, TX collection.

Spatio Geographica, view of Oswego collection.

Spatio Geographica, view of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC collection.

Spatio Geographica, view of Troy, NY collection and rock core from Oswego, NY collection (middle Ordovician period).

Spatio Geographica, exhibition map (floor plan of installation)

Subanageographica: transvirtual perspectives in a semi-tropical environment, Installation view

Locust Projects, Miami, Florida

For Subanageographica, Bartow+Metzgar mapped out a section of the city (bound by highways and water) surrounding LP through the use of virtual mapping platforms.  These were used to investigate Miami from afar, i.e., Metzgar in New York, Bartow in Texas.  From this investigation, a system of directives was produced to establish routes for urban walks while in Miami.  The walks were conducted with the use of a videometer, a wheeled walking apparatus for recording the surficial landscape as qualities of time at various intensities.  What is recorded says less about what Miami is and more about what a landscape becomes when not seeking out productions of identity or representation.  The videos produced from this apparatus meets a quality of time that is neither a metric nor a representation, rather it registers as speeds and intensities.

Subanageographica: transvirtual perspectives in an semi-tropical environment, Installation view

Subanageographica: transvirtual perspectives in an semi-tropical environment, Installation view

Subanageographica, Google street view converted to strata drawing, used to determine monitor staging

Subanageographica, Strata drawing composite, used to determine monitor staging

Subanageographica, Videometer

Subanageographica, Video walk site (Miami)

Subanageographica, Video vector walk key

Subanageographica, Gallery key

Utopic Geographica, Installation view

Action Art Actuel, Saint Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, Canada  

Bartow+Metzgar’s  installation Utopic Geographica, at Action Art Actuel, functioned as an experimental analysis of the urban environment of Saint Jean-sur-Richelieu through the multi-perspective lens of cartography, topography, geology, and microbiology at varying scales and intensities.  B+M’s consideration of utopia is framed as a question about who/what speaks, and what forms of engagement are needed to address the collective of the human and nonhuman?  

More images of this project can be found at Action Art Actuel.   

Utopic Geographica, Installation view

Utopic Geographica, soil cores, particulate slides, and slurry slides

Utopic Geographica, Bacterial culture from Richelieu River, urban sample

Utopic Geographica, Bacterial culture from soil core, urban sample

Utopic Geographica, Gallery map key

Colloquiseum, Installation view

Evergreen House and Museum, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD

Colloquiseum is a hybrid term created by B+M.  It was derived from the function of the museum as collection/archive, and the term colloquial, which we came to think of as a discussion/conversation with the “everyday.”  It is with these two words that the act of dialogue is fused with the space of an archive.  The two combined produce a space of event, a haptic space where the tactile world meets the conversational world.  During its exhibition period (8 months) the installation operated in several capacities: as a research space, an observation space, and an archive space.

Read Metamorphoglomulations, a catalogue essay for Colloquiseum by Iain Kerr.

Colloquiseum, Installation view

Colloquiseum, Upper deck view

Colloquiseum, Tree drawing (upper deck)

Detail, Tree drawing

Detail, Tree drawing

Colloquiseum, Microbial drawing, from site collections (organic and inorganic)

 More nonhuman drawings here.

Colloquiseum, Drawing with graticule at graticule station 2 (upper deck)

Corrupture, Installation view

Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo, NY

Corrupture was installed using a simple set of directives that utilized the gallery’s spatial dimensions and partition capacity.  Installation components were placed, respectively, into placement zones utilizing a category system developed specifically for this exhibition.  The use of a system stems from an interest that B+M have in mediators and their capacity to problematize the world.  For this installation the gallery was considered an active agent that could determine the layout of B+M’s assemblage.  Our methodology treats the gallery as a fully active space that is inherently complex and heterogeneous (multiple and varied).

Corrupture, Installation view

Corrupture, Installation view

Corrupture, Installation key

Lenticular Humours, Installation view

Lentiscopic Humours, Installation view

Texas A&M University at Commerce, Commerce, TX

Lenticular Humours was comprised of research from the urban environment of Commerce, TX.  What is the Urban given the radical shifts in population density i.e., movements involving the human and nonhuman from one rural or urban area to another urban area(s) that are happening throughout the world?  B+M are interested in this radical shift in population distribution that it is changing the complexity of the urban at all scales and forms of life.  The gallery became a site for experimentation (a three-dimensional modulation of urban information) where we could devote time to research and analysis of the urban collections pulled from Commerce.

Lenticular Humours, Installation view

Lenticular Humours, Detail of urban collections

Lentiscopic Humours, Bacterial cultures from urban collections