BIOGRAPHY
assume vivid astro focus was created in 2000. Based in New York & Paris
2008 antonella varicella arabella fiorella, public project for ENEL Contemporanea, Roma
2007 Concrete Waves: An Homage to Skateboard Culture, P.S.1 & Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami; 1st Athens Biennial 2007
2006 Open call, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna;
Faces, bodies and contemporary signs of Ernesto Esposito’s collection, Museo D’Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina – MADRe, Naples
2004 assume vivid astro focus IX, public art project for the Central Park in conjunction with the Whitney Biennial, New York
Selected Bibliography “assume vivid astro focus”,
Art Review, July-August, 2007; GENOCCHIO, Benjamin, “Assume Vivid Astro Focus: A Very Anxious Feeling”,
The New York Times, Weekend Arts, May 11, 2007; MEYERS, Julian, “Ecstasy Review”,
Frieze, January-February, 2006, pp.145.
INTERVIEW
Yuko Hasegawa: You mentioned that you look for different communication tools that would differ depending on nationality and cultural background. I would have thought that there would be a universal means of communication. How relevant are these elements to your work?
assume vivid astro focus: The local research we do is usually related to getting new inspiration which allows us to come up with new tools – and we believe they are mostly universal even though at first born out of a specific location. The choice for different tools can come out of our exposure to a certain environment and be determined by different cultural environments. Our intention is usually to transform the local into universal as we mix different strategies and inspirations in every project we are involved with. We don’t believe in a linear thought or just one strategy. Because of this, the detailed perception and understanding of our work is never one only. We believe in the spiral endless open close perception because what is most valuable about our pieces is the whole not its parts.
Yuko Hasegawa: What kind of research did you undertake for the work at Deitch Studios and in Queens, and what was your response to that venue?
assume vivid astro focus: Demolition was the main concept behind our show at Deitch Studios in Long Island City. We’ve been interested in construction / destruction sites for a while, and we’ve been relating them to the more “spontaneous” architecture of slum areas. The pink fake façade structure in the middle of the main gallery was an homage to a very typical sort of Brooklyn home, which is rapidly vanishing, since they have no evident historical value. We spent two months with a van going around different neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens collecting trashed wood and other materials from various destruction sites. The Deitch space was a perfect environment for a comment on this situation. First because the space itself represents the gentrification of that area which is changing so rapidly (a big New York gallery opening a new space in Queens). At the same time, its localization – a warehouse right on the Queens waterfront, with an incredible view of Manhattan’s skyline – offers you the most idyllic landscape of New York City, the perfect postcard, unreal and dreamlike. Inspired by all this, we decided to place the cartoonish nuke neon piece (a neon atombomb explosion in collaboration with artist Kenny Scharf, based on one of the nuclear bomb images he used in his paintings of the ’80s) right in front of this skyline. It had some sort of a dual meaning for us: at the same time commenting on the destruction of this ideal image of New York City by the recent real-estate boom, while also proposing a call for action, a new beginning, a utopian beginning in which its own population could bomb the status quo.
Yuko Hasegawa: What are your expectations of multidisciplinarism and how will you work within such a context?
assume vivid astro focus: Multidisciplinarism for our work is a tool to reach out to the viewer by proposing different ways to attach yourself. We wish the space for our project would be even more open to the park as it was originally planned (by removing all the windows), turning it into some sort of a piloti space, a passageway, visited spontaneously by Ibirapuera Park’s passersby. But in any case, we will be proposing a place of surprise and discovery, an organic living space that will influence and be influenced by its visitors. We will be offering a few different actions throughout the week while we build the main structure that will host the final performance (with Black Meteoric Star). These actions will include a range of things including lectures, a night club, screenings, workshops, performances, dance classes, graffiti, etc. We see our function for this project as inciters, fomenters, provokers, arousers of primordial beliefs of freedom and unification, knowledge, power and the spread of focus.
Yuko Hasegawa is the curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Tokyo (MOT).
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