Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen Collaborative Application Portfolio for Liz Flyntz and Catalina Alvarez
Liz Flyntz
Writing Sample
Ant Farm’s Visions for 2020: A Wilderness of Tomorrows
Ant Farm’s 1973 20/20 Vision exhibition framed their prognostication of the year 2020 as a synthesis of four key dates – two past (1939 & 1955) and two future (1984 & 2020) – that exemplified in their collaborative imagination the nexus of a century of American culture, ambition, politics, industry, creativity, technological innovation, and (ultimately) dominance and destruction.
The exhibition was presented in Texas, the heartland of the US oil industry, during an international fuel crisis brought on by US foreign interventions. The exhibition featured “readymade” displays of vehicles and fuel pumps, collages of ephemera collected from previous Ant Farm projects, and two key new works: Kohoutek: Dollhouse of the Future, a Barbie-doll scale model of a techno-dystopia in which an all female colony of humans is raised by giant insects for food, and Convention City, an architectural proposition for the 1976 US Presidential nominating conventions where politics fused with a made-for-TV game show set.
Full article PDF here.
Flyntz, Liz. “Ant Farm’s Visions for 2020: A Wilderness of Tomorrows.” Vesper: Journal of Architecture, Arts and Theory, No. 3/Wildness, Fall-Winter 2020, pp. 174-183.
Multimedia work
Sound-capsule.org
A self-directed audio guide developed for the exhibition The Present Is The Form of All Life: The Time Capsules of Ant Farm and LST. Developed in collaboration with Clocktower Radio and Pioneer Works using archival and contemporary interviews with members of art and architecture groups Ant Farm and LST.
Please note that the audio in this work only functions on a mobile or tablet device.
Catalina Alvarez
Video
In Sound Spring, residents of Yellow Springs, Ohio narrate their personal entanglements with its larger history. Some villagers trace their roots six generations to the Conway Colony--formerly enslaved people who were helped to settle here by the abolitionist son of their slaver. The film also recounts the former glory of Antioch College, one of the most progressive colleges in the country, whose enrollment is now decimated. Its illustrious alumni include Coretta Scott King, who eventually transferred, as she struggled to carry out her internships because of racism in the village. By becoming actors lip-syncing to their own interviews, these villagers unfold stories across time, creating a collage of past and present.
CREDITS
Featuring Jalyn Roe, Sumayah Chappelle and Rukiya Robertson
Produced by Catalina Jordan Alvarez and Matthew Morgan
Written by Catalina Jordan Alvarez and Jeanne Kay
Director of Photography and Co-producer Elena Dahl, Location Sound by Shawndra Jones
Directed by Catalina Jordan Alvarez
Made possible with grants from the Yellow Springs Community Foundation and Antioch College,
In-kind donations from WYSO and Matthew Morgan
Fellowships at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Wexner Center for the Arts
This short film is a sequence from the larger project.