Mobile Observation (Transmitting and Receiving) Station is a new project by Lisi Raskin commissioned by the Center for Curatorial Studies as part of it’s first artist-in-residence program. On April 14, 2008, Raskin departed CCS Bard in a converted cargo van for a month-long journey across the American west to visit sites of nuclear testing and development.
Raskin writes: “Over the past five years, I have been investigating land use and its relationship to the architecture of war. My projects usually unfold according to the following logic; I travel to a site and gather as much information as possible and then distill this research into a body of work that takes the form of drawings, videos, sculptures, and site-specific installations. I usually make this artwork in my studio and directly in the institution or gallery where it is to be shown. The perimeters of Mobile Observation Station offer a slight departure from my usual process and an opportunity to deepen my relationship to my subject matter. The Mobile Observation Station is a cargo van transformed into a roving workspace equipped with the tools and materials I need for the project. This very fact enables me to make artwork directly in the landscape through which I travel.”
Throughout her journey, Raskin will send art works and ephemera back to headquarters at the Center for Curatorial Studies, where they will be processed and displayed by CCS Bard graduate students in a post office/receiving station constructed specifically for the project. The entire Audrey and Sydney Irmas Atrium has been re-configured into a plywood bunker cum post office replete with satellite dish, an artwork receiving station, and an audio and video diary station, which will be updated with intermittent transmissions from the field.
The installation will be on view at CCS Bard daily from April 13 - September 7, 2008.
Mobile Observation (Transmitting and Receiving) Station is a continuation of Mobile Observation Station: Command and Control, a new work commissioned by CCS Bard in February 2008 for the exhibition High Resolution, at the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York City.
SITES, TRANSMISSIONS, AND ARTWORKS
Raskin’s itinerary tracks a selection of sites that range in function from atomic laboratories to underground missile silos and test sites. Follow the links below to view details, photographs, and “transmissions” from each location the artist visits on her journey.
WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE AND TRINITY TEST SITE
The site of the world’s first nuclear blast
TITAN MISSILE MUSEUM
The only publically accessible Titan II missile site in the US
In Lisi Raskin’s work, a highly personal worldview is often juxtaposed with a factual situation, with palpable political implications. Her “spaces of fear” are somewhat naive reconstructions and depictions of parts of bunkers, nuclear power stations, and missiles, but also more abstract reenactments of particular atmospheres.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Lisi Raskin lives and works in Brooklyn. She received a B.A. in fine arts from Brandeis University and an M.F.A. from Columbia University. Her work has been exhibited internationally at various institutions, including the Frankfurter Kunstverein in Germany; the Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius, Lithuania; and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York. Raskin has contributed to the P.S.1 Newspaper, North Drive Press and HTV Magazine, and she has published reviews in Frieze and C Magazine. She was the 2005 recipient of the Guna S. Mundheim Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin. In 2007 she was an artist-in-residence at Iaspis in Stockholm, Sweden, and in 2008 at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. For more information on the CCS Bard Artist-in-Residence program, click here.
