![Design 99 is shifting gears. Husband & Wife team Gina Reichert & Mitch Cope are currently undertaking a series of museum exhibitions and have closed the retail location, after which they will focus on the ongoing work in their Detroit neighborhood. Design 99 seeks to break the notion of contemporary design as expensive and inaccessible. From tricking out multi-family immigrant homes to posh downtown lofts, we approach each project with the same contemporary mindset- albeit different budgets- making contemporary art, architecture and design available to a wider public through over-the-counter design services. \
Design 99’s work explores the edges of art practice, utilizing, design, architecture, found materials and utilitarian objects to propose creative solutions to complex problems. Their practice has at its core the belief that transformation can happen in a natural way, if we only take a look, think out-of-the-box and take action. — Luis Croquer, MOCADetroit Director and Chief Curator
I want to suggest, without growing too rhetorical, that [Design 99 is] working on a new kind of artistic agency, in which relational art and site-specific production (even US land art traditions) are combined… more modest, less openly artistic, crossing disciplines and often just about being in the world in this place and time. — Charles Esche, Director of Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
http://www.visitdesign99.com](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lr8phplERl1r1mqq3o1_1280.jpg)
Design 99 is shifting gears. Husband & Wife team Gina Reichert & Mitch Cope are currently undertaking a series of museum exhibitions and have closed the retail location, after which they will focus on the ongoing work in their Detroit neighborhood. Design 99 seeks to break the notion of contemporary design as expensive and inaccessible. From tricking out multi-family immigrant homes to posh downtown lofts, we approach each project with the same contemporary mindset- albeit different budgets- making contemporary art, architecture and design available to a wider public through over-the-counter design services. \
Design 99’s work explores the edges of art practice, utilizing, design, architecture, found materials and utilitarian objects to propose creative solutions to complex problems. Their practice has at its core the belief that transformation can happen in a natural way, if we only take a look, think out-of-the-box and take action.
— Luis Croquer, MOCADetroit Director and Chief Curator
I want to suggest, without growing too rhetorical, that [Design 99 is] working on a new kind of artistic agency, in which relational art and site-specific production (even US land art traditions) are combined… more modest, less openly artistic, crossing disciplines and often just about being in the world in this place and time.
— Charles Esche, Director of Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
MTAA
Michael Sarff (M. River), born 1967, Iowa City, Iowa
Tim Whidden (T.Whid), born 1969, Elyria, Ohio
Both members of MTAA live and work in Brooklyn, New York.
Michael Sarff and Tim Whidden formed the artist collaboration MTAA in 1996. The home for MTAA’s various on- and off-line activities is http://mtaa.net.
MTAA has presented work at The New Museum, MoMA PS1, The Whitney Museum, Postmasters Gallery and Artists Space, all in New York City; Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY; 2010 01SJ Biennial, San Jose, CA; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; The Beall Center for Art and Technology, UC Irvine, CA;The Getty Center, Los Angeles, CA; and SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA.
International exhibitions include Translation is a mode, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Vienna, Austria; Made In Internet, ARTBOOM Festival, Krakow, Poland; The Art Happens Here (part of iCommons Summit ‘07), Dubrovnik, Croatia; Link-a, Madrid, Spain; Split Film Festival, Split, Croatia; Netizens II, Rome, Italy; and The 2nd International Video Art Biennial, Tel Aviv, Israel.
The collaboration has earned commissions, grants and awards from Creative Capital, 01SJ Biennial, EMPAC, SFMOMA,Rhizome.org, Eyebeam and New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.
Elsewhere Artist Collective
In 1937, Joe & Sylvia Gray began what would become a series of businesses principled on the creative use of available surplus in downtown Greensboro. Realizing that trucks sent to New York with new furniture were returning to the region empty, they began filling them with stock from Depression-era storehouses in the North. Before long, the business known as Carolina Sales Company outgrew its space at 607 South Elm. In 1939, the Grays bought the building across the street. The space was large enough to include a first floor retail store, a second floor four-family boarding house, and a third floor warehouse. Sylvia worked in the store until the day before she died. The astounding accumulation amassed over her lifetime remained in a massive heap that was boarded up after her death in 1997. In 2003, George Scheer (Sylvias grandson) and Stephanie Sherman took a spring break trip to the South with friend Josh Boyette. On a whim, the three soon to be college graduates decided to stop by Greensboro to see the old store that George had been telling them about. The objects that the young writers found sent their minds in a million directions! Sylvias artifacts demonstrated a potential ability to expose the kinds of ideas that form and stimulate personal connections. Of the many questions that arose from the encounter, one resonated:Could Sylvias collection become a thinking playground?In May 2003, George recruited two friends from Michigan, Josh Fox and Matt Merfert, to move with him to Greensboro. Declaring Nothing for Sale!, the crew of three began the long process of discovery and organization. Stephanie Sherman and Allen Davis joined them in October. A year into the excavation, Elsewhere became a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. In 2005, the group launched an artist residency program that brings 35 creative producers across media and disciplines to Greensboro in order to create new works using the collection. Thanks to a grant from the Greensboro United Arts Council, some chance movie shoots, a new-work commission (for a giant Lite-Brite!), an active crew of volunteers, and the creative inspiration of artists, Elsewhere found a sturdy foundation upon which to continue dreaming.
Almost daily, Elsewherians discover new objects that reflect Sylvias fascinating mind and life. The store tells a cultural narrative about material excess, consumption, and overproduction. Our culture of constant curation allows for collaborative creativity. The building provides us a physical setting for a communal story, a shared narrative written in attics and basements across the country.
TODT
From the Venice Bienalle to 57th Street, TODT has challenged the individual notion of a singular “Master” in art. TODT is interested in the future, and has depicted a world controlled by science and government.
TODT is a direct art, like Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling. There is the possibility that a profound meaning lies behind TODT’s astonishing images- you don’t need it, anymore than you need to understand the words of an opera. But unlike opera, this is an art for everyone. No art could be more inclusive. It would equally entrhall a small child or a sophisticated historian of art. One does not have to interpret it to feel it. As in the case of most art, understanding is incidental to the import of the work. The visual effects which make great art great leave one speechless. And this is a great art. With elaborate installations, illusions of plant and animal forms, scale models, sculptures, tiles, drawings, paintings, and beautiful use of light, TODT achieves an art which has all the richness of the art of the museums.
TODT is a collaborative of three artists who choose to remain anonymous. The word “TODT” itself is both a brand name and a statement. “Todt” is an old german word meaning “dead”. TODT can also be pronounced “tot” to suggest a small child, or like “tode” (tod) which means death in German. A child , or death- we encounter in the name “TODT” a kind of alpha and omega: it is an art that involves both beginnings and endings. Existence on this earth fills the repertoire of TODT’s extraordinary imagery, and it includes almost anything. No aspect of reality is beyond TODT’s purview. However, it is a dark reality. There is a downside to everything TODT portrays. Death, always hovering in the wings of TODT’s art, was more overt in its early years.
neuroTransmitter (Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere) was co-founded in 2001 as a project whose work fuses conceptual practices with transmission, soundproduction, and mobile broadcast design. Through the combination of media formsand sound performance, their work re-articulates radio in multiple environments and contexts - public, exhibition, over the airwaves - considering new possibilities for thebroadcast spectrum as public space. neuroTransmitter’s public performances connect FM radio technology and the body - negotiating, occupying, and sonically mapping the invisible and physical spaces of the city. As radio-sonic installation, further workreferences the politics, history, and technology of the medium.
The Pinky Show is the original super lo-tech hand-drawn educational project by cats. We focus on information & ideas that have been misrepresented, suppressed, ignored, or otherwise excluded from mainstream discussion, and do this in a way that is informal and easy-to-understand. Pinky (the black kitty) and Bunny (the grey rabbit*) host a show called ‘The Pinky Show’ which has garnered a huge following as a show that calls itself a part of ‘Radical Education’. In this show, they outline problematic issues that are overlooked in education, media and general views and take the viewer along with them on a sort of personal journey into better understanding the world around them.
