BOOKSHELVES Program | “Relationship as Material”
Relationship as Material was a conversation in which Gordon and Katz discussed their collaborative social practices and how they engaged one another in the course of Gordon’s BOOKSHELVES residency. The conversation was facilitated by Alexandra Grant, and explored the faceted negotiations we make when working and sharing authorship with others, as well as how the intersection of practices –namely, “a relationship” — ultimately forms a non-quantifiable support structure in its own right.
“Relationship as Material” comes from the artwork Gordon and Katz co-authored for this residency and installed at the entrance to the space, titled through hosting we know that guesting is also work (2017). The phrase, which Gordon wrote and Katz edited graphically, emerged from their ongoing dialogue about agency, labor, and role-play in each of their practices. After deciding to fabricate the text as a neon sign, Katz wrote a joint-custody agreement to accompany and preside over the object. In discussing the work’s materials list, it became clear that it was comprised of not only the evident materials but also the immanent materiality of Katz and Gordon’s longstanding exchanges as friends and colleagues. The materials list therefore reads, “neon sign, contract, a relationship.”
In yet another twist of dependency, Gordon then translated select blacked-out portions of this neon text into the abstract sculptural compositions that comprise her 3307 reading environment, Lights for Collaborating at Night, further situating the production within a series of relations…
PANELISTS’ BIOS
Alexandra Grant is a Los Angeles-based artist who uses language, literature and exchanges with writers as the basis for her work in painting, drawing, sculpture and photography. Grant’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), among other museums and galleries. She has collaborated with artists and writers including philosopher and playwright Hélène Cixous, hypertext pioneer Michael Joyce, and actor and writer Keanu Reeves. Grant is also recognized for her philanthropic grantLOVE project, which produces and sells original artworks and editions to benefit artist projects and arts non-profits. Her work is in public collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), MOCA (Los Angeles), the Orange County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, the Blanton Museum of Art (Austin) and the Art Gallery of Ontario. She is also the co-founder, with Jessica Fleischmann, Florence Grant and Keanu Reeves of X Artists’ Books, a small press focused on collaborative book publishing.
Meghan Gordon (b. 1985, New York, NY) is a Los Angeles-based artist, writer, and facilitator who creates exhibition frameworks that invite collaborative practice. Recent projects include some times, a performative project space in the form of an itinerant bar; Studio Cooking (in collaboration with Arden Surdam), a series of meal-based programs at the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA; Toggle (with the collective neverhitsend), a digital residency and exhibition platform at 221A, Vancouver, BC. Gordon received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, and is currently Associate Director at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. She has received support from several arts organizations, including The Artist Project Los Angeles, NYFA, Sculpture Space, The Times Museum, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Wave Hill, MacDowell Colony, and Burlington City Arts. Gordon’s site-conscious practice often considers how politics and sensuality intersect in the formation of personal relationships. She describes artistic collaboration as “temporary autonomous relationships with an end date.”
Amanda Martin Katz is an artist, writer, and facilitator whose practice explores relating through textual engagement. Recent works have been published and performed in Foundations Magazine, the journal 7×7 (in collaboration with Renée Petropoulos), the Torrance Art Museum, and the Institute of Jamais Vu (London, UK). She engages collaborative inquiry and embodied research methodologies in long-term projects such as the salon and exhibition platform, Katz’s Deli (since 2012) and the ‘thought-residency’ program, BOOKSHELVES (since 2016). Both of these programs operate out of her experimental space-cum-project, 3307 W Washington Blvd, located in the Arlington Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. 3307 is host to literary events, performances and meals, and has the lifespan of its three-year commercial lease. As a socially engaged project that builds community through the valuing of literacy, 3307 will ultimately find form as a book of its own.