Big Box Reuse
September 19, 6-8pm: Hometown BBQ Reception
November 13, 4:30-6pm: University Lecture Series, Big Box Reuse Presentation + Book Signing
What happens when Wal-Mart moves out, leaving behind massive and drearily generic buildings amidst acres of paved land? Rather than focusing on multinational retailers for their relentless, smothering expansion, artist and writer Julia Christensen chooses to focus on community, and is optimistic about our ability to move on. She has researched and documented the ways that American communities have creatively adapted and transformed these mega stores into more constructive uses – while asking her audience to think critically about what a landscape of reused big boxes actually means for our future. And she offers a response to the big box concept: Christensen created an architectural installation for Your Town, Inc., providing us with a starting point and a site for discussions about urgent issues like sustainability, public space, car dependency, and corporate ownership.
KEEP IT SLICK
Infiltrating Capitalism with the Yes Men
Curated by Astria Suparak
September 4 – October 26, 2008 @ Feldman Gallery at PNCA, Portland, OR, in connection with PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival
November 14, 2008 – February 15, 2009 @ Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University
Reaching countless people through websites, newspapers, and television broadcasts, the sometimes anonymous Yes Men are among the most visible and effective artist-activists of our time. Over the past decade they have fearlessly taken on the world’s biggest corporations and bureaucracies through a process they call “Identity Correction.” Infiltrating the elite realm of the influential and the moneyed, cloaked in the sheerest layer of authority – thrift-store suits, quick-print business cards, forged press releases – these social activators urge us to question where ethics belong in our capitalist-driven society.
This survey represents the first-ever solo exhibition of the Yes Men. Here you can walk into a re-creation of their past exploits in the Conference area, witness a comically apocalyptic future, and pay your respects to a janitor who generously donated his body to satisfy our insatiable energy needs. In the Executive Board Room, you may browse through the Yes Men’s personal office items and orate along to their absurd PowerPoint presentations. The Yes Men seek to incite change. And above all, they urge us to do something better.
SIGNS OF CHANGE
Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now
Guest-curated by Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee
September 20 – November 22, 2008 @ Exit Art, New York, NY
January 23 – March 8, 2009 @ Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University
Hundreds of posters, photographs, moving images, audio clips, and ephemera bring to life over forty years of activism, political protest, and campaigns for social justice. This important and timely exhibition surveys the creative work of dozens of international social movements.
Although histories of political groups and counter-cultures have been written, and political and activist shows have been held, this exhibition is a groundbreaking attempt to chronicle the artistic and cultural production of these movements. Signs of Change offers a chance to see relatively unknown or rarely seen works, and is intended to not only provide a historical framework for contemporary activism, but also to serve as an inspiration for the present and the future.
The Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University has supported the creation, understanding, and growth of contemporary art through exhibitions, projects, events, and publications since January 2000. The Miller Gallery was founded by Regina Gouger Miller, and is a unit of the College of Fine Arts.
MILLER GALLERY AT CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
Purnell Center for the Arts
5000 Forbes Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
412.268.3618
http://www.cmu.edu/millergallery
For inquiries about touring exhibitions, or to sign up on our mailing list, write to: [email protected]
Media contact: Eric Sloss, [email protected]
Images above:
Spam Museum, renovated Kmart building, Austin, Minnesota, J. Christensen
McDonald’s McMascots: Rona McRiveter, the Yes Men
War Abroad Is War on US, Northern California War Tax Resistance.
For more information go to: http://www.cmu.edu/millergallery