Lisi Raskin
Mobile Observation (Transmitting and Receiving) Station
April – September 2008
Bard College, PO Box 5000
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000
845-758-7598
ccs [at] bard.edu
Mobile Observation (Transmitting and Receiving) Station is a commissioned project by the Center for Curatorial Studies’ first artist-in-residence, Lisi Raskin. Raskin is a Brooklyn based artist working with subjective responses to the contemporary climate of fear and its legacy stemming from the Cold War. Her practice involves a sublimation of childhood fears of and adult desires for nuclear apocalypse into a slightly twisted and highly physical recreation involving makeshift production and playfully dark fantasy. This project continues her investigations into spaces of fear.
The American West has long been associated with a list of familiar tropes: the cowboy, the desert and boundless expansion. In the mid-20th century, however, an entirely new articulation of land use entered the vocabulary of the West – that of the atom bomb. Atomic testing in sites from the outskirts of Las Vegas, Nevada; to Wendover, Utah; to Los Alamos, New Mexico have been conducted by the U.S. government in an unprecedented form of manifest destiny.
The ever-present paranoia of Cold War rhetoric in Reagan-era American politics has led Raskin to a fascination with this form of land usage in the American West. For her residency, she will be taking a custom van through a tour of historic nuclear test sites and sites of nuclear development. On this month-long trip she will make plein air outdoor sculptures, installations, transmissions and drawings inspired by and built from the landscape of the sites she visits.
From this mobile observation station, art works and ephemera will be mailed 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 will be 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 sites to be toured by the artist may include, but are not limited to, the Titan Missile Museum in Tucson, Arizona; Wendover Air Force Base in Wendover, Utah; the Nevada Test Sites in Las Vegas; and the White Sands Missile Range twenty miles to the east of Las Cruces, New Mexico.
LISI RASKIN (Miami, FL 1974) lives and works in Brooklyn. She holds an MFA from Columbia University,
New York
Selected exhibitions include: Bard Center for Curatorial Studies/Hessel Museum, NY (2008); Milliken Gallery, Stockholm (solo) (2008); Guild & Greyshkul, New York (solo) (2007); Signal Galeri, Malmoe, Sweden (solo) (2007); Gavle Konstcentrum, Gavle, Sweden (solo) (2007); Riccardo Crespi Gallery, Milan (solo) (2006); PS1 MoMa, Queens (solo) (2006); Kuenstlerhaus Bethanian, Berlin (solo) (2005); Kunstverein Wolfsburg, Germany (2007); IASPIS Project Space, Stockholm (2007); Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, Lithuania (2003)
Lisi Raskin’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Artforum, Flash Art, The Brooklyn Rail, Tema Celeste, and Frieze magazine.
For more information about Lisi Raskin contact Guild & Greyshkul:
