Foundations Studio

Category: Uncategorised

  • Rosette Rago

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/27/movies/american-movies-asian-stars.html

    When I was a teenager in the Philippines, living outside Manila, I entertained myself by tending to my various blogs about Western pop culture, which I consumed vigorously online. The internet gave me access to movies that weren’t being shown in local theaters or sold in local video stores.
    It introduced me to worlds I longed for and envied, as depicted by Sofia Coppola, Spike Jonze and Richard Linklater, among many others. I was attending a Catholic university and stayed home most nights — but really, I wished I were Julie Delpy on a European train flirting with the cute but morose guy sitting across from me.
    These characters moved so freely in their worlds, while mine suffocated me. I wondered if I was even allowed to behave that way, since I wasn’t blonde and white. I wondered if the stories would be the same if I were in these characters’ shoes, looking the way I do. I wanted to be the main character, not the nerdy best friend. When I watched Diablo Cody’s “Juno,” I imagined myself as the main character Juno and not Su-Chin, the Asian protester outside the abortion clinic yelling in imperfect English.
    That scene embarrassed me when I saw it for the first time. Was this how the rest of the world saw people who look like me?
    Three years ago, the screenwriter and digital strategist William Yu started#StarringJohnCho, in which he and others photoshopped Cho’s face onto several movie posters, sharing them online as a way to push for more Asian-American leads. What would it look like if Captain America and James Bond were Asian-American? Projects like his come from the same desire that I have to see myself represented on the big screen, and not just as a sidekick. We want to see ourselves as the heroes, too.

    Now living in Los Angeles, I’m caught between honoring the culture I grew up with and adjusting to the freedom that my new home affords me. I am constantly modifying my behavior, afraid to completely lose my values and disappoint my family. At the same time, my life here in America sometimes feels like a chance to explore my boundaries as a woman of color.
    When I began this project, I reached out to my friends first. Once people had signed up, we worked together to decide what characters they would play; I felt the images should hold some meaning for them, too.
    By composing my own photographs, I’ve been able to revisit the movies that made an impact on me growing up. Through these characters I love, I’m examining my place in the world, one frame at a time.

    Images and text by Rozette Rago

    Rozette Rago is a visual journalist based in Los Angeles.

    Produced by Raillan Brooks, Alicia DeSantis, Gabriel Gianordoli, Jolie Ruben and Josephine Sedgwick.

    Surfacing is a weekly column that explores the intersection of art and life.

    Actors: Ann Pastor as Leslie Hayman as Therese Lisbon, Ericke Tan as Kirsten Dunst as Lux Lisbon, Jessica Wu as A.J. Cook as Mary Lisbon and Lhiyanne Reyes as Chelse Swain as Bonnie Lisbon in “The Virgin Suicides”; Brandon Tan as Steve Zahn as Sammy Gray, Rozette Rago as Winona Ryder as Lelaina Pierce, Tracy Nguyen as Janeane Garofalo as Vickie Miner and Myrrh Raguro as Ethan Hawke as Troy Dyer in “Reality Bites”; Neil Reyes as Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore Twombly and Ericke Tan as Amy Adams as Amy in “Her”; Angela Guo as Mickey Sumner as Sophie Levee and Sabrina Imbler as Greta Gerwig as Frances Halladay in “Frances Ha”; Tracy Nguyen as Kate Winslet as Clementine Kruczynski in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”; Howin Wong as Armie Hammer as Oliver and Abe Kim as Timothée Chalamet as Elio Perlman in “Call Me by Your Name”; Heather Sten as Julie Delpy as Céline and Daniel Varghese as Ethan Hawke as Jesse in “Before Sunrise”; Jonny Sun as Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Tom Hansen and Saera Hur as Zooey Deschanel as Summer Finn in “500 Days of Summer”; Ria Misra as Ellen Page as Juno MacGuff in “Juno.”

    Film still credits: Paramount Classics (“The Virgin Suicides”); Universal Pictures (“Reality Bites”); Warner Bros. (“Her”); IFC Films (“Frances Ha”); Focus Features (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”); Sony Pictures Classics (“Call Me by Your Name”); Castle Rock Entertainment (“Before Sunrise”); Fox Searchlight Pictures (“500 Days of Summer”); Fox Searchlight Pictures (“Juno”).

  • Artists to RESEARCH, and RE-DO a performatic image in a new way:

    Dana Schutz

    Camille Turner

    Richard Long

    Janine Antoni

    Kehinde Wiley

    Hernan Bas

    Janet Werner

    Jeff Wall

    Ai Wei Wei

    Kaye Donachie

  • Ai Wei Wei – Never Sorry (Full film)

    AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY is the first feature-length film about the internationally renowned Chinese artist and activist, Ai Weiwei. In recent years, Ai has garnered international attention as much for his ambitious artwork as his political provocations. AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY examines this complex intersection of artistic practice and social activism as seen through the life and art of China’s preeminent contemporary artist. From 2008 to 2010, Beijing-based journalist and filmmaker Alison Klayman gained unprecedented access to Ai Weiwei. Klayman documented Ai’s artistic process in preparation for major museum exhibitions, his intimate exchanges with family members and his increasingly public clashes with the Chinese government. Klayman’s detailed portrait of the artist provides a nuanced exploration of contemporary China and one of its most compelling public figures.
    Director Alison Klayman
    Cast Danqing Chen, Ying Gao, Changwei Gu, Tehching Hsieh, Huang Hung, Yanping Liu, Evan Osnos
    Writer Alison Klayman

    https://uoguelph.kanopy.com/video/ai-weiwei-never-sorry-0

  • Toronto Gallery Trip – Fall 2018

    Gallery TPW

    Jeneen Frei Njootli, Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, 
    Chandra Melting Tallow, Tania Willard


    Emphasizing invisible labour and Indigenous-led economies, Coney Island Baby features a collaborative film project by Jeneen Frei Njootli, Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Chandra Melting Tallow and Tania Willard, with cinematographers Amy Kazymerchyk and Aaron Leon. Filmed during a December excursion to BUSH gallery on the territory of the Secwépemc Nation—in the interior of British Columbia—Coney Island Baby follows the artists as they learn how to snare wild rabbits. As they work towards a vital skillset often performed by women in Indigenous communities, the film questions what shared forms of sustenance can propose alternatives to capitalism.

    MKG127 is pleased to present Everything and Nothing, an exhibition of new work by Adam David Brown
    Opening Saturday, October 20, 2-5 PM

    In Everything and Nothing, Adam David Brown explores the concepts of time and place through emblematic structures such as lunar cycles, lines of latitude and core samples. Employing postage stamps, smoke drawings and lunar photography, Brown engages with how our beliefs and perceptions can be shaped by imaginary objects such as the equator- a perceptual line which, though represented as 0 degrees, encompasses everything yet functions as a zero, a non-space or merely a point of departure.

    Adam David Brown is a multidisciplinary artist living in Toronto, Canada. His work is guided by the principle of “less is more”, and is frequently generated by his interest in science, language and ephemerality. He has exhibited his work in Canada, Europe, Central America and the United States. His work is held in numerous public, corporate and private collections in both Canada and the USA.

    Museum of Contemporary Art

    We invite you to come and play with us on Floor 1, which is always free to the public. Andreas Angelidakis’s DEMOS – A Reconstruction is an installation of 74 foam modules that visitors of all ages can move and rearrange. While soft and lightweight, the modules explore powerful ideas around both architectural and colonial legacies as well as our relationship with computer coding and future technologies.

    Everyone is welcome to respond by creating a seat, a stage or even a monument. Each demo is then demolished to make way for the next DEMOS.

    DEMOS – A Reconstruction is MOCA’s first Invitation Project, a series of site-responsive installations that straddle the disciplines of art, architecture and psychology to explore the formation of social space.

    Create your own DEMOS

    Maya Stovall

    Liquor Store Theatre, included in the Whitney Biennial 2017, is a four-years-running, four-volume, twenty episode video series, forming a meditation on city life in a Detroit neighborhood. The series includes moving and still image works from 2014-2017, and may be continued at any time.

    In Liquor Store Theatre, for four years, I staged and documented performances and discussions in the streets, sidewalks, and parking lots surrounding the eight liquor stores in the McDougall-Hunt zone, where I also lived.

    Ewol Erizku

  • Project 2: Zine

    So many incredible zines were made by students, here’s just one sampling, Surprise by Shannon Moroz. Inside this egg shaped kinder surprise inspired zine are a collection of small toys and poems.