6 Foot Collaboratory

MacDowell Colony

2008-03-31T12:02:00.000-07:00

Click Here to visit MacDowell's website.

The 6 Foot Collaboratory is going to MacDowell Colony for the months of July and August. We will split out time: Elizabeth will represent us in July and Caroline will represent us in August. We will be working in Heinz Studio, pictured here.

Video Stills

2008-02-26T09:49:00.000-08:00

Vanishing into the weather.

2008-02-02T08:06:00.000-08:00

Spiral staircase on Lookout Mountain, GA.

Tea Boat Bags

2008-01-27T12:01:00.001-08:00

Acknowledging the values embodied in everyday utilitarian objects, we celebrate the poetry of “user as protagonist” and misrecognized function to produce objects that use the language of product design to create narratives of precarious comfort and hopeful fragility rather than heroic sterility. If consumer goods live parasitically off planned obsolescence, our ephemeral objects declare a limited lifespan with the tender reality patched jeans or duct taped car windows.

Balloon Sketches

2008-01-21T11:24:00.000-08:00

A Flying Tree from Elizabeth on Vimeo.

House from Elizabeth on Vimeo.

Building Over Bodies

2007-12-21T20:58:00.000-08:00

Building Over Bodies from Caroline Woolard on Vimeo.

Video Demo

2007-12-04T18:40:00.001-08:00

6Foot Collaboratory from Caroline Woolard on Vimeo.

click "Full" to view full screen

Cupped Hands

2007-11-28T17:45:00.000-08:00

Lake MI visits NY from RI

2007-11-23T09:43:00.000-08:00

At "Come and sit with us because we miss you" on the East River, November 10-12th.

Blind Boatbuilders Tea Ritual with Reliable Furniture

2007-11-23T09:37:00.001-08:00

We used the platform between us to celebrate an origami tea ritual taken from 16th cen. Dutch shipbuilders going blind, no longer able to build large scale.

Reliable Table

2007-11-18T20:48:00.000-08:00

Reliable Structures

2007-11-16T08:42:00.001-08:00

Ice Candle: duration of hope

2007-11-02T07:28:00.000-07:00

The shortest wish in history: short tests, heading towards the right atmosphere... needing outside footage for juxtaposition

Reliable Action

2007-10-23T18:34:00.000-07:00

Roof test: great body/architecture scale better for a different action...

Reliable Action

2007-10-23T18:01:00.000-07:00

Cupped Hands

2007-10-23T17:56:00.000-07:00

Walking on Water

2007-10-19T16:21:00.000-07:00

Pedestrian traffic is possible around the waters that contain Manhattan. A boat ride from artist Marie Lorenz around November 11-14 will carry our liquid curiosity further. Submerged or emerging candidates are: vertical supports with long lost horizontal planes (aka old docks).
For example, the west side Highway: off West 57th and Amsterdam or the 69th Street Bridge.

Urban Camping

2007-10-18T14:50:00.000-07:00

Up on the overpass the night was wide open and blowing headlights like the sea. He stood against the wind and let it peel him clean.

(Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red, pg. 55)

Ice Candle

2007-10-18T14:49:00.000-07:00

We are making absurd and/or pathetic objects whose material and formal properties convey moods (precarious comfort, hopeful fragility) that accumulate sensations for a larger narrative film with a script we are currently developing. The project could be classified as Romantic-Conceptual Art.

lake MI visits RI ocean

2007-08-29T11:08:00.001-07:00

An installation at Nancy Austin's gallery in Newport, RI.

SHOW: Lecture!

2007-08-01T08:41:00.000-07:00

Notes: We approach Lake Michigan as a material. Information is made urgent with bodily risk: we use ingestion as visceral knowledge, as valuable as written information. The lake goes through our bodies, into Kalamazoo water reclamation facility, to the Kalamazoo River, and back to the Lake. We have been to all of these places and feel as nomadic as a raindrop from the lake. Displacement, Re-collection, etc.
Comments: "These poetic installations are separate from your research." Our response: our work seeks to provoke curiosity. Just as a Wallmart shopper may not consider an object's production, a viewer may not fully investigate the larger life of an installation. We hope all people consider context and history in any situation.

Wholeheartedly

2007-08-01T07:53:00.001-07:00

SHOW: call mom

2007-08-01T07:32:00.000-07:00

I couldn't think about anything but my mom, and neither could she. So we made an installation for our moms. How much we miss our mothers and they might not even know we talk about them all the time. So we spent the night trying to keep in touch because we need to say I love you, I miss you, I want you to be here with me and I want to hug you.

SHOW: chicken and lake

2007-08-01T07:13:00.000-07:00

We caught both lake and chicken, brought them to the gallery, and served portions from a hallway constructed in the gallery, directing the view outside.

Potable Prototype 3

2007-07-30T02:40:00.000-07:00

SHOW: short cuts screened

2007-07-30T01:45:00.000-07:00

Screening short, rough cuts of the human hammock, water filtration, clay dinner party, vulnerable proximity, and more...

SHOW: Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water...

2007-07-29T12:24:00.001-07:00

We gathered the lake, contained it with weather (self-contained), and presented a live event: rain, hail, ingestion. The thread visualized the dripping lake segments in a fluid spatial photograph, articulating the entire drip trajectory in space while remaining malleable. The time recycling program has begun...

THE SHOW: In the Beginning...

2007-07-28T10:12:00.000-07:00

Day One.
One hour preparedness (failure is simply opportunity), removing the floor for levitation, ceiling constellation, precarious comfort (faith in architecture), etc.

Book Launch

2007-07-26T05:38:00.000-07:00

Our book is available at lulu.com for $30.
You can preview or buy it here.

Show at Oxbow 7/27/07 at 7pm

2007-07-24T19:17:00.000-07:00

Photos can be seen here.

About Us (we added Grant!)

2007-07-06T09:46:00.000-07:00

The 6 foot collaboratory is composed of three artists (Caroline Woolard, Elizabeth Tubergen, and Grant Goeman) whose practice balances between visceral spontaneity and analytical composure. Extending the Collaboratory’s research beyond a single space or conversation, we work with public officals and beach-goers alike, using overlooked spaces and making our process and experiments available on this blog. Recent projects involve water filtration, public sculptural rearrangement, spontaneous perspective shifts, and body extensions that connect to or support architecture.

We bring our wheel-barrow furniture (currently in development) with tools and papers everywhere for performances announced by goose-call: our mouths open reservoirs to drink from, dinner parties of clay, a human-hammock, daily readings (our magazine out soon), and air-duct attachments.

Space Between

2007-07-03T20:31:00.001-07:00

Some short clips reaching towards a finished video on the space between us.

A Note on Implausibility

2007-07-01T09:56:00.000-07:00

It is important to think outrageously, if not always, then from time to time. Much is possible.

Oddity in the Meantime

2007-06-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

Dan the accordian man not only plays the accordian, but also windsurfs. Dan spends late windy days at Oval beach. If the wind isn't right, he plays the accordian. If the wind is right, Dan windsurfs. His body is the only connection between his sail and his board--he holds it together with his body. I am jealous that Dan gets to explore the horizon, a space that is wholly imaginary to me, but then again, I am afraid of deep, empty water.

the Space Between

2007-06-23T13:20:00.001-07:00

The 6 Foot Collaboratory moves at unprecedented speeds as ideas are externalized faster, discussed, and made manifest with passionate analysis.

Endless Horizon

2007-06-23T12:51:00.000-07:00

The lake seems like an ocean because we can only see 20 miles ahead... this is the asymptote of perception. The untouchable horizon is a site infused with potential, a space for imagination by default.

Porous Ceramic

2007-06-23T12:32:00.000-07:00

Paul Flickinger (teaching at the Kalamazoo Institude of Arts) has fired natural clay ceramics on the sand near lake Michigan for 40 years. His advice will help our experimentation...

Systems of Exchange

2007-06-22T12:11:00.001-07:00

How do we circulate our work?
As producers of culture, we look to alternative models for the display and exchange of art that operate financially without giving up content for exchange value. Mess Hall's Claire Pentecost and Marianne Fairbanks reflected on their system of generosity, self-appointment and merit rather than obligation where time = money, discussing potential trajectories in our studio this week.
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If, as Marx writes, a commodity fetish obscures the mode of production, what can we gain by understanding our entire system of production (material and labor)?

Curiosity

2007-06-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

This is the goal... curiosity, wonder, and accumulated subjective knowledge rather than strict standards of acceptable facts. An ideology of product over process limits experimentation by regimenting "success." Art as an excuse for transgressing conformity, art as a doorway to real world issues, art towards empathy, art as a slap in the face...

to come: charts of sites and assumed audiences, etc.

Joy and Grace

2007-06-22T09:53:00.001-07:00

Liz began to explain this to me...
I wonder: what is the relationship between the search for satisfaction and the attainment itself? The journey vs. the view, the process vs. the product, experiential education...

Ingestion and Body Knowledge

2007-06-22T09:51:00.001-07:00

A rejection of sedentary culture! Instead, tactility, muscle memory, and proprioception to understand our current location.

Filters

2007-06-22T09:39:00.000-07:00

We are experimenting with filters: using felt to collect the material that is typically "rejected," zebra mussels as bio-filters, and a porous clay material (natural clay and a local lumberyard's sawdust) similar to a technique developed by Potters for Peace.
Other projects of interest are: the LifeStraw, and more...

The Femur Bone

2007-06-22T06:28:00.000-07:00

The femur bone is the longest, strongest, and most voluminous bone in the body. I have an extra long femur, and so does Caroline.

What is a natural resource?

2007-06-21T09:41:00.001-07:00

We use clay from the riverbank,

water from Lake Michigan,

zebra mussels from the lake (over-populated foreign invader from international shipping),

glass from our local brewery,

wool for felt from the sheep near us,

and perhaps kellog's corn flakes (invented here).

If, as Marx writes, a commodity fetish obscures the mode of production, what can we gain by understanding our entire system of production (material and labor)?

Resources: the BODY of water

2007-06-21T09:22:00.000-07:00

At the Oxbow residence, drinking water comes from the Kalamazoo water treatment facility and wells. In filtering water from Lake Michigan, our biggest concern is the Kalamazoo river. The EPA assumed responsibility for the Superfund cleanup on the Kalamazoo River and The Allied Paper Inc./Portage Creek/Kalamazoo River Superfund Site began an 80-mile clean-up effort as our residency began (June 1, 2007). The removal effort is documented here. For more information about the quality of water look here. PCBs and non-point contaminants are discussed here and other MI watershed links can be found here.

Liz Tubergen and Caroline Woolard

2007-06-21T07:55:00.000-07:00

We are the 6 Foot Collaboratory