Capital (revisited)

IDEAS CITY Festival

The 2013 iteration of IDEAS CITY, the biennial festival created to explore the future city and to effect change, will take place in downtown New York from May 1–4, 2013. Formerly known as the Festival of Ideas for the New City, IDEAS CITY was founded by the New Museum as a major collaboration between dozens of downtown arts, education, and community organisations to harness the power of the creative community and imagine our collective future. This ambitious initiative is built upon the core belief that arts and culture constitute a driving force behind the vitality of urban centers worldwide.

The theme for IDEAS CITY 2013 is Untapped Capital.  As the world’s resources continue to be endangered, depleted, and destroyed, we all need to imagine new solutions and develop innovative approaches and practices. Rather than focusing on deficits, IDEAS CITY 2013 will encourage intensive examination of surplus resources that may be under- recognised or underutilized: Untapped Capital. There are many ways of thinking about what might define “untapped capital,” ranging from people and raw materials, to ideas, networks, varied resources, and modes of communication. The topic of Untapped Capital provides a touchstone for alternative thinking about new methodologies, new solutions, and new goals.

Capital Revisited is commissioned by The Drawing Center in collaboration with the New Museum, ideas city project. The project was initiated by David Thorp. In 1995 I made a work at the British Museum called Capital. In New York 2013, for ideas city I revisited this work in a series of fragments focused on buildings in the East Village, just off the Bowery.

The project lasted twenty three days and began with an intensive period of drawing in my temporary studio in the basement of LaMaMa.

The work is a 54 ft x 38 ft drawing made in mixed media, broken and assembled in sections and relocated in five locations around the Bowery area of New York. using wooden fences, outside walls and the windows of a local restaurant.

Part two of the project is an exhibition called Document, that opens on the 18th June - 18 August at the Drawing Center NY.

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http://www.newmuseum.org/ideascity/view/terry-smith-capital-revisited

http://thebottomline.drawingcenter.org/2013/03/12/capital-revisited/

http://the-drawing-center.tumblr.com/post/42039647930/blittman-the-work-of-the-uk-based-artist-terry

http://www.drawingcenter.org/en/drawingcenter/5/exhibitions/9/upcoming/

Capital Revisited was made possible through the help, support, expertise and good humour of Jason and Keith of republic world wide.

The work

The project was curated by Nova Benway  and Aimee Good  with studio assistants Rebecca Dearlove, Gabriella Perez, Blake Ruehrwein, Kate Smith, and students  Joen Kim, ShinYeon Moon, The installation team were Keith Schweitzer and Jason Patrick Voegele

photographs above by Udom Surangsophon

There were five locations, the walls of Ideal Glass and LaMaMa, the fence on first Street Green, the windows of L’Apicio windows and the final piece in the basement studio.

The project began with a site visit in February 2013 and the discovery of a Corinthian Capital on the outside of the Drawing Center. This first drawing became the point of reference. The intensive studio period began with the daily routine of drawing and gradual scaling up of drawings till the eventual full size drawings that were wheat pasted onto two locations.