Brian Hitselberger’s blog

I hope you'll be able to join me tomorrow night for my Artist Conversation at Elsewhere in Greensboro, North Carolina. 

During my residency at Elsewhere, I re-curated what was formerly the "wood room" on the second floor of the 24-hour studio. I cleared a space on the incredibly messy and dusty third floor, installed two sets of industrial shelves, and built a wood management system. Hopefully, future artists and residents will use this system for as a safer and more organized system of access to the raw materials that Elsewhere has to offer. The long-term plan for Elsewhere is to convert the third floor into a "more traditional" artist workshop. This was the first step in that direction. 

Once the room was emptied of wood, I thoroughly cleaned the walls and floor,  and applied polyurethane to all surfaces -- it was sparkly and clean. I then began creating a room-sized installation, referencing the coexistence of poetry and chaos within Elsewhere's space. 

At once Utopic and terrifying, Elsewhere serves as a completely self-sustaining museum, in which no materials leave the premises, and only selected elements are brought into the space. To create work here is an exercise in reuse, re-contextualization, and reinvention. However, because of this process, the physical environment itself is constantly changing--nothing stays in one place for long. The net result upon visitors is a quickly shifting world within a decaying space, a sensation at once exhilarating and ominous; in this maner, Elsewhere functions as a scale model of our reality, where real-life sordid politics, uncomfortable inter-personal relationships, and fragile international relations are played out in metaphor with old objects, cracking paint, falling ceilings and urban detritus. 

Within this space, I wanted to create a place-holder illuminating this union of discord and order. My piece, 'Goodbye to All That,' attempts to straddle a sense of poetic beauty and silence, while significantly altering the physical space, and manifesting an environment of an ominous an consuming unknown. In this manner, the piece is a model of Elsewhere, which is a model of our reality. It is a model of a model. 

My Conversation will attempt to re-create for an audience the experience of working and living daily, for 30 days, in this place. The nuances of Elsewhere, as well as it's extremities (reflective silence and deafening visual noise) will be equally straddled through a serial narrative projection comprised of photographs, videos, and sound, accompanied by short texts authored by the artist illuminating the materials from an individual perspective. However, these texts will not be read by the author; rather, audience members, both willing and unwilling, will narrate the experience in real time, in a sense allowing others to occupy the role I have filled for the past month. 

'Goodbye to All That' will begin at 8pm in the Elsewhere, at 608 S. Elm Street in downtown Greensboro, and should last about an hour. Admission is free. Expect surprises. I hope you can make it. 

..and so was Marybird.

Tommorrow, the the following day, I have the horse-blinders on my for my Artist Conversation, which is scheduled for 8pm, here at Elsewhere. I'd love for you to come. 

It's going.... slowly but surely....

I guess it never occurred to me that by taking a room in a building without air conditioning, and completelycovering the walls in red drapes, I might end up creating and environment that is *very* hot. 

Whoops.

Regardless, I am almost ready to move on to stage two. By the way, there are three stages. So I guess you could say I'm almost halfway done. Stage two involves electricity, as well as a trip to Home Depot! Two of my favorite things!

I will keep you posted. As always, more photos on my Flickr site. If anyone needs me, I'll be upstairs stapling. 

Last night, fellow Elsewhereian Artist-in-Residence Meng screened her short film, 'Looking for Mr. Greensboro,' documenting her ongoing performance in the city of Greensboro. Meng has, since she arrived here at Elsewhere, been walking daily around the city, looking for Lane Green, a man she has begun calling 'Mr. Greensboro.' He calls her 'Ms. Formosa."

While walking, Meng wears a sculpture of a house on her back like a backpack, that houses a hidden camera inside it. People looking at the house on her back will see themselves on a television screen inside the piece. Brilliant. 

I've liked Meng since I met her, but last night, I realized how much I admire what she does. While watching this charming film of her daily travels, I realized how incredibly fearless she is, to travel alone into an unknown city everyday, speaking to absolute strangers, wearing a house on her back. This is not something that everyone could get away with - I think it takes a special kind of artist to undertake a task like she has. 

Congratulations, Meng! Last night went wonderfully!

There's quite a bit of dust on the third floor. 

Cut through the ceiling yesterday to set up a shelving system for all of the wood at Elsewhere. This was a group effort between George, myself and Aliya. Following dinner, and a very informal artist presentation (in which I waxed poetically about my work in between mouthfuls of fried green tomatoes), many awesome people showed up to move wood and drink beer. Folks, we got it all moved in under two hours, and we drank all the beer in less than one. 

To everyone who came out last night to help, thank you thank you thank you! I hope my piece in my new clean room will be a fraction as awesome as each of you!

Things are going much smoother and faster than I expected *knocks on wood.* This probably has a lot to do with the fact that everyone here has been completely rad in helping me with my harebrained scheme. 

But wild scheming is certainly what this is all about. 

Pictures of the reorganized third floor are hard to capture, as the level of airborne dust makes photography a trial. But I promise, the final products will be well-documented. 

In the meantime, I signed up to cook everyone dinner next week..... you have been warned..... 

Here we are; home sweet home. 

I once was fortunate enough to see artist Lesley Dill speak about her work and practice. Among other things, she recounted about her experience traveling to India with her husband, a documentary filmmaker, for a film job. Not exactly knowing what to anticipate, she was 'alarmed' to discover, on stepping off the plane, 'how immediately at home I felt. Rather than coming to this country for the first time [which was in fact the case], it seemed as if I was returning after prolonged absence.'

I think I could say the same of this place. I was expecting to be completely overwhelmed. I was expecting to be completely disoriented. I was expecting, I admit it, to be afraid. I was not. 

The speed that I found myself acclimated to the rhythms of life here (surprisingly, in an environment as chaotic as this, they exist) was and is amazing to me. Wake up. Get to the bathroom to brush teeth (only one for upwards of 15 people!). Have appropriately strong coffee with other early risers. Walk to the YMCA. Swim. Shower. Walk home. Have lunch. Write. Take pictures. Make short movies where photos aren't appropriate.  Venture upstairs (not recommended for those not fully awake). Look at what you can. Be aggressive about it. Take more pictures. Make plans, knowing they will soon become decisions. Write some more. Go back upstairs. Leave again. Walk -- this is where you will get the majority of your thinking done, in the visual silence of the sidewalk, as well as the sight of your own feet, one in front of another, away from (and eventually back to) your temporary home, this maniac place you have already (less than 48 hours!) come to love. 

This is one tack to take when living here that I've found, but I cannot speak for all of us. Every person here, no matter what role they are playing, exists in their own mental space, navigating chaos (contained, albeit loosely). There is not enough room for everyone's mental world, and they frequently bump into each other. This is when you decide to open your mouth. This is, in many ways, the best part. 

Unsurprisingly, many of the projects undertaken by the past residents offer some form of isolation-- this is a busy place, with many people moving through it, with much to be done. When asked as a visitor to create something within it (over the course of one month), many individuals feel it entirely necessary to manufacture some form of solitude, and create silence in a constantly changing live/work space.

When you get right down to it, it's not so different from anything else, anywhere else. Except that here, rather than TVs, iPods, cell phones, car horns, traffic lights, barking dogs and intercom speakers, we find ourselves surrounded by visual noise, which takes the form of fabric, ribbons, old wooden furniture, books (and more books),  toys, glass panes, 2 x 4s, instruments, assemblages. If everything object here spoke with a barely audible whisper, the ensuing din would be enough to deafen one for life. There is noise here, all around you, everywhere.