Finishing School is an interdisciplinary artist collective that explores contemporary social, political, and environmental issues. Their projects conflate praxis, play, and activism and seek to engage audiences through various participatory models. Finishing School was established in 2001 and is based in Los Angeles.
Misc. Blog
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54, 2010 (ongoing)
54 is a participatory film and art project consisting of the production and presentation of an immersive film installation, together with related sculptures, photographs, drawings, prints, and an artist book. It is the most ambitious project to date, both conceptually and geographically by the Los Angeles-based artist collective Finishing School. The film is a dark social sci-fi narrative about biennial culture. The nonlinear plot is linked together by a central character on a physical and allegorical journey. The central character silently wanders through the ancient urban landscape of Venice, Italy attempting to make sense of the system that has chosen him. In this world coded observations, memories, and fantasies collide with reality. The project is being created over a period of three years (2010–2012) and three biennials - the 2010 California Biennial as an official project, the 2011 Venice Biennale as an unofficial project, and culminating with the hopeful inclusion in an upcoming biennial exhibition and artist book. Finishing School is collaborating with Jon Brumit and Lucky Dragons on the sound design and music for the film and installation. Chloe Flores is co-authoring the artist book with Finishing School. 54 critiques biennials as a cultural form and explores their complex socioeconomic and political landscape, using the invitation to participate in one biennial as an opportunity to critique the very model through the critical cinematic dramatizing of another biennial. 54 actively engages multiple publics in and around three separate and discrete biennial models - regional, national, and international, through its production, exhibition, and documentation. The project's complexity aims to invite personal and institutional self-reflexivity and consideration of new paradigms. 54 investigates the role of biennial audience as participants and speculates about the impact biennials have on culture. 54 incorporates the art audiences and various publics into the folds of the critique by sharing the filmmaking/viewing and biennial experience by redirecting some of the control into the hands of the project audience, participants, the public at large. The complete project attempts to transform passive audiences into engaged spectators, actors, travelers, viewers, and readers. Employing nonlinear narrative, 54 echoes questions raised by artists, curators, and writers regarding biennials deployed worldwide. Specifically, questions addressing access, perpetuity, communication, desire, power, place, affiliation, and participation. Questions like: Who has access and conversely who is excluded and why? What are the messages communicated at biennials and can they be subverted? What do we really want from a Biennial experience? Who controls biennials and how do they benefit? Is it really one place after another? Can we play too? The production of the film began at the 2010 California Biennial, where they transformed the exhibition space into a green screen production set and invited the public to participate as actors in the film. In the next segment they traveled under the guise of an art tour to Venice during the 2011 Venice Biennale, where they filmed on location with their tour participants/actors/crew, as well as the various art and non-art publics in the city. The final two portions of the project continues the biennial critique, while also addressing issues associated with the display and reception of process-based artworks, through an immersive film installation in a hopeful third biennial and a multi-volume publication that playfully historicizes the process of the project. The film blends narrative, cinema vèrité, and improvised experimental cinematic styles. Intervention, homage, appropriation, and collaboration are important tactics in the making of the film. Described by Finishing School as "absurdly complex" 54 is a multi-faceted project without traditional boundaries between the process of making the film, the completed film, the immersive installation, and artist book. 54 is generously supported by the Nimoy Foundation Artist in Residence Grant |
Projects 54, 2010+ |
