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Using various filmed images of well-known locations in the Easton area, Robert Whitman’s “Local Report” will be on display in the Williams Center for the Arts gallery through March 25.
Along with the exhibition, Whitman will give an informal talk followed by a reception 3-5 p.m. Sunday, March 4. In addition to a free gallery handout, there will be a catalog for sale.
Gallery hours are noon-5 p.m. Monday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday; 2 p.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; and noon-5 p.m. the first Sunday of each month for First Sunday Easton. For more information, contact the gallery at (610) 330-5361, email, or visit the website.
“Local Report” is a multi-screen video and sound installation, made up of five live performances in which participants, or performance reporters, used video cell phones to contribute images and sounds from their areas.
“I am delighted to have the opportunity to show ‘Local Report’at Lafayette’s Williams Center gallery not only because of our direct involvement in the Easton performance, but because showing ‘Local Report’ in one of the communities in which a performance took place is fitting,” says Michiko Okaya, director of the Williams Center gallery. “In addition to seeing the Easton ‘Local Report’ in the context of the complete project, the local participants can now see the results of their efforts, something they were unable to do while ‘reporting.’”
During the summer of 2005, “local reporters” used video-capable cell phones to send video transmissions and oral descriptions of designated locations in five cities. Selected transmissions were projected live at the central performance site and simultaneously streamed online.
The performances for “Local Report” were sponsored by the Richard Baker family in conjunction with the National Realty & Development Corp., with the idea of providing an opportunity for shoppers at the company’s retail centers to experience works of art. The performances were held at five locations, including Kingston, N.Y.; Holmdel and Burlington, N.J; Trumbull, Conn.; and Easton. The Easton performance took place Friday, Aug. 26.
Whitman is considered a pioneer in the use of film and other media as material in his performances, sculptures, and installations. “Local Report” is the latest in a series of innovative works in which he uses the fast-developing capabilities of new communications media.
In 1972 he produced “News,” in which he provided people with coins and sent them around to particular pay phones in Manhattan. Each person moved from phone to phone, reporting about what they saw, which was broadcast live on WBAI radio.
“You ended up with a collection of these verbal images of Manhattan,” says Whitman. “Then, as technology changed with cell phones, you don’t need a bunch of change anymore; you can call from anywhere in the city. We did the piece in Leeds in 2003 using cell phones and the reports played over loudspeakers in a large square in the middle of town. Now with video cell phones, I wanted to do a performance in which the reporters make video and voice calls. As it turned out, the broadcast in this case was on the Internet.
“What these pieces have in common is that you get to see something that is generated by a community. You get to see what other people see, and have a kind of surprise in all that. We’re able to continuously change each piece by using new technology.”
Okaya and Robert Mattison, Metzgar Professor of Art, were local coordinators, while Paul Miller, visual resources curator, was involved in the production of the headquarters set up at the Northampton Crossings shopping center in Easton.
Julie Martin, “Local Report” project manager, and Whitman contacted Mattison to see if he would be interested in helping with an Easton venue. Mattison, Miller, and Okaya met several times with Martin and Whitman as the summer progressed.
“Bob Mattison and I served as the local coordinators, charged with finding the 30 participants who would become performance reporters, and Paul Miller became an important member of the production staff by providing technical assistance for the Easton set up,” says Okaya. “We recruited performance reporters from Lafayette faculty, staff, and alumni. The local arts community responded enthusiastically, with many performance reporters coming from ACE, the Arts Community of Easton.”
In addition to Miller and Mattison, Lafayette performance reporters included Richardand Polly Kendrick, Williams Center technical directors; art graduate Krista Laubach ’05; Owen McLeod, associate professor of philosophy; Yvonne Osmun, philosophy and foreign languages & literature secretary; and Joseph Shieber, assistant professor of philosophy.
Long-time Easton residents, Mattison, Miller, and Okaya showed Martin and Whitman locations which were identifiably “Easton,” including Center Square, Mount Ida, local dairy farms, Easton Cemetery, Delaware and Lehigh rivers, Bushkill Park, and Lafayette’s campus. In addition to these sites were new locales, such as new housing developments in former farm fields, which are changing the landscape of the Easton community. Performance reporters were then sent to some of these locations.
“We were excited about being involved in the most recent of Whitman’s telecommunication projects, and intrigued by the ambitious project,” says Okaya. “It is interesting to see in the resulting video what the reporters chose to transmit. Even though we had selected many of the locations, we did not and could not anticipate the visual and auditory decisions of the reporters. As a result, we learned new things about our community – new ways of seeing the familiar. The videos, taken with cell phones and enlarged many times in the exhibition projections, are blurry, jerky, and pixilated, with a dream-like, timeless quality. Sometimes it is difficult, if not impossible, to identify what was filmed, but careful watching reveals common themes as well as unique perspectives.”
Whitman incorporated each of the performances into a final five-screen video and sound installation. For this multi-screen installation, the five videos from each site play on five screens, and the sound from each venue is localized to the screen showing the video from its venue. The video images and the sound play on different tracks, and due to their varying lengths, the sound shifts in relation to the image as the work is shown.
A copy of the exhibition premiered at the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum in New York, and was donated by Richard Baker and the Baker family. The work was installed there in December 2005 at an event marking its formal accession into the museum’s permanent collection.
Born in New York City, Whitman studied literature at Rutgers University and art history at Columbia University. In the late 1950s, he began to present performances and exhibit his multimedia work in some of New York’s more influential experimental venues. In 1966, with the scientists Fred Waldhauer and Billy Klüver and artist Robert Rauschenberg, he co-founded Experiments in Art and Technology, a loose-knit association that organized collaborations between artists and scientists.
The Williams Center gallery is funded in part by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.