Flâneuse>La caminanta is a video documentary edited as a VR (virtual reality), using a 360-degree camera to document soundwalks of female participants in the public space. The title emphasizes a missing word in the French and Spanish language of women as wanderers. Sound walk on First Friday July 5th @ 7 pm
Building 10a / Nolan Park / Governors Island
Open to the Public: Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Holiday Mondays 11 am – 5 pm from June 1 thru August 11, 2019
Sound walk on First Friday July 5th 2019
Artist Talk on Saturday July 27 2019 with Mollye Bendell from 3 – 5 pm
Amanda Gutiérrez (b. 1978, Mexico City) explores the experience of home, belonging, and cultural identity by bringing into focus details of everyday practices whose ordinary status makes it particularly hard for us to notice their key role in defining who we are. Trained and graduated initially as a stage designer from The National School of Theater, Gutiérrez uses a range of media such as sound art and performance art to investigate how these conditions of everyday life set the stage for our experiences and in doing so shape our individual and collective identities. Approaching these questions from immigrants’ perspectives continues to be of special interest to Gutiérrez, who completed her MFA in Media and Performance Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently elaborating the academic dimension of her work regarding the aesthetic of the walk as a person of color. Accordingly, these techniques also constitute the core of the pedagogical practice Gutiérrez has developed over a decade of teaching in diverse settings ranging from high schools on Chicago’s South Side to a senior center on New York’s Upper West Side, including academic institutions such as The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Connecticut College, Columbia University, and Rutgers University in the Department of Film Studies.
Gutiérrez has held numerous art residencies at FACT, Liverpool in the UK, ZKM in Germany, TAV in Taiwan, Bolit Art Center in Spain, and her work has been exhibited internationally in venues such as The Liverpool Biennale in 2012, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. A recipient of a grant from the National System of Art Creators, in Mexico, Gutiérrez recently was the recipient of the residencies at the New York Camera Club, Harvestworks, and MISE-EN_PLACE Bushwick.
Videos
- Flâneuse>La caminanta Video teaser
- Flâneuse>La caminanta Video walk 1. Walis Johnson in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
Flâneuse>La caminanta Video Walk 2. Phi Hong Su, Abu Dhabi walk
Flâneuse>La caminanta Video Walk 3. Carmen Vazquez, Ecatepec Estado de México
PRESS QUOTES
“Amanda Gutiérrez could be understood as subversive, strolling through the city at her own pace and opposing the convulsive rhythm of capitalism that sustains a metropolis like New York. “
Lorena Marrón, Camera Club of New York
“Our last stop is one of the oldest arts organizations in town: a photographic circle founded in 1884, which counts Alfred Stieglitz and Richard Avedon among its alumni and which relocated four years ago to this street where the courthouse neighborhood melts into Chinatown. Amanda Gutiérrez, a Mexican photographer based in New York, has recently opened an evocative exhibition here: In “Walking in Lightness,” her images of Sunset Park apartment blocks, storefronts and fruit vendors are printed with variable dye shifts or collaged on top of each other. The shifts and overlays become redolent metaphors of home and displacement.” The New York Times
“Walking in Lightness is an exploration of Gutiérrez’s experience as a Mexican immigrant woman living and working in New York. She uses disposable cameras to deemphasize the authority of photographic representation and presents her prints in multiple iterations, each with a different tone—showing us the simple but profound ways in which photographic processes can alter the way people are represented. Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon throughout the run of the exhibition, Gutiérrez will turn the Camera Club into a public studio, inviting viewers in to watch as she creates test prints and works on a video installation. She will also host “soundwalks” on Thursday evenings, taking guests along walking trips through Chinatown as she documents the process.” ARTNET NEWS
• WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Project website: https://vrwalkers.org
The Brooklyn League of Women Walkers https://brooklynleagueofwomen.tumblr.com/, will constitute the post-production community initiative, taking in consideration screenings, collective walks, and a forum.
WONDA prototype Web version (Work in Progress) https://go.wondavr.com/Yl2TR0VcUU
COLLABORATORS
Matthew Gantt coding
Stuart Jackson music
Interviewees:
Ixchel Maya, Mexico
Carmen Vazquez, Mexico
Phi Hong Su, Abu Dhabi
Walis Johnson, Brooklyn
Eryka Dellenbach, Brooklyn
Allie Shyer, Manhattan
INTERVIEWS AND PRESS COVERAGE
Baxter Street Gallery
https://www.baxterst.org/category/authors/lorena-marron/
Chicago Reader
https://buff.ly/2Gck6Vh?fbclid=IwAR1bTOY0KEBDH4-TqwEO83llOt9P79FX0YBJGY1_kwplgkgQQbDMC5bjXck
Social Justice News Chicago