Title
Persistent
other media 2007
Persistent, O’Grady’s 2007 project for Artpace, San Antonio, is her first video installation. With a generously funded residency, she was able to experiment and, as a “reactive artist,” she chose to make herself open to the stimulus of a new place and situation. It would be only her second trip to Texas and her first extended stay, but she was connected to the state through her second marriage — to Chap Freeman, a seventh-generation Texan whose roots extended back to the Republic. Her first idea was a piece involving boots (Chap’s forbears had been cowboys) and a play on the Freeman family’s membership in the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.
A chance googling of terms like “San Antonio,” “African Americans,” “music,” yielded a blog item about a multiethnic dance club being closed by its landlord. It was a depressingly familiar story of real estate and the “wrong crowd,” but in it O’Grady sensed a kernel of hope. By serendipitous accident, the DJ who had blogged was also the receptionist at Artpace. With Jay Lopez’s help, O’Grady contacted the owners and dancers of the recently closed Davenport Lounge to produce perhaps her most personal piece to date. A club dancer in her youth and later a rock critic, in videotaping 12 dancers individually on green screen and then monumentalizing them as ghosts on the wall of the vaguely reconstructed club, O’Grady attempted to bridge through a shared intensity for this most basic human activity, one she has often referred to as “better than sex,” both the loss of an essential communal space and perhaps of youth itself.
Documentation proved more difficult than making. Photographers and videographers could only capture the image of the darkened club on a dimly lit street (like the old Paradise Garage cul-de-sac) by changing essential elements of the work. The locked door preventing viewers from entering and approaching the dancers also raised a question: can one make a piece about the frustration of desire that does not itself frustrate?
DJ JJ Lopez’s email invite to the Persistent opening at Artpace, San Antonio, TX
by Jay Lopez. 2007
The founder of the “diggindeepquartet” DJ collective and lead DJ of the closed Davenport Lounge in San Antonio — and O’Grady’s collaborator on the installation — emails a description of Persistent to his list.
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Hello Everyone,
Well, we're back. It's been a while and the diggindeepquartet has been busy! We've been working on solo projects, club nights, YA, Art openings, Art pieces, collaborations, guest spots, and more than anything, we've been enjoying the Music!! We have some great news to announce this week so without a further delay, let's get on with the 411.
Hold up!! Real quick: before we mention all of the good stuff, I wanted to take a moment to say, thank you to everyone who has supported me over the years and the diggindeepquartet. I originally started off the ddq project with high hopes. But one can never foresee the future and one can never foresee the changes that will come one's way. It is with both great sadness and great joy that I announce that as of July 12, 2007, I will be stepping down from the diggindeeqquartet as founder and director. This does not mean that I will not be djing around the city or that you will no longer see me on the dance-floor sweating it, hell has not frozen over. What this means is, just like the Davenport was handed over to the capable hands of our co-founder DJ Gibb, so will the diggindeepquartet. It is with great joy that I announce our new director, DJ Gibb, Gibby Diaz. This man has been making huge waves in the city since his return from Austin and shows no sign of slowing down. I wish him and the crew the best as I confidently step aside and allow our future to be guided by DJ Gibb. Gibb, keep that mutha rockin'. On with the show.
Since the closing of the Davenport, there have been a few articles, a few radio mentions, lots of talk and most of all lots of treasured memories going around the city of San Antonio. We have this week a very special art opening happening at Artpace (445 N. Main Ave. San Antonio TX 78205). Artist, writer, and all around Hipster, Lady Lorraine O'Grady will be presenting her new installation this Thursday, July 12, 2007 at 6pm. See below for more info.
(from the Artpace brochure)
“about the project: Lorraine O'Grady's Persistent
Lorraine O'Grady's Persistent, co-produced by Jay Lopez, is a eulogy to the recently closed Davenport Lounge in San Antonio and the culture it came to embody. The imposing installation, with its accompanying audio and video projections, demonstrates the kaleidoscopic generation and repression of multiethnic counterculture.
The twilight street scene environment recalls the artist's first visit to the nightclub two months after it had been shut down. Upon entry, one encounters an austere façade, dimly lit by floodlights and revealing only the viewer's reflection. O'Grady has superimposed this portrait of the spectator onto the building to evoke a sense of personal loss, inviting us to mourn the destruction of a space that so many had once enlivened in a free expression of the beauty found in diversity.
One must peer into the windows, almost pressing one's nose against the glass, to see within O'Grady's nightclub. The sparse interior features carefully arranged clusters of Art Deco furniture and empty Davenport lounges. On the walls, ghostlike projections of Hip Hop, Funk, and House Music dancers energetically move in sync with the pulsating music. Emerging as a contemporary manifestation of Egyptian funerary monuments, the exhibition evokes the riches of a bygone era and the eminence of what has been lost.
The fusion of rhythms that resonate from the edifice are vibrant, yet melancholic, in their repetition. Composed by the DJ's Rise and JJ Lopez, the mix sporadically fluctuates in volume, mimicking the sounds emitted from opening and closing club doors–a nod to the lines of Davenport patrons that used to wrap around the city block. The loop begins with an upbeat and energetic tempo that quickly diminishes and then rises once again, symbolizing the rise and fall of the Davenport Lounge. This Hip Hop funeral anthem both heralds DJ culture, underlining its presence as a profession that combines the artistic efforts of myriad peoples, and memorializes what Barbara Ehrenreich has called "the need for public, celebratory dance that seems hardwired into us. . . a uniquely human capability."
O'Grady's installation symbolizes neither failure nor success, but the perseverance of counterculture in the face of racism and discrimination.”
Thank you everyone,
Keep the Faith
I'll see you all on the dancefloor,
Peace,
JJ-
diggindeepquartet "by dancers, for dancers"
Myspace JJ Lopez
GarageBand JJLopez
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San Antonio Express-News, July 25, 2007
Exhibit reflects downtown dance club
by Dan R. Goddard Express-News Staff Writer
Daily newspaper review of O’Grady’s video installation Persistent, at Artpace, San Antonio, TX, July 2007. A work on dance, music, economics, and race that recalls O’Grady’s own past as a club dancer and rock critic.
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New York artist Lorraine O'Grady has memorialized the Davenport, the downtown club that once occupied the space at North fSt. Mary's and Houston streets and featured the city's most innovative DJs.
You can dimly perceive dancers who seem to be floating in the air inside the dark club with heavily tinted windows and throbbing music set up in a downstairs gallery at Artpace. The installation, titled "Persistent," is part of "New Works: 07.2."
"It's becoming a familiar story when the cost of real estate collides with parts of the culture that don't always fit the landlord's agenda," O'Grady said. "I was responding to a story I read about the closing of the club. It seemed like one of the places in the city where all the races came together to dance."
An African American artist who often deals with racial issues, O'Grady early in her career became somewhat infamous as Mademoiselle Bourgeoisie Noire, a whip-cracking alter ego who attacked racial divisions in the arts. She just finished spending five years teaching studio art and African American studies at the University of California-Irvine.
Recent projects include an examination of the relationship between the French writer Charles Baudelaire and his Haitian wife, Jeanne Duval, and a "Miscegenated Family Album," about the resemblance of the women of O'Grady's family to the Egyptian queen Nefertiti.
Photo: Artist in residence Lorraine O'Grady looks in on her video installation at Artpace recalling the Davenport, a downtown dance club.
"But I never do the same thing twice," O'Grady said. "For San Antonio, I just started Googling things I was interested in. At first, I started thinking about doing something with cowboy boots, but when I looked further and found out about the Davenport, I decided it was a story I could relate to because I started out as a rock critic.
"Now the music they played at the Davenport isn't my music, but I can see how it helped to bring a lot of diverse people together."
O'Grady managed to track down a dozen dancers who appeared at the club with the help of Jay Lopez, who works as a DJ when he's not manning the reception desk at Artpace. She also salvaged some of the club's furniture, which is part of her installation.
"I tried to re-create the sensation of standing on the corner of St. Mary's and Houston and hearing the music inside the club," she said. "Getting the tint right on the windows was the hard part. I didn't want you to be able to see too well, but I wanted you to be able to see OK."
The dancers were videotaped in front of a green screen, used for special-effects photography, inside a commercial video studio. The dancers are projected onto three walls inside the gallery space. But for the front, O'Grady created an almost perfect reproduction of the big windows that were one of the club's most distinctive features.
The windows are tinted so dark that it's practically impossible to see inside without cupping your hands around your head and pressing your face against the glass. But if you stand back, the dancers appear like ghostly figures floating in mid-air, moving in sync with the relentless techno beat.
Express-News publish date July 25, 2007
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STORIES OF HIP HOP
Lorraine O'Grady
Posted by DIVA DEE on The Juice Online, July 2007 (no longer archived)
A review of the
Persistent installation at Artpace by a former patron of the Davenport Lounge, the subject of O’Grady’s piece. Posted by “Diva Dee,” variously described as a DJ, college student, and blogger, on an entertainment news blog geared to black San Antonio.
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The genius of modern art and the rhythm of this generation are coupled in a beautifully urban piece entitled “Persistent,” at the Artpace Gallery. New York artist Lorraine O’Grady has perpetuated the closing of one of San Antonio’s favorite dance lounges, The Davenport, which shut down recently to the chagrin of its multi-ethnic patrons. O’Grady, who is also a renowned writer and critic, decided to do a photo installation piece that represented the social desires of popular culture versus the pragmatic needs of business and real estate.
I went down to experience “Persistent,” part of the “New Works: 07.2.” at Artpace. As soon I walked in the bass thumped through my body. Celena Bustamante Emery, manager of public affairs and special events at Artpace, led me graciously to the downstairs gallery. I immediately found myself beamed onto the corner of Houston and St. Mary’s peering through the large red frames and darkly tinted windows of The Davenport, where the funky furniture was viewed as art. Through high tech photography, O’Grady captured several local dancers and imaged them into the air with lights and visual effects. The house music kept the dancers moving non-stop and the closer you get to the window you can see the reflection of yourself. Although my personal visits to the Davenport were on Hip Hop and Old School Saturday nights, I could relate to the universal theme of loss that her artistry uniquely captured on so many levels.
O’Grady, also known as Mademoiselle Bourgeosie Noire, is a wizard at evoking emotion and social change through her work. Since the early 80’s she has challenged racial tensions and sexist notions through this Lois Lane/Wonder Woman character that she created. Some of these works include the 1998 Studies for Flowers of Evil and Good at the Thomas Erben Gallery, NYC, which is a derivative of Les Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) by French poet Charles Baudelaire. The 16-diptych installation evaluated the love between Baudelaire who O’Grady says “speaks in poetry” in her piece and Jeanne Duval, his Haitian common law wife of 20 years, who “speaks in prose.” Through her art, she welcomes us into worlds and situations unknown.
Lorraine O’Grady is a renowned artist, critic, writer, and educator. She has just completed a five-year span at the University of California-Irvine where she taught African American studies and studio art.
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