Renee Green
Encyclopedia
Renée Green is an artist
, writer, and filmmaker. Her pluralistic practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, architecture, photography, prints, video, film, websites, and sound, which normally converge in highly layered and complex installations. Green studied art at Wesleyan University
, with an intermediary year at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Green also attended the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Course, at Harvard University
, Cambridge, MA. In 1989 she was a participant in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (ISP).
Green wrote Discourse on Afro-American Art as her graduating thesis from Wesleyan University
, a “textual analysis of criticisms, which were written by both Black and White critics from the 1920s and the 1960s.” A seminal influence was Green’s participation in cataloging Sol LeWitt’s donated collection to Wadsworth Atheneum. Green wrote the catalog entries for Adrian Piper
, and Lawrence Weiner
.
Green explains in her own words the impetus behind this activity of collecting and exhibiting different data and materials: “I wanted to begin by examining an artifact, a text, a painting or a group of paintings, a decorative object, an image, a novel, a poem, a garden, a palace, a house. By beginning with these objects or places, and the contexts in which they appeared, it was possible to detect the intricate working of certain ideologies which were being put forth [...] and to attempt to decipher the contradictory pleasure which might accompany them."
A lot of the materials collected for her projects come from the immense repository already in existence in our culture, but her work can not be considered as a mere assemblage of cultural artifacts, nor an appropriationist practice. In each of her projects, Green produces works of art in different mediums like photography [Secret (1994–2006)], prints [Code: Survey], films [Some Chance Operations (1999); Wavelinks (2002), Elsewhere? (2002], and sound [Vanished Gardens (2004), Muriel’s Words (2004)], which are integrated in highly designed installations or environments. Due to the selective accumulation of materials Green’s work has been labeled in some instances as archival.
As a result of the complex web of relations and conceptual links among the materials and projects, these normally take place during a duration of time, and in different locations, in which the same theme is presented in different formats. For example, Import/Export Funk Office (1992), was presented as an installation in Cologne and Los Angeles, and exists also as Cd-Rom (1996); or Code: Survey (2005–2006) takes the form of a permanent public work installed at the Caltrans Headquarter in Downtown Los Angeles, and as a website, which can be accessed worldwide. http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist07/code_survey/intro.htm
Import-Export Funk Office (1992) is a subjective map of the flow of hip hop music
and related culture between New York
, Los Angeles
and Cologne
.
Mise-en-Scène (1992), an investigation of the role in which French cities like Clisson
and Nantes
played in the Atlantic slave trade
.
Secret (1994). Green inhabited an apartment at Le Corbusier
’s Firminy Unité d'Habitation
, and documented her stay via photographs and video.
Partially Buried in Three Parts (1995–1997). Robert Smithson
’s land art work Partially Buried Woodshed (1970) functions as the starting point in Green’s examination of student’s protest movements in the United States, which focuses in the Kent State shootings
, as well as in Kwangju’s student’s massacre which took place in Korea in 1981, also known as Gwangju Democratization Movement. In its installation form, the work presents an examination of the year 1970 from different perspectives.
Some Chance Operations (1999). An essay-film about Italian filmmaker Elvira Notari.
Elsewhere? (2002–2004). The film Elsewhere? was created for an installation located in a garden setting in Kassel, for Documenta
11, Standardized Octagonal Units for Imagined and Existing Systems (2002). The film explores the idea of imaginary places, as well as the history of gardens and gardens architecture or follies
. In 2003 Elsewhere? was presented as an installation at Portikus
, Frankfurt where 1400 colored imaginary places names covered the spaced walls http://www.portikus.de/ArchiveA0115.html.
Endless Dreams and Water Between (2009). In this project commissioned by the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, Green created an immersive environment in which through drawings, sound, banners and films ideas of islands, physical or mental, are explored. In a film titled as the exhibition, fictional characters write to each other reflecting on a different range of subjects, among these historical figures like George Sand
, Laura Riding
, Frédéric Chopin
, Robert Graves
, and Llorenç Villalonga; the characters also investigate longer histories of the three locations that they inhabit: Majorca, Manhattan
, and the San Francisco Bay Area
. Endless Dreams and Water Between.
Due to the density and formal complexity of her different projects, Green uses the standard catalogue published alongside her exhibitions, as a part of her work. These books function in a variety of levels: as an exhibition catalogue
, as an artist's book, as a repository of documents, as transcripts of conversations and scripts of the films and videos produced for the different projects .
In 1997 Green was chosen by the American Federation of the Arts to design Artist/Author: Contemporary Artist's Books.
Green has also written extensively, and her work has been published in different publications from United States and Europe. Among the publications are October, Texte zur Kunst, Transition, Sarai Reader, Multitudes, and Collapse.
, Green has also been working as an educator. She has been guest faculty at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (ISP) since 1991, and became the Director of the Studio Program in 1996-1997. From 1997 to 2002 she was Professor at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna. In 2003 she moved back to the United States to become Distinguished Artist Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. From 2005 to June 30, 2011 Green was Professor and Dean of Graduate Studies at the San Francisco Art Institute. During her tenure as Dean she directed Spheres of Interest, the Graduate Lecture Series. She is currently a Professor at the Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) Program, School of Architecture and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
. She is also guest faculty at Maumaus - Escola de Artes Visuais, Lisbon. Other teaching venues as guest professor have included Yale University, Vermont College, Hochschule der Kunst in Berlin, and the Hochschule fur angewandte Kunst, Vienna.
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, writer, and filmmaker. Her pluralistic practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, architecture, photography, prints, video, film, websites, and sound, which normally converge in highly layered and complex installations. Green studied art at Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
, with an intermediary year at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Green also attended the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Course, at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, Cambridge, MA. In 1989 she was a participant in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (ISP).
Green wrote Discourse on Afro-American Art as her graduating thesis from Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
, a “textual analysis of criticisms, which were written by both Black and White critics from the 1920s and the 1960s.” A seminal influence was Green’s participation in cataloging Sol LeWitt’s donated collection to Wadsworth Atheneum. Green wrote the catalog entries for Adrian Piper
Adrian Piper
Adrian Margaret Smith Piper is a first-generation conceptual artist and analytic philosopher who was born in New York City and lived for many years on Cape Cod, Massachusetts before emigrating from the United States...
, and Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner was a central figure in the formation of conceptual art in the 1960s His work often takes the form of typographic texts.- Life and career :...
.
Work Overview
Green’s work adopts the form of complex and highly formalized installations in which ideas, historical events and narratives, as well as cultural artifacts, are examined from myriad perspectives. As scholar Alexander Alberro notes, Green’s attempt is not a didactic one, rather an invitation to participate in the construction of knowledge, as well as shifting perception: “Green consistently gives the spectator a central role in the process of deconstructing genealogical discourses and assuming subject positions. Indeed, a feature that recurs in her installations is the production of interactive environments that galvanize the viewer into the role of an equal participant in the construction of meaning.”Green explains in her own words the impetus behind this activity of collecting and exhibiting different data and materials: “I wanted to begin by examining an artifact, a text, a painting or a group of paintings, a decorative object, an image, a novel, a poem, a garden, a palace, a house. By beginning with these objects or places, and the contexts in which they appeared, it was possible to detect the intricate working of certain ideologies which were being put forth [...] and to attempt to decipher the contradictory pleasure which might accompany them."
A lot of the materials collected for her projects come from the immense repository already in existence in our culture, but her work can not be considered as a mere assemblage of cultural artifacts, nor an appropriationist practice. In each of her projects, Green produces works of art in different mediums like photography [Secret (1994–2006)], prints [Code: Survey], films [Some Chance Operations (1999); Wavelinks (2002), Elsewhere? (2002], and sound [Vanished Gardens (2004), Muriel’s Words (2004)], which are integrated in highly designed installations or environments. Due to the selective accumulation of materials Green’s work has been labeled in some instances as archival.
As a result of the complex web of relations and conceptual links among the materials and projects, these normally take place during a duration of time, and in different locations, in which the same theme is presented in different formats. For example, Import/Export Funk Office (1992), was presented as an installation in Cologne and Los Angeles, and exists also as Cd-Rom (1996); or Code: Survey (2005–2006) takes the form of a permanent public work installed at the Caltrans Headquarter in Downtown Los Angeles, and as a website, which can be accessed worldwide. http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist07/code_survey/intro.htm
Some Projects
A brief description of selected Green’s projects.Import-Export Funk Office (1992) is a subjective map of the flow of hip hop music
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
and related culture between New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
and Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
.
Mise-en-Scène (1992), an investigation of the role in which French cities like Clisson
Clisson
Clisson , is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique département in western France.It is situated at the confluence of the Sèvre Nantaise and the Moine southeast of Nantes ....
and Nantes
Nantes
Nantes is a city in western France, located on the Loire River, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the 6th largest in France, while its metropolitan area ranks 8th with over 800,000 inhabitants....
played in the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
.
Secret (1994). Green inhabited an apartment at Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
’s Firminy Unité d'Habitation
Unité d'Habitation
The Unité d'Habitation is the name of a modernist residential housing design principle developed by Le Corbusier, with the collaboration of painter-architect Nadir Afonso...
, and documented her stay via photographs and video.
Partially Buried in Three Parts (1995–1997). Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson was an American artist famous for his land art.-Background and education:Smithson was born in Passaic, New Jersey and studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League of New York....
’s land art work Partially Buried Woodshed (1970) functions as the starting point in Green’s examination of student’s protest movements in the United States, which focuses in the Kent State shootings
Kent State shootings
The Kent State shootings—also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre—occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970...
, as well as in Kwangju’s student’s massacre which took place in Korea in 1981, also known as Gwangju Democratization Movement. In its installation form, the work presents an examination of the year 1970 from different perspectives.
Some Chance Operations (1999). An essay-film about Italian filmmaker Elvira Notari.
Elsewhere? (2002–2004). The film Elsewhere? was created for an installation located in a garden setting in Kassel, for Documenta
Documenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
11, Standardized Octagonal Units for Imagined and Existing Systems (2002). The film explores the idea of imaginary places, as well as the history of gardens and gardens architecture or follies
Follies
Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman. The story concerns a reunion in a crumbling Broadway theatre, scheduled for demolition, of the past performers of the "Weismann's Follies," a musical revue , that played in that theatre between the World Wars...
. In 2003 Elsewhere? was presented as an installation at Portikus
Portikus
Portikus is an exhibition hall for contemporary art in Frankfurt am Main, originally founded in 1987 through the initiation of Kasper König, one of the most influential living curators of contemporary art. It's name derives from the surviving portico of the Stadtbibliothek from 1825 that was...
, Frankfurt where 1400 colored imaginary places names covered the spaced walls http://www.portikus.de/ArchiveA0115.html.
Endless Dreams and Water Between (2009). In this project commissioned by the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, Green created an immersive environment in which through drawings, sound, banners and films ideas of islands, physical or mental, are explored. In a film titled as the exhibition, fictional characters write to each other reflecting on a different range of subjects, among these historical figures like George Sand
George Sand
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...
, Laura Riding
Laura Riding
Laura Jackson was an American poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer.- Early life :...
, Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
, Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
, and Llorenç Villalonga; the characters also investigate longer histories of the three locations that they inhabit: Majorca, Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, and the San Francisco Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
. Endless Dreams and Water Between.
Due to the density and formal complexity of her different projects, Green uses the standard catalogue published alongside her exhibitions, as a part of her work. These books function in a variety of levels: as an exhibition catalogue
Exhibition catalogue
There are two types of exhibition catalogue : a printed list of exhibits at an art exhibition; and a directory of exhibitors at a trade fair or business-to-business event.-Art or museum exhibition catalogues:...
, as an artist's book, as a repository of documents, as transcripts of conversations and scripts of the films and videos produced for the different projects .
In 1997 Green was chosen by the American Federation of the Arts to design Artist/Author: Contemporary Artist's Books.
Green has also written extensively, and her work has been published in different publications from United States and Europe. Among the publications are October, Texte zur Kunst, Transition, Sarai Reader, Multitudes, and Collapse.
Green As Educator
Even though an artistArtist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, Green has also been working as an educator. She has been guest faculty at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (ISP) since 1991, and became the Director of the Studio Program in 1996-1997. From 1997 to 2002 she was Professor at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna. In 2003 she moved back to the United States to become Distinguished Artist Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. From 2005 to June 30, 2011 Green was Professor and Dean of Graduate Studies at the San Francisco Art Institute. During her tenure as Dean she directed Spheres of Interest, the Graduate Lecture Series. She is currently a Professor at the Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) Program, School of Architecture and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
. She is also guest faculty at Maumaus - Escola de Artes Visuais, Lisbon. Other teaching venues as guest professor have included Yale University, Vermont College, Hochschule der Kunst in Berlin, and the Hochschule fur angewandte Kunst, Vienna.
External links
- Code: Survey Website http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist07/code_survey/intro.htm
- Renée Green's Free Agent Media Website