The End of Failure Curated by Katrina Lamb April 29 – May 13 Opening Reception: April 29, 2011, 7:30-10:00 p.m.

Performances by Ross Moreno, Christian Oittinen, and Ryan Wilsie begin at 8:30 p.m. Television For Ghosts, by Shalo P., will conclude the program at 10:00 p.m. as the doors close, and will continue into the night.

Ross Moreno Michelle O’ Brien Christian Oitinnen and Kellie McCool Shalo P Anna Pratt Jeff Ray Chris Sollars Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore Ryan Wilsie Anne Yalon Micahel Zheng

Failure. Do you remember when we used to run with this word, owning it as prize-winning job title and life strategy? Artistically and academically, thrilled by its abject potential, we mined failure for all it was worth. We glorified living in flats with leaking ceilings, prided our attempts to flunk out of Painting 101, and bonded over beers stolen from the next table over. The possibilities seemed endless-visually manifested through scribbly line drawing, undocumented (quote“ephemeral”) public interventions, and deliberately anti-gallery processes.

We were the founders of post-conceptual working methodologies. We collapsed the space between intent and action, rejecting content and meaning; whatever the new project was about was beside the point—what mattered was how it made you feel.

Failure has been championed for its reputation as a strategy that carries radical connotations—one that implicitly rejects mainstream values and measures of success and creates a way to turn attention to things that may be otherwise ignored or erased. (Documents of Contemporary Art) (Lisa LeFeuvre, MIT Press, 2010), Beautiful Losers (directed by Aaron Rose and Joshua Leonard, Sidetrack Films, 2008), A Conference on Failure in the Arts (hosted by University at Buffalo’s Department of Visual Studies, February 2010) and P.S. 1’s event entitled An Afternoon of Failure (April 2, 2011) are just a few examples of recent major exhibitions, shows, and texts that have cemented failure as a broadly understood phenomenon in contemporary art.

As the methodologies and strategies that surrounded failure have gained recognition and acceptance, what viability and meaning do these strategies have for artists now? Has “failure” been mined for its entire worth, or does failure still hold the potential to instigate new ways of being in the world? If not, then how is our generation of avant-garde (for lack of better term) artists, musicians, writers, academics, and thinkers going to reconcile what may be a potentially painful process or reconciliation.

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from A SHORT PLAY ON FAILURE by Harry Aclund, 1999.

Andrew Mackenzie-Oh timelord, we have heard your cries from the future. We are the oracles you called. You have succeeded in distorting time.

Andrea Garner-Yes, Lord knows how blind you have been: all here are from the past, like it or not.

Timelord- Then you are not real.

Chorus (sing)- A Ha. Are we real. Real or false. Are we real. Real or false.

Timelord- By Davros what are these voices — my failure is confirmed, Am I real or false? My success is a fraud, it is not possible at all. My failure is my inevitable tragedy.

Chorus (Sing)- But we are here, we are real, you are false.

Nickie Smith- Yes we are here for you, we have come for you, to rid time of you. We come in the image of friends, but Davros sent us to destroy you; your success is your downfall; your success is to be our end. you could say your failure.

(she strangles him)

Timelord- My success? my success is my downfall. I have run out of time….

(dies)

Narrator- And so we witness the madness, and the death of our hero – a self-proclaimed failure, who’s success was his downfall, although he (tragically) only knew this on his death. He was surely a sacrifice for the stability of time itself at the command of the mighty Davros, but we are running out of time too, and our moral tale must close upon this sadness.

Chorus (sing)- Our tale must end, our tale must end,

this sadness is so overwhelming,

the Lord of time is dead, the lord of time is dead,

this sadness is so overwhelming,

or will he fight the mighty Davros on another day,

in another time.

(THE END).