Future Imaginary at Ben Maltz Gallery

The Future Imaginary
January 24 - March 28, 2009
Press Release (PDF)

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 24, 4-6pm
The Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design is pleased to present the exhibition The Future Imaginary, opening January 24, 2009 with a public reception for the artists from 4-6pm. On view through March 28, 2009, the exhibition features work by 11 artists whose work responds to the new interactive DVD novel The Imaginary 20th Century by Norman Klein, Margo Bistis and Andreas Kratky. The exhibition is sponsored by OTIS Ben Maltz Gallery and Public Programs, The Center for Integrated Media at California Institute of the Arts, and The David Bermant Foundation.
Exhibition-related programming includes a conversation with Tom Leeser, Norman Klein and Margo Bistis on Sunday, February 8 at 4pm, and an exhibition tour led by the curators Tom Leeser and Meg Linton on Saturday, March 28, 11am.Exhibition Curators Tom Leeser, Director of the Center for Integrated Media at California Institute of the Arts, and Meg Linton, Director of OTIS Ben Maltz Gallery and Public Programs, worked in collaboration with author Norman Klein and historian Margo Bistis to create this dynamic, kinetic and provocative interpretation of man’s need to envision the future. The curators and artists engage with the novel by assembling work in response to Klein’s interest in the “misremembering of the future.” Featured artists previewed the DVD novel, and responded by creating a new work or submitting an existing work that engages the premise.

Featured Artists
Deborah Aschheim www.deborahaschheim.com
Jeff Cain http://www.artleak.org/civicmatters/bio_cain.html
Tom Jennings http://wps.com/
Jon Kessler http://www.jonkessler.com/
Ed Osborn www.roving.net
Lea Rekow www.learekow.com/
Douglas Repetto http://music.columbia.edu/~douglas/portfolio/index.shtml
Phil Ross www.philross.org
Kari Rae Seekins http://www.kariraeseekins.com and Aaron Drake www.aarondrake.org
Susan Simpson www.manualarchives.org/susan.htm

DVD-Rom/Novel: The Imaginary 20th Century
by Margo Bistis, Norman Klein, Andreas Kratky
The Imaginary 20th Century is a journey into comic and perverse phantoms – factual, and at the same time, very fictional. It contains a double story: the story of the century that opened at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, and the story of a woman (Carrie), who in 1901, selects four men to seduce her, each with his own version of the new century. In Europe and America, between 1895 and 1926, there was not simply one ‘imaginary 20th century.’ Dazzling visions repeated and overlapped in seemingly endless nuances, like traveling through phantoms of an imaginary future fed by a single engine. In this project, that engine is a historical science-fiction novel that operates as a gigantic interactive database of 2,200 images with an original sound composition. The images are harvested from period illustration, cartoons, photographs, film, ephemera, industrial design, architectural drawing, urban planning schemes, science fiction, fantasy and utopian novels, and more. This collaborative venture follows up on Klein’s award-winning interactive novel Bleeding Through: Layers of Los Angeles, 1920-1986 (2003). Like Bleeding Through, The Imaginary 20th Century is a new narrative form appropriate to the digital age at the end of a consumer-driven century. It is being released as a DVD-Rom with an accompanying book by Verso in Spring 2009.

Event Schedule:
• The Future Imaginary on view: January 24 – March 28, 2009
• Opening Reception for the artists: Saturday, January 24, 4-6pm
• Conversation with Tom Leeser, Norman Klein and Margo Bistis: Sunday, February 8, 4pm
• Exhibition tour with curators: Saturday, March 28, 11am

Press Releases