jhana and the rats of james olds: Short Works

Between June 25th and August 7th, 2011 Stephanie Barber moved her studio into the Baltimore Museum of Art where she created a new video each day in a central gallery open to museum visitors. The goal of this project, entitled jhana and the rats of james olds or 31 days/31 videos, was to create a series of short, poetic videos in the playful and serious footprints of Oulipo games and daily meditations; creating one new video each day. The exhibit was both a constantly changing installation as well as a collaborative performance in which museum visitors were present as spectator and often creative partner. 

“I am thinking about the emphasis given to product over production, or display over creation. The piece is a video screening and an installation and a performance—a spiritual obeisance, an athletic braggadocio, a consideration of Marxist theories of production (with the assembly line so lovingly lit). It is a funny game for me to play, an exercise in concentration, discipline and focus, an extension of my everyday. It is a greedy desire to squeeze a massive amount of work out of myself; a dare; a show I would like to see myself. It is like the backstory before the story, an inversion of the way we usually experience art work. A moving from the inside out. I was thinking how the interiors of museums are really only able to share what is almost the exterior of a piece of art work––and though this colliding of the interior and exterior is fuzzy––a step towards the interior of any art piece might be the making of that piece. I’m interested in the tedious and repetitive qualities of meditation and art work, the difference and similarities in these two practices. The practice and work of these practices––the dispelling of the so-seductive myth of artist as creating through a vague and florid explosion of inspiration––or perhaps interested in romanticizing the effort and challenging technical, logistical, practical elements of creation. The tedious as IT. Or one of the ITs. Like all pieces of art, this project is accordion in its intentions, shrinking and expanding upon use.”—Stephanie Barber

The works, now removed from the course of production, compile a known fascination with the philosophical implications of photographic images; a grappling with memory and the way it shapes our sense of time; an acute awareness of our mortality and a desire to engage the formal concepts of 'narrative' in unexpected ways. Hopefully they consider these concepts with humor, pathos and imagination.

The titles are available individually by request. List of titles:

Colorful Circles: First Day
Dear Randolph
Romance Novels
SOME ANIMALS
Puppet Television
The Badger and the Hare
The Party
Time is Running Out
At the Baths
The Eclipse
At the Shore
Miniatures
Billy and the Magician
Tears or Rain or Something That Falls
Delaney, Soyinka   
Little Kitten
Bruce Nauman
30,000 days
Degas
Have You Seen Diane?
July 1st
The Tree Shadow
TO BE OLD
Level of Zero Buoyancy
My Regrets
The Shama Bird in 1889
Tatum's Ghost
The Phone Call 
For W.G. Sebald (Travel without Travel)    
The Survey
The Last Day