PROJECT
PeoplesLab, 2024
PeoplesLab offers procedural, pragmatic and sensorial tools for change:
meeting conflict with an adaptive process to revive trust between people; guiding recognition and understanding of differing perspectives; illuminating ways in which we may be caught in old structures, beliefs and habits; teaching communication and negotiation skills to bridge differences, and generate creative options for effective collaboration. In our era of severe cultural tension and change our collective future depends on our asking, “Who are we to one another”, and on choosing to align in mutual support to meet each other with new creative responses.
Date :20 May 2021
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PUBLICATION
Where Art Might Happen: The Early Years of CalArts, 2021
Philipp Kaiser, Christina Vegh,
Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, Germany
The publication Where Art Might Happen: The Early Years of CalArts, accompanies the exhibition of the same name presented at the Kestner Gesellschaft during 2019. The structure of this publication is astutely highlighted by the chapters Where Art Might Happen, an overview of the exhibition including 42 artists, as well as essays + oral histories in the following chapters Institutional History, Fluxus, Feminist Art Program and Conceptualisms.
Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, Germany
The publication Where Art Might Happen: The Early Years of CalArts, accompanies the exhibition of the same name presented at the Kestner Gesellschaft during 2019. The structure of this publication is astutely highlighted by the chapters Where Art Might Happen, an overview of the exhibition including 42 artists, as well as essays + oral histories in the following chapters Institutional History, Fluxus, Feminist Art Program and Conceptualisms.
Date :19 May 2021
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PROJECT
The Sighted See the Surface, 2020
LM Projects is pleased to announce its latest publication, The Sighted See the Surface, by artist Dorit Cypis
The Sighted See the Surface is an expansive project developed by Dorit Cypis over the course of seven years (2012-19). Sparked by the death of mentor and teacher Michael Asher, Cypis excavates her 40 year art practice by connecting disparate points from past to present while unearthing the complexities between sight and seeing, difference and the psychosocial relations within and between people. Works made during this period include video, photography, prints and drawings.
The Sighted See the Surface is an expansive project developed by Dorit Cypis over the course of seven years (2012-19). Sparked by the death of mentor and teacher Michael Asher, Cypis excavates her 40 year art practice by connecting disparate points from past to present while unearthing the complexities between sight and seeing, difference and the psychosocial relations within and between people. Works made during this period include video, photography, prints and drawings.
Date :12 Sep 2020
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PROJECT
Friendly Fire, Epoch Virtual, 2020
EPOCH Gallery | September 5 – October 23
Friendly Fire – Epoch Virtual explores how our internal landscapes may reveal traumas of social histories – trapping us into reactive behavior. Histories are embodied and refracted by us even as we may hold elevated social principals and values. How may we be wearing the ancient warrior coliseum as a collar around our necks? In the age of Covid-19 everything has shifted under and around us. It’s a new world order yet held by broken old world structures. How will we assess conditions with new eyes, ears, minds and bodies to weave our ways towards developing generative models for who we want to be to
one another?
Date :12 Sep 2020
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PROJECT
The Color of Whiteness
Field Workshop: Action Projects, 2020
ICA Los Angeles | August 30, 2020
The Color of Whiteness was performed Sunday, August 30, in-person and over Zoom, by invitation-only and on site at ICA-LA. This event was created by Cypis and 7 previous participants of PeoplesLab: Identity, Race, Whiteness + Antiracism, a research/training/dialogue program Cypis developed in June 2020 following the tragic murder of George Floyd.
Date :30 Aug 2020
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PROJECT
Come Closer, 2019
Come Closer is a triptych of prints intended to be challenging to read. The work asks the reader to take time, to focus carefully in following a flashlight beam across words that appear and disappear in shadow.
Date :03 Dec 2019
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PROJECT
XI OPEN CITY Festival of Art in Public Space, Lublin, Poland
Showcasing contemporary art in urban space as an integral part of everyday urban reality. Hospitality versus Hostility in Lublin’s History and Contemporary Global Cultures
September 13 – October 12, 2019
Welcome the Stranger is created for the Open City Festival, Lublin, Poland, an ancient city with complex political and cultural histories. Welcome the Stranger is an urban installation, performance and social engagement project that reflects principles of sharing sustenance across all human need. Dorit Cypis and Louise Steinman are two artists, a visual artist and a writer, living in Los Angeles, USA, both with family roots in Poland’s Jewish community.
opencity.pl
facebook.com/festiwal.opencity/photos
opencity.pl
facebook.com/festiwal.opencity/photos
Date :04 Oct 2019
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PROJECT
The Sighted See the Surface (Studio), 2019
The Sighted See the Surface, which began as a tribute to artist Michael Asher whose practice shed light on power and consciousness, documents a mapping process of projected light across 11 photographs installed on a wall at the artist’s studio. The photographs perform as portals into events taking place between 1973 - 1977 and 2012 - 2016. Cypis’ process borrows from crime detective tropes connecting unlikely suspects, locations, intentions and expectations to chart a prism of possibilities between sight and blindness, intimacy and violence, conceptual art and community dialogue. The Sighted... deepens Cypis’ investigation into aesthetics, ethics, identity and human relations, the roots of her practice since the late 1970s.
Date :29 Aug 2019
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PUBLICATION
The Art of Direct Action: Social Sculpture and Beyond, 2019
Karen van den Berg, Cara M. Jordan, Philipp Kleinmichel (Eds.)
Texts by Karen van den Berg, Mary Jane Jacob, Cara M. Jordan, Grant Kester, Philipp Kleinmichel, Kuda Production, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Marina Naprushkina, Dan Peterman, Rainer Rappmann, Pedro Reyes, John Roberts, Gregory Sholette, Caroline Tisdall, Anton Vidokle, Caroline Woolard
One of the most significant shifts in contemporary art during the past two decades concerns artists and collectives who have moved their artistic focus from representation to direct social action.
Texts by Karen van den Berg, Mary Jane Jacob, Cara M. Jordan, Grant Kester, Philipp Kleinmichel, Kuda Production, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Marina Naprushkina, Dan Peterman, Rainer Rappmann, Pedro Reyes, John Roberts, Gregory Sholette, Caroline Tisdall, Anton Vidokle, Caroline Woolard
One of the most significant shifts in contemporary art during the past two decades concerns artists and collectives who have moved their artistic focus from representation to direct social action.
Date :15 Aug 2019
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PROJECT
Close Your Eyes If You Want to See
Santa Monica Prefecture | April 1 – July 6, 2019
Santa Monica Prefecture is pleased to present a new work by artist Dorit Cypis, Close Your Eyes If You Want to See, a social sculpture exploring relationships between psychological, physical and social aspects of identity and social relations. Clear, fearless, and piercing, Dorit’s work emphasizes critical social engagement, never falling into reaction, or outrage.
Date :16 Jul 2019
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PROJECT
One Another: Identity, Difference + Conflict
NAVEL | April 17, 2019
Dorit Cypis presents a ten-act interactive presentation on identity, difference and conflict – key themes in the upcoming collaborative research project, One Another. Here, interested audience members will be invited to apply to participate in the seven month process, where, if selected, they will progress through several rounds of rigorous collective inquiry and self-examination.
Date :11 Apr 2019
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PUBLICATION
Art Reminds Us: We Are Implicated in Each Other’s Lives, 2018
One of the things recent events at the Mexico/US border have shown us is the power of documentation: audio, video, and photos that indelibly show the human impact of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy. While the viral response to news of separated families and children held in “tender age facilities” underscores the power of such practices, it also raises questions for those of us in the art world: What can art do that journalism can’t? If documentation can stop us in our tracks, is it art’s job to help us move beyond that, to process what we encounter in the media? Four artists weigh in: Natalia Almada, Jackie Amézquita, Dorit Cypis, and Ifrah Mansour.
Date :18 Aug 2018
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PROJECT
The Future of Policing, 2015 – 2018 ongoing
Presented by Days of Dialogue, Institute for Non Violence Los Angeles, across Communities of Los Angeles City and County,
Dorit Cypis is assisting The Future of Policing as a Dialogue Facilitator. Days of Dialogue is a nonpartisan organization whose mission is to be a catalyst in the community problem solving process by creating dialogue on sensitive social issues among diverse community groups.
Date :10 Jan 2018
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PROJECT
To the Population, 2016
A safety vest protects the human chest and warns of danger. This vest is stuffed with “campaign” buttons asking questions of psycho-physical dimension. We pass people in need on the streets every day. What do we know of one another? How can we connect beyond our fear, towards empathy and reciprocity?
Date :10 Jan 2018
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PUBLICATION
The Space of Conflict: Aesthetic Lessons for Mediators, 2016
Published in Handbook in Mediation, editor Alexia Georgakopoulos, Routledge Press, 2017
The Space of Conflict: Aesthetic Lessons for Mediators frames lessons on recognizing the knots of chronic conflict through considering the spatial nuances of human identity and social relations. As an artist and mediator I use the double lens of aesthetics and mediation to explore identity as psychic spaces within bodies and politicized spaces surrounding bodies that mirror, inform and extend each other. If we miss this reflexive relationship between internal and external spaces, we miss a large part of the story of human identity differences and what fuels conflict between and within people. My artist practice has always explored identity and social relations through aesthetic genres of performance, photography and social sculpture. I became a mediator to extend out from the...
Date :14 Apr 2017
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PROJECT
Whose Bare Life (braille), 2015
Series of 18 prints, each uniquePhotographs with visual braille in Silkscreen.
Date :15 Jan 2016
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PROJECT
Who Did It (alert), 2013 – 2015
Who Did It (alert) makes simple words complex to read. The 5 prints mimic the 5 colours of Homeland Security Advisory System instituted in the USA in 2002.
Date :10 Dec 2015
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PROJECT
News to Be Read, 2013
Photograph of a monthly journal, Braille edition - one of a series of eight.
Date :05 Mar 2013
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PUBLICATION
Performing Empathy: What the Arts Can Offer Conflict Resolution, 2014
Empathy, Art and Mediation
Differences between people can be incomprehensible, fueling mistrust that can deter us from engagement. Recognizing and negotiating personal and cultural differences is dependent on developing empathy for oneself and between people. Empathy is more than feeling for another; empathy requires us to reach deep within ourselves and recognize our own inner responses so we can then better recognize another person’s response.
Differences between people can be incomprehensible, fueling mistrust that can deter us from engagement. Recognizing and negotiating personal and cultural differences is dependent on developing empathy for oneself and between people. Empathy is more than feeling for another; empathy requires us to reach deep within ourselves and recognize our own inner responses so we can then better recognize another person’s response.
Date :07 Feb 2014
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PROJECT
The Sighted, 2013
Archival pigment prints on Hahnemuhle rag paper.
Date :05 Feb 2013
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PROJECT
Can i be dropped from history?, 2013
Video: 30 sec (loop), iPad, aluminum frame, 12” x 18” blackboard.
Date :05 Jan 2013
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PUBLICATION
History Lesson (an arrangement), 2011
In Tribute to Tadeusz Kantor
Tadeusz, I am so happy to be in relations with you once again. It has been quite some time since we last met, Los Angeles, the summer of 1984 I believe. The Olympic Games, against the LA backdrop pretense of urban harmony, had inhaled the city. Downtown, hundred of homeless people were given one-way bus tickets to Arizona, “cleansing” the streets of a hyper visuality of basic human life needs.
Tadeusz, I am so happy to be in relations with you once again. It has been quite some time since we last met, Los Angeles, the summer of 1984 I believe. The Olympic Games, against the LA backdrop pretense of urban harmony, had inhaled the city. Downtown, hundred of homeless people were given one-way bus tickets to Arizona, “cleansing” the streets of a hyper visuality of basic human life needs.
Date :25 Dec 2011
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PROJECT
… a prelude to The Life of Life, 2012
The Life of Life is a performative work including “sleight of hand” tricks that continue the artist’s aesthetic exploration of the uncanny nature of history.
Date :04 Jan 2012
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PUBLICATION
Los Angeles: A Zone Beyond Time, 2010
Relocating to Southern California in 1975 was an adjustment to Pacific Standard Time
and to the persistence of shifting sands. That’s the year I landed in Los Angeles,
specifically at the California Institute for the Arts (CalArts), after a half-year residency in
New York’s Soho, across the street from the art bookstore Jaap Reitman, and five years
studying in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Date :07 Aug 2010
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PROJECT
ALL MY FLOWERS (2010), 2011
Yearlong event - flowers held in this vase from January 1 – December 31, 2010
Date :01 Mar 2011
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PUBLICATION
Foreign Exchanges: You who look may not see, 2008
“May I help you?” “No thank you. Just looking”.
To look is to scan, taking in selectively without commitment, to consume, gliding over endless surfaces, to shop, desiring, inhaling without exhaling, to project without reflection. To see, is an intimate act, recognizing that the one outside of oneself is different and at the same time very like oneself. To witness this simultaneous sameness and difference of “you” requires a commitment from me of extra-ordinary proportions.
To look is to scan, taking in selectively without commitment, to consume, gliding over endless surfaces, to shop, desiring, inhaling without exhaling, to project without reflection. To see, is an intimate act, recognizing that the one outside of oneself is different and at the same time very like oneself. To witness this simultaneous sameness and difference of “you” requires a commitment from me of extra-ordinary proportions.
Date :07 Nov 2008
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PROJECT
Plis (the similar between Polish and Palestinian), 2011
Two rubbings of same silver box (from A Symmetry).
Date :07 Feb 2011
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PUBLICATION
flip, flop, foul and reconciliation: which beautiful game?
EAST OF BORNEO | July 2014
Rook Campbell and Dorit Cypis are colleagues, a professor of sport diplomacy and an artist and mediator. They engage on “Fútbol: The Beautiful Game,” an art exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art curated by Franklin Sirmans.
Date :14 Jul 2014
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PROJECT
A SYMMETRY, 2011
A Symmetry is a time line of photographs and text charting seven objects chosen from the artist’s family archive.
Date :01 Jan 2011
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PUBLICATION
A Brave New World (remix), 2011
Ghostly reflections of Hieronymus Bosch...Dante’s Inferno...Dawn of the Dead... interchangeably drifted through my mind when I first entered the tent city of Occupy Los Angeles, late October, 2011. The terrain of people was bare, raw, gritty, and utterly public. I’m an artist and a mediator. I chose to show up on site frequently over the next month offering engagement and conflict transformation skills to support their capacity to perform expressions of public outcry at our culture’s out of control social inequity. These are my reflections...
Date :07 Dec 2011
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PROJECT
The Artist and Her Archive, 2010
The artist spent three-months investigating her archive to discover connective portals of personal and political dimensions. Personal objects took on cultural and political meaning not previously recognized.
Date :10 Nov 2010
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PUBLICATION
Conflict, Mourning and Aesthetics, 2008
(what happens when history does not pass?)
Conflict, informed by a complexion of personal subjectivities and cultural forces, exists within and between people. Where there is difference there will be conflict and as human difference is inevitable, so is conflict. The question is, what tools are available towards questioning, examination, reformation and transformation?
Conflict, informed by a complexion of personal subjectivities and cultural forces, exists within and between people. Where there is difference there will be conflict and as human difference is inevitable, so is conflict. The question is, what tools are available towards questioning, examination, reformation and transformation?
Date :07 May 2008
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PROJECT
Inside/Outside/In, 2010
Inside/Outside/In was developed as a performance for Dan Graham the gallery, to engage with the artist Dan Graham's Performer/Audience/Mirror, originally performed in 1975.
Date :07 Nov 2010
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PUBLICATION
The Spirit of Proximity, 2008
Journal for Art and Protest
What is the lifespan of the spirit of revolution? I always wondered about this question ...even as very young child. I remember my father, a textile engineer, traveling every year to Central America from Israel, and then from Montreal, and returning home, it seemed to me, with stories of either recurring natural disaster or revolution. My juvenile mind couldn’t comprehend, but I did wonder: why another revolution in the same place, when there had been one only a few years before?
What is the lifespan of the spirit of revolution? I always wondered about this question ...even as very young child. I remember my father, a textile engineer, traveling every year to Central America from Israel, and then from Montreal, and returning home, it seemed to me, with stories of either recurring natural disaster or revolution. My juvenile mind couldn’t comprehend, but I did wonder: why another revolution in the same place, when there had been one only a few years before?
Date :07 Sep 2008
Comment :Off
PROJECT
Galileo, 2008
Galileo is an immersive installation of photographs, mirrors, a telescope and chairs.
Date :08 May 2008
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PROJECT
Stranded Subject (Weekends), 2007
Stranded Subject (weekends), an immersive installation, digitally re-combines newspaper images to create new narratives from those that are delivered to us daily.
Date :07 May 2007
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PUBLICATION
Between the Conceptual and the Vibrational, 2003
Dorit Cypis speaking with Simone Forti
Simone Forti today, is the same woman I met many years ago, and so much more. Her work in dance, from the 1950's to today, 2004, spans the aesthetic movements of expressionism and minimalism and has branched much further into a mature hybrid of both, embracing a deep humanism of extraordinary focus to the details of life and death, which surrounds us daily.
Simone Forti today, is the same woman I met many years ago, and so much more. Her work in dance, from the 1950's to today, 2004, spans the aesthetic movements of expressionism and minimalism and has branched much further into a mature hybrid of both, embracing a deep humanism of extraordinary focus to the details of life and death, which surrounds us daily.
Date :21 Mar 2003
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PROJECT
Sightlines, 2006
Sightlines, is an immersive environment where the viewer becomes partner to cross-historical and cross-cultural variables.
Date :08 Jun 2006
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PROJECT
Liberty (leading the people), 2003
Liberty (leading the people) is a reflection on Eugene Delacroix's romantic/classical painting Liberty Leading the People, 1830. Cypis employs photography, video, performance, and sculpture to create an immersive space of experience and discovery, psychological, physical and political.
Date :08 Nov 2003
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PROJECT
Framing Memories I Never Had, 1998
Framing Memories I Never Had is a perpetual projection machine projecting images of 7’ x 5’ against the wall it faces.
Date :17 Feb 1998
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PROJECT
The Visceral Viewer and the Court, 2000 – 2002
The Visceral Viewer and the Court was developed as college curriculum bridging aesthetics and social practice. Partnerships were developed between college/university art departments and California Superior Courthouses.
Date :07 May 2000
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PROJECT
Psycho Portraits, 1993 – 1995
Psycho-Portraits are made from autobiographical and public domain pictures that each subject participant chose from his/her personal collection. The portraits evoke social and psychological layers of identity.
Date :17 Feb 1993
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PROJECT
Kulture Klub Collaborative, 1992 – present
Artist Dorit Cypis created Kulture Klub Collaborative in 1992 within Project OffStreets, a drop-in center providing crisis intervention services for homeless youth in Minneapolis.
Date :07 Nov 1992
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PROJECT
Living Buildings Act, 1979
Living Buildings Act, was presented at the Federal Building, 11000 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA.
"What is the GSA, the agency responsible for holding back and NOT passing on the presidency logistics baton to Biden/Harris?
In 1979 I spent the year negotiating with the GSA - General Services Administration of all USA federal buildings - to permit me to install and perform a daily ritual at the Federal Building in West Los Angeles - a ritual represented by dancers moving under/with the metaphoric weight of government and corporate industry across their shoulders. (comment added 11-11-2020)"
"What is the GSA, the agency responsible for holding back and NOT passing on the presidency logistics baton to Biden/Harris?
In 1979 I spent the year negotiating with the GSA - General Services Administration of all USA federal buildings - to permit me to install and perform a daily ritual at the Federal Building in West Los Angeles - a ritual represented by dancers moving under/with the metaphoric weight of government and corporate industry across their shoulders. (comment added 11-11-2020)"
Date :17 Feb 1979
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PROJECT
Foundation for Art Resources, FAR, 1977 – present
Foundation for Art Resources was founded by the innovative gallerists Morgan Thomas, Connie Lewallen, and Claire Copley, for the production and presentation of contemporary art projects outside of the gallery structure.
Date :07 Jan 1977
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