IMATANI, Garrick; SAND, Kaia

Mixed media

4 1/2 x 23 x 22" OVERALL

Garrick Imatani’s work centers on issues related to archival exploration, artistic collaboration, and placemaking (an approach that considers the planning, design, and layout of public space in relation to the community). This mixed media work includes the files from the Looseleaf Services: (a) cardboard box entitled Looseleaf Services; (b) So He Raised His Hand, (documents) by Inge Bruggeman; (c) 12 stencils with description, designed by Katherine Ball. The Watcher File Project investigates and interprets, in various ways, records amassed by the Portland Police Bureau on 301 activist groups operating in the city between the 1960s through the 1980s. Such groups were under routine surveillance until an Oregon law was passed prohibiting the authorities from spying on factions not officially under criminal investigation. Imatani’s participation in the exhibition is represented by Looseleaf Services, which consists of two major components: a filing cabinet holding various records reproduced as metal inserts, and a cardboard binder that sits atop the cabinet holding a publication subscription. For $40 a year subscribers receive “primary and secondary source documents-addenda & errata-all punched with holes to slip into the binder.” Additional materials that are sent to subscribers include artwork, poetry, essays, and small objects made by collaborators that relate to the materials within the files. All the materials including the filing cabinet are meant to be handled by visitors. By researching and making this information available, Imatani hopes to preserve the history of these activist groups as well as highlight the history of their surveillance.

2013-14

IMATANI, Garrick; SAND, Kaia

b. United States, 1974 (Imatani); b. United States, 1971 (Sand)

Museum purchase

2014.018.001a-c