David Antin, Skypoem, c. 1977
The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2008.M.56)
© Estate of David Antin
David Antin, Sky Poem, c. 1988, Museum of contemporary art San Diego, September 29, 2018
© Estate of David Antin
photo © Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, by Stacy Keck
David Antin, Sky Poem, c. 1988, Museum of contemporary art San Diego, September 29, 2018
© Estate of David Antin
photo © Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, by Stacy Keck
David Antin, Sky Poem, c. 1988, Museum of contemporary art San Diego, September 29, 2018
© Estate of David Antin
photo © Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, by Stacy Keck
David Antin, Sky Poems, c. 1988, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, September 29, 2018
© Estate of David Antin
photo © Museum Associates/ LACMA, by Danielle Galván Gomez
David Antin, Sky Poems, c. 1988, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, September 29, 2018
© Estate of David Antin
photo © Museum Associates/ LACMA, by Danielle Galván Gomez
David Antin, Sky Poems, c. 1988, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, September 29, 2018
© Estate of David Antin
photo © Museum Associates/ LACMA, by Danielle Galván Gomez
David Antin, Sky Poems, c. 1988, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, September 29, 2018
© Estate of David Antin
photo © Museum Associates/ LACMA, by Danielle Galván Gomez
David Antin, Sky Poems, c. 1988, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, September 29, 2018
© Estate of David Antin
photo © Museum Associates/ LACMA, by Danielle Galván Gomez
David Antin, Sky Poems, c. 1988, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, September 29, 2018
© Estate of David Antin
photo © Museum Associates/ LACMA, by Danielle Galván Gomez
Performance and symposium
Sky Poems
David Antin
27 & 29 September 2018, Los Angeles and San Diego
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Museum of contemporary art San Diego
a proposal by Julien Bismuth
Initiated by Julien Bismuth, the David Antin performance Sky Poems is the last episode of the the american chapter of the yearlong artistic and curatorial project at La Criée centre d’art in Rennes, While I was also listening to […]. The performance will be restaged behind MCASD La Jolla saturday 29 september 2018 at 11 am and than at 4 pm at LACMA.
On 3 September 1988, MCASD presented Sky Poems 2, a performance and literary event created by poet and performance artist David Antin (1932–2016). The first stanza of the poem appeared in 1987 in the sky over Santa Monica. In La Jolla the following year, a team of aerial skywriters reproduced the second stanza over the beach and the Museum, writing letters in the sky with puffs of smoke. Thirty years later, this vividly ethereal work will be restaged in its original locations as a collaboration between MCASD, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Join us on the coast behind the Museum on the morning of September 29 for the first part of this day-long celebration, which will continue in Los Angeles that afternoon.
The Sky Poems project is organized by French artist Julien Bismuth as a tribute to Antin, who passed away in 2016. Antin wrote that the work was inspired by his childhood memory of a fleet of advertising planes sky-typing a message over Coney Island. His original idea for the piece was “an epic poem stretching across the United States… gradually being written for people who would never see all of it.” While Antin was only able to realize two parts of the epic poem, this 2018 revival will see the poem stretch across Southern California in a single day.
A great friend to MCASD and the San Diego art community, Antin was celebrated internationally for his performative talk poems developed in the early 1970s. He was a founding faculty member in the visual arts department at the University of California, San Diego, where he taught for 27 years. Antin published thirteen books and was the recipient of a Longview Award for Poetry; fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities; and the PEN Los Angeles Award for Poetry in 1984.
Julien Bismuth, associated artist of to the cycle While I was also listening […] 2017-2018, initiated the restaging of Sky Poems as part of the yearlong curatorial and artistic project, with the support of director Sophie Kaplan.
A special symposium will be held at the Hammer Museum on Thursday 27 September, to commemorate Antin’s legacy. The event will feature a group of poets, artists, and scholars, including Eleanor Antin, Julien Bismuth, Aram Moshayedi, Marjorie Perloff, and Jerome Rothenberg.
David Antin is the central figure of the yearlong program dedicated to narrative run by La Criée, which borrows his title from him, While I was also listening to […]. David Antin has been part of the two collective shows that opened and closed the program. The second show has presented a selection of Antin’s archive on the Sky Poems project. The publication which follows the program includes an unpublished text written by the poet, entitled framed or being framed (to be to be published in December by Shelter Press).
David Antin: Talking, Always Talking
- Thursday 27 September 2018 at 7:30 pm
- Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
David Antin: Sky Poems
- Saturday 29 September 2018 at 10:30 am
Museum of contemporary art San Diego
- Saturday 29 Septembre 2018 at 4 am
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
David Antin
born in 1932 in New York, United States
died in 2016 in San Diego, United States
Cycle
Felicia Atkinson, Julien Bismuth and Yann Sérandour
from January 2017 to February 2018
Residencies and performances evenings
Felicia Atkinson, Eleanor Antin, Charles Bernstein, Julien Bismuth, Morgan Bassichis, Constance DeJong, Wayne Koestenbaum, Sara Magenheimer, Jennie Liu, David Horvitz, Lucky Dragons, LeRoy Stevens, Julien Bismuth, Krysten Cunningham, Yann Sérandour, Ellen Zweig, Lucy Ives, Svetlana Kitto, Bartolomé Sanson, Sophie Kaplan
from 19 to 31 March 2018
Associated artist
While I was also listening […]
born in 1973 in Paris, France
lives and works in New York, United States
Exhibition
David Antin, Eleanor Antin, Mariana Castillo Deball, Delia Derbyshire, Jean Dupuy, Mark Geffriaud, gerlach en koop, David Horvitz, Pierre Paulin, Shimabuku, Simon Starling, Zin Taylor and Virginie Yassef
from 13 January to 5 March 2017
Exhibition
David Antin, Eleanor Antin, Mariana Castillo Deball, Jean Dupuy, Mark Geffriaud, gerlach en koop, David Horvitz, Daphne Oram, Pierre Paulin, Shimabuku, Simon Starling, Zin Taylor, Christian Xatrec and Virginie Yassef
from 16 December, 2017 to 18 February , 2018