Jeanine Oleson: Hear, Here

The New Museum hosts the first museum presentation of work by Jeanine Oleson.

Her project “Hear, Here” culminates in an exhibition, a series of special in-gallery events, several public programs, a publication, and a fully staged experimental opera.

Produced over the course of a five-month residency as part of the Museum’s 2014 spring R&D Season: VOICE, “Hear, Here” asks: How can we attune ourselves to each other? Where is the agency in language? What does it really mean to listen?

Jeanine Oleson is an artist whose practice incorporates interdisciplinary uses of photography, performance, film/video, and installation work. Challenging political and social norms through works that bear a distinctive mix of pathos and wit, Oleson engages contemporary societal topics. These include the collective psyche of apocalyptic anxiety, the global ecological crisis, the persistence of spiritual rituals, and alternative methods of addressing the myriad inequities produced by homophobia, racism, and classism.

An exploration of different kinds of voices – from the musical voice of opera to political acts of speech –“Hear, Here” simultaneously investigates language and points beyond it. The foundation for this investigation resides within art itself – particularly in relation to issues of audience and embodied engagement, in addition to objects and conditions that alter modes of expression – in order to respond to larger political and cultural problems faced on a global level.

In this context, Oleson is developing a video installation for the Museum’s Fifth Floor gallery. This installation considers conditions of spectatorship, drawing from documentation of “The Rocky Horror Opera Show” that took place in the New Museum Theater on March 7. This event, organized by Oleson and opera dramaturg Cori Ellison, invited the direct participation and intervention of the audience, challenging the institutionalization of behavior in the reception of traditional forms of performance and presentation. The set and objects for an experimental opera (including musical instruments, staging tools, and performance artifacts) will also be present during the run of the exhibition, forming an impromptu stage set and a catalyst for a series of informal programs in the gallery space leading up to the final performance. Accompanying the exhibition is an archival and research-based presentation in the Resource Center that takes up questions around various registers of Voice. The residency culminates with the premiere of Oleson’s experimental opera in the New Museum’s Theater, June 13–14.

Centering on a paradoxical landscape – a mountain that is also a cave – the exhibition and its constantly shifting elements produce a reactive space that focuses on the politics of vocalizing perspectives and the necessity of participation in lived experience. All the while, the affective role of voice in Oleson’s work mobilizes a mix of humor, rancor, and joy in addressing an avalanche of pressing issues in contemporary life.

until July 6, 2014
Jeanine Oleson
Hear, Here
New Museum
235 Bowery, New York