About
Since 2003, Sarah Pierce has used the term - The Metropolitan Complex - to describe her project. Despite its institutional resonance, this title does not signify an organisation. Instead, it demonstrates Pierce's broad understanding of cultural work, articulated through various working methods, involving papers, interviews, archives, talks and exhibitions. Characterized as a way to play with the hang-ups (read 'complex' in the Freudian sense) that surround cultural work, one emphasis is a shared neuroses of 'place', whether a specific locality or a wider set of circumstances that frame interaction. Central to her activity is a consideration of forms of gathering, both historical examples and those she initiates. The processes of research and presentation that Pierce undertakes highlight a continual renegotiation of the terms for making art: the potential for dissent and self-determination, the slippages between individual work and institutional context, and the proximity of past artworks.
I'm interested in how knowledge can rebel, not in opposition, but in spite of inheritances that form us. We are as much implicated by what we love as what we despise; how we enact these dependencies led to the project that I call The Metropolitan Complex.
- Sarah Pierce, Legacies in Art, De Appel, Amsterdam 2007.
This website is part of a conversation between Sarah Pierce and Sven Anderson that began in Dublin in 2002. As a conversation, it tends towards triggers, past and present, where a preoccupation with finding one's place is so-named The Metropolitan Complex.
If I Can't Dance...
Sarah Pierce at Theatre Frascati, Amsterdam, 30 November 2008 at 4 pm. Part of the series If I Can't Dance Tonight... Over the next year Sarah Pierce will be working closely with the curatorial platform If I Can't Dance I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution as one of six commissioned artists who will develop new projects for Edition III: Masquerade. Throughout the programme these developments will enjoy four distinct public moments: De Appel in Amsterdam; Sala Rekalde in Bilbao; Project in Dublin; and Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.
It's time, man. It feels imminent.
Three chapters in a recent work by Sarah Pierce: ICA, London (May - October 2008); de Appel, Amsterdam (27 September - 9 November 2008); FOUR, Dublin (10 December 2008 - 31 January 2009)
Test Pieces/Authority and Ambivalence.
An open call to students from various New York art academies to contribute unfinished work and test pieces for display. For the exhibition Nameless Science curated by Henk Slager, apexart, New York (10 December 2008 - 31 January 2009).
Tree Dance with live element and Skater.
A presetnation of Gordon Matta-Clark's Tree Dance (1971) with a live element. Also a one-time screening of Skater 1999, a 4 minute film by Sarah Pierce. Part of Gracelands curated by Vaari Claffey, Co. Leitrim (1 November 2008).
Sonic Pass
A limited edition CD made on the occasion of Underground curated by Dennis McNulty and Peter Maybury at Road Records, Dublin for the Darklight Festival (27 June - 6 July 2008).
This CD is Paper No. 14 in a series published by The Metropolitan Complex.
By now we share an affinity
A flyer produced for the Unfair fair, curated by Cecilia Canziani and Vincent Honore,
Rome from Friday 29 February to Monday 3 March 2008. The Unfair fair was a sort of event, situation, exhibition, intervention, action and infiltration timed to coincide with two new contemporary art fairs in Rome - ARTE and ROMA. Whereas the raison d'etre of the contemporary art fair may be characterised by maximization and accumulation, the conditions of the Unfair fair relate more comfortably to the states of minimization and disintegration.
Letter to BvDP
Artist pages in The Lost Moment, eds. L. Bik, J.N. van der Pol, and F. Ustek, Bik Van der Pol:Rotterdam 2007.
Caption for a photograph
In When Art (or In What Regard?), by Jeanette Doyle, part of FLOAT curated by Sara Reisman, a biannual exhibition organized in Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York, August 2007.
The Meaning of Greatness
Solo exhibition at Project, Dublin (10 June - 21 July 2006) and reinstalled in Feminist Legacies, curated by Frederique Bergholtz and Annie Fletcher as part of If I Can't Dance, Edition II at MuHKA, Antwerp (27 October 2007 - 6 January 2008).
Every Exhibition at Every Institution
Three individual projects by Falke Pisano, The Metropolitan Complex and Tue Greenfort presented simultaneously as part of the exhibition Open Form curated by Axel John Wieder, Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart (June 2007). Pierce re-presented selections from four projects - Affinity Archive, the Concept of Documentation, Red Archive, and The Meaning of Greatness - which together infer multiplicity and repetition as the main discourse of the art institution. Presented on display tables fabricated in the house during Ute Meta Bauer's time as Artistic Director.
Our Failure to Disagree
Introduction to "I Can't Work Like This," Printed Project Issue 6, ed. Anton Vidokle and Tirdad Zolghadr. Published by VAI:Dublin 2006.
Enthusiasm!
A series of radio programmes curated by Sarah Pierce and Grant Watson, broadcast from the Resonance 104.4fm radio booth at the Frieze Art Fair, London, 11am - 12pm daily. The curators worked with the diverse possibilities of radio, so that discussions are interspersed with related sound elements, such as performances, music, readings and audio works by artists.
Image: Garrett Phelan, A REGURGITATED CONVERSATIONAL MONOLOGUE OF LITTLE POLITICAL CONSEQUENCE in Enthusiasm!, Frieze Art Fair, Resonance 104.4fm, Sunday 15 October 2006.
Test Pieces
A project organized by Sarah Pierce and curated by Sandra Grozdanic at the Student Cultural Centre (SKC), Belgrade (08 April - 21 April 2006).
The Concept of Documentation
Presented in the exhibition Ireland at Venice, curated by Rene Zechlin at the Louis Glucksman Gallery, Cork (1 February - 1 March 2006) following Sarah Pierce's representation in Ireland's national pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale, commissioned by Sarah Glennie (12 June - 2 October 2005).
Monk's Garden
A project by Sarah Pierce, presented in the Scuola di San Pasquale in Venice's Castello district, commissioned by Sarah Glennie on the occasion of Ireland's national pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale (12 June - 2 October 2005).
The Redux Conversations
A limited edition CD for printed on the occasion of Our Day Will Come, a project by Paul O'Neill for NEKROMANTIC at Zoo Art Fair, 13-15 October 2006, presented by temporarycontemporary.
Peter Lewis, Elizabeth Price, Craig Smith, Maria Fusco, Jason Coburn.
Between 17 and 20 May 2005, a series of one-to-one conversations took place in Redux, London. Sarah Pierce invited each participant to have an informal discussion in the context of the exhibition Coalesce/Remix, curated by Paul O'Neill. There was no audience present. This CD is Paper No. 12 in a series published by The Metropolitan Complex.
Excavation site, Library of Congress
A4 flyer produced for Definitively Provisional, curated by Cecilia Canziani and Kristine Haugaard Neilsen, Whitechapel Project Room, London 2003.
There was Once a West
Introduction to Printed Project Issue 1, ed. Sarah Pierce, with contributions from Matthew Buckingham, Gerard Byrne, Pip Day, Peter Fend, Bettina Funcke, Wendy Judge, Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith, Aleksandra Mir, Asier Perez, Alan Phelan, Rachel Price, Issa Samb, Simon Sheikh and Grant Watson. Published by VAI:Dublin 2003.
The Paraeducation Department
An ongoing group project about organizing and education by Sarah Pierce and Annie Fletcher in various locations:
Witte de With/TENT., Rotterdam NL 2004
Paraeducation Department Reader, Dublin/Amsterdam, 2005-6
The Exchange, Penzance, Cornwall UK 2007
National Sculpture Factory Cork IR, 2008
Other independent reading groups include Sarah Pierce's seminar on the MA in Visual Arts Practices (MAVis), Dun Laoighre, If I Can't Dance... in cooperation with De Appel, curated by Frederique Bergholtz and Annie Fletcher, and the Transit reading group in Antwerp.
Open House (Just Past)
Sited inside a shipping container on the grounds of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Dublin as part of the visual arts programme curated by Mark Garry for the Dublin Fringe Festival (22 September - 11 October 2003).
You Can't Cheat an Honest Man
Organised by Sarah Pierce as part of Romantic Detachment, curated by Sarah Glennie and Adam Sutherland at PS1/MoMA, New York (16 October - 7 November 2004) and funded by the Grizedale Foundation. A lecture on confidence tricks (or con games) in collaboration with the NYPD Crime Prevention Unit, followed by a screening of the film Midnight Cowboy directed by John Schlesinger, 1969. Friday 29 October 2004 at 2:00 p.m.
Caged Archive
A collaboration between Mark O'Kelly and Sarah Pierce on the occasion of Mark O'Kelly's solo exhibition In Fashion at Limerick City Gallery of Art (14 January - 14 February 2005).
Archivo Paralelo
Presented in Meanwhile in another place... curated by Leire Vergara at Sala Rekalde, Bilbao Bizkaia Spain (21 December 2004 - 20 February 2005) Archive design by Gorka Eizagirre.
Red Archive
Part personal anthology, part resource centre the red archive includes materials from individual artists, curators and institutions that inform, complicate and represent the relationship artistic practice and political action. As a system to accumulate matter that both informs and represents a variety of strategies in artistic practice, Red Archive is a place to think about art as a political prospect. Launched May Day 2004, and displayed at Project, Dublin (1 May 2004 - 30 June 2004).
St. Pappins Ladies Club 1966-2003
An archive of activities of the St. Pappin's Ladies Club (1966-2003). Initial display in Artists/Groups curated by Grant Watson at Project, Dublin (30 October - 6 December 2003).
Affinity Archive
An archive of items donated by artists and curators related to the conditions surrounding their work. Initial display in Studio 16, Broadstone, Dublin (12 March - 5 April 2003).
One Banner Removed
Published in Visual Artists Newsletter SSI:Dublin 2003. A select group of individuals was asked to write about their favourite piece of public art in Ireland. Pierce chose this banner, hung in central Dublin by Irish property developer Mick Wallace.