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Vehicle is taking a break right now.... 


Vehicle is/was/can be a series of screenings and talks where a group of artists and other interested practitioners get together and have candid conversations over drinks about the work they produce.


Meetings generally take place 7pm at  The Sunview Luncheonette in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. 


If you would like to be on the mailing list, email studio[@]camelcollective[dot]org

For more details read on…

Vehicle is a forum for moving image and other narrative media. This site provides information about presenting artists, upcoming meetings, and serves as an archive of past presentations with links to related materials and research.

A visiting artist will present a work-in-progress along with an occasional reading, sent in advance. The readings provide a frame of reference for the ensuing discussion. Screenings and readings are selected by the presenting artist and Vehicle.

We are interested in difficult works that provoke difficult discussions. We like works that are problematic in a critical and analytic sense—a problematic work generates problems (i.e. matters of concern), and with problems we generate ideas. We care how things function. We care how works generate meaning and how meaning can emancipate us from fossilized ideas. We care about creating a forum to help artists understand what meanings their works are generating and how they go about doing it.

Who’s in the room? A group of peers invested in time-based media, the problems of narrative, the politics of aesthetics, and the aesthetics of politics. Meetings last as long as the conversation and alcohol hold out.

We imagine our conversations offering a sustained critical analysis of the work, an open, lively, and rigorous debate about issues of real substance, and an elaboration of the consequences of our works on the world at large. Nothing is off the table. 

We would like to acknowledge the work of Jen Liu and Chelsea Knight and their Video Group. Along with Jen and Chelsea, we envision Vehicle to be a continuation of the Video Group as well as an elaboration on its form.

We have kids. Meetings are child-friendly, and those with children who would like to arrange childcare during the meetings should contact us. 

Vehicle is a project of Camel Collective
contact Anthony Graves with any inquiries
studio [@] camelcollective [dot] org
<< Vehicle


Oct 29: Nate Harrison



7pm at The Park Church Co-Op
129 Russell Street
Brooklyn, NY, 11222


Made possible through a

City Artist Corps Grant


and brought to you in collaboration with

The Sunview Luncheonette


“Pour le Peuple” (2021)


56 min. HD video, color with sound

Pour le Peuple is an essay film that retraces the history of one of modern American art’s most iconic public sculptures, La Grande Vitesse. The film examines how a local citizenry has given meaning to such a cherished work of art, and it also paints the portrait of a midwest city in all its complexity: one comprised of progressive and creative communities that also voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election. La Grande Vitesse (roughly translating from French to “The Great Swiftness” or “The Grand Rapids”) is one of sculptor Alexander Calder’s large-scale metal “stabiles,” erected in June 1969 in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan. “The Calder,” as Grand Rapidians refer to the sculpture, was also the very first public art work to be commissioned by the then, newly-established National Endowment for the Arts. Yet La Grande Vitesse met a lukewarm reception at the time of its installation from a mostly conservative, Protestant population that had little patience for modern, abstract art. The art work's peculiar legal status has has further contributed to its ongoing controversy.

Nate Harrison is an artist and writer working at the intersection of intellectual property, cultural production and the formation of creative processes in modern media. His work has been exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Kunstverein in Hamburg, among others. Nate has several publications current and forthcoming, and has also lectured at a variety of institutions, including Experience Music Project, Seattle, the Art and Law Program, New York and SOMA Summer, Mexico City. From 2004-2008 he co-directed the Los Angeles project space ESTHETICS AS A SECOND LANGUAGE. Nate is the recipient of the 2011 Videonale Prize as well as the 2013 Hannah Arendt Prize in Critical Theory and Creative Research. Nate earned his doctorate from the University of California, San Diego with his dissertation Appropriation Art and United States Intellectual Property Since 1976. Nate also received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan and a Master of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts. Nate serves on the faculty at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/361452291
More info: https://nkhstudio.com/pages/bio.html
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Feb 24: Stephen Sewell



7pm at The Sunview Luncheonette
221 Nassau Ave Ground Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11222


Three Lessons (How to shoot a gun)


Three Lessons (How to shoot a gun) is an essay film that examines the reproduction and naturalization of gun culture by following a young woman as she travels across the United States to learn how to operate a firearm from three men of different backgrounds and ideological points of view. The video forestalls discussion of the Second Amendment in favor of examining gun culture in relation to history, identity/identification, and the reproduction of ideologies. The montage of instructional footage, interviews of the participants discussing their history and experiences with firearms, found footage, and animation underscores the gaps and contradictions that arise between individual experiences and uses these dissonances to identify the underlying political, economic and social forces shaping them. As the video shifts between these individual experiences and larger determining forces the realization that these customs of gun ownership are not given but historically practiced becomes apparent and the capacity for change more evident.


Stephen Sewell is a Brooklyn-based artist, filmmaker, and educator. He received his MFA from the University of Washington and is an alum of the Whitney Independent Study Program and Art & Law Program. He has exhibited works nationally and internationally and has lectured and participated on panel discussions at institutions such as the University of Hertfordshire, Queens Museum, Pacific Northwest College of Art, and MoMA PS1 Print Shop. He currently works for the Whitney Independent Study Program.

http://www.stephensewell.com/
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Nov 02: Elise Rasmussen



2 pm at The Queens Museum
New York City Building
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Queens, NY 11368


more info:
Events Calendar, Queens Museum 

The year without a summer


“The year without a summer” takes its title from a phenomenon that occurred in the summer of 1816 wherein many parts of the world experienced extreme weather conditions. Dramatic storms and colorful skies gave inspiration to Romantic art, as witnessed in works by William Turner and Casper Friedrich; while poor harvests, economic decline and civil unrest influenced Mary Shelley’s writing of Frankenstein during her summer sojourn to Lake Geneva. A century and a half later was it discovered that the eruption of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia was the cause of this erratic shift in the world’s weather patterns, causing a famine in Switzerland and speculation that the world was ending. Using this historical framework as a provocation, “The year without a summer” re-examines the effects of this environmental anomaly, finding parallels with our current climate crises, while intertwining diaristic accounts of Mary Shelley and her circle, Sumbawan folklore, and my own reflections traveling to the same volcano and lake during the hottest summer on record.

Elise has provided the following text in reference to her work:  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley
“Letters Written During a Residence of Three Months in the Environs of Geneva in the Summer of 1816"

Elise Rasmussen is a research-based artist working with lens-based media. She has exhibited, performed and screened her work internationally including venues such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Bronx Museum, Pioneer Works (New York), Night Gallery (Los Angeles), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), Dazibao (Montreal), and the Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto (Scarborough). Elise received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has been an artist in residence at a number of institutions including the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), the Nirox Foundation (South Africa), La Becque (Switzerland), LMCC (New York), Shandaken Projects (Storm King), SOMA (Mexico City), the Banff Centre (Alberta) and was a 2016 Fellow in the Art & Law Program (New York). Elise has been written about in publications such as Art in America, BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, Canadian Art and the New Inquiry, and has received grants and awards from the Jerome Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, NYFA/NYSCA, Contact Photography Festival, and the American Austrian Foundation. Born in Edmonton, Canada, Elise lives in Brooklyn, NY.

http://www.eliserasmussen.com/
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Sept 30: Alex Strada



7pm at The Sunview Luncheonette
221 Nassau Ave Ground Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11222

What Truths Are Worth Telling?


"What Truths Are Worth Telling?" is an in-progress film that investigates the idea of "truth". The work is structured by a series of questions derived from Bertolt Brecht's "Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties" (1935). Examples include: “How do you recognize an idea as truthful?” and “How can different truth claims be shared with the goal of eliciting collective action?” I posed these questions to a range of women whose professional practices intersect with the idea of truth, such as postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak, philosopher Vanessa Wills, and writer Sarah Schulman. These conversations are paired with footage of the hidden labor taking place within the Whitney Museum’s conservation lab and at the London Meat Co., one of the last meatpacking facilities that neighbors the museum.

Strada has provided this text in reference to “What Truths Are Worth Telling?”: Bertolt Brecht, “Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties,” 1935.

Alex Strada is an artist and educator based in New York City. Working across film, photography, performance, and text, her projects ask questions related to the politics of representation, the visibility of labor, and the reproduction of collective memory. Her process is research-based and often involves collaboration. Strada's work has been shown at the Anthology Film Archives, Socrates Sculpture Park, Goethe-Institut, Museum of Moving Image, Jewish Museum, National Museum of Iceland in Reykjavik, MuseumsQuartier in Vienna, Kaunas Biennial in Lithuania, and on the screens of Times Square with Time Square Arts' Midnight Moment. Strada was a fellow in the Art & Law Program, the Institute for Investigative Living at A-Z West, and the Socrates Sculpture Park Emerging Artist Fellowship. Her work has been written about in Artsy, Vice, and The New Yorker. Strada received a B.A. from Bates College in 2010, an M.F.A. in Visual Art from Columbia University in 2016, and she was a 2018-2019 studio participant in the Whitney Independent Study Program. She is adjunct faculty at Fordham University and Columbia University.

http://www.alexstrada.com/
<< Vehicle


June 24: Liang Luscombe



7pm at The Sunview Luncheonette
221 Nassau Ave Ground Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11222

Sweaty Scales


The lily blossom will never allow herself to humiliate her white ghost. She digs her nails in… waiting for him to squeal. This is not to draw blood, but only a bit of fun. She will never discuss facts from your family life with her friends. She has her own ghosts in the closet, and doesn't need to know about yours too. Lily blossoms are hardworking and determined — she works and studies obstinately and doesn’t forget about her home and family… how could she? Her white ghost willfully reminds her. She tries not to interfere in her white ghost’s relationships with his ex-lovers and friends. If this blossom needs to meddle, she will. She welcomes with saccharine stamens possessing an imperceptible poison that clings to each end. If you like these features in a lily blossom, then now is the right time for you to orient yourself and prepare … to unearth … your beloved!

Sweaty Scales is a surreal comedy set in a world of brightly coloured constructed film sets, puppets and sculptures. The video tells the story of a pair of lovers: an Asian American woman named Lisa and her Caucasian lover Oliver. Through this interracial romance, the project explores Lisa’s struggle finding her own sexual identity and space for fantasy in relation to the bind of representation that confronts Asian American women. Guided by a narrator that performs upon a diamond-shaped staircase set, we follow Lisa and Oliver through a world of parties, late-night cocktails, crafting evenings, and film-going.

This is a work-in-progress single-channel video.  

Liang Luscombe is a visual artist currently based in Chicago and undertaking the 2018–2019 Chicago Artist Coalition’s HATCH residency. She has undertaken residencies at the SOMA Summer, Mexico City, 2018; Australia Council Studio, British School at Rome in 2013; and Perth Institute of Contemporary Art Studio Residency, Perth in 2011. She was the recipient of an Australia Council JUMP Mentorship in 2013 and was mentored by Australian painter Angela Brennan.

Recent solo exhibitions include: She inches glass to break, VCUarts MFA Thesis Exhibition, Richmond, 2018; Table Talk, Box Copy, Brisbane, 2016; A Tall Painter, Yarra Flats, Melbourne, 2016; Three Sailors, Sutton Project Space, Melbourne, 2014; Non in Casa, 157 Blyth St, Melbourne, 2013; Bauhaus Fisher Price, TCB art inc., Melbourne, 2012. Selected group exhibitions include: Phone Home, EFA Project Space, New York, 2019; Footnotes, The 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Yekaterinburg, 2015; No fond return of love, I.C.A.N., Sydney, 2014; Dear Masato, all at once, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne, 2014; brimming dissolution, buoyant expenditure, RM, Auckland, 2014; Synonyms for Sincerity, Alaska Projects, Sydney, 2013; Please be quiet, The British School at Rome, Rome, 2013; Navel Gazing, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne, 2013; Fresh Paint, Sutton Projects, Melbourne, 2012; Ménage a Trois, XYZ Gallery Tokyo, 2012.

http://liangluscombe.com/
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