State USA Boxing Tournament - Female Middleweight Champion of Florida

[still at TNT Boxing Club, Tampa, FL]

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Can Serrat Residency, ACHC Grant, & More Art

[Still from GG in Punta Gorda, FL in front of bout sheets]

It seems my boxing-as-art and art in athleticism explorations are still a hot topic. I was recently accepted to the 30-day Can Serrat Artist Residency Program in the Montserrat Natural Park, Spain (Just outside Barcelona). In addition to my acceptance, I was awarded a Support Stipend and have within 1 year to book my stay. I'm extremely excited for this upcoming opportunity! To assist with the remainder of the expenses, I recently applied for an Individual Artist Grant from the Arts Council of Hillsborough County worth up to $1,000. Below are some of my brief responses:

1. Describe the PROJECT for which you are seeking funds.

I am seeking funds to support my recent acceptance to the Can Serrat Artist Residency Program. Can Serrat is a communal artist workshop and residency located within the confines of Montserrat Natural Park, just 25 miles outside Barcelona, Spain. With the assistance of a Hillsborough County Individual Artist Grant and the Support Stipend Can Serrat has awarded me, I look forward to what the future could hold if given the opportunity to attend in order to further develop and advance my creative practice. As a Tampa-based emerging contemporary artist with a Master of Fine Arts degree in New Genres/Performance, my current creative focus and research involves the integration of my artistic practice with athleticism–specifically amateur boxing. I regard boxing as a potent topic in terms of contemporary sports and gender studies, as female boxing is debuting in this year's London Olympics. Coupling gender and athlete demographics while dissolving traditional fields and boundaries, I implement a rigorous artist-turned-athlete training regimen with the aims of exploring the intersection between visual art and the noble art of boxing as an alternative form of performance. To ground my recent contributions to these fields, I am pleased to have been recognized as a prominent local artist at the National Performance Network's recent annual meeting in Tampa, and also recently recognized as the 2012 Golden Gloves Female Middleweight Champion of Florida. With this background and focus considered, my proposed project that Can Serrat has accepted and awarded a Support Stipend involves this interest in athleticism abroad. The project involves documenting a rigorous 21-day stamina and endurance performance that initiates at dawn and concludes when I hike to the summit of Sant Jeroni. This simultaneous conditioning routine and meditative ritual resonates with the history of the surrounding Can Serrat site. Similar to the contributions of walking artists Richard Long and Hamish Fulton, I plan to document the effect of my presence on the environment and also the environment's effect on me via photographs, binaural audio recordings, and other expanded media. After these treks, my time will be spent in the studios reconciling the data from these hiking excursions into tangible and experiential artworks for exhibit in both countries–Spain and the United States.

2. Describe how the PROJECT for which you are seeking funds will directly impact the Hillsborough County arts community or artists.

The works that I will generate during my participation in the Can Serrat Artist Residency Program will receive public reception not only in the Can Serrat exhibition center, but locally as well upon my return to Tampa. I look forward to contributing to the diversity of the arts culture of Hillsborough County by sharing my creative experience abroad via local public exhibitions, artist organizations, and advocacy. I plan to submit my Can Serrat works to forthcoming group exhibitions, including those hosted by Tempus Projects, an artist-run project space and alternative venue. I have a high regard for group exhibitions and value the opportunity to connect with multiple artists and discuss the relationships between works on display. I am less interested in a solo exhibition of the works, and more interested in relational community correspondence and conversation. This interest will lead me to also submit the works to multiple organizations of the Hillsborough County Visual Artists’ Alliance, including the North Tampa Arts League and the Tampa Realistic Artists. Notably, this alliance and these organizations also lay emphasis on community, and I believe will be receptive to considering the works I generate in Can Serrat for exhibition. In addition to public exhibitions and opening lines of communication across varied local artist organizations, I believe my work advocates a harmonious and balanced perspective by combining art in athleticism. My work on exhibition and promoted online will emphasize a creative mind that is congruent with a physical body. It examines the result the artist produces while also considering the artist him/herself as a tool worth refining, and the process as a journey of discovery. As an artist and recently recognized Golden Gloves Female Middleweight Champion of Florida, my work pushes boundaries regarding artistic medium, takes risks, and empowers the artist as a catalyst for change in the pursuit of one's passions and ambitions. I believe this is an admirable model for all of the Hillsborough County arts community.

3. How does this project advance your development of work/career goals?

The opportunity to engage the Can Serrat Residency Program's site of the Montserrat Natural Park is the ideal environment where my creative practice can benefit and flourish. The investigations I plan to carry out will foster creative and conceptual development while combining my interests in athleticism as an invigorated return to my previous artistic practice. Before my current artistic explorations involving boxing, my work heavily integrated the physicality of my body in other ways, namely through walking as a medium that responded to various environments as a catalyst for reflection and examination. Sites for my walking projects included the desolate Mojave Desert in California and the threatening sites of tension within the urban cityscape of Tampa, Florida. As a long-time resident of Tampa, I generated artworks addressing the pedestrian terrain of borders, barriers, and hindrances that are materialized and dematerialized in the geography and psycho-geography of the city. Through the use of installation, site-specificity, and performative elements, I frequently incorporated my own body in order to generate these works.The mountainous topography that Can Serrat provides access to is a landscape I have yet to explore, where I can continue to broaden and expand my research and practice while collaborating with new artists in a working community. This will advance my explorations of harnessing my body and will directly contribute to my comprehension of walking as a spacial practice–as a form of navigation and transformation. Furthermore, the potential to amplify the walking experience from gentle hikes to challenging treks and climbs offers an outlet to incorporate an element of athleticism as a mode of conditioning and stamina training. I would also delight in the opportunity to ground my creative work not only physically, but spiritually as well, via introspection and access to the historical Montserrat Monastery. It is this unique and natural beauty of Can Serrat's Catalan hills and influence of the Catalan culture that will enrich me creatively, physically, and spiritually as I embark on creating new works during my 30-day residency.

Lastly, my abstract "Artistic Performance, Amateur Boxing, and "A People to Come"" was accepted for the Digital (De-)(Re-)Territorializations Conference, hosted by Bowling Green State University in association with BGSU’s Association for Textual and Literary Analysis Students. I look forward to start shooting this weekend to generate my upcoming mini-doc / academic presentation on boxing and Deleuze for my submission.

It's been a lot to handle lately with continued boxing training, a full-time job, grant proposals and slowly making headway on pending art projects--namely the boxing catalog and a new series of fight-themed, large-scale graphite portraits, amongst other works. Details to come.

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Golden Gloves Female Middleweight Champion of Florida

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Digital (De-)(Re-)Territorializations: New Theory for New Media

ABSTRACT

Artistic Performance, Amateur Boxing, and "A People to Come"
by Desiree D'Alessandro

My artistic performance practice is integrated with ambitious pursuits in athleticism–specifically amateur boxing. Boxing is a potent topic in terms of contemporary sports and gender studies, as women's boxing is debuting in the 2012 London Olympics. Coupling gender and athlete demographics, while dissolving traditional fields and boundaries, I implement a rigorous artist-turned-athlete training regimen with the aims of exploring the intersection between visual art and the noble art of boxing.

I utilize the internet to document and broadcast my progress and related boxing artworks through my website, blog, and YouTube videos. The process of sculpting my body into that of a competitive athlete and uploading to YouTube engages the broader social register. I document my sweat and sacrifice to transform the physical work into an intellectual encounter. This is the creation of what Deleuze calls a "people to come" – in effect a multiplicity in the state of being born. Also in accordance with Deleuzean philosophy, my practice aims to strip the seemingly implicit separation between art and athleticism to engage new, hybrid praxes that reconstruct, reterritorialize, and recontextualize these fields. In front of a collective physical and virtual audience, my work unravels on-target and immediate contemporary issues regarding Performance Studies, Sports Politics, Race/Gender/Identity Formation, and Spaces/Sites of Resistance.

As an artist and athlete, I seek to enhance the experience of spectator involvement in a practice that eliminates the ropes that restrict the ring, so that the scale of the encounter shifts from the individual to the social. In this sense, my work supplies a conduit for broader collective engagement. As Deleuze points out, “the author is in a situation of producing utterances which are already collective, which are like the seeds of the people to come, and whose political impact is immediate and inescapable. The author [is] in a position to express potential forces and to be a true collective agent, a collective leaven, a catalyst.”

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Photag: Robert Richards

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Quotes from Muhammad Ali

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks
will accomplish nothing in life.”
- Muhammad Ali

"Champions aren't made in gyms.
Champions are made from something they have deep inside them:
A desire, a dream, a vision.
They have to have the skill and the will.
But the will must be stronger than the skill."
- Muhammad Ali

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FL GG Countdown: 19 days

The following is a brief boxing update:

As many of you already know, since graduation at the University of California, Santa Barbara (which I am proud to say was recently ranked one of the top 10 universities in the world), I have relocated back to my hometown of Tampa, Florida. I was sad to leave Duke's Boxing & Fitness in Isla Vista, Calif. There, I discovered my passion for boxing and bonded with my friends and mentors Former Southern California Golden Gloves champion Henry Calles and Hall of Fame Boxing Historian David Martinez during my first year of consistent and routine boxing training. When I moved back to Tampa, I recultivated a training relationship with boxing trainer and marathoner Walt Conrad, whom I had previously worked with during brief holiday vacations away from UCSB. I picked up private sessions with him for approximately 2 months, where we rigorously trained approximately 15 hours a week. While I am grateful and appreciative for the time we trained together, I decided it was in my best financial interest to start training independently. This decision was difficult, because as soon as I committed to the decision, I landed a full time job at a public relations and advertising firm. The 40-hour a week position was stifling at first, but I regained my momentum and picked up independent training in terms of cardio, weight lifting, and boxing at Calta's 24/7 Fitness on Florida and Bearss.

I also began to play the part of self promoter and researcher and established communication with boxing contacts Mark Streisand and Bob Nicholson in regards to my USA Boxing registration and the upcoming Florida Golden Gloves tournament held Jan 12-15th in Punta Gorda, Fla. I discovered that I qualify for the tournament, can register as unaffiliated or unattached, and that a corner team and coach is not a requirement. I was fully prepared to enter this tournament without a corner team, ready to stand to face my opponent without water or sit-down rests during the interval breaks. However, I thought I'd take one more shot at finding the best local boxing representation around. This is how I discovered Legends Boxing Club.

I felt like Rocky Balboa in Rocky III where Apollo Creed introduces Rocky to Tough Gym in Los Angeles. When I entered the building, the intense atmosphere and serious work the boxers were putting in was inspiring. The sparring was hard but considerate, the training was as much about proficiency as it was rigor, and for the first time yet, I actually see the "Eye of the Tiger" in the faces of those who are working out. The difference between this atmosphere and the atmosphere of previous recreational boxing gyms I've seen is astounding. Equally as astounding are the owners and trainers that run the place, two-time World Champion Fransisco Arreola and Sherman Henson who's trained 2 WBC World Champions a NABF World Champions and numerous professional and amateur boxers. Even Antonio Tarver former WBC, WBA, IBF, & The Ring light heavyweight champion and his prodigy son train here, and many other distinguished names in boxing, which I am sure to soon discover and meet. I am proud and excited to call Legends Boxing Club my new home for boxing and sparring training while still attending Calta's for routine cardio and weight lifting. Additionally, I am proud to have Frisco and Sherman in my corner in the upcoming FL GG tournament, taking place in less than 3 weeks. My checklist is complete as I continue to train up until the deadline:

☑ Official USA boxing passbook
☑ Fitted mouthguard
☑ USA Boxing approved headgear
☑ Female groin guard and chest protector
☑ Boxing shoes
☑ Trunks with contrasting waistband
☑ World Champ Fransisco Arreola in my corner

It's been a long road to get to this tournament. I hope to call upon the advice and the technique of everyone who has worked with me. I will demonstrate diligence, determination and discipline. I will execute ring generalship, aggressor formation, and unleash a fury of combinations of speed and power. No matter what, I will do the best I can with this opportunity.

I will take my shot!

Win or lose, this will be an excellent opportunity and learning experience to better prepare me for National Women’s Golden Gloves to be conducted this summer in Charlotte County, Fla.

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Local Art Scene: NPN Annual Meeting & Tempus Projects

I am an invited speaker at the Visual Artists Network (VAN) Late Night Chit-Chat, National Performance Network (NPN) Annual Meeting. The presentations will be held at the Hyatt Regency Media Lounge, Room 302 in Tampa, Fla.

Additionally, be sure to check out the reception for MIXTAPES & TEES at Tempus Projects in Seminole Heights. D'Alessandro Fight Jamz: A Father-Daughter Mixtape will be featured!

Come check it out!

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Closing the Distance

Article cross-posted from dmboxing.com:

I have met so many wonderful people in boxing over the years. Working with the younger generation at the gym is always a delight for me. As the kids grow up, come and go, and maneuver their way in life, I try to stay in touch. Though with some I seem to lose track, there is one young lady I will always keep in contact with: Desiree D'Alessandro. I have previously posted her on my website and would like to update on her current whereabouts. Desiree graduated from University of California, Santa Barbara this past June 2011 and has relocated to her home town of Tampa, Florida. She accomplished her schooling with a Master of Arts degree and has continued her boxing training with her busy work schedule. Below is a chapter I wrote for her (forthcoming) collective publication regarding her graduate studies and boxing while attending UCSB. I would like to share with you my chapter on UCSB boxing history and my involvement. Desiree and I have stayed in touch on a regular basis even though we live 3,000 miles part. Our maintained true friendship and communication closes the distance.

Boxing from David Martinez / Boxing Historian

My love for boxing started back in the early sixties and has been an integral part of my life for the last fifty years. I have written many boxing articles for various publications and reported for radio and television. I was the former director of the World Boxing Hall of Fame board, have refereed USA Boxing amateur bouts, and was the recipient of the 2003 Lifetime Achievement Award in boxing. I was inducted in to the California Boxing Hall of Fame in 2007, and I currently devote my time to working with local boxing gyms and maintaining my informative boxing website: dmboxing.com.

My involvement regarding UCSB boxing occurred with two major highlights in the eighties. On September 16, 1981, I wrote the front sports page feature story for the Santa Barbara News-Press preceding the World Welterweight unification title fight between WBC champion Sugar Ray Leonard (30-1) and WBA champion Thomas Hearns (32-0). The bout was shown live on a closed-circuit telecast at Robertson Gym. I was in attendance for this event in front of a sold out standing-room-only crowd. It was an event for the ages at that time because it was a first in boxing for UCSB in the arena of a professional fight. The fight was voted “1981 Fight of the Year” in every boxing circle worldwide.

The following year in 1982, at the same Robertson Gym, I was a referee and judge for the inaugural Fight Night, a 12-bout boxing exhibition. The show was promoted by Art Carbajal, the founder of La Casa De La Rasa Boxing Club before it became known as Primo Boxing Club, an organization in which the proceeding Fight Night fundraisers have benefited. I remember well that evening was again a sold out standing-room-only crowd. It was an event that rocked the entire UCSB campus and boxing community of Santa Barbara––a live boxing show! George Calderon highlighted the show and fought a three-round exhibition bout that night. Interestingly, Calderon is the uncle and trainer of Henry Calles, current owner of Dukes Boxing in Isla Vista, CA. George went on later to win various coveted amateur titles and Henry won the Southern California Golden Gloves champion of the Open Division in 2001. Migrating from the Robertson Gym to the Thunderdome, there have since been 17 Fight Night boxing events staged on UCSB campus up until the event's controversial cancellation in 2009. To me, however, there will be nothing like reminiscing the moment of the very first show.

These last two and a half years, I have been directly involved with Henry Calles at Duke's Boxing Gym. I have had the pleasure to coach and offer my expertise to many UCSB students that come to the gym on a daily basis. My greatest pleasure is interacting with the youth on a personal level that attend daily workout and boxing classes. In August of 2010, I met artist Desiree D'Alessandro, a particularly determined and lively young woman looking to box for the first time. I remember the eagerness in her introduction, saying she wanted to learn, lose weight, and ultimately compete. Her confidence and conviction made our first meeting memorable.

This past year, I was delighted to assist Desiree on two occasions that brought me back to the UCSB campus since the aforementioned events of thirty years ago. The first being her display of boxing at Open Studios at Harder Stadium on Feb 5, 2011. She displayed her boxing skills at every level and entertained many that attended her studio-turned-training-facility that night. I acted as her promoter, narrating her 4-hour relentless endurance performance. The other occasion was a tribute to her thesis work, staging a boxing event that exceeded expectations beyond the comprehension of many. Art in Athleticism: The Form and Physicality of Boxing took place in the UCSB campus Old Gym Gallery 479 on April 22, 2011. Many were delighted to participate and witness this conjoined art exhibition/exhibition bout which was new and unique to the campus and community.

In closing, I feel honored to have worked with such a devoted and hard working person as Desiree, my friend. Her willingness to improve in boxing and to help others in the sport, that she has vastly learned (and is still learning), is truly a reflection of her courage and character.

Job well done, Desiree D'Alessandro!

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Open Online Two Exhibition

My work is currently on exhibit with U.K.'s Fermynwoods Contemporary Art (FCA) as part of an international call juried by George Barber and Matt Davenport. Open Online Two features works by 9 artists who have created sound-based work through a range of multi-disciplinary methods, exploring diverse themes. I am one of two artists representing the U.S. with other participants from the U.K., Canada, and Germany.

The work selected was an audio-only modification of the remix World Water Shortage vs Golf Course Consumption which I made back in 2010. The work recontextualises a wide array of appropriated audio samples from pop culture to create an environmental message regarding worldwide water shortage in the face of the rampant golf course industry (especially in Calif., U.S.). It juxtaposes the difference in the way water is discussed in the news vs mainstream media commercials, and treats each cut as a continual conceptual stream across a variety of media dissemination platforms. The resulting critical yet humorous narrative ultimately promotes the utilization of water in a more judicious sense and stands against maneuvers to convert this critical world resource into a profitable commodity.

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D'ALESSANDRO FIGHT JAMZ

D'ALESSANDRO FIGHT JAMZ is a cassette recently created in response to Tempus Project's recent call for entries. This father-daughter mixtape features a retrospective compilation of their favorite fight and/or training songs between 1982 and 2010, spanning 14 tracks from different artists. The custom cassette booklet also includes a recent transcribed conversation between the two exploring Victor's fight history and Desiree's current boxing pursuits.

D'ALESSANDRO FIGHT JAMZ: A Father-Daughter Mixtape
2011
Cassette; 0:55:58

PLAYLIST: STREAM

SIDE A (1982-2004)
1. Eye of the Tiger - Survivor (3:53)
2. Keep It Up - Snap (4:03)
3. Go For It! - Joey B. Ellis (4:14)
4. Good Vibrations - Marky Mark (4:28)
5. Mama Said Knock You Out - LL Cool J (4:58)
6. 'Till I Collapse - Eminem (5:27)
7. Can't Be Touched - Roy Jones (3:40)

SIDE B (2006-2010)
8. Round One / Boxing - Kray Twinz ft D&G (3:21)
9. It's a Fight - Three 6 Mafia (3:11)
10. Born To Win - Papoose (4:01)
11. Knock 'em Down - L.T.D.A (4:09)
12. To Be King - Outlaw (3:21)
13. Champion - Flipsyde ft Akon (4:05)
14. Ready For The Fight - The Young Punx ft Count Bass D (3:37)

DOWNLOAD THE HIGH-RES PDF (5MB)

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Website Updates!!!

desiree-dalessandro.com

My website is now sporting (pardon the pun) updates in the ABOUT, CV, and GALLERY section, particularly my latest BOXING AS ART and the RISING & FALLING: HOW WE WALK sections. Feel free to contact me via a variety of the new social networking plugs also!

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Rising and Falling: How We Walk Publication

I was pleased to recently discover that a publication I designed back in 2008 found its way online in a distributable free digital format. The following excerpt is from where it was hosted, at commonplacesproject.org:

Rising and Falling: How We Walk is a publication that resulted from our 8 month effort to work with walking, in a city that renders disposable bodies not confined to vehicles. This small book is our way of reflecting on our work, but it is also meant as a teaching and learning tool for young people in Tampa who may form their own walking communities.

Contributors: Laura Bergeron, Rozalinda Borcila, Martin Bosman, Robert Brinkman, Desiree D’Alessandro, Sarah Hendricks, Sarah Lewison, Lou Marcus, Alan Moore, Raul Romero, Victoria Skelly

The book contains 5 durational walking projects and 6 walk/talks, folded in a handmade box. The book layout puts the walking conversations in relation with the durational walks; it includes images and descriptions of the walks and documents their translation in a number of different public exhibition situations.



We Are Here – an Introduction
by Rozalinda Borcila

Take [I 275 or I 75] to the [Fowler or Fletcher] exit. Go [East or West] until you reach Bruce B Downs Highway, turn [North or South] to Pine Drive, follow Alumni Drive, pay and park. Along the way you may see one or two people standing on the side of the on/off ramps – what the locals predictably refer to as “the crazies”. If the Shriner’s Hospital is fundraising, you may spot men in funny hats standing at one of two major intersections. During shift changes at the Mall Food Court, the occasional uniformed worker may dash across Fowler Ave from South to North. Or maybe you will see an orange-vested highway worker on foot. You drive on highways and 8-lane roads and 5 lane-roads, to smaller streets not equipped with sidewalk or shoulder. And you arrive here, where we invite you to our ongoing conversation about walking: about who walks in our city and who doesn’t, and whether walking is even possible in such a place. We want to ask about walking as a signifying practice, as a form of self-experimentation and self-knowing, as research, as trespass, as a marker or pointer… We want to ask about how power is encoded in the built environment, and about practices of daily life which can, as Henri Lefebvre has suggested, “make the edifice totter”: about walking as an attempt to break down and repurpose the city, to vacate its spaces of their current function and put them to different use.

This small publication emerges out of these ongoing discussions. It centers around a selection of 5 durational walking experiments in Tampa, and a number of contributions from scholars and researchers. But first we must situate ourselves in relation to a certain history and institutional structure.

All of the projects and all but one of the contributors are affiliated with, and financially supported by, the University of South Florida. This publication is partially funded by the School of Art and Art History, which has a long tradition of experimental pedagogy and social art practice. The art projects began their lives as part of a Performance course I taught in Fall 2007; given the highly experimental nature of the Sculpture/Ceramics program, our students frequently develop performative projects which investigate, and intervene within, the space of the city. After several months of work in locations throughout Tampa, the art projects were formalized in a number of exhibition settings: the Oliver Gallery on campus, the University’s Contemporary Art Museum, the Tampa Art Museum and Going Green, a city-wide fair on sustainability and ecology also organized through the University. The students/artists included in this publication are continuing their collaboration, seeking ways to work beyond the structure of the course which brought us together. Initially, this departure seemed simple: beyond the temporal limitation of the semester, the power relations and physical location of the classroom. However, sustaining such practice has implied not merely an exit from the advantages and limitations of the current institutional structure, but also the necessity to build something else: other structures, other functions, other spaces, other forms of cooperation and conflict. This publication comes at a crucial moment in this ongoing process, a moment of great indeterminacy and potential – which it can merely point to and not, as of yet, reflect upon.

This project is also supported by the Center for Getting Ugly – a sort of counter-institution which has been operating in various ways in the last 4 years or so, a self-organized open infrastructure intended to facilitate cooperative practices. The Center itself is a function of the desire to experiment with collective dissent and conflict as proper artistic and political work. Even though none of the current projects are formally affiliated with it, we include here an excerpted transcript from Sarah Lewison’s oral introduction to a workshop organized by the Center for Getting Ugly at Versionfest Chicago, which eloquently outlines some of the most important aspects of our own ongoing discussions about walking and not walking, and their institutionalization.

The publication includes a number of folded “maps” – outlining four durational walking projects, as well as a collaborative intervention which is deployed in a number of different contexts. It also includes contributions from a number of scholars and researchers whose work I found immensely provocative, and who in various ways address the complex relationships between space and power that seem to be at the heart of the matter. Instead of essays or interviews, these contributions were solicited as walks/talks in different locations and under different circumstances (including a sleep walk/talk recorded by artist Desiree D’Alessandro). These wandering conversations are documented in extensive excerpted transcripts. My sincere gratitude to all the contributors for their inspiring work, their honesty and candor.

DOWNLOAD THE LOW-RES PDF (25MB)
DOWNLOAD THE HIGH-RES PDF (35MB)

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2011 Re/Mixed Media Festival, NYC

A Boxer's Soundscape is being featured in the 2011 Re/Mixed Media Festival put together by the director Tom Tenney. It will feature performances, panel discussions, hip-hop, sampling, beat-box, film & video, fashion, food, DJs, technology, interactive installations, painting, sculpture, software, hacking, and much more!

The RE/Mixed Media Festival is a 2-day celebration of collaborative art-making and creative appropriation. It's the artists' contribution to the ongoing conversation about remixing, mashups, copyright law, fair use, and the freedom of artists to access their culture in order to add to and build upon it.

Having participated in the 2010 Re/Mixed Media Festival, I have since embraced remixing via the genres of art and athleticism as I explore boxing as my latest artistic medium. A Boxer's Soundscape was recently created through an orchestrated mashup of appropriated sourced audio samples found online and original ones captured with binaural recording equipment mounted to my headgear. The resulting audio work remixes genres, audio samples, and even media as it has existed as an immersive installation at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum in CA, and now as a stereophonic audio piece for the 2011 Re/Mixed Media Festival in NY.

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Honors to Hooters

Honors to Hooters
Desiree D'Alessandro and Diran Lyons
2011
Work Statement (below), Curriculum Vitae, Resume, Hooters Application
Dimensions Variable

Work Statement by Diran Lyons:

In response to the Museum of Science and Industry's ARC Gallery Book as Art event, contemporary artist Desiree D'Alessandro and I have collaborated on a submission that brings an artifact to the forefront that is frequently overlooked––that of the artist's curriculum vitae. All too often artist CVs, resumes, and statements are bundled and neglected on a lonely table off to the corner of an exhibition. Honors to Hooters encourages the viewer to critically reexamine these artifacts in a way that resonates with the sad state of affairs that is the United States economic crisis.

I have known Desiree D'Alessandro since 2005, when she first enrolled in my painting and sculpture classes at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, FL. Since that time, Desiree went on to earn degrees in visual art at University of South Florida and University of California, Santa Barbara, where she was a Regents Fellow in their MFA program. Due to the depressed economy, opportunities to teach at the collegiate level are scarce. Desiree spends her time hoping for teaching positions to open, but is seeking immediate employment in other fields. Recently, she even applied to Hooters, reflecting her desperation for employment.

Unfortunately, I find myself in a similar predicament, having graduated from the UC system in visual art 7 years prior to Desiree. I, too, was a UC Regents Fellow. I would like to be able to assure Desiree that with hard work after graduate studies, she will find full-time employment in her desired field of academia, but I cannot truthfully do so. While Desiree is armed with words of encouragement and letters of recommendation from former faculty and employers, the reality of her situation calls for trepidation.

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