Meltionary: heat, encounter or another friction

Kansas City Art Institute, Nov 11, 2021 - Feb 27, 2022.
Please book your visit (remote or in person) via KCAI's eventbrite page.

Welcome to the remote access webpage for our current exhibition at KCAI. Below you will find image impressions of the exhibited works as well as the videos within the show.

You can download and engage the essay that artist and head of KCAI's Social Practice program Sean Nash wrote here.

Exhibited Works

Warming Up for the Unknown

Warming Up For Theory is an artwork that prompts you to warm up by taking verbs from a theory book literally and embodying them.

At KCAI gallery, a pink rug with red and blue fuzzy elements and books on it lays on the ground with a white wall behind it that shows the printed instructions for the work in vinyl. Near a glass door further in the background there are a variety of wooden and resin wedges places in small groups on the ground. A colorful rug with a hand, a cloud and some blobs woven into it is shown. Some books are scattered across the rug. Visible to read are the titles: Disability Visability, Design Justice, M Archive and Building Access.

Rituals Against Barriers

Rituals Against Barriers consists of a poster with texts about practices that refuse oppression and a series of wedges (doorstoppers) that hold open space.

Wedges made out of wood and resin are arranged next to each other. Two of them are standing up and each have a text burnt into them: STOP, and WHO IS NOT HERE. One wedge is keeled over and shows a wood burnt shape of another wedge on its surface. Two smaller resin wedges lie on the ground adjacent to it.
Wooden and resin wedges are arranged in a group, some are standing upright, others keeled over on the ground. Text on some of them is readable and says: WELCOME, ACCESS IS FRICTION, NO ASSIMILATION. Black paper letters that have dried within a resin wedge are not readable.
There is a shelf holding a printed poster with blue ink. Rituals are suggested on the poster.
Wedge forms sit next to each other, some are standing upright, others keeled over on the ground. Three of them are made of wood with shapes and letters burnt into them, and two are made of resin with black letters that have dried within them but are unreadable.

Archiving the Unstable

Archiving the Unstable is a video that shows 3D models of materials such as ice blocks as well as their projections onto fabrics. Ice, water and vapor are materials that change a lot. This is why scanning them is very difficult. The work asks what can and cannot be captured.

A video monitor on a white wall is shown. Displayed on the monitor are three floating ice cube blocks ontop of a rolling topology.
A gallery space with a bench in it: On the wall is a monitor with a video playing on it and text describing the exhibition is printed on vinyl on the wall.

Temporal Drift

In the video Temporal Drift, white people’s hands hold one ice block as long as they can. The hands shake from the coldness while the ice block melts more and more. Whenever holding the ice block causes too much pain, the person passes it on.

Light from a projection stretches over two gallery walls that are arranged in a rectangular angle. The video shows a white persons' hand holding an ice block.
Photographed from a side angle, one of two perpendicularly arranged walls becomes only a line in the image. On the large wall behind, half of a bright projection from the video work lights up the space.
On the floor of the exhibition printed in vinyl is the title T-Temporal Drift.

Hacking Concrete

Hacking Concrete is a website artwork and installation that shows filmed experiments with concrete. Concrete comes up in different forms such as dust, mush and hardened rock. These experiments work towards more access for disabled people. On the floor there are sculptures made of latex, dirt and concrete and on the wall there is a projection of the website work.

A view of the work titled 'Hacking Concrete' is shown. A person wearing a blue sweater stands at a white pedestal using a mouse, activating the artwork, and there are laytex, dirt and concrete sculptures in the background of the image. Projected on the far wall is an image of a white person stirring concrete in a bucket.
A view of the work titled 'Hacking Concrete' is shown. There is a white pedestal with a computer mouse on it and there are laytex, dirt and concrete sculptures in the background of the image. Projected on a far wall is an image of a white person stirring concrete in a bucket.
A side view of the work titled 'Hacking Concrete' is shown. There is a white pedestal with a computer mouse on it and there are laytex, dirt and concrete sculptures in the background of the image. Projected on a leftside wall is an image of a white person stirring concrete in a bucket.
A latex component from the project hacking concrete is shown. It has multiple layers of stacked latex at different sizes, the latex pieces are similar in shape but become smaller as they stack upwards. Ontop of the stack is a pile of dirt and a blob of concrete.
A latex component from the project hacking concrete is shown. It has multiple layers of stacked latex that are different sizes, ontop of the stack is a pile of dirt - planted into a blob of concrete. The shapes of latex are wobbly and create a sort of underwater feel.
A latex component from the project hacking concrete is shown. It has multiple layers of stacked latex that are different sizes, ontop of the stack is a pile of dirt - planted into a blob of concrete. The shapes of the latex are wobbly and have a fish-esque feel.
A latex component from the project hacking concrete is shown. It has multiple layers of stacked latex that are different sizes, ontop of the stack is a pile of dirt - planted into a blob of concrete. The shapes of the latex are wobbly and have fingers that extend in differing directions. There are footprints over the largest piece of dark latex.

Heating Matters / Change Flux

Heating Matters / Change Flux is a video that shows experiments with melting and discusses themes around technology and climate change.

A gallery space with a projection is in the image. The projection points down and is focused on the floor. The walls extend into the distance forming a near-right angle, there is space to pass between them. In the video there is a clay structure holding up a printed circuit board.
A video is projected down on the floor. The video shows a printed circuit board held up by a clay structure and some closed captions on the bottom of the video that read: Leaking is a process not bound to any particular field: It's a term in electronics.

Essay

The first page of the essay shows blocks of text arranged in different black and white shapes: Wedges, blobs and hearts playfully enact aesthetics of the exhibited artworks. The headline says 'Joining Movements in the MELTiverse'.
The second page of the essay displays large hapes of hearts and flames. Spaces within the text are left blank so that visitors can fill them in with their own impressions of the show.