Kemper Art Museum Special Exhibitions Kemper Art Museum

Richard Flood, chief curator at the New Museum, and curatorial associate Benjamin Godsill discuss a selection of works in the exhibition Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other, on view at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum from October 8, 2010 to January 10, 2011.

The artist exposed maps of New York state counties to the elements during the rainy season in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, alluding to the mutability of geography over time. After drying, the maps were painted, further taking on a transformed state.

The miniature sculptures that make up this series were created by various people during conversations in bars and restaurants. Collected by the artist, these modest assemblages effectively constitute semi-conscious traces of social activities and verbal exchange.

Visitors are invited to describe their first love to a police sketch artist. The title of this work is borrowed from a novella by Samuel Beckett.

This video, the title of which pays homage to the 1976 Roman Polanski film of the same name, follows the trajectory of a soap bubble as it floats through the empty rooms of a house under renovation. The soundtrack has been constructed out of found and synthesized sound by the Brazilian duo O Grivo.

Inspired by the 1974 film by Francis Ford Coppola of the same name, this installation is an exploration of surveillance techniques and the paranoia they engender. To create this work, a series of covert listening devices were professionally installed under the wallpaper and beneath the carpeting. The artist and her team then went through the space, ripping it apart in an effort to locate the devices. The sound of this process of discovery and destruction was recorded by the bugs and now plays over the small speakers visible in the disrupted space.