Campus Updates & Messages

2:21 pm

June 1 – August 11, 2024

Fever Dream explores resonance, metamorphosis, multispecies relationships, and entanglements among organisms, oceanscapes, and sound.

Sourcing field recordings from sea caves, atmospheric river events, decomposing trees, aquaria, animals, and climatic phenomena, the opera expands our human-centered understanding of perception / world-making to consider the sensory worlds of more-than-humans. Wild bats and beetles, sea lion pups and tortoises, coyotes and hagfish, cicadas and cormorants, marine isopods and bees are among the many animals voicing the score.

Metamorphoses abound. Tree frogs transmogrify into brass bugles, pupae into pipe organ pistons. Sea caves and juniper trees transform into cellos.

The project experiments with expanding our senses of perception to consider different understandings of time, sounding and sensing. When we hear the glassy bells of starfish tube feet, we are hearing feet walking, tasting, and smelling all at once. Recordings of echolocating bats open our ears to means of sensing via pulse and echo. Buzzing cicadas reveal a world of sounding reliant on tympanal vibration and abdominal resonance.

Field recordings of animal vocalizations are arranged with recordings of local sea caves. Bowing wires that have been stretched across cave mouths allows us to hear a cave’s range of resonance, its unique acoustical architecture.

An ancient juniper tree also plays into the score. Copper wires stretched across a fire-carved scar in a 1000+ year old juniper are activated with a cello bow, with the tree itself acting as the resonant body for the wires’ vibrations. When we hear the vibrations of these fibers, we are hearing the acoustical anatomy of a tree, the resonance of centuries of climatic phenomena acting upon an organism.

What are new ways of thinking about growth and decay, decomposition and re-composition—of a musical note, a juniper tree, a sea cave—on larger-than-human and even geological timescales? How might listening to growth and decay on larger-than-human timescales influence our thinking about phenomena?

Many of the sounds and visuals in Fever Dream were created with the sound sculpture Brass Tide, which can be viewed in the main gallery space. Sourcing material from traumatized instruments and brass objects salvaged from waste streams and flea markets, Rigby welded the piece in the Okada Sculpture and Ceramic Facility at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska.

Pipe organ soundscapes and video footage from the performance Gill Valves are also present in this piece. Gill Valves was a community-activated performance in which audience members were invited to sit back-to-back with a pipe organ and experience sound on a seismic scale, to move freely and observe the ways our spatial movements shaped not just our perception of the soundscape but also the very nature and creation of that soundscape. A similar phenomenon is occurring here now, whereby your presence and movement in this space is shaping an ephemeral sonic signature. As you move through this space, what are your own relationships to sounding and listening, sensation and perception?

Rigby played the parts for pipe organ, piano and viola. Kafele Williams played the trumpet elements, and The Wrinkles in Time Brass Band played horns and percussion.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Julia Edith Rigby is an Orange County-based experimental sound artist, composer, and sculptor who thinks about entanglements among humans and more-than-humans, phenomena, and sound. She works with found materials and found sites to explore phenomena, perception, and sense of place.

The artist has performed at LEAF Festival in Lafayette, Colorado (2024), LOW End in Omaha, Nebraska (2023), and the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna, Florida (2023). She is a recipient of artist grants from the Center for Cultural Innovation and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. She was recently awarded an artist residency at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Oregon. Rigby was the Sound Art + Experimental Music Fellow at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska in fall 2023. She has been an artist in residence at GlougauAIR Artist Residency in Berlin, PLAYA Summer Lake, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Kala Art Institute, and others. She has exhibited work in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Berlin. Rigby received her MFA in Studio Art at the University of California, Davis (2020), where she was a recipient of the Mary Lou Osborn Award and the Fay Nelson Award.

9:44 am

July 5 – Ongoing

OPENING RECEPTION

Saturday, July 5 from 7-10PM

Part hangout, part drawing workshop, DDC is a safe space that allows people with disabilities, chronic illness, and mental illness to be unapologetic about their bodies. It also broadens representation of the disabled experience within one’s community.

DDC’s pop-up at the Grand Central Art Center, Magic Eye, explores invisible disabilities and illnesses, which are often absent from visual representations of disability. Like many people, Reizman appears able bodied, but each day she combats a miserable cocktail of sharp pain, extreme fatigue, bloat, and brain fog. 

We invite you to answer prompts and draw directly on the wall. Reflect upon your own experience, or someone who is close to you.

ABOUT THE ARTIST 

Renee Reizman is the founder and facilitator for Disability Drawing Club. She is an interdisciplinary social practice artist, writer, and educator who works with communities to reveal the ways infrastructure and public policy contribute to social inequality. She is currently an adjunct assistant professor at Pepperdine University and the University of Southern California.

Reizman has engaged with the public through residencies and workshops at the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, Canyonlands Solid Waste Authority, the Blue Sky Center, the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, Antelope Valley College, Franconia Sculpture Park, Northwestern Oklahoma State University, Kolaj Institute, and Machine Project. She has exhibited work at the Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University, Access Gallery, the Irvine Fine Arts Center, Monte Vista Projects, Unit 5 Gallery, UCLA Broad Arts Center, and California State University Long Beach. Her writing appears in the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Hyperallergic, Observer, Art in America, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, Vice, Teen Vogue, InStyle, Chicago Magazine, Slate, and more. She holds an MFA in Art: Critical & Curatorial Studies from the University of California, Irvine.

1:58 pm

image credit: Still from Mounira Al Solh’s The Sea is a Stereo, Paris Without a Sea, 2007-08.  Courtesy of the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery Beirut / Hamburg.

June 7 – August 24, 2025

OPENING RECEPTION

Saturday, June 7 from 7-10PM

The Sea is a Stereo is an ongoing series of reflections by artist Mounira Al Solh on a group of men who swim at the beach in Beirut every day, regardless of the circumstances—be it rain, wind, or war. Even as we read this, the men might be swimming or preparing to do so. The series consists of various elements: a collection of videos, photo-collages, a lecture, and other materials. Al Solh views these elements as different possibilities for creating The Sea is a Stereo, describing it as “a never-ending work; like the men in Beirut who will never stop swimming.”

Paris Without a Sea, video #2 of the series, focuses on interviews conducted by the artist with the men. Typically, conducting an interview presupposes an interviewer and an interviewee, with the two standing on opposite sides. This video challenges that assumption.

The interviews begin with seemingly basic questions that may appear banal but actually touch on critical sociological and anthropological issues, such as the men’s nicknames. The exaggerated fast pace of the video, along with these surprising questions and answers, sometimes leads the video into the realm of the absurd, where appropriation and performance are key elements. Al Solh has lip-synchronized her voice over the men’s voices, becoming one with them and embodying both the interviewer and the interviewee. Viewers are surprised to hear a soft, feminine voice, as all the men now share the artist’s voice.

The artist has practiced and mastered each man’s accent, allowing her to embody each character she admires. As a result, we wonder: How does a voice represent a person? How does this influence our expectations of hearing others’ voices, given that we never hear our own voice in the same way we hear others’?

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Mounira Al Solh (b. 1978, Lebanon; lives and works between Beirut and Amsterdam) is a visual artist whose practice spans installation, painting, sculpture, video, drawing, text, embroidery, and performative gestures. Her work delves into equality, while it adopts manners such as micro-history, to bear witness to the impact of conflict and displacement. Al Solh’s work is socially engaged while being political and poetically escapist simultaneously. Her practice utilizes oral documentation, multidisciplinary collaboration, and wordplay to explore themes of memory and loss. Motivated by acts of sharing and storytelling, change, and resistance, Al Solh strives to craft a sensory language that transcends nationality and creed.

The work in the exhibition is courtesy of the artist and SFEIR-SEMLER GALLERY, Beirut / Hamburg.

8:37 pm

June 7 – September 14, 2025

Opening Reception: Saturday, June 7 from 7-10PM

A person is more important than anything else…, a five-channel video installation, is a profound social commentary created by artist Hank Willis Thomas. This compelling work, lasting 28.5 minutes, is driven by the powerful cadence and intonation of James Baldwin’s voice, weaving together audio, images, and video in a fluid-moving digital stream of consciousness. The installation connects Baldwin’s 20th-century discourse with the 21st-century issues of race, gender, class, and sexuality, inspiring viewers to re-imagine their relationship to the contemporary moment.

Thomas, known for his conceptual photography and social engagement, utilizes historical artifacts and appropriates American advertising and media strategies to challenge constructions of race and gender. His work extends beyond photography, incorporating elements from past social struggles, such as the Civil Rights Movement, police violence, and apartheid, transforming these records into primary sources that speak to today’s cultural conflicts. In this installation, Thomas offers compelling moments of agency and resistance, encouraging a deeper understanding of contemporary acts of protest and resistance mediated through the events of history.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976, Plainfield, NJ) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, and is a conceptual artist focusing primarily on themes related to perspective, identity, commodity, media, and popular culture. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad, including at the International Center of Photography, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Musée du quai Branly, Hong Kong Arts Centre, and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art.

His collaborative projects include Question Bridge: Black Males, In Search Of The Truth (The Truth Booth), The Writing on the Wall, The Gun Violence Memorial Project, and For Freedoms, an artist-led organization that models and increases creative civic engagement, discourse, and direct action. Thomas was the 2022 U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts honoree from the Office of Art in Embassies, Washington, DC. Additionally, he is the recipient of the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2019), Guggenheim Fellowship (2018), AIMIA | AGO Photography Prize (2017), Soros Equality Fellowship (2017), Aperture West Book Prize (2008), Renew Media Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation (2007), and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Award (2006). He is a former member of the Public Design Commission for the City of New York.

Thomas’s public art practice includes permanent artworks across the country, including The Embrace (2023) on the Boston Common in Boston, MA; REACH (2023), made in collaboration with Coby Kennedy, at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, IL; Duality (2023) at The Underline in Miami, FL; and The Truth is I Love You at The Austin Public Library, Austin, TX. Additional permanent public artworks include Unity in Downtown Brooklyn, NY; Love Over Rules in San Francisco, CA; and All Power to All People in Opa Locka, FL.

Thomas holds a B.F.A. from New York University, New York, NY (1998), and an M.A./M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2004). He received honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD, and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, Portland, ME, in 2017.

The work in the exhibition is courtesy of the artist and PACE Gallery, New York and Los Angeles.

4:28 pm

April 5 – August 10, 2025

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 5 from 7-10PM

During the virtual performance The Adjacent Possible, which ran at the height of the pandemic, artist Joshua Michele Ross opened by collecting participants’ desires. Ross then recited them back at the end of the show, closing with a sense of community and hope. These desires—representing over 900 statements from 35 countries—ranged from funny to sad, everyday to deeply poignant.

Now, in collaboration with artist Hope Meng, this project transforms these desires into an immersive time capsule, set within the confines of an elevator.

As one enters, they are greeted by an ambient, unfolding soundtrack beneath a slow recitation of each desire. The looped audio is approximately three hours long, ensuring a unique experience each time one enters the elevator. Quilted fabric lines the walls, featuring text of desires from participants around the world. Riders are drawn into a warm cocoon filled with sentiments from a paradoxical time when we felt togetherness in our isolation and new possibility amidst tragedy.

An elevator, like the pandemic, represents a transitional space—a vehicle taking us from the known past into an ambiguous new future—while the enclosed space mirrors the state of lockdown.

To Be Among Friends creates a site of remembrance and a collective prayer for possibility, togetherness, and the exaltation of simple pleasures.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Hope Meng (b. 1977) is a San Francisco-based artist whose work exists at the unlikely junction of typography and textiles. Hope creates sewn fabric compositions using a typographic system that she developed, based on the visual language of American quilt patterns. Hope has exhibited at several galleries and museum shows, including Hella Feminist at Oakland Museum of California, the Berkeley Art Museum, and Scalehouse Gallery in Bend, OR. Her work is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Oakland Museum of California. She has a BFA in Graphic Design from California College of the Arts (2007) and a BA in Economics from UC Berkeley (1998).

Joshua-Michele Ross (b. 1967) is a conceptual and sound-based artist whose work centers on time, ecology, and the restorative power of listening. In response to a visually-dominated world, he uses listening as a disarming medium for revelation, enchantment, and increased connection with the more-than-human world. Ross has exhibited in the U.S. and abroad including Mengi (Reykjavik, Iceland), The Bo Bartlett Center, Grand Central Art Center, and Pasaquan – a visionary art environment in Buena Vista, Georgia.

5:15 pm

March 1 – May 11, 2025

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 1 from 7 – 10PM

Nevermind is a non-narrative post-punk aria, one in Jennifer Reeder’s three-part video series significantly inspired by Steina and Woody Vasulka’s Let it Be (video, 1970). This project is about the manifestation of gender and rebellion in media culture. It threatens the power of the hero in Rock music and features the artist lip-syncing to Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.

ABOUT THE ARTIST 

Bong Joon Ho recently named Jennifer Reeder, “a filmmaker to watch in the 2020s.” She constructs nuanced genre films about relationships, trauma, and coping that borrows from various forms, including after-school specials and amateur music videos, and could be classified as NOIR CAMP. These films have been screened and exhibited at festivals and museums worldwide, including Sundance, Berlin, Rotterdam, SXSW, Tribeca, BFI-LFF, The Whitney Biennial, and the Venice Biennale. She received the 2024 Tour De Force Award from the Chicago International Film Festival.

2:57 pm

March 1 – May 11, 2025

Artist Gallery Talk / Exhibition Walkthrough

Saturday, May 3 at 6PM

At the intersection of globalization, migration, and memory, Deep Roots Among Fallen Trees offers a reflection on architecture as a space where loss and regeneration coexist, where memory is both preserved and erased. This installation delves into how diasporic communities continue to develop complex cultural landscapes despite being torn from their roots, forging new identities and histories through the fusion of old and new, memory and materiality. It explores how ancestral knowledge endures, not as a static inheritance, but as aliving process shaped by displacement, resilience, and the passage of time. In tracing these shifts, Rachel Hakimian Emenaker reveals architecture as more than a physical structure; it becomes a vessel of cultural continuity and reinvention across generations.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Rachel Hakimian Emenaker is an Armenian-American artist raised between Paramaribo, Suriname, and Moscow, Russia. She received her MFA from UCLA in 2024. Drawing from Eastern and Western art and craft practices, she explores materials with histories of commodification along global trade routes, blending them to examine geopolitics, globalization, erasure, and cultural memory. Through installations, she reimagines architecture as a symbolic space where histories collide, languages and identities engage, and migration and erasure intersect. She seeks to uncover and reimagine what has been lost, erased, or forgotten, preserving diasporic memory through her work.

CURATOR

This exhibition is curated by Savannah Lee, GCAC Curatorial Associate.

4:03 pm

February 1 extended through June 15, 2025

In the 1980s and 1990s, many families migrated from Mexico to Orange County, California, particularly Anaheim and Santa Ana. These cities became hubs where immigrant communities, including the artist’s family, found belonging and built new lives. As a first-generation Latinx growing up in this environment, artist Dino Perez witnessed how stories of parents’ lives in Mexico intertwined with the shared experiences of navigating a new culture and identity.

Immigrant parents made immense sacrifices to come to this country, driven by the hope of providing better opportunities for their children. For their first-generation kids, this often translated into the pressure to excel academically and pursue esteemed professions like medicine or law. Amidst these expectations, these youth were also teenagers who sought joy, connection, and release. For many, dancing became that outlet—a form of escapism where one could momentarily shed the weight of expectations and revel in the present.

“Ditch Parties” became a cornerstone of adolescence. Often held in backyards or patios during school hours, these gatherings were vibrant spaces where first-generation teens connected through dance, music, and shared stories. They bonded over their parents’ migration journeys, exchanging tales of their sacrifices and struggles. The music at these parties was eclectic, ranging from ’80s New Wave and House/Techno to Rock en Español, creating a unique cultural fusion that reflected bicultural identities.

Flyers for these parties were a form of art adorned with psychedelic cartoon characters in neon colors. Groovers, rebels, and other youth subcultures came together in these spaces, embracing peace and unity. Fashion also became a form of expression: vibrant text embroidered baseball caps and cereal box backpacks adorned with toys and pacifiers symbolized the creative and rebellious spirit the rave culture embraced. These backpacks, crafted by hand, represented a playful twist on a utilitarian object—a nod to the backpacks parents had carried during their migration journeys.

While youth danced in these unconventional spaces, their parents found joy and escapism on the dance floors of nightclubs like El Conejo Feliz in Anaheim and El Festival in Santa Ana. These venues became sanctuaries for immigrant parents who worked labor-intensive jobs, providing a space to relax, dance, and connect with others. The artist discovered that many of the youth’s parents frequented the same clubs, creating a surprising overlap between their experiences and the youth’s own. While the parents danced to cumbia, Dino and his counterparts moved to techno, yet the underlying spirit of connection and release was the same.

Movement is a thread that ties these stories together. From the physical migration of families from Mexico to Santa Ana and Anaheim to the rhythmic movement on dance floors and at ditch parties, there is a constant interplay of motion. Dancing was more than a pastime—it was a way for communities to cope, celebrate, and reclaim joy in the face of adversity.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born and raised in Santa Ana, artist Dino Perez continues living and has his studio in the city. He presented his 2018 solo exhibition, It’s Time the Tale Were Told, at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art and was included in the recent group exhibition Original Sources., curated by Juan Gomez and Maribel Nuño Navarro. From 2016 to 2018, Dino was an Artist-in-Residence at Grand Central Art Center through a partnership with non-profit Community Engagement, where he led projects like Coloring with the Community in Santa Ana’s Lacy Neighborhood and was co-founder of Crear with artist/writer Sarah Rafael Garcia.

In 2017, Dino received an Artist Grant from the City of Santa Ana. He participated in the 2018 Akumal Arts Festival in Akumal, Mexico, serving as an Artist-in-Residence at Tortuga Escondida, an experience made possible through the additional support of Community Engagement.

10:25 am

Nina Katchadourian: Monument to the Unelected, (2008 and ongoing)

September 26 through November 17, 2024

Grand Central Art Center in collaboration with Community Engagement

LOCATION: Monument to the Unelected is viewable on the lawn at 896 S. Oakwood St. Orange, CA 92869

PLEASE NOTE: Our advance thanks to visiting patrons for their respect to the property, neighbors and surrounding neighborhood, and works included in the installation.

Watch the Spectrum 1 News story about this years installation.

— Jonathon Keats, in Forbes Magazine, listed the 2020 Grand Central Art Center presentation of Monument to the Unelected as one of the “6 Exceptional Art Exhibits To Redeem 2020”

Grand Central Art Center, in collaboration with Community Engagement, is pleased to present Nina Katchadourian’s Monument to the Unelected, exhibiting in Orange County, CA, from September 26 through November 17, 2024 on the lawn at 896 S. Oakwood St. Orange, CA 92869. This temporary installation, consisting of 59 signs bearing the names of losing candidates from every presidential election in American history, coincides with this year’s presidential election. Once results are official, a new 60th sign with the name of the losing candidate of the 2024 Presidential Election will be added.

Katchadourian was initially commissioned by the Scottsdale Museum of Art (SMoCA) and curator Cassandra Coblentz to create a new work around the time of the 2008 presidential election.  The artist became interested in the plastic election signs sprouting up on front lawns, vacant lots, and at busy intersections around Scottsdale, Arizona. She states, “These markers tend to crop up in the weeks leading up to an election, after which they disappear, with some of the names going on to take office and others being largely forgotten.” The signs also struck her as an American tradition of sorts and with an aesthetic all their own.

Working with designer Evan Gaffney, Katchadourian created a series of signs bearing the names of individuals who ran for president and lost. Each sign was made in a contemporary design vernacular, even if it advertised a candidate from previous centuries. None of the signs are designs used in the candidates’ actual election campaigns. Many of the signs borrow directly from the designs of signs that she documented in Scottsdale; others are modeled on signs seen in other parts of the country. All the signs are printed on corrugated plastic using similar commercial production methods as typical election lawn signs.

At this moment, when the country is deeply preoccupied with a major national election, Monument to the Unelected serves as a reminder of the country’s collective political road not taken. It does not reflect any particular political viewpoint or endorse any specific party but does highlight the US history for peaceful transition of power. Monument to the Unelected has been exhibited nationally during the past four presidential election cycles, usually spanning a period before and after the election that allows for the addition of the losing candidate’s name.

This election-cycle the work will be shown at six additional locations nationwide simultaneously

Roots Community Health Center, Oakland, CA

The di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, CA

Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco, CA

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA), Scottsdale, AZ

Center for Art and Dance, St. Olaf’s College, Northfield, MN

Home of Abrahamson Family Collection, Madison, WI

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Nina Katchadourian is an interdisciplinary artist whose work includes video, performance, sound, sculpture, photography and public projects. Her video “Accent Elimination” was included at the 2015 Venice Biennale in the Armenian pavilion, which won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. Group exhibitions have included shows at the Serpentine Gallery, Turner Contemporary, de Appel, Palais de Tokyo, Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, Turku Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, ICA Philadelphia, Brooklyn Museum, Artists Space, SculptureCenter, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Morgan Library, and MoMA PS1. A solo museum survey of her work entitled “Curiouser” opened at the Blanton Museum in 2017 and traveled to the Cantor Art Center at Stanford University and the BYU Art Museum. An accompanying monograph, also entitled “Curiouser,” is available from Tower Books.

Katchadourian completed a commission entitled “Floater Theater” for the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 2016 which is now permanently on view. In 2016 Katchadourian created “Dust Gathering,” an audio tour on the subject of dust, for the Museum of Modern Art as part of their program “Artists Experiment. Katchadourian’s work is public and private collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Blanton Museum of Art, Morgan Library, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Margulies Collection, and Saatchi Gallery. She has won grants and awards from the the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation, the Tiffany Foundation, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, Gronqvista Foundation, and the Nancy Graves Foundation. Katchadourian lives and works in Brooklyn and Berlin and she is a Clinical Full Professor on the faculty of NYU Gallatin. She is represented by Catharine Clark Gallery and Pace Gallery.

GCAC expresses our sincere gratitude to Deb and Jon Webb for providing their front lawn as installation site for the 2024 showing of Monument to the Unelected. We thank visiting patrons for your respect to the Webb’s property, their neighbors, and surrounding neighborhood, and the work included in the installation.

image credit: Nina Katchadourian, Monument to the Unelected (2024 installation), Organized by Grand Central Art Center, in collaboration with Community Engagement, on the lawn at 896 S. Oakwood St. Orange, CA 92869 

1:53 pm

Daniel Tucker, Rosten Woo, and Manny Escamilla

Program and Opening of the Time Capsule

Saturday, September 7 @ 6PM

Join us on Saturday, September 7th at 6 pm for a program to mark the unlocking and opening of the ten-year Santa Ana time capsule installed at Grand Central, developed originally in 2014 as part of artist Daniel Tucker’s GCAC artist-in-residence. The event will kick off with a discussion between Tucker and Rosten Woo about the video Future Perfect: Time Capsules in Reagan Country on display in the gallery, which documents the creation of the time capsule. The conversation will be followed with a reading of a letter to the future by Manny Escamilla, who co-organized the 2014 time capsule with the Santa Ana Public Library History Room. Concluding the evening, the time capsule will be opened and displayed in the Grand Central Art Center gallery. People who placed items into the original time capsule and those interested in local history and California political history are highly encouraged to attend. 

Daniel Tucker’s original residency in development of the time capsule was supported in part by a grant to Grand Central Art Center from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

5:03 pm

September 7 – November 17, 2024

Daniel Tucker’s 2015 work Future Perfect: Time Capsules in Reagan Country grows out of an interest in the continued echoes of a speech delivered by Reagan following the end of his Governorship in California on August 19th, 1976 at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri. In this speech, Reagan talks of the difficulty he found in writing a letter for a time capsule to be sealed in Los Angeles and opened one hundred years in the future. Departing from this moment Future Perfect explores Reagan’s future-oriented science fiction imagination and rhetoric through visits to Reagan-inspired monuments and time capsules throughout California. Directed by Daniel Tucker, Edited by Valerie Keller, Additional Camera: Emily Forman and Steve Rowell, Music: Tim Kinsella and Todd Mattei. The video was the subject of a profile in the Baffler Magazine by Rick Pearlstein and has been screened at Veggie Cloud (LA), Grand Central Art Center (Santa Ana), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago), Slought (Philadelphia), Visual Studies Workshop [Rochester, NY], Interference Archive (Brooklyn NY), Spaces (Cleveland), and the Galleries at Moore (Philadelphia).

SANTA ANA TEN-YEAR TIME CAPSULE

On Saturday, September 7th, GCAC, Daniel Tucker, and Santa Ana Histories Room Original Collaborator Manny Escamilla unlocked and opened the ten-year Santa Ana Time Capsule. The capsule had been installed above the Gallery Store at Grand Central Art Center,since it was first developed in 2014, through artist Daniel Tucker’s GCAC artist-in-residence. The event was kicked off with a reading of a letter to the future by Manny Escamilla, who co-organized the 2014 time capsule with the Santa Ana Public Library History Room. The reading was followed by a discussion between Tucker and Rosten Woo about the video Future Perfect: Time Capsules in Reagan Country on display in the gallery, which documents the creation of the time capsule.. Concluding the evening, the time capsule was opened with those who has placed original object and the contents displayed in the Grand Central Art Center gallery which will remain in the gallery until November 17..

Daniel Tucker’s project Future Perfect was developed through a GCAC Artist-in-Residence, supported in part by a grant to Grand Central Art Center from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.