Visitor of the day Michael showed us his copy of The Minus Times that has a piece by Jason Fulford that mentions Kadist. Thanks for stopping by, Michael! #kadist #oogabooga (at Kadist Gallery)
In anticipation of tonight’s Mushroom Machine with Jason Fulford at Kadist SF, we’ve put together a collection of interviews and other materials providing a peek into the different sides of his practice, photography, and publishing.
Here’s a VICE interview discussing traveling, photographs of signs, and visiting the presses.
Here’s an interview from Making Room Magazine about the role of place in Fulford’s photographs.
Here’s an interview with Media Bistro about his work with J & L Books.
Here’s a text and video from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts about his project as part of their New Pictures 5 exhibition, which ran from October 21st, 2011 to April 8th, 2012.
This Wednesday, Jason Fulford and the Kadist Art Foundation will be collecting objects, and holding them for the future in a Mushroom Machine. If you’d like to contribute, bring an object no larger than 10 inches in any one dimension. Space is tight! You will receive a gift in return. Limited to the first 100 visitors.
We asked Jason some questions about the Mushroom Collector project.
On the website for The Mushroom Collection there is a Samuel Beckett
quote: “…to find a form that accommodates the mess”. This project works in multiple registers — shifting between book, website, exhibition project, line of thinking — and hinges on your photography practice. There are also recurring motifs, which suggest something like different specimens of the same variety. Could you tell us about your relationship to the mushroom, as form, framework and metaphor?
Jason Fulford: Mushrooms have acted as metaphors in several different ways throughout this project: mushroom as decoration; mushroom as spontaneous, short-lived event; mushroom as an underground network. You know, the largest living organism on earth is a mushroom. There’s also the character of the mushroom collector — parallel to the photographer. Both wander and scavenge, slowly building a collection.
At Dexter Sinister, visitors passed objects to you and you transformed them into photographs. This might be understood as a performance of collecting. But the project also tracks your movement (and travels) throughout the world and the conversion of the observation and collaboration into images. What’s the difference for you between observation and collection, to behold or hold?
Jason Fulford: For me, observation and collection are the same thing. Things observed are collected, either as photographs or memories. As the collection grows, the observation shifts. It’s part of an evolution.
