New Show at Franklin Street through November 9

This fall, the Franklin Street Works presents It Narratives: The Movement of  Objects as Information, an exhibition featuring artists' projects that engage the  postal system and its intersections with digital communications media. The artists  in It Narratives find forms for everyday experiences of distance and time by  reflecting on the way objects move through information networks. The exhibition  is curated by New York-based guest curators Brian Droitcour and Zanna Gilbert  and will be on view through November 9, 2014.

Artist: Frank Heath

Title: Bcc: Fort Lafayette Island / David's Island (Bed) 

Medium: Powder Coated Steel, Photograph, Postage

Year: 2013

Photography by: Frank Heath 

With areas of expertise in mail art (Gilbert) and Internet art (Droitcour), the  curators take into consideration how Internet technology and digital forms of  commerce have changed the way artists use the postal system. Mail art emerged  in the late 1960s as a collective, networked medium allowing artists to circulate  and exchange works and ideas in a sphere uncontrolled by curators, institutions,  the art market, or state censorship. Today, mail is employed less frequently as an  artistic medium, in keeping with an overall shift in how information is experienced  and exchanged. News and greetings from friends and family have migrated from  the postal system to the faster networks of email and social media, yet "snail  mail" has not become obsolete. Sending objects over great distances is part of  online commerce. Print-on-demand services that allow users to design their own  T-shirts, books, or mugs with a few clicks of a mouse connect Internet browsing and data input to receiving objects by mail and handling them in everyday life. 

It Narratives: The Movement of Objects as Information takes its title from a prose genre popular in the late 18th century, the “it-narrative.” These were accounts of objects circulating in the structures of emergent industrialized capitalist markets written in the first-person from the perspective of the objects. It Narratives the exhibition updates this concept for the 21st century by presenting artists' projects that track the movement of objects online and by mail, taking measure of the physical and emotional experiences of time and distance inherent to these networks.

artist: Lance Wakeling

Title: video still from A Tour of the AC-1 Transatlantic Submarine Cable 

Year: 2011

Medium: video 

Exhibiting artists include: Greg Allen, Tyler Coburn, Tim Devin, Yevgeniy Fiks, Lukas Geronimas, Frank Heath, David Horvitz, Jean Keller, Alexandra Lerman,  Kristin Lucas, Cat Mazza, Kristina Lee Podesva and Alan McConchie, Paul  Soulellis, Emily Spivack, The Thread, Ehren Tool, Print All Over Me, Forms of  Melancholy, Lance Wakeling, Roberto Winter.

 Franklin Street Works is located at 41 Franklin Street in downtown Stamford,  Connecticut, near the UCONN campus and less than one hour from New York  City via Metro North. Franklin Street Works is approximately one mile (a 15  minute walk) from the Stamford train station. On street parking is available on  Franklin Street (metered until 6 pm except on Sunday), and paid parking is  available nearby in a lot on Franklin Street and in the Summer Street Garage  (100 Summer Street), behind Target. The art space and café are open to the public on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and  Sunday: 12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. with extended hours on Thursdays, 12:00 p.m. – 7:00  p.m. Franklin Street Works does not charge for admission during regular gallery hours.