The Stephen and George Laundry Line announces the newest installation by JANKS ARCHIVE, on view June 1 - July 1, 2016.
JANKS ARCHIVE is conducting an investigation of insult humor from cultures around the world. Insults are an ancient oral tradition embedded within the collective consciousness of a culture or region. How people insult one another differs from place to place, as does the word used to describe these jokes (the term “janks,” for instance, is what put-down jokes are called in Alabama). While the intention appears, at first, to be cruel, “janks” are in fact an integral aspect of human interaction, used as much to strengthen camaraderie as to establish dominance.
The project documents this tradition through crowdsourcing and field recording, in which participants recite “janks” from memory and the collective gathers contextual information in an attempt to trace origins. Since 2012 they have staged events in 11 cities in 7 countries, and material they collect is presented in an online video archive, as well as in art installations, publications, and screenings. For the Stephen and George Laundry Line, Janks Archive is installing two banners which were used for a recent collection event in downtown Vaasa, Finland.
JANKS ARCHIVE was founded in 2012 by Jerstin Crosby (Chapel Hill, NC), Ben Kinsley (NYC), and Jessica Langley (NYC), and they are currently exhibiting at the Queens Museum as part of the 2016 Queens International. This project grew from a conversation the three artists had in response to an historic audio recording made by the filmmaker, ethnomusicologist, and mystic Harry Smith. They began with an experimental event at Practice Gallery in Philadelphia in December 2012 and have since continued this investigation with a number of international events and exhibitions including: La Galeria de Comercio in Mexico City; Kallio Kunsthalle Taidehalli in Helsinki, Finland; FIX13 Live Art Biennial, a program of Catalyst Arts in Belfast, Northern Ireland; and the 2014 Pittsburgh Biennial. They have presented video screenings and installations at the Internot Festival in NYC; Project 4 Gallery in Washington D.C.; Casa del Lago in Mexico City; POST Gallerie in Kaunas, Lithuania; KKC in Riga, Latvia; and the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
In Fall 2014 Janks Archive released a limited edition publication through Acid Rain Production, was featured on the “The Last Billboard” (a curated project by Jon Rubin) in Pittsburgh, PA, and presented at the conference “Unruly Engagements: On the Social Turn in Contemporary Art and Design” at the Cleveland Institute of Art. From December 2015-January 2016 they were artists in residence at Platform in Vaasa, Finland.