Matt Haffner - "Serial City"
an ACP Public Art Project

Atlanta Celebrates Photography

This page cronicles and documents the progress of Matt Haffner's work on a large scale public arts commission through
Atlanta Celebrates Photography. This will be updated through the course of the project. Check back periodically for up
to date information.

ACP Announces the Curator and Artist for its 2006 Public Art Project
Curator: Joey Orr
Artist: Matt Haffner
This year, Joey Orr became the first curator of ACP’s annual Public Art Program. Orr founded and ran ShedSpace for
five years, 2000-04. He was the curator of exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Saltworks Gallery,
and Garage Projects.
“Atlanta Celebrates Photography’s public art project is an exciting chance for me to further my curatorial practice begun
in ShedSpace, “ noted Orr. “What does how we live say about who we are? What are some of our assumptions about the
spaces we live? By asking Matt Haffner to explore his street practice in the context of the city of Atlanta, we are able to use
the medium of photography to engage the city in the unique vision of one our own accomplished artists.”
Haffner began working on the street while studying at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. His early experiments
combined graffiti, drawing, wheat paste, and silver prints, and they used ambiguous narratives derivative of film noir and
comic books. Some of these same themes will find their way into his 2006 project, which will be specific to Atlanta.
The project will be accompanied by a DVD created by Chris Downs of TUBE Creative.
Haffner received his Masters degree from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia in 1998. After moving to Atlanta, he
became the 2003-2004 recipient of the Forward Arts Foundation, Emerging Artist of the Year Award. He is a studio artist
at the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center and was recently appointed as Professor of Photography at
Kennesaw State University.

Notes About the Project:
Working with ACP curator Joey Orr, who I've worked with in the past (Atlanta's Shed Space, which was Joey's
brainchild), started an interesting new dialog between the two of us about ephemeral street art and it's role in
the Atlanta art scene. I had done this type of work before, but on a smaller and less legal scale. Now the issue
would be to make sanctioned, larger works that had a national backer like ACP.
Check out the ACP press release for more information.

Initally we had planned over 20 sites, though, through the process of getting approval and time factors taken
into consideration, there will be 14 sites around downtown Atlanta and immediately surrounding areas. Here is a map
detailing where most of these sites will be. There will be a final list once all are approved. This list will be on this
site and be in the ACP festival guide.

Atlanta Celebrates Photography’s 2006 Public Art Project
Curatorial Statement
Architecture must be recognized today as a social system: a new economic condition and a psycho-political experience. - Krzysztof Wodiczko
It is a known fact that we do not see with our eyes but rather with our brain. - Robert Smithson

Place is mythmaking. But whose stories are being told and by whom? Every place is mediated by some degree of authority. When intervening temporarily in the public sphere, we experiment with the unspoken politics of space. What better way to engage in this exercise than through narratives that entice our imaginations? Not dictated, linear narratives, but an artistic practice that opens up new spaces for experience and discourse.
Atlanta photographer Matt Haffner re-engages with his street practice in Atlanta Celebrates Photography’s 2006 public art program. While exploring the city for potential sites, I was struck at how buildings and their scale did not match their corresponding images in my head, nor did their appearances generally coincide with how I had verbally constructed them in conversation. In other words, the city I lived in was not always congruent with its empirical evidence. Haffner’s wheat pasted photographic scenes intervene, therefore, not only in the built environment, but in our own constructed spaces, slipping quietly around corners, scaling ignored architectural features, disappearing into the layered surfaces of forgotten walls and reappearing transiently between our assumptions about a city that exists only experientially…discursively.

By bringing Matt Haffner’s street work to the fore of ACP’s annual investigation into photography, the work is seen, not in the context of a gallery, museum or specialized visual art venue with its own set of rules and authoritative codes, but within the context of the audience itself. The manner in which Haffner’s characters can at times surprise or elude us, so it is with the occupation and performance of space for us all. This kind of creative practice will always have currency because it opens us up to possibility and makes an impact on what and how we are able to perceive.

Joey Orr