Event Details
Saturday, September 9, 2023
2:30 pm 

Dia Beacon
3 Beekman Street
Beacon, New York 

Free with museum admission.

Artist Rita McBride and designer David Reinfurt will activate the Momentum Manifesto (2023) in connection with the exhibition Rita McBride: Arena Momentum.

Dia acquired Arena (1997) in 2021. As part of that process, McBride transitioned the digital files and conceptual parameters for the artwork into a copyleft license that is stewarded by Dia. Arena’s copyleft status is emblematic of the artist’s dedication to the democratic principles of exchange and her continued commitment to institutional engagement. The digital copyleft files and the Momentum Manifesto, designed by Reinfurt, are free to the public.

Taking the form of a large-scale poster, Momentum Manifesto chronicles 25 years of activations of Arena at major art institutions around the world and articulates the parameters of the work’s copyleft status. Posters are available for visitors to take in the gallery and in the Dia Beacon bookshop.

The Momentum Manifesto will serve as a point of departure for a stream of institutional programming developed around Arena and titled Blind Dates. Guided by the conceptual parameters of copyleft, such as free interpretation and openness to all, Blind Dates will begin in October 2023 and develop throughout the duration of the exhibition. Details to follow. 

David Reinfurt is an independent graphic designer. He received a BA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a MFA from Yale University, New Haven. Reinfurt worked at Two Twelve Associates from 1993 to1995 and at IDEO from 1995 to1997, and formed O-R-G inc. in 2000 followed by Dexter Sinister with Stuart Bertolotti-Bailey in 2006, all in New York. From 2006 to 2011, Dexter Sinister published the magazine Dot Dot Dot, and in 2011, with Bertolotti-Bailey and Angie Keefer, Reinfurt founded the journal The Serving Library. He was the 2010 USA Rockefeller Design Fellow and received the 2016–2017 Mark Hampton Rome Prize for design from the American Academy in Rome. His work has been exhibited widely and is in the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He has written two books, Muriel Cooper (2017) with Robert Wiesenberger and A *New* Program For Graphic Design (2019). Reinfurt teaches at Princeton University, New Jersey.

Rita McBride was born in Des Moines in 1960 and lives in Düsseldorf and Los Alamos, California. She received a BA from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia. In 1988, she began exploring architectural and sculptural form in works ranging from small-scale objects to public commissions. Her major public commissions include Mae West, Munich (2011); Bells and Whistles, the New School, New York (2014); and Obelisk of Tutankhamun, Cologne (2017). Major presentations include Rita McBride: Public Tilt, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (2014–15); Rita McBride: Gesellschaft, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, Germany, and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2015–16); Rita McBride: Explorer, Wiels Centre d’Art Contemporain, Brussels (2017–18); Particulates, Dia Chelsea, New York (2017–18); National Chain 2020/Social Practices (in collaboration with Alexandra Waierstall and Fontys Dance Academy), Museum De Pont, Tilburg, the Netherlands (2021); and Rita McBride: Particulates, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2023). In 2001, she initiated a series of genre-bending publications that often use anonymous, collective writing structures. In 2018, she also initiated Particulates, an anthology of science fiction, edited by Nalo Hopkinson, that accompanied her exhibition Particulates at Dia Chelsea. McBride’s first project with Dia was a performative lecture on the work of Rosemarie Trockel as part of the 2003 Artists on Artists series.