IMAGE COURTESY ESTATE OF BETTINA GROSSMAN.
Inspired by Bettina’s cycles of making, Franklin Furnace presents an activation within the exhibition space on December 11, 2025. The event will reimagine moments from Bettina’s work through projection, unfolding as a “movable painting” that gradually transforms into a surface. The afternoon’s activation will take place both within the room and across the projected planes, immersing participants in a shifting environment of image and presence.
Internal Combustion: Staging Surfaces unfolds in three parts:
I. Archival presentation: Memory Work – highlighting parallel approaches from Franklin Furnace’s Artists’ Books and Events Archives, presented by Senior Archivist Fang-Yu Liu.
II. Performative Lecture: Outside In – A continuous unboxing of his collection of boxes / interactive storytelling experience presented by Ken Dewey Director Harley Spiller.
III. Guest appearance by Martha Wilson, Franklin Furnace’s Founding Director Emerita, performing a piece from her Political Evolution series—and as herself.
The event is produced by Xinan Helen Ran, with technical support from Rohan Subramaniam and assistance from Helen Vong and Georgia Helena Burki of Franklin Furnace.
This program is presented in conjunction with Original Order Order Original. Created in collaboration with the Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought, the exhibition explores the art and archives of the artist known as Bettina (1927–2021) and unfolds over the course of six months. As the largest and most extensive viewing of Bettina’s work, the exhibition honours the sequential and exponential nature of the artist's practice, uncovering, documenting, and sharing an expansive selection of works in real time.
Franklin Furnace’s mission is to present, preserve, interpret, educate, and advocate on behalf of experimental art, especially forms that may be vulnerable due to institutional neglect, cultural bias, or politically unpopular content. They provide physical and virtual venues for the presentation of time-based art, including artists’ books and periodicals, performance art, installation art, and contemporary artforms.
Fang-Yu Liu is a Taiwanese-born archivist based in New York. Her research and curatorial interests center on artists’ books and time-based art, with particular attention to the themes of ephemerality and malleability of memories. She currently serves as Senior Archivist at Franklin Furnace Archive.
Harley Spiller is an artist and arts administrator. Now serving as the Ken Dewey Director of Franklin Furnace, Harley’s art focuses on collections of everyday artifacts. His book Keep the Change: A Collector’s Tales of Lucky Pennies, Counterfeit C-Notes, and Other Curious Currency (Princeton Architectural Press) was selected by Roberta Smith as one of 2015’s top ten art books. His collections have been exhibited internationally, from el Museo de Bellas Artes Caracas to the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum.
Martha Wilson is a pioneering feminist artist and gallery director, who over the past five decades created innovative photographic and video works that explore her female subjectivity through role-playing, costume transformations, and “invasions” of other people’s personae. In 1976 she founded, and as Founding Director Emerita, continues to help direct Franklin Furnace, an artist-run space that champions the exploration, promotion and preservation of artists’ books, installation art, video, online and performance art, further challenging institutional norms, the roles artists play within society, and expectations about what constitutes acceptable art mediums.
Xinan Helen Ran creates scalable installations and searches for the point where trauma, nihilism, and humor converge. Ranked “Highbrow and Brilliant” by the New York Magazine Matrix, she is a 2025 MacDowell Fellow, a 2024 More Art Commission Artist, a 2024 New York State Council on the Arts grant recipient, and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Xinan is also an art educator, set designer, and the Program Director of Franklin Furnace. www.xinanran.work
