The exhibition takes its title from the Routine Pleasures (1986), a film by the director Jean-Pierre Gorin, who had once collaborated on a series of politically charged cinetracts with Jean Luc-Godard (as the Dziga Vertov Group) before relocating to teach in the relatively relaxed context of San Diego, California. The film delineates two parallel tracks—one, a gradual infiltration of the Model Railroaders Club, a group of “train people” who met every Tuesday night in a hangar near San Diego, and two, a consideration of the still life paintings and writing of artist and film critic Manny Farber—and the often unexpected intersection of these tracks.
 
Artists to be included are James Benning; Jennifer Bornstein; Center for Land Use Interpretation; Harry Dodge; Manny Farber; Judy Fiskin; Magdalena Suarez Frimkess and Michael Frimkess; Galería Perdida; Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer; Simon Leung; Lucky Dragons; Roy McMakin; Carter Mull; Newspaper Reading Club; Pauline Oliveros; and Steve Roden.

Curator: Michael Ned Holte