NYFA speaks with 2009 Digital/Electronic Arts Fellow: Hi Leila and Cary, please tell us a little bit about yourselves and what you’re currently working on.
We are an eco-art/theory collaborative and former New Yorkers now based in Rochester, NY. Leila’s academic training is in literature and Cary has made new media and performance-based art for over twenty years. We bring together our separate disciplines, histories, and practices through a shared interest in nature and the environment. For us, the “environment” encompasses a wide variety of networked systems, including biological habitats, global exchanges, industrial grids, digital networks, and the democratic imagination. Our works merge primitive with emergent technologies and navigate the intertwined terrain between nature, built environments, mobility, and electronic spaces. We are particularly excited right now about a residency program we are creating in the central Maine mountains where new media practitioners will be invited to make art in networked treehouses in the remote woods.
The Emmy award-winning team at Brainstorm Digital has put together the before and after shots from season 2 of HBO’s hit series “Boardwalk Empire”. Boardwalk Empire is an American television series from cable network HBO, set in Atlantic City, New Jersey, during the Prohibition era.
THE GAMBIT OF THIS EXHIBITION about 9/11, which includes sixty-nine works by forty-two artists, is deceptively simple: to eschew any images of the attacks and any made in response to them. (As if to prove the rule, there is one exception, a 2003 proposal by Ellsworth Kelly to reconfigure Ground Zero as a giant trapezoidal park of bright green grass.) Instead, MoMA PS1 curator Peter Eleey writes in his brochure, “this exhibition considers the ways in which 9/11 has altered how we see and experience the world in its wake.” This is a strong thesis—one that asks to be taken seriously. As for the ban on images of 9/11, Eleey regards the attacks as an intervention in spectacle that was a spectacle in its own right: 9/11 “was made to be used,” he argues, with the Bush administration no less than Al Qaeda in mind. “Why would I want to repeat such transgression?” His catalog essay begins with an epigraph from Wittgenstein—“A picture held us captive”—and his purported aim is to release us from this captivity, to despectacularize 9/11, a little.
View of “September 11,” 2011. Foreground: Christo, Red Package, 1968. Background, from left: Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Questions), 1991; Willem de Rooij, Index: Riots, Protest, Mourning and Commemoration (as represented in newspapers, January 2000–July 2002), 2003. Photo: Matthew Septimus.
Sculptor Abdulrahman Katanani is one example of the fact that Arab artists are ‘already among us’ [Al Jazeera]
The function of art – one of the functions of art – consists in bringing spiritual [geistigen] peace to humanity. I believe one cannot characterise the state of consciousness in contemporary art any better than by saying: more and more people are becoming conscious that spiritual peace is not enough because it has never prevented, nor could it ever prevent, real strife, and that perhaps one of the functions of art today is also to contribute to real peace – a function that cannot be foisted upon art, but must lie in the essence of art itself.
- Herbert Marcuse, “Society as a Work of Art”
Doha, Qatar – Cai Guo-Quiang’s exhibit in Doha was exquisite. Incorporating techniques from Islamic artistic heritage such as miniature paintings, Saraab (“mirage”), the celebrated artist’s inaugural solo exhibition in the Arab world creatively synthesised the hitherto unexplored historical and cultural dynamics of the Arab Gulf and China.
For instance, through controlled gunpowder explosions, he produced a dazzling canvass of 99 horses that simultaneously highlighted the symbolic nature of the number 99 – a reference to the 99 names of God in the Islamic tradition, and a symbol for infinity in Chinese culture – and of the horse more generally, with the majestic steed featuring prominently in both cultural milieus.
One small problem, though: in my several hours of marvelling through the Mathaf, the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, I counted fewer than ten other patrons there to take advantage of Cai’s exhibit. Even more disappointing, every one of those vagrant visitors looked foreign, without a Qatari (or Arab, for that matter) in sight to savour the fruits of Cai’s labour.
Even the plethora of advertisements for the exhibit prominently plastered around the city, it seems, were insufficient to generate serious interest.
For an institute whose stated mission is to present “a unique Arab perspective on modern and contemporary art”, its reception was less than encouraging.
Myths of Rape , by Leslie Labowitz-Starus, Performed for Three Weeks in May, Suzanne Lacy, 1977.
The history of postwar art in Los Angeles is punctuated by dramatic examples of public artworks, large-scale spectacles, expansive performances, and small-scale interventions in the public sphere. The Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival celebrates this history through a contemporary lens, with a series of adaptations, re-inventions, and commissions that are inspired by the installation and performance artists working in Los Angeles between 1945 and 1980.
Throughout the 11-day festival, a group of new public artworks will be on view throughout the city. In addition, new performances will premiere every day, including outdoor visual spectacles, experimental theater and sound art, social and political interventions, and media art. A nightly after-party, Black Box, will provide a space for socializing, and include surprise performances each evening.
The festival is presented as part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-80, an unprecedented collaboration of cultural institutions across Southern California coming together to celebrate the birth of the L.A. art scene. As the festival moves throughout the city, visitors will also be surrounded by dozens of groundbreaking exhibitions about the history of art in Southern California. The festival calendar has been designed to allow time to attend both the performances and nearby exhibitions on each day.
A wide-range selection of about 60 pairs of shoe creations by Japanese shoe designer Kei Kagami form a 10-year retrospective exhibition of his work at The Lloyd Hotel & Cultural Embassy in Amsterdam. The shoes display a unique personal and visual understanding of the experimental and individualistic artist and maker that is Kagami. The exhibition is opened in the presence of the artist.
Curated by Rachel Clarke, Claudia Hart and Michael Rees
University Galleries, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ
Monday October 24-Friday December 2, 2011
Reception: Thursday, November 3, 4:30 – 6:00
Panel Discussion: Thursday, 11/17, 12:30
Artists
Kari Altmann (Baltimore), Jose Carlos Casado (NY), Rachel Clarke (Sacramento), Claudia Hart (Chicago), Spencer Hutchinson (Chicago), Yael Kanarek (NY), Brian Khek (Chicago), Alex Lee (Seoul), Lenox-Lenox (Chicago), Alex McLeod (Tornonto), Jon Rafman (Montreal), Michael Rees (Montclair), Lou Regele (Chicago), Timur Si-Qin (Berlin), Yemenwed (NY), Katrina Zimmerman (Chicago), Zeitguised (Berlin)
The technical object cannot be dissociated from human history, but the relationship between Man and Technology remains complex. As a synonym of progress, in western eyes, the technical object is at once desired and suspect, arousing by turns hope, wonder, and disillusion. The exhibition Mondes inventés, Mondes habités (“Invented Worlds, Inhabited Worlds”) broaches the issue of technology transcended by artistic genius. It highlights the special relationship of creative people, those “technical poets” who, rather than restricting themselves to the utilitarian aspect, base their research on an understanding of existence and the beauty of machines. So through the works of some twenty artists of different generations and with different outlooks, the exhibition offers glimpses of the capacity for invention and wonder, daring and curiosity, hallmarking the human and artistic adventure.
David Altmejd
Chris Burden
Vija Celmins
Björn Dahlem
León Ferrari
Vincent Ganivet
Paul Granjon
Theo Jansen
Bodys Isek Kingelez
Paul Laffoley
Isa Melsheimer
Miguel Palma
Panamarenko
Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison
Nancy Rubins
Conrad Shawcross
Roman Signer
Jan Švankmajer
Curators
Marie-Noëlle Farcy
Clément Minighetti HERE
A chemist gives the inside of a beaker a reflective coating during the 21st annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. Photograph by Adam Hunger, Reuters
Brian Handwerk: A wasabi alarm, beer bottle-loving beetles, and doomsday math were among the scientific advances honored Thursday with 2011 Ig Nobel Prizes.
The unique annual awards go to real research “that first makes people laugh, and then makes them think.” The scientific celebration, now in its 21st year, was hosted by the Annals of Improbable Research and several Harvard University student groups.
As usual, more than a half dozen genuine Nobel laureates were onstage at Harvard’s Sanders Theater to hand out the coveted prizes.
kabinetten, 10 September – 9 October, 2011, curator: Susan Hapgood and Cornelia Lauf
The Foundation for Visual Arts Middelburg (Stichting Beeldende Kunst Middelburg) presents the exhibition In Deed: Certificates of Authenticity in Art in De Kabinetten van De Vleeshal, Zusterstraat 7, Middelburg. It opens on saturday 10 september at 4 p.m. As part of the exhibition a publication will be presented.
At 5 p.m. there will be a symposium in De Vleeshal, with curators Susan Hapgood and Cornelia Lauf and with special guests Seth Siegelaub and Daniel McClean.
Free Admission
‘Certificates of authenticity are a critical aspect of art works today’
Certificates of authenticity are a critical aspect of art works today. They often even embody the artwork itself, while referring to it, serving as its deed, legal statement, and fiscal invoice. Certificates by artists validate the authorship and originality of the work and they allow the work of art to be positioned in the
marketplace as a branded product-no matter how immaterial or transient that product may be. Whereas the inherent importance of any given work of art should be self-evident to the connoisseur’s eye, certificates point the focus elsewhere, and
prove that material or aesthetic qualities in an object sometimes do not suffice in constituting the work of art. In our globalized, capitalist present, the certificate and its implications about artistic thinking have become an instrument of business nterprise, as well as a philosophical statement about the nature of an artwork.
Certificates have legal and ontological implications that make them fascinating documents of changing attitudes toward art and the role of artists. +++ HERE
Mairi Macleod: I couldn’t imagine how Richard Dawkins’s iconic book The Selfish Gene could be turned into an Edinburgh Festival Fringe show, billed as the world’s first “biomusical”. But you know what? Bex Productions has managed to pull it off.
Jonathan Salway has a background in theatre, not biology, but when he read Dawkins’s book, the clarity of writing, the fascinating subject matter and even the humour so inspired him that he felt compelled to transform it into musical comedy and set about dissecting the book to write script and songs with the help of fellow writer Dino Kazamia and music by Richard Macklin.
In the show a fusty Oxford professor, played by Salway, tries to lecture the audience on the fundamentals of evolutionary theory. Meanwhile, the Adamson family share the stage, going about their daily trials of life, unwittingly providing examples of the points he’s making. He frequently interrupts and explains to them why they’re feeling and behaving the way they are, and sporadically gets involved in their lives along the way. Continue HERE
‘Dirt’ reveals the fascinating world of filth that remains one of the very last taboos.
Our major new exhibition takes a closer look at something that surrounds us but that we are often reluctant to confront. ‘Dirt’ travels across centuries and continents to explore our ambivalent relationship with dirt.
Bringing together around 200 artefacts spanning visual art, documentary photography, cultural ephemera, scientific artefacts, film and literature, the exhibition uncovers a rich history of disgust and delight in the grimy truths and dirty secrets of our past, and points to the uncertain future of filth, which poses a significant risk to our health but is also vital to our existence.
Following anthropologist Mary Douglas’s observation that dirt is ‘matter out of place’, the exhibition introduces six very different places as a starting point for exploring attitudes towards dirt and cleanliness: a home in 17th-century Delft in Holland, a street in Victorian London, a hospital in Glasgow in the 1860s, a museum in Dresden in the early 20th century, a community in present day New Delhi and a New York landfill site in 2030.
Highlights include paintings by Pieter de Hooch, the earliest sketches of bacteria, John Snow’s ‘ghost map’ of cholera, beautifully crafted delftware, Joseph Lister’s scientific paraphernalia and a wide range of contemporary art, from Igor Eskinja’s dust carpet, Susan Collis’s bejewelled broom and James Croak’s dirt window, to video pieces by Bruce Nauman and Mierle Ukeles and a specially commissioned work by Serena Korda.
The Cognitive Cities Conference (#CoCities) aims to bring the vibrant global conversation about the future of cities to Germany. We believe that collaboration and diversity lead to the best results. By inviting bright minds with different perspectives, it is our ambition to enable not only an in-depth exchange about the current state of affairs, but also to foster new projects and contribute to the ongoing global discussion. We see CoCities as a platform for exchange and mutual inspiration. We invite urban planners, designers, technology geeks, environmental experts, public officials, urban gardening enthusiasts and cultural influencers to be part of the conversation. We can only make our cities more livable if we work together to improve them. Cognitive Cities Conference
On the quest for another world, Carsten Höller follows in the Hamburger Bahnhof the origin of Soma, a mythical libation of the Indo-Germanic Vedas from the 2nd millennium BC. Soma brought the Vedas enlightenment and access to the divine sphere and was highly praised in their hymns. The herbal ingredient of this libation has not been passed on without a doubt, but from a botanic, ethnologic and etymologic view there is evidence that it could have been the fly agarics.
Based on these circumstances Carsten Höller develops a scenario between laboratory and vision, alleged objectivity and increased subjectivity.
Before the eyes of the observers unfolds an expansive “living picture”, a symmetrical experimental field, which is divided in two parts along its center line and which compares the ordinary world with the realm of Soma in a double-image experiment. This is an experiment, that find its completion in the imagination of the observer and whose evaluation is subject to your power of observation. On a mushroom like platform in midst of the arrangement resides a bed, where guests will have the opportunity to spend a night at the museum and to dive into the world of Soma.
Alter Nature: We Can shows the work of 20 international contemporary artists and designers. The exhibition focuses on the different ways in which people have displaced, manipulated or designed nature: from small gardens to private islands, from carrots and bonsai trees to acoustic plants and orange pheasants.
In Alter Nature: We Can, Z33 looks at the sub-aspect of fauna and flora in nature. Through the works of some twenty international artists we explore how humankind manipulates nature and how the concept of ‘nature’ constantly changes as a result of this.
The works are not about using nature to meet basic needs (such as health, food, protection, etc.). Interesting projects in this context are legion, but grouped together they almost inevitably lead to simplified contradictions. On the one hand, one has projects that look ‘positively’ upon transforming nature: they find out what technology can do or they show solutions. These projects are often criticised because they seem to subscribe seamlessly to the scientific belief in progress. On the other hand, some projects show the negative side; they look at interventions in nature that have gone wrong. These projects are criticesed to bethe autonomous art corner’s wagging finger. They criticise but do not offer any solutions.
Alter Nature: We Can wants to go beyond this simplified pro-contra positioning. The works on display are therefore devoid of strict utilitarianism and the emphasis is on the historic context of intervention, the multiplicity of manipulations and our fluctuating understanding of the concept of nature.
Alter Nature: We Can is part of Alter Nature, an overarching project by Z33, the Hasselt Fashion Museum and CIAP in collaboration with the MAD faculty, the University of Hasselt, the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), KULeuven University and bioSCENTer.
Curator:
Karen Verschooren (Z33)
Artists:
Makoto Azuma (JP)
BCL: Shiho Fukuhara (JP) and Georg Tremmel (AT)
David Benqué (UK)
Julien Berthier (FR)
Merijn Bolink (NL)
Center for PostNatural History
Mark Dion (US)
Driessens & Verstappen (NL)
Daisy Ginsberg (UK)
Tue Greenfort (DK)
Natalie Jeremijenko (US)
Eduardo Kac (US)
James King (UK)
Allison Kudla (US)
Reinier Lagendijk (NL)
Antti Laitinen (FIN)
Hans Op de Beeck (B)
Michael Sailstorfer (D)
Maarten Vanden Eynde (B)
Adrian Woods (NL)
Adam Zaretsky (US)
«REALSTADT.Wünsche als Wirklichkeit» [Realstadt.Wishes Knocking on Reality's Doors]. The focal point in this exhibition is not only the concept of the City but also the way we deal with the City. It is the wishes of very many different actors playing an active part in shaping the City that are central to the exhibition: mundane wishes and spectacular ones, idealistic and economic ones, local and global ones. Cities, after all, are built from wishes, animated by wishes and pulsing with wishes.
A vast array of around 300 architectural and planning models and 80 exemplary projects from all over Germany testify to the wish for change and the energy needed to make it happen. In response to a nationwide call, these models were submitted by local authorities, town planning offices, universities, planning initiatives and individuals. The prize-winning projects of the competition “National Prize for Integrated Urban Development and Baukultur”, which was organized in 2009 by the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development represented important points of reference. They include blueprints for extensive urban redevelopments and pinpoint interventions, realized concepts and shelved competition entries, participatory processes and bold individual statements. More HERE
Sunflower Seeds is made up of millions of small works, each apparently identical, but actually unique. However realistic they may seem, these life-sized sunflower seed husks are in fact intricately hand-crafted in porcelain.
Each seed has been individually sculpted and painted by specialists working in small-scale workshops in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Far from being industrially produced, they are the effort of hundreds of skilled hands. Poured into the interior of the Turbine Hall’s vast industrial space, the 100 million seeds form a seemingly infinite landscape.
Porcelain is almost synonymous with China and, to make this work, Ai Weiwei has manipulated traditional methods of crafting what has historically been one of China’s most prized exports. Sunflower Seeds invites us to look more closely at the ‘Made in China’ phenomenon and the geo-politics of cultural and economic exchange today.
Update: Friday 22 October 2010
The landscape of sunflower seeds can be looked upon from the Turbine Hall bridge, or viewed at close-range in the east end of the Turbine Hall on Level 1. It is no longer possible to walk on the surface of the work, but visitors can walk close to the edges of the sunflower seed landscape on the west and north sides.
Although porcelain is very robust, we have been advised that the interaction of visitors with the sculpture can cause dust which could be damaging to health following repeated inhalation over a long period of time. In consequence, Tate, in consultation with the artist, has decided not to allow members of the public to walk across the sculpture.
Skulls was and exhibition about CAS’ extensive collection of bird and mammal skulls and skeletons.
“A cursory glance through the Skulls exhibit may raise the question: Why collect so many skulls? In some cases, tiny fragments of a single skull are enough to make groundbreaking discoveries. However, due to the natural variation that exists among individual animals, large collections allow scientists to address questions about a species or an ecosystem with much greater accuracy. With over 1,800 sea lion skulls alone, the Academy’s skull collection has provided valuable data for scientists around the world.” SKULLS HERE
The Black Cab Sessions is a series of one-song performances by musicians and poets recorded in the back of a black cab and filmed for an internet audience. A black cab is a type of hackney carriage (taxicab) common to Britain. The sessions are recorded while the black cab that serves as the studio travels through city streets, usually in London, England. Most of the performances feature rock bands, ranging from popular acts such as Death Cab for Cutie, The Kooks and My Morning Jacket to lesser known acts such as the Cave Singers. (text from Wiki)
Barry Hyde of the British rock group The Futureheads.
It would be nice if BCS becomes a little bit more stylistically diverse, but hopefully someone else is working in creating a similar version but more like an Eclectic Auto-rickshaw Session.
Once again the (labels apart) lounge electro-poppers Tim Gane, Laetitia Sadier, Andrew Ramsay, Simon Johns, and Joseph Watson return with their fuzzy Moogs, peculiar string trots, deep-tones, and playful vocal melodies.
As Gane has noted in interviews, Chemical Chords was constructed by fiddling with infinite chord combinations and analog drum loops.
Embrace the groop’s pop molecules as you surf the 60s French pop and Motown soul waves of Chemical Chords.
Stereolab, (Chemical Chords) = Three Women (not the Robert Altman’s one)
Sep 20 2008 8:00P Detroit BarCosta Mesa, California
Sep 21 2008 8:00P Glass House Pomona, California
Sep 24 2008 8:00P La Zona RosaAustin, Texas
Sep 26 2008 8:00P Variety Playhouse Atlanta, Georgia
Sep 27 2008 8:00P 40 Watt ClubAthens, Georgia
Sep 29 2008 8:00P Cat’s Cradle Carrboro, North Carolina
Sep 30 2008 8:00P 9.30 ClubWashington, Washington DC
Oct 1 2008 8:00P Trocadreo Theatre Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Oct 2 2008 8:00P Fillmore at Irving PlazaNew York, New York
Oct 3 2008 8:00P Fillmore at Irving Plaza New York, New York
Oct 4 2008 8:00P Fillmore at Irving PlazaNew York, New York
Oct 6 2008 8:00P Paradise Boston, Massachusetts
Oct 7 2008 8:00P Club Soda Montreal, Quebec
Oct 8 2008 8:00P Phoenix Concert Theatre Toronto, Ontario
Oct 9 2008 8:00P Crofoot Detroit, Michigan
Oct 10 2008 8:00P Vic Theatre Chicago, Illinois
Oct 12 2008 8:00P First AvenueMinneapolis, Minnesota
Oct 14 2008 8:00P Gothic Theatre Denver, Colorado
Oct 17 2008 8:00P Showbox Seattle, Washington
Oct 18 2008 8:00P Wonder Ballroom Portland, Oregon
Oct 19 2008 8:00P Commodore BallroomVancouver, British Columbia
Oct 21 2008 8:00P Fillmore San Francisco, California
Oct 22 2008 8:00P Fillmore San Francisco, California
Oct 23 2008 8:00P Henry Fonda Theatre Los Angeles, California
Oct 24 2008 8:00P Belly Up TavernSolana Beach, California
Dec 12 2008 8:00P The Pavilion Cork, Cork
Dec 13 2008 8:00P Tripod Dublin, Dublin Dec 14 2008 8:00P Black Box Belfast, Northern Ireland
Dec 16 2008 8:00P Oran MorGlasgow, Scotland
Dec 17 2008 8:00P Academy 3 Manchester, Northwest
Dec 18 2008 8:00P Concorde 2Brighton, South
Dec 19 2008 8:00P Koko London, London and South East
The ISSUE Project Room is another one of those place where you and I would like to Teletransport to see and hear precious events.
If you are floating around New York, go to Brooklyn and enter FLOATING POINTS 2008 at ISSUE Project Room, and innovative house speaker system designed by Stephan Moore. This festival is loaded with some unique aural treats that will reside your brain for a couple of weeks. Some of the shining starts to come are Phill Niblock, Sawako , Yasunao Tone, Francisco Lopez, and others. So if you are around Brooklyn….GO NOW!
VIDA, the international competition on art and artificial life, was set up 10 years ago by Fundación Telefónica (Spain). They recently rewarded works of art produced with and commenting on artificial life technologies. The artwork includes empathic blobs, cabinets of curiosities for the biotech age, exploration into digital survival and animatronics.
View of “September 11,” 2011. Foreground: Christo, Red Package, 1968. Background, from left: Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Questions), 1991; Willem de Rooij, Index: Riots, Protest, Mourning and Commemoration (as represented in newspapers, January 2000–July 2002), 2003. Photo: Matthew Septimus.
Sculptor Abdulrahman Katanani is one example of the fact that Arab artists are ‘already among us’ [Al Jazeera]
Myths of Rape , by Leslie Labowitz-Starus, Performed for Three Weeks in May, Suzanne Lacy, 1977.
Ed Bereal and members of The Bodacious Buggerrilla performing Miss America Piece, ca. 1969-70
Conrad Shawcross : The Nervous Systems (Inverted), 2011, Courtesy de l’artiste et galerie Victoria Miro, Londres, Commande et Production Mudam Luxembourg avec la collaboration de la galerie Victoria Miro, Londres © Photo : Andres Lejona
A chemist gives the inside of a beaker a reflective coating during the 21st annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. Photograph by Adam Hunger, Reuters
Image: Owain Shaw
The Cognitive Cities Conference (#CoCities) aims to bring the vibrant global conversation about the future of cities to Germany. We believe that collaboration and diversity lead to the best results. By inviting bright minds with different perspectives, it is our ambition to enable not only an in-depth exchange about the current state of affairs, but also to foster new projects and contribute to the ongoing global discussion. We see CoCities as a platform for exchange and mutual inspiration. We invite urban planners, designers, technology geeks, environmental experts, public officials, urban gardening enthusiasts and cultural influencers to be part of the conversation. We can only make our cities more livable if we work together to improve them.
This carrot was created by 
images copyright by Jan Bitter
Barry Hyde of the British rock group The Futureheads.
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