shaped by our shipping

Here are a couple of good reads on the nature of shipping containers (historic/contemporary) and their silent role in within the fabric of a consumer society.

• Part 1
• Part 2

via: CORE 77

Escape from New York

I've been asked to participate in the proposed art exhibition - Escape From New York. More importantly though is the project behind the show. A great group of artists have been lined up by Olympia Lambert so please read the proposal.

Here are the details:

Do you have $5.00 (or more) to support a proposed art exhibition as hopeful as it is handsome?

Curator and freelance arts writer Olympia Lambert aims to turn a former silk factory in Paterson, New Jersey, into a noted art destination. Unfortunately, Lambert doesn't have the capital to make the project happen. Thus, she's turned to KickStarter, a terrific website and "funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers," and other folks trying to bankroll a good idea.

On the KickStarter page for her project, Lambert writes:

"2010 has brought with it many changes and challenges, and with it a newfound enthusiasm and excitement for New York artists. In many ways, the art world we once knew and loved has come to pass. Artists are being pushed out left and right, publications folding, galleries closing, all while more and more MFAs continue to be churned out than can possibly be hired on by Manhattan’s service industry. Space is at a premium. Do we continue to go even further east into the cramped, treeless, concrete, PCB-infested jungle of Bushwick? [...] Or do we begin to explore other venues west of the Hudson?"

"This project is specifically designed to raise financing for a print and online media advertising campaign for the group art exhibition, "Escape From New York," held in the Fabricolor Building on Van Houten Street in Paterson, NJ. [...] We will be placing a full-page ad in the second week of May 2010's edition of 'New York Magazine' and run online banner ads on ArtForum, Culture Pundits, and other art media."

Image credit: ripped from Olympia Lambert's Kickstarter project page

David Foster Wallace audio project

Haven't downloaded these audio files yet but this looks like a great resource.

The David Foster Wallace Audio Project

This collection of David Foster Wallace MP3's was lovingly collected by Ryan Walsh in early 2009. Included herein are many, many files under the following category headings:

• Interviews & Profiles
• Readings (Now includes the BIwHM audiobook!)
• Eulogies & Remembrances
• 'Brief Interviews' Staged Readings

hat tip:Simplistic Art

Art Blogging Panel at SMartCAMP this Sunday

This looks quite good so head over to the Lab at Roger Smith Hotel tomorrow.

It’s art fair week in New York but this year Gotham’s art market orgy will coincide with SMartCAMP, which is a two-day conference jointly organized by #artstech and the Roger Smith Hotel in midtown Manhattan.

A social media bootcamp of sorts, the conference is designed to:

…help those who are new to or skeptical of social media put together a course of action with the help of presentations and case studies from some leading figures working at the intersection of art and social media. For those who have already been engaging in social media, SMartCAMP offers an opportunity to deepen their knowledge, hone new skills, refine social engagement strategies and gain inspiration for future social campaigns from distinguished peers and colleagues. For social media professionals looking to work with arts organizations, SMartCAMP offers an opportunity to learn about the challenges unique to the cultural space.

For my part, I will be moderating a panel on art blogging — FINDING A VOICE IN THE ART BLOGOSPHERE — and I’m very lucky to have the following panelists in attendance:

• Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes;
• Carolina Miranda of C-Monster & WNYC; and
• Andrew Goldstein, the new executive editor of Artinfo.

read on

Secrets of the New York Art World

The above proposal from Hyperallergic is part of the ongoing think tank experiment at Edward Winkleman's new storefront gallery on West 27th Street with artists William Powhida and Jen Dalton. The artists were asked to “consider ‘alternatives/solutions’ to the market” and decided to organize a show titled #class. You can follow events via their live web cam, which broadcasts whenever the gallery is open (find it on the #class blog).

The Hyperallergic proposal:

Help Us With Our Project

When the buzz began, Hyperallergic decided to join the mix by submitting a proposal called, “$ECRET$ OF THE NEW YORK ART WORLD,” which involved placing a ballot box in the gallery for the duration of the event that simply asked if people were owed any money from someone in the New York art world (artist, dealer, publication, etc.).

Where did the idea come from? Well, after hearing about all the heinous amounts of money that The Project and Salander-O’Reilly Galleries owed people before they closed up shop (or were forced to close, in the case of the latter), we guessed there had to be some doozies out there. While, I don’t expect that we will uncover millions of dollars owed to individuals, we want to document the stories that eat at us and frustrate us to no end. We want to hear from you about the $40 you were owed and never received. That artist who promised you an art work but never came through, or that critic who took a work from your studio with a promise of something that never happened. Consider this your confessional, and everything will stay confidential … unless you don’t want it to.

So, if you or someone you know would like to submit to our project, please fill out the form below:

DOWNLOAD THE FORM & SUBMIT YOUR $ECRET$ NOW

All submissions will be published April 1, 2010, in the form of a PDF which you will be available for download from this website.

Feel free to fill out the form in color (any color you wish) and submit via email or snail mail (all instructions are on the PDF download).

Ivory Tower w/Sharon Butler today

If you are attending previews today, you may want to stop by Winkleman Gallery at 4 pm for this discussion.

TODAY: The Ivory Tower

Today at 4pm!
Winkleman Gallery, 621 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001. If you're interested in the discussion but can't come to the gallery, check out the live streaming video and the #class feed on Twitter.

Everyone is welcome, but confirmed participants include:
Greg Bailey--Connecticut College
Mia Brownell--Southern Connecticut State University
Peter Dudek--Hunter College
Rico Gatson--New York University
Ethan Ham--City University of New York
James Holland--Eastern Connecticut State University
Brece Hunnicutt--Non academic, MFA Columbia
Clint Jukkala--Yale University
Kate Kretz--an academic who (gasp) quit teaching
Martin Kruck--New Jersey City University
Kevin McCoy-New York University
Joanne Mattera--Director, Monserrat Encaustic Conference
Tom Micchelli--Cooper Union
John O-Donnell--University of Connecticut
Cathy Nan Quinlan--Non academic
Austin Thomas--Camp Pocket U

Here are the topics we'll be discussing:

• Art schools have drawn heavy fire recently for churning out young artists driven towards quick commercial success at the expense of their long term artistic development. Yet most artist-academics do not consciously try to instill in their students an impatient mercenary sensibility. Where, then, does it come from?

• Artists who are lucky enough to find full-time teaching jobs have to find a way to fit into conventional university systems that don't understand anything about art. Promotion and Tenure Committees, comprising professors from all departments, may understand the importance of gallery exhibitions, but are completely baffled by relational aesthetics, new media distribution, and other contemporary art practices. How do artists maintain their identity and artistic integrity while working within the traditional academic system?

• The corporatization of education has led to a bureaucratic environment in which we are asked to participate in efforts like “Outcomes Assessment” and “Academic Program Reviews” that contradict the open-ended nature of artistic investigation. Are we guilty of maintaining the status quo by seeing our institutions simply as paycheck providers rather than art communities? Why are our teaching and art practices two separate and distinct activities? Are we failing to think creatively?

• How do you feel about the Bruce High Quality Foundation University's critique of traditional art school?

Overview of the #class project:
#class, organized by William Powhida and Jen Dalton, has been selected as a Critics' Pick in ArtForum. Bill and Jen have turned the gallery into a 'think tank' for guest artists, critics, academics, dealers, collectors, and anyone else who's interested to examine the way art is made, seen, and sold in our culture. Their goal is to identify and propose alternatives and/or reforms to the commercial model and attendant commodification of art, but also the unquantifiable, intangible, unpaid aspects of participating in the art world. They transformed the gallery from a showroom into a conference room, where discussions and events will take place from approximately Feb 20 - March 20, 2010. For a full list of events and video feed, click here.

urban field manual

Check out BEYROUTES from onlab. Fanatstic idea and design. Would love for a whole series of these exploring the different nature of urban environments around the world.

Beyroutes, a guidebook to Beirut, one of the grand capitals of the Middle East. Beyroutes presents an exploded view of a city which lives so many double lives and figures in so many truths, myths and historical falsifications. Visiting the city with this intimate book as your guide makes you feel disoriented, appreciative, judgmental and perhaps eventually reconciliatory.

Initiated by Studio Beirut
Supported by Partizan Publik, Archis, Pearl Foundation

HCR Zombies

Image: Tim Eagan

John Chiara and process

I've been looking at a lot of John Chiara's photography of late and came across this excellent video piece on his photographic process. Really fascinating and such a great body of work.

Vampires and Zombies: Transnational Transformations

Saw this and just had to re-post for the sharper minds that walk among us.

A call for proposals for an exciting anthology has crossed our transom:

Vampires and Zombies: Transnational Transformations (working title)

Editors: Dorothea Fischer-Hornung (Heidelberg University, Germany), Timothy Fox (National Yilan University, Taiwan), and Monika Mueller (University of Stuttgart, Germany)

The undead are very much alive in the contemporary cultural imagination. Vampires and zombies have garnered a generous amount of attention in print media, cinema, and on television. The vampire, with its roots in medieval European folklore, and the zombie, with its origins in Afro-Caribbean voodoo mythology, find multiple transformations in global culture and continue to function as monstrous representatives of zeitgeist.

A publisher has expressed interest in a volume examining the phenomenon of vampires and zombies as transnational cultural icons. Contributors are invited to submit papers on aspects of zombies and vampires as they relate to texts and media across cultural boundaries. Approaches and topics that papers may address, but in no way are limited to:

• Readings of individual texts, authors, and media
• Histories and anthropologies of the zombie and the vampire
• Genre, gender and sexuality, class, and race/ethnic interpretations
• Comparative, transnational, and translingual analyses (traveling tropes, cultural diffusion, mapping translations)
• Globalizations and cultural contexts (economies of power, colonialism, post-colonialism)
• Terrorism, modern warfare
• Migrations, creolizations, hybridizations, the cyber-undead
• Xenophobia: the Other, the alien, the invader, the intruder
• Horror, fear, anxiety, paranoia
• Encounters with Thanatos
• Tainted blood, disease, pandemic, viruses and other biological agents of infection
• Formation of inhuman Communities
• The postmodern, the posthuman, apocalypse and post-apocalypse
• The pop culture industry and consumption (series and sequels, slapstick, satire, the “mockumentary”)
• Video gaming and clubbing
• Graphic novels and comic books
• Self-publishing technologies (digital books, print on demand), the Internet (YouTube, social networks, blogs, e-zines)
• Interviews with authors or filmmakers

Please submit a 500-word abstract and a CV, including contact information, to: (vampzomb at mesea.org)

Deadline: March 15, 2010.

To facilitate procedures, we request that in the Subject space of the email you write: Abstract-[contributor’s name].

The editors will select from among the submitted abstracts according to suitability for the project and contact submitters by April 1. Successful abstract submitters will be requested to submit a full paper (approx. 7,000 words) by August 1.

via: infocult

bunkART

I was a massive fan of Wacky Packages and Weird Wheels as a kid. If you're like me, you should be pleased to learn that Tom Bunk has a blog with tons of great stuff - bunkART. enjoy.

Bruce Sterling on Atemporality

Another great discussion regarding Atemporality and Network Culture. Strangely absent from the visual art discourse.

If progress is to go beyond the banal indulgences that give rise to a never-ending array of car shell designs then we need to analyse our present time with regard to its aesthetics and its media.

Watch Bruce Sterling's keynote on Atemporality at Berlin's Transmediale.

via: Core 77

Defending the Enlightenment

A good discussion via Eurozine between AC Grayling and Tzvetan Todorov.

How to defend the Enlightenment

"To say that reason is only desiccating and too dry is a dangerous caricature. No less dangerous is to eliminate the place for arts, for myth, which is a different kind of knowledge of the world. We have to be cautious about both dangers, both reductions." On the publication of his new book In Defence of the Enlightenment, Tzvetan Todorov tells British philosopher AC Grayling why the Enlightenment must be separated from scientism and cultural chauvinism.

image: Nicholas Hughes

The Sacred Comic Book (final show @ Jack the Pelican)

I received the press release this week, and sadly it appears that one of the remaining iconic galleries of Williamsburg is closing.

From Jack the Pelican Presents:

It breaks my heart to announce Jack the Pelican is closing our space at 487 Driggs Ave. in Williamsburg. It is our hope to re-open some months in the future at another location. But where and when, we cannot say.

But we are saying goodbye for now on a bright note, with one final show that is dear to our hearts...

THE SACRED COMIC BOOK
by anonymous, ca.1921

This is a beautifully drawn, 40-page comic book about an artist, his seedy existence, his community, and his struggles. A single narrative, extending over 30 years, it was completed anonymously in 1921, which makes it the earliest document of its kind. What we're showing here are the original drawings in watercolor and ink.

This comic book belongs to Jack the Pelican and all our artists and also everyone who struggles against the odds and the day-to-day adversities of being an artist. It's central message is Just Keep Pecking Away, and it's dedicated to "the down and outs, the never-was-its and the also-rans (sic), in the Year of our Profits 1921.

In the early days of Jack the Pelican, we invited all our artists to read it. It was akin to an initiation. We always called it "The Sacred Comic Book." It's not really much of a mission statement for a gallery, but it was the closest thing we had. We are happy now to have this last chance to share it with all of you.

THE SACRED COMIC BOOK
by anonymous, ca.1921

opens this Saturday
February 20, 7 - 9pm

February 20–until the marshal comes (1, 2, 3... weeks?)
Opening:		Saturday, February 20, 7–9pm
Location:		487 Driggs Ave, bet N. 9 and N. 10
		Directions
Hours:		Saturday–Sunday, 12–6pm, or by appointment

Art: Charles Nicholas Sarka (1879 1960)

minimalist television

These minimalist television show posters are so good I'm tempted to buy the whole set!

Designer Albert Exergian's TV show posters "created out of a love for posters, modernism, and television.

hat tip: boing boing

The Hoggard Wagner Art Collection

If you follow art blogging then you are likely to know Bloggy.com and JamesWagner.com as well as their collaborative arts calender artcat.com. You may not however know them as prolific art collectors and supporter of living artists. Now you can. Their personal collection is now online and open to the public: The Hoggard Wagner Art Collection. I hope this is a trend that will catch on.

The Collection

Hoggard and Wagner began collecting art as a couple in the mid 1990s, and some works were acquired by Wagner prior to their partnership. This web site is intended to publicize the collection and the artists within it. They have never sold a work of art from their collection and they do not intend to do so. Their hope is that this site will present it to a wider public than the relatively few people who are able to see it in a private home.

Image:
optimism Metrocard, 2009
Reed Seifer
New York MTA Metrocard
2.125 x 3.375 inches
Edition: 14 million
Image(s) via Yana Paskova for The New York Times

Carlo Farneti's illustrations for Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal

These are pretty great - Carlo Farneti's illustrations for a 1935 edition of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal. (From the collection of Richard Sica)



via: A Journey Round My Skull

r.i.p. Dale Hawkins

Rock'n'roll pioneer Dale Hawkins has passed. See the obit here.

Roberta's rant

Last week Roberta Smith had a great piece on the crisis of curating within the contemporary museums here in NYC. It is a thoughtful complaint and poses strong questions for our arbiters of public display. Also, good to hear someone stand up for painting for a change. Why has painting become the ugly stepchild, yet again?

Here are some clips:

How did we get to this point? In the 1970’s the Whitney used to be committed to showing artists from across the United States; they were called regional artists in those days. That term has thankfully fallen out of fashion, but the artists have all but disappeared from museum walls. The Modern, for its part, used to present several works each by 10 to 15 artists under the rubric of its “Americans” show.

But a combination of forces threatens to herd all of our major art institutions into the same aesthetic pen. The need to raise and make money sends curators hunting for artists with international star power who work big at least some of the time, deploy multiple entertaining mediums and make for good ad campaigns (like the self-portrait featured in the MoMA ads for its coming exhibition of William Kentridge). The small show devoted to an artist who doesn’t have an immense reputation and worldwide market becomes rarer and rarer.

The consistent exposure to the big-statement solo exhibition becomes self-perpetuating, as these shows condition not only curators but the public to expect more of the same. I realize to my horror, for example, that the idea of seeing a survey of contemporary painting at the Modern makes me squirm. It would look — I don’t know — too messy and emotional, too flat, too un-MoMA.

But shows where we encounter an artist’s single-minded, highly personal pursuit that proceeds one object at a time tend to feature past masters. The Guggenheim’s recent, fantastic Kandinsky exhibition was an example (as was the Modern’s Ensor show). Yet there are plenty of artists working this way now. They may not be making history (or entertainment, either), but they are still making really good art whose very unfolding has its own integrity and is exciting to see.

Museum curators need to think less about an artist’s career, its breakthroughs and its place in the big picture and more in terms of an artist’s life’s work pursued over time with increasing concentration and singularity.

They have a responsibility to their public and to history to be more ecumenical, to do things that seem to come from left field. They owe it to the public to present a balanced menu that involves painting as well as video and photography and sculpture. They need to think outside the hive-mind, both distancing themselves from their personal feelings to consider what’s being wrongly omitted and tapping into their own subjectivity to show us what they really love.

studio of light

This is hilarious. A wonderful addition to the Studio Visit.





hat tip: Tim Buckwalter