meanwhile....

self editing

during my thirty day adventure in Argentina, three things seemed constant: great wine, incredible meals, and wonderful moments of laughter. another recurring feature was the artist Nicola Costantino.

I first heard that name on my second day there, when I asked about local artists. her website, which features an animated conveyor belt with a baby pig moving from one end to another, was shown to me. at that point it was somewhat difficult for me to understand what her work was about, because of my rusty castellano and some navigational issues on her site.

a few days later, I was taken to the San Telmo district in Buenos Aires for my first gallery opening at 713 Arte Contemporáneo, which featured the works by Cinthia de Levie, Juan Pablo Garcia and Andrea Vasquez. this historic neighborhood has beautiful colonial architecture; this gallery was situated on two floors of a three story row building. the second floor was the main exhibition space, where the wine was served and the majority of the gallery goers found themselves. it was there that de Levie's exhibition La Cosa (my translation "the thing"), a series of dark waxy objects arranged in clutters along with ink wash drawings (the main exhibition for the evening), was shown. that same floor also presented a small sample of Garcia's and Vasquez' works in a projects room. these works were extremely elegant and beautifully installed, but possessed a rather international detached quality that I did not find remarkable.

upstairs the third floor, more storage than display space, held works by artists this gallery represents in three large rooms (some works hung on the walls salon style, others stacked along the walls on in piles). towards the back of the house, on what probably used to be a balcony (now enclosed with a roof and walls) was their video projection room. this narrow and darkened room featured a projection that consumed an entire wall (perpendicular to the entrance). here three videos by the young artist Milton Kalbermatter were projected on a loop, under the umbrella title of Gestos al azar (my translation "chance gestures"). these consisted of short performative works featuring the artist himself (whom later I met in the gallery) of an uncomfortable nature - reminiscent of Vito Acconci's Three Adaptation Studies (1970)- simultaneously enigmatic but rather specific (in one he holds a smile for three minutes while staring at the camera). each vignette was shown unedited, whole, with no title or credits given. they were simple and yet captivating, providing an intimacy (the space was small, the figure large) and ease without being too coy. I noticed that many people stayed in the room for more than one loop. I returned to it a few times that same evening.


when the opening reception ended, I found myself going with about a very large group of people to a pizza place around the corner, which included the gallery director, some of the staff and many artists it represented (along with their friends). it was during this dinner that Nicola Costantino resurfaced, though it was only on my second to last day that I put together her name with the baby pig. a few of the artist were critically talking about her, in a manner I found peculiar. again my castellano was not up to par, but I noticed that the tone of the conversation was mixed. one particular artist was describing how she had plastic surgery and was artificially inseminated to get pregnant, and her opinion (and facial expressions) were obviously negative. another person (I am not sure if she was an artist or not), who had brought up Nicola as a conversation topic, pulled out brochures of her most recent exhibition, and passed it around.


it was explained to me that Nicola had a sculpture background, but after dating a photographer she began making photographic self portraits. the brochure was exquisite, a great balance of images and text, and the print quality was amazing. in it there were photographic reproductions, of what I assumed were these "photographs" she made with the then boyfriend. they seemed to be titled Nicola y su doble ("Nicola and her double," my translation). the artist appeared in a variety of environments with a dummy that looked almost exactly like herself, to scale. only by observing carefully one could tell which one was which (usually by looking at the joints, where the articulation was visible). these images also seemed to refer to photographs of historical importance, such as Henry Peach Robinson's Fading Away (1858) and Horst P. Horst's Bathers (1930). one photograph showed Nicola holding a baby, which I assumed was the IVF one.

I got the feeling that part of the criticism had to do with her using herself in the work, and being somewhat concerned with beauty or vanity. this conversation was somewhat strange to me because I am in support of both plastic surgery and in vitro fertilization if that is what one wants for their lives (I am also a bit Orlan fan). it also felt odd because on the table behind us was an artist (Milton), who uses himself in his work - so why is it okay for one, and not okay for another? is this a gender thing? or does it have to do with the fact that one was present and the other absent? I thought it would have been more interesting to talk about the art itself, rather than talk about the artist. but perhaps when friends get together they can let their guards down, and not edit what they say in public.

the following week there was another event in Buenos Aires I was invited to go to, a series of openings at the Centro Cultural Recoleta, one of the best known cultural destinations in that city (because of its location and the many activities in the arts - visual and performance- they hold). on our way there we made a detour to the Fundación YPF, located in the posh and futuristic district of Puerto Madero (which really looked like Second Life). this organization, a cultural foundation run by a (once state-owned) petroleum company, runs a program called Arte en la Torre (art in the tower). the lobby of this building was circular in shape and reminiscent of London's Barbican Art Gallery (though YPF was only half used and left oriented, as opposed to the full loop starting at the right at Barbican).

the YPF featured the works of Nicola Costantino, and I found out that the brochure I had seen was from this exhibition as well. titled Trailer, the installation featured six small mobile home trailers arranged around the semi circle shape of the space; in front of each one a movie poster/marquee of Nicola and her double (the same images from the brochure) were displayed. each trailer had a different arrangement, and one could look into it from windows and openings on their side; one appeared to be a workshop, another a baby's room, a bedroom, and so forth. the second to the last trailer had a side door opened and inside a video monitor was installed, with seating arranged for less than 10 people. a sign outside explained that a 3 minute piece with an interval in between, would be played on a continuous loop. the monitor displayed the preview/trailer for a movie that featured the exploration of the creation of this double and her pregnancy. the images were beautifully lit, a la film noir, with dramatic music and no speech (the occasion text was interspersed). this trailer ends with Nicola pushing her dummy double, sat on a wheelchair, down the top of a stairway in a park, which I believe to be a reference to Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin (1925). after watching this trailer, inside a trailer, I was mesmerized.

as I walked out of the structure, moving towards the last mobile trailer in the exhibition, I told my companions "I want to see this movie" and they looked at me and said "there is no movie, only a trailer." the last trailer in the space had a metal staircase that one had to walk up and look down into it via a glass window on its top. inside it one could see the shattered double arranged within the space (which, in the movie, was subtitled as "the inevitable").

this art experience was very profound to me. in addition to loving her play of words (the multiple meanings of the word trailer), the display of a fragile and obsessive relationship with the represented self felt honest and clever to me. language barrier aside, I understood that this artist was making as much a statement about the mystique of artists in art, as a critique to her critics (which from my dinner experience, was that of her being a narcissistic artist). while in the popular or colloquial sense of narcissism has to do with one being obsessed with their own appearance or image (hence the comments on plastic surgery and independent baby production), psychologically speaking this has more to do with the inability to separate self from an object condition. in art this could manifest via a constant examination of a represented self. I imagine the irritation and intimidation others have of this type of (art) practice has got to do with the direct confrontation one has with private concerns (as anyone arguably spends a considerable time editing what images of themselves they post on Facebook, for example, or looking at themselves in the mirror every morning). it is an artist's job, at times, to put their audience in this uncomfortable place - hopefully beyond the initial repulsion some self-reflexivity will occur. with this interpretation I found Nicola Costantino's art to be touching and giving, and I left YPF very moved. whether we admit to ourselves (or even realize) or not, we all long to find/create/own that perfect but separate self; some of us spend our entire lives looking for it on someone else, or attempting to make that other into our own image.

her approach to representing her self with spatial and time-based media was directly oppositional but relatable to another artist I met in Argentina, Hernan Khourian. utilizing an experimental but documentary approach, Hernan creates extensive, and often nonverbal video sequences that delineate but not narrate a particular topic or series of concepts. throughout his pieces there is an implication of the self, via a reflected image on a mirror-like surface, the rapid and repetitive movement of a handheld camera, and sometimes indexical vestiges in audio (walking, breathing, et cetera). his works have a great similarity to early Bill Viola's pieces, such as Sweet Light (1977), I do not know what it is I am like (1986), and to some extent The Reflecting Pool (1977-79). Like Nicola's work, a lot of what takes place is left out of the video space, in the editing suite. what we are presented with are fragments of larger and unknown narratives; it is our job to connect the dots, to imagine what happened in between scenes, and why the artist decided to (re) present these to us. Unlike Nicola's video, Hernan's are quite lengthy; both artists left me wanting more. to find out more about his works, please read his own words on E-TERVIEW.


Nicola's name came up one last time during another dinner conversation with a local artist. this time I was able to ask more questions and understand more of the issues so many peers had with her work (though not necessarily agree with them). I finally understood that the plastic surgery, lipo suction, was done for an art piece called Savon de Corps (2004), which were a series of soap bars made with her own fat that sold for US$1,000 each. this sort of surprised me because I felt that it was somewhat unoriginal, or obvious (as a young artist I thought of doing that myself after watching the movie "Fight Club" with Brad Pitt). the same went for her construction of her double to scale; I thought Charles Ray's self orgy was way more poignant[Oh! Charley Charley Charley (1992)]. but speaking of parts or elements never do justice to an entire picture; Nicola's effectiveness is in the combination of bodily concerns with language, the construction/construing of meaning alongside the making of bodies.

when comparing the video works of these two Argentine artists, Hernan Khourian and Nicola Costantino, I encountered two ways of understanding self and artist. one leaves the self out of the picture (but I gather a better understanding of whom he is and how he experiences the world), while the other centers the work on herself, but manages to elude me and confound others.

my last encounter with Nicola was a few days before my departure, on another field trip to Buenos Aires, at arteBA '10, an international art fair, which featured hundreds of Argentine galleries and some from Latin America, the US and Europe. like most similar events around the world, it was held in a convention center, where each gallery had a mock space or booth with a selection from their roster. these events are also quite extensive and tiresome, similar to a trip to a mall where, for some reason, you fell compelled to go into every single store. we spent about four hours at arteBA, and saw a mix of old and new artists, again with that same international taste I had found at 713 [though I have to say that their booth in particular had some incredible work, most notably a computer animation by Estanislao Florido based on Marcel Duchamp's Large Glass (1915-1923) - for which I do not have the title unfortunately]. I imagine we also walked a million miles. there was so much to see that it is hard to narrow it down to any highlight or best in show, or" the good the bad and the ugly." as we were about to leave, I noticed in passing a familiar face. in a small room, arranged near other pieces, were large photographic prints of Nicola's images for the movie posters in the exhibition (sans text and display apparatus). while those pieces had the red dot of sale, they seemed lost and undermined in that setting. out of the installation context, they looked sad and flat; center stage is where they shine. I wonder how these will look in someone's house, and what people will talk about (or refrain from saying) upon encountering Nicola, her double, and their representations.

programming update

dear followers,

greetings from Argentina =-)

from now on all entries featuring interviews with artists and art-related folks will be found in e-terview.blogspot.com .

all previous interviews have been placed on that site. our first feature on E-TERVIEW is artist Candace Briceno.


soon a new entry will be posted here as well!

I hope you join us there as well, and thank you for supporting ART-SIGHT.

cheers,

V.

state of the arts

in a recent New York Times article I read through Facebook (thanks to Gilda Snowden), a group of artists took residency in Governor's Island and worked for 4 months, culminating in a public day of events that will be open to the public at large until October. this project is sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Snowden's post sparked some lively debate over state-sponsored ventures.

a space full of (empty) potential in Detroit, among so many others in this city, is the Russell Industrial Center, which already houses many artist studios, workshops, commercial ventures, a bazaar, and alternative spaces/galleries. this complex is truly amazing in its scale, and only a small portion of it seems to be permanently utilized. I added my two cents to the discussion saying that Detroit should promote an art residency program at the Russell, where four artists with a 6 months residency and a $15,000 stipend each could run for less than $100,000 a year (excluding renovation and administrative salaries)... my idea was met with some sarcasm, in part because there is truly no money anywhere in the city or state for the arts. many wonderful and established programs are struggling right now to keep their head above the water as is, so why spread what little is left with another venture?. I completely sympathize with this sentiment.

my thought was that such residency could place Detroit and surrounding communities in a better and continuing dialogue with the global art world/market (specially if it was run similar to or modeled after the Art Pace in San Antonio, with one local/regional, one national, and one international artist selected each year). I also posited that the Kresge Foundation could add that to their already extremely generous portfolio of programs for the arts in Michigan ( the same could be said about the Art Prize folks - this being the million dollar yearly project, soon to unveil year two in Grand Rapids, MI - they could jump in as well). there are many other wealthy and generous families in the metro area and state as well, who already contribute to many causes, art or otherwise. I am more than happy to get no credit should this idea ever come into fruition (as we would all benefit from it, one way or another), and would gladly provide the little know-how I have on the subject.

of course this thought has been sparked by my current situation, that of being an artist in residency at Casa de Artistas - Residencia Corazon, in La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina (this being my third experience in a AIR program). the specifics of my experiences can be read on my daily Notes posted on Facebook (friend me if you have not already). this residency program is institutionally supported by the Secretaria de Cultura y Educacion - Municipalidad de La Plata, Instituto Cultural Buenos Aires, and Universidad Nacional de La Plata, among other private organizations. artists participating also contribute with a nominal fee. currently, all residencies are either one or two months long.

Rodrigo Mirto and Juan Pablo Ferrer are the directors for this residency program. both have other professional activities on the side, Mirto is an artist that works in sculpture and painting, as well as a custom maker of iron rod fixtures for private homes. Ferrer does some photography and video on his own time, in addition to co-directing La Plata's International Independent Film Festival and running the year-round programing for the Cine at the Centro Cultural Pasaje Dardo Rocha. a few days ago we were talking about the economic situation in the U.S. and I explained how things have changed, though now it is either getting better, people are getting used to it, or the media found a sexier subject to cover. in so many words (still some language barrier in our communications) they told me that what we see as our current struggle is something they have always had to deal with, that being an artist or in a creative field in Argentina has always meant you have to do something else, on the side(s).

a few days later, while touring the city, we went to the (state run) Fine Arts College and walked around. the building, which also housed a secondary school, a library and the university radio channels, was somewhat falling apart (though the library was beautifully renovated, albeit a bit hot), but the high energy was palpable, with bright-eyed students talking and practicing their art, singing, playing instruments, sketching, everywhere (combine "fame" with "buena vista social club" to get a sense). the college radio station was on the top floor, so we went for a visit and met Oscar Jalil, among others, the coordinator for 107.5 FM, who also curates the exhibitions at the (city sponsored) Malvinas Centro Cultural and writes for the Argentine Rolling Stones. the usual mate drinking and indoor smoking took place, along fast conversation and with David Bowie playing in the background). a day later I went to the Malvinas complex for a double opening reception, but that is subject for another blog entry.

one expectation and anxiety on going into a residency program is the shut out factor of not having television available. this of course is not usually a problem if there is an internet connection available, if you are still in the U.S. (or whatever country you are from) and access to local programing. but when you are abroad most American television is off limits. that, compounded with the lack of telephonic communication at an affordable rate, gives you a lot of thinking time (and many hours wasted looking at cats on youtube). Ferrer gave me to watch a DVD by Hernan Khourian, a local artist who works with video. of special interest to me was a video titled Esplin o errar o sin embargo (18 minutes, color, 2007) that he created while doing an artist residency in Paris. this piece had some of the reflexive energy, wonderment and mesmerizing visuality of early Bill Viola pieces, such as sweet light (1977) and I do not know what it is I am like (1986), but with a more youthful, contemporary edge/references. his residency required that the work reflected his experiences in Paris, so he combined images of the Eiffel Tower as seen from a window of his living quarters (a space that almost felt like a prison or hospital), with webcam images of the same tower from the internet. the program he participated in was sponsored by the Ville de Paris, el Ministerio de Cultura de la Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Aires, and the French Embassy in Argentina. Khorian, who now teaches at the university level in La Plata and Lanús, has also earned many artist prizes that are state funded.

while federal and regional government funding for the arts is common throughout Latin America and Europe (though at times limited and also shrinking - they have their struggles, but they keep going and going strong), and I imagine in other parts of the world, in the U.S. it varies from state to state. Since the 80's NEA backlash many Arts Councils have struggle to keep what they have going. the current economic climate does not help either. Michigan began a tax incentive for film-making, and the region has seen some of the benefits already (though it is not a gold mine). but why not extend such benefits to other art forms? why not reserve a portion of State tax to the arts? Michigan has a population of about 10 million people, almost 3.8 million households in 2000 (per http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/26000.html). if less than $1, even a quarter or a dime, from each Michigan household's collected income was geared toward the visual arts (you may say I am a dreamer), the state could position itself as a competitive and creative environment that embraces intellectual pursuits as a right to its people, and the ones that choose to move there. instead Michigan has had a continued population bleed, or brain drain, for many years now (per http://detnews.com/article/20090402/METRO/904020403/Leaving-Michigan-Behind--Eight-year-population-exodus-staggers-state). and this state is not alone in that, as the American mindset promotes, rightly so, the seeking of opportunities where opportunities are. ironically, countries with less economic power seem to have greater support for the arts. we might want to learn from them or we will be left behind, on the side.

click here to read the New York Times' article

click here to visit Residencia Corazon's blog

click here to visit Malvinas Centro Cultural's blog

click here to visit Hernan Khourian's website

painting is dead (or was killed)

after spending the last month or so visiting a variety of exhibitions in the Detroit metro area and meeting/talking with many artists, curators and the likes in town, and a day before leaving the country for 30 days, I decided to finally finish what would be the longest entry on this blog.

my goal was to cover the following exhibitions and artists:

- Dick Goody's paintings in The Decay of Lying at The Butcher's Daughter gallery;
- Ian Swanson's and Adrian Hatfield's in I don't believe in art. I believe in artists, curated by Cedric Tai at the Whitdell gallery;
- Donald Baechler's, Ed Fraga's, and Susan Campbell's in Black & Blue at the Lemberg gallery;
- Clinton Snider's, Andy Krieger's, and Faina Lerman's in Nocturnal Translations at the Public Pool gallery;
- Petrova Giberson's in who loves the sun at the Susanne Hilberry gallery.

that blog entry, titled "painting the town...", was divided into the following sections: red; blue; black and blue; everything in between; with controversy. while most of the argument existed inside my head, there were specific images I planned on using to anchor each section.

as luck would have it, while transferring all the photo documentations I had carefully collected with my iPhone to my laptop, the application froze and subsequently crashed. I thought that a simple restart would put me back at the place where I started, but then noticed that most images were simultaneously gone from my phone and my desktop, with the exception of somewhat unrelated images I photographed today.

this saddened me because, in addition to completely destroying the structure for my writing, those images documented beautiful instances of contemporary painting here. and unfortunately most of these shows are either closed, or will be closing very soon.

how could I write about Goody's brilliant excess of color painted with humor and lightness (a departure for him from previous works that were dark, heavy-handed and somewhat bitter)? like Goody himself, who brilliantly combined fetish objects with cartoonish representations of his youth with text quotations on what he is/was "interested in" (or taking a jab at such statements) I felt the need to also connect my words here to his images there and, dare I say it, let them together speak for themselves, my role becoming that of a guide rather than a translator.

I also wanted to write about being engulfed in Hatfield's ocean of blueness, magic and mystery - his painting so hypnotic that I had to refrain myself from trying to jump right in for a swim (with my phone in my pocket nonetheless)... or attempt to drink from it... or steal it.

without images it would also be difficult to explain the relationships of materials, architecture and structure Swanson produced and processed, which in my view is the strongest work to date, by this extremely dedicated but at time discouraged young artist (don't stop believing!).

needless to say, the multiple and wonderful collaborations Tai undertook with his selected artists would go unrepresented, though not completely unmentioned. a squid will never be the same to me.

Fraga's implication of a three-dimensional space within a gallery (his paintings arranged as an "L" on the corner of the space, creating two of four sides of a rectangle), had a nice resonant but disagreeable dialogue with the two dimensional space within each work's frame, that effaced the maps and floor-plans used as ground for his whimsical, dream-like escapes.

similarly, the dots/holes that Campbell punched off her works, which denied the painterly and fluid aspect of the underlaying colors she first applied to the surface of the paper, resembling braille markings, would go unheard.

and what can I say, I learned a new term "flocking," while looking at Baechler's work (which must be seen in person anyway, as even my lost pictures, after many attempts from so many angles and vantage points, had failed to capture a grasp of lushness of their surface).

like a good dream you never want to end, Snider, Krieger, and Lerman captivated my attention with their wandering and meandering forms and figures in the popular and crowded collaborative concept exhibition during its opening reception. you will have to take my word for it.

last but not least, the poetry of Giberson's run in sentences - as far as I remember, they were the only text-based paintings in a group show that ironically was also poetically and fittingly titled (as many exhibitions in that venue are named after the featured artist) - will have to remain in my memory (as it was also erased from my computers' memories).

***

I should have concluded this blog entry with my brief summary, an exploration-that-never-was, on these artists' paintings.

but perhaps a better fit should include the only images that survived the mostly failed file transfer, shot a few hours ago. in hindsight an art blog about contemporary painting in Detroit during the spring of 2010 could not go about without a reference to Banksy, even if his paint comes from a spray can.

this infamously famous artist made his mark in the greater Detroit urban and decayed landscape (no lying); four of his pieces were discovered, documented, discussed, and argued over in the last few weeks. as it is (somewhat) known, and wonderfully written about on the weekly Metrotimes, one of Banksy's piece, from the dilapidated Packard Plant, was removed, without permission, by gallery 555. little has been written about them since (rumor has it that the piece has been hidden, as it's been threatened by unknown or unmentionable persons), also partially because local tragedy has taken central and national stage in the media, deservingly so.

my view on the matter (aside from the controversy of Banksy himself - a non issue really), is that the removed/destroyed piece would live best under the conservancy of the Detroit Institute of Arts, because they have the facilities and know-how to properly preserve this art work for posterity (and that might heal some wounds opened by the Packard and 555 folks with each other, as well as the community at large).

out of the four site-specific pieces created by Banksy here, as per said Metrotimes article, and if we consider the Packard/555 his first, the second piece was washed off by an overzealous property owner (whose property is up for sale for a price under Banksy's supposed market-value for a similar piece), and the third was irreparably damaged by another local group while attempting a second removal. only the last forth piece survived in the façade of an abandoned warehouse south of 12 Mile Road, on Van Dyke Road. before leaving Detroit for a month I wanted to go see, in person, the surviving Banksy, of the little mouse wearing star-shaped sunglasses, holding a pole and balancing itself on a real-life chain, that stood for a tight-rope. this cute and most expressive mouse, a recurring character from Banksy's extensive cast, symbolically depicted my journey here.

here being art. here as art

here being blog. here as blog.

here being site. here as sight.

here being Detroit. left and right.

the mouse is now gone, gone before I could meet him/her in person. like so much around here, it is gone before you know, and yet it leaves a mark, a mark that fails to erase what was once there. a mark like a scar, a reminder of what is sometimes forgotten. look around!

the mouse is now gone, and it wasn't me... or was it? did the mouse leave, because it knew I would photograph it, and then later lose the photograph?

the mouse is now gone.... as of 12:30 pm Eastern, on May 30, 2010. mouse being art. mouse as art. mouse depart.

this mouse is now gone... and soon so will I.



not being here. not being art. not being site, not as sight. not as here. not as art. not left, nor right.

UPDATE #1: it seems another Banksy piece has been found in Detroit after all. let's see how long this one will last.

UPDATE #2: someone comes forward as being Banksy, according to The Onion ;-)

dear anonymous...

similar words were used in an open Facebook newsfeed by Jerry Saltz in relation to the recent $106 million Picasso purchase in auction. his post so far has garnered over 840 "likes" and 396 comments, two of which are mine (the first a response to his original statement, the second a response to a response to my comment). in case you were out of the loop, here is what Jerry wrote and shared:

Dear imbecilic anonymous telephone bidder who paid a record $106 million for a 1932 Picasso @ Christie’s. You think you’re an art lover. Sorry. Had
you taken $106 mill. & bought a gigantic building in the West 40s in NYC: 500,000 sq. ft.; & simply rented space
ONLY AT COST to 100 good galleries & 100 artist studios you’d have changed American
art & the American art world, forever.

Enjoy the painting.

- Jerry

I will not comment on his statement here because the proper forum, at this time, is Facebook itself. but I will write about what this situation made me think, which I find oddly inspiring (much like good works of art, where you end up wiser after experiencing it, almost surprisingly so).

you see, Jerry is not a "friend" of mine on Facebook. but, for some reason, his post appeared on my newsfeed. I imagine that a while back I sent him a friend request, which he was not able to deny or accept because he simply had already too many friends already (this is what the social network told me this morning during my second attempt to "friend" him). this might actually be a glitch, but sometimes Facebook incorporates someone's threads onto one's newsfeed while one waits for a friend request response (I got the same from Bravo's Andy Cohen, though he actually replied to my request with a personal "I am sorry" email, very touching in so many different ways; coincidentally enough, Jerry is a judge for Bravo's upcoming "Work of Art" reality competition show, a Project Runway with visual artists).

what has been great about Jerry's comment is the discussion it has engendered, which has been varied in tone, opinion, and depth. I only read a portion of the comments (less than 100), but really enjoyed the way in which people openly and simultaneously criticized the subject matter and the author's stance. what I also enjoyed was what I perceived as being the generosity of the author himself as well, of not setting limits to whom has access to his account and its contents. this is a similar spirit to what I want to happen in ART-SIGHT. my goal has been to create a forum for lively discussion among everyone who encounters this blog, with my entries serving as points of provocation.

in these past six months I have experimented with many approaches and formats for writing (mainly divided into re-views and e-terviews). I have already discussed the difficulties of writing about the community one exists from within. and the verdict is still not out as far as what method will be the one chosen by me, or most prevalent.

a few months ago I decided that I would not respond to comments posted on the blog. I felt that there was the possibility for creating the impression that I always wanted to have the last word on any given discussion (which has actually never been my intention). this choice was pretty much cemented until I read some of Jerry's responses to the comments to his thread. it was great to read how he actually considered what was posted, and, in more than one instance, how he reformulated his original writing to expand and focus the discussion, or shift his perspective. his approach has made me reconsider my position. from here on, if the response to any given blog of mine is extensive and enlightening, I might throw in some post scripts. I do hope that more people read and feel comfortable with sharing their thoughts.

one other aspect of this blog in relation to comments posted by readers is the notion of anonymity. a dear friend of mine told me that, as a rule, she was against the ability for anonymous comments and replies. what she meant was that if someone had something to say, they should own it and not hide under the mask or disguise of being "no one". in theory I find that appropriate, but in practice that would leave a lot of people out of this blog's loop. of course, if one considers the fact that this blog has only 19 official followers, who might have better things to do with their time, adding more restrictions (such as the need for a gmail account) may further limit its potential audience.

but so far the anonymous replies have been the most unsettling of all, because they have seemed to be almost completely off topic, or rather, focusing on me or my formal choices, rather than on the content and/or the subject of my writing. the beauty of Jerry's Facebook thread was being able to see who wrote what, and the possibility to find out more about that person by clicking on their names (and even "friending" them). in the next few months I will turn on commenting restrictions (one that will ask for people to have some sort of identification to post comments) and watch what happens.

in the past I have received, via email, some great responses to this blog that were not made public. sending an email directly to me is an option for the ones who wish not to create an official access to this blog, should someone not have already the proper verifications for posting a comment. if/when that happens, I will respectfully ask if it is okay to nominally quote their emails on the thread.

sometimes figuring out what something is, much like looking at great art or making art, becomes in and of itself the point of it all, rather than getting to a point of complete and clear certainty on something. this quest should be ongoing and fluid. I believe this approach, of simultaneous critique and wonderment, from within and without, is one I aim to bring forth and maintain with ART-SIGHT, and in this process, learn more about myself, my community, blogging, and contemporary art. content-wise, I will attempt to create a balance between blogging on local/regional art activities with national/international events I have the opportunity to personally attend, with the intermittent exchange with an artist/scholar. my goal is to write from a place of honesty and humility, with a dash of humor and the occasionally loving poke (to use another Facebook-speak terminology).

I hope to hear and learn from you.

don't be a stranger!

e-terview with Kathryn Kramer

While the format for this blog has its own default rigidity, in my exploration of this medium I have allowed for a variety of approaches to emerge, such as the travelogue, the gallery review, and the interview. The latter, in particular, has mainly, to this point, focused on artists. The subject for this month's e-terview is not an artist, but fittingly enough her interests and research speak of a similar approach to mine in this venture: wandering and wondering. Dr. Kathryn Kramer is an Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at State University of New York Cortland. In addition to having received awards for research and teaching, her writings have been published and presented in a variety of venues. In early 2008, on a chance encounter, Kramer came upon a flier I randomly placed at a conference table, with a call for submissions for an exhibition I was currating on contemporary flânerie. This led to a series of email exchanges that culminated in an essay written by her for the exhibition's catalogue, my presentation at her department's visiting artist series, and the spark for many interesting conversations and potential collaborative and/or corroborative situations between us. Below is the first steps down one road.

How did you become interested in the Flâneur as the subject for your research?

When I was in graduate school, I did some work on Manet’s Parisian street philosophers/ragpickers and in the process read Walter Benjamin’s Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. That book was my entrée into flânerie beyond what everyone, including I, seems to just know about the practice “by osmosis,” so to speak. At that point, I made a mental note that I myself was a natural born flâneuse and moved on to my dissertation on Paul Klee. It was only about five years ago or so that I began to wonder if globalizing cities, particularly beyond the west, could function as new proving grounds for a flânerie revival: was flânerie Eurocentric, or could it go transnational, and if so, how? I chaired a panel on the subject of flânerie and globalization for the 2005 College Art Association conference in Atlanta, which addressed for me the question of flanerie’s contemporary relevance but still left a lot to be pondered regarding its viable internationalization. My current research took off from there.

2- You guest edited the most recent issue of the online journal Wagadu: Journal of Transnational Women's and Gender Studies. This special issue, “Today’s Global Flâneuse,” focuses on the flâneuse. How did that come about and more specifically, what have you included?

Check it out at http://appweb.cortland.edu/ojs/index.php/Wagadu/issue/current. It is inevitable to inquire whether or not the flâneuse has truly arrived on today’s world stage when beginning to reconsider flânerie’s current resonance. While scholarship has long moved away from flânerie's classical definition featuring a bourgeois, indolent male wandering around 19th-century industrializing Paris for the sake of modernity and art, it is still more inclined to insert the flâneuse into 19th-century Paris than to focus on the contemporary flâneuse, although there is a body of recent scholarship, mostly from the last two years or so and mostly coming out of France and Spain, that is finally focusing on the present. This tendency to get stuck in the past seems to be an occupational hazard when trying to tackle flanerie’s currency: Benjamin himself started it by basically re-living Baudelaire’s experience.

This casting for flânerie amidst the high modernism of the 19th century and then taking up semi-permanent residence there is a strange phenomenon and could be a research project in itself, but I wanted to focus on the possibilities of today’s flâneuse with my Wagadu guest editorship. To that end, I put out the call for what I have come to recognize as 21st century flânerie, which is a twining of sociology and aesthetics—ethnographic research practice that is art and vice versa—from feminine perspectives. I was expecting submissions of complex, experiential, and emotive documentations of the dynamics of today’s world cities, providing not only vivid evidence of cities in transformation but also representations of their urban imaginaries. Interestingly, the majority of the submissions reflected more of the interurban circuit created by 21st-century globalization rather than the world cities themselves, leading me to an unexpected conclusion that today’s flâneuse exists more as a global nomad, practicing a broader, more cosmopolitan form of flânerie than the strictly urban variety. Does that mean that cities are still relatively unavailable to the flâneuse, same as it ever was? Perhaps. I think I need a much broader sampling than what appears in Wagadu. So the research on the global flâneuse continues.

What I really like about this issue is that it is a hybrid volume—part ethnography, part memoirs, part artist’s illustrated book. Plus since it is an online journal, we were able to include time-based digital media in its HTML version: the importance of capturing the intrinsic mobility of flânerie with appropriate media cannot be overstated!

3- Your current research focuses on global art events. Could you describe what you have been working on and where this research has taken you? Does this relate to the flânerie in any way?

From 2007-2010, SUNY Cortland supported my research into the interurban circuit of burgeoning biennials and other art expos. My primary purpose was to travel to a variety of these art events over this period in order to explore their connection to the revival of cosmopolitanism, a notion that has experienced resuscitation in the 21st century very much along the lines of flânerie. In the course of my research, I also gathered examples of artists from all over the world who are engaged in the practice of flânerie.

4- What do you plan on doing with this current research? (book, journal, presentations, conference, exhibition, etc)

A couple of essays are in various stages of completion. As soon as I visit the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, I am going to complete an essay focusing on Shanghai’s reinvention of itself as a global city in part through its recent biennials and especially through its upcoming world’s fair. I would like to expand the Wagadu edition into an edited book about the feminine filtration of the urban (I am always on the lookout for those who would like to contribute). In terms of the flâneur/flâneuse artists that I am collecting, I would like to—in a Benjaminian gesture—channel Baudelaire and write a description of their practices (so, they would be both Mr. and Ms. “G’s”!!) a la “The Painter of Modern Life” essay. See, it has happened to me, too: the eternal return to the 19th century!