art-sight

image and rhetoric

2011-06-16T11:03:00.002-04:00

After an unplanned absence from this blog, I feel compelled to write a new entry this morning, in view of the eminent Anthony Weiner resignation scheduled to take place today (scandal as media event, or media as scandal event?).

Consider the two images below (thanks to TMZ):

My question to you is the following: who would you rather sleep with?

If sleeping with men is not your cup of tea, who would you rather see shirtless?

If that question still does not apply to your reality, which person looks healthier?

The search for Weiner's picture (via the autofill my Mac computer comes up with) spelled out "Anthony Weiner Lewd Photo." The term lewd is defined, at the www.thefreedictionary.com, as "a. Preoccupied with sex and sexual desire; lustful" and "b. Obscene; indecent." It is precisely this term's second definition, and the politics backing this definition, that have probably pushed Weiner over the resignation edge. Because as the legality of images with contentious nature in the US goes, obscenity is illegal, even though pornography is not. What deems something obscene in contingent upon its socio-cultural context (meaning a local court), and apparently in Washington D.C. (sans court), sending a picture of oneself over the Internet in various states of undress to willing receptors is at least unbecoming of a Congressman, if not lewd and/or obscene.

It is ironic that the same people (ideology-wise) that are so ready to point the finger at Weiner have also historically pushed for the censoring of art via public funding cuts. These folks seem to be experts in the history of images (and in a round about way they are, because they do paint a pretty grim picture whenever it is applicable to their politics), because they feel it is totally okay to disregard entire historical and scholarly accounts on the importance and place of images, of many kinds - pleasant or not - in the journey of humanity, if that suits their needs. Here I am obviously talking about the NEA cuts in the past and the Wojnarowicz removal more recently. Of course these folks, the deciders, also know how to censor other types of images - that of images of war for example, which never seem to surface into the public sphere in the US.

As a parenthesis to this topic, I have never understood why the sexuality of politicians has so many negative connotations. In a country that is so eager to go to war, sexual prowess should be seen as a positive thing. But with sex comes shame (no pun intended), while with war pride arises (ditto). But I digress.

Interestingly enough, the manner in which works of art are made have also come under the magnifying glass of litigation recently. In a surprising turn of events, Richard Prince and his gallery (the Gagosian, who recently launched a very cool iPhone/iPad app) lost their case on the grounds of unoriginality (because appropriation was not seen as enough in most case, an entire suite of works was deemed a breach of copyright). I imagine an eminent appeal is in the works. A similar but less recent lawsuit case on image appropriation, the Obama "Hope" poster by Shepard Fairey, was settled out of court. Again, experts's opinion are disregarded by the law's interpretation, and in this process attempted to tarnish by proxi the image of the Commander in Chief. These legal (re)readings (re)define future decisions and policies, therefore embedding self-censoring in art practices and one's being.

Ironically (sadly so), this rhetoric of morality, of condemnation of anything visual and at times sexual out of the ordinary (for in the US the nude can only be understood as sexual, just as much as art can only be beautiful and original - read with appropriate tone) appears to be appropriated by every generation of politicians, as if we are still in the midst of the mid 20th century. In times when redefinitions of marriage and gender/sexual politics also stand in a pivotal place, will we go back to the politics and morality of sixty years past?

That is a picture I find hard to look at.

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PS: there are a few entries that have been in the works for over a year that I hope to upload later this Summer. thanks for being patient.

update #357

2011-02-18T08:37:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone,

just wanted to share with you that I am now writing a bi-weekly column at the Oakland Press newspaper. those articles will go alongside the ones in this blog, but have a more local flavor.

hope to see you either here or there!

cheers,

V.

out of sight, out of mind...

2011-01-28T08:08:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I think that teaching is much like therapy, at least the kind of therapy I've been in. The mindless and aimless stream of consciousness at times leads one to the heart of the matter. In the classroom I aim to create an environment where, sitting together and facing one another, we all talk out our impressions on art works we see in class. Many of the works I show in class are deceptively simple but in fact quite complicated, thus requiring a working through in order to understand it, or at least arrive a some commonality (though in my classes the goal is never to make someone "like" something, but to get some sort of meaning from it, from anything actually). In this process I believe I learn as much as my students do, which makes teaching a wonderful experience.

I've also noticed that, for this blog, immediacy is the best strategy. There are about 3 or 4 entries I have begun writing and never finished. I spent so much time researching and fact checking that, by the time the entries took some shape, my excitement lost its momentum. So I've also learned that the best way to get something into art-sight is to get it out of my mind as quickly as possible. This entry is based on a classroom exchange and a conversation with a friend from this past week.

In my video art class we have moved to the second project, which deals with appropriation (vis a vis television). That course combines a set of working skills with historical screenings and related readings. These activities usually relate to the conceptual concerns of the project at hand. For appropriation I screen some of the works of Dara Birnbaum and Ant Farm. The latter consists of a collective that combined performance/public intervention with guerilla tactics in their practice. They were mostly active in the in the late 60s through the late 70s, though some of their works have re-emerged lately in contemporary exhibitions that examine the use of video and related (mass) media in art.

We watched in class three video works by Ant Farm: Cadillac Ranch, Media Burn, and Eternal Frame. They are not easily available online for one to watch, but there is some writing available, easily found via a Google search (while you are at it, look up Birnbaum as well, an incredible artist, which will remain greatly unmentioned here). Eternal Frame (1975) centers on the images of the assassination of JFK, its title an insightful pun on the eternal flame on display at his monument at the Arlington Cemetery. This is what Gregory Ulmer might call a "puncept." The video below, Media Burn, contains footage of the "artist-president," some of which were re-used (appropriating themselves) for Eternal Frame.

At its core, Eternal Frame merges historical footage with a public performance/reenactment taking place at the sight of the original event; footage of the impromptu audience, and their reaction, are also included. The effect is simultaneously bizarre, tasteless, funny, and touching. Ant Farm member Doug Hall plays JFK (in more than one art piece, I might add here). While done many years after the actual assassination, and many decades before now, the currency of this work attests to the fact that great art persists through time, though here such fact has a very sad note. The first media president of the US was both born and killed via television, bringing forth the immediacy of that medium. To paraphrase Ant Farm, his televised bodily death gave birth to his eternal life as myth and image, and that, to some extent, we all killed Kennedy.

The parallels to our times are uncanny: the powers of monopoly, militarism, and mass media (pointed out as the large contributors to the decline of American culture by the group) have only increased as time goes by. Seeing president Obama on a talk show, or photographed in a bathing suit on a tabloid cover, makes me think that we might have completely tipped the scale to one scary side - president as celebrity, presidency as PR campaign or media event.

In our class discussion the notion of a pivotal image that marked one's generation came up, for neither one of us were born before 1963, and therefore can only relate to that event as history. My parents, who lived in Brazil then, in many ways recall the moment as somewhat marking in their lives (they still remember where they were). I brought up that for my generation the media image of tragedy that has persisted was the almost missed explosion of the space shuttle Challenger (1986), which strangely enough was also historical footage to my students. Their marking moment was the Twin Tower terrorist acts of September 11, 2001, those images being their eternal frames of their reference, continuously repeated and displayed for a very long period of time. Sadly enough, that terrible event ended a period of American life (at least to me), and began another one, which we still find ourselves in. That image, more so than anything that might ever be re-built on its site, might become the biggest marker for a generation. And perhaps the end of all public displays of tragedy.

Going back to the JFK assassination, I brought up a similar (though with a somewhat happier outcome) current event, the Tucson shootings of early 2011. In it a US senator was shot and gravely wounded, though fortunately the assassination attempt failed (though other bystanders were killed, and many wounded, most notably a young girl who was born on September 11, 2001, a twisted and ironic turn of fate). The major difference between these two events, and a true show of how much times have changed, is the fact that there are no images of the actual shooting in the public sphere. Isn't it interesting that, in 2011, in a supermarket with surveillance equipment, with a considerable number of citizens with camera-enabled mobile phones, no images have come forth? Of course the tastelessness of it (I do not wish to see such footage, believe me) has to play some role in it. But we also need to think of the fact that in this technological world we live in, the images we see and do not see have an important role to play. Very little footage of the current wars we are in come into the public sphere, which differs greatly from 1975 (think of all the audio media being made public with Watergate, for example). Even images from 2006, of Saddam Hussein being hung/executed, surfaced immediately, those images illegally obtained and uploaded via mobile technology in a "backwards" country. Why is that? Who decided that? Did we all kill Hussein too?

As the Patriot Act comes to its expiration date (will it be extended?), and the NEA once again faces budget cuts at best or total annihilation (let's hope not), we must keep thinking, and talking about, the way images become symbols, and what the lack of images in our culture truly represent.

Just like therapy, the talking out of things, and in my case this morning, the writing of my thoughts, brings forth some enlightenment. I had mentioned that the Challenger explosion was the media image that marked my generation. But now I take this back, and in its stead will replace it with another powerful image. In 1989, a few days before my 16th birthday, images of people climbing over the Berlin Wall, destroying and celebrating its fall, were all over the news, around the world. I choose to think of that image as one that truly marked my life through media, the in-sight (in mind) of my generation. We all can use it, and, like Ant Farm, re-purpose it, as our symbol, renewed, that will help us all climb over the walls that currently surround us all.

Socialist Art - part 2

2011-01-21T18:40:00.000-05:00

This much-waited entry is a continuation of the previous one with similar title. These locations were visited in different days, and the order below does not follow the chronological visits, though the last one presented here is where my visit ended. If interested in more specific information, such as the names of artists and curators, please Google the name of the institutions and/or exhibition.

Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (a bank)
Located in the heart of the old downtown São Paulo (centro antigo), in a completely restored 1901 building, CCBB maintains an ambitious roster of exhibitions and related programming that is open and free for all. While similar institutions might dumb it down for the masses (as many do with populists and/or easy to digest art), CCBB unapologetically showed the works for Laurie Anderson in I in U/Eu em Tu across its five stories. Works displayed in its many mezzanines were photographable, while works in the closed galleries (most notably in the old vault in the basement, as well as the side galleries above) did not allow for such. As much as possible I gathered illegal content, which I here share with you (do not tell anyone, it is all for the goodness of human-kind). But some of the best works, such as the performative and kinetic sculptures, will have to remain in the imaginarium.

Centro Cultural FIESP
I was not allowed to photograph here, but they had this incredible exhibition, titled A Construção de Brasilia, on the architecture and construction of Brasilia through the eyes of photographers. At this location the annual FILE (Festival Internacional da Linguagem Eletronica) takes place.

Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo
The Pinacoteca is housed in one of my favorite old buildings in town; besides its deconstructed façade, its surrounding neighborhood contains a train station (which also houses the Museu da Lingua Portuguesa), a park (where you can see rubber trees and middle aged prostitutes, as well as turtles and at times sloths, amidst public sculptures), and almost everything in between, all with a lovely patina of decay (decadence avec elegance).

As luck would have it, most of the galleries were closed. And photography was only allowed in the main area of the installation Teoria (Theory) by Ignasi Aballi, pictured below. Graciela Iturbide was featured in an encyclopedic manner, with all her greatest hits featured (the prints are more impressive than their publication, i was glad to have that reaffirmed). One of my favorite thematic exhibitions during my visit was Desenhar no Espaço: Artistas Abstratos da Venezuela e Brasil (To Draw in Space: Abstract Artists of Venezuela and Brazil). Some of the usual suspects, such as Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica were featured there; but new names were added to my list of favorites, such as Mira Schendel and Gego. My biggest regret was not getting the catalogue, and I hope someone who reads this and lives in São Paulo remember that my birthday is coming up (it is always coming up, November is around the corner).

Also not pictured here is the Estação Pinacoteca, an offshoot of this institution, located at Estação Julio Prestes from walking distance. Again photography was not allowed, and half of the galleries were under construction/remodeling. Their top floor, however, featured an impressive Georg Baselitz, where he repainted some works from previous decades. The scale of the room and the works allowed for an almost meditative contemplation of his works that literally aim to flip your vision upside down.

Museu de Art de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP)
While certainly the architecture of this museum (a hanging modernist glass structure that seems to float amidst the city chaos) is always the main attraction, followed by a vigorous restaurant and bookstore in its lower levels, what the museum normally presents (a mix of collection and rotating exhibitions) makes the visit worth. This time around they presented Deuses e Madonas: A Arte do Sagrado (Gods and Madonnas: The Art of the Sacred), and Lugares, Estranhos e Quietos (Places, Strange and Quiet), containing photographs by Wim Wenders.

While I was not allowed to photograph most exhibitions, below are some guerilla-style images I made of the Se Não Nesse Tempo (if not in this time) of contemporary German painting, as well as the work presented on the façade of the building, by Regina Silveira titled Tramazul (I added an external video for this piece at the end of the post).

"TRAMAZUL" from Luciana Brito Galeria on Vimeo.

Itaú Centro Cultural (a bank)
I have always had found memories of this place, because it was here that I once fell in love with interactive new media art, at the early part of this century (before I had a crush). I actually walked to Itaú with my sister immediately after our MASP adventure, which proved to be much longer than I remember (next time will take the metro, even if it is only one stop). By the time we got there we were pretty tired, so we briefly looked at the Egyptian exhibition on display there, which was somewhat encyclopedial (does this work exist?), but filled with digital displays where one could flip pages and zoom into details.

The exhibition Histórias de Mapas, Piratas e Tesouros (Histories/Stories of Maps, Pirates, and Treasures) took place on the two lower levels and on the second floor. While the notion of mapping has been overplayed for some time now, the 22 artists selected, from six South American countries, managed to provide a fresh perspective onto it, combining manipulation of space, manipulation of represented space, and performance, and the many different intersections these trajectories brought forth. while the space is not necessarily huge, it packed quite a lot of work within its walls, making the experience somewhat exhausting.

The first lower level housed photography, video and some installation art, while the second lower level had mostly video works. The second floor (which is actually the Brazilian first floor, the first floor there is the ground floor -terreo) contained the most interesting works in my opinion, and coincidentally was the only level I photographed, because I did not think photography was allowed anywhere. It was there that the exploration of mapping and media, as well as mapping as a deconstruction of experiences came to the fore (one of my favorites was the breaking down of cooked portions of fried rice from different restaurants in Caracas).

Galeria Luciana Brito
While this gallery is for profit, their programming, which includes lectures and discussions in addition to artist talks and opening receptions, is often partially funded with governmental grants. The exhibition I visited, Back to Simplicity by Marina Abramovic, was accompanied by a bilingual catalogue with the same title, which the artist signed and handed for free at the opening reception (that edition print ran out by the time I visited the show, see gallery video below).

Back to Simplicity from Luciana Brito Galeria on Vimeo.

It was great seeing in person and with the 4th dimension many seminal works by this artist I had only previously encountered as still images and/or poor quality web-video. Even better was to fall in love with new works.

This gallery, although difficult to find (one must drive over there), has become a favorite of mine). This exhibition was my last art sighting in São Paulo this season, and a great way to end this blog entry that started with a wonderful solo artist and ended with another.

(re)claiming an identity - some considerations

2011-01-09T13:52:00.039-05:00

As much as I roll my eyes (sometimes at myself) when someone brings up Facebook-related topics for face-to-face conversations, I have to be honest and say that many an exchange there have inspired me. This entry is one of those.

Earlier today an artist friend posted on her so-called Wall a link to an article that had been published (in a few places) about Detroit artists. The genesis for this blog came from my the constant hearing about the need (what almost everyone in the local art scene seemed to express as a need) for more critical expressions and reviews of local art. Early on I thought that my (self-assigned) job was to pose the hard questions and speak openly about what everybody else seems to be talking about when no one is looking.

While now I do not see this as any sort of mission or quest, nor that I am the best person for it, I find myself wanting to, once again, to make public what so many of us think. So as a response to the link posted, I commented:

"do you think there will ever be an article about Detroit artists that make work about other stuff besides the city?"

Similar to this blog, I actually never expected an answer to come up, because sometimes what we need is to think about stuff and not resolve them. For the following two hours since I commented, I tried to think of actual solutions to this issue.

But first let me just say that I do not think there is anything wrong with making work about the place where you live, and/or about Detroit. The usual suspects, we all know who they are (add Slow's BBQ just in case), are actually extremely interesting and talented artists, who actually work real hard and really well at what they do. So my take was not meant to critique these artists, but in fact consider the circumstances that perpetuate this discourse about the local art scene, and to an extent, the city itself.

After a couple "likes" on the post, the first two from artists who do not directly make work about the city, I began shuffling through my mind all the local artists that I knew, their work, their subjects, attempting to make some sort of inventory. I tried to find some relations, by first considering some figurative painters. But then a bunch of expressionists ones came to the fore. I then thought about organizing exhibitions to display the best of the best, in the hopes that, if these happened more often, eventually someone would take notice (though there are already and there have been many excellent shows). But would that really be it? Would that work? It seemed that I could not come up with an answer to my own question.

Eventually I got a response to my comment. My Facebook friend (who originally posted the link), and here I am paraphrasing her, responded that we all to some extent benefited from this, and that hopefully one day the powers that be, who have chosen the few, might remove their blinders, look around a bit more and see what else is around. And that actually pointed to the real crux of the problem.

If an art exhibition was mounted in a gallery, but no one saw it, did it really happen? And how one chooses which gallery to go to, which forest to wonder through? Do people write about a few artists because these artists are good, or are they good because they are written about?

We seem to live in a culture, more and more globalized, where the need to categorize things is a given, not a necessity. Because there is so much to encounter, some sort of discernment must take place. This of course is the full realization (though I suspect with different results) of that modern need to put things into a box - or rectangle. The difference is that we have so many frames that at times they seem to disappear.

This situation goes along with what I am talking about. It reminds me of the 70s and 80s identity politics in arts, which at one point was the norm, but seem to have fallen out of fashion these days. In the process of claiming a stake at a notoriously exclusive realm, artists also carved their coffins; consider the hyphenation that we see everywhere, the gender/race/ethnicity thematics still prevalent. And the eye rolls that follow. While class and age have not necessarily been incorporated into the game in a prominent manner (rarely do we see exhibitions of "elderly" work in the mainstream, though queerness as an example still shows up), this classification now includes geography. We read everywhere that someone is "..."- based. I myself have in my bio "Detroit Metro-based artist," and have benefited from opportunities for the minorities I identify with. But am I a Detroit artist? (a similar question was raised by another Facebook friend in regards to my question).

Perhaps this constant repetition of the same names has become a means to forge a Detroit identity; anyone that veers from that identity complicates its premise. My issue with this reminds me of the issues I had with the old identity politics. This need to call for identity is very reductive - I believe us to be a cluster of varieties, and not a single measure. The same goes for the Detroit art scene. As someone who constantly gets pegged as an artist working with identity (because I am a person of color and use myself in my work), even though that is not the case as far as my intentions, my ultimate realization goes back to the interlocutor, and not my self. We become what others make of us (though ideally we'd be what we choose to call ourselves).

Whether we like it or not. This need for putting a label on something, rather colonial still in 2011, brings forth the inadequacies of the speaker - and their comfort zone. However conscious or not, many have been trained to look at and not look into. Hence the impression that the same narrative keeps being retold; it is so prevalent, it must be true.

But who is to blame? Again I do not have the perfect answer, but I think that we are all to blame to some extent. A year and a few months after this blog started, the number of voices writing about Detroit art critically has increased in a minimal manner. Again, I am not even sure if this blog does that either. There are many blogs (if you post and no one reads, did it really happen?), reviews, discussions, and even more interesting conversations, but if we do not figure out a way to enter a greater dialogue, we will remain the same malcontent group, talking about the same things, and in the process, forge a secondary Detroit identity that goes nowhere. How do we avoid that? I imagine there are many ways to go about. One thing I have noticed is that very few of my Facebook friends ever share or repost my blog entries on their Walls (talk about hitting the wrong wall), thus limiting the scope of this discussion to my few followers. They all seem to repost all those Detroit articles we all seem to be reading about, all the time. I do that myself, guilty as charged (of both reposting those articles and not always sharing local writing - perhaps I am following the only examples around).

I am ware that maybe what I write is lacking, inconsequent; maybe I am not yet a Detroit artist (nevermind a writer). Maybe this is not a community that supports one another so openly, because competition is a reality. Maybe we are but a cluster of individuals that seem to gravitate around something greater than us all, with no destination in sight. Everyone is try to go for the proverbial carrot on the stick. Maybe we also need to remove our blinders.

I'll continue to write, for as long as it becomes a learning experience for me, a place to understand and productively move forwaed. I'll continue to write, in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will walk into my forest, that someone will take notice, and nod. And then everyone will know it, everyone will know that what I saw really happened.

looking south, toward Detroit

Socialist Art - part 1

2010-12-26T10:27:00.004-05:00

It's always amazed me that in a country where even animals have Facebook pages, the country where social networking and web 2.0 (arguably) arose (with Gore or otherwise), that most words relating to "social" are seen by the majority as a pejorative term, much like Feminism.

Recently I read an article at cnn.com about a Christian church in Alabama where its members decided to completely reformulate their organization's budget and make hundreds of thousand of dollars towards helping the ones in need, abroad and in the U.S.. Their reasoning was one that stemmed from the realization that in order to live the word of (their) God, they had to put the need of others ahead of their individual wants (the 160 families in that congregation also adopted and/or foster-cared all children in their county). This concept could also be transposed to some of the discussions on Health Care around that country, though the results have thus far been the opposite (the individual comes before the community).

It is funny how social living has become the platform for display and observance, meaning that in a social-techno setting, an individual becomes the center for society to watch. Now do people really watch one another, or watch only the responses they might get?

At this point you might be thinking, what does this have got to do with art? Hang in there, please.

I've lived in two countries for extensive periods of time in my life, Brazil and the United States (and a couple short residencies elsewhere). The longer I transit between these two places and cultures, I seem to see a south-to-north shift, where one place has slowly (in my view) overcome their difficulties, and another begins (also slowly, though it seems fast because it is happening right now) to fall before my eyes. It is as if one place is learning from the mistakes (hopefully) of the other. While I always saw Brazil as a theoretical place (Order and Progress its motto), I now see it as a place where some social concepts are being put into practice and now, some 20 years or so, the fruits of these ideals seem to be coming out. The U.S. seems rather rhetorical these days, more concerned with speech, the breaking down of speech, than action.

Mind you that Brazil, in my view, is still a relatively poor country (middle class, if you will), with extreme social and cultural issues, and the U.S. is still very wealthy by comparison (with the exception of Switzerland, I still find the U.S. one of the cleanest countries in the world overall - and I live in Detroit).

Of course what I propose here has been shaped by some recent events, such as the Smithsonian fiasco with the "Hide/Seek" exhibition (see the Virtual Protest post in this blog), as well as my art tour of São Paulo in the last twenty days.

In 1991, the Law nº 8.313 of December 23, known as "Lei Rouanet" came into effect in Brazil. Its directives allowed for 6% of a person's taxable income, and 4% of a corporation's taxable income, to participate in funding for a variety of cultural purposes, and therefore become tax deductions (for what I understand 100%). This fund is managed by PRONAC (National Program for the Support of Culture) and MinC (Ministry of Culture) as far as I can tell. Much of the funding has gone towards the visual and scenic arts, partially the reason for the boom of Brazilian cinema in the mid 90s (you will find MinC as one of the funding sources for the internationally acclaimed Central Station movie of 1998 - a must-watch). Michigan has enacted a tax break for cinema, and though I imagine the particulars are very different (not sure how much it has trickled down to the local economy), the effect is somewhat visible there.

Back to the Rouanet; by 2008 about BR$1 billion (about US$588 million), had been collected and dispersed. In 2010 this law was amended to expand its reach and facilitate access to those seeking funding. A reoccurring criticism for this law has always been that corporations might dictate what constitute culture, but how is that different from any institution? In my view at least they are putting their money where their mouth is (as opposed to loud-mouths elsewhere who in the name of morality, call for censorship, claiming misuse of public funding - all of a sudden government SHOULD control people's lives).

As a U.S. resident and college professor at a state institution, I often wished I could dictate where a percentage of my income withholdings would go to. If I had a choice, I'd choose the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) and education. I fear that unwillingly, I am contributing to causes I do not agree with. But such is the fate of living in society, sometimes we take one for the team, we put the group ahead of ourselves.

In my slightly utopian view of taxation, I see exponents of this ideal, even if awkwardly articulated, all over São Paulo, the city I once called home, the place I grew up in. Of course this is the largest and wealthiest city in the country (probably Latin America), so what gets funneled through here is larger than in other parts of the country (though I have heard that in the Northeast, traditionally the poorest part of the country, huge amounts of funding have been put into state and federal universities - by helping everyone, by raising the bar, everyone benefits).

The 29th São Paulo Biennial is of course the most obvious example (its catalogue displays its sponsorship, both private and governmental). Of two articles I read in the local media about this event, one was by its CEO, who divulged the (over)budget, about BR$30 million, and the fact that it is, for the first time in a while, out of the red. The other article I read was a critical review, much focused as far as I could tell, on local drama, but that called for a more educational or didactic presentation mode for its displays (because most people were left in the dark what the stuff was about). As an educator I have to say that sometimes giving students (or the Biennial's audience) a feeling of WTF when seeing art is actually more productive than chewing down and providing all the answers. Sometimes art has to plant that seed of doubt or wonderment in one's mind in order to persist (see my two Redux entries in this blog, where I barely introduce the works, hoping that readers will think for themselves). And let's not forget the negative criticism the Detroit Institute of Art received when it opened its doors after many years of expansion and construction (too didactic, too dumbed down, too local).

Now, finally, back to art. A walk through the old and new downtowns provided the usual stops and some fun flaneurial unknown encounters. The rundown that follows will provide the name of the institution and the works I saw in them. I will finish the downtown list and include the new downtown in part 2.

Caixa Cultural (a federal bank)

If you get off the Sé metro station (the equivalent of the Time Square/Ports Authority/Grand Central of New York, only much cleaner and very modern, architecture-wise) and walk away from the Cathedral you will encounter this black granite building with NeoClassical features. This building by far contained the most variety in exhibitions, all with catalogues (locally called "folder" in English, a misnomer of sorts, like most of the English intertwined into Brazilian Portuguese).

The first and second floors contained rotating modern and contemporary art, and the 6th floor (only accessible by elevator) holds an interesting but creepy museum of furnishings of this bank (including a somewhat barbaric doctor's office) from the 20's, 30's and 40's. Up there you will also get some great views of the Cathedral.

Lágrimas de São Pedro (Saint Peter's tears) by Vinícius S.A.

Formas Silentes (Silente Forms) by Luiz Martins - apologies for the lack of photographic focus.

Retrospecto (Retrospect) by Bandeira de Mello - first image view from lobby (stained glass not artist's work).

Entre Tantos (Among Many) by Geraldo de Barros

Espaço Cultural BM&F BOVESPA (the state's stock exchange)

Photography was not allowed in this beautiful space, but you can visit their site and see a few images by Alice Brill. The catalogue (free, as the entrance) is beautiful.

Secretaria da Justiça e da Defesa da Cidadania (a government agency)

At the heart of Patio do Colegio (where the city was found in 1554), inside the lobby of this beautiful 1880s building designed by Ramos de Azevedo (who designed most of the architecture of the old city), is a statue by Dante Dado de Giacomi, titled "Zumbi" (an important Afro resistant leader in Brazilian's problematic history). Interior pictures taken illegally (photograph first, and act dumb and smile when they tell you it is not allowed, works every time).

The building on the far left is where the statue is, the pink building in center was the home of one of the most famous mistress of the Emperor, Solar da Marquesa de Santos (currently being remodeled, to become a museum).

Saguão da Defensoria Publica do Estado de São Paulo (the lobby of the State Attorney's Office, a government agency)

A photographic exhibition from the Museu Afro Brasil titled "Walter Firmo, um fotógrafo negro."

Centro Cultural Correios, Palacio dos Correios (central post office building, a government institution)

Another structure by Ramos de Azevedo, this building was revitalized with the city center (a few doors down a public Music Institute is being planned, ground just broken). Inside its immense lobby, in the Cidade Galeria (City Gallery) Cassio Vasconcellos's Noturnos (Nocturn) exhibition of large photographs (resembling polaroids) is installed.

Following is an interior view of the building's entrance to Vale do Anhangabaú (as seen from gallery level).

Noturnos extended itself to the outside of the building, between Correios and the construction site for the new music school. This picture was taken from the 360 degree penthouse terrace of the Martinelli Building, a downtown landmark.

Red Bull House of Art 2010 at Sampaio Moreira building

The irony of this gallery for me is not to the fact that it is sponsored by Red Bull (after all they've got to use their 6% somehow), but by the fact that it is exactly across the street from the bank I worked at as a teenager, before moving to the U.S. and follow my dream of becoming an artist. Sometimes what you run away from is right in front of you.

I do not know much about this space, with the exception that it seems that Red Bull offers residencies in the city and each year there is an exhibition at a different site. It also seems that São Paulo was the first city in the world to host House of Art.

Six artists, Clara Ianni, Felipe Salem, Guilherme Peters, Jaime Lauriano, Marcos Brias e Sofia Borges, make up the exhibition Tateando o redor (touching the surrounding).

And surprise, surprise, the architect is also Ramos de Azevedo, and this was the first skyscrapper in the city (entrance to the bottom left).

Redux: The 29th São Paulo Biennial - part 2

2010-12-24T19:36:00.000-05:00

There's more to look at. To view any one of the images below, please click on it.

One of the most interesting installation pieces I saw, of many that depict a room, or living space (most will be featured on another post), was the one created by Anna Maria Maiolino (Italy, 1942). Radicated in Brazil since the 60s, Maiolino's Arroz com Feijão (Rice and Beans) was first made during the dictatorship, and has been reassembled many times ever since democracy was reinstated.

Marcius Galan (USA, 1972)'s Ponto em escala real (Dot in real scale) presents a literal transposition of a point in the map of the city that uses a 1/130,000, reconstructed it in this new environment to its actual scale.

Tatiana Trouvé (Italy, 1968)'s work 350 Points toward Infinity comes with a warning. The magnetic field hidden in the floor of her installation space, which holds multiple pendulums as if they were in mid-swing, could potentially offset pace-makers. A secondary and less threatening warning is the slight plumber's crack on display by the Biennial staff that was cleaning the piece when I photographed it (it being the work, not the crack).

More than once I ran into the cleaning crew, who incessantly cleaned the place, no small feat given the spareness of the building the the shedding quality of some artworks, such as Cinthia Marcelle (Brazil, 1974)'s Sobre este mesmo mundo (This same world over). Her work made me think of how William Kentridge's studio might look like, but with charcoal dust instead of chalk.

A good segue-way to that Kentridge reference is Qiu Anxiong (China, 1972)'s animated drawings titled The New Classic of Mountains and Seas Parts 1 and 2, which were shown as three projections, though this work possesses its own merits.

While some works were immersive in their subject and pace, some works actually required its audience to enter and navigate through its interior, such as Henrique Oliveira (Brazil, 1973)'s A origem do terceiro mundo (The origin of the third world). As one exited this piece (paging Courbet), the gathering of smiling faces on that end made one look back, join the group, and enjoy the impending surprise.

Fittingly placed near one another were artists Antonio Manuel (Portugal, 1947) and Gustav Metzger (Germany, 1926). Their work used concealment and audience participation as a means of unveiling to deal with political topics, from different times and places. Manuel's flans are concealed by cloths that can be moved from ceiling pulleys.

Of a larger scale, Metzger's To Crawl Into - Anschluss, Vienna, March 1938 was displayed in front of it on the floor, covered by a yellow fabric.

Towards the end of my second visit to the Biennial, a day before its closing date, I ran into Yoel Diaz Vázquez (Cuba, 1073)’s video installation La torre del ruído (The tower of noise), which was one of my favorites. Unfortunately I ran out of memory space in my card, so only this small snippet of video is available.

Rosangela Rennó (Brazil, 1962) uses the object-ness of the photograph, and related apparatus, in her installation Menos-valia (Worth-less). On the day between my viewings a live auction took place, so upon my return the majority of the artifact on display was gone.

Another manner in which multiple video screens were presented were via multiple projections in a darkened room (my least favorite mode, I’m a fan of television monitors). Two that come to mind that transcended my bias centered on the relationship of body and space, in and out of the image. Kutlug Ataman (Turkey, 1961) presented Beggars, perhaps a contemporary take on (or result of) Sam Taylor-Wood’s Third Party.

Amar Kanwar (India, 1964)’s The Lightning Testimonies also employ multi-screen projections, but with the different pacing in the videos and intermixing of audio channels.

Last but not least, another favorite of mine (which did not make it to the well-known section of part 1), Cildo Meireles (Brazil, 1948) featured two different bodies of work. The early Projeto Cédulas (Quem matou Herzog?) [Project Bills (Who killed Herzog?)], where real currency was changed and reintroduced into the world was almost lost in a small room filled with other three artists’ works (Hélio Oiticica, Artur Barrio, and Sandra Gamarra), a real disservice to everyone involved in that section on the third floor. In a better spot, near the temporary home of MAC (Museo de Arte Contemporanea), a new installation simply titled Abajur (Lamp) invites viewers into a circular walk up enclosed environment, where a large photorealistic diorama of an ocean, with birds and clouds, slowly moves, lit from within. As one walks around the space a colonial imperial vessel appears. Upon close inspection, below deck so to speak, one sees three or four young men moving a mill, that activates the motion of the space.

Redux: The 29th São Paulo Biennial - part 1

2010-12-24T11:34:00.012-05:00

My time in Brazil at the end of the year 2010 has been extremely inspiring in a variety of ways. The works of art I have seen have inspired me to write a series of posts, which I will begin now and probably end in early 2011. To start, I thought it would be interesting to showcase a variety of works I do not plan on addressing in future posts. In many ways this will probably be the most visual (and least textual, as far as language is concerned) post from this blog's series. Take this as a visual collection of what I saw on the last week of the "Bienal."

The 29th São Paulo Biennial, the second oldest of its kind in the world (followed by the Venice Biennale), took place at the Parque do Ibirapuera's Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavillion from September 25 till December 12, 2010. Curated by Agnaldo Farias, Moacir dos Anjos, with guest curators Chus Martinez, Ferndando Alvim, Rina Carvajal, Sarat Maharaj, and Yuko Hasegawa and financially supported by many corporations (national, international, multi-national, the list is immense) , this edition's title was Á SEMPRE UM COPO DE MAR PARA UM HOMEM NAVEGAR, which translates as "there is always a cup of sea to sail in," a quotation from the poem Orpheus' Invention by Jorge de Lima [its title bespeaks of Orpheus being invented, rather than him inventing something]. The logo-image for the Biennial is depicted below (a cup with a wine cork pierced by a needle, floating in water, of varied colors.

It is always fun to run into "old friends" in events such as these. In fact, some of my favorite artists were represented here. 159 artists from all over the world participated in this edition, which was divided into six different thematic areas: FAR AWAY, RIGHT HERE; I AM THE STREET; REMEMBRANCE AND OBLIVION; SAID, UNSAID, NOT TO BE SAID; THE OTHER, THE SAME; and THE SKIN OF THE INVISIBLE.

I will begin with three artists that I actually know (as in have met, hug, had a meal, a drink, a conversation, etc).

At first I could not find where her work was, but upon reading the catalogue and actually consulting the map I realized that Adrian Piper (USA, 1948)'s work, titled Bach Whistled, was actually an audio piece installed in the stairway between the second and third floors. Much like the artist herself, this piece possesses a beautiful softness/lightness, laced with whimsy, while simultaneously critical of socio-ethno-cultural and in this case even architectural structures. Below is a short clip of it (my camera battery died while I was taping). This work was a lovely encounter amidst the cacophany of sounds all over. I imagine it would have also been a great juxtaposition to the vultures piece title Bandeira Branca (White Flag, based on an old samba song but perhaps a reference to violence and piece) by Nuno Ramos (Brazil, 1960), before the birds were take away (future blog post).

If I had one task when going to the Biennial, it was to find and document the works of Karina Skvirsky Aguilera (USA, 1967), whom I have known since 2006 while curating the TERGLOBA exhibition. My Pictures from Ecuador, as presented here, consisted of 12 photographic prints of old album pages from a family trip abroad in the 70s. Like most photography these days (and perhaps always), Karina's work meddles that tension of the real and the imaginary that sits in the tenuous line of (digital) manipulation, believability, and compression, while addressing concerns of history, identity, and memory - also fluid. Unfortunately my documentation was not as good as it could have been, a recurring theme in a building with extremely high ceilings and tons of windows.

Last but not least, I sort of ran into Nan Goldin (USA, 1953) 's The Ballad of Sexual Dependency almost by mistake, as I thought she had something else in the show. I first saw this piece when I met Nan, back in the mid/late 90s, when she performed it live in São Paulo at a cultural center nearby my house. The work, shown as digital projections with synched audio, was surprisingly fresh, but slightly different what I remembered (I believe there is more than one configuration). For me it felt like looking at an old family album, with faces and songs from a time that I did not really live as an adult, but that I understood, in part because of this work. Because of its groupings, the walking in and out of its room by the audience was intense, specially during the naked male part, but a few of us stayed for the entire duration, enjoying the darkness and coolness and emptyness, that felt like an oasis in the crowded urban Brazilian summer weather.

Now, some well-known, but never-met, artists.

Douglas Gordon (Scotland, 1966)'s Pretty Much Every Film and Video Work From About 1992 Until Now To Be Seen on Monitors, Some with Headphones, Others Run Silently, and all Simultaneously, a beautiful installation that incorporated some local elements (such as Brazilian crates, which are different from American ones).

Joseph Kosuth (USA, 1945)'s Art as Idea as Idea : East, North, South, West. Best served shaken, not stirred.

Fiona Tan (Indonesia, 1966)'s incredible looped single-channel video A Lapse of Memory.

Jean-Luc Godard (France, 1930)'s Je vous salue, Sarajevo.

Lygia Pape (Brazil, 1927)'s carnivalesque video of a collective ensemble performance Divisor (Divider).

Chantal Akerman (Belgium, 1950)'s multi-room video installation D'est (From the East), which is pretty engaging, even when seen backwards, as I did on my first go (three rooms, two entries). I think, not sure. There are two youtube embeds given my taping fiasco, but I believe that a) they are one piece, and b) should be seen in the order below. Maybe.

Alfredo Jaar (Chile, 1956)'s The Eyes of Gutete Emerita reminded me of the slide library at work, the one in graduate school, and the monumentality of a technology so quickly surpassed. The Bodily presence of this piece, given the repetition and scale, also reminded me of all bodies that have gone missing, buried in unmarked graves, every where in the world, throughout history. And for some reason I did not steal one.

And now some of the works that persisted in my memory (and that will not be featured in future blog posts).

Rodrigo Andrade (Brazil, 1962)'s beautiful, relief-like large scale painting series titled Matéria Noturna (Night Matter), shown here in background of picture (for context with exhibition space and other works), with viewer (for scale), and sideways (to attempt to depict surface indentations) of Rua deserta com cerca (deserted street with fence) from series.

Pedro Barateiro (Portugal, 1979)'s Plateia (Audience). Pieces like this makes one understand the reason why the budget was so high for this edition of the Biennial, though I believe this was made in situ, and not shipped.

Wilfredo Prieto (Cuba, 1978)'s stunning installation on the flag colunnade, of grisaille flags, outside the Pavillion titled Apolítico (Apolitical). Here shown as seen from interior and exterior of building.

Kimathi Donkor (England, 1965)'s oil painting series titled Scenes from the Life of Njinga Mbandi, which seemed small in scale and somewhat rarefied in an environment filled with video and installation, though they had a beautiful luminosity to them.

At this point it seems to me that it will be best to break this post into two parts, as I still have over 10 artists to go through. While my selection may seem extensive, given the number of artists and the quality of the work, I am not surprise. But keep in mind there were quite a few unremarkable presences there. And that two other posts about the Biennial (one exclusively about it, and another partially) are still forthcoming. So I'll end with the beautiful painting above.

virtual protest

2010-12-04T14:23:00.000-05:00

These past few days my inbox has been flooded with a series of email threads about something that should have made the national, if not international, news, but has really not caught on. Of course I am talking about the Hide/Seek exhibition in Washington D.C.'s Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. If you do not know what I am talking about, I rest my case. Most people I have talked to in person had no idea what I was talking about, or had just heard about it.

It is ironic that this particular news-worthy current event (because it threatens or at least pulls at the fabric of what is essential in our society - freedom) gets put aside to more immediate and inconsequent happenings (did you hear that the Royal wedding might be shot in 3D?). Yet, the consequences of what is being played out (but not properly broadcast) right now might potentially affect an entire generation of artists and citizens alike. As the first decade of the "future" comes to a close, I wonder if the clock is not actually ticking backwards.

The complexities of the issues surrounding the aforementioned exhibition have created a wave of responses from extremely well-informed, intelligent, inspiring people, as well as (finally now) by pertinent institutions and organizations. There are many email threads to be read, e-petitions to be signed, blogs to voice one's opinion and as many replies, articles online, articles on articles, protest via consumerism (purchase the catalogue on Amazon.com) and so forth.

I've always thought that the postmodern condition is one of constant paradox, with the individual at its center, either unable to make a choice, or choosing all the options at once. What I mean by this is that we know what afflicts us and the ones around us, and yet we manage to do very little about it, or reinforce what creates the struggle in the first place, or simultaneously both. This goes along the lines that stupidity is repeatedly doing the exact same thing and expecting a different outcome. Or a more concrete example, being familiar with with Photoshop tricks and yet measuring oneself up to retouched images. But perhaps I am describing more on how I thread this world? Is anybody else out there?

The fact is that, as much as this news is absent, so are our responses. This morning I read, while still in bed, about 25 different threads I had been skipping since Dec. 01, when the whole thing started. While their space and length might be inconvenient, what makes us believe that congressmen, curators, director, presidents of institutions, etc, will actually read any of this? For all we know, they will hire an intern who wants a line in their resume and will work almost for free to delete or archive all these emails, all this uncountable data. This same intern, perhaps working from home, is probably wearing one of those $1 "feel good charity" bracelets as identity markers for their concern for the world. But are we any different from them? What good does it do to click away from home, and never leave the house? Do we just do this to make ourselves feel good, "we put our two cents", we make our Facebook friends aware that we care, and then we go our merry ways, with the rest of our lives?

That is the beauty of virtual communication, many can participate and reach others easily. The beast consists of the fact that is just as easy to delete all of them. As far as I know there has only been one protest/march, where a whooping 75 people silently walked, with signs, t-shirts, and masks. I read this at the comfort of my own home.

And here lies my inner conflict, the fact that I (mainly I, in my self-absorbed view of the world where I am responsible for all its ills) and perhaps many others, have not really done a thing to change this. We know what needs to happen, but perhaps we are not sure or willing to use the proper tools to make things happen. Do we actually have any agency (the subtitle for this blog was going to be "do you believe that we can change the future?")?

I have purposefully excluded any specifics of this situation on this blog because I want people to find out on their own what is happening as best as they can. Though I imagine most will just Google the title of the exhibition, my hope is that by hiding the info here, they/you will seek the answer elsewhere. Even if their/your participation/protest is only virtual (as I hope, even if remotely, that there is still some virtue to doing that), at least you will now be aware of the situation. You/we might be able to hide behind our keyboards and screens, but this story'd better not run away from us, from our minds. Because it will find us eventually, one way or another, just as history repeats itself. Because any one of our omissions is a permission for things to come (back). I provide no answers or solutions here, I am guilty as charged. But I will try to not forget. Will you remind me?

---

PS: there are many links and images I could include in this entry, usually this last part is where you go to find such resources. In addition to wanting you to seek your own solutions, I also want to belatedly mirror the spirit of World AIDS Day and Day Without Art (Dec.01 of every year since 1989). There are a few connections here. One I will point to you is that they too barely made the national news.

camera obscena

2010-11-25T11:54:00.006-05:00

As 2010 comes to a close, many things surprise me. One is the fact that blogs exist and that I actually have one (or two), even though I do not write as often as I would like. Another is the fact that photography still has such a cultural and controversial presence in today's world. This last statement is problematic in many ways, I know. Some would argue that today, more than ever and unlike any other time, photography is simply unescapable.

Let me try to clarify a couple things here. For the purposes of this blog entry (and only this one) I will expand the meaning of the term and/or the technology, by defining photography as anything using a mechano-electro-digital device to produce images via refraction. I will further limit it to the acquiring or capturing of such images without the element of time and sequentiality added (meaning I will exclude video and cinema here), or the conjunction with other media (such as print and hyper media). My regained wonderment comes from the fact that photographic images are still loaded with the burden of truth or proof at the closing of the first decade of this new milenium. In the age when photoshop became a verb, I positively assumed this medium had lost that punch.

A couple recent news events brought those issues back to the public discourse, and though they seem disconnected, they somehow provide me with two sides of a(n American) coin, even though they seem to be doing the exact same thing. As the busiest traveling weekend in U.S. unfolds, much discussion on the merits and concerns over the scan machines at the TSA check points are and have taken place. Radiation and patting aside, many fear the exposure/capture of their naked bodies and the potential distribution/disclosure of said images (this in the age of Facebook and Twitter image uploads by the million, or better yet, "With this economy, what about the children?"). This fear connotes the (supposed) proof and truth of photography as privacy and modesty transgressions. Whether or not such leaks will happen remains to be seen (the ones that have shown up thus far are not clear, as far as image rendering, nor flattering and enticing in a mainstream pop sense). As fewer than 20% of all passenger will have to make a choice between a latex and a radiating space, I am not sure I will ever be put into that position, at least not in 2010, with only two flights left. This age-new discussion (to scan or not to scan, that is the question), works almost as a decoy to the underlying issue at hand, gloved or otherwise - more on this later.

Meanwhile, in New York City, an Assistant Professor of Photography at NYU has surgically embedded a cam on the back of his head, as art. Each and every minute this eye-spy third-I device captures an image and sends it via the interwebs to the other side of the planet, to the new Mathab: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar as art, and to be displayed as art. A question, somewhat close to home for me although ancillary to most, is to what lengths must one go to ride the train on the tenure track ( or "to peer-review or not to peer-review..."). The current concern is also on the privacy issues surrounding this project. Will Prof. Wafaa Bilal have to wear a sign letting people know that they are under surveillance (will he also need to only play elevator music on his iPod)? Already discussed and decided by his department will be the use of a lens cap while on campus (paging academic freedom), to protect its students' privacy (their disclaimer)or pontentially shield any future lawsuits of varied natures (my suspicion).

A solution to the scanning problem in airports, provided by some folks in the conservative crowd, is the return of profiling, meaning that only Muslims/Arabs or anyone that does not look like me (not my "me", their "me") should have their bodies thoroughly searched, with either the digits of a hand, or digital imaging. While I do not provide a direct quote here, anyone can read tons of opinions openly expressed that mirror what I have conveyed, in many news media sites. I wonder what Prof. Bilal, who was born in Iraq, went/would have/has got/will have to go through at a TSA gate check. Will he have to bring a note from his doctor or his boss (a different type of doctor)?

The underlying issue for me is that we have gotten to the point where our sense of freedom and self have been captured, so swiftly, in the name of an image, and images. These images are as much of "them" as of "us" and they all seemed to be detached from much first hand experience(s). This sentiment, this paranoia, and unapologetic stereotyping has crossed over so many spheres of public interest, such as politics, mass media, and academia. What are we protecting ourselves from, if not from ourselves? What have we got to fear, but fear itself? (paging overused cliches).

Definitions for "obscena" I found online (search as research?) follow: inauspicious/unpropitious; ill-omened/boding ill; filthy| polluted| disgusting; obscene, vulgar; improper, indecent (especially of sexual indecency); profane; immodest, impure; dirty, filthy; indecent, obscene; scabrous, ribald; unclean. I find these words potentially more fitting to images we have not extensively seen much in the last 10 years, of illegal searches, the handling and destruction of bodies, of forgone privacy and pursue of clean water/shelter/life (let alone happiness), of the fracturing and fragmentation of families, towns, cultures, of unsung heroes, of misled youth with the promise of something that never existed, of debt and loss and loss of debt, of name calling and not being called out, most of which (but not all) have taken place elsewhere, in someone else's backyard, far away, on the other side of the planet.

Obscenity can be understood as that one caveat that pinches freedom of expression. But that may be a mute point at this point. Laws regarding obscenity (words, images, actions) in the land of the free (which exclude commercial pornography) have mostly to do with the immediate/local context of what offends a particular community - that is, they are the ones who decide. But at times we seem to expand this approach beyond our own realm, beyond the schoolyard.

A couple years ago, at the 2008 FILE exhibition in Sao Paulo, I came across a fascinating, even if very simple, piece of art. Amongst the many interactive pieces of art displayed in the darkened room was a large reflective surface which displayed both multiple human images and a vertically moving bar of light, left to right. I then noticed many children surrounding this piece (I was one of the oldest person there, visitors and staff alike); they ran and slammed their bodies onto the glass, like bugs in the windshield of a car, or players in a testosterone-drive sport bumping chests. Their images were simultaneously captured and displayed on that surface, which I then understood it to be a life-size scanner. In retrospect I found their fascination with their reproduced bodies refreshing, almost beautiful. Their proximity (imagine 5 or 6 tweens pressing themselves onto a 6 foot width of plexi) was not sexual nor self conscious, their sense of self seemed somewhat collective, sans hierarchy, sans distinctions, sans prejudice. They all smiled to the camera and celebrated their bodies, their images, their choice, their freedom.

PS: While writing this I also thought about ways to include some info on x-ray research on lobster vision (they possess one of the most "unique vision system in the animal kingdom") that was funded by the department of homeland security , but decided to exclude because they are considering reflection instead of refraction... it is an interesting subject to say the least... file under "fun fact" or check out the link below:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/lobster-x-ray-technology.htm/printable

like a canon

2010-09-04T15:50:00.003-04:00

As someone who frequently deals with the age old question of what constitutes art, I have found it easy to fall back onto a definition that, albeit flawed, works for the majority of the situations. In defining art, I believe to be important, no, paramount, a basis on context and intention. Of course this definition does not qualify art (whether it is good or bad art), which often provokes confusion as a means of dismissal for my (perhaps problematic) formula. And to clarify my approach even more, this is intended for visual/fine arts, and not cinematic arts, culinary arts, performing arts, literary arts, et cetera.

While it is easy to understand that almost everything anyone does CAN BE seen/understood/framed as art, not everything IS art, specially in view of contemporary art practices. I remember a few years back taking my father to an opening reception at Galerie Vermelho in São Paulo for their annual VERBO exhibition, which focuses in performance art. Right there the blurring of categories begin, as many might consider performance art as "bad" performing arts. My father, a wonderfully curious man without an ounce of artistic interest, got excited to come along with me to the reception when he understood the possibility of free wine happening there (not sure what was most attractive, the free or the wine). I was actually glad he came with me, because his unfiltered interaction with the performers was quite wonderful. He openly flirted with a young female artist locked inside a glass box (at one point he even attempted to reach over and touch her, not surprising as this is a man who thinks it is okay to rub his fingers on a Van Gogh painting - it's like taking a child to a museum); he took away every object the performers handed out (after all, they were free); and he openly and loudly shared his opinion ("what the hell are they doing?"), vigorously shaking his head from side to side.

But what caught my attention was his behavior at an outdoor performance-installation that went on throughout the night (as some of you may know, the gallery is located in an alley flanked by a hip restaurant, with a lovely courtyard). One artist set up an outdoors kitchen and cooked meals for anyone to eat, as her performance art piece. My dad basically sat there for hours and ate almost everything that was offered to him; he happens to be a cute old man, so I imagine even the artist found him amusing. Eventually I was able to pry him off his seat and go home. On our way to the car he proceeded to give me a critique of the food, which was not so good, but at least free.

I usually use this anecdote to illustrate the transformative powers of art (via the artist), how something that is not normally seen as art (within the traditional painting and sculpture categories), can BECOME art through intention. A meal can be a wonderfully nourishing and creative activity when done well, but if it is intended as a meal, it is not art. My father's experience at Vermelho was art, though it was bad food. Now, had this installation/performance taken place elsewhere, outside the holy grounds of the art gallery (the context), how would it have been seen and understood by others? If her (the artist's) stand was set up on the street, besides breaking some loitering law, would it have been art? I would like to propose that, given some other form of context (such as press releases, or photo/video documentation) yes, perhaps it would become art. Otherwise I would err on the side of calling it a wimpy practice of something else.

But two recent events made me think of something else that happens, as sometimes the artist's intention is not very clear, and the work itself is recontextualized by someone else other than its maker/owner and/or original institution.

Lately I have been revisiting some of my old music favorites from the 80s, 90s, and early millennium (the nadas, as I like to call the period between 2000 and 2009). This quest has led me to search for older music videos available on youtube now, which, for my chargrin before my Facebook friends, I have copiously posted on my wall, oftentimes followed by extensive commentaries and/or lyrical adaptation to the third person.

One of my favorite revisits during this period was the Madonna Bedtimes Story video, directed by Mark Romanek. This is one of the most confounding and surreal pieces from that time (with overt references, in my opinion to the paintings of Remedios Varo, and even some early Nam June Paik television sculptures), and lovely little moments and touches, like the sound of a computer hard-drive being turned off at the end (which, along with the modem sound, has almost been completely underused by artists, if not forgotten). Unfortunately I cannot embed the video on this blog because that feature is disabled on youtube (a common practice by record labels), but please follow the link below to watch it, if you have not seen it yet:

click here to view the official bedtime story video on youtube video, beware of cellphone commercial

After some extensive research (meaning a five second wikipedia search) I found out that this 1995 music video was later shown and eventually included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. For young artist working with time-based media, music videos as much as cinema is a common inspiration. But how can one cut a clear line on whether a Madonna video is art or not?

My usual reply to that was that it was not art, it was entertainment. Its intention was to perhaps expose the artist and ultimately sell albums (though the lines between selling music and image are here blurred as well). Its context was television (and now the internet), not a fine art context, but a mass communication medium (please keep in mind that again I am not qualifying TV as bad and Museum as good, but as parallel spheres that at times intertwine). So, according to my definition for art (even bad art), the above music video has neither intention nor context for being art.

So then, one might ask, what the hell is that video doing at the MOMA? And who gets the credit for it? Is it Madonna? Is it Romanek? Or the video producer, the DP, or the production company, or the record label? And how about Bjork (who wrote the original lyrics, which were revised by the record producers)? Unfortunately another "extensive" online research did not provide any clarifications (though I suspect it is attributed to all of the above, with Madonna's name at the front).

The last question of course brings forth many authorship issues, which I do not plan on discussing in this blog entry, though I will quickly say that the author here, in my opinion, is Madonna, and not Romanek (he was a carefully chosen and most important player, among so many involved in the process, but not the artist here - the conductor on this one Madonna symphony).

Back to the original subject, one element to consider is the function of a museum. A museum is a repository of knowledge, which aims to preserve and (hopefully) share its contents with many generations to come. While many believe that everything in a museum is art, specially in an art museum, it is important to consider that many objects in its collection would fall under the category of artifact. This would make perfect sense with mass-produced objects (such as furniture and posters), but lately even ephemeral or digital artifact are being included into prominent museum' collections. MOMA itself symbolically "bought" the character @ recently, and the Library of Congress acquired several million tweets from Twitter.

This process is similar to religious canonization, that is, the instating of a "saint" title to a very good person that accomplished many good deeds in their lifetimes (after much research and consideration by experts in the field). The irony here is of course the canonizing of an artist who is named already after a saint, and who emulated the image of another person canonized into art by an artist (Marilyn and Warhol respectively).

I always found this process of transformation, or trans-classification, or trans-contextualization somewhat problematic, because it, in a way, disempowers the person(s) behind the artifact. I first thought about that as a young college student, when studying the history of photography. I particularly remember the images made by the muckracker Jacob Riis, which are quite lovely to behold in a gallery wall, but originally meant as a political and journalistic move that actually changed American law, society and made it to history (please look up "How the other half lives"). From transgressive photo-journalism to objets d'art, I wonder how Mr. Riis sees his own work right now (he is probably telling himself "let's get unconscious, honey").

Coincidentally, this question was again brought up on Facebook by a friend of mine, Daniel B. It seems that the song-and-dance number this summer in regards to photography has been the new Ansel Adams controversy, the so-called Norsigian glass negatives. Many a discussion have taken place in that forum, in regards to who owns these new-found negatives, and why. My take on this subject actually approaches a qualitative point, similar to what I imagine my father would say: "why the hell do people care so much about boring pictures of trees?"

To put into other words, I am not sure why so much time is being spent on Ansel Adams in the year 2010. I also believe that whoever owns those new negatives should monetize as much as they can, that the AA Estate is probably doing alright as is (and most likely already profiting from this new-found relevance, or hoopla). But Daniel B., who I am almost sure completely disagree with me, brought up another interesting question, which prompted me to write this blog entry. The new chapter in the Adams-Norsigian saga (which I should call Adasigian, much like Brangelina), is that one expert is now recanting his opinion on the validity of the negatives. Daniel B. posed the thought that (as understood by me) we should all consider or reconsider what we look at on the walls of museums and galleries, and think about why this piece is there. Is it because of its maker, or because it's been canonized? Is it the intention, or the context?

I wonder if/when the Library of Congress and MOMA will begin collecting blogs...

PS: I am sure many would agree that photography itself lends to a permanent flux status, or constant recontextualization, as it operates in so many spheres of modern and contemporary life. Photography is a relic and reliquary, in both historical and religious senses of the terms. Perhaps some of this is also passed on to photo-based imageries, such as cinematic film and video tape.

give (back) and take (away)

2010-08-30T20:24:00.000-04:00

this Summer I had the opportunity to join a committee in a local organization, Michigan AIDS Coalition (MAC), that sponsors a series of fundraising events to benefit AIDS-related causes in the region.

though I have been involved with AIDS walks organizations in both Illinois and Michigan (board member in the former and fundraiser in the latter) since 2003, this was the first time where I combined my engagement to this crisis with art. the event we organized is a yearly art auction and reception called Artworks for Life (A4L), which I have also participated since moving to the Detroit Metro area, as an artist-donor.

my intended role in the organizing committee was to bring in a new generation of artists into the mix. I contacted as many artists that fit the bill as I could (about fifty-five), and my estimate is that out of the 170 or so artists that showed at the event, about 35 or so confirmed their participation through their exchanges with me.

this post is not meant to be a pat on my own shoulder, as the A4L committee has worked so hard for fifteen years without me and built the reputation of this event. the fact that the majority of the artists already knew about A4L is a testament of their efforts. my goal here is to explore the complexities of issues that arise when art and charity intersect.

while many of the artists wanted to know the technicalities of the event (such as deadlines, how ready to hang the work had to be, how to estimate pricing, the level of junk email privacies, etc), some wanted to know if some of the kinks from previous years had been resolved. for what I could gather, there had been inconsistency with thank you letters and information disclosure on art purchases(some years names were released, some years they were not, some letters of acknowledgement arrived months after the fact if ever, etc), which is not surprising given that the committee is composed almost entirely of volunteers, and MAC's employees and volunteers involved with A4L were also organizing many other parallel events to take place on the same site over a period of three consecutive days.

another recurring issue revolved around the decisions made with the art work in the auction. there were two types of auction at A4L: the silent auction (where people wrote bids on papers next to each piece) and the live auction (the supposed highlight of the evening, with an actual auctioneer and fast-paced bidding). many of the artists involved wanted to know how the live auction pieces got chosen (usually 10% of the total), and who decided where/how all works were presented. the committee earlier on told me that the entire process was quite organic, with no binding rules, and that sometimes artists whose pieces brought in large sums of money one year in either auction were more likely to be included in the live one. of course a lot had to do with the overall appeal of the pieces and the name recognition of the artist. the actual display of the works was dependent upon the facilities (which have changed almost every year since I became involved), rather than curated - all silent auction pieces were displayed salon-style on walls or on tabletops. I relayed this information to everyone that asked me, in hopes to demystify any notions that a conspiracy was in place to benefit some and denigrate others. all of this proved to be true during the two day installation process, which I was heavily involved.

a few particular issues against participation were cited by most of the artists who declined my invitation:

1- the auction prices were way below the actual value of the pieces. this discouraged serious collectors from buying their works full price from their studio or galleries;
2- the benefits to artists (free ticket to event and discounted ticket price to guest, a value of $200 for $25), were below the benefits for collectors (who walked away with bargains), and the press exposure minimal;
3- the issues on how to cite the event in resume posed a problem, as a one day auction is not an exhibition per se, specially sans catalogue and official reception and installation documentations.

these reasons are more than valid, but there is always a counter argument to them. the third issue could be easily solved if the artist actually attended the event and documented their own pieces (I was asked by more than one artist in absentia if I could send them a documentation of their installed piece, as well as how much their piece went for - no to both was my answer given the sheer amount of donated works). as far as citation, one could create a "charity" section in their resume or completely leave the event out, both of which I have done at different times, for different reasons. the second reason could be countered with the fact that many of the collectors that come to the event actually collect art outside these events, so a broader trickling down of benefits to the whole region takes place - and maybe, just maybe, if your piece was very intriguing, you could actually get a sale to match the auction donation (I know of one particular collector that does that as much as possible to help out local artists).

all these points could be counter-argued by the umbrella concept of openheartedly giving. if one truly makes a commitment to give back to their community, with no conditions, the act of donating art to any event becomes quite easy, and enjoyable as well. I would also bet that there is virtually no artist in this world that doesn't have an older work of art stuck in their vault, that could be easily given away. pay it forward, to use a cliche. I even told so to an artist that suggested that the committee should purchase the artwork and give a cut of the event to the artist (but unfortunately we are not running a gallery). personally I am a firm believer in karmic equalization, that is, if one gives something away, one is given back somehow, and at times two- or three-fold. being an artist is already part sacrifice, so donating art work can be seen as another extension of that.

A4L was actually very different from previous years, and in many ways the event itself was much better - great (free) food, open bar, dance floor, a DJ two notches above Bar Mitzvah spinning, and even acrobats with skimpy outfits appropriately located next to the dessert tables. I am not certain of the amount raised in the auctions, if it was par, above, or below previous years. the live auction seemed to have raised a fair amount.

I was one of the assistants to the auctioneer and knew the estimated price for the pieces. while the more expensive ones (in five figures) went below 50%, some of the more affordable pieces went way above their estimate. the silent auction seemed to have gone under what was expected (my view). some pieces were sans bid, and many went for the minimum bid. in previous years I witnessed many bidding wars, but this time it was not the same.

as a member of the committee I placed initial bids on many pieces (including my own), in the hopes that sales would be stimulated. there were actually two or three pieces that I really would have liked to get. at the end of the evening I ended up spending three times as much as I had budgeted for myself, and left with seven beautiful pieces by six artists (my own piece went to a good friend of mine, for about 1/7 of the estimated time, after 4 bids). I left the event extremely tired but with my hands full of great art (including the ones I wanted badly, a first), and confident that together we had made a good go for this important cause.

well, my Pollyanna attitude changed somewhat as time went by. in retrospect, I ended up feeling like one of the collectors who went to an auction to get something I would have never been able to afford otherwise (one piece was acquired with a bid lower than 10% of the estimated value). I also kept recalling a very ugly exchange between two bidders that I witnessed towards the end of the event. one collector was standing guard to a piece (by a well-known local artist) that was going for a fraction of what it costs. another collector, who had not heard the closing of the silent auction (the sound system that announced its end was not appropriate to the high ceilings and large scale of the room), walked towards the piece with the intention of doubling the current (or so she claimed). when the guardian/collector saw that she jumped up and claimed her stake. it was a very awkward situation as I was standing right in between both (I almost thought an actual fight would take place). the late comer walked away and felt that the whole purpose of the event was to raise money, and not get pieces, so that, even if she was one minute late, if she had a few more hundred dollars to give, she should be able to do so. and this type of altercation happened in at least two other places that night (as told to me by other afterwards).

another damper into my positive spirit towards the event was an interaction I had with a staff member a few hours before the evening started, after the work was hung. I had politely asked them to please double-check that all donating artists were put in the guest list. I was afraid that some might arrive and be turned away, which would be humiliating to say the least. it would also damage my relationship to them (as many told me they were only donating because I had asked, since they had had bad experiences with the event in prior years). the response I got from the staffer was "too bad if their names are not on the list". that really infuriated me, because I felt that to be extremely disrespectful. that attitude supported the claims that this organization (and many others in the region, who constantly ask for art for charity) systematically take artists for granted. it is worth mentioning that many of the art works were bid and purchased by local artists, so again the old method of self supporting continued. I did not pay attention, but I would not be surprised if the said staffer was not bidding.

the questions that come to my mind are, what do we do about all of this? what will happen if artists stop donating their works? will that change in any way the value of their work (less exposure)? will that increase their studio/gallery sales (unlikely given the limited number of local galleries that regularly show and sell local art)? what will happen if artists stop being collector, stop giving their own money to get art from their peers?

and how is it possible to change a culture that takes art and artists for granted, even while having noble causes? what will happen to these organizations that rightfully need all the help they can get? I am not sure I have any answers to these and other important questions in regards to art and charity. but I believe that this blog environment might be a good place for a dialogue/discussion to ensue.

eventually I made my peace with the whole thing. that is what we have to do sometimes, the proverbial high road. I choose to believe that MAC and its staff had/has the best of intentions, and that misgivings and miscommunications are mostly due to stress and, well, being human. I also believe that the Artworks for Life committee did its best, with the best of the intentions to all involved (we were so careful to be good to the artists specially), as best as we could, and hope that our humanity and efforts compensate for any shortcomings.

at the end of the day we all need to put our egos aside and focus on the reasons why we decided to help: to give to a complex and important cause that sadly still merits much attention and care. with this in mind, giving back is what we take away from it. and that is more than enough.

...

PS: this entry about art is being purposely posted with no images, in order to recall DWA (Day Without Art), which for myself and many others might have been a first encounter with art and artists responding to the AIDS crisis.

self editing

2010-07-22T16:37:00.001-04:00

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.

UPDATE (07/29/2010):
the final version of this entry omitted one important and relevant strategy for self editing, which, after some careful consideration, I've decided to add as a brief post script.

please visit the link below to watch the international exhibition titled [self]~imaging, which was curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne for VideoChannelCologne. the breadth of the video works, varied in length, approach, depth, et cetera expand what one may consider a portrait to be - collectively they provide a snapshot of what can potentially be seen as an international yearning, or a complex collective unconscious for self expression and understanding.

[self]~imaging

meanwhile....

2010-07-19T12:48:00.000-04:00

programming update

2010-06-20T14:06:00.006-04:00

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

2010-06-05T10:03:00.012-04:00

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)

2010-05-30T14:27:00.007-04:00

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...

2010-05-09T18:44:00.003-04:00

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

2010-04-30T06:55:00.005-04:00

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!

performance anxiety (in three acts)

2010-04-27T15:31:00.009-04:00

I.

On April 08, 2010 I was scheduled to give a presentation at SUNY Cortland as part of their visiting artist lecture series. Dr. Kathryn Kramer, who wrote a beautiful essay for the Contemporary Flânerie: Reconfiguring Cities exhibition I curated (March 2009), invited me to come to campus, meet her colleagues, present my work, and interact with their students.

On April 07, 2010 I got on the road, having decided to drive there, via Ontario, instead of flying (Cortland is located somewhere between Syracuse and Ithaca, New York). While the extensive drive may seem like dead time, for me it was a good thinking time (thanks in part by cruise control and GPS navigation). I titled my presentation “Technology Becomes Him” as a means to focus my current artistic interests. This talk (45 minutes long) was an expansion of the Pecha Kucha one (5 minutes) I did in Chicago in February 10, 2010 at the Illinois State Museum. For it I compiled 55 slides into a Powerpoint presentation and an 8 channels DVD compilation of my works from the past 5 years. Though I feel very comfortable with the content of my work and how they all fit together or dialogue, I felt pretty nervous about, once again, speaking in public.

The two strategies I normally employ in such events are humor (specially self deprecating), and audience reading (for this particular talk I had three possible endings, depending on people’s reactions – this time I ended up using the first end and leaving 12 slides and 1 video out). One reoccurring concern of mine for these presentations centers in creating an understanding (a foundation really) on the exploration of subjectivity, which is the main vein of my work. My intent in art, via performance and performative actions, is for an eventual self-erasure (where people will see me as an icon rather than a human being, and consider my expressions as symbolic rather than biographical). The name of this blog, art-sight, proposes that through vision a stance or perspective takes place, which perfectly correlates with the ephemeral nature of this medium. With my work I forward the proposing of body-as-site, where physicality and place creates a position for cognition and expression. As such, I hope that my art/body/sight/site transposes someone else’s, becoming a projection/conduit/mirror for further examinations of others: I am the ticket, not the destination.

Part of my anxiety in public speaking also comes from two nagging terms that I seem never able to shake away from my work: identity and narcissism. The latter was expressed in a question by a faculty member during dinner that same night. I am not afraid to answer such enquiries, because I have very clear and precise answers to almost anything relating to that. My anxiety comes in part because the answers seem never satisfactory to the interlocutor(s), because their questions assume a given or conventional rigidity in meaning. What I mean by this is that unless they are open to consider my interpretations of such (my favorite term now is one borrowed from Kramer, “a return to subjectivity”), my answers create a vicious cycle of perpetual frustration because they are not satisfied by my reasoning (ironically enough, narcissism is characterized by that same perpetual frustration or lack of completeness).

II.

After spending a whole day interacting with students, and their anxieties, Kramer and I drove to Ithaca to have dinner and see the Cornell campus. Given our mutual penchant for wandering, she made reservations at several eateries at different times, and let chance make a choice for us. As we drove around the beautiful lakes and ravines that surround that geography we talked more about the events of the previous days, our future projects, etc. Once on campus proper (which by the way is probably one of the most beautiful settings I have ever been to in an American university), we ran into the fascinating Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art building, which was designed by I. M. Pei (or “he is Pei”, as I like to say).

As luck would have it, they were having an opening reception for their shows (they usually close by 5 pm, but were open late that evening). Of the many exhibitions featured alongside their permanent collection, were James Siena: From the Studio (a presentation of art and artifact collected and made by the alum), Michael Ashkin (a range of media and timeframe on display inside and outside the museum) and Bodies Unbound: The Classical and Grotesque (curated by students in Cornell’s Art History program. It bears to note that extensively informative pamphlets and brochures were available at no cost to any viewer, a huge plus in my (check)book. Their New Media room, really is a closet with video art, was disappointing in its scale, though the work itself, Climbing Around My Room by Lucy Gunning, which I will term as an architectural interaction performance, was pretty interesting, though devoid of much presence (mostly because of the manner in which it was displayed).

The most anticipated work in exhibit for me and Kramer was Carolee Schneemann: Interior Scroll, which was advertized on the exterior walls, and in the main gallery guide distributed at the door. As we anxiously waited for what it seemed like the slowest elevator on the east coast to get to the second floor, our anticipation built.

III.

It actually took us a while to find the piece because we, for some were, were expecting to see it as a film of some sort. What they had on display was a suite of thirteen photographs, some similar to the ones most of us have seen, some quite different (thus indicating that the scroll part was the center of the performance, but not the totality of it). Interestingly enough, the museum provided a pamphlet with the actual transcription of the scroll, it being a dialogue between the artist and a male film-maker... who considered not a film-makeress Schneemann, but “(…) a dancer.” If I had the permission, I’d publish the whole transcript here, but unfortunately I do not. What I will say is that reading it completely transformed the piece to me, raising it to my top ten favorite performance art pieces ever.

Her negotiation between art and film, male and female, body and sex, brought back memories of my first exposures to serious performance art, while I was still in graduate school. Funny enough, it was then that I began to fully utilize performance, dance and sexuality in my work. Two particular performances I attended are worth mentioning here. In 1999, during the CAA Conference in Los Angeles, I saw a performance by Karen Finlay at the Track 16 Gallery at Bergamot Station, that took place within her Pooh Unplugged exhibition (yes, the bear of children’s stories). I arrived mid performance and found a circle of people standing in their main room, with her in the middle, completely naked, with honey all over her body. Anyone in the audience could lick the honey off her body provided they gave her a dollar. It was very interesting to see much older (then) people negotiating the tension of wanting to participate, wanting to walk away, wanting to be open-minded, et cetera. The tension in the air was palpable, and measurable by the nervous laughter that was enveloped by the smell of the free wine (similar to that of being in a low-end strip club). This was a few months before I actually ran into a classmate in a strip club in Ocala, FL actually. My reaction was more negative toward the work on the wall (I remember saying something to the effect that there was too much text to be read on the walls, the irony is not missed by me), and felt the performance slightly silly. But today I see it in a completely different way. I think that, similar to Schneemann, Finlay created an oddily shocking but non-threatening expression of her experiences and times.

The other performance I remember from grad school was performed at the Harn Museum of Art by Nao Bustamante and Coco Fusco titled “STUFF” in 1998. This piece combined media and original footage with costumes, props and scripted dialogue. It took place in a theater-like setting with a clear distinction between audience and performers, unlike the gallery in Los Angeles. Food, Latinas, media, histories and their representations constituted the main theme for this piece, laced with humor and the absurd. Nao was invited back to campus and featured in a solo exhibition in 2000 (a few months after I graduated). Being unemployed at the time allowed me to spend some time with her and volunteer in the installation of her work. In the few days she was there I felt connected to her. Looking back, her work, which is simultaneously complex, clever, and disturbing, allowed me to create the work I do today.

Time went by and of course we lost track of each other. In 2005 I ran into Nao at a CAA Conference in Atlanta, where I was presenting a video performance titled “free video hypnosis here,” a piece that dealt with my love-hate relationship to media and pop culture. Since then we managed to stay in touch via email, and last January we were able to bring Nao as a visiting artist to OU. I have screened Nao’s piece “Sans Gravity” every year in my video art class. Her visit brought me back to graduate school, our conversations then and our conversations now, somewhat different in nature, still carried some of the same ease from years bacl. Watching her interact with my students and the audience in her talk prepared me for my own adventure in upstate New York, though some anxiety still persisted.

On my second day in Cortland I met with students working in a collaborative, interdisciplinary project on Congo. It is always very interesting to begin such interactions, as usually my first statement, and the student’s response, set the tone for the rest of the day. Should I be the bitch or the nice guy? I opted to be unfiltered, to the point, and slightly nurturing (and luckily I managed to insert the word dildo into the discussion within the first hour without laughing). At the end of the day I was quite drained - we met for about 5 hours - but I believe that every one pretty much left the room with some knowledge gained and a level of satisfaction and accomplishment (at least I did). What brought everyone together in a nice way was a sense that we were all there to learn something, and that no answers were final, but only new pathways for exploration.

Lately I have been thinking about students and their relationship to critique. It is of course difficult to pinpoint when exactly, but I have sensed that in the last four years or so there is a different posture assumed by students. Of course my posture has also changed. The main difference is a more open acceptance to criticism. I cannot seriously remember the last time a student cried in a critique, because it rarely happens. Part of it is a lack of investment from their part, and a softening from mine.

Another aspect is the students’ overall politeness to one another – I usually assume the role of the bad guy and they pat each others’ backs. Kramer and I talked a bit about that in relation to television competition programming. One thing shows like American Idol and Project Runway have brought to the mainstream is the concept of critique as a method for growth and improvement (and cattiness as humor). Of course there have been similar programs for decades (paging Star Search), but the prominent role of media, and the multiple access to it we have nowadays makes critique and creativity/self-expression almost inescapable.

An ex-friend of mine in graduate school (long story, don’t ask) once told me that art was only relevant if it permeated mainstream culture, because then it would become part of the fabric of life (this is a gross paraphrase of what he said). Of course I think he meant something else, and I am not even sure what exactly he understood as art (he was in a language department). In a way this is what has happened with art criticism (I am also using here the term art in a very broad sense). Which brings me to a place where anxiety might be replaced with anticipation. In June 2010 Bravo will begin airing the first season of “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist,” a reality competition show featuring fine/visual artists as contestant, with a high profile cast of both participants and mentors. One of the contestants is none other than Nao Bustamante. If one watches the preview clips, “Sans Gravity” is re-performed (how pertinent, with Marina Abramovic’s reenactments all over the MOMA this season), and jurors state, among quick cuts and multiple juxtapositions, the sentences “you are not an artist,” and “you give performance art a bad name.” Who did they mean these to? Will they edit Nao to be the villain? It all remains to be seen, and scene’d. We might just have to watch what happens.

merchandising

2010-03-27T14:40:00.003-04:00

dear friends, blog readers, and followers,

I've been creating several designs for clothing (t-shirts and hoodies) in the past few weeks, some relating to art projects of mine (such as iconographs), some relating to teaching (such as critique), and some just for fun.

for this venture I am using a print-on-demand online service called redbubble. this company allows one to upload and sell their designs from their online store. each piece is printed upon order, and delivered within 10 business days (though I got my first samples in less than a week). they use the color palette and sizes from American Apparel, so the quality is good and the colors vivid.

t-shirts cost about US$25 each (order three or more and shipping is free); the profit margin at this point is minimum for me (about $3 per shirt), but if you'd like to support and promote this site, please consider purchasing one - link below (please note that there are many color choices for logo, even more so for fabrics, apparel choices, logo positioning, etc, as well as other designs to choose from).

when your t-shirt arrive, make a picture of yourself wearing it and I will post it on this blog.

I thank you for following this blog, reading and providing feedback =-)

love,

V.

click here to visit my store

e-terview with Joseph Ravens

2010-03-21T11:14:00.016-04:00

there are many words I could use to describe Joseph Ravens, an artist and a human being of many facets. his work, and his work ethics, as well as his joi de vivre, are truly inspiring, a rare combination of committed integrity with heart-felt lightness. his technology-enhanced performances have been shown and toured around the world. his credentials are too extensive and intense to list, to say the least (please visit his site for more information, at the end of this entry). we recently had the opportunity to spend some time together in Chicago; what follows is a series of questions exchange a few weeks after that. in his own words.

your art practice combines elements of performance art, theater and dance, sprinkled with technology. how would you best describe what you do?

This is an interesting question because I often have to describe what I do . Unlike other mediums and disciplines, telling someone you’re a performance artist is usually followed by puzzled looks and a bunch of questions. I have several answers based on my cursory assessment of that person's artistic knowledge. Funny, I’m sometimes wrong and totally talk down to people, describing my work in simplistic terms and then they say, ‘oh, you mean you’re a performance artist, like Abramović or Barney or something…’, and I feel like a fool. Actually, your question uses similar language that I use to describe myself. I love the phrase, ‘sprinkled with technology’ – can I steal that from you? It’s very accurate. Historically, performance art has been difficult to define. Frankly, it’s one of the allures – the limitless unrestrained nature of the medium. I happen to have a theater and dance background so those elements and skill-sets are certainly a part of my performances. But I prefer to identify myself as a visual artist because I apply visual art aesthetics to time-based creations. The structures and narratives present in theater and dance I find problematic and limiting. I really do straddle disciplines and sometimes one artistic genre is better suited as a vehicle for my thoughts or ideas. I present in galleries, theaters, dance spaces, and non-traditional environments.

The semantics surrounding performance art are really interesting – the medium is so enigmatic. Performance (without the ‘art’) is being used the most (I think) in the United States. Live Art is used a lot in England. Art Actions, Art Performance, Behavioral Art…there are so many terms used to define the practice. Performance is becoming very popular again. A lot of sculptors and painters and artists from established mediums are making performances or performance is part of their process. Also galleries and Biennales are encorporating performance. Perhaps one of the reasons Performance is becoming popular again is that Roselee Goldberg (along with Marina Abromović) started the (somewhat elitist) Performa Biennale in New York. As we all know, though, boundaries between artistic disciplines are becoming fewer and far between – and not only in visual art. Hybrid, multimedia, multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary, however you want to put it – the parameters are more elastic now than they have ever been. I’m getting off the topic. In reply to your original question: When my aunt asks me what I do I tell her I’m an actor, director, or playwright. When the average person off the street asks me what I do I say I’m an artist. When an artist asks me what I do I say that my work is a hybrid of visual art, dance, and theater.

'AIR POCKET(S)' by Joseph Ravens
Postsovkhoz4 International Symposium: MOKS, Mooste, Estonia 2004

which particular piece of yours would you say exemplifies your practice?

As is the case with most artists, my practice is constantly changing and evolving. I also have a short attention span and an adventurous spirit, so I am constantly interested in fresh approaches or perspectives. I think I’m particularly diverse – sometimes writing plays and other times making dances or fiber-based installations. But I would have to say my performance, RAVENOUS, is most characteristic of my style. I made this piece as my MFA thesis at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). When I moved to Chicago I changed my name to Ravens without really considering the bird or what it represented. The word ‘ravens’ is actually part of my original longer Germanic surname - I shortened it for ease and memorability. When I did start researching the Raven – especially the role of the bird in various mythologies – I found we had a lot in common. So the work came from a really personal place. It also incorporated a lot of ideas and skills that I acquired as a student at SAIC. It was something of a re-birth and it embodied a lot of the aesthetics that I continue to embrace: sculptural movement, large scale fiber-based installation, poetic text, abstract narrative, clean minimalist style, illusion, seduction, and even a ‘sprinkling of technology’.

Joseph Ravens in ‘Ravenous’

is there one particular sequence or process you employ in your creative endeavors? what are the usual steps between conception and implementation?

Oh gosh. I often joke about starting a company called “Cart-Before-the-Horse Productions”. For the past 10 years or so I’ve felt that my process is backwards. When applying for festivals or grants I manifest ideas – often thoroughly researching and developing the ideas but never implementing them. If and when the opportunity presents itself, I then bring that Idea into being. I have a love/hate relationship to the idea of artist as inventor – a mad scientist toying with his creations in a studio cluttered with materials. I want to be that kind of artist, but it’s really not possible or realistic. I have a general idea and then I usually schedule a fairly short and organized production period – often the month before the exhibition. When I do create a work, though, I really think about it becoming part of a repertoire – a body of work that I can mount and re-mount. I also think about how it travels, since travel is a vital part of my practice. I’m very practical. I think about impact and portability. I think a lot about how I can make something large out of something that is small, lightweight, and easy to carry. That’s what drew me to inflatable objects. When I do create solo works, the video camera is essential to the process. I set up the camera and use the remote to record myself. Then I create or choreograph and view the tape at regular intervals to tweak and shape the work. I hunger for feedback, especially as a solo artist, but it’s a luxury I rarely have the pleasure of.

Joseph Ravens in ‘Is My Liver Showing?’ at Midway Studios, Boston, MA

how much, or how little do your life experiences permeate your art practice? if your body is the medium, what message does this body engender?

Sex and seduction, materialism and vanity are ever present concerns for me as a hyper-aware, hyper-sensitive gay man navigating an agist, beauty-obsessed culture. I think by body and the exposure of my body stem from this place. On a more aesthetic level, and in a dancerly sort of way, I simply find beauty in the human form. I’m very interested in anatomical details. In my most recent work, Kattywampus, I choreographed an entire section for my shoulderblades. Whenever I present this piece I try to drop body fat so that my ribs and shoulderblades are more obvious. I really see my body as the material – as the sculpture. I pay a lot of attention to negative space – the air between my limbs, etc. I am very influenced by Butoh – a Japanese artform that embraces a certain physical intensity. My bald head and physical presence is also meant to be something mannequin like, neutral – I like to present myself as something otherworldly – something decidedly ‘other’ while still allowing the viewer access to my internal struggle. In that way, my presence in performance is usually not me as the artist–creator, but, rather, a persona. But this isn’t often the case. I have text-based autobiographical pieces (a lá Holly Houghes) that I rarely perform. I have been focused on working internationally and, in an attempt to create work that is globally universal, my images and ideas have become sort of hyper or meta…less specific or personal. So my life experiences don’t frequently make their way directly into my work and text is seldomly used anymore. I am not interested in any sort of politics or overt message in my work. I aim for something more poetic, lyrical, and abstract.

Joseph Ravens in ‘Rigamarole’ (a version of ‘Kattywampus’)
Open Festival, Beijing, China 2009

what project are you currently touring? what future projects do you have in the works?

I’m touring 'Security System' and 'Kattywampus'. I often collaborate with Marianne Kim and we are developing two new works – a new inflatable performance installation series that will deal with urban navagation, and the second in a series of ‘rooms’ inspired by the Japanese video game, Katamari. ‘Room One’ was the bedroom and the next room will be the dining room.

I have two personal projects that I haven’t really started but they are rattling around in my skull. I’m very interested in queens – royal women. I’d like to write some monologues or make some videos with transgender male-to-female performers embodying famous queens throughout history. They, of course, would be abstract and idiosyncratic. Perhaps I’m the various queens. I’m curious about keeping it sort of period in style and look but present the videos like a vlog – within an obviously anachronistic technology framework.

I’m also interested in starting a vlog about my inherent ‘wantitis’ - the affliction of always wanting to spend money on something new. An obvious comment on materialism and consumerism, I’m really looking at this habit and how to overcome it – all in front of the public eye.

Marianne Kim and Joseph Ravens in ‘Room One’ at Arizona State University 2008

click here to visit Joseph Ravens' website

click here to see some recent work

big journeys begin with a single step

2010-03-04T15:30:00.010-05:00

the title for this blog comes from a fortune cookie I got at a restaurant last night. that day had an early, fueled by coffee, with too many activities and few breaks in between. by the time I sat down to eat dinner with a friend we were both pretty spent (his excuse a jet leg)...

lately I've been thinking about my life, how I've gotten here, where I will be going next, et cetera... much like this blog, life begins with a single step, going out on a limb: the first time we open our eyes, or say the first word, kiss someone, leave home, quit that job, click the camera shutter... all a risk. all a roll of the dice. impulsive and instinctual decisions with potentially little regard for outcomes or consequences...

that nagging question, of having regrets (or not) is always looming. but it really is irrelevant. we are responsible for our actions. while we might have done something else if we knew then what we know now, ultimately the decision made is always right. because it is a done deal. because it propels us to be where we are today, right now.

the secret is to love the now.

so today, finally, I went back to the Susanne Hilberry Gallery, a place I had not returned since my last visit and subsequent blog entry. I felt torn between really wanting to see Scott Hocking's exhibition, but not wanting to go there, in case I did not like the work. I was also haunted by my own thoughts, that were expressed in this blog, about practicing and critiquing the art community I belong.

Scott and I met maybe a few years ago, and often run into one another at art events and functions. but we have only talked once, for a long period of time, at a fancy dress party at the Entenmann's (actually he spoke most of the time and I listened, along with others, so it was a group situation, not a dialogue). perhaps my drawn mustache (and the ever flowing drinks I had consumed) allowed me not to be as shy as I usually am with people I do not know, but know about. what impressed me about Scott was his knowledge and passion about this area (and his work). such passion, that for a place, is somewhat foreign to me. not because I do not like this area, but because I am not a person to get attached to places in general I usually get attached to people and things, and mostly attached to things and people and places I hope to experience some time in the near future). I also enjoyed listening to his stories about his explorations, which, quite frankly, I usually find extremely boring (specially if eventual images are to be attached to such stories). but Scott had/has a way with words that keeps you engaged, because they can stand on their own.

I had heard from more than one trusted source that his exhibition was quite wonderful, but was a bit suspicious of people's kindness. as some of us experienced in a recent public lecture in a large local institution - that was almost as large as the artist's ego that spoke there (though the institution is to no fault), sometimes someone's reputation, allure, and past glories supersede their current achievements and lack of charisma (but of course it could be that we can only appreciate such art and artists in a more personal level, or in retrospect). I feared that the same would take place here.

one article I recently read from a link uploaded on Facebook dealt with the subject of artists becoming critics in smaller communities, and the ensuing problems with that, which related to one of my own concerns in writing from/about Detroit and its art scene... the author's recommendation was that one should only write about art that they deemed good or great.

so here we are. I have to honestly say that I think Scott Hocking's exhibition moved me (not to tears, but to that simultaneous raise of one eyebrow and one corner of the mouth, when you are wonderfully and quietly swept off your feet, so to speak). I felt that his images managed to combine an aesthetic rigor with a critical concern that I normally find lacking in much contemporary photography. what i mean by this is that his images could be simply looked at and appreciated for the formal choices they possess, such as composition, quality of light, balance, and visual dialogue within the grids. but thematically and conceptually they relevantly transcended their subject matter. some of his images reminded me of the sCRIPT series by my much missed and beloved mentor Dr. Gordon P. Bleach, whose untimely death took place in 1999. I believe their concern for architecture and space as reliquaries for memories are very much in tune.

the photographing of dilapidated and decaying structures are usually elementary choices that beginning shutter-bugs undertake (I have been involved with fine art photography in one form or another since 1992, and have seem tons of projects under this category). but Scott's work is far from that, though I am sure he is aware and critical of that too. his manipulations into these spaces, or what I perceived as manipulations, bring forth the placement of our culture in Time (with the big T), as well as that of other cultures in relation to our times (small t). pointedly, like photography, our existence in this planet is as quick as a flash of light, our present glories are our future ruins.

when I looked at Scott's images I felt that they meant to become markers of our time and Time, as if to say, to future generations, that these things, these buildings, these places, once mattered to a lot of us (even as ruins). his works began to function as a reinforcement, a memorial, removed of schmalzy nostalgia, quietly, like a giant that has fallen or is in repose (but not necessarily a mythologized wounded warrior). I felt the excitement I assumed he feels when making his works. I was transported back to that party, when I heard him speaking of frozen basements, illegal hockey practices, and unsuspecting encounters with a stranger's passing, and became inspired by his practice, even if my understanding of it was only from speech (his), not sight (mine).

which brings me back to the beginning of this post, a first step of sorts. the last time I was at the Susanne Hilberry Gallery I was trying to find a gift for myself, a replacement for my own birthday party (that never took place), but left empty-handed. and today, which happens to be Scott Hocking's birthday, I have found my own gift.

which image did I choose? if you get invited to my next birthday party you will see it hanging in my house ;-)

e-terview with Leon Johnson

2010-02-27T15:12:00.010-05:00

A new direction for this blog that I aim to pursue is what I am calling "e-terviews", or interviews conducted via email exchanges with artists pursuing new or alternative art practices. This first one features the artist Leon Johnson, whom I curated into an exhibition in March 2009 at the Oakland University Art Gallery titled Contemporary Flânerie: Reconfiguring Cities. We presented his video FAUST/FAUSTUS in Deptford, the culmination of a decade-long exploration that poetically merged disparate narratives on life and/as pilgrimage.

Leon Johnson is an artist of many media (video, performance, print press, theater installation, and painting come to mind), working on projects that combine research and multilateral practices that are simultaneously intriguing, disturbing, and beautiful. Originally from South Africa, Leon has shown throughout North America and Europe. In addition to keeping an intense exhibition schedule, Leon is also an Associate Professor of Intermedia, at the University of Maine, and faculty at Transart Institute, Berlin. In the Fall 2010 Leon Johnson will be moving to Detroit to chair the Fine Arts Department at the College for Creative Studies.

1. For the ones unfamiliar with the large oeuvre of your work, could you please delineate a general sense of the strategies and conceptual underpinnings/concerns for your art?

I feel a need to keep at arms-length the supposed historical or contemporary demands on creative practice, and rather commit to inclusive, very porous strategies - the intertwining of trends, debates, and practices in popular culture, the humanities, sciences, politics, and the worlds of commerce and communications. A favorite proposal around this idea comes from Homi Bhabha, looking at creative engagement where the power is "not in its transcendent reach but in its translational capacity: in the possibility of moving between media, materials, and genres, each time both marking and remaking the material borders of difference."

This translational potential just feels like a healthy way to proceed. It is particularly useful in subverting my occasional impulse to settle for creative mimicry, or pastiche. Or at least to be as conscious as possible of all the skeletons that collectively rattle in our maze of closets, every time we settle for those “place-holder” solutions. One such project is DUAL SITE: A Psycho-Geographic Dinner Theater. DUAL SITE is a collaboration that mobilizes the works of artists, urban growers, gleaners, farmers, wine makers, bakers and chefs, metal-smiths, artisans, chefs, designers, youth groups, actors and food producers from diverse backgrounds into a robust company of inventors, really. The project is one part dinner theater, one part economic catalyst, and one part community building, with its goal to be a new model for cultural production both within and beyond the traditional bounds of the arts. DUAL SITE takes inspiration from the book Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens In Wartime, written by New York native Kenneth Helphand. This important survey of wartime gardens speaks to the power of human and ecological resilience to cultivate communities through collective making. “Defiant Gardens suggests that planting, cultivating, contemplating in the garden, planning for life, for beauty, for order, is war’s opposite and thereby not just escape but a potent act of resistance”.

The performance features actors in acts of reclamation and recollection: Paris, 1850, excerpts from the Journals of the Goncourt Brothers – Russia, 1929, two men seek answers in a doll store, just under the heel of Stalinist annihilation, adapted from a short play by A.A. Amal’rik – Warsaw, 1944, the last two gardeners, in the last Jewish garden in the Ghetto. Each night, between sequences, a three-course dinner is served to the members of the audience in custom produced porcelain bowls from our nomadic kitchen.

2. Collaboration, which is regaining more prominence/visibility in recent times, plays an important role in your practice. Could you please expand on your interest in it, or the/a catalyst moment that pointed your practice towards collaboration?

Well, I think the real question is how does collaboration develop new forms of community and practice, no? And how they are accompanied by new vocabularies and methodologies. How do we develop collaborative communities across groups that have seemingly nothing in common? That, to me, is critical. My current models are always seeking to situate collaborations around conviviality and food – in history, in memory, in contemporary ecologies - so simply put, convivial engagement is my preferred modus operandi. Yes, hermetic research and contemplation is needed, but the power, and thrill, of a vibrant, diverse dinner-table can rarely be topped as a space of potential.

And, as a model for collaborative engagement I keep on returning to that convivial-vortex - inspired at an early age, perhaps 14, by Allan Kaprow and by the work of Fluxus, and its founding agitators Alison Knowles, Geoff Hendricks, Emmett Williams, George Brecht, Robert Filliou, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono and others. And our kitchen table at home as a child, made very active, very political, and very pleasurable by my Mother.

3. The employment of multiple layers of meaning (borrowed from literature, cinema, history, etc) and manifestations in your work (video, site-specific performance, librettos) seems to be a reoccurring thread. How to did you arrive at such methodology?

We need new vocabularies, and expanding strategies for reclamation, excavation, recovery, and rapprochement. A worthy problem demands worthy research to engender outcomes worth celebrating. [Of course “worth” is a shifting value-system, but one we must negotiate in context. Over, and over again.] This process must challenge us to negotiate the next set of emerging problems.

A project that exemplifies this is the 15 minute video I produced in 2003, FAUST FAUSTUS IN DEPTFORD, after a decade of development as a monologue, a duet, then a performance with a company of 12, including, eventually, composers, glass artists, silver and goldsmiths, singers – touring the UK in six English Heritage sites – and finally… a 15-miute video! The project interweaves documentation of live performance and psycho-geographical drift, triangulating through remora and remembrance the unmapped distances between the Faust legend, Christopher Marlowe's murder in Deptford in 1593, and Oscar Wilde's vandalized tomb in Paris.

The main current of the travelogue-video begins as Marlowe’s 16thC Faustus and Goethe’s 19thC Faust meet to wander points of location and of loss. Faust and Faustus emerge from under the Thames, drifting from the river to nearby Maryon Park, the exact site where Antonioni filmed the scene of the crime at the center of Blow Up, a scene and site in sympathetic riddle to the journey Faust and Faustus are making. Faust and Faustus then “drift” to Paris, to perform an "intervention" at the site of Oscar Wilde's tomb in Pere LaChaise cemetery, a simple pilgrimage to repair for a silver moment the dismembered Sphinx that hovers atop Wilde's tomb.

In this act of re-membering, Faust and Faustus pay their last respects, honoring the generative in resistance to scandal and ruin. From Paris, the two are able to make their final trip to Deptford, to visit the site of Marlowe's murder and burial ground, another riddled loss of a poet both decadent and brave, another prophet of "this new world." And from the graveyard they find their way along a blighted urban path in Deptford to the polluted banks of the river Thames, where, in fading light, the travelogue documents a final drift of chance discovery – a rusted message, a final memory of unmappable love, and the appearance in blue twilight of a miserable guide to the next or the last destination.

4. Site is another important aspect for your works. Was the complexity of Detroit as an urban and cultural space a contributing factor on your decision to relocate here?

Yes, certainly. The palimpsest that is Detroit is powerfully compelling for me – beyond all the supposed “posts” – post-capitalist, post-American, post-industrial, etc. It is a landscape as rich as any – including the entire length of the Thames River!

My move here follows an enchantment with an ongoing journey that began with embarkation from the southern-most tip of Africa, via San Francisco, New York, Iowa, Oregon, Maine, and onto Detroit. Layers, and layers of reclamation and potential, no?

5. What projects/directions do you foresee exploring here?

One is working on collaborations with SPURSE in Detroit. SPURSE is a creative consulting service catalyzing issues into actions. Through research, design, making, exhibitions, events, teaching and publication, they engage many scales and systems, and explore the entangled emergent complexities of the human and nonhuman, organic and non-organic. To articulate problems worth having and worlds worth making, our curiosity must ask the question: How are we not merely in the world, but of the world?

It all starts with dinner. Lets begin there, and with dates, locations and times. I do a pretty good Green Thai Curry, and have experience setting up field-kitchens. Can somebody help slip-cast 200 porcelain bowls?

Last word goes to Homi:

"The world is both our earthly inheritance, and a cultural and ethical horizon. We reach out to it, in the best way we know, when we protect and propagate the right to narrate and the duty to listen. And that social 'relation' - to relate, to narrate, to connect -becomes our juris-diction and our juris –dictio, quite literally, the place from where we speak. No name is yours until you speak it; somebody returns your call and suddenly, the circuit of signs, gestures, and gesticulations is established and you enter the territory of the right to narrate. You are part of a dialogue that may not, at first, be heard or heralded—you may be ignored—but your person-hood, your shared life, your telling, cannot be denied. In another's country that is also your own, your person divides, and in following the forked path you encounter yourself in a double movement... once as stranger, and then as a friend."

click here to visit Leon's site
click here to visit SPURSE

entr'acte

2010-02-10T14:48:00.011-05:00

while I am working on a couple other pieces for the blog, I thought it would be interesting to have a "guest-blogger" filling in.

I hearby introduce you to the one and only Sean Capone, an artist extraordinaire, designer par excellence and opinionated big apple dweller.... below is his review of a current exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, originally posted on January 30, 2010 on Facebook:

Speed Dating at a Strip Club: THIS PROGRESS by Tino Sehgal

The famous riddle goes something like: "What crawls in the morning, walks on two legs during the day, and three legs in the evening?" The answer has something to do with Tino Sehgal's latest installation-slash- performance-slash- social sculpture now at the Guggenheim Museum. There is no physical artwork in the main rotunda; on my visit, the museum was amok with children, groups of teenagers, and bemused folk of all ages. The atmosphere was lively. The experience of the piece goes something like this: at the base of the ramp, a small child confronts you with the question "What is Progress?" As you walk and talk and formulate a response to this precocious charge, you are unceremoniously fobbed off on a person of more advanced years--late teens, early 20s. More walking, more talking, another handoff, another age bracket. Before you know it you are at the top of the museum, shaking hands goodbye with the senior-aged 'guide', and then you go into a side gallery and look at some Picassos and stuff. So the question about progress really becomes a question about process, about the inevitability of aging and decay, and any grand notions turn inward and become soberingly personal.

Back up a minute. The first thing you see upon entering is a couple embracing,making out, and rolling around on the ground floor of the rotunda. Their movements are dancer-ly and mannered, like a tango in slow motion. The awkwardness of witnessing public eroticism dissolves over time, partly because the stamina of the performers and extended duration of the performance, but also because they are constantly visible no matter where you are--it's an erotic ballet which anchors the center of the Guggenheim's helix runway. They are the first and the last thing you see: as I left (after an hour & a half or so) a changeover took place, presumably to give the first couple relief. It's worth mentioning that the couples were male-female, young, hip-looking, inter-racial, fit, and basically attractive.

Some thoughts:

Ok. The kids are totally adorable. Their earnestness and obvious thrill at being in charge is disarming and a cunning point of entry to the piece. I found myself talking to them as I would speak to an adult. Good one.

As you 'progress', the transitions from conversation to conversation can be abrupt. The guides are prone to leaping out from behind columns at you, or darting away when you are in the middle of a sentence. This is meant to keep you off balance, to remind you that you are on the clock. The first time I went through the cycle, it was kind of exhilarating. I stood at the top of the rotunda and looked down at the kissy dancers. I thought about all the cool things I just said in a short space of time. Then you see the guides walking up the ramp chatting with someone else, and you feel a little cheated. These people are there because it's their job to pay attention to you. They do not particularly find you interesting. It comes off feeling like speed dating at a strip club.

Not that there's anything wrong with strip clubs. We seek out fake experiences all the time, as a reminder of our notions of the so-called 'Real.' You watch strippers to get a certain experience about sexual voyeurism. Speed dating gives you a pared-down, goal-oriented meta-experience of flirtation. But there's no essential chemistry, and the conviviality is self-aware. Sehgal's 'Progress' is not about social chemistry. The final conversations, prompted by the older guides, were a little morbid. I rambled on about capitalism, war, and death. The particular architecture of the Guggenheim is perfectly suited to house this stagy cradle-to-grave metaphor.

The second time I walked through, I felt a rebellious urge to break the rules a little bit. This piece DOES have rules. A child reprimanded me for turning the question back on him (the performers are not allowed to give their own opinions). I stalked a couple of other people's 'conversations', and the vibe was about the same as when one does this to strangers at a bar. I got one of the older guides to break the wall and admit that she didn't know if this was art, and that "no social science will result from all this--the artist will never know what happened". An enthusiastic young German guy told me that "art is supposed to confront you with thoughts." I flirted with a couple people (unsuccessfully). I tried to get a guide to walk me DOWN the ramp (nope). I deliberately answered questions obstinately and got what felt like an honest argument out of the performer, but I never got a sense of any REAL tension, or that the guide was allowed to judge my opinions as one would in a real conversation.

And, just in case you think this is all a bunch of phony baloney, or if you need a break, there IS art to look at. The side galleries are stuffed with the procession of Modernism: Picasso, Braque, Kandinsky, and Brancusi, all that pre-war jazz. It's good. It makes you think about art's relation to the 'progress' of the 20th century. There is an amazing NEW work by Anish Kapoor that looks like a rusted beached submarine forcibly wedged in a narrow gallery. It's volume and heft is breathtaking; in fact the piece is so large you have to view it from three separate corridors, and for once you get to peer into the void of the sculpture's interior. It's a great experiential magic trick, and it was all I could do NOT to shout just to hear the sublime echo. I prefer the volume of the void to his mirror surfaces any day.

As I left, passing the dancers engaged in their amorous torpor, I witnessed a a changing of shifts. Another couple (also male-female, young, and interracial) merged onto the floor. After a minute of synchronized dance-hugging, the first couple exited, to some scattered applause. I think they deserve a lot of credit for their strenuous, compelling performance. But if it were my piece, I would have taken a lot of couples, really going at it, and hidden them behind stairwells, around columns, in the reading room, and other secret places. There is no sex without a little mystery, a little surprise--even in a sex club. And there's no come-hither, no real allure, in a conversation that one doesn't really want to be stuck in. Am I really talking to someone, or just waiting for my turn to speak?

'Progress' is part relational aesthetics, part social work, and part Tony & Tina's Wedding. In other words, it limns the boundaries of the comfortable territories of ART and is part of a genus of activity that perhaps needs a new name to describe itself. For all the valid criticism that gets lobbed at the Gugg, this is one show, love it or hate it, that WORKS in it, and BECAUSE of it. The open spiral ramp shows you simultaneously where you came from and where you're going, the people that you're traveling with, and the painful human yearning for connection and love which slowly spins at the axis. This sounds like as good a definition of progress as I've ever heard.

click here to visit Sean's site

click here to visit the Guggenheim

video art in detroit (2009)

2009-12-19T11:02:00.011-05:00

this entry is long overdue, as for the past few months some excellent video art has been on display in the city. I will focus on two institutions that are well-known, the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), because their exhibitions on video will come down very soon, so maybe you'll have a chance to go take a look. I visited each show at least three times before today.

from July 03, 2009 through January 03, 2010 the DIA has hosted the exhibition titled Action<>Reaction: Video Installations, which features the works of Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Bill Viola, Bruce Nauman and Ana Mendieta. if one enters the show from its intended beginning, the first thing shown is a video projection of green text onto a wall that contextualizes video art ("video art may be..."). This institution has been heavily criticized by its didactic labeling of art work ("dumbing it down") since their reopening, and to some extent its use of media technology ("gimmicky") but I have always been a fan of both choices, as I believe that the museum needs to speak to many different people, in different levels - experts should not expect wall signage to cater to their needs, they can come up with their own jargon on their own, I am sure. the use of projections also animates and invites young viewers into a familiar territory, so that the museum space might remind them more of home or a movie theater, than a grandmother's house where nothing can be touched.

so I began this particular exhibition and actually thought it was good to use the medium to explain its own diversity in approach (as performative space, sculpture, nonlinear narrative, etc), though I would have liked it better if they had chosen a TV monitor rather than a projection (as I feel that it still connects the medium more to cinema than to television/mass media). as an aside, I thought it was great (funny actually, as in peculiar) to have the director of the DIA speak in a vertical flat panel at the Avedon, exhibition, and wander if the irony was intentional (director as newscaster/personality in an exhibition on models and/as celebrities)... on my third and last visit there, with my video art students, I was asked which artist made that video (the media label), and that for me was telling, as I began to see how, for the untrained eye, that such projection might be confused with a new type of art work, rather than a curatorial statement. it was then that I also began to reconsider my enjoyment of the use of other media throughout the museum, because we do live in times that the word art is used to liberally, and that it might be confusing to some to distinguish which is what...

moving into the first room (there are three of them, off the Rivera Court, plus the initial explicative projection) is a piece by the collaborative duo Fischli&Weiss called The Way Things Go. this was by far the most popular piece in this exhibition; on all three times all seats were taken, with many folks standing around and watching it (it is a fairly long piece). This cleaver exploration might be best described as the documentation of a dynamic sculptural installation, which reminds me very much of a Road Runner carton for some reason. without giving it too much away (as I hope you make it there to see it), I hope you notice the illusions of uninterrupted time via the use of natural elements (fire, water, etc). my one wish in regards to this piece was that it was not presented again in a darkened room, with seating, because then I feel it gets experienced as cinema (specially given its entertaining qualities), and not as video (which I find to be a wonderfully complex and paradoxical medium).

the next room featured a piece by Bill Viola, which I had not seen before. my prior engagement with his works were much larger in scale, but here Nine Attempts to Achieve Immortality was shown in a small vertical flat panel television (again in a darkened room, why?). this part of the exhibition was always quite empty, myself usually being the only person there waiting for something to happens, which it does, and it is sort of wonderful given the beautiful quality of their sound (it is rightly loud at times)... but I feel that the installation loses a lot of the spiritual connections Viola usually refer or imply in his work, because the architectural surroundings are mostly obscured by the darkness (look up his installation at the Church of San Gallo in Venice, quite impressive)... the DIA has similarly impressive rooms, it would have been great to see his work in a different wing.

the last room contained monitors (finally!), two containing the performances of Ana Mendieta, and one by Bruce Nauman, both of which I had seen in person before in different institutions. I saw Mendieta's work (I believe all fall under the Earth Body explorations in situ) in the Bienal de Sao Paulo in 2006, where they were shown as projections, side by side, which I found most appropriate, because of the larger scale that creates and the relationship to the viewer's body in relation to her own body (implied or otherwise) in the works. I also suspect that her work is actually mostly done in film, and not video, and I believe that these different mediums have very distinct discourses (have not found much evidence online that she shot actual video, but all is possible, Iowa was a very progressive place in the late 70s for performance).

Bouncing in the Corner by Nauman is actually one of my favorite pieces of his (him being one of my favorite artists). it is from the same time period as Stamping in the Studio, which I show to my students every year. like many early practitioners of video art, Nauman was interested then in the performative possibilities as relating to time (they lasted the length of the tape) and space (the confinings of an empty space, as well as the dimensions of the video frame), as well as the shifting of one's perception of what is right/correct (he often placed the camera any way other than straight on). I saw Bouncing... at the Hamburg Bahnhof Museum in Berlin back in 2008, amidst a beautiful collection of Joseph Beuys' works (another one of my favorites), Mike Kelly and Rodney Graham (borderline groupie here!)... Nauman's work was situated on an adjacent building, and I first heard his work, before seeing it. I heard this extremely loud thud that actually shoot my insides, much like being in a loud night club with a strong bass, and its repetitive quality reminded me of my own heart beat. when I turned around the corner I saw the simplicity of his work and I was extremely moved by it, which was unexpected (as I always read more wit than raw emotion in his poetics). I wish the installation at the DIA had the same effect on me, but the volume was quite low, and combined with another artist's work in a small and crowded room, it lost its power to me immensely.

I still enjoy my memory very much, which brings a point of something that may or may not have been evident in this post so far: the importance of the apparatus when interacting with video art. along with considering its visual and auditory hybrid condition, it is always paramount to consider how the apparatus of video is used/concealed/conceived as part of the work, as video is inherently dependent on it for its decoding, unlike cinema (one can actually see the cinematic image upon the inspection of the film strip, which video's magnetic ribbon must be mediated/interpreted by a machinery). this ephemeral/spiritual connection to the medium of video is conceptually aligned very well with this exhibition, albeit some minor modifications would have further enhanced it.

the exhibition seen by the main entrance (and to the right) at MOCAD by Alexander Gutke fully and beautifully embraces the incorporation of the apparatus as a conceptual device, a necessity really, for the understanding of the work. the use of film, video, and slide projectors make a commentary on our expectations of the media these machines translate and enlarge, with a focus on the loop as a conceptual and narrative trope. as much as these media (photography, film, and video) aim to capture or encapsulate time for posterity, here time is revolving over and over again, simultaneously exploding any precious notion of a time past and enclosing or interrupting (imploding?) our own present time, by hypnotizing us with unwinding repetition. make sure that you grab at the door the greatly concise description of the works and map for the exhibitions, as they will provide you with wonderful "a-ha!" moments (not in the 80s band way)....

moving towards the back room via the concert area are the works by Ann Lislegaard titled 2062, a first of many references to the future. The entrance to that hall is enclosed by a sound-proofed tube, with snippets of futuristic sounds and quotations from past visions of times to come (aka hollywood sci-fi). there are five distinct areas here, three video projection installations (one single-channel with audio, one two-channel sans audio, and one triptych with sound), as well as two audio bed stations and one room installation. depending on one's knowledge of the genre (one piece was inspired by a book I read ages ago, the left hand of darkness, another in my view a direct reference to the monolith of 2001: A Space Odyssey) more clues may be needed for the enjoyment of these works, though for me their strength rely on their commentary of architecture as space (which funny enough puns with space and imagination in science fiction). what differs from Gutke's work here is the shear beauty of images and sound here (his work is dryer and more formal, hers is very seductive), which created a very inviting environment, albeit filled with mystery (much like going "where no one has gone before")...

both these exhibitions will be available until December 27, so please hurry up and see them... the new addition to the MOCAD space is the current installation/performance of Christian Marclay's The Sound of Christmas, which was initially performed on December 12, with different installments until December 20. I actually went to his live performance, which included local DJs as well, and found it both boring and relaxing, which I think are fine responses to any given work of art, but I am not sure if that was the intended reaction. this performance consists of five or so turntables which are used back to back by different DJs, from a collection of christmas vinyl records that are also on display at the space, as both video representations, and as stacks one can peruse (that was enjoyable). the live event also included a video feed that was projected behind the stage, which for me was a miss. this ten year project reminded me of events I went to, well, ten year or more ago, when video jockeying was beginning to becoming very prominent in the east coast. and like any musical event, one must have a more active participation (such as dancing or talking or moving through space, etc)... maybe unintentionally people sat down to hear the spontaneous compositions (which at times were very interesting, but mostly sounded like experimental sound from the 80s and 90s at best), but I wish we all had not had the chairs and the tables around, because watching someone spin two records with a dramamine-absent projection got old very quickly (Marclay's set, to be fair, was exquisite - my favorite, and all DJs seemed to have a lot of fun, which was wonderful to watch, but maybe for 5 minutes, not a couple hours).

what was most wonderful to me at Marclay's adventure at MOCAD was the inclusion of local talent. MOCAD has tremendously energized the local art community, and its new director, Luis Crocker, has raised the bar with the exhibitions and events he has brought to town since his arrival (keep at it, and truly thanks!). but a hope a clue is taken by the more overt inception of local artists there. I am not the first person who has wondered why this museum does not include a small space for Detroit artists to show their work, much like the 12x12 space at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. a similar venture here would create a more interesting dynamics between larger institutions, galleries, and a great pool of local talent. is there a suggestion box somewhere?

last but not least, on Sunday December 20 at 3:00 pm CCS Professor Michael Stone-Richards will be giving a walking talk at MOCAD on the aforementioned video art exhibitions. this is yet another not to miss event. hope to see you there!

click here to visit the DIA site

click here to visit MOCAD site

click here to visit the Hamburg Bahnhof site

between a blog and a hard place

2009-12-11T20:13:00.006-05:00

tonight I come to you as a way to look back at what has transpired here.... what "here" means is for you to decide.

I began this art venture because of my frustration, and that of others... or so I thought...

being pro-active is sometimes understood as talking about being pro-active... but not all actions are created equal....... good intention is not good enough, a level of commitment is warranted... is it possible to do so, when writing is one small part of all the many thing you want/like/need to do?

I first thought I'd be writing about all events I went to, an ongoing art report with a bite, but as these posts came to life and people began to respond, I found myself in a difficult place.

not sure if it is possible to write about everything, every time, everyone, and say all that needs to be said.

tonight I went to three events at the Russell Industrial Projects, where the new MONA satellite site opened, with a print and video exhibition by Christo & Jeanne Claude.... quite amazing what the director, Jef Bourgeau, was able to get, considering that his museum runs with zero funds. (btw, all donated works at MONA are for sale, and the funds will revert to future museum events)

what else can I say about it? can I critically write about a place that has been supportive of my own work?

right next door was the solo show titled "vestiges" by Lauren Rice, at the org.contemporary gallery. I really like this show, the works on paper being my favorites. a few weeks ago in a studio visit and was awed by the 2D work, but the sculptural pieces wonderfully transformed themselves in the gallery installation.

as always I ran into a river of people I have spent some considerable time with, in Detroit, around the country, and even abroad... small world, as they say...

can I critically write about a show at a gallery that showed my own work a few months ago?

here is the heart of the problem... this is a small, intimate art scene in a large metropolitan area... with access to a good calendar and/or Facebook, a car and willingness to venture out in the cold (or in the heat during the summer), and with a lot of persistence, one can easily get to know a lot of the local art scene. acquaintances are made, friendships forged.

I have met so many wonderful people here, and I keep meeting them...

as much as we all want to have a critical exchange around here, are we ready to do so, face to face, or via an interface? are we ready to air the dirty laundry, so to speak? can we take the heat? can we separate ourselves and take in the criticism as a learning experience?

or is this best left to do so with a few close friends at a bar, a restaurant, or someone's living room, over a bottle or two of wine? do we want to have a critical discourse in the area in the hopes that our own work gets a good write up, or even a bad one, and rise to fame via infamy? what will all this accomplish? and who is the right person(s) for the job?

on my way out of the Russell I stopped at the Detroit Industrial Projects (DIP). I ran into its director, Jeanette Strezinski, who is one of the nicest person you can ever meet in town. her smile just warms any room she is in. she told me that in the upcoming year the DIP will feature mostly solo shows by local and regional artists.

and did I tell you that her step-daughter was a student of mine?

then the thought of expressing one's opinion at the cost of hurting someone's hard work came to my mind. should I write that I thought inappropriate (or odd at best) for a Kresge Fellow to be selling work for less than $200 bucks in a group show? or was that the deal of the century? or yet a further dilution of yet another attempt in this region to reach for a higher standard? I drove home and realized I forgot to take pictures of that show, and felt really crappy...

I thought that the last entry in this blog should be fully illustrated....

but not everything ends up the way you set out to go about at the starting line.... I got so immersed in my thoughts about the art scene and this blog, whether I should continue or stop it altogether, that ended up driving two miles past my exit.

eventually I found my way home, and my way into this window... and a way out of my head... instead of reading my impressions, go see these shows and tell me what you thought about them, perhaps we can have some wine? or whine?

what happens after here, whatever "here" is supposed to be, is for me to think about for now...

and for you to, eventually, find out.

happy Hanukkah to you all!

three galleries, one cup

2009-11-19T09:28:00.013-05:00

last saturday was my birthday, so I decided to do three things I enjoy very much before joining some friends for dinner: take a walk around town, eat some ice cream and see some art. the weekend before that I missed all the art openings in town, with the exception of "sought/found" one at the Pontiac's Creative Art Center. I had some work in said exhibition (which features work from Oakland University Art faculty), so I will not write about it, but every one should go check it out. there will be future possibilities for local artists to have their work shown there as well, so it might be a good idea to take a field trip.

now, back to November 14, 2009 in Ferndale, Michigan... my first stop was the Susanne Hilberry gallery, which is a few blocks from my house. I had heard from a friend that they have a ceramics show, which worried me because I am not the biggest fan. well, let me rephrase this better. I actually love ceramics, and my small art collection contains quite a few pieces (have more ceramics than paintings, but mostly photography). ceramics is the art that I love to live with, where I love to appreciate formal and functional concerns (as relating to light, as well as the human hand). what I dislike is the discourses that surround the medium, which is usually very minimal. so with this in mind I thought I'd give it a go.

the Hilberry gallery to me has the best set up in town - one cannot but think they are in Los Angeles or Chelsea. the space is simultaneously neutral and sexy, austere and fresh (in an airy sort of way). its current exhibition features the works by Shio Kusaka, whom I have never heard of. as you walk in small drawings (around 16 inches high) are displayed in a row by the wall near the reception desk. these were made with either ink or pencil or a combination or mediums and mirrored some of the vessels on display.

the back alcove has a narrow shelf made out of unfinished wood, and displayed cups of varied girth. there were a variety of techniques employed, which unfortunate I do not know the correct terminology for (some looked like painted patterns with glazes, some were marks or grooves, probably scored before the firing, etc). I walked back to the front desk to see if these works had titles, and to check their prices (each was numbered, all pictured). the titles were either poetically minimal or unspecified enough to leave me on my own. I did not find any information in regards to the title of the exhibition (I assume it is the name of the artist), an artist bio or an artist statement.

I then moved over to the large room, where an L-shaped narrow but extremely long table (same material as aforementioned shelf), or a wall with no sides a bit above waist height, divided the space into two parts. this was an interesting arrangement, as it created a different architecture to that space. I also imagine that in a room filled with people it would create an interesting social dynamics... I looked at each vessel from one side, then walked around the gallery to be able to see them from the other side. it was at this point that the lovely Hazel, dressed in a mini-Swiss Miss dress (her hair has gotten so long), came to me and told me it was okay to hold and handle the pieces, to see them up close and personal (and to find out the info on them, as their numbers were below). she then immediately disappeared, as there seemed to be other folks in the back room, where the staff was hanging out (as at one point an adorable baby walked my way, with the cutest smile, at another Susanne's poodle).

after having permission to touch, fearing for my life that my clumsiness would destroy something, I began to really experience and relate to the art in display (I'd say at least 60 of them throughout the space)... and then I fell in love with one of them.... in particular a small bowl that looked like it was made of white ribbons, overlapped in a vertical manner to form an uneven and somewhat pumpkin-like shape (I think the word moon was in its title). I also loved the simplicity of the lines of the tall vase with dark triangles all over. these pieces (and many others as well), possessed that rare quality of being simultaneously extremely slick in appearance but with enough subtle oddities in their almost primitive formation that brings forth the hand of the artist in the work. while looking at them I imagined a pair of hands touching the surface, slowly moving the clay around like a musician touching a stringed instrument. this calmed me very much, because I imagined that the person doing that was meditating as well.

I then moved back to the room with the cups and handled a few of them... they were gorgeous. most of the ones I liked had already been purchased, but I found two of them that spoke to me a lot and were still available, the ones that looked like doodles I make when I am sitting in a boring meeting at work, of repeated parallel lines forming a grid (one a tighter one, the other with larger squares). I thought those two would make a lovely pair. it was then and there that I decided to buy myself a birthday gift and get a few pieces for my modest collection...

I waited for a few minutes to see if someone would come to the front, but everyone was in the back, or talking to an older gentleman who was looking at a larger vessel... I then moved to the front of the gallery, by the desk and placed the price list back on its rack, and waited for a few more minutes... someone saw me there and walked right by without acknowledging my presence (not Hazel)... I waited a few more minutes and then decided to leave. I tried opening the front door but could not figure out the lock (it had been locked after I walked in)... it took me a few more minutes to figure out how to get out, and by then I was a bit annoyed... I was upset that the gallery did not consider that I would make an art investment that day and therefore spent their time focusing on someone else (they've seen me before I am sure, but I have never purchased anything there). i would normally understand this attitude if this exhibition had the usual price point for that gallery, but the pieces in this show were extremely affordable (in fact I thought it was the Hilberry version of a Holiday Sale), most pieces below $500. this whole situation put a bit of a damper on my birthday, because I had not thought until then that I would actually get myself anything gifts this year. when I made up my mind to get some, I felt that my spontaneous indulgence was denied for no good reason. it somehow reminded me of the art scene in town, which is to some extend highly supported by artists (artists donate works, artists buy works, etc), unless you move to our version of the blue chip, where then collectors jump in - which I imagine is the Hilberry audience. I wish these distinctions were not in place, that there was more flexibility from all parts involved.

I headed my way north to the Affirmations Center to see Taurus Burns' exhibition. the opening had taken place the night before but I did not have a chance to go to. Affirmations gallery uses that cable metal hanging system, which actually works well for their purposes,for the most part (given the cinderblock walls and the multifunctional nature of their lobby gallery).

on one side there were photographs by another artist that were somewhat pleasant but largely pedestrian (a mix of light erotica and amateur modeling/band/catalogue portraiture, borderline artsy)... I understand why they were there, given the young nature of Affirmations' patrons, but I have seen better works from the same genre done in town. but I wanted to look at Taurus' work so I turned around and went to the other side of the space. Taurus' paintings were displayed salon style with the metal apparatus, with varied sizes (but usually in the smaller size, maybe 12 inches as the widest measurement). I looked at them a couple times, and noticed that there seemed to be two distinct veins in this set of pictures. the first being almost like a collection of photographic mementos from urban Detroit, the kind of painting I would buy if I were to move away from the area and wanted something to remember it.

the other was a more set-up, constructed narrative, with figures in somewhat surreal situations, partially or fully nude in a public space. for me these did not work so well, perhaps because the scale of the pieces limited any painting statement he could have tried to make with them. what I mean by this sentence is that I did not find that the painterly quality married well with the compositional choices and implied narrative. perhaps in a grandiose scale (such as his mural works) the intricacies of the color mixing provide a secondary point of entry into those works. his brushstroke quality for me worked better with the portraits of the city, sans people. some of those possessed a sense of irony with the text and mystery with the time of the day they depicted (as well as the eerie notion of cities with no citizens) that the constructed paintings lacked. before leaving the gallery, I looked for a price and title list but did not find any. there was a small bio/statement provided but those seemed to be directed more towards understanding what the artist does, rather than address the actual works presented.

my next eastbound stop was the Pinwheel bakery, to fulfill my goal of getting a cup of their lovely gelato for my birthday... they have the best in town, and many great baked desserts as well (the vegan brownie is to die for). unfortunately they were not making the ice anymore ("Summer is over"), so I decided to head over to the Lemberg gallery, on foot.... I had forgotten how far north from main street the gallery is, and the thought of the long walk home came to my mind, specially as the temperature began to drop. fortunately the art on display there pushed those thoughts right away. I was greeted by the wonderful and forever smiling Lemberg ladies (as I secretly call them). The Lemberg featured works by Jane Lackey, in an exhibition titled "Shapes Of Entanglement: Particle Politic."

large panels of cloth that seem to be hand painted and printed, flanked the main opposing walls. a concern with geometric and architectural shapes, as well as city maps and mapping, was visibly evident throughout the works. there was also an interest in juxtaposing both man-made and machine-made patterns, via readymade stickers and stitching, along with precise field painting. again, I spent quite a bit of time with these works, getting lost in their labyrinthine patterns and reflective surfaces (one word:gold). the remembrance of my pre-flânerie studying of St. Petersburg maps came to mind, as well as how I had gotten to the gallery in the first place. the title of the exhibition, the title of the works and the statement gave me something to grasp, and the unexpected use of thread (sometimes a subtle white, sometimes a strong orange), hooked me to these large panels. again I saw myself living with some of these pieces, which for me is an important component in the art-making process.

when I make work I imagine it in someone's house (not mine, as I never display my own work at home - I find that extremely odd actually, when artist only have their work on walls in their homes)... I imagine someone looking at my work, someone loving and living with my work. As the artist Cyriaco Lopes said (this is a paraphrase), you must first fall in love with your own work before sharing your work with someone else. and I believe in that.... I believe that you must love your own work in order for someone else to fall in love with it. and when I looked at the works by Lackey I thought that she probably loved her work (even if the labor of making it could be quite difficult, not very loving)... and I then saw myself living with those, looking at those on a daily basis (how great they'd looked over my new fireplace). unfortunately for me they were way above my price range, so for now they will remain in my thoughts.

before my departure, the ladies and I exchanged some words about the art work as usual. it is always great to hear them talk about their artists. it is not just spiel for the investor, they seem to always express their awe on the work in an unassuming manner, and not to impress anyone. what I enjoy about that space is the consistency of the aesthetics they subscribe in their representation (contemporary formalism and expressionism, in my view), while keeping a varied roster of artists - the work might not be your cup of tea, but I find them habitually good. as my adventure on my birth day were coming to a close, before my dinner that same night, I headed back home, cutting through NW Ferndale. some folks were raking the leaves, some were bringing in grocery bags, all seemed to be getting ready to enjoy a cozy Fall night at the place they call home. my last unofficial stop was the CVS pharmacy, to get some dental floss. I thought "is this how this walk will end? no art, no ice cream?" it was then that a beacon of light caught my eye, a blinking neon "open" sign at the Dairy Queen. I did not get a cup of gelato at the Pinwheel. I did not get a ceramic cup at the Hilberry either. DQ would have to do it for now. the familiarity of their strawberry sundae hit the right spot.

dinner was great as well, in case you were wondering ;-)

click here to visit the Susanne Hilberry gallery
click here to visit the Affirmations Community Center
click here to visit the Lemberg gallery

projecting

2009-11-06T10:49:00.006-05:00

today I finally finished the long-winded painting align="right" align="left" which I began working at the same time I began this blog. again, the title would include the brackets, or a sideways V, which I cannot type here because the blog interface automatically turns it into its html coded function.

while painting I started to think about a lot of things, as I usually do while getting into the zone.... I recalled the beginning of this painting series, which for me was a huge departure to what I had been doing for the previous decades, medium-wise, but really something I've been wanting to do all along... I wanted to major in painting in college, was encouraged by my teachers, but discouraged by my father...... I considered about my entire artistic career, a quest really..

I thought about all the sacrifices, all the moving around, trying to find a job, trying to get shows, trying to get a green card, trying to find a place where I belong......

and here I am, one week away from my 36th birthday.... looking back, has it been worth it? has it been worth living away from my parents, who each day get older and older, away from my sisters and now nephew and nieces? was it worth leaving my country and culture behind? I also thought about all the relationships that I either gave up or did not even give a try because my career was my priority....

36 years old, and what do I have to show? single, bilingual, Pet Shop Boys always seem a right fit...... have a closet full of art work, which occasionally comes out, but is seldom looked at...... really looked at, except by me...... my last show in Detroit I got some wonderful feedback, a couple people (Linda and Dick come to mind, but there were others) seemed to really have looked at the work, considered, and given me generous feedback...... made the months and long hours worth while.... I was very touched by their interest and care...

this artistic quest or journey is one that is filled with sorrows and turbulence and tribulations, with the occasional sunny spots (or bright spells, as Marchand used to say)..... in a way it is an addicting masochism lifestyle, sans kink.....

my mind then moved to some other areas, I thought about people I know, some very close friends actually, going through a real tough time, and I felt their pain..... I've been to similar circumstances (but not to the same degree), and remembered how immensely overwhelming the "not-knowing" can be some times... I thought about them for a little bit and sent my love their way, a mental email that do not require a reply...

and then I looked at my own work, half way through it... I stepped back, turned on my spot light, and blocked the projector with my body to take a look at what I did...... I thought about Jim Carey's joker costume, and the tentative quality of the brush-stroke.... I was not completely happy with how the paint was adhering to the paper.... it seemed so tentative, and too distorted.... I partially blamed it on the old brush I used, and the even older replacement paint I found in my studio (today is a day of losing things, card-reader still missing, or perhaps today is the day of "finding something else instead")... I turned up the volume of the music, hoping to bring some of the celebration into the work, and to quiet my thoughts....

went back to painting, actually set down on the floor and got close to the surface of the paper.... I smelled the paper and the paint, looked at the graphite smudges on my hand, and dipped the paintbrush in the palette, and began covering another letter..... this time I got closer and really looked at what I was doing, and in this process I began to see how the quality of the brushstroke was a reflection of my state of mind.... all my insecurities and stresses were there, as if in the process of covering the projected text, I was projecting back my mind onto the surface of the paper... this acknowledgement made me love what I was doing, made me see how this piece was becoming a marker of where I am in life right now...

36 years old, and none the wiser.... I am still the same boy who a million years ago made concentric circles on a blank piece of paper with his best friend in kindergarden, the same kid who drew around newspaper comics and collected architectural floor-plans, the same youngster who stayed up all night drawing apples on striped fabric in college only to fall asleep minutes before his critique.... I am still the same uncertain person who, against all fears, takes the plunge and pursues his dreams.... I am the one who still has the callus on his index finger, who does not want to get wiser, but remain innocent, even when faced with failure...

by the time I completed the painting I realized I had succeeded here, because, unknowingly, I had actually found out what I was looking for =-)

Breeding Ground: New Detroit Sculpture at MONA

2009-10-31T15:42:00.011-04:00

last friday, on my way home from work, I stopped by MONA (Museum of New Art in Pontiac, MI) to take a look at the exhibition Breeding Ground: New Detroit Sculpture, co-curated by Kevin Beasley and Christopher Samuels, which featured the works of Nathan Morgan, Abigail Newbold, Andrew Thompson, and the Detroit Projection Project (as well as the curators'), dispersed in four galleries and two floors, all delineated and labeled in a convenient map.

due to a scheduling conflict, I was unable to come to the opening reception, which greatly diminished my experience of the pieces displayed - the scale and interaction with the human body (other than mine, and that of multiple bodies) could potentially and significantly have affected my responses, as well as seeing the works at night (as opposed to 2 in the afternoon).

in preparation to the panel discussion to take place on November 01 at 4 pm, the gallery that features the works by Nathan Morgan was modified from its original arrangement. I am aware that my reading of his art may not have been 100% aligned with his intended choice, so I elected not to write about it (though what I perceived seemed interesting). the brevity of my visit also did not allow me to fully experience the two video works by the Detroit Projection Projects (aka Steve Coy and Brandon Wally), so I will not write about these works either. for the purpose of this blog I thought this would be the best option - I am certain more opportunities to look at their works will arise in a near future.

there were a few words floating in my head as I looked at the works presented. they, in one way or another, could be applied to all works seen, in both positive and negative aspects.

S: (adj) facile (arrived at without due care or effort; lacking depth) "too facile a solution for so complex a problem"
S: (adj) facile (performing adroitly and without effort) "a facile hand"
S: (adj) eloquent, facile, fluent, silver, silver-tongued, smooth-spoken (expressing yourself readily, clearly, effectively) "able to dazzle with his facile tongue"; "silver speech"

S: (adj) transcendent, surpassing (exceeding or surpassing usual limits especially in excellence)
S: (adj) transcendent (beyond and outside the ordinary range of human experience or understanding) "the notion of any transcendent reality beyond thought"

S: (n) transformation, transmutation, shift (a qualitative change)
S: (n) transformation ((mathematics) a function that changes the position or direction of the axes of a coordinate system)
S: (n) transformation (a rule describing the conversion of one syntactic structure into another related syntactic structure)
S: (n) transformation ((genetics) modification of a cell or bacterium by the uptake and incorporation of exogenous DNA)
S: (n) transformation, translation (the act of changing in form or shape or appearance) "a photograph is a translation of a scene onto a two-dimensional surface"

on the first floor, in the Front Window gallery I encountered the works by Andrew Thompson. I have seen and enjoyed some of his works in other exhibitions, but did not notice a particular correlation to what I have seen him produce before to these, with the exception that a personal narrative seems to lie somewhere between the artist's mind and the title of the piece(s). Constituted of refuse and recyclable materials, an inference to the human body (via humanoid shapes, silhouettes and house/dwelling) was made throughout the space. while I can see that these work relate to the vague exhibition description found online (Detroit as a scavenger's paradise), I do not particularly understand why and how this garbage/recycling aesthetic has to do ONLY with Detroit, but with any urban setting - I am also not sure how the word "new" applies here, as works like this have been made for a long time, every where, in both high and low art. While laborious and obsessive in appearance, process and scale, and with beautiful but very minute sections (the weaving of plastic grocery bags come to mind) the pieces overall seemed facile to me, slightly obvious, and not transformative enough from its original source materials - nor did it transcend enough (or at all) its current museum setting - too much of a good thing sometimes is just too much. perhaps an outdoor installation would have shed a more interesting light onto these. I also wonder where these materials will go to once the work is deinstalled - I fear that it might end up where it came from, and to some extent potentially reinforce or contribute to what is being critiqued (this last thought could be applied to the exhibition as a whole actually).

moving along upstairs I first visited the North gallery where the works of Christopher Samuels and Kevin Beasley were installed. Samuels' use of prefabricated materials and construction tools provided an elegant solution at times. the image above depicts in two views by far my favorite piece of his, which led me to believe (in retrospect) that here what had occurred is what lacked in other parts of the exhibition. this untitled piece transported me outside Detroit, outside Pontiac, outside MONA, and even outside my own physicality - I concentrated on the fragility of the form in front of me, and the implied tension and descension. the fact that it was installed in the most neutral section of the museum aided my experience. the other sculptures by Samuels , displayed in other two alcove, were not as successful to me. the thought that came to mind was that the work seemed mostly "staged", rather than installed (the word facile again resurfacing). for me that was not satisfying. titles (or at least numbers) and a statement would endow focus to these. the poetics of his pieces were also diluted and lost to me given their proximity to one another - it could be interesting if each artist had work in all four galleries and therefore dialogue with one another.

adjacent to Samuels' were Kevin Beasley's works, which to me appeared to center mostly on the congealing of found materials in mutable substances, as well as what I assume to be found objects, with the repeating of round shapes somewhat prevalent. while transformation here was a more evident concern than in Samuels', the transcendence again lacked. his recent solo exhibition at the org.contemporary gallery allowed me to experience Beasley's work under a much more appropriate light (pun intended), his vision there clearer and simpler but more poignant than here, and the beauty of his simplicity seemed more intentional then as well. While navigating through the space here I had a hard time understanding what was purposeful and what was accidental/already there (the North gallery is not spare on industrial fixtures that have a similar texture and feel to Beasley's art), but not in an intriguing or complex manner but rather distracting and dissatisfying (as if I had taken a bite on a piece of fruit and tasted texture but not flavor). it could be interesting that, in their goal of articulating Detroit, these artists could have reconfigured/neutralized the MONA spaces more by remodeling them (even wall paint and carpet removal) prior to installing their work - a makeover practice that Detroit itself needs more, from a grass-roots and proactive position (as a history - of peoples, objects, towns, etc - can be displayed as an interpretation, rather than as an index). I would be curious to see Beasley's work at the Cave, or similar setting.

last but not least I moved over to the South gallery (the main MONA space) to the works by Abigail Newbold. While the facile aspect of other works in this exhibition veered towards the random, here I found an ease of entry/encountering that was truly joyful. Newbold transformed the materials she utilized (a combination of found knickknacks and mass-produced furnishings with home-improvement store supplies) into large but portable platform environments that were both funny, intimate, familiar and somewhat forlorn. her pieces also transported me away from the (literal and metaphorical) surrounding noise of the gallery, and had the potential of physically me transport me outside the gallery too, because they rest on industrial-sized casters (I imagine that any attempts of moving these in their entirety might aide in their own demise, since they were assembled in loco and potentially too large to fit into its elevators, a concept in and of itself extremely pertinent to this geography). their titles also imply a distant location (with a hint of resort getaway or homemade simulacra to boot). while they reminded me of Australian artist Adam Norton's work quite a lot (and many others who work in a futuristic modular-home approach), I was able to push those thoughts aside immediately and really see their poetic possibilities. in my view these pieces complexly spoke about Detroit, about living in Detroit, about being and thinking Detroit (and/or what I imagine all of these to be to many other individuals) - of an uncertain fear and dignified grace, with a dash of kitsch and sass amidst its post-industrial dissolution and blurred boundaries; that desire to simultaneous leave and set roots (here and somewhere else). these qualities would position this work to exist and interact with a local social perception elsewhere, not just here, and speak to the transient nature of a globalized but interconnected society, and its citizens.

my reading and experiencing of the art might have been somewhat different if the facilities of MONA were also further neutralized (sans carpet, stains and inconsistent wall color and surface, etc). I hope their new annex gallery at the Russell will solve some of these issues of space/environmental interference on works of art and continue giving the opportunities for the new generations of artists to best display their works, because MONA is one of (if not the most) interesting alternative spaces in the metro area.

I only wish I had been able to attend the opening reception and conversed with the artists to get a better understanding of their work. ditto in regards to the panel discussion (my sincere apologies). I also wish that the texts provided online were better articulated, not filled with vague generalizations about sculpture and Detroit (as well as statements by each artist, which I did not find, this of course could be my mistake). the somewhat repetitive statement of placing their art practice as unique (have we not moved past the avant-garde quest?) and socially engaging (what constitutes a "social landscape" anyway and why is that exclusive to here?) without ever defining what those terms t actually mean or meant within this curatorial program, lacked a much-needed substance that could broaden what their practice can/could be and become. as is, the ephemerality of some pieces might veer into non-existence and oblivion, rather than transcendence.

what may make the works in Breeding Ground relevant to our times is not their connection to Detroit or urbanity or their sculptural statement/manifesto... but what happens with these works once they leave this gallery space.

click here to visit MONA's Breeding Ground page
click here to visit the Cave gallery
click here to visit the org.contemporary gallery
click here to read an article on Adam Norton

violence in movies

2009-10-25T09:00:00.004-04:00

last night I watched at home the movie Knowing (directed by Alex Proyas, starring Nicholas Cage)... I have been going through this period where I enjoy reading sad books and watching action/sci-fi movies, don't ask me why.... so tonight I clicked on this movie while eating my dinner (can never go wrong with Anita's Kitchen)...

it was interesting to see that the main character was a college professor, specially since reading recently on CNN.com that college professor is in the top 10 most desirable professions these days (I believe it was number three)... of course, being a Nolte role, this professor had to be one with a million issues, a drinking problem, etc (nevermind that impossible hairline and them most manicured hands ever)....

anyway, I am not going to write a review on this movie, there are plenty ones to read about online (paging rotten tomatoes)... but I just want to comment a bit on its sheer violence... I also noticed this unbridled violence in District 9 a few months back (that is a great movie)...... and I wonder the amount of violence that was exhibited in two Mel Gibson movies that I boycotted, the Jesus one and the Mayan one..... is this a new trend in movie making?

it was a bit shocking for me to watch last night bodies burning and exploding, being realistically hit and torn up by out of control vehicles etc....... and this is after I saw the trailer and got really interested in watching it... so I guess then my question here is, how do we deal with (in my humble opinion) gratuitous images of violence? I am not a big fan of rating systems, as I view them as a socially-sanctioned form of censorship... in a post-9/11 world do we simply need to learn how to live with these representations?

click here for official movie site

Lisa Marie Thalhammer at The Butcher's Daughter gallery

2009-10-24T22:28:00.008-04:00

because I had met the artist the night before at a dinner party, and harbored a massive hangover (for unrelated reasons), I walked up the steps to The Butcher's Daughter gallery with some trepidation and a bad taste in my mouth...

there is a well-known need to have some critical discussion and writing about the art scene in Detroit... we all talk about it and we all hope one day it will get better.... I've been thinking about starting a blog such as this for a very long time, taking matters into my own hands so to speak, but always felt (and still do) that I may not be the best person to do so, or that this might not be very good for my own art career, locally speaking.

what would happen if I had to write something negative about a friend? what would happen if the person being critiqued did not appreciate my comments? would this black-list me in some circles? or is art criticism something people like to complain about, but secretly love its absence? (the complaint being the binding factor in the community)...

and what is art criticism anyway? should I embrace the "I like.../ I don't like..." dictum that my students so frequently use, and that I abhor? how fully should I embrace my subjectivity? these questions are ones that usually surface in the teaching environment... so as any good teacher, it is time for me to become a student too and try to follow some of my own advice...

the addition of The Butcher's Daughter to the Detroit art community has also inspired me to undertake this venture. Monica Bowman has been very brave in actualizing her ambitions at a time when most like to focus on uncertainty and not be pro-active... the energy and freshness this space has brought to the scene is truly wonderful, and I hope the local art community will full-heartedly support it.... Monica, thank you for putting forth and expressing your vision....

a blog is a place of opinion, so I will express mine here... I will try to avoid any notions of taste (and if that is not possible, acknowledge it openly) and attempt to apply a description of my response and an analysis of my thoughts as a means of articulating my opinion.... so here we go!

this exhibition is made up of small-scale collage works (photographic images from magazines with painted elements), one large portrait painting, one mural and one stop-motion animation video piece...

one of my current gripes with art and the art experience is the notion of the presence of the art piece (its existence or lack thereof).... what I mean by that is the physical statement the work has once one approaches and experiences it.... more precisely, the way the aura of the work moves me... I feel that there are a lot of works being done these days that simply lack presence to me... for me that was one aspect that this exhibition did not possess as a whole at a first glance... perhaps the lack of glass in the presentation added to that reaction (I am partial to glossy surfaces, have always been), as well as the scale... the first impression for me was a bit flat...

there were some exquisite moments there though, and some portions of some pieces were very delightful to experience (also note how photogenic they are), such as the outline around the figures in the amber pieces by the reception desk/bar... the color palette and the paper texture worked well for me there... those pieces felt cohesive (no photos of these were taken, so make sure you go to the gallery to check them out)... but with some pieces the texture of the handmade paper were a bit too distracting and odd (specially when the palette was cooler)... the red piece with the arabesque patterns and the small collages around the border was one of my favorite pieces on the show (pictured below), perhaps because it warranted an approximation that fitted its scale better that in others... there was also a very nice dialogue between that piece and the video animation... more on that later...

some of the collage pieces, although interesting, gave me the impression that was too familiar and not as complicated as they could be... there is a whole generation of artists now dealing with this conglomerate look that implies motion (though of course this is nothing new or of only these times - this approach is as baroque as it is cybernetic)..... two artists that come to mind are Alexander Reyna and Sean Capone, whose work I curated into an exhibition at OUAG last March.... what differed their work from Lisa Marie's is their embracing of an over-the-top glossy and orgasmic effect in their final creations. I felt that Lisa Marie's were in a way too timid, too quiet, and even a bit too encrypted....

I also could not shake out the notion of many wall and table decorations I have seen in diners, tattoo parlors, pubs, and alternative restaurants all over the world, where this dismembered assemblage is on public display... it begged me to ask the question "what makes these different?" (aside from their context)... and then it hit me that perhaps this is precisely what this work is about... this is a commentary on that attempt for visual expression that is accessible to many (makers), prevalent in underground and mass media culture, but not completely assimilated.... a grunge or rebellious or queer scrap book of sorts.....

upon reading the statement that brings forth a biography as inspiration, the environments Lisa Marie has lived through begin to focus her work more for me... what was little evident to me was the feminine/feminist perspective in the work that was addressed in the statement (the decapitation and implied mutilation/mutation for me reinforced the critique it attempted to make, instead of posing a new solution or articulation of her position)... both Rosler and Ofili have dealt with similar imagery a while back, both with very different points of view and effect (though both related to this work via religion and gender politics), so what has been absorbed/learned from the(ir) past? is it possible to move into a post-feminist thought where the essence of being is as much celebrated as the struggle of being?

which brings me back to the video piece in the exhibition... it is here that I see a glimpse of things to come for her work.... what attracts me to this piece is similar to my experience in meeting the artist in person the previous night - shyness, humor, beauty and inner glow.... in this video I see where the work can go, in so many different directions (just as my experience of Lisa Marie changed, as we got to know each other more, and her intelligence, kindness and laughter emerged)... I imagine sounds and flashing lights, syncopated rhythm and tons of motion... and I hope this rubs off in the 2-D pieces as well..... I want to see an explosion of colors and rainbows and stars, ripping the edges of the paper, escaping its own boundaries... I also want to see some greater scale (the mural in the room makes me feel this way) and asymmetry (the burden of the rectangle no more)... I want to see, hear, taste and feel anger as much as joy.....

it could be interesting to see actual pieces of the truck stop too (furniture, backlit signs, menus, some 3-dimensionality) somehow incorporated into this endeavor... her personal history should be, somehow, articulated within the pieces to a greater extent (and not only in writing)... there is a million ways to do that (the scrap book mention also recalls the diary or journal), and if this is not an interest, then it is perhaps best left out of the artist statement... because it also reads as some type of justification for what we see, and the work does not need any face-saving... we don't need to always be defined by our parent's career choices ;-)

by the time I left the exhibition I was inspired by the art works I had seen/absorbed, my head filled with thoughts on their potential and possibilities... sometimes we see work that leaves us empty or too full, with nowhere to go to, and in a sense those pieces disappear thereafter from our minds.... sometimes pieces affect you (think of a wedgy or a hotel pillow, discomfort or Unheimlich) and leave you wanting more, like here... I really look forward to seeing more works from Lisa Marie in the near future... I'll be curious to see which road she decides to take next in her life and hope we get invited to ride along...

click here to see Thalhammer's work
click here to go to The Butcher's Daughter
click here to see Reyna's work
click here to see Capone's work