4th release of the always breath-taking Desktopography has just dropped in.
Brand new creations by amazing artists from all over the world directly to your desktop.
The work above is by far one of my favorites and comes from the hands of insanely talented mr. David Fuhrer.
“Fisheye Quake is a version of quake (software rendering) that allows you to play in ANY fov [field of vision], i.e. 10 to 360 and over.”
I know I said I’d stop posting stuff that was popping up all over the web. But this one is just a must see.
Blu has always been a genius. But this one really sets the bar even higher.
Just spent 3 days in Rome to check out FotoGrafia, the 7th edition of international festival of photography which runs until May 25th in several venues throughout the city.
In a time when most photo festivals focus on urbanity, chaos or sustainability, the theme chosen by FotoGrafia this year is very brave: “Seeing normality. Photography portrays daily life”.
First stop was the Palazzo delle Esposizioni there were several shows by young photographers but one of the photo series was so striking (and so far away from what you and i would regard as “normality”), i spent the rest of my stay in the Italian capital obsessing about it. Chinese Wild West, a collaboration between photographer Paolo Woods and journalist Serge Michel, follows China’s industrial neo-colonialism in African lands.
As they explain: To quench its thirst for oil, its hunger for copper, uranium and wood, Beijing has sent out its state companies and its adventurous entrepreneurs to conquer Africa.
For the 500.000 Chinese who have emigrated to the ‘dark continent’ there is the promise of a 21st century Wild West. Some have struck gold and run large conglomerates that span whole regions of Africa, others are still selling their cheap goods on the burning hot roadsides of the poorest countries in the world.
Woods and Michel conclude their presentation of the work with these words: These are rare images: Beijing wants to keep a low profile for its conquest. But though it remains largely unexposed these photographs portray a phenomenon, a new dimension of globalization, that threatens to leave the West behind.
The amazing photos are accompanied by a short explanatory text. A selection:
China, Mianyang, 2007
Peng Shu Lin is leaving tonight to go and work in Nigeria. He is 36. He has spent more then half of his life melting plastic in a state factory in Mianyang, his hometown in the center of China. His 90$ monthly salary is simply not enough anymore to live on and help his ageing parents. In Nigeria he will work in one of the 40 factories of a Honk Kong businessman, for a 550$ salary plus room and board. Peng Shu Lin has never left his Sichuan province, never taken a plane and never seen a black man, except on television. All he is taking to Africa is in the small sport bag next to him. He thinks that when he returns to China, in two or three years, he will have saved something like 15.000$, enough to get married and open an Internet café in his town.
Nigeria, Lagos, 2007
A festive dinner for the meeting of the association of Chinese entrepreneurs of Lagos that takes place monthly at the restaurant “Mr. Chang”. The responsible of the association are the new generation of Chinese businessman in Africa. They are often very young and their companies are booming. The waiters are dressed in Chinese costumes directly imported.
Nigeria, Lagos, 2007
Nigerian workers and a Chinese technician organize the production at Federated Steel. The Chinese expats, who are often very qualified, are charged with forming the Nigerians as well as keeping up the very intense work rhythm. Even if the Chinese often speak little more then a few works of English they occasionally manage to create a complicity with their African colleagues.
Congo, Imboulou dam, 2007
On the building site of the Imboulou dam, Republic of the Congo, 200km north of the capital Brazzaville. In the foreground a Chinese worker of the China National Mechanical & Equipment corporation (CMEC) company, which in 2001 has obtained the contract. With its 120 megawatts, this power plant will double the national production of electricity and will give light to a large part of Congo. 400 Chinese technicians and qualified workers supervise a Congolese workforce of a thousand man, paid 3 dollars a day, that disappear as fast as they can find a better paid job. This, in part, explains the dam’s construction delay that has to be absolutely terminated by 2009, the year of the next Congo elections. CMEC requires the Chinese workers to wear yellow and the Congolese blue hardhats.
Congo, Conkouati National Park, 2007
In the Cotovindou logging concession a Congolese worker for the Chinese timber company Sicofor saws down a 22-meter moabi tree that will be loaded the same day on a truck bound for Pointe Noire. From there it will be embarked for China. It will probably end up as luxury furniture in Europe or the States. Moabi (baillonella toxisperma) takes about hundred years to reach maturity. Its fruits are edible, its bark has medical applications and the oil its seeds produce is very sought after on the African markets. The droppings of elephants, that love the Moabi fruits, are the main mechanisms for spreading the seeds and therefore of its reproduction. Due to poaching, elephants are getting rare, due to logging Moabi is getting rare. In the Congo forest elephants and Moabi could disappear at the same time. Moabi has been included in the red list of IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) in 2004.
Nigeria, Lagos, 2007
Mr. Wood was born in Shanghai in 1948 and arrived in Nigeria at the end of the 70’s were he started an industrial empire that includes today about 15 factories with more then 1600 workers, construction companies, hotels and restaurants. He is an official adviser to the president and has obtained the title of African chief and the authorization to use police cars as his own which helps in the monstrous Lagos traffic jams. He uses as well the police as private bodyguards, like here on the construction site of 544 villas built at record speed on the Lekki peninsula near the headquarters of the Chevron oil company.
Congo, Brazzaville, 2007.
The Savorgnan de Brazza high school is the most respected school in the Congolese capital but is in very bad need of repair. Jean de Dieu Malanga, professor of Chinese, is giving the students of the second year their annual examination. He himself has studied in China during the 80’s and makes a living as a translator for the Chinese bosses at the numerous construction sites besides his work as a teacher.
The full photo series is on view on Paolo Woods ‘s website.
The good folks at Evasèe are always up to date dropping the new hot stuff on design, art and general trends; but this one is for sure one for the books: Cyberoptix.
Created by Bethany Shorb, this enterprise is dedicated to the always curious, atractive, yet unexplored market of ties, and it does it in a masterful way.
Make in fine silk with hand-made sikscreening processes, each one of these ties is an absolute statement of elegance, vanguard and style.
By far an attractive gift that out does and differs from the traditional market offer.
Get your own for around US$35 – US$40.
Link: Cyberoptix.
Via: Evasèe.
Awesome sculptures made by the Peace Art Project Cambodia.
All made only with unused gun parts.
Genius.
Via: TrendHunter.
Take two persons whose work in the media art field i’ve been admiring for years. Have their minds communicate for more than a couple of minutes. What is going to happen?
UBERMORGEN.COM (Lizvlx/Hans Bernhard), Psych|OS – Hans 2, 2004. Lambda print on aluminium. 100 x 150 cm. Edition of 5. Private Collection, Brussels / Fabio Paris Art Gallery, Brescia
Yves Bernard is the director of iMAL (interactive Media Art Laboratory), a space dedicated to contemporary artistic and cultural practices emerging from the fusion of computer, telecommunication, network and media. iMAL is the only space that doesn’t put the Belgian french-speaking community i come from to total shame. The presence and recognition of media art varies from country to country but nowhere are these differences as tangible as in Belgium: while Flanders supports media art generously and dynamically for years, the rest of the country believes that media art equals video art. The work of Yves and his team is admired way beyond our national borders but strives to get the attention it deserves in the french-speaking community.
Domenico Quaranta is an art critic and curator living in Brescia, a small-ish city of Northern Italy. He shrugs when i tell him that one day he’ll rule over the art world but that’s because i have more faith in his brilliant writings, impeccable taste and broad culture than he does.
Yves and Domenico took the opportunity offered by Art Brussels, the international contemporary art fair which closed yesterday, to get the eyes of the contemporary art world set onto digital art. With more passion and talent than real budget they curated and organized Holy Fire. Art of the Digital Age, an impressive exhibition featuring the kind of digital artworks susceptible to convince the contemporary art world that digital art should get the place and understanding it deserves in the contemporary art panorama.
To be honest, i needed such exhibition. Last Summer i realized that i was getting a much more fruitful and satisfying art experience at the Venice Biennale than at Ars Electronica. Media art often suffers from faddism and from a series of misunderstandings. For example, i can’t count the number of times i heard someone (or seen an exhibition) confuse “something weird done with technology” with media art.
Joan Leandre, The Kernel Peak: At my Limit(Unknown Universal Series), 2008. Digital Print. 140×102 cm. Edition of 5. Courtesy Project Gentili, Prato
No such risk here. The quality of most of the works on show at iMAL is outstanding. The exhibition counts more than 20 pieces, i’ll just highlight a handful of them:
After a year long immersion in World of Warcraft, Eddo Stern translated the legends, obsessions and symbols of the subculture he had experienced into his art practice. With Emoticon, Stern uses icons and emoticons from online forums to crown and dress a synthetic goddess – herself an icon – which smiles, pouts, frowns, cries and expresses the other emotions at her command in the most languorous way.
Eddo Stern, Emoticon, 2007. 3D computer animation with sound on 42 inch plasma screen. Running time 3 minutes. Edition of 3. Private Collection, Brussels / Courtesy Postmasters Gallery, New York
For their participation at the Venice Biennale in 2001, Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.org turned a virus Biennale.py into a work of art and spread it from the Slovenian Pavilion on the opening day of the exhibition. The Perpetual Self Dis/Infecting Machine features the Biennale.py virus. Trapped into a computer devoid of any connection to a network, the virus does its best to spread its wings and start its contagious process, but the machine fights back and submits it to a disinfection process. The power game is repeated again and again. Ad vitam eternam.
Eva and Franco Mattes (0100101110101101.ORG), Perpetual Self Dis/Infecting Machine, 2001-2003. Custom made computer infected with the virus Biennale.py. 70 x 50 x 13 cm. Courtesy Fabio Paris Art Gallery, Brescia.
Reface [Portrait Sequencer], by Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman, is a video mash-up that composes endless combinations of visitors’ faces. The installation records and remixes brief video slices of its viewers’ mouths, eyes and brows. Even if visitors move in front of the display the system will line up their face. The images recorded are “edited” by the participants’ own eye blinks. Blinking also triggers the display to advance to the next set of face combinations.
“Reface (Portrait Sequencer)”, 2006, LCD screen, custom software, computer, camera, plexiglass enclosure. Edition of 6. bitforms gallery, New York
Oh, yes! at this point is should also note that in an attempt to explore how new media art, bypassing all the stereotypes connected with its presumed immateriality and difficulties of maintenance, was able to enter the art market, the works on show at Holy Fire come from galleries and collections from around the world (USA, Europe, Russia).
Strangely, the “romantic” idea that to be a valuable artist you have to starve, drink yourself blind with absinthe and die alone in your chambre de bonne is still very much alive and kicking.
Holy Fire shows that it doesn’t have to be the case for media artist by choosing to exhibit only collectible new media artworks already on the art market, in the form of traditional media (prints, videos, sculptures) or customized new media objects.
The art market offers new sources of income for new media artists. Up to now, these have been limited – when they exist – to public funding from institutions and governments, sometimes dictated by politics. An art market can help develop a new economy through direct relations between artists and art consumers, confirming the artists’ social role and the support of the people who are increasingly looking for something different from mass-produced digital gadgets.
Jodi, Max Payne Cheats Only, 2004. Video installation (2 channels). Private Collection, Brussels
More images from the exhibition.
To investigate the theme explored by Holy Fire: you can either have a look at the discussion about Holy Fire on rhizome and get your hands on the catalog of the exhibition which features opiniated contributions from many protagonists of the media art world.
Even better you can give your view by collaborating to aminima study about the new media art market.
Gazira Babeli. Gaz Of The Desert – Pieta, 2007. Lambda print. 70 x 107 cm. Edition of 3. Collection Marchina-Ghizzardi, Brescia / Courtesy Fabio Paris Art Gallery, Brescia
Holy Fire (yes, the title is inspired by one of Bruce Sterling‘s books) is on view at iMAL (google map), Brussels through April 30, 2008.
Related: walking around Chelsea, A conversation about exhibiting and selling digital fine art.
The result of the elections in Italy (where i half live) is saddening me beyond words.
I cheered up a bit this morning when i discovered that tagr.tv has put the video of Casey Reas’ talk at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna online. Last week i had the pleasure of attending Casey’s lecture at the Node08 festival in Frankfurt. While his talk in Vienna focused on his own work, the Frankfurt audience was blissed with a wonderful presentation that made coding finally understandable to someone like me, was packed with references to wonderful artworks based on code subtleties and provided a glimpse into what his next book will be like. The creator (together with Ben Fry) of processing told me that it took them several years to come up with their Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists, so don’t expect the new opus to land on your bookshelf this month.
Image bitforms gallery
I missed Paul Prudence‘s presentation which was apparently fabulous and if you’re curious about Node08, Paul has started to write about the event on his blog. However i caught theverymany‘s very engaging presentation slash performance. I was so sick that day that i took almost no notes but i listened avidly and rescued this gem from their talk:
They worked with architect Alex Haw to develop LightHive, a delicate “luminous architectural surveillance” constellation made of some 1500 LEDs, positioned to recreate the location of every light source in the building of London’s Architectural Association where it was installed last year. Each LED replicates the intensity, colour and direction of the real light sources. They switched on and off and changed in intensity according to light use throughout the school building.
ps. if you’re in Brussels over the coming weeks, come and check out Casey Reas’ work at the Holy Fire exhibition curated by Domenico Quaranta and Yves Bernard, the director of iMAL.
Yesterday i went to a very exciting show at Museum of Arts & Design in New York. Pricked: Extreme Embroidery has invited 48 artists to demonstrate the diversity of new approaches to needleworking technique.
As they did with their previous show Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting, the Museum demonstrates that contemporary artists are exploring new ways to bring centuries-old handcraft traditions into the 21st century.
Phrenology III (child)
One of the works that most impressed me was Morwenna Catt Phrenology Heads. Phrenology, developed by German physician Franz Joseph Gall around 1800, and very popular in the 19th century, is a discipline which claims to be able to determine character, personality traits and criminality on the basis of the shape of the head (i.e., by reading “bumps” and “fissures”). Catt’s soft sculptures of heads have long animal ears, Frankenstein-like stitches all over their face, one eye is shut by a patch and a needle is stuck in their head as if the work was unfinished.
The heads are embroidered with fragments of texts: the Mother one has “You will need eyes at the back of your head”. The Father has “The gloom and the silence, i am terrified when i realise i am alone”, etc.
Phrenology head II, 2007
Phrenology head II, 2007
Words and images have been combined in traditional embroidered samplers for more than 500 years, and many contemporary artists give their own twist to the convention. Tilleke Schwarz, for example, embroiders texts and images she finds in her daily life from letters to editors that have caught her attention to images from television.
Tilleke Schwarz, Count your Blessings
Tilleke Schwarz, Into the Woods
Elaine Reichek embroidered an 80-foot long transparent curtain with dots and dashes that spell out the first telegraph message sent by Samuel F. B. Morse on May 24, 1844: “What hath God wrought”.
Elaine Reichek, First Morse Message
Andrea Deszö records aphorisms and warnings received from her Transylvania mother in the Lessons from My Mother series. 48 cotton squares are embroidered with illustrated bits of folk wisdom passed down from her mother: “My Mother Claimed That A Woman’s Legs Are So Strong That No Man Can Spread Them If She Doesn’t Let Him”, “My Mother Claimed That You can get hepatitis from a handshake,” “My Mother Claimed That Men will like me more if I pretend to be less smart,” etc.
Andrea Dezsö, Lessons From My Mother
While embroidery traditionally connotes safety and domestic security, some of the artists in Pricked use the medium to explore and reflect on political and social issues.
Mexican artist Ana de la Cueva‘s video shows a digital embroidery machine stitching the contours of the United States and Mexico highlighting the planned wall to keep out illegal aliens in bright red thread, all to the tunes of Mexican and American popular music.
Ana de la Cueva’s video “Maquila” shows a commercial sewing machine stitching a white-on-white outline of the United States on plain cotton fabric, with a bold red line demarcating the Mexican border. Maquila refers also to the use by American manufacturers of cheap labor embroidery shops scattered along the border.
Xiang Yang, The Truth that People Are Not Willing To Face — Bushism vs Saddamism
Xiang Yang’s The Truth that People Are Not Willing To Face — Bushism vs Saddamism are portraits of President Bush and Saddam Hussein linked by a rainbow of threads. The threads are continuous between the 2 visages, giving the impression that the faces have morphed into one another.
Peter Hellsing used embroidery as a channel for communication with the immigrants who live in Flemingsburg, the suburb where he lives in Stockholm. He documented their stories of dislocation, alienation and longing for home on household furniture. The body of works, called A Little Cabin In the Woods, tells the story of these migrants, how they grew up in Sarajevo, or their fate during the Turkish-Armenian war.
Peter Hellsing, A Little Cabin In The Wood (detail)
Sonya Clark‘s $5 bill celebrates the connection between the president and the Afro-American community by giving him an afro hairdo.
Afro Abe II, Sonya Clark
A section of the exhibition explores the work of artists who adopt, appropriate or quote images and ideas from other sources, including art history and popular culture, in their embroidered works.
Los Angeles-based artist Maria E. Piñeres embroiders portraits of celebrities who have been arrested, such as Mel Gibson and Robert Downey, Jr. Mark Newport has created a full-sized bed spread of embroidered comic books heroes as a way of exploring masculinity and identity.
Mark Newport, Freedom Bedcover: Zachary
Paddy Hartley uses his research into the lives and families of disfigured World War I soldiers as the basis for his reconstructed military uniforms that are embroidered with texts and images related to the specific soldier.
Paddy Hartley, Lumley
German artist Sybille Hotz created large-scale stuffed human figures drawn from first-aid manuals and medical books.
Sybille Hotz, Wenden
Orly Cogan embroiders found linens that have been previously embroidered with flowers, animals, and hearts with nude self-portraits and animal fantasies.
Orly Cogan, Second Nature
Laura Splan, whose work is at the crossroad between medicine and art, is showing Trousseau, an embroidered nightdress created from a transparent plastic-like material that results from a drugstore facial peel-off mask which picks up and retains the detailed impression of texture and hairs on one’s skin. She covered her entire body with the product, let it dry, peeled it off in one large “hide” so that she could have large sheets of “fabric” to work with. The sculptures are embellished with computerized machine embroidery.
Trousseau (Negligee #1)
Splan has also turned the cellular formation of scary viruses such as SARS, herpes, HIV, and flu into doilies. They generate both a feeling of repulsion and one of attraction. Would we be willing to pass these dollies from mother to daughters as tradition would require?
Laura Splan, Doily (Herpes)
Italian artist Angelo Filomeno, who learned embroidery as a child and today is a master in the form, has created a wide panel titled Death of Blinded Philosopher. It depicts a skeleton whose eye sockets have been violated by alaws, facing a blood red explosion of tendrils and blossoms attacked by flies and cockroaches.
Angelo Filomeno, Death of Blinded Philosopher
Paul Villinski‘s wall sculpture Lament is made up of hundreds of abandoned or lost gloves collected from New York Streets, assembled as a massive pair of black bird’s wings which would perfectly suit Icarus.
Paul Villinski, Lament
On view at the Museum of Arts & Design through April 27, 2008.
More embroidery: Subversive Knitting, Sandrine Pelletier, Divine Deviltries, Gales and Gasps, etc.
Back in New York for a few days and walking around Chelsea with a long list of shows to visit (as usual ArCal has helped me select them.)
On Friday i fell in love with the work of Marcel Dzama at the Gallery David Zwirner.
Fist Born 2007
Even the Ghost of the Past, Dzama’s fifth solo exhibition at the gallery, includes drawings, collages, costumes, installations, dioramas, and a film. They evoke fairy tales but with an added streak of terrorism, jazz-era nostalgia, sexual perversion and cruelty.
La Verdad está Muerta Room Full of Liars, 2007
Inspired by the religious shrines he found in Mexico and the work of Joseph Cornell, the Canadian artist has created a series of five dioramas. Recessed into the wall, they recall a child’s puppet theatre or the didactic displays found in natural history museums.
On the Banks of the Red River, 2008
Nearly 300 ceramic sculptures were used to compose the biggest diorama in the show. On the banks of the red river recreates the apocalyptic cover image of his 2005 exhibition catalogue, The Course of Human History Personified. Dozens of haughty aristocratic hunters, guns in hand, are massacring forest animals. The lovely fawn lays with its tongue out, the bird had its head severed from the body, the fate of the little dead frog leaves the hunters indifferent, bats and flowers are flying, etc. Great care has been taken to make the corpse as cute as possible. The cuteness of the animal kingdom turn into perversion with the Infidels diorama where adorable little bats flap their wings above a dead bear.
Infidels, 2008
Dzama also created an installation that pays homage to and almost demystifies Marcel Duchamp’s Étant donnés, 1946-66. Like Duchamp, Dzama has created an intricate tableau only visible to viewers through a peephole. The artist imagines what could have provoked Duchamp’s scene of a nude splayed in the woods. Dzama’s interpretation proposes a wily fox is to blame, knocking-out both the nude and her lover with a slingshot.
Even the Ghost of the Past, 2008
In a room at the back of the gallery, the silent film The Lotus Eaters recalls a time when black-and-white mute movies were accompanied by live pianists. The title suggests Homer’s mythical race whose favored food induced a dreamy and contented forgetfulness.
Lotus Eaters, 2005
Using a combination of 8mm and 16mm film, Dzama also incorporates footage shot by a Fisher-Price PixelVision camcorder – his childhood camera. Embodying the unique combination of homespun aesthetic and referential complexity that characterizes Dzama’s production, the film makes vivid not only the characters who occupy the artist’s imagination, but also the essential nature of the creative process.
Untitled (Page 8 of 13), 2007
In Dzama’s drawings and collages, distinct characters take center stage against a blank background, most notably the masked and armed “terrorist.” The character is repeated amongst cowboys, archers, and femmes fatales. What the artist really meant to evoke is up to everyone’s imagination. It’s hard not to think of the climate of paranoia at the forefront of American politics.
Weep our sad bosoms empty, 2007
More images. And i took some photos.
On view at David Zwirner gallery, through April 19, 2008.
On Saturday, i visited the Biennale de la Photo de Liège. Now you might never have heard of Liège. Good for you! That’s where i grew up and i must say that apart from the sticky Sirop de Liège (which i’ve never really liked but was nevertheless almost forced to eat), a fantastic programme at a couple of independent movie theatres, and Georges Simenon, there is nothing exciting nor even remotely nostalgic i’m ready to say about that city. Pass your way, dear tourist… Unless you happen to be stuck there before March 30.
ANOUK KRUITHOF, no title, from the series « We are the blue people », 2007
The concept of Territories is the centre of Liège’s 6th International Biennial of Photography and Visual Arts. This theme is explored through different aspects: “Mental Territory”, “Political Territory”, “Mutating Territory” or the relationship between “Territory and Identities”.
Brigitte Grignet, Nablus, West Bank, June 2005, from the series Palestine, Unfortunately It Was Paradise
The selection is really good but the curators didn’t take any risk. I mean you can’t go wrong with the likes of Edward Burtynsky, Xavier Delory and Patrick Messina, can you? Several aspects of this biennale looked a bit like a re-load of several exhibitions on the same topic i’ve seen over the past couple of years (namely BAC! Living in Babylon in Barcelona and Spectacular City in Rotterdam) but, hey, i enjoyed the biennale a lot so i’m going to stop spitting in the soup now. As I applauded some chapters of the biennale much better than others, i’ll exercise my right to be a subjective blogger and focus only on what grabbed my interest.
View of the Ancienne Eglise Saint-Antoine
Political Territory
My first stop was at the luminous Ancienne Eglise Saint-Antoine, an ex-church recently restaured with a very profuse helping of white paint. Wars and fights have marked the history of nations but also left stigmas on the landscapes and in the hearts of people. While some of the artists presented in the Political Territory exhibition turned their lens towards the geographical borderline – seen here as either a real or a symbolic delimitation, other photographers reflect on the human and social consequences which inevitably tailgate these geopolitical challenges.
A fascinating place was dedicated to migrants, “unrooted” or displaced persons, all those who move to another land following their own will or obligation and had to somehow adjust and rebuild a new community and identity.
Yann Mingard and Alban Kakulya, from the series «East of a New Eden», 2001-2002
Today, long after the fall of the iron curtain, new reinforcement measures are being put into place. The buffer zone that was formerly made up of the ‘sister countries’ of the URSS, is slowly becoming the European Union’s buffer zone against illegal immigration and illegal traffic.
Yann Mingard and Alban Kakulya, N 43° 44′ 32 3” – E 28° 34′ 43 9”, from the
series «East of a New Eden», 2001-2002
In 2002, just before some of the Eastern countries would join the European Union Yann Mingard and Alban Kakulya took a GPS and travelled along the length of Europe’s new frontier, from the Adriatic to the Baltic to give a snapshop of the state of a border separating the European Union from countries of the ex-Soviet Union.
Yann Mingard and Alban Kakulya, N 55° 05′ 33 3” – E 21° 53′ 49 6”, from the
series «East of a New Eden», 2001-2002 (c-print 100x100cm)
East of a New Eden raises a series of questions: What is happening today in a zone where people, who have been accustomed to the standards of the Ancient Regime, are suddenly expected to follow the rules of the European Union? Will the iron curtain be replaced by a high tech surveillance barrier?
Yann Mingard and Alban Kakulya, from the series «East of a New Eden», 2001-2002
Rip Hopkins traveled to Uzbekistan, a country very few people could locate on a map but also an artificial country as it was peopled “forcibly” by outcasts from various counties of the former Soviet Union. The Displaced (“From Home and Away”) photos are accompanied by a short text which tells the story of one of these Uzbeks who might or might not feel that they really belong there.
Rip Hopkins, from the series Déplacés, 2002
Leonid Svertchkov in Tashkent’s Geology and Biophysical Institute’s conference room. He is 42 years old. He is Ukrainian and works at the Science Institute as an archeologist specialised in Zoroastrian sites in the south of Uzbekistan bordering with Afghanistan. Leonid was born in East Germany and came to work in Uzbekistan in 1982. He will not leave to join his wife and two sons living in Athens, Greece. 30/07/02
Rip Hopkins, from the series Déplacés, 2002
Lena Olegovna in the shop Les cadeaux de la Dame Nature in the city centre of Tachkent. Lola Karimova, the elder daughter of President Karimov, owns this shop. Lena is 24. She is an english, russian and ouzbek interpret. Her mother is Tatar and her father is half Russian and half Ouzbek. She want to go to Norway. 03/08/02
With Linewatch – Pasaje en la frontera, Laetitia Tura documents the border areas between the United States and Mexico and in particular the police control systems erected across the accidents of the landscape.
Laetitia Tura, Lumière inquisitrice 7, Colonie Libertad, Tijuana, Mexique, 2005
Jérôme Brézillon‘s series Souverains, Indiens des Plaines is a breathtakingly beautiful and thought-provoking series about the fate of Indian Americans. In 1868 the Treaty of Fort Laramie set the frontiers of the land assigned to the Yanktonai Sioux, Santee Sioux, and Arapaho and stipulates that the land is theirs to use as they deem fit. History showed that their territory was not always respected.
Jérôme Brézillon, Souverains, Indiens des Plaines
In the Souverains (Sovereigns) series Brézillon juxtaposes a portrait of a Sioux Lakotas with a landscape of Indian reservations. An identity relationship is instantly created. History, myth and ancestry ensure that the intimacy cannot vanish so easily nor be reduced to folklore.
Mutating Territory
View of the Musée de l’Art wallon
The exhibition Mutating Territory, at the greyer than grey Musée de l’Art wallon, explores how men appropriate a territory and shape it according to their own requirements.
But doesn’t this new territory in turn also shape a new humanity?
Joël Tettamanti toured the globe to document the way mankind takes root in the landscape.
Joël Tettamanti, Qaqortoq_1781
Joel Tettamanti, from the series Maloting, Lesotho, 2004
Edward Burtynsky collects evidences of man’s boundless disregard for the planet: oilfields, polluted ship-breaking beaches, recycling yards, quarries, industrial refineries, etc. He takes images of the colonized landscape but he also enters factories to take sublime shots of intricate industrial constructions or chain workers in the process of loosing any personality.
E. Burtynsky, Oil Refineries No. 14, Saint John, New Brunswick 1999
E. Burtynsky, Manufacturing 16, Bird Mobile, Ningbo Province, China 2005
Xavier Delory didn’t have to take any plane to dedicate his attention to the houses “clé sur porte” (key in the door), they are all over Belgium and many other European cities. Manipulating the images to remove any trace of door and window, he leaves us with a soul-less canvas which has no qualm about being in total disharmony with the environment.
Xavier Delory, from the series Habitat
Mental Territory
I’m going to pretend i haven’t visited Territory and Identities and go directly to Mental Territory at the MAMAC. The territory this time is the one of human intimacy, the internal territory mapped by our choices, family, loneliness, etc. Although i tried as hard as i could there was little attention left for anything else than her pictures the moment i saw Marrie Bot‘s Geliefden. Timeles Love. The series shows elderly having some very intimate moments. Hard not to let your jaw drop and ask your companion “How can they?” “You’ll find me so awful when i’m seventy, we will just hold hands and that’s it right?” Hard to also not to think that these couples are incredibly lucky to still love each other so much after decades of marriage.
Marrie Bot, Liesbeth (76) and Cor (70), Geliefden-Timeless Love, 2004
Territoires, the 6th Biennial of Photography and Visual Arts is on view at several venues in Liège until March 30.
Mathias Nouel, Iris, 2004
Patrick Messina, from the series «Ma petite Amérique», Courtesy of Label Expositions, Paris
The great annual theater festival Santiago a Mil has been involved year after year in bringing to our humble country some of the most important and amazing performances worldwide, and this year it was no exception.
Today I had the privilege of seeing the beautiful “Players of Light” show, by the incredible Groupe F.
An outdoors and free event that involved everything I enjoy: Great music, mind-blowing fireworks, all sorts of lights and beautiful colors.
An experience that went on for a little over an hour that felt like ten minutesU, but I’m pretty sure it must have left the thousands of people that were there more than satisfied.
A sublime experience. A captivating game of lights of unmatchable quality.
More notes taken during the DLD Conference, this time while listening to the Archives and memory panel, moderated by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Taryn Simon is a young photographer whose images and writing have been exhibited internationally, and featured in numerous publications and broadcasts including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, CNN, BBC, Frontline, and NPR.
In her latest photo series An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Simon documents spaces that are intrinsic to the country’s identity and daily functioning, yet inaccessible or unknown to average citizens. She brings into broad day light rarely seen sites from domains including: science, government, medicine, entertainment, nature, security and religion. The project was started at a time when the US were actively seeking to uncover secrets beyond its borders.
Her 70 color plates transform that which is off-limits or under-the-radar into a visible and intelligible form. These images, however, rarely reveal their secret until you read the text that accompanies them.
Transatlantic Submarine Cables Reaching Land. VSNL International, Avon, NJ
My favourite is the Transatlantic Submarine Cables Reaching Land (VSNL International, Avon, NJ). It is really scary to realize that something that looks so fragile and mundane as those orange cables holds the key to all the virtuality that has come to almost constitute the essence of my life.
The submarine telecommunications cables extend across the Atlantic Ocean. Capable of transmitting over 60 million simultaneous voice conversations, these underwater fiber-optic cables stretch from Saunton Sands in the UK to the coast of New Jersey, emerging directly into the VSNL International headquarters, where signals are amplified and split into distinctive wavelengths enabling transatlantic phone calls and internet transmissions.
Underwater fiber-optic cables are laid along the ocean’s floor by specially designed ships. Cables are buried as they approach shore and armored to protect against undersea landslides, marine life (sharks, in particular), and fishing equipment. Fishermen are advised of cable locations as hooking one can interfere with international communication services as well as sink a boat.
White Tiger (Kenny), Selective Inbreeding. Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge and Foundation. Eureka Springs, Arkansas
At the risk of sounding ridiculous and naive, the photo of White Tiger (Kenny) almost broke my heart as much as it angered me.
In the United States, all living white tigers are the result of selective inbreeding to artificially create the genetic conditions that lead to white fur, ice-blue eyes and a pink nose. As a result of inbreeding, Kenny is mentally retarded and has significant physical limitations. Due to his deep-set nose, he has difficulty breathing and closing his jaw, his teeth are severely malformed and he limps from abnormal bone structure in his forearms. The three other tigers in Kenny’s litter are not considered to be quality white tigers as they are yellow coated, cross-eyed, and knock-kneed.
Alhurra TV, Broadcast Studio. Springfield, Va.
Anchor Mona Atari at the Alhurra news desk in Springfield, Va. Alhurra is a US government-sponsored, Arabic-language television network devoted primarily to news and information. Established in Feb. 2004, the network broadcasts 24-hour, commercial-free satellite programming to an audience of 21 million weekly viewers in 22 Arab countries. In April 2004, a second, Iraq-focused channel, Alhurra Iraq, was launched.
The US government is authorized to disseminate information abroad about the US and its policies but it is prohibited to broadcast the same information domestically. Alhurra is Arabic for “the free one.”
Nuclear Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility Cherenkov Radiation. Hanford Site, U.S. Department of Energy
Submerged in a pool of water at Hanford Site are 1,936 stainless-steel nuclear-waste capsules containing cesium and strontium. Combined, they contain over 120 million curies of radioactivity. It is estimated to be the most curies under one roof in the United States. The blue glow is created by the Cherenkov Effect which describes the electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle, giving off energy, moves faster than light through a transparent medium. The temperatures of the capsules are as high as 330 degrees Fahrenheit. The pool of water serves as a shield against radiation; a human standing one foot from an unshielded capsule would receive a lethal dose of radiation in less than 10 seconds. Hanford is among the most contaminated sites in the United States.
Visits to some sites were preceded by long correspondence. However, some never accepted Simon’s requests. Disney, for example, denied her access to their underground facility. Their fax answer read:
“After giving your request serious consideration, even though it is against company policy to consider such a request, it is with regret that I inform you that we are not willing to grant the permission you seek…As you are aware, our Disney characters, parks and other valuable properties have become beloved by young and old alike, and with this comes a tremendous responsibility to protect their use and the protection we currently enjoy. Should we lapse in our vigilance, we run the risk of losing this protection and the Disney characters as we know and love them….Especially during these violent times, I personally believe that the magical spell cast on guests who visit our theme parks is particularly important to protect and helps to provide them with an important fantasy they can escape to.” (Excerpted from a faxed response from Disney Publishing Worldwide, July 7, 2005.)
More in those picture galleries: The Morning News, Wired and pbase.
The second body of works Simon showed are part of The Innocents, a series of portraits of people who were cases of wrongful conviction in the United States and investigates photography’s role in the in the criminal justice system by its ability to influence memory.
Calvin Washington- C&E Motel, Room No. 24, Waco, Texas. Where an informant claimed to have heard Washington confess. Wrongfully accused- Served 13 years of a Life sentence for Murder. 2002
The artist traveled across the country talking to and photographing men and women convicted of crimes they did not commit. After having spent sometimes decades in prison, these men and women were cleared by DNA test results. In their cases, the primary cause of wrongful conviction was photography as it had lead to mistaken identification. The criminal justice system had failed to recognize the limitations of relying on photographic images.
This project stresses the cost of ignoring the limitations of photography and minimizing the context in which photographic images are presented. Nowhere are the material effects of ignoring a photograph’s context as profound as in the misidentification that leads to the imprisonment or execution of an innocent person.
Roy Criner – Alibi location, Houston, Texas. Wrongfully accused- Served 10 years of a 99-year sentence for Aggravated Sexual Assault. 2002
Simon photographed each person at a site that came to assume particular significance following his wrongful conviction: the scene of misidentification, the scene of arrest, the alibi location, or the scene of the crime.
The wrongfully convicted in these photographs were exonerated through the use of DNA evidence. However, for the majority of the wrongfully convicted, there is no DNA evidence. And when there is, as Simon writes, DNA evidence must be handled and stored and is therefore prey to human error and corruption. Evidence does not exist in a closed system. Like photography, it cannot exist apart from its context, or outside of the modes by which it circulates.
Charles Irvin fain. Scene of the crime, the Snake River, Melba, Idaho. Served 18 ears of a Death sentence for Murder, Rape, and Kidnapping. 2002
Photography is not the flawless medium of the eyes, it is a bit of a prostitute. Photography can be used by almost anyone, even with questionable agenda.
British artist Paul Fryer has a spectacular exhibition, In Loving Memory, at the Guido Costa Projects gallery in Turin.
Martyr, 2007, stainless steel, wax, Plexiglas, human hair, Tesla coils, computer, light system
The show features only one art piece: Martyr, created specifically for the gallery. This large scale installation represents the synthesis of Paul Fryer’s research into the origins of technology and the labyrinths of science. The actual elements used to construct the artwork – stainless steel, wax and glass – testify to this synthesis.
The origins of the work are bound up in an event which made news at the end of the 19th century. A Western Union lineman, John Feeks, employed alongside others to hang the thousands of kilometres of wire connecting one building to another and providing the city of New York with electricity and information. Freeks was accidental electrocuted and his corpse corpse dangled for hours in a tangle of wires above the Manhattan streets, to the horror of thousands of onlookers. His fate became symbol of the perils of technological advancement, a martyr of progress, and one of the most famous victims of the electromechanical revolution at the end of the 19th century.
What i found striking is that i was sure i had seen a photography of Freeks death somewhere. After some research i realized that what i had seen what a picture similar to the installation. But it wasn’t in the US, it was in Mexico. Jesus Bazaldua Barber, a telecommunications engineer, was electrocuted by more than 60,000 volts whilst installing a new phone line. Toluca, Mexico in 1971 and Enrique Metenides “immortalized” the scene.
Fryer’s installation is a sort of modern monument to the forgotten workers and their anonymous contribution to supplying the electricity to power modernity.
Like Ron Mueck, Fryer uses wax to render anatomical details. However, the reason why the artist chose wax was not to re-create life but rather because it the material that best communicates the rigidity of death.
I took many pictures.
Previously at GCP: The Velocity of Thought.
On view until 31 January 2008, at the Guido Costa Projects gallery in Turin.
This is one of the stairways at Nydalen subway station in Oslo, Norway.
27 meters of delightful light shows.
Just beautiful.
Via: TrendHunter.
This is kind of a local event in Santiago, Chile. So if you’re not in the area maybe you won’t be interested in this post… Anyways…
Cartel Se Busca (Poster wanted) is a project where 100 different artists are asked to interveine a foldable poster commonly found outside small stores around the city, also known as palomas (pidgeons) here in Chile.
Now the organization of the project is throwing a party to raise funds being held tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. Sorry for the short notice but I’ve had a few problems posting the news.
The event’s info is on the flyer, but just in case, the address is Santos Dumontt 480. It’ll cost $1000 chilean pesos ’till 1 AM, after which it’ll cost $2000.
Those who can, try to go support this excellent and creative iniciative.
While i was walking through the streets of Firenze last week, i came across a contemporary art gallery, entered because that’s what art bloggers are supposed to do and discovered the work of Ericailcane
At the Biagiotti Progetto Arte gallery: La lepre, 2007
Ericailcane makes etchings, graphic art, street art (most notably in collaboration with street artist Blu as demonstrated in this video), animations, sculptures, installations, tattoos and loads of drawings. Inspired by Victorian children’s illustrations, the works are often macabre but never sad. They depict animals dressed like human in surreal situations.
Installation for Santa’s Ghetto, London, 2006
The work of Ericailcane is part of the collective exhibition Drawing Out 1, together with the drawings of Gabriele Arruzzo, Nicola Console, Dacia Manto, Federico Solmi and Nicola Toffolini.
On view at the Biagiotti Progetto Arte Gallery through January, 18, 2008 in Florence, Italy.
Some notes from an exhibition i saw a month ago in Paris:
B??tes et Hommes is a 3500m2 exhibition which explores the relationships between humans and animals.
“Frog and a Praying Mantis,” from the Food Chain series. Photo ?? Catherine Chambers, 1994-96
The exhibition takes place at the Grande Halle of La Villette which used to “welcome” animals in the past: the space had been initially built in 1867 as a slaughterhouse for the cows which would then feed the Paris markets.
The exhibition takes individual situations involving a human being and an animal as its starting point and suggests an alternative way to think about living creatures, questioning their place in our society and proffering ideas about cohabitation that might inspire the world of the future.
B??tes et hommes, photo ?? Christophe Raynaud de Lage
Patrick Bouchain based the design of this exhibition on structures that brings man and animal together: the shelter, the refuge, and the den. Visitors navigate from one tent to the next one, the way to move from the beginning to the end of the exhibition is not always clear which makes the experience all the more interesting, it felt sometimes like being lost in a cozy jungle.
Map of the exhibition parcours
Once again congratulations to the press office people for their poor job: i was not allowed to take pictures and could only use the few images they provided us with. Their photos show the exhibition without visitors (which makes it hard to judge the scale of the tents designed by Bouchain) and most of my favourite works were not featured in the image press kit.
B??tes et hommes, photo ?? Christophe Raynaud de Lage
Still, B??tes et Hommes is a very good exhibition. La Villette is an exhibition centre dedicated to science and technology and it was exciting to see how well this exhibition makes use of artistic works to highlights some key concepts (full list of art works).
Grizzly little fucker, by David Mach, 2003. Photo ?? David Mach – Courtesy Galerie J??r??me de Noirmont, Paris
The exhibition proposes new ways to think about animals, challenging preconceived ideas you might have, giving different points of views, asking questions but never coming with answers for you to swallow passively.
Fuck’d Tony Matelli, 2004. Photo ?? www.frigesh.at – Coutesy : Fondation culturelle Ekaterina, Moscou, Galerie Gary Tatintsian, Moscou et Studio Tony Matelli
Four themes are presented:
Animals affect humankind
Human beings have tried to learn from animals and to acquire some of their characteristics. Example: Inspired by the way bats are able to navigate in darkness, the Batcane uses ultrasonic echoes, signals which bounce off objects present in the environment, and feedback information to the cane.
Animals are strangers to men
Animals live in a world apart from our own. For us to gain access to it, we have to understand what interests them, what affects them, what motivates them. An attempt at this understanding has led to some of the most astonishing discoveries about them.
Ethologists’ recent discoveries reveal that animals have abilities which have traditionally been attributed to men only (for example Wattana, an orangutan living in a Paris Zoo is able to make true knots using her hands, feet and mouth) while the experience of people who actually live with animals (breeders, shephers, care givers or pet owners) show further unexpected skills.
Orang-Outang, Carsten H??ller, 2000-2001. Photo ?? Carsten Eisfeld – Courtesy Esther Schipper, Berlin
When devoid of his or her hair, isn’t H??ller’s Orang-Outang more human-like?
Animals have a job to do
One of the best-known forms of connection between man and beast involves working together, forming a team with an animal – the blind and their guide dogs or circus trainers and their animals are just some examples. But what function do today’s pets and livestock have? Why do we feel sad and angry to see images of a baby seal killed for its fur but have next to no qualms at the idea that thousands of pigs are slaughtered every day to feed us.
Zoopsie, Philippe Loparelli, 2003
Animals force us to choose
Some people want bears to keep on living in the forest, others would rather see them safely locked in a zoo. Crows are ok, but not in your own backyard. In the Pyrennes, vultures used to be allies but when there are too many of them, they are not welcome anymore.
Who do we want to live with? That’s the question at hand. The current debate is unique in that it concerns so many different characters: ecologists, scientists, breeders, animal lovers, tourists, inhabitants, and animals.
S??rie Lucky Family Yang Zhenzhong, 1995. Photo ?? Yang Zhenzhong – Courtesy Shanghart Gallery, Shangha??
The exhibition space is also hosting living animals in residency (a bit as if they were artists) such as Mynah birds, iguanas, buzzards, crows, vultures, and otters. Each of them is a witness of the conflict and cooperation relationship with humans. These animals were either hurt or healed by humans, seized at customs or at private homes, etc.
Evolution, 1971 – S??rie Jours de cirque. Photo ?? Jill Freedman
Henry Horenstein’s Aquatic photo series with an amazing close-up of a squid and other marine portraits
M6info has a great slideshow of images from the exhibition, and i have a small selection online (please respect the credits if you ever want to use these images).
Photo ?? Christophe Raynaud de Lage
Last week i visited the Paul McCarthy exhibition at the S.M.A.K. in Ghent (Belgium.) I knew little of his work, all i had seen before was his Santa merrily carrying a buttplug outside the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam. Then i heard about the Ghent exhibition, saw the images in the press kit, learnt that it featured a mechanical pig, a rabbit with a 12-metre long rubber penis, some fierce-looking pirates, image of Osama bin Laden wearing a Guggenheim turban, etc so i thought; “Yesss, this is going to be a nice & easy & fun little exhibition”.
Spaghetti Man, 1993 (collection FRAC)
It’s nothing of the kind. At all! The Head Shop / Shop Head exhibition is rough, abject, violent, it grabs you by the guts, hovers between bad Hollywood slapstick and the restroom, it’s a carnival of the vile and filthy but it is fascinating and mind-blowing. In fact, it must be one of the best exhibitions i’ve seen this year (together with History Will Repeat Itself (Part 1 and 2) which is currently running at the KW in Berlin.)
McCarthy’s work throws at our face the dark side of The American Dream and western consumer society. S.M.A.K. presents a selection of the works he produced between 1966 and 2006, plus a series of new works which premiered in Ghent.
Caribbean Pirates, 2001-05. Both Courtesy Hauser & Wirth Zürich London
The Pirate Project was by far the most appealing/repulsive body of works for me. The artist’s studios are in Los Angeles and one can feel the references to Hollywood. It’s not so much a critique of the “dream factory” as a parody of it. Caribbean Pirates for example is inspired by the Disneyland attraction and movie Pirates of the Caribbean, only that there’s nothing glamour and entertaining, it heads straight to the gore and soft porn.
The Frigate, 2001-05. Collection of the Artist, Courtesy Hauser & Wirth Zürich London
The center piece is an imposing 5 meter high pirate ship made of fiberglass. The deck of this brownish-red hull is strewn with objects and smeared with chocolate sauce, ketchup and fake blood. The Pirate Party videos projected on the walls surrounding the ship reveal the obscene and brutal scenes which took place on board. In the movies, thirty actors, some of them wearing oversize carnival heads, simulate the invasion of a village, complete with rape, mutilation, violence and the public sale of the village women.
Caribbean Pirates, 2001-05. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth
There’s so much fake blood/ketchup in his work that some critics have compared it to Viennese Actionism. However, McCarthy said: “The use of ketchup and masks grew out of my work and not out of being conscious of their work. I was pretty aware that certain artists were doing stuff like that. I think I found out about the Viennese in the early 1970s. Vienna is not Los Angeles. My work came out of kids’ television in Los Angeles. I didn’t go through Catholicism and World War II as a teenager, I didn’t live in a European environment. People make references to Viennese art without really questioning the fact that there is a big difference between ketchup and blood. I never thought of my work as shamanistic. My work is more about being a clown than a shaman.â€
Caribbean Pirates, 2001-05. Collection of the Artist, Courtesy Hauser & Wirth Zürich London
Beyond the farce, the masks and the grotesque spoof horror movie scenes, McCarthy’s Pirate work makes also some references to the US invasion of Iraq, some scenes have been said to allude clearly to Abu Ghraib and the abuse of prisoners.
In 1991, McCarthy outfitted himself in a chef’s costume and Alfred E. Newman mask and performed a cooking-show parody on a set –a hamburger stand– once used for the TV sitcom The Hogan Family. But now the set is exhibited as an installation smeared, damaged and sullied with the remains of the artist’ Bossy Burger performance: dried splotches of ketchup, a feeling of squalor and furniture in disorder are clues that a bloody gastro-massacre has been going on there. Outside the production set, a monitor screens the performance.
Mechanical Pig, 2003. Collection of the Artist, Courtesy Hauser & Wirth Zürich London
The Garden features sets from Bonanza, a cowboy TV series from the 1960s. Seen from a distance, the artificial forest glade looks quite innocent, but walk closer and you’ll spot two life-size mechanical male figures – an upright and pathetic “father†fucking a tree and a “son†giving the same kind of attention to a hole in the ground.
The Garden, 1992. Courtesy Jeffrey Deitch, Deitch Projects
Trailer of the exhibition:
I now realize that this might be a very unsuitable post for xmas days but i loathe carols and i had no moose in store for you. Besides, 4 days after having seen the exhibition i’m still filled with the same feeling of bewilderment and wonder. The McCarthy retrospective made me happy like only art can make me happy when it is rare, challenging and good. What else could i ask for come the end of the year?
I took quite a few images.
The exhibition runs at the S.M.A.K. in Ghent, Belgium until February 17, 2008.
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