January 2007

Locally Localized Gravity

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The Philadelphia ICA currently has a show up entitled “Locally Localized Gravity.” Their curatorial stament calls this a show organized around the concept of “artists-as-producers.” From the context of the rest of their literature, it’s fair to say that they mean producers of events, rather than producers of paintings.

“Each [artist or artist group] has created an installation that characterizes how they operate in the art world. The [sic] in turn have invited others: during its run, ‘Locally Localized Gravity’ will feature over 100 artists, musicians, lecturers, performers, writers and many other creators.” (via ICA, Philadelphia)

The show has met with praise from some (like the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council) and mixed reviews from others:

The substantial events schedule for “Gravity” are available on the ICA’s Web site; a downloadable PDF catalog soon will be.

The events are the missing, critical dimension for visitors who come in when nothing special is happening. It’s like wandering into an empty theater on the morning of opening night.

This points up the most salient characteristic of this communal art playground: its firm grounding in the moment. “Gravity” feels transient and serendipitous. All of what you see, hear and read today might not be available tomorrow. It’s art as blogging, with all that implies about substance and permanence. (review in the Philadelphia Daily News)

The curator/historian Alan Moore also offers a detailed (and highly critical) walk through the exhibition:

. . . But that the groups and spaces here represented specifically do not work together seems to be part of the concept. Neither do the grapes and bananas communicate in the fruitbowl which the ICA proudly wears upon its head, shaking its behind to lure the eyes of international curators to the home of the cheese steak. (via post.thing.net)

I guess ‘Dark Matter‘ doesn’t have a monopoly on adopted physics terms . . . and the show certainly has some people puzzling over what contemporary art has to do with theoretical questions about the number of dimensions that we inhabit.

Participating artists/groups: Black Floor Gallery, LURE, basekamp, Space 1026, Matt Bakkom, Red76, LTTR, and Fritz Haeg’s Sundown Schoolhouse

Also, some Flickr sets of action shots from the opening by Libby Rosof and Roberta Fallon.

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Redefining ‘Hero’

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Last summer, Galería de la Raza (located in the Mission area of San Francisco) installed a street-level billboard/mural featuring two images from Dulce Pinzón’s photo series, “Superheros.” Each photograph depicts a Mexican immigrant worker in New York doing their job in an off-the-shelf superhero costume. The Hulk unloads produce from a truck, Batman drives a taxi, and Catwoman takes care of her employer’s children. The superhero’s name, home town, and the monthly amount of money they send home captions each photograph.

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Tour Bagdad in New York and Gaza in Tel-Aviv

you-are-not-hereDuring last year’s Conflux festival in New York, Mushon Zer-Aviv presented the collaborative project “You Are Not Here,” an “urban tourism mash-up” allowing participants to explore Bagdad while walking around the streets of New York City. Now, he’s working with Kati London, Thomas Duc, and Dan Phiffer (some of the original collaborators on “You Are Not Here”) to put together a similar experience for two cities that are geographically much closer. Participants will be able to walk through the streets of Gaza while physically in Tel-Aviv.

He has also been collaborating with Dan Phiffer on ShiftSpace, an open source project that attempts to do with the web, what “You Are Not Here” does with New York. They have built (are building) tools to allow a second layer to be created on top of the current world wide wibe that we see with our regular web browsers. Inspired in part by the democracy of Wikipedia, they want to give the entire web a layer that is editable by anyone. This project arose from their

[concern] about the main paradigm of the web, namely privatization. While the discourse about the web is full of superlatives implying freedom and sharing, we find ourselves constantly bouncing into new walls and boundaries online. The web is built as a huge set of private spaces - while the internet protocol is indeed distributed, the DNS (Domain Name System) protocol is totally centralized - meaning the control of the page content (no matter how interactive or web 2.0-ish it is) always in the hands of a single private power holder.We are trying to challenge this approach and make a point by not just questioning the web’s power structures, but prove that we can build an interesting and useful tool. ShiftSpace is an open source platform for the social extensions of websites. It is if you will, a transparent layer above any website where users can leave notes, discuss, protest, create art, and deeply explore the interactive potential of the web. (via an interview with Regine Debatty)

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Apparition: The Today show, NBC, 31 December 2004

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Yvon Lambert, from the Apparitions series

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Fotothek: “the first specialty shop for forgotten private photographs”

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German artist, Anke Heelemann has opened a shop dedicated to archiving and presenting personal photographs that have wandered astray from their original owners to be rediscovered in junk-shops, on ebay and in flea markets.

The FOTOTHEK presents analog imagery of anonymous past lifes. By showing private moments which are no longer remembered, the photographs lose their function as an individual source of memory. The project questions the potential value of these pictures outside of their original context. As the image-material will be reprocessed and reused, it exercises image recycling in order to visualise the narrative, aesthetic and cultural dimension of such images.

As a public space, the FOTOTHEK extends an invitation to everyone who wants to experience the large collection of found photographs. In addition to the ever-changing presentation of the collection, the shop makes various offers with the private image. Although the pictures themselves are not for sale, the shop provides services such as the transmission of image messages, the adoption or rental of photographs. (via the FOTOTHEK blog)

Apparently adopting photos has been quite popular:

Some 100 people have already signed up. “Adoptees” include a picture of a silhouette of a nude woman made out of wire hanging on the wall next to a rubber plant, considered a petty-bourgeois icon in Germany. Another one depicts a group of people and has been dedicated by the adopter to one man, whose head has been cut off in the photograph. There’s a picture of an East German Trabant car chosen by a visitor as a present to his father, who used to drive one just like it. (via Deutsche Welle)

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Sylvie Blocher lecture @ SFMOMA 22 FEB, 6:15 pm

New Work: Sylvie Blocher

blocher.jpg Friday, February 23, 2007 - Sunday, May 13, 2007French artist Sylvie Blocher has been working on her Living Pictures video series since 1992. This ongoing project is made up of multiple site-specific video installations. Each work follows a basic format: the artist recruits volunteers through classified ads and other postings, then conducts filmed interviews with these subjects. Editing the videos into a compilation, Blocher creates a group portrait out of individual encounters. Her interviewing technique opens up possibilities for personal response and reflection and touches on issues such as immigration, privacy, memory, and the authority of the artist. This exhibition features Living Pictures/Je et Nous, a 2003 project in which Blocher filmed volunteers wearing T-shirts printed with statements they had written. In addition, it includes a new San Francisco-based installment of Living Pictures, commissioned by SFMOMA.

MEMBER EVENTSPreviews and Events for New Work: Sylvie Blocher, Picasso and American Art, and Brice Marden
Members are invited to take a first look at New Work: Sylvie Blocher, Picasso and American Art, and Brice Marden: A Retrospective of Paintings and Drawings at special events before the exhibitions open to the public. The member evening reception features refreshments and entertainment, while the daytime preview offers private access to the exhibition galleries.Member Preview and Reception
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
6:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.
6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Artist’s Circle and Director’s Circle members
7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. upper-level members
8:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m. general members
Museum-wide

Member Preview Day
Thursday, February 22, 2007
11:00 a.m. - 8:45 p.m.
All members
Fourth- and fifth-floor galleries

Watch your mailbox for an invitation.

Also in conjunction with Brice Marden and Picasso and American Art

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Lecture Series
Artist Talk: Sylvie Blocher
Sylvie Blocher, artist
February 22, 2007
6:15 p.m.
Phyllis Wattis Theater
One of France’s most notable multimedia artists, Blocher produces site-specific installations that explore concepts of otherness, authority, representation, memory, and the political responsibility of art. By interviewing strangers and compiling group portraits from the individual encounters, Blocher encourages different ways of viewing and understanding the world. She will discuss her ongoing video series Living Pictures as well as the new work commissioned by SFMOMA on view in the galleries.Free with Museum admission.

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This Way Ami

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Ami Sioux, a French photographer, has a new book called REYKJAVIK 64°08N 21°54W. It’s the first in a five-part series (Berlin, Paris, London, and New York to follow) of what she calls “personal city guides.” For this project, she asked friends and acquaintances (fifty in all) to draw a map for her to get to a place that has personal meaning or significance to them. She pairs these hand-drawn maps with photographs of the destination represented on the map. Unlike Stanley Brouwn, she doesn’t re-stamp these drawings as her own (besides publishing them in a book with her name on the cover). The obvious care and effort present in many of the maps tells a story not only about the place, but about her relationship with the cartographer. Unlike a “This Way Brouwn” these maps are not only drawing in the minds of their commissioners, they are also drawings in the minds of their creators. This fundamental difference changes the power structure of the exchange. It makes Ami Sioux’s project less of a conceptual exercise, and opens the door to collaboration.

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