New publication by experimental media group from Nantes - Poétique(s) du numérique

Poétique(s) du numérique
Ouvrage collectif dirigé par Sophie Gosselin et Franck Cormerais

Quelles pratiques et formes d’expression s’inventent à travers l’appropriation des technologies numériques ? En quoi le développement de ces technologies bouleverse les découpages entre champs disciplinaires, générant des pratiques transversales liant création artistique, recherche scientifique, développement technologique, pratiques médiatiques ?
Inversement, comment ces réagencements et recompositions dans les relations entre champs disciplinaires et usages des technologies nous conduisent-ils à réviser et à repenser le statut, la place et la fonction de la technique dans nos pratiques sociales et créatrices ? À travers la mise en jeu d’expériences et d’expérimentations poïétiques (arts de faire et faire de l’art) se dégagent des dynamiques et mutations générées par les développements technologiques actuels dans les pratiques d’invention et de création collective.
Cet ouvrage prolonge la réflexion amorcée lors du colloque intitulé Poétique(s) du numérique, organisé par APO33 (collectif artistique) et le CERCI (centre de recherche universitaire), qui s’est tenu à Nantes en 2006 dans le cadre du festival Scopitone (Olympic, Nantes). Il réunit des acteurs, créateurs et chercheurs issus d’horizons disciplinaires multiples, autour d’une réflexion sur les nouvelles formes de création liées aux développements et à la diffusion des outils numériques (internet, systèmes interactifs, technologies télématiques, dispositifs évolutifs et/ou distribués, pratiques en réseau ou collaboratives…). C’est en tant que partenaire de la collection « l’électron musagète » qu’Alphabetville (dont la fondatrice, Colette Tron, est intervenue dans le colloque) participe à cet ouvrage.
En marge des approches traditionnelles du champ de la création numérique, cet ouvrage propose tout autant une approche critique des mutations engendrées par les technologies numériques qu’une mise en perspective des ouvertures qu’elles rendent possibles. À travers la poétique du numérique s’esquissent les prémisses d’une reconfiguration de l’espace social et politique : une po(é)litique à venir.

ISBN : 978-2-912877-98-7 / Collection L’électron musagète
Domaine : Multimédia - Sciences humaines / Genre : Essai
Format : 15 x 21 cm, 192 pages
Prix : 19 euros
Parution : Octobre 2008

LES AUTEURS :
David gé Bartoli, Philosophe-artiste développant des dispositifs expérimentaux dans la production philosophique, artistique et littéraire. Il est chargé de cours.
Franck Cormerais, docteur en philosophie et en sciences de l’information et de la communication, est maître de conférences.
Philippe Coutant, militant politique en recherche.
Jacques A. Gilbert est Maître de conférences en langues étrangères appliquées et Chercheur au CERCI.
Sophie Gosselin, artiste-philosophe. Chargée de cours, membre d’Apo33 (laboratoire artistique, technologique et théorique).
Alex Haché est Chercheuse activiste.
Antoine Moreau, Artiste. Chargé de cours.
Brandon LaBelle, artiste et écrivain travaillant le son, les espaces, les corps et les récits culturels.
Julien Ottavi, médiactiviste, artiste-chercheur, musicien et performeur, membre fondateur d’APO33.
Esther Salmona est diplômée de l’École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles. Elle explore les relations entre la musique, le son et l’espace.
Jean-Paul Trichet, Ingénieur de recherche et conservateur du Centre de documentation et de recherche de l’UFR Lettres et de Langues.
Colette Tron est auteure, critique.

Machine Project at LACMA

A Machine Project Field Guide to the LA County Museum of Art:

November 15, 2008
Noon til 10pm

Ten hours of performances, workshops, and events which experiment with LACMA’s encyclopedic collections and expansive grounds. Featuring over 60 projects dispersed across the seven-building, twenty-acre campus, visitors are encouraged to explore the museum in new and unexpected ways.

El Cliente Siempre Tiene la Razón

Seis conferencias en el marco del V Foro de Arte Público, acerca de la relación entre el arte, las instituciones, y la economía, con expertos nacionales e internacionales:
SI TODOS SOMOS ARTISTAS, ¿QUIÉN ES EL PÚBLICO?
(Jueves 13 de noviembre, 19:00 hrs)
Bernardo González-Aréchiga (Economista, Director de de la Escuela de Graduados en Administración Pública y Política Pública (EGAP) del ITESM, Monterrey)
Anselm Jappe (Filosofo, especialista en Guy Debord y profesor en la Escuela de Bellas Artes de Frosinone, Italia, vive en Tours, Francia).
EL MUSEO DE LO CONTEMPORÁNEO Y EL TIEMPO DE LA OBRA DE ARTE
(Viernes 14 de noviembre, 19:00 hrs)
José Luis Barrios (Filósofo, Director de CURARE y docente en la UIA y la UNAM , Ciudad de México)
Peter Osborne (Filósofo, Director de Centro de Investigación de Filosofía Europea Moderna de la Universidad de Middlesex, Londres)
¿QUÉ NOS UNE? EL MUSEO: MEMORIA COLECTIVA O EL MERCADO COMO FORMA DE COLECTIVIDAD
(Sábado 15 de noviembre, 12:00 hrs)
Luis Galindo (Antropólogo, Director del Museo de la Diversidad , Caracas, Venezuela)
Ernesto Piedras (Economista, Director de The Competitive Intelligence Unit, Ciudad de México)

A BRIEF TIME ONLY

If you'd like more info about how to participate in this exhibition, you can click here.

Going Pink

Walking through Paris one morning, and coming upon this pink street, I was wonderfully impressed and jarred by the intervention, somehow an act of graffiti occupying an unusual space, that of the street, a horizontal plane, with no direct message, but a block of color as its only signifying image, no scrawl or tag but a pure sign (I only notice the few letters to the side afterwards, upon looking at the photo... but at the time, my eyes delighted in the color alone, like a swath of cotton candy gone missing...), which made me linger along the street, to trace the pink, as an action-painting without masculine angst, but a light agency (pink rights, gay pride, or just some candy-coated excess initiated by late night guerillas) turning the street into a space of laughter or at least smiles.

Buren meets Picasso

Daniel Buren's current intervention at the Picasso Museum in Paris inspires a second glance, causing a stir in the perspectival understanding of the building. Cutting through the entire building, a one-sided mirrored structure moves from the front courtyard through the interior's three floors, to arrive out the back, as a further extension into the garden. The cut is literally a perfect mirror image - located directly in the center of the building the work is an unavoidable invisible gesture, disturbing while also seemingly leaving intact the architectural image. A form of spatial magic, a supplementary object, a fold or a house of mirrors, Buren's reworking of the Picasso Museum might be said to celebrate an extravagant form of minimalism, recalling previous works, such as Robert Smithson's mirrored displacements or even Dan Graham's reflective pavilions, where mirroring seems to function as a material insertion that offers means for extended reflection on the question of perception and place.

more Bucky reflections

After seeing the impressive show at the Whitney this year on Buckminister Fuller, I've been noticing a resurgence of Bucky discussion. I recently bought a used copy of his astonishing book Critical Path which 'summarizes' (in 409 densely written pages!) his ideas and design principles. Also, just out are some reflections on his legacy in this month's Artforum.

Erik Gongrich lecture Sunday November 2

If you happen to be in Berlin this weekend, starting at noon on Sunday there will be a 25min. lecture every hour until 11:00p.m. as part of the exhibition Megastructure Reloaded
Molkenmarkt 2 / Berlin - Mitte
Sunday the 2.nov. is also the last day of the exhibition Megastructure Reloaded.

12 hours "megaminis" are lectures about...
...found architecture and monuments
...sculptures that are transformed into living houses
...the beginning of the misunderstanding
...billboard-house-clusters with private messages
...close encounters and the real
...mobile monuments and fountains
...influencing reality by using the image of Brasilia
...placing an island in the middle of São Paulo
...duty free shops displays and public space in exhibitions
...interventions in public space
...projections offering escape
...searching the mega in big houses and the Tirana-Durres-strip

New Orleans Report

Sent from CalArts Alum Sean Boyle:

I've been working as an assistant on this project of Mark Bradford's for about 18 months. The ark sits in the Lower Ninth Ward at Caffin Ave and N. Miro on what used to be the Chalumette Funeral Home.
The project title, Mithra, is a mythical allusion to a bull that was sacrificed and from the blood of its loins sprang the flora and fauna of the earth.
I think that it's fitting that the community has embraced it as a symbol of hope while the media, art world, and 'up-towners' are keenly aware of its criticism of the failed power systems that New Orleans represents, particularly at this juncture in American history.

Breton at In & Out

Walking out of an In & Out burger restaurant in Los Angeles recently, we happened upon this scene: a guy in a truck placing his order. The total ridiculousness of the scene prompted us to pause, take the photo, and relish the juxtaposition of the elements. It was a kind of inspirational moment, a Surrealist intersection of forces relocated from the Parisian streets of Breton to the sunny drive-thru culture of contemporary Los Angeles. This combination of ingredients might come to express something deeply idiosyncratic to the LA environment, that of bringing together what usually does not meet, and in doing so allowing certain fantasies to surface - LA might be a site for the potential exaggeration of form, nurturing fantasy and granting space for their manifestation (Hollywood becomes the quintessential example: it is the very sign for such potential and promise). Here at In & Out it might be read in the very site itself, tucked alongside the LA airport with its own park across the street used for viewing incoming aircraft, and further, to the truck itself, as the expression of certain vehicular imagination, and to the final meeting, of the In & Out attendant dressed in a costume that aims to recall some notion of early fast food culture, where burgers and fries meets rock n roll and fast cars of the 1950s. With the sun covering the scene in its glow, we might begin to appreciate LA as a landscape of disproportionate scale, which in itself inaugurates a formal realignment of the senses.

Stars in New Plymouth

Coming to New Plymouth in New Zealand one rainy and grey day, for an event at the Govett-Brewster gallery, I was pleased to come upon this public sculpture nestled amongst the coastline. By the New Zealand artist Len Lye, the sculpture, known as Wind Wand, perches on the coast and bends inland, oscillating and riding the winds as they blow in from the ocean. Measuring 45 meters high the sculpture uses related ship-mast engineering technology to express its arc, and its flexibility, to allow the sculpture a soft form of kinetic actions. It was not until later in the evening, after the event and hanging outside the gallery waiting to venture forward into the night, that I further appreciated the work - as its transparent bulb at the top glowed a brilliant red, adding a crimson star to the darkness.

Brisbane TSBs

Walking around Brisbane I couldn't help but notice the painted traffic signal boxes that dot the urban landscape. Located throughout the city, the decorated boxes sprinkle the streets with fantastic landscapes, waterfront views, and imaginary birds, all with the aim of modifying the dull grey generally coating urban infrastructural devices. Coordinated by Nicole Gaunt, as part of the Queensland Urban Ecology organization, the project aims to give more color to the urban landscape, supporting creative expression and local artists to give alternative visions of what urban experience can be like. Struck by such a plethora of paintings and their personal expressiveness I was led to discuss this with local artist Lawrence English, who also offered up the other perspective on the situation whereby the paintings come to deter illegal postering. A long-time posterer himself, English pointed out that one is more reluctant to poster over an existing painting than the usual dull anonymous grey that cover the signal boxes. While the city may support the creative flair of local artists, the general innocuous and rather trite content of such works seem to support English's observations, underscoring the signal boxes as sites for the meeting of an undercover confrontation.

Questions about the privatization of infrastructure...

There is an interesting article in today's NYTimes about the future of financing infrastructure. I guess the real question is how to strike a balance between governments with no budget and investors hoping to cash in... Naomi Klein's recent book touches on this very question.

Freedom Square

During a recent visit to Bratislava, I came upon this square, known as Freedom Square, which boasts a beautiful central fountain, known as Družba Fountain (built in 1980). The square itself has a long history, as a location in the city, from housing Archbishops during summer months throughout the 18th century to the Slovak inventor Ján Bahýľ and his curious ride in the first ever helicopter in 1897 to its restructuring as a communist headquarters after the revolution and its current standing as governmental and university quarters. The square reverberates with the architectural traces of its recent Socialist past, with the highly functionalist buildings off-set by the blooming fountain, in the shape of the linden flower, the symbol of Slovak people.

Yet, the removal after 1989 from the square of the enormous statue of Klement Gottwald (pictured here with Stalin), the first president of Czechoslovakia (1948), finds curious echo in Gottwald's own dedication to the Stalinist purges following the war. Dedicating himself not only to collective farming and nationalized industry, Gottwald forcibly removed non-communists and communists alike who opposed his government, jailing many while also erasing them from official photographs, records and archives. Such erasures seem to find a form of poetic justice in Gottwald's own removal from Freedom Square, itself now renamed from its former Gottwaldovo. Yet such legacies of erasures and counter-erasures make me wish for a more accepting form of modifying public space - rather than discovering the missing statue through other forms of abstracted research, my walk through Freedom Square could have been more directly effected and rewarding by encountering the history of the square through its own assembly and maintenance of historical parts, from the Archbishops to the helicopter ride to Gottwald himself. Following the ideas of Richard Sennett, city space might better serve the public by creating opportunities for confronting difference, diversity, and the tensions at the heart of political life. Freedom Square could truly earn its name by allowing Gottwald his space, even while, and especially, reminding someone like myself of the embedded and stratified anguishes and delights which come to define history and our place in it.

Transreport

Fünf in Rumänien geborene und jetzt in München lebende junge Künstlerinnen und Künstler am Anfang der Professionalität schlagen mit in Rumänien lebenden fünf jungen Künstlerinnen und Künstler, einer Choreografin/Performerin und einem Kunsttheoretiker mit dieser ersten Präsentation von Installationen, Malereien und Videoarbeiten eine Brücke zwischen München und der Heimat ihrer Kindheit. Die Projektvorbereitung fand während eines mehrmonatigen Stipendienaufenthaltes der Rumänen in der Villa Waldberta, dem internationalen Stipendiatenhaus der Stadt München in Feldafing, statt. Im Gegenzug wird im Oktober 2008 der zweite Teil der Projekts in Rumänien stattfinden.

Die Ausstellung “transreport” trägt den Untertitel: Fortschreitende Fassaden - und ihre Unverzichtbarkeit "Warum fortschreitende Fassaden? Allein schon deshalb, weil jeder weiß und impliziert, was eine Fassade ist - weil viele sich welche bauen oder aufsetzen und weil man sich an manchen (vielen) Orten über ihr Fehlen wundert. Oder über ihre Vernachlässigung, die orts- und kulturbedingt von Fall zu Fall unerwünscht zu sein scheint. Und weshalb sprechen wir hier von ihrer Unverzichtbarkeit? Weil irgendwo, irgendwann ganz bestimmt eine Fassade gebaut oder zumindest herbeigesehnt werden wird, entweder eine alte, baufällige, unauffällige, hinter der man sich verstecken und in Ruhe seinen Geschäften nachgehen kann, oder eine neue, strahlende, saubere, gesunde Fassade, mit der man protzen oder hinter der man sich seiner Sache und seiner Haut sicher ist. Um über einige der Künstlerinnen und Künstler und die Sicherheit der eigenen Haut zu sprechen, Florin Bobu, beispielsweise, spielt in einer seiner Installationen mit den Assoziationen, die ein jeder mit einem Heizkörper verbindet. Wärme, Geborgenheit, Sicherheit, Zuhause, das ist die eine Seite, die der warmen Heizung, auf der anderen steht die Kälte, Unsicherheit, Bedrohung der Gesundheit, und vielleicht sogar die Mittellosigkeit, wenn man sich die Wärme nicht leisten kann. Jeder kennt das Gefühl, wenn die Heizung nicht läuft, ihre kalte Erscheinung, ihre Lächerlichkeit. Die Installation besteht aus mehreren Heizkörpern und einer Videospur, in der man ihn selbst ausgezogen hinter der Heizung sieht, als würde er Schutz suchen, und natürlich denkt man auch an Zeiten und Orte in der Geschichte, in und an denen Kälte sowohl körperlich als auch geistig herrschte. Durch sehr einfache Mittel entsteht hier ein Bild, dessen Aussage sich sowohl auf menschliche Mikro- als auch Makrostrukturen bezieht.

Wie Florin Bobu, wirft auch Johanna Zey einen Blick hinter die Fassaden. Auch sie arbeitet mit unterschiedlichen Medien. Im harten, jedoch noch ungeschliffenen Blick der jungen Künstlerin, widerspiegelt sich der hohe Grad an Subjektivität, den sie in sich und den anderen zur Geltung bringt. Ihre bisherigen kinetischen Arbeiten, herumkriechende Müllhaufen, ein sich selbsttätig als „Qualle“ bewegendes Regenschirm-Skelett, die zu einem Stilleben aufgebauten, Küchengeschichten erzählenden Gegenstände, bauen eine Brücke zwischen der Notwendigkeit des Alltäglichen und dem Fortlauf der Zeit." (Auszug aus dem Konzept, 2007)



Florin Bobu / Iasi
Eduard Constantin / Bukarest
Cristina David / Bukarest, Isaac Cima / Schweden, Arne Vinnem / Norwegen
Andrea Faciu / München
Ioan Grosu / München
Nita Mocanu / Arad
Ciprian Muresan / Cluj
Frank Stürmer / München
Tim Wolff / München
Johanna Zey / München &
Ioana Mona Popovici, Choreografie & Performance / Prag
Vlad Morariu, Kunsttheorie / Iasi

Eröffnung von transreport
25. Juli 2008, 19:00 Uhr Es feiern mit:
Tovarasu Tim, Toma Trei &
special guests

the painful design of the Bench (or how I dislocated my hip)

During various investigations into the current developments spanning the far east side of the Spree on the outskirts of Berlin, I marveled for a number of moments at this recently planted garden site. As part of the Berlin Campus residential complex - a set of apartments incorporating the left-over structures of a prison - the garden boasts a set of concrete pathways, which presumably aim to create a sense of public space in the center of the apartment complex, and a series of concrete blocks, which I sense are intended to offer local residents a place to sit. Though, I can't help but question the entire scene, and how this curious space might actually function, and in particular, how this concrete block may in turn offer the local grandmother, or father and toddler, a cosy place to rest and enjoy the local surrounding.
The history of the public bench then might be read as part of the ongoing relation of designer and user, where innovation may run counter to the slow durational procession of the relaxing body in space, which over the span of the ages has no doubt found its optimum articulation in the simple L-shaped structure we all have come to appreciate, especially during those moments of reverie or down-right exhaustion only cities can produce.

fascist clothing in Mitte?

Biking through the fashionable neighborhood of Mitte in Berlin yesterday I found a number of sites loudly proclaiming anti-fascist and anti-racist sentiments. As it turns out, there has been a surge of protest against a clothing store that is accused of catering to the far right, neo-nazi shopper. The store carries a brand of clothes by Thor Steinar, whose clothes are preferred by the extreme right. The label has been involved in past legal battles with the German government about the representation of Nazi symbols in their clothing.
Activists have pushed for the landlord of the building to evict the shop and have successfully publicized the issue. The shop window was smashed and the facade was littered with paint bombs.
The site of the store is apparently significant. The street number of the address on Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse is said to refer to Hitler's initials: 1=A, 8=H.

Billy Carts, Soapbox Cars, and a general theory of vehicular imagination

Stumbling upon this street party in Berlin the other day, a cart competition was just underway. With kids jumping around, wheeling out there carts, a legacy of modified vehicles, custom-built cars, home-made cart constructions, and other appropriated wheeled objects seem to follow behind... While this particular competition was fused with children fantasies, other carts came to mind, such as Gordon Matta-Clark's Fresh Air project, where the artist wheeled around a set of oxygen tanks and offered fresh air to passers-by.

Gordon's cart circulates as a social vehicle, gaining attention through humor and performativity as to how oxygen is put on wheels, while the Berlin carts charm viewers with their imaginative flair. The cart as an object then seems to harness a general impulse toward mobility, fused with the power and poetics of appropriation and self-made platforms that promise movement. Other carts in turn carry the problematics of an uneven social reality, such as those wielded about by the homeless, or those built by favela communities in Brazil, that use the cart as means toward collecting and recycling.

The cart then pinpoints the specifics of certain situations, while sliding across others by granting the imagination a literal vehicle for pursuing fantasies of transport.

Bucky Media

Attending the Tuned City festival in Berlin recently, one of the highlights was the work by Farmer's Manual. Located at the Alexanderplatz during a hot afternoon, the work Bucky Media consists of a 5-meter geodesic metallic ball fitted with live wireless microphones. Inviting interaction, the work created a playful and performative instance, with live processing of audio signal amplified through a sound system generated by the thudding and rolling of the ball as it bounced around the square, making people laugh, run for their lives, and join others in the unspoken game of exploring this uncertain object. Sitting on a nearby bench, I took delight in watching people walk by, become curious, and slowly approach the ball, touching it at first, wondering how to proceed, what kind of possibilities exist for interaction... It was an immediate process, resulting within a few moments in confident actions: it did not take long before people understood how to engage, what was called for, when to interact... The ball was there, as an out-of-place object that quickly found its place within a public situation. I felt Bucky would be satisfied to know his dymaxion engineering principles would find such an expression, as an object of playful interaction that may, in the end, create a sudden space for performative and shared investigations.

Oscar & Carmen in Rio

Visiting the Carmen Miranda Museum in Rio de Janeiro, the meeting of two different versions of Brazilian modernism seem to come together - the organic brutality of Oscar Niemeyer's architecture and the voluptuous kitsch of Carmen Miranda, the "Brazilian Bombshell". Both versions find expression in the Niemeyer-designed Museum. The concrete circular form located in an out-of-the-way park in the Flamengo neighborhood was designed in the 1960s and houses various displays of Carmen's own dresses, notorious platform-shoes (from the 1930s & 40s), and related ephemera - photographs lodged into every possible corner like a frieze made up of Carmen's smile and banana head dresses, with Latin-flavored pin-ups of the star. The outlandishness of Carmen's wardrobe, her excessive lifestyle - Hollywood nights, Copacabana nightclubs, movie-sets, radio spots, fashion modeling, and general jet-setting all came to symbolize a notion of Brazilian modernism imported onto the international stage. In parallel, Niemeyer's languid and poetical architecture typified such modernism by infusing European rationalism with a distinct Brazilian biomorphism - the swooping curve of Niemeyer's architecture supplements the European grid of steel and glass, finding form in concrete circles and ramps poised against the new urbanism rising up in Brazilian cities at the same time Carmen was singing "Bananas Is My Business." While Niemeyer's Museum is often seen as an absolute contrast to Carmen Miranda's work, I see them as forming a poignant and insightful coupling onto Brazilian culture of the 20th century. The Museum allows a glimpse onto both versions of a single story, marking the space as a radical expression of museological work.

duty free

DUTY FREE is a twenty-one day long sculpture in the Leipzig/Halle airport by Erik Göngrich and Stefan Shankland taking place from the 18.6 to the 6.7.2008. They have taken over the airport’s duty free shop and transformed it into their studio. It has become a place of production, experimentation and exchange about the form and function of sculpture in a context of globalisation. During the three weeks of the international festival Theater der Welt the space will be open for public interaction from 4pm to 8pm Tuesday to Saturday and from 2pm to 6pm on Sundays (closed on Monday).

border strategies

I recently stumbled across this alternative border strategy. I especially like the yoga class pictured here...

Marco Kusumawijaya and the Mak Urban Future Initiative

Last week I attended a dinner organized by Linda Pollack for artists working with urban spaces to meet the first fellow of the Mak center's new Urban Future Initiative at the Fitzpatrick-Leland House. The house was recently donated to the Mak center and the house will be home to the visiting international fellows for stays of around two months. Tonight Marco - who is the first fellow and an architect and environmentalist from Indonesia - presented his research at the Schindler house in West Hollywood. It was a stimulating conversation in terms of thinking about imagining forms of sustainable urbanism. Marco highlighted the Grand Avenue development as a potential opportunity to experiment with sustainable development and admitted his skepticism about the current state of the project proposal. He also spoke a lot about transportation in L.A.

The Fitzpatrick-Leland House as photographed by Julius Shulman in 1936



And by Tom Queally in 2006

Bending Theory

On a recent trip to Newcastle I was ecstatic to discover the Millennium Bridge. Designed by the architecture firm WilkinsonEyre the Bridge rises up into an elongated and elegant bend before descending down onto the opposite bank, counter balanced by a swooping arch that rises into the air to support the base. Walking across the pedestrian bridge, I was full of glee marveling at the simple but profound idea of the bridge producing an indirect path - rather than cut firmly and strictly across the Tyne river the Bridge offers a soft journey, as if proposing that one consider the view, or daydream a bit along the way... It made me appreciate the simple fact that embodied within the Bridge is a form of theoretical perspective that one might begin to apply to the built environment in general. Situationist dérive or fanciful form? Whichever way the Bridge takes the idea of being a pedestrian as an opportunity to explore the surrounding environment, and how radical that such an urban project (costing no doubt millions of pounds) would put forth such a theory of the bend.

Dominion

Fellow U.C.Riverside Lecturer Michael Wilson screened his film Silhouette City tonite and it presents a fascinating portrait of Christian extremist's transformation from a radical fringe movement in the 1970's and 80's to the mainstream political force that it is today. It's compelling on many levels... one of which is the way evangelical Christians have framed America as holy place with a god given right to rule the world. Through the course of the film, we watch various sites – a small compound in Arkansas, a place of worship or the entire geography of the U.S. – perform rhetorically as the location where god's will might be enacted. The film is a nuanced and telling examination of religious fundamentalism in America.

Experimental Group

an application for utopian building consent has been made
a proposition has been put forward for Vertical Common in Smithfield Market, Central London
notices were posted at the site on 5th May 2008
to view the proposition and have your say go to http://www.experimentalgroup.org/blog

Berlin - city in the throes of its own détournement

Critical Art Ensemble artist Steve Kurtz finally cleared

Nice to read today that Steve Kurtz' case was dismissed by a judge when, after four years of legal wrangling, it was finally brought to trial.
Read more on the story here.

Storefront in L.A.

POP-UP STOREFRONT FOR ART AND ARCHITECTURE
comes to Los Angeles with the exhibition

CCCP: COSMIC COMMUNIST CONSTRUCTIONS PHOTOGRAPHED:
Architecture of the last two decades of the Soviet Union photographed by Frédéric Chaubin

Opening Reception - Friday, April 11, 7pm

Pop-Up Storefront @ Paper Chase Printing
7176 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90049
(2 blocks west of La Brea @ Formosa)

April 11 - May 17, 2008

Gallery hours:
Wednesday - Friday, 3pm - 8pm
Saturday - Sunday, 1pm - 8pm

About the Pop-Up Storefront project...
Since 1982, Storefront for Art and Architecture has gained a reputation for bringing innovative, groundbreaking and controversial exhibitions on architecture, art, and design to New York City from its gallery space in SoHo. This year, the gallery will begin a new chapter in its history which will carry the gallery beyond the confines of New York. A series of new Storefronts will pop up in cities around the world to host events and exhibitions in partnership with local cultural institutions, and then will disappear. The very first ever Pop-Up Storefront will debut on April 11, on Sunset Boulevard in the heart of Hollywood.

Pop-Up Storefront LA is sponsored by American Apparel
Local Partners: ForYourArt and Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design


About CCCP: COSMIC COMMUNIST CONSTRUCTIONS PHOTOGRAPHED
Architecture of the last two decades of the Soviet Union photographed by Frédéric Chaubin

Over the past five years, during the course of his travels in the former Soviet Union, French photographer Frédéric Chaubin has documented an extensive collection of startling architectural artifacts born during the last two decades of the Cold War. Architects in the peripheral regions of the Eastern Bloc countries, working on governmental commissions during the 1970s and 1980s, enjoyed a surprising degree of creative freedom. Operating in a cultural context hermetically sealed from the influence of their Western counterparts, they drew inspiration from sources ranging from expressionism, science fiction, early European modernism and the Russian Suprematist legacy
to produce an idiosyncratic, flamboyant and often imaginative architectural ménage. Unexpected in their contexts, these monumental buildings stand in stark contrast to the stereotypical understanding of late Soviet architecture in which monotonously repetitive urban landscapes were punctuated by vapid exercises in architectural propaganda.

The subjects of Chaubin's photographs, scattered throughout Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, were all constructed during the last two decades of the Soviet era. Very few of their designers achieved anything more than local recognition, and until now these buildings have never been collectively documented or exhibited. The authors of many works remain unknown, and some have been destroyed since Chaubin's photographs were taken. Conceived and executed during a moment of historical transition, they constitute one of the most surprising and least known legacies of the former USSR.

letters from Cape Town

Echoes from the homeland or lost objects... Stumbling upon English-style pillar post boxes in Cape Town brought forward in a material form the movements of colonial occupation: this curious object reflects a strange act of missionary work performed as a duplication of homeland design.

Jean Nouvel wins the Pritzker Prize

Curious that in explaining their choice, as the NYTimes reports, the Pritzker committee explained that in a recent project Nouvel manages to work both with and against a site. Here are photographs I took at two of his most famous projects in Paris in 2006. The first is a detail of the light responsive system of apertures on the facade at the Arab World Institute and the the other is a partial view of the Quai Branly Museum.
My most vital memory concerning Nouvel was a lecture at USC I attended in 1998 during which I witnessed Jalal Toufic (who was teaching at CalArts at the time) subject Nouvel to a scathing, awkward and ultimately productive critique.

slightly site-related

Though I confess that Janet Sarbanes new short story collection entitled Army of One (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions) has a somewhat tangential relationship to the usual content for this blog... given my enthusiasm for this book, I thought you should know about it.
This is fiction that matters! Here is an upcoming reading schedule in Southern California:
April 15 - Redcat
April 16 - Otis College of Art and Design
May 16 - Hammer Museum
You can order a copy here.

Experimental Geography

Nato Thompson has curated what looks like an excellent new show....

AnyTime, AnyPlace

A 2 Day Symposium on Art Collectives in the 21st Century

Thursday March 13 — Friday March 14, 2008

The artist groups participating in Anytime, Anyplace are some of the finest examples of 21st century creative collaborative efforts. A network of collaborative groups exists around the globe, exchanging knowledge, entering into conversations, and expanding the range of communication associated with art production. They work not only to challenge the systems of power and accepted strategies adopted by young artists, but also to serve as cultural agents who aggressively push the boundaries of art—what it does, what form it takes, and how it ultimately interfaces with our contemporary world.

DAY 1: Thursday, March 13th @ the PCC FORUM

7:00 - 7:45 pm Keynote Speaker: Grant Kester (critic and art historian)

7:45 - 8:15 pm Dessert and Coffee Bar

8:15 - 9:00 pm Guest Speakers: Brett Bloom and Salem Collo-Julin, Temporary Services

DAY 2: Friday, March 14th in R122

9:00-10:00am Registration

10:00-10:50am Session One: Futurefarmers

11:00-11:50am Session Two: Temporary Services

12:00-1:00pm Lunch in PCC Art Gallery Courtyard

1:00-1:50pm Session Three: Temporary Travel Office

2:30-6:00pm Tour with Temporary Travel Office to former 1984 Los Angeles Olympic sites

For more information, see the event page.

Women in the City

Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler and Cindy Sherman are part of this public exhibition throughout the streets of L.A. Maps and more about the project can be found here.

The Lament Project

I recently participated in The Lament Project.

From the project description:
The Viralnet.net curators invited a variety of performance, electronic, acoustic, noise, spoken word and visual artists to contemplate the meaning of the lament and to submit a personal interpretation, one minute in length.
Even though there are many traditional laments to draw from, Viralnet.net encouraged the artists to invent new and personal interpretations of the form and to explore the full range of possibilities, spanning the humorous to the serious. Except for the one-minute length requirement, there were no preconditions or rules that the artists needed to follow in creating their laments.

A Wikipedia Reader

Mylinh Trieu Nguyen and David Horvitz organized a project based on artists looking into the linking of wikipedia pages. You can download a copy or order a book version here.

Talking trash?

I recent took a class of CalArts students to the Chiquita Canyon Landfill. It was quite an experience... Some of the more interesting facts: The landfill receives between 5000 and 6000 tons of trash per day. Yes, that's per day! The nearly 600-acre site is outfitted with a complex network of piping that allows the methane gas released from the garbage to be burned by an enormous furnace, which reduces the pollutants released into the air. The landfill is currently in the process of building an facility that will use the burning of methane gas to produce electricity. I was struck in particular by the construction of landscape by the refuse. You could see that the process of "disposing" of the waste was essentially about digging giant pits lined with black plastic and creating layers of waste which eventually morph into a hill-like landscape. My students were disappointed that the falconer had gone home for the day... apparently many landfills use birds to deter gulls from congregating.

There is lots of interesting thinking about trash available... A couple of examples are Heather Rogers work from a few years ago The Hidden Life of Garbage. The film and the book are both excellent. Here is an interview from alternet. Also, Errant Bodies contributor Jennifer Gabrys has written some excellent articles on electronic waste. Check out her website for details.

Michael Asher at SMMOA

It was a big weekend in L.A. for Michael Asher. His new show opened at the Santa Monica Museum of Art on Friday night and Saturday afternoon Benjamin Buchloh spoke to a packed auditorium about Asher's work. In the current show, Asher rebuilds all of the temporary walls built in the museum from 1998 through the end of 2007. Mimicking exactly "the materials, size and position of the stud walls used to support drywall" from previous shows, this work shifts the terms of Asher's critical position. As Buchloh pointed out in his lecture, in the Santa Monica Museum show, Asher seems less intent on exclusively critiquing the institution as he does in analysing the exhibition and display strategies at work in the museum over time. This temporal dimension to the work was stressed as critical to Asher's investigation. Buchloh spoke for about an hour and then answered a few questions from the likes of Mary Kelly, Andrea Fraser, Simon Leung, Sally Stein and others. Miwon Kwon, who wrote about the exhibition for the museum, also contributed to the conversation. In general, Buchloh seemed interested in drawing out the themes of withdrawl, removal and voiding in the work of Michael Asher and highlighting repetition as a key strategy for understanding his work.

The exhibition itself is a strange experience... somewhat like a very clean and maze-like construction site. A small room near the entrance contains images of all of the floor plans of the previous exhibitions and as you enter the main space, you're required to sign a waiver that limits the liability of the museum... in case of an accident, I presume? For those of us familiar with Asher's work through photographs and text, this installation is especially curious in part because the physical experience of the exhibition is so visually charged. The rows of mostly metal studs in the gallery distort spatial perception so extremely that I overheard many visitors describe the exhibition as a hall of mirrors. The sounds of people moving through the narrow spaces between studs, zippers and buttons clinking and scraping against metal, creates an ambiance oddly unlike the dry, analytic tone usually associated with institutional critique. The phenomenologically charged atmosphere of the installation was described as Mannerist by Buchloh and as stifling and suffocating by others. I found it curiously delightful.

Buchloh began by raising a question about the 'conventionalization of radicality.' He also linked Asher's work to that of the poet Mallarme... presumably because of Mallarme's interest in the 'space' of the page. (Buchloh mentioned that Asher and the artist Marcel Broodthaers were his primary cornerstones in terms of influences for his writing. Broodhaers in particular is noted for his conceptual debt to Mallarme.) As in the work of Robert Ryman, Robert Morris and Lawrence Weiner, Asher notably denies the viewer the kind of visual gratification associated with art. But, Buchloh contends, Asher pushed this denial further by completely removing that denial from the context of the pictorial plane. In particular, he compared Asher's work to removals completed by Weiner in the late 60's that however successful as artworks, remained in the context of the pictorial frame. As an example, the 1973 project for the Toselli Gallery in Milan was cited as an example of Asher's move from pictorial space to architectural space... in this case by sandblasting the paint from the walls and ceiling of the gallery. Not only is the art object voided but the architectural space itself becomes a place of contemplation.

Speaking about Asher's use of repetition, Buchloh evoked Asher's astonishing re-installation of a trailer in different parts of the city for the Sculpture project Münster over the course of forty years. In terms of repetition, Buchloh linked Asher's strategy to artists Piet Mondrian, Carl Andre and Dan Flavin. But in addition to refusing the cultural demand for innovation, Asher seems to add an ethical dimension to his critical practice, in part by bringing questions of history and temporality to bear on the spaces of art production and reception.

Finally, Buchloh suggested that Asher's work offers resistance to the spectacularization of aesthetic practice and to the aestheticization of everyday life. Difficult and valid questions were raised about the definition and nature of the 'aestheticization of everyday life' during the question and answer period... Overall, a great pleasure to be able to experience an Asher exhibition first hand and to hear Buchloh speak so eloquently about someone who has maintained a rigorous, critical art practice for so many years.

Rome in a Day

This weekend I'm participating in the building of rome in a day. If you're in L.A. come check out the madness.

Errant Bodies event in Stockholm

Konst-ig bookshop presents
Errant Bodies Press
A celebration of books, words, sounds, projects and activities
Friday, January 18, 17:00
Åsögatan 124
Stockholm
Tel: 08 20 45 20
http://www.konstig.se
Join us for drinks, readings and soundings
With reading by Brandon LaBelle, audio installation by Marie Wennersten and Carl Michael von Hausswolff & Thomas Nordanstad's film works.

Errant Bodies Press is a publisher focusing on sound art, performance, spatial strategies and related theory. Since 1995 it has published anthologies, monographs, CDs and DVDs, artists books and special projects from artists, writers and activists working with sounds, places, bodies, narratives, and visual languages and documents. Their publications include Site of Sound: Of Architecture and the Ear, Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language, Social Music, Surface Tension: Problematics of Site, among others.

Rainbow Audio Transformation

8 –13 January 2008
Opening Friday 11 January at 20.00
at Extra City, Antwerp

This project brings 12 artists together working on a collective experiment on the relation between colour and sound, departing from the 7 colours of the rainbow, with white and black added. Each artist and/or collective works on a specific colour, using both intuition and scientific sources, and will produce a looped sound piece. After approximately one month of experiments, all artists come together in Antwerp for some days, after which these individual works will be synthesized into one collective installation, made up of 9 sound works played simultaneously.


Participating artists

Mike Harding and Philip Marshall
working with RED (wavelength ≈ 625–750 nm) and ORANGE
(wavelength ≈ 585–620 nm)

Finnbogi Pétursson
working with YELLOW (wavelength ≈ 570–580 nm)

Maia Urstad
working with GREEN (wavelength ≈ 520–570 nm)

Leon Milo
working with BLUE (wavelength ≈ 440–490 nm)

Brandon LaBelle
working with INDIGO (wavelength ≈ 450–420 nm)

Jana Winderen
working with VIOLET (wavelength ≈ 380–420 nm)

CM von Hausswolff
working with WHITE (all colors of the light spectrum)

Building Transmissions: Nico Dockx, Kris Delacourt and Peter Verwimp
working with BLACK (which absorbs all colors and reflects none)