Urban Landscapes, Lisbon

Walking through Lisbon, I came upon these temporary bench-plant structures strewn along the waterfront. Their colorful and modular appearance stood out as a rather dynamic solution to urban furniture. Allowing flexibility, the structures give way to possibilities for immediate transformation, reconfiguration, and interaction - one might imagine these blobs being moved around now and again, creating a sort of mobile urban landscape (if only they were on wheels...).

7th Bienal do Mercosul, Brasil

http://www.bienalmercosul.art.br/
Public Text:

The exhibition has gathered together artists that require an active dialogue with the city, reconfigured in a manner of a public text:
The curating approach here is a plan.
A plan of occupation and of forces and pulses existing in the urban space.
In this curating approach, the artists work the symbolic and material elements of the public space.
We are interested in artists working the city as material for their projects.
We are interested in artists producing poetic forms out of urban phenomena.
We are interested in visible and invisible works, which can occupy subtle physical ties like the air and the sound space, urban space and the media.
We are interested in giving back to the city, its spaces as they were, without adding materials, so that the waste will consist of memories and meanings.
The exhibition will mainly take place in the public spaces of Porto Alegre, basing itself on several lines of investigation:
i. Illumination: Works that render visible strategic points of the city.
ii. Wavelengths: Open radio transmissions to all the artists that are taking part in the Biennial (see below).
iii. Transitory and Ambulant: Works about the flux and dynamic of the time and of the urban space.
iv. Points on the Map: A net of projects at the Biennial and at the city, have together given expression to a new and amplified text. In addition, the exhibition will be held in one of the warehouses of the Quayside. Here, the Biennial looks at the creation of a radio installation - Radiovisual - the radio commissioned especially for the Biennial.

I participated in A Day in LA: Washington Boulevard Art Concert on Sunday, October 11. This was a project organized by Stephen Van Dyck that involved 60 artists reinterpreting public unused outdoor space along all 27 miles of Wash Blvd.
The installation I constructed is titled Referential system designed to mimic the structures of symbolic capital and was located Northwest corner of Perrino Place and Washington Blvd.
More information about the project can be found here.

The Space Hijackers prosecuted

The decision has been made to prosecute peaceful activist artists the Space Hijackers for impersonating police on 1st April 2009 at the G20 Summit demonstrations.

It is alleged that the group entered the City of London wearing police uniforms in an armoured personnel carrier with the intent to deceive the public into believing that they were members of the Police force. The Space Hijackers vehemently deny any intent to deceive or that they had any sinister motives.

The Space Hijackers describe themselves as ‘Anarchitects’ and that their aim is to challenge and provoke discussion through peaceful public performance. A spokesperson for Space Hijackers, said "We are shocked and appalled by the behaviour of the Police on the day both towards us and others. We don’t feel that we were arrested because the officers honestly believed that we were impersonating the Police but because we were becoming a thorn in their side.”

Raj Chada of Hodge Jones Allen said "The Space Hijackers were protesting entirely peacefully. In light of the numerous allegations of violence and misconduct against the police that have marred the event, perhaps the biggest joke is the decision to prosecute those peaceful protestors playing loud music and wearing fancy dress."

The Space Hijackers have every confidence in their case and welcome the opportunity to encourage further scrutiny of the policing of the event itself. The Space Hijackers will vigourously contest the charges laid against them and their legal team invites all assistance from any witnesses who saw the defendants on 1 April 2009.
For more information, please visit their website.

Manual, Oslo

Manual for the construction of a sound as a device to elaborate social connection

September 14 – 20, 2009
process, project, interaction
held at
Deichman library, Grunerløkka, Oslo
&
The Storefront, Thorvald Meyersgt 61, Oslo

with
å+k (Åsa Ståhl & Kristina Lindström) (Sweden)
Siri Austeen (Norway)
Brandon LaBelle (USA)
Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec (Slovenia/Holland)
Jana Winderen (Norway)

The Manual project explores sound and auditory experience as platforms for social cooperation and environmental investigation. Bringing together a working group of artists, the project uses sound as a tool for considering public space, and functions as a site-specific field study of Oslo, involving locational research, artistic presentation, performative actions and public discussion.

The Manual project highlights sound and listening as important locational and social material, to question how sounds of everyday life generate forms of commonality and how the dynamics of listening inform unique types of artistic intervention. Exploring such themes, the Manual project is based on process-oriented actions and events using specific locations in Oslo. During the course of one-week the artists will bring forward amplifications of city life, giving expression to sound and listening as social energy.

Including the Swedish collaborative duo Kristina Lindström and Åsa Ståhl (aka å+k), whose projects are based on forms of story-telling and sharing, the American artist Brandon LaBelle, working with urban networks and distributed sonic narratives, Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec from Holland/Slovenia, investigating questions of architectural space and forms of transmission, and Norwegian artists Jana Winderen, uncovering hidden sources of sound through blind field recording, and Siri Austeen, exploring concrete sounds and the act of listening.

Organized by Brandon LaBelle and Jana Winderen
Producer: Hjørdis Kurås, Norway

Manual for the construction of a sound as a device to elaborate social connection
is a cooperation with Ultima 09, Oslo Contemporary Music Festival (www.ultima.no),
Atelier Nord and Deichman libary, Grünerlølkka

The project is supported by Norsk Kulturråd
www.kulturrad.no

Book Launch at Machine Project

Thursday, July 30 at Machine Project – What remains of a building divided into equal parts and distributed for reconfiguration is the second volume in the Surface Tension Supplement series dedicated to publishing documentation and critical writing on site-based practices in art, architecture and performance. This volume investigates the social and political dimensions of buildings and urban spaces, including critical reflections on recent urban planning policies in China, histories of participatory architecture, and proposals for urban farming. What remains of a building divided into equal parts and distributed for reconfiguration offers multiple perspectives on the limits and creative possibilities of the built environment.
With contributions by Rachel Allen, Ava Bromberg, Ken Ehrlich, Jesko Fezer and Mathias Heyden, Nis Rømer, Carl Michael von Hausswolff and The Land Foundation.

Lowrider as cultural machine

Attending the 17th Annual Pharaoh's Car Show in Wilmington yesterday, Ken and I marveled at the aesthetics and community of car customization. From Classic Chevrolet to stripped down Ford to souped-up trucks, the car functions as a dynamic space for cultural expression and agitation carrying across the LA streets the legacy of lowrider history, Chicano identity, and the politics of having wheels. The car literally becomes a signifying machine for the production of various meaningful codes, which galvanize specific communities around the pin-stripe, the hydraulic lift, the car stereo, each a syntax within an expansive language seeking to take it low (to duck the law). Heading back to our own car, a rather dull Ford, and turning the ignition I couldn't help but feel the textured mythology running through the car, as a site for the making of particular freedoms (imagined, fantastical, real). The car already promises the open road - modifying its body, customizing its shape, appropriating the built-in class politics running from the Chevy to the Lincoln, seems to supplement through a magnifying zeal all the potentiality found in being behind the wheel, as well as taking to the road.