New Art

Sunday, July 17, 2005

Hybrid

Calling something "hybrid" is just too easy. The word refers to a combination of two or more species, suggesting some original purity of form which is then combined with other pure forms to create the hybrid.
When applied to the arts, it subtly introduces a biological lecture, hinting at a linear (pluri-linear, but still linear) character of artistic works. Basically: "the work A comes from the combination of styles 1 and 2".

Hybrid, to me, is the beginning. It is the point of departure, it is what we find upon our arrival, it is what me must make sense of when advancing: it is the basic stuff, the original, delightfuly uncomprehensible remix, or entangled panoply of experience. We, I, go through it, cutting away, isolating, naming, framing, sensing. And "the hybrid work of art" is probably just the use of an unexpected tool to get me out of somewhere, of some tiring remix, some hybrid form.

For your viewing pleasure: the art of A.R.Menne.

Saturday, July 16, 2005

Remapping the world

Mappingworlds is an initiative of changing social (and international) awareness through redesigning maps through non-geographical criteria, such as hospitality, asylum applications, or rivers and floods (okay, that one's geographic).

(via)

Retro innovation

Kee, designed by Shira Miasnik , is a motion-based digital music instrument.

The user modifies the digital output by tilting and rotating the wooden disk.

Movements can define endless parameters: manipulating Kee in different directions, angles and speed changes different qualities of the animation. Pressing the logo button modifies the presets which define the changes in the animation.
It is fairly hard to say from the video how exactly it works, but it seems like a nice combination of "digital" with "retro".

(via)

Friday, July 15, 2005

Send your video art/documentaries now!

22nd Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival
November 8 - 13, 2005
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
LAST CALL FOR ENTRIES
Deadline: August 1st, 2005
Reglement & Application Download: www.filmladen.de/dokfest
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- documentaryFILMVIDEOart screenings
- exhibition MONITORING
- interfiction symposium
- Live visuals

(via)

Earthbed

An old installation of mine.

Slightly off-topic (against hi-tech)

Several years ago (about 1999) I worked as an English teacher in a language training center that had a military technology company as its biggest client. We used their technical guides and prospects as teaching material. It seemed pretty hi-tech, but I never really thought about it, until yesterday, when I saw this:

This is given as big news on several blogs. Apparently Seiko/Epson have just presented this "new invention". As you have already guessed, flexible screens were one of the products we had the documents of in our classes. Six years ago. And let me tell you, the prototypes were much more flexible than that. That's what I call going "back to the future". And this is another reason why I don't get too impressed with the "inventions".
If I had the money, I wouldn't mind offering a big prize to the first artist that would manage to create a work with the flexible screens that I would find Very Impressive Indeed.

Rabbit Field - and others

Rabbit Field is an installation where rabbit-like, inflated forms react empathically when one of them is being deflated (i.e. squeezed or poked by the spectators), causing a "ripple wave" within the bunny society. The bunnies also reproduce quickly, increasing in numbers over night, often until they fill the entire room. Since the rabbits' sensors and inflating fans are connected via a central computer, they can be set up to react to their nearest neighbor or to a cousin across the ocean (via the marvelous-and-ever-surprizing web). This sounds really cute (I don't know why the guy on the picture is lying down pretending to be dead).
My big question is: what next? What could we invent using the mechanisms that were elaborated for the use of this project that could go beyond the cute bunnies? Is there anything, or do we have to quickly focus on another gadget? My challenge to you, dear readers, is to think up, and choose to share with me or not, any other ways of using such a "empathic system". How would you see it in your work?

Very Lost Highway

For David Lynch fans. (click on "1=1", the title of the work) For me it's just another consequence of the sillyness of Lost Highway and most of his other films.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Art Blogging

It is never going to be a main-stream activity. A few medium-size names might appear here and there, but art blogging simply doesn't go well with creation. It's a question of time. Of focus. What interests you? Is it art? Or your art? If it is the latter, whyever would you wander away to dangerously other grounds?
Blogging is for the wandering ones. For those who instinctively lean towards the activity the French call flaner: walk around, float, wander, disperse. It is about letting go of your inner discipline, about substituting something for everything, for the unexpected discoveries and rare echoes, for the misty strength of total, absolute, concrete virtuality.
Why am I doing this? To educate myself, to form myself, to see the world, to share it. But why am I doing this? Where from? Out of what, what need, what rush, what drive? Some strange urge to run away, to hide away so that one becomes visible, to keep the artistic discovery for myself- to share it in a hidden (illicit?) way. Obviously, way too obviously, not to be alone. To find ground somewhere else, to know what sort of (artistic?) world I'm living in. Not to be afraid of what happens. To participate in it. Or: to feel myself participate in it. Take a shortcut. Maybe. Take the long way. Possibly. Write, express, yes, whatever. But beyond the obvious. To draw out my world. To myself, to the present posterity (those who will have known me). Why is it better here than elsewhere? Recognition. To re-cognize - to think again, to find out once more. To confirm the presence through thinking. And, since art is a myth, the confirmation seems welcome. And unfair: didn't I want the myth instead of its confirmation?

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Floating

Erin Johnson, I Love You to Death (Chicago, 2005)

A few good links

Personal World Map - don't judge a world by its cover
What good are the arts? - a light-hearted reflection
The Long Tail of Art - aiming to give digitally-curious artists a little money
Hidden horoscope - just a description of just a school project, but it inspires
Busan Biennale - design a work of art for a beach. Be an artist. Travel. Have fun. Stop blogging, for chrissake.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Guerrilla Girls on tour in Poland (2003)

Part art, part feminism, part tourist publicity. Here's a piece of a diary I found by the famous Guerrilla Girls.

Quote

...to pretend that a man standing on a hill could be doing everything except just standing is simply divorce from life

-Merce Cunningham

Monday, July 11, 2005

Once a year

It's my birthday!

After the avant-garde (?)

A recent article by Margo Jefferson in the NYTimes (free subscription required) about the avant-garde (focusing on theater and the performing arts) is far from what I would call revolutionary or even very useful for someone already acquainted with contemporary art languages, at least if we read it on its basic level. It does, however, show how the "general public" is being introduced to more experimental forms of expression.
It's interesting too see how Jefferson sees - and shows, thus co-constructing - the "new art": she keeps going back to the idea that it's something one has to get used to, a world worth discovering, but not easy to enter. Pretty obvious... but. The spectators are to "suspend judgement", as the artists "are experimenting" and we are to do it with them. But Jefferson admits,

Avant-gardes get middle-aged; they become the establishment. When one goes to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, for instance, one is likely to see the work of artists who belonged to the avant-gardes of the 1960's and 70's and early 80's. Some are perfecting what they've already done. A few keep on experimenting, while some are being better paid to calcify than they ever were to innovate.

And that is a problem. Because avant-garde today, as Jefferson rightly puts it,

is not a designated tribe of rebel outsiders anymore. It is a set of tools and practices; certain styles and attitudes.

Which should be a good reason to redifine experimenting and change the way we see it (and criteria for discovering it). It is far from the idea of people coming up with completely new, unexpected and revolutionary worlds. It is much more about using the current conventions, habits, paradigms, to their best use, exploring how far they take us. And that trip is pretty difficult to execute if we don't understand those paradigms (the darned question of competence, irritating, but true?). But once we do, I see no reason to suspend judgement altogether, other than belonging to a generation that considered criticism to be a horrible idea and "gave itself away". The problem is, the Robert Wilsons and Laurie Andersons (two names cited in the article) are really far from anything one could call innovative today: their art, good as it may be, has been pretty much the same for a long time. And frankly, I see no reason for going on with the suspended judgement, especially, since this attitude hasn't really helped much in introducing the "avant-garde" to main-stream culture. Any ideas about that?

Friday, July 08, 2005

Falling once again

You want falling? Here is falling.
First, take your time to watch. Just watch and let yourself become hypnotized, frustrated, angry.

Then use the mouse.
Take control. And feel even worse.
Can't this provide the feeling of sublime?
(Oh, but I don't want it to provide the feeling of sublime!)

(via)

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Hymen

Artificial hymen, that is.

Developed by the art studio/laboratory VivoLabs, HymNextTM is an actual organic tissue grown in a laboratory. The prototypes were grown from rat smooth muscle tissues and blotting membranes. The artists/producers point out that the HymNextTM are "not meant for human application" only as "soft sculptures". The developed hymens, in various shapes and colors, are presented in a cerimonial box. "Alternative packaging is being developed".

(via)

Against the (universal) avant-garde

Tadeusz Kantor, Panoramic Sea Happening (1967)

From the time of Verdun, Voltaire's Cabaret and Marcel Duchamp's Water-Closet, when the 'status of art' was drowned out by the roar of Fat Bertha - DECISION became the only remaining human possibility, the reliance on something that was or is unthinkable, functioning as the first stimulant of creativity, conditioning and defining art. Lately thousands of mediocre individuals ahve been making decisions, without scruples or any hesitation whatever. We are witnesses of the banalization and conventionalization of decision. This once dangerous path has become a comfortable freeway with improved safety measures and information. Guides, maps, orientation tables, directional signs, signals, centres, Art Co-operatives guarantee the excellence of the functioning of creativity. We are witnesses of the GENERAL MOVEMENT of artist-commandos, street fighters, artist-mediators, artist-mailmen, epistologs, pedlars, street magicians, proprietors of Offices and Agencies. Movements on this already official freeway, which threatens with a flood of graphomania and deeds of minimal significance, increases with each passing day. It is necessary to leave it as quickly as possible. This is not easily done. Particularly at the apogee of the UNIVERSAL AVANT-GARDE - blind and favoured with the highest prestige of the INTELLECT, which protects both the wise and the stupid.

- Tadeusz Kantor (1915-90), a great, wonderful Polish artist, creator of the Theater of Death (the theater (or rather: performance) group he founded in 1955 was called Cricot2). Beyond being an excellent theater director and visual artist, Kantor was an eternal provocateur. His biographies are full of outrageous statements and controversial incidents.
One I recall happened when his group went to Japan for some festival. They were invited to a teahouse (or was it some other elegant place?). Kantor declared they had to show these "Japanese barbarians" that culture is not about washing the floor and having a "most pleasant light" in the room. He then walked around in mud, and upon entering refused to take his shoes off.

Kantor during the performance of his most famous play, Umarła Klasa (The Dead Class) (1975). You can see the director on the left, behind the bench, as he had the habit of "directing" (observing, but also slightly changing) the shows even during the performance.

(some more on Polish avant-garde here)

Delete! update

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Further

An old picture.

Monday, July 04, 2005

Deleting money

The Delete! project, by Christoph Steinbrener and Rainer Dempf, was an "installation" in the middle of the tourist zone of Vienna, Austria. It seems like a logical consequence of The Untitled Project. In TUP, the erasing of all written signs was symbolic - made by manipulating the photos. Here, it's the real thing. It reminds me of an article about the power of Yves Klein's picture of jumping into the void (yes, that again...). The author (I'll try to remember who) suggests Klein's photomontage was taken seriously by many artists and influenced the artists that came after him to move into body art, where the artists' bodies were (and still are today) actually abused for aesthetic - or more broadly: artistic - goals. Here, we have a similar move from virtality to the real thing. Steinbrener and Dempf probably don't even know Matt Siber, but I guess it was just something in the air. Zeitgeist.

What's wrong with that?
For one, as this comment suggests, it is a rather naive critique of consumerism. Granted we read it as an actual critique. If, on the other hand, we consider it as a merely aesthetic realization, one could argue (as the author of the comment does) that the yellow signs are not really prettier than the original shields. Then again, one could also argue about the aesthetic value of Christo's and Jeanne-Claude's project - which doesn't (and shouldn't) stop them from making them. And if they could cover up the world, why can't others?
The one thing I found disappointing was the quality of the work, as a production: behind the yellow plastic, we can clearly distinguish the signs...

The work stayed on for two weeks. By week two, some storekeepers simply couldn't resist it:

Bad? Well, many other people couldn't resist either:

The idea also reminds me of the numerous artistic endeavors with burning money (starting with Klein's performances at the bank of the Seine river in 1962, I believe). This time, it is erasing, bleaching the print. The one thing that seems to make it quite different from the oldendays is that Delete!, just as Christo's works, is temporary. Which, of course, is good. And bad.
More pictures od Delete! here and a great Quicktime VR (360º).

Sunday, July 03, 2005

2 boxes and 1 self-portrait by Lucas Samaras

Untitled (1965)

Box (1963)

Photo-Transformation (1973)

All works by Lucas Samaras.

Friday, July 01, 2005

Art for London 2012

When London bids to participate in the (2012) Olympics, it means business. And culture. Which is why the bid comes accompanied by a wonderful program: 40 Artists, 40 days. Basically, it is a publicity for Britain and its artists:

In the final 40 days of the campaign we want to raise awareness of this wider Olympic opportunity, and encourage support for London 2012, by creating a unique countdown calendar that will focus attention on Britain’s exceptional creative talent. We have asked 40 leading artists to provide a work, either original video, music, text, performance or visual art, which will be showcased here on Tate Online as a message of Olympic support, with a new piece being added every day until you can enjoy all 40.

The diversity is fantastic, as is the quality and the nearly always contemporary edge. On the site you'll find excerpts of dances (some quite interesting) , music, literature about music in England, and much, much more. My big disappointment was the work One Story Building by Blast Theory (you know I like them). But not because it's bad. It's an "interactive work" where you call a number and have to answer a series of 2000 (2012?) questions:

In this interactive work, the participant drills through two thousand either/or questions. Starting with the question ‘Urban or Rural?’, the piece moves from the expansive into the cloistered, finally arriving at a secret and private space. Reminiscent of ‘10×10’ by Charles and Ray Eames, it uses this swoop in scale to explore the taste of the participant, whilst gently mocking the notion of interactivity itself.
Single Story Building can be accessed anytime of day by phoning 0871 504 3987. Use your phone's keypad to navigate through the work. Calls are charged at the national rate (8p/min from a landline).

And I can't even tell you what's it like - it's a number I can't access from Lisbon. Anyone in Britain can give some feedback (wink at Lunettes Rouges)?

(via)

Documentary films

And while we're on the subject of films and ethics, here is an interesting article, called The Good, The Bad, and The Documentary, by Dutch cinema scholar and programmer Kees Bakker, about documentary films and their possible - and actual - role in culture. I really like how it includes a whole range of situations/people/functions into the film-creating process, way beyond the typical "directorial" approach. Another important point he makes is to recall the experimental roots of documentary cinema. Not many people know that the roots of documentary cinema are connected to European avant-garde experimentation. While most might associate documentaries with Michael Moore or Reality TV, this is certainly not the area of documentaries that seems the most stimulating (for an experimental, but no less fresh - or 'en vogue' - approach, try something like Tarnation).

Thursday, June 30, 2005

Old new films

It's amazing how quickly films move away to be "history" and not "film". I have just seen, after a few years, Krzysztof Kieślowski's Short Film About Killing (1988, Polish title: Krótki film o zabijaniu). And I hesitated before writing about it. I mean - how new can a 1988 film be? Then I realized a huge chunk of what I put here could be considered old (goes as far as the beginning of the 20th century!), though to me it is quite contemporary (or participates in contemporary culture).
But feature films participate in the showbiz culture, which has an awful influence on their longevity. Of course, the cinema elites (italics are meant to suggest irony) go back to old films. But why shouldn't old films participate in the artistic culture the same way paintings and music pieces do?
Kieślowski's film is haunting. It is exactly what it announces: a film about killing. About how humans kill other humans. It follows the case of a murder, followed by the (capital) punishment. Story-wise we don't get much more: a few secondary characters, a few coincidences, apparently insignificant situations. What else do you need? Killing is not about reasons, is it? Not about the rational ones that "explain", as in a Agatha Christie novel. It is about something strange that happens, that convinces the killer that through annihilation he creates. But this, of course, is my reading. Kieślowski does not allow himself to go that far: he merely exposes, in such a way that upon leaving the cinema huge arguments arise about what is evil and what isn't, about innocence and cruelty, about all these things we might have once thought were important issues to deal with, in art, in life.
All this is filmed in yellowish tones, with a horrible-quality film tape, which intensifies the desperately grey tones of Warsaw in the 80's. Having lived there as a child during this period, I can only confirm this. Even the bad quality of the tape seems to belong to that era, like a proof that this really existed.
It is a heavy film. Extremely European, far from the Hollywood speed or dynamics. At times, its weight is simply unbearable. There are moments which seem incredibly naive, clearly "written out" and not really integrated with the flow of the film. But Kieślowski was a thinker: he thought out through his films. And he thought well. Maybe that's why he ends up convincing - he was trustworthy, not through the way he answered, but through the way he asked questions.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

3 Pictures from Spain

The below pictures come from the site of the Barcelona-based company Conservas. The first one is a (as yet) unidentified picture from the InnMotion 2005 Festival which is about to begin. The other two pictures come from a show by Conservas called Femina Ex-Machina (2000). I will spare you their rather naive statements and comments, if you really need to, find them on the Conservas site. I think the pictures speak for themselves.

(via)

Who is Joe?

Post-traumatic art?

Here's the story: an artist is fascinated by falling. He takes pictures of himself falling off different things: ladders, trees, buildings. He fakes it (just as Yves Klein did), using ropes, harnasses and other security measures. Then he retouches the pictures for a strong a effect. He moves to bigger objects, until he gets to a really big one: a museum. And jumps off it (pretends to). And refers to September 11th, and the tragedy of the people, and the crisis [though from what I had read later on it seems the photo-performances were far from pointing to that reference as the only one]. And all press hell breaks loose, and he is considered the worst of the worst: a horrible, cowardly, stupid and insensible performance artist:

That's why performance art is invariably so lousy - it spits in the face of honest human reaction, all those trust fund frauds locking themselves in a bathroom and claiming it is in solidarity with actual prisoners who don't have Guggenheim fellowships.

The artist, obviously, defends himself as best he can. It simply isn't enough.
I believe this particular artist to be of fairly poor artistic merit. He seems unconscious of the history of jumps in performance art, as well as unconscious of how delicate a matter he is entering by referring to 9/11. What's more, he acts with very little sensibility to the issues he's addressing: and when you're an artist, that's a cardinal sin.
On the other hand, it shows how fragile the U.S. still appears, how traumatized, to the extent of censoring anything that comes close to Ground Zero.

Quote of the day - Heiner Müller

What would you regard as a central issue in your recent texts?

How should I know, and if I knew why should I tell you?

If you reject this idea of a central issue, could you mention some of the interests you pursue in your writing?

See above.

This was the part of the interview I was interested in. But what comes later some might find creepily prophetic:

Your plays have been performed in East and West Germany [the interview takes place in 1984], in the United States, and in many other countries. You partipated in many of these production and recently have directed your plays in both Germanies. (...)
a) Where is the theatre, in your opinion, a more efficient instrument of social impact?
b) Where would you prefer to direct, and to watch, your plays on stage?

a) In the East. b) I would like to stage MACBETH on top of the World Trade Center for an audience in helicopters.

Terms like 'Despair,' 'Pessimism,' 'Guilt' are often used by critics writing about your work. DO you think these are adequate definitions of your intentions and/or values?

Three times No.

People familiar with your recent texts often complain about a total lack of hope in your writing. What is your opinion?

I am neither a dope- nor a hope-dealer.

Would you care to comment on your views about the future of our world which you paint so darkly in your work?

The future of the world is not my future. 'Show me a mousehole and I'll fuck the world.' (Railworker at the soft-coal strip mine Klettwitz, GDR.)

All quotes come from an interview that first appeared in H.Müller, Hamlet Machine and Other Texts for the Stage (New York, 1984)

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Digital manipulation

Learn how to create digitally manipulated pictures the professional way with this Photoshop tutorial.

Monday, June 27, 2005

Brick of Coke

Brick of Coke is part of the Experience the Experience project by Monochrom (from the site: monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group of basket weaving enthusiasts and theory do-it-yourselfers having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis). It consisted of creating a brick of Coke (yes, the drink) and then, well, experiencing it.
It is/was a performance/installation/conference/weird thing happening in an artsy context. You can see it all step by step here. Of course, it is social criticism. Of course, it's moralizing and trying to be subtle while you're at it. And come on, give me a break. But then again - they did end up with a brick. And a brick is a serious thing.

Those people at Monochrom are kind of crazy. They know their concepts, but they just seem to like to go out of control - and then provide a pretty, entirely controllable certificate to prove it. While at the same time inserting themselves back into the formal confines of the art world.

Nice touch. A little sticky, and smells of burnt candy, but hey, nothing we can't handle.
Then, of course, comes the question Sean Bonner asked: "what do you do with a 3 and a half pound brick of coke after you are done showing it off?" Try to stick a miniature shark in it and sell it to a rich man?

Iraq

Invasion is a short film using archive material and giving it a solid twist. It's above all a political statement, but that counts too, doesn't it?

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Move around, be the art

Feedtank is a collective of artists using technology to create interactive, playful spectacles. Their inventions have all to do with movement and image, and more precisely, with creating through the interaction with an image.
The three works they have been promoting are: Dance Floor Moves, a projected interactive dance floor, Full Body Games, computer games combining virtual with physical space and movement, and TransPose, a digital musical instrument that allows the musician to create music by moving around.
What I like about Feedtank is that they manage to keep a fun, clearly entertaining spirit in the diverse areas they work in. At the same time, the work could go beyond the "fun". So far, Discovery Channel included them in an episode about gadgets. Now that they can certainly make a living out of it, I'm expecting something more.

Kollabor8 on a picture

Kollabor8 is a project/site where artists from all over the world (that means you) can co-create a picture. Each picture is rearranged by the following artist, until - another artist decides to move in. Often, though not always, I get the impression the first one is the best, maybe because it has the guts and strong, clean expression of someone determined to do a certain thing, while the changes often bring about confusion, haze, and it might take a while for the dust to settle down. Then again, sometimes it does, and then we can really enjoy the new landscape. Or change it completely, of course.

(via)

The Forest, by Agata Lenczewska

Agata Lenczewska, The Forest (2005)

Saturday, June 25, 2005

Digital stencil art

Pixel Roller, by Stuart Wood and Florian Ortkrass, is a really nice piece of engineering.A "roll" with ultra-brite LEDs excites surfaces painted with fluorescent paint, leaving a (programmed) trace that fades out with time. The programming part is what's really amazing: you get the stencil feel, with no stencil!

(via)

Friday, June 24, 2005

Of Art and Politics

Duane Keiser is an American painter who came up with the idea of painting one painting a day and selling it through posting the image on his blog. I find the pictures quite good, and am not alone, as apparently most of them are sold 5 minutes after being posted (each one is postcard-sized and costs 100$).

This is where the post was supposed to end. Instead, through the links on Keiser's blog I discovered his other projects, and among them, a painting of fighter planes commissioned by the Naval Institute (US Navy?). And that got me mad. It reminded me of Top Gun, the Hollywood commercial for the army, and the very innocent-looking but no less present apology of the (US) military spirit. "Our brave boys." Art propaganda is propaganda. I went back to the painting-a-day and it seemed false. Cheating. Fake innocence.
Of course, Keiser doesn't say anything about the war in Iraq, the US foreign policy, or even his own political stance. He simply made a painting, and if it was an apology, it was an apology of an important instution, one that many, many people find not only useful, but crucial to maintaining stability in the world.
The problem is, I couldn't help myself. The candy-like picture was just so distant from the classic-looking daily paintings. In all its photographic naturalism it was...fake. Then I
remembered all the great (or good, or somewhat interesting) artists that have at a given point defended wrong positions, bad revolutions, morally dubious ideas, adding clear, happy, vibrant colors wherever it was necessary. Mayakovsky, Shostakovich, but also Sartre (all three at one point defending stalinism), without mentioning Leni Riefenstahl or Heidegger (both idealizing the nazi) or other stories of the sort. Today the world seems more complicated, the "sides" are less obvious (though the lack of distance blurs the image), but still, we have Oliver Stone (a Fidel Castro admirer) and several others. And we have artists who defend war, who justify (what I consider to be) injustice and who speak out in a way I don't agree with on many other issues. Does that disqualify them as artists? Never? Always? To what extent?

(via)

Art, Sex, Revolution. Mind [the] Gap

Have just stumbled upon letters of Robert Filliou to Allan Kaprow (both belonging to the Fluxus group), written in 1967. All these crazy, ridiculous, crazily ridiculous ideas. One wonders how an artistic evolution could come to being on such fundaments. (But it did!)

(...) In an Institute of Permanent Creation, we might work on "gap-filling" games, and new ways of communicating on the individual, group, and international levels.
We might develop anti-brainwashing devices. Or anti-erosion programs. Toward that end, we might make a study of people with a gift for living, in any walk of life. We might map pit new areas of communication (...). We might investigate other gaps.
SEXUAL GAP: no need to elaborate. The sexual revolution must go on.
MIND GAP: it seems that the human brain is too slow to grasp the universe, or everything happens in the world at the same time, for that matter; or too gfast to stick to one particular practical problem: it spills over, then, and bad thought drives out the good. (...)
We might develop tools of self-awareness (...). And ways and means to put all these tools into practise (performances, toys, games, events, happenings, etc....). I need not elaborate, because in my mind all these things must be studied by the students and the artist. It is essential. (...) Think of what other artists like Cage, Brecht, etc.... might bring up, I mean man, just imagine what the students could get out of direct concrete contacts with such people, and these with such students. (...)
The artist should not try to influence anyone. (...) For remember, Allan, bulls die, and bullfighters too, eventually, but bull fighting is eternal. L[e] rêve des hommes fait [l']événement.

Robert Filliou

Robert Filliou, 7 Childlike Uses of Warlike Material (1970)

Among the Fluxus artists were some of today's most renowned names.
What happened to Fluxus? This.

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Pretentious

Upon answering the Art Survey, I realized that I consider most of the (fine) artists I know to be pretentious. Also, I checked Warhol in nearly every category: innovative, pretentious, distinctive, speaks to me, brilliant, overrated, stimulating, offensive, passé, prestigious, sexy, good investment, different, incomprehensible, fun, courageous, trendy, inspirational, controversial, connected, beautiful. How can one artist be all these things? The question might just as well be - how can a great contemporary artist not be all these things at some point?

Filming architecture, the abstract way

The Bridge, by Mogens Jacobsen, is for all you architecture freaks and color freaks out there (you know who you are).
The idea is so simple: limit the screen to a band, then copy the top and bottom line of the band until they fill the screen.
Another proof that avant-garde can do fine without cutting-edge technology.

(via)

Plutocratic art chaos

For all the utopians: What happens when each person has the (equal) right to add one pixel per day to an image? Pixelfest (by The Man In Blue).

(via)
ps: There is also a flash animation showing the "evolution" of the work. Notice how the fact of seeing it change through time makes us want to instinctively give it a sense, a meaning...
pps: Of course I added a pixel.

Sunday, July 17, 2005

Saturday, July 16, 2005

Friday, July 15, 2005

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Monday, July 11, 2005

Friday, July 08, 2005

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Monday, July 04, 2005

Sunday, July 03, 2005

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