Christmas solution

The Foodloop.

Technorati: design, art, contemporary art, vvoi

The Origin of Net Art

Simple Version.
Complex Version.

Technorati: net art, art installation, digital art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

1-pixel Pac Man + Christmas card

The smallest Pac Man ever.
The author, Alan Outten, author of the world's smallest website (with many other tiny versions of classic games), has a pretty Christmas card on his site.
And this is my favorite small piece of his.

Technorati: net art, internet art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Obscene Art #3: For the Love of Flesh - Joel-Peter Witkin

The sad thing is that more and more, we are becoming disconnected with a sense of wonder, of mystery and destiny.

Joel-Peter Witkin

It isn't hard to think up something very deep and poetic concerning Witkin: through his imagery, we gain a greater understanding about human difference and tolerance, someone declares. Someone else seems to admire Witkin for nearly the opposite:
His arresting images show us our powerlessness in the face of madness, lust, disease and death.
The thing about Joel-Peter Witkin is that he shows people. And daringly so. The strangest people you have ever seen. In the strangest of poses. In the most surprizing situations. And, although his pictures are full (some say: overfilled) with references to art history, his merit seems to be above all related to this: showing.

How does he find his models? Some of them in the morgues, others, from ads. Ads like this one from 1989, looking for:

Pinheads, dwarfs, giants, hunchbacks, pre-op transsexuals, bearded women, people with tails, horns, wings, reversed hands or feet, anyone born without arms, legs, eyes, breast, genitals, ears, nose, lips. All people with unusually large genitals. All manner of extreme visual perversion. Hermaphrodites and teratoids (alive and dead). Anyone bearing the wounds of Christ.(...) Anyone claiming to be God. God.

Someone states that seeing Witkin's works is like witnessing a brutal car crash. Indeed, we feel voyeuristic, as in, willing to witness obscenity. Being the good art amateurs we are, we look for justifications, just as we might look at the crash "from a distance", inquiring into the reactions of others, or the aesthetic vs. ethical aspects of the scene. We might even go so far as to declare the paintings a cry for tolerance. The question remains: how distant is this cry from the freak-shows history has known time and again? Isn't it just the curiosity of the crippled, the strange, the too-different? Seeing the world without its regular masks?
And if we are just part of a long line of curious onlookers, are we damned? As in, morally condemnable?
The concept of monster, which made a career during the Renaissance, comes from the Latin verb monere, to warn, and/or from the Greek root teras, meaning something both horrible and wonedrful.
Contrary to common belief, monsters weren't only associated with signs of evil events to come, but also, and quite frequently, with signs of devine power. The monster shows were often events where one would discover the many ways of divine creation. (Notice how words like "amazing" and "awesome" also have an ambiguous quality at their origin, but went the other way, becoming generally accepted as positive adjectives).
In this sense, what we see, through Joel-Peter Witkin's eyes, are monsters. They are the marvels.
They are the graces of a wonder-ful world.
Should we believe that Witkin is genuinely preoccupied with the people he photographs? Yes, there seems to be no doubt about it. He is deeply religious, but has found a home in the esoteric side of religion. And with it comes the love for the awesome, the excentric. And a fascination for, or empathy with, the humans within this underworld. He is interested in their stories, and openly declares that his art is "not intended to reveal what the individual subject chooses to hide but instead to make the hidden qualities more meaningful."
Meaningful they become. But what is their meaning? And does it not risk turning against those he claims to defend?


One of Witkin's many critics, Cintra Wilson, writes,

The work is beautiful enough to be "real art," but it is still an intellectually camouflaged, carny peep show of the most debased and obvious water. You can put as many flowery wreaths and as much gorgeous photo technique as you want around a dead baby, and it will be art, yes, but it is still a dead baby. It is still a sideshow for the morbidly curious, regardless of how much Witkin may drone on about the deeply religious quality of his work.
(...) The artists I respect get more irreverent with age while, at the same time, they humanize; they lighten up, they drop the old mask, they actually start to care about things more and open up a little, laughing about things they used to take to heart as deathly serious. They evolve -- for better or worse.

Then again - Francis Bacon, in that sense, did not evolve, did he?

(the first image is the portrait of Witkin by his wife, tattoo artist Cynthia Witkin)

Also check out one of the most recent of Witkin's albums:

Animal pleasures

Sensuality is a delicate game.

There is something about perversion that makes it aesthetically appealing.
This glass is made of cat hair.
This is part of a series of cups/glasses made of cat hair. They are incredibly attractive, soft and pleasant. Yet, at the same time, they are repulsive. They're unbearably close.
This game of closeness, this flirt with the uncomfortable distance when objects go out-of-focus, is what makes them so powerful.
Of course, they have an artistic predecessor: surrealist's Meret Oppenheim's Object, from 1936.
But this here is a different story. It is far from a heavy surrealist joke. The series, called Drink-me-by, has more to do with the transparence of a look, or the hesitating, ephemeral nature of our feeling-of-the-world. It is still a play with the senses, but it trusts us more as viewers (and as touchers).
The author, Verónica Fernandes, doesn't like the comparison. Object was not an inspiration, and for her, it belongs to a different language, a different way of looking at things. She says: "If we were to put it in cinematographic language, The Object is more like a cartoon, with its forms covered by fur. Drink-me-by is for me more like a film, as its very structure is made from the hair"
The cups differ as much as the cats :

There is even one you can actually drink from - or mistreat. It has a fine layer of silicone, giving it new qualities:

I had the great privilege of seeing these objects come to life. Their author has not exhibited them anywhere. She hasn't even thought about it - but if you know of a gallery that would be interested, please let me know. They definitely deserve to be seen outside of this modest virtual setting.

(all pictures of Drink-me-by are by José Miguel Soares)

Technorati: visual art, fine art, installation, art installation, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Michael Hutter and the sex of death

Michael Hutter is a painter, a visual artist in the classical meaning of the word. Some of his pieces seem combinations of Dali and Beksiński. Others are closer to sci-fi yet others seem games with painting conventions. Take his The Girl and Death (2005), echoing as if in a crazy mirror the romantic works of the likes of Munch or Schiele. This time, though, sexuality is present in a different, contemporary and self-ironic way:


And then, there are his erotic engravings, full of tension and strange perversions. Even the most innocently sexual scenes take place in somewhat creepy settings. The idyllic stories have dark backgrounds, as if innocence, here, was just a cover-up, a play-on-words.

(via)

Poetry, the internet, and the paradox of flash

Poetry on the internet is a delicate matter. More: poems are a delicate matter. They are fragile, require faith.
And the internet doesn't seem to have the required stillness that reading a poem might demand. But it has other advantages. And Born Magazine uses them, combining flash animation with poetry and music, turning poetry reading into a truly aesthetic experience, that is, speaking to the senses.
My problem with some of the works, as with Courtney Queeney's Origami, is that it could very easily be considered kitsch. And the problem is not with the poem, nor is it actually in the flash animation. It seems to be the combination of the two, which turns a pretty poem and a pretty animation into an all-too-sweet experience. Too much sugar.

But then, not all works are like that. Many are darker, more aggressive. Some are gloomy. But in all cases it seems the flash-maker really creates the poem. This goes further than classical "interpretation" of a play. The direct impact of sight and sound appears as much more potent than the subtile work of a poem. I need to digest a poem in order for it to have impact. But by the time I finish watching the animation, the story is over, my wave of emotions (or wavelet, in case of weaker works) has long gone, and there is no turning back. In some works you can stop and decide when to read, but the graphical side seems to take over.
But then, maybe that's the trick? I wouldn't go to a poetry page anyway, and here I am trying to go back to the poem to discover it without the all-too-clever animation. Paradox? Reverse psychology?

Technorati: net art, internet art, poetry, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Burden Fails: 220

220, F-Space, October 9, 1971: The Gallery was flooded with 12 inches of water. Three other people and I waded through the water and climbed onto 14 foot ladders, one ladder per person. After everyone was positioned, I dropped a 220 electric line into water. The piece lasted from midnight until dawn, about six hours. There was no audience except for the participants.
The piece was an experiment in what would happen. It was a kind of artificial "men in a life raft" situation. The thing I was attempting to set up was a hyped-up situation with high danger which would keep them awake, confessing, and talking, but it didn't, really. After about two-an-a-half hours everybody got really sleepy. They would kind of lean on their ladders by hooking their arms around, and go to sleep. It was surprising that anyone could sleep, but we all did intermittently. There was a circuit breaker outside the building and my wife came in at 6:00 in the morning and turned it off and opened the door. I think everyone enjoyed it in a weird sort of way. I think they had some of the feelings that I had had, you know? They felt kind of elated, like they had really done something.

- Chris Burden

quote from:

Human

Photo by Francine Gagnon.

Does anyone say he is his body, period?

What is it that makes the body such a scandal? Is it because bodies we see are not our bodies? Is it this un-identity, the fact that empathy seems like a childish dream, some sort of ridiculous belief? Is it that touching is losing my own touch? Listen to Wittgenstein: The truth is: it makes sense to say about other people that they doubt whether I am in pain; but not to say it about myself.
So there is a basic egocentrism in our thinking about the body. In English, we say "take a walk in my shoes". Compare it to the Polish version: "put yourself into my skin". (Strange, how my skin seems to define me.) Is a racer without his car still a racer?
And that's where the fear of skin appears. And the obsession of skin. Its shapes, tones, actions.
How many skins can I have, how distant is this skin from mine, what can be done with this skin. Using it to re-create identity, as a toy, a scandal, or any other pretext. And we all do it - which is scary, and nice : feel the carress. It translates the other into what's yours.
And vice versa.

NB: Here is a short overview of body in contemporary art (in French)

Technorati: photography, erotic art, fine art, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Surface

Untitled (2005)

Technorati: photography, visual art, fine art, erotic art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Artistic residency

Mousonturm is organizing an artistic residency for its Plateaux Festival:

Plateaux is a supportive model for young performing artists.

Plateaux invites international artists, performers and companies in the field of experimental theatre, performance art and live art to send in conceptual proposals. The proposals should display a discrete and textually well founded aesthetic position.

Plateaux commissions a limited number of productions and invites the artists for production residencies. The artists can carry out their respective projects at Künstlerhaus MOUSONTURM in Frankfurt/Main or at one of the co-producing institutions. The productions will then be presented at the Künstlerhaus MOUSONTURM during the Plateaux festival in October 2006.

Plateaux deadline
JANUARY 14 2006 (Postmark)

Technorati: performance, performance art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Obscene Art #2: For Christ' Sex - Sarah Lucas

Chicken Knickers (1997)
"I was quite a tomboy when I was growing up, I liked hanging out with a lot of boys, and I sort of got used to their way of talking about sex. And at the same time as thinking it was funny, I suppose I was a bit aware that it also applied to
me, and I've always had those two attitudes."
We Do it With Love
"I don't think I have a problem with having more than one view about it at once."


The Stinker (2003)

Got a Salmon on (Prawn) (1994)
Recently you could buy it at Artangel for under 20 000€...



The Kiss (2003)

"I first started smoking when I was nine. And I first started trying to make something out of cigarettes because I like to use relevant kind of materials. I've got these cigarettes around so why not use them. There is this obsessive activity of me sticking all these cigarettes on the sculptures, and obsessive activity could be viewed as a form of masturbation."

Christ You Know it Ain't Easy (2003)
(link to anarticle about the exhibition here)

Beer Can Penis (1999)

Beer/Cake (2001)

And a little more.

Obscene Art #1: Cutting off the penis

The Polish events, which just keep getting worse and worse, are an inspiration to write about body art and every possible controversial art form I can think of. For now, enjoy some pictures of Paul McCarthy's work:
Here's a free translation of a (fragment of a) recent post about McCarthy's last London show by my friend LunettesRouges:

In a huge abandoned warehouse, models of pirate ships and a few remains of the filming, some heads, arms, swords. This is where Paul McCarthy and his son Damon spent a month filming pirate scenes that are now projected on two sets of screens. It is grotesque, hilarious, carnavalesque, obscene, unsettling, funny, terrifying, violent, perverted, orgiastic, gore, gargantuan. The music is obsessive, deafening. The actors scream, shout, laugh, fight. It's Hollywood and Disney gone amok, perverted, parodied. The pirates attack a village, they kill, rape, torture the prisonners (Abu Ghraib, of course), they sell the girls at auctions. The blood is naturally ketchup, the cut off members are naturally made of plastic, and nothing is done to hide the cameramen or the dummies.

It's a deformed reality, a repulsive attraction, and, if you don't leave disgusted after five minutes, it's a mind-twisting experience.

(all this off-site from the Whitechapel Gallery)

And here's an article from the Guardian, in case you want to know more about the man.
Oh, and since it's the right season. Here's a holiday picture, courtesy the very special mind of Paul McCarthy:
"I am not interested in art being a cure-all." - Paul McCarthy

More:

Post Guernica now!

Art has power. Here is how much:

John T. Unger, an artist and longtime commenter on Collision Detection, recently announced an intriguing art project called "American Guernica: A Call for Guerilla Public Art". He's calling upon artists nationwide to post replicas of Guernica, Picasso's famous antiwar painting, on billboards and the sides of buildings(...).

Why Guernica? Because Picasso intended it to depict the horrors and insanity of war, particularly the human destruction wreaked by bombings. Guernica caused a stir when it was unveiled back in 1937, and apparently it still does. John says his inspiration for the project came from an Iraq-related incident, as detailed by Wikipedia:

A tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica is displayed on the wall of the United Nations building in New York City, at the entrance to the Security Council room ... On February 5, 2003, a large blue curtain was placed to cover this work, so that it would not be visible in the background when Colin Powell and John Negroponte gave press conferences at the United Nations. On the following day, it was claimed that the curtain was placed there at the request of television news crews, who had complained that the wild lines and screaming figures made for a bad backdrop, and that a horse's hindquarters appeared just above the faces of any speakers. Diplomats, however, told journalists that the Bush Administration leaned on UN officials to cover the tapestry, rather than have it in the background while Powell or other U.S. diplomats argued for war on Iraq.

As John writes, "If the painting intimidates warmongers into covering it, then why not make sure that it goes up in as many public spaces as possible?"

Well, I don't have the resources to put one up on a billboard, but at least virtually, I make my statement, and encourage others to do the same. And, scarily enough, although in this case I might not physically be in America, it really doesn't make much of a difference, does it?
(via)

Technorati: internet art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Spiral Jetty up close

If you look from a distance,

From Rozel Point, the Jetty is just a doodle on the landscape. It is art as ornament, Smithson-made bling-bling for Mother Nature.
(- Tyler Green)

But if you come up close,

You also begin to see that the entropy at work here at Spiral Jetty is not all natural. There is evidence all around that people are using the site in ways that will lead to its disintegration over time. People (probably men based on the expressionistic traces left) have pissed all over the work--on the sides of the boulders, on the top of the jetty, and (most prominently) right at the tip of the spiral--staining the white salt yellow. There are several piles of shit on the jetty and on the hard salt surface around the piece. At the tip of the jetty someone has left what was probably once a small sculpture made of modeling clay. It's now disintegrated into a puddle of red, blue, yellow, and green mush that looks like a melting scoop of Superman ice cream. There are cigarette butts on the jetty and empty cans at its base.
(- Todd Gibson)

Couldn't we consider this part of the artwork? Here is a comment by the photographer who took the above picture, Chas Bowie.

...when I was there making the afore-linked photo, previous visitors had piled a collection of rocks taken from various points on the jetty and piled them at the tip of the line, creating a sort of nipple at the end, which stacked to about a foot higher than the rest of the jetty. I couldn't imagine caring enough about the Jetty to drive all the way there, only to add your own stupid little touch at the end. It reminded me of the old Steve Martin bit in which he travels to France, and describes basking in the awe of a glorious cathedral, drinking in the stained glass windows and architecture—only to pull at a can of spray paint to leave a dopey tag behind. Needless to say, I dismantled the distracting little pile (those rocks are indeed heavy).

I'm not sure it's that simple. The very way the work was made, its placing, context, character, all incite a dialogue. We are out of the museum here, and out of the socially binding cultural context of "art". And that was one of the points Smithson seemed to be making - introducing human intervention into a domain where normally it wouldn't be considered appropriate, at least not as an artistic act. One could say: leave the beautiful Salt Lake alone. It doesn't need your silly, megalomaniacal twister.

Technorati: landart, land art, art installation, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Figure, out

Technorati: painting, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Art-of-Focus

Michael Takeo Madruger's net art works on Turbulence are calm, seemingly monotonous. They fear focus as dates fear the morning - it takes away the clarity of feel. Some of them are quite political, others personal, all of them seem to play with our ability to see - or rather, to almost see. (there is a wonderful Portuguese verb for that - "vislumbrar" - to appear in an unclear way). Re_collection is one of them, a short piece where "nothing" actually means a lot, where every pixel fights for expression - until they manage. Don't waste too much time reading the project description - at least not before you see it.

Technorati: digital art, internet art, net art, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi