Situation Aesthetics : Michael Asher

Speak / Memory

12 December 2010 thru 20 February 2011
Opening: Saturday 11 December 2010, 5 pm
(introductory presentation, Cameron Jamie's 'Massage the History', at 4 pm at Filmhuis Den Haag, Spui 191)
Location: Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
Open: Wednesday thru Sunday, 12 noon - 5pm
(closed on December 25 and January 1)

The exhibition includes a side program of guided tours (every Sunday at 3 pm), studio visits and lectures. More info will follow.

'Speak, Memory' is an international group exhibition on remembering, memory and the passage of time. The exhibition shows works in which the erosion of memory and the passing of time are explored in different ways. Stories deform when they are retold. Buildings transform visibly and invisibly, leaving traces behind. Our earliest memories are often elusive. The point of departure for the exhibition is the work of artists Leontine Lieffering, Sara Rajaei and Vittorio Roerade who received the Stroom Premium subsidy last year. In addition the show includes work by Omer Fast*, Sara van der Heide, Anne Holtrop, Cameron Jamie, Andrew Lord and Rachel Whiteread.
returns to the prima

image> Sara Rajaei, A leap year that started on Friday, 2010

http://www.stroom.nl/activiteiten/tentoonstelling.php?t_id=6387647

12 Dec '10 - 20 Feb '11
Opening on Saturday 11 December at 17:00
Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
Entrance: free

Art as Social Critique

surprise

The Best Surprise Is No Surprise covers a 7-year period beginning in 1999, and chronicles communiqués for exhibitions, publications, events and symposia chosen from the archive of electronic announcements originally distributed by e-flux, and selected both by the e-flux readers and by some of the most active international curators, artists, critics and art historians of our time, including:

Zdenka Badovinac, Ariane Beyn, Mircea Cantor, Binna Choi, Elena Filipovic, Liam Gillick, Jörg Heiser, Jennifer Higgie, Jens Hoffmann, Eungie Joo, Samuel Keller, Francesco Manacorda, Viktor Misiano, Naeem Mohaiemen, Jessica Morgan, Molly Nesbit, Ernesto Neto, Natasa Petresin, Brian Sholis, Nancy Spector, Christine Tohme, Barbara Vanderlinden, Octavio Zaya, and Tirdad Zolghadr.

The book, published by JRP|Ringier press, contains an essay by Daniel Birnbaum and an interview byHans Ulrich Obrist with Anton Vidokle & Julieta Aranda.

literature taste

Ways of World Making

The title of this book has a big influence on the latest Venice Biennial's name "Making Worlds"

I came upon it in a rather beautiful book called Ways of World Making, by the American philosopher Nelson Goodman. The title is there to communicate an atmosphere rather than be too strict. The idea of "making’’ is about art in a studio, or a sort of laboratory environment — something very different from a museum, says Daniel Birnbaum.

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/31535/conversation-with-daniel-birnbaum/

What is it that drives you?

Power Ekroth talks with Daniel Birnbaum in 2005..

PE: Your background with a PhD on Husserl in philosophy is by no means a natural way leading into a curatorial role and working with visual art. Why did you become a curator and what is it that drives you?

DB: Initially and fundamentally it is about a genuine interest to try to understand. It is about trying to understand ones immediate contemporary times which one is apart of and also not being merely a spectator of it, but instead being on the artists side of the fence so to speak. This way one tries to get into a dialogue with the contemporary “zeitgeist” and somehow also to try to formulate it.

I have always been around artists and working together with artists; 25 years ago I was already helping out artists with their exhibitions but not perhaps in such a conscious way as today, and also I started to write about art in daily newspapers which in a way also is about going into dialogue with the artists. However the role of the critic has been hollowed-out, perhaps especially so in the Nordic countries although it is a global tendency and my interest is much deeper inside the discursive moment, writing essays for example. I never wanted to become a museum curator, maybe because my mother worked as a museum curator, instead I was always much more interested in the production-side of art and being behind the scenes. It is an idea about immediate contemporaneaity I guess and to be able to formulate it. The exhibition as a medium is a very interesting medium; I regard exhibitions to be visual essays. If Harald Szeemann used the term of “visual poems” I would rather like to use the term “visual essays.”

To understand one’s contemporaneaity means that one must also see to the contemporary history and this was also what we had in mind with the more historic discursive element in the Italian Pavilion curated together with Francesco Bonami in Venice two years ago.

Strike

Strike by Hito Steyerl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpGobhaYT8Y&feature=related

The Curious Museum

Van Abbe Museum in NL attempts to enlarge the experience and understanding of traditional museum. They call it a curious museum and understand it as a research project.

Walking through the museum, visitors are likely to be asked about their personal background and motivations - the traditional wall texts have been replaced with wooden modules that provide questions as access points to the featured exhibitions: ‘Where were you in 1989?’ ‘What’s your idea of the perfect museum?'

http://www.vanabbemuseum.nl/en/browse-all/?tx_vabdisplay_pi1[ptype]=29&tx_vabdisplay_pi1[project]=704&cHash=40c97a2063

Must Have: Studio International

I am looking for the Vol. 195 No. 900.1/1980

Special Issue: Art Galleries & Alternative Spaces of Studio International Magazine.

History In The Present

The latest issue of Manifesta Journal, a journal of contemporary curatorship is quite good. It suggest looking back in time and exhibition's history. Especially due to Seth Siegelaub's interview, it is one of my highlights now. Enjoy!

Exhibitions are, by definition, ephemeral. They experience time dramatically. While the works displayed are usually destined to endure, the exhibition itself is condemned to disappear. From a historical perspective, the most authentic locus of an exhibition is arguably in the viewer's memory. Not all exhibitions, however, are granted a place in history.

The Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement

f 'The Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement,' [Seth Siegelaub and Robert Projansky]. The Agreement, was written in 1971 by Siegelaub, well-known as the organizer of early Conceptual art exhibitions in the late 1960s, in collaboration with the lawyer Bob Projansky.

Beyond Curating

Great Symposium is coming soon in Essen!

http://www.tanzplan-essen-2010.de/index_en.html

Friday 28- Sunday 30 January 2o11, Pact zolverein Essen

Escape the overcode

The Forgotten Space

Still from The Forgotten Space, Allan Sekula and Noël Burch

Winner of the Orrizonti jury prize at the 67. Venice Film Festival 2010

He who controls the sea, ruins the world

In the film essay The Forgotten Space, the American artist Allan Sekula and the French-American director and film historian Noël Burch examine the sea, the ‘forgotten’ space in our modern era, in which - albeit out of sight - globalisation is leaving its most pressing visible mark.

http://www.skor.nl/artefact-4891-en.html

Conceptual Art and Politics Of Publicity

Seth Siegelaub and Hans Ulrich Obrist

Published In TRANS> #6, 1999
copyright TRANS> arts.cultures.media
Pages # 51 - 63

HANS ULRICH OBRIST:
My first question concerns your most recent activity. Could you tell me about this special issue of Art Press called the "The Context of Art/The Art of Context" published in October 1996?

SETH SIEGELAUB:
For a number of years now, there's been a certain amount of interest in the art made during the late 1960s - perhaps for reasons of nostalgia or a return to the "good old days", who knows? - and as part of this interest, over the few years I have been approached by a number of people to do an exhibition of "concept art" and I have always refused, as I try to avoid repeating myself. But in 1990, when I was approached by Marion and Roswitha Fricke, who have a gallery and bookshop in Dusseldorf with the same request, I suggested doing a project which would try to deal with how and why people are looking at this period, and thus, ask some questions about how art history in general is made. To do this, I thought the most interesting thing to do would be to ask the artists themselves who were active during the late 1960s and have lived through the past last twenty-five years, to give their thoughts and opinions about the art world; how (or if) it had changed, how their life had changed, etc. The Frickes were interested in the project, and together we began to organize it.

for more http://www.e-flux.com/projects/do_it/notes/interview/i001_text.html

Exhibitions History: book launch and discussion

This event celebrates the launch of the Exhibition Histories series at the Temporary Stedelijk in Amsterdam.

Introduced by Sophie Berrebi (University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam) the event will lead into a public interview between Teresa Gleadowe (Afterall Books, London) and Seth Siegelaub (curator, Amsterdam) which will explore key issues in 1960s and 1970s exhibition practice. The afternoon will conclude with a round-table discussion with Charles Esche (Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven), Deborah Cherry (University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam), Teresa Gleadowe, Ann Goldstein (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam), Christian Rattemeyer (Museum of Modern Art, New York) and Seth Siegelaub, moderated by Sophie Berrebi.

The launch will be held in the Auditorium, Stedelijk Museum, Paulus Potterstraat 13, 1071 CX Amsterdam. Entrance price: € 5.00 + valid ticket to museum.

The launch of Exhibiting the New Art: 'Op Losse Schroeven' and 'When Attitudes Become Form' 1969 inaugurates the Exhibition Histories series, which investigates exhibitions that have shaped the way contemporary art is experienced, made and discussed.

Map Marathon

Serpentine Gallery hosts a project titled 'Map Marathon' during the Frieze Art Fair week. I love this real multi-disciplinary approach, including poets, writers, philosophers, scholars, musicians, architects, designers and scientists among the visual artists.


http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2010/10/this_weekendmap_marathonsaturd.html

Conversation: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Daniel Birnbaum

The on-going exhibition in Portikus is by GUILLERMO FAIVOVICH & NICOLÁS GOLDBERG.

http://portikus.de/9.html?&L=1

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Daniel Birnbaum talks about the work.

CCB: Are we sure of anything? Are we sure that we are “we” because we know we shall die, and because we have language? What is an artwork according to you?

DB: Well, I doubt that I can give you a satisfactory definition of the notion of “art” right away. But I am quite convinced that this cosmic readymade will be accepted as a work of art—and a pretty great one at that. There is a rather recent book titled After Finitude by the French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux that would be worth mentioning here. He talks about objects that are so ancient that they precede not only humanity and intelligent life on the planet, but also any form of life known to us. He asks what these objects might have to say about our modern philosophical tradition, which takes subjectivity and language as its starting point. For him, the fact that we have these objects and can make scientific statements about them forces us beyond an insistence on finitude that is typical of modern thinking after Kant. The meteorite could be an example…

CCB: Yes, it could, if one looks at it from the point of view of time. However, Karl Marx, in “The Meteors,” the fifth chapter of his doctoral dissertation, uses the theory of celestial bodies of Epicurus to argue almost the opposite. To him, understanding the materiality of meteorites allows one to avoid any belief in the unknowable and the infinite: “The heavenly bodies are the supreme realization of weight. In them all antinomies between form and matter, between concept and existence, which constituted the development of the atom, are resolved; in them, all required determinations are realized”. One way or another, the Campo del Cielo meteorite field 1,200 kilometers north of Buenos Aires in Argentina was known from time immemorial to the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the region and since the late sixteenth century to the Spanish, although only in the late 1700s were scientists convinced that meteorites fell from the sky and were not rocks coming from the earth’s core.

DB: One last question. With this exhibition we are trying to rejoin what belongs together. But, of course, our rock is still in two parts. Do you see this as a tragic work?

CCB: I see the reunification of El Taco meteorite, from Campo del Cielo, as a joyous work that celebrates—at least provisionally—the possibility of reintegration. The fact that it gets divided again, at the end of the exhibition, just means that art could be a lot better than life.

after68s

http://www.after1968.org/

after 68s..

or after berlin wall fall.

always referring the historical events.

to create a statement.

The End(s) of the Museum

Early morning, I was checking the lecture's list for this term at school, and I came across a name 'Thomas Keenan' who serves as a curator and prof. on literature and human rights. While I was thinkin that it is a brilliant idea to bring Keenan for a lecture, at the same time I was googling one the books he co-edited, titled 'The End(s) of the Museum' and ended up finding this article. let's remember 90s..while MMK questions and makes series of lectures named 'Production of Museum' It is still a vivid topic to comment..



The End(s) of the Museum is a concerted collective attempt to come to grips with the questions of what the museum has been and done in the West, and where it might be going. Is the Museum as we have experienced it coming to an end? Has it outlived its definitions - from classical to postmodern - and, if so, what might become of it ?
John G. Hanhardt (Curator), Thomas Keenan (Curator)

With Janine Antoni, Christian Boltanski, Marcel Broodthaers, Sophie Calle, Bill Fontana, Joan Fontcuberta, Andrea Fraser, Dan Graham, Jamelie Hassan, Ilya Kabakov, Louise Lawler, Antoni Muntadas, Julia Scher, Francesc Torres

Organised by Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona

Of course, a reflexion on the possible disappearance of the museum cannot be separated from an examination of its aims and purposes, its ends. The exhibition and symposium are opportunities for rigorous and adventurous, artistic and theoretical speculation on an extremely challenging topic, one which holds within it the question of nothing less than the memory and the promise of our culture.

But "our" culture and "the" museum - as an institution, an idea and a practice - are not, could not be, just one thing. In fact, what is most interesting are the ways in which this situation has developed into an expression of multiple desires and goals which now, more than ever, seem at odds with one another. Classically, the museum was oriented toward the preservation and conservation of the canon of art history and aesthetics. Modernism gave it the task of embodying the utopian and recuperative power of art, and expanded our notions of what belonged in a museum. Today, the museum often seeks to become a space where a new community of cultures and histories challenges inherited aesthetic paradigms. These heterogeneous definitions and intentions have not simply succeeded one another, but instead often co-exist in an institution that envisions itself as directed toward the fulfillment of them all.

The End(s) of the Museum does not pretend to imagine a museum of the future, nor to recall nostalgically what the museum once was or might have been. Instead it is a sustained theoretical and critical inquiry into the genealogy of the museum. This implies not so much a search for the roots of the museum, as if history were only a continuous development from an origin, but a rigorous theoretical investigation of the museum as an historical artifact. What are the epistemological presuppositions of this institution, which is also to say, what are its social, economic and political stakes? The End(s) of the Museum aims neither to describe situations nor to prescribe solutions but rather to analyze the ways in which the museum is imagined within and without the histories and institutions which have overdetermined it. In deconstructing the locus of the museum in Western art and culture, we hope to provide the conceptual tools to redefine, and thus enable a new theory of, this project called the museum.

The End(s) of the Museum includes work by fourteen artists. Some of them have created work especially for this exhibit, others are showing previous work relevant to the questions raised by the exhibition.

http://www.fundaciotapies.org/site/spip.php?rubrique462

a happy level playing

'And the idea of a happy level playing field between artists and curators is indeed far too pastoral.' says Tirdad Zolghadr. Is that so?

Our broken American hearts

Hope is once again tied to the USA. Hope of a re-emerging order, some kind of decency and maybe just the hope of a new hope. After eight years with George W. Bush and his warring administration an alleged secterian and unrealistic minority of critics has turned into an overwhelming global majority. That´s hopefull. But what will happen now? A restart?

The Museum of Forgetting’s next project – Our Broken American Hearts – is a reflection on our relationship with USA, focusing on the mixture of love, disappointment, critique and re-born passion. Previously we have worked with the Iraq war, and media’s coverage of this war. A starting point for our engagement, work and creativity was a critical view of the US war politics, propaganda and the failure of the media industry to critically cover the ‘war on terror.’ Now we are interested in how ‘we’, Swedes, Europeans, people, you name it/us – in spite of our indignation and outrage also hosts a lot of love for USA. many have been fed, and eagerly taken inside its steady outflow of popular culture. Intellectuals and academics around the globe have for long had American output as their dominant source of inspiration and confrontation.

The hegemony is deep in all areas. So is the love and the criticism, as well. It is as if a US-critical part falls out from every generation, like out of a chemical solution. It is a matter of coming into consciousness as well as a crisis. In any case, the falling out, falling away, from USA, rooms beside the joy of critical awareness and articulation, also a sting of disappointment.

Our project is thus, not at first hand a project about USA or ‘America.’ It is rather about us (everybody are invited) and ‘America’ in us, and now, after Bush, about our broken American hearts.

Participating artists: Johanna Billing, Kalle Brolin, Karin Broos, Dror Feiler, Gonzalo Frasca (UY), Maria Friberg, Coco Fusco(USA), Björn Melhus (TY), Erik Pauser, Ride1, Åsa Sjöström and Gunilla Sköld Feiler.

The Unknown Political Prisoner

14 March – 30 April 1953
About | Visiting information | Book tickets
The Institute of Contemporary Arts organised a world-wide sculpture competition to commemorate or symbolise the theme of The Unknown Political Prisoner.

The intention in suggesting such a theme was to pay tribute to those individuals who, in many countries and in diverse political situations, had dared to offer their liberty and their lives for the cause of human freedom.

The Competition was undertaken on a truly international scale, in the hope that it would prove to be an inspiration not only to artists, but to all those in positions great or small who may give support to the arts.

Entry applications reached 3,500 from fifty-seven countries: Reg Butler won the £4500 Grand Prize; Mirko Basaldella, Barbara Hepworth, Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo were the winners of £750.

http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/theunknownpoliticalprisoner/default.shtm

30 years have passed since it was published

The Issue of 'Otherness' has Become a Cliché, But the Problem Still Exists

http://eipcp.net/policies/2015/alptekin/en

by Huseyin Alptekin

Post Colonial Discourse

In Post-Colonial Drama: theory, practice, politics, Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins write: "the term postcolonialism – according to a too-rigid etymology – is frequently misunderstood as a temporal concept, meaning the time after colonialism has ceased, or the time following the politically determined Independence Day on which a country breaks away from its governance by another state, Not a naïve teleological sequence which supersedes colonialism, postcolonialism is, rather, an engagement with and contestation of colonialism's discourses, power structures, and social hierarchies ... A theory of postcolonialism must, then, respond to more than the merely chronological construction of post-independence, and to more than just the discursive experience of imperialism."


Helen Gilbert, Joanne Tompkins, Post-Colonial Drama: theory, practice, politics, Routledge 1996

Political manifesto as curatorial project

It makes me say "Oh I wish I was in London in the year 2007/ I was 2 years late" But we can always follow up what had happened.

Should curators get involved in politics? Curators and artists look back, with reference to the ICA's political curating history.
A talk held at the ICA on Tuesday 27 November 2007.
From the post-WWII era to Vietnam and 'the war on terror', curators have used the political issues of the day to create relevant and provocative exhibitions. The ICA has often been at the forefront of this practice, playing host to the politically controversial Unknown Political Prisoner exhibition in 1953, offering solidarity in the early 60s to LA artists protesting against Vietnam, and most recently inviting artists' proposals for a Memorial to the Iraq War (2007). In a time which is often described as apathetic, but which has also seen some of the biggest anti-war demonstrations ever, should contemporary politics be the domain of the curator?
Speakers:
Liam Gillick, artist, and contributor to Memorial to the Iraq War;
Sophie Hope, co-founder B+B, co-curator, Real Estate for London in Six Easy Steps, ICA (2005);
Will Bradley, co-curator, Forms of Resistance: Artists and the desire for social change from 1871 to the present, Van Abbemuseum;
Marysia Lewandowska, Polish-born, London-based artist who has collaborated with Neil Cummings since 1995, and whose recent Enthusiasm project explored, through amateur films made by Polish factory workers under socialism, the potential of working outside 'official' culture.
Chaired by Andrew Brighton, writer, contributing editor to Critical Quarterly and painter, with an introduction on the history of the ICA's involvement in political projects by Ben Cranfield.
Please note: this is a recording of a live event. Sound levels and quality may vary, and the recording does not include audience discussion that took place at the end of the event.
60 Years of Curating is developed in association with Ben Cranfield and the London Consortium. Ben Cranfield is a collaborative doctoral award student at the ICA and London Consortium, currently working on an intellectual history of the arts in postwar Britain.

Magicians Of Earth

PARIS, May 19— ''Magicians of the Earth,'' which opened Thursday at the Pompidou Center and La Villette, brings together contemporary art from all over the world, juxtaposing artists from New Guinea and Italy, Australia and England, Tibet and the United States. Every culture and countless artistic approaches have been appropriated in a spectacular post-Modern bazaar in which everything seems equally valid and available.

NYtimes,1989 http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/20/arts/review-art-juxtaposing-the-new-from-all-over.html


The monster show presented in Paris during the summer under the title Magiciens de la Terre (Magicians of the Earth) will be remembered as the first-ever attempt at a planetary exhibition of contemporary art. Four years in the making, the show assembled works of one hundred artists from some forty countries--mostly countries and regions that have been largely overlooked by the mainline art establishment. It filled the entire top floor of the Pompidou Center as well as the whole of the six-plus acre converted cattle shed of La Grande Halle de la Villette. In many ways, Magiciens was more like a worldwide biennale of a new kind rather than a conventional exhibition.

http://www.worldandi.com/specialreport/1989/september/Sa16748.htm

A Bigger Picture: why contemporary art curators need to get out more

Barrie attempts to see and show the bigger picture..

Text of Arthur Batchelor Lecture delivered by David Barrie at the University of East Anglia on 6 May 2010

http://cdobarrie.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/a-bigger-picture-why-contemporary-art-curators-need-to-get-out-more/

While researching / look back in time

Tomorrow, I will be giving my first lecture as a guest lecturer with the topic 'Contemporary Photography From Turkey; Direct and Indirect Approaches Locality and Socio-political Engagement'

I think it makes sense to begin with the function of photography in Turkey at the late ottoman era and the early republic period. By 90s, the aesthetics of visual arts is revolutionized in Turkey, and many talented artists and critical works are appeared. However, before arguing about these artists, looking back in time is a good idea.

some interesting articles I came across

"Between Orientalist Cliches and Images of Modernization: Photographic Practice in the Late Ottoman Era"

http://www.mwoodward.com/ottomanphoto.html

"Ottoman Photography of the Late Nineteenth Century: An 'Innocent' Modernism?" by Wendy M.K Shaw

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a908920072~db=all~jumptype=rss

for general information http://www.turkishconsulategeneral.us/abtturkey/cult/fine/photo.shtml

but to get to know the contemporary part..you should attend my course.

Agonism

Agonism is a political theory which emphasises the potentially positive aspects of certain (but not all) forms of political conflict. It accepts a permanent place for such conflict, but seeks to show how we might accept and channel this positively. For this reason, agonists are especially concerned to intervene in debates about democracy. The tradition is also referred to as agonistic pluralism.

yes, I am a little wikipedia bird.

'Keep It Real'

my critical dictionary: simulacrum

I find wikipedia is more useful than going to academia sometimes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacrum

The Exhibitionist

Curatorial journal established by Jens Hoffmann
I had a chance to read the second issue, I am amazed.

http://www.the-exhibitionist-journal.com/pastissues.html

The Political Potential of Curatorial Practise

http://www.on-curating.org/documents/oncurating_issue_0410.pdf

My conversation with Jimmie Durham

My conversation with Jimmie Durham was almost something like that..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIwM9u-h37c

Columbus Day

The title comes from a poetry book, written by the artist Jimmie Durham in the early 80s. (1983)

Columbus day refers to the Columbus's arrival to America.

I would love to have the first edition, to smell the old papers.

text + concept + emotions

marcel proust calls it 'involuntary memory'

you sent a photo

internet became unbearable

Juan Gaitan on Sara Rajaei

"I considered to reflect a characteristically “bourgeois” reference, but not in the sense of “alienation” – not the anonymous stare of the maid-servant in Manet’s painting – but in the sense of a space so profoundly dedicated to itself, so invested in itself, that barely anything could exist, at least affectively, outside of it. Laughter and tears, memories, broken objects … "

David Elliot tells that..

without the ethics, there's never be the aesthetics, - they don't exist independently from each other - contemporary art expresses anything it has to express, and attitude towards freedom of freedom for itself, but freedom or autonomies good enough - so-called the autonomy of art needs to express our freedoms and that's why we do.

re-dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y

Let's re dial the history http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWyiY0JywC4&feature=related

Johan Grimonprez at Fruitmarket Gallery http://www.fruitmarket.co.uk/

22 May - 11 July 2010

Journal for Contemporary Art

One of the discoveries of lazy sunny sunday

http://www.ctrlp-artjournal.org/

Art in the Age of Biopolitics: From Artwork to Art Documentation

Must read article vol. II http://www.ranadasgupta.com/notes.asp?note_id=34

by Boris Groys (translation: Steven Lindberg)
art, documentary, Benjamin, biopolitics

from the Catalogue to Documenta 11

Question of the day

What is the difference between, organizing and curating talk series?

The task of both practices inquire illustrating a framework, calling for speakers and moderating it.

So, why to call 'curating' rather than organizing? Curating talk series evokes more intellectual work process, than calling it 'organizing' which mostly refers to business field. Or do people use it just to be trendy and look like they did a theoretically engaged job?

Quotation of the day from Anton Vidokle

quotation of the day

Yet another example of such a tendency is the “Curating Degree Zero Archive,” a traveling exhibition of “curatorial research” designed as a kind of artistic installation. Conceived by curators, the exhibition circulates through a network of public art institutions largely run by curators. The issue is not whether curators should have archives or open them to others, or to what degree this is interesting or not; rather, the question concerns whether the people in charge of administering exhibitions of art should be using the spaces and funding available for art to exhibit their own reading lists, references, and sources as a kind of artwork. Even more ludicrous is the fact that the dissolution of the self-contained (autonomous) artwork is cited as a justification for supplanting the work of artists in the museum altogether, as shown on the website of this curatorial project:

Archives have become an increasingly common practice in the art world since the 1960s. On the one hand, there are archives founded by artists or collectors; on the other, a more recent development, there are those founded by curators, who sought to make their collections of materials accessible and make their selection criteria public. That desire may have arisen from the dissolution of the notion of the self-contained artwork, which has been eclipsed by a contingent art object that makes a new form of cultural memory necessary and always contains a note of protest and a critique of museum practices.⁷

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/136#_ftn4

Institution Building

Nikolaus Hirsch, Philipp Misselwitz, Markus Miessen, Matthias Görlich (Eds.)Institution Building
Artists, Curators, Architects in the Struggle for Institutional Space

With contributions by Shumon Basar, Andrea Phillips, and Jan Verwoert

This book presents a study that conceptualizes, tests, and practically applies the spatial strategy for the European Kunsthalle. The investigation is the result of the activities incorporated into a two-year work practice from 2005 to 2007, an iterative “applied research” informed by resonances between theory and practice.


The developed approach attempts to constructively question ideas of “stability” and “instability” and—in doing so—proposes a specific strategy for the European Kunsthalle that positions it within a local, regional, national and international contemporary discourse.

Nikolaus Hirsch, Philipp Misselwitz, Markus Miessen, and Matthias Görlich have developed three spatial strategies: an unstable configuration, a stable strategy as well as a model that consolidates the potentials of both variants towards a, albeit slowly, growing institution. The proposal acts as a laboratory that plans a collective structure consisting of individual components. It results in a network of possible spatial options stemming from programmatic modules and leads to numerous possible spatial configurations. This alternative institution is a showcase of a growing phenomenon problematizing the relationship between authorship and institution. As time spans of exhibitions become shorter and programs become more differentiated, architecture in itself becomes exhibition—renegotiating the default role models of artists and architects

sunday morning article

Samuel Maoz: my life at war and my hopes for peace

The former Israeli tank gunner turned award-winning director talks about his controversial film, Lebanon, and why he's still in the line of fire

click for more, http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/may/02/israel-lebanon-samuel-maoz-tanks

art baby revolution

Jonathan Meese at Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai. Photo: Jan Bauer. Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts

Never Neutral

Sin titulo / Untitled Hotel (Hotel Regis terremoto, Ciudad de Mexico), 1985

Courtesy the artist and Kurimanzutto, Mexico City

Opening, Never Neutral May 6th 2010

Mısır Apartmanı, Istanbul

what the flesh requires

Antoine Renard's project, May 2010

carnival

Sven Johne humour reminded me the images from Postkapital archieve of Daniel Andujar.