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.