I liked 'The Rest of Now', the Bolzano section of the Manifesta biennale so much that I fear that I'll end up forgetting about the other exhibitions I saw at the Biennale this week. Two of the participating artists/architects took very literally the questions put forward by The Raqs Media Collective who curated the exhibition: What gets left behind when everything is taken away? What can be retrieved, and what can be remembered? How can the residual become the engine of meaning?
Over time, parasitic micro-organisms such as cyanobacterias and the Cladosporium genus of fungi, have occupied and taken over the walls of the abandoned Alumix factory. The restoration of the ex-factory means that the building is loosing its value as habitat for the organisms.
Architects Stangeland and...
Established in 1933 in the austere and elegant Palazzo dell'Arte designed by architect Giovanni Muzio, the Milan Triennale regularly hosts some impressive design, art and architecture exhibitions of the 20th century.
Triennale Milano, entrance view. Photo by Gabriele Basilico
Launched in the wake of the Stuttgart Weissenhof --an estate of working class dwelling which was built in Stuttgart in 1927, the opening exhibition at the Palazzo back in 1933 was dedicated to the theme of housing.
One of the Triennale's Summer exhibitions is revisiting the theme of affordable housing under a more contemporary side. Casa per tutti is pressing architects to give their attention to a theme that was central in the inter-war and post-WW2 reconstruction periods and is once again crucial in...
I first came across the name of this extraordinary place in one of the BBC's Imagine-documentaries about German director Werner Herzog, who asked to be met in what he called one of his favorite places in Los Angeles, The Museum of Jurassic Technology. After locating it in Culver City, BBC's Alan Yentob remarks: "I begin to understand why Herzog likes it here. The exhibits in the museum cross the line between fact and fiction, between reality and imagination."
Front of the museum in Culver City, Los Angeles
The collections of the museum, which was founded in 1989 and is being curated by David Hildebrand Wilson and Diana Wilson, span over three little buildings and consist of pieces from about a dozen sub-collections which are often centered around a certain subject such as belief...
The REACTIVATE!! exhibition at the at the Espai d' Art Contemporani de Castelló, near Valencia (Spain), being an almost endless source of wonders i tried to cover last week (see REACTIVATE!! Part 1, Urban reanimations and the minimal intervention and REACTIVATE!! Part 2, Instant urbanism), i still have a last story in my magic bag to share with you:
Some of the projects presented in Castellon were commissioned by the contemporary art center to engage in a site-specific fashion with the theme of 'remodeled spaces and minimal interventions.'
The most poetical installation was created by ex.studio, two Barcelona-based Mexican architects Patricia Meneses and Iván Juárez with an impressive portfolio chock-full of projects that investigate and experiment with new ways of relating...
You might remember that a year ago Marc Owens designed the Avatar Machine, a system which replicates the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface.
His reflections on identity and gaming didn't stop there, during the Royal College of Art Summer show, the Platform 11 graduate was exhibiting his latest game-inspired works.
A study by psychologists at Nottingham Trent University has found that 54 percent of all males and 68 percent of all females "gender swap"--or create online personas of their opposite sex.
A real life manifestation of that practice, the Virtual Transgender Suit replicates the aesthetics of the typical virtual female form and catapults them within a...
Corine Hazoume is the founder of the porcelain and ceramic manufacturer Cera Afrique,
which is described as a "...A laboratory of creation and design which defines new lines of creativity, directs trends..."In an interview with 100% culture(Fr) she stated:
Only work generates wealth. The use of our materials and science can help us to free ourselves from dependency...foster boundless...
Christien Meindertsma is a designer with an investigative mind. She analyzes, surveys and in her latest project she went as far as dissecting a pig.
A few years ago, as she was graduating from the Design Academy Eindhoven, she bought for a few euros the 3267 items taken from the passengers who embark at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam during one week: spoons, nail clippers, golf tools, bottle openers, pipe wrench, pocket knives, one axe, combs, toy pistols, etc. She photographed and archived the collection in Checked Baggage, a book containing the pictures of all these 'tools of supposed soldiers of skyjacking and terrorism.' The book itself was not safe for air travel as it came packaged with one of the 'prohibited items'.
Next, Meindertsma set her sight on sheep. She used the...
As announced two days ago, here's a lengthier report about REACTIVATE!! Espacios remodelados e intervenciones mínimas (Remodeled spaces and minimal interventions), an exhibition which takes place until August 31 at the Espai d' Art Contemporani de Castelló, an hour away from Valencia.
View of the exhibition. Image courtesy of the Espai d' Art Contemporani
Curated by Francesca Ferguson in collaboration with Pepe Ballesteros, REACTIVATE!! is merging two exhibitions organized last year by the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel (S AM). The resulting show brings together a cluster of recently-built projects which demonstrate how resourceful architects and designers can transform disused, outworn or inadequate urban spaces and buildings into efficient, and even aesthetically...
REACTIVATE!! is a two-fold exhibition which runs until late August, at the Espai d' Art Contemporani de Castelló, near Valencia in Spain. It engages with recent architecture projects which makes the most of disused, outworn or inadequate urban spaces and buildings to create striking new edifices. On the cheap and with jaw-dropping results.
Heri & Salli, Real Landscape-Real Mistake. Photo : Heri & Salli
It's also dedicated to contemporary urban interventions that appear to put into practice that which the Situationist International developed as radical urban critique and theory.
Views of the exhibition. Images courtesy of the Espai d' Art Contemporani de Castelló
Borrowing from Situationist strategy of détournement, the temporary and modular architecture projects...
Born 20 years ago, ISEA, the International Symposium on Electronic Art has the objective of discussing and showcasing creative productions that apply new technologies in interactive and digital media. While i'm spending my last hours in quiet and sweaty Turin, Brisbane-based artist Priscilla Bracks is in Singapore because that's where ISEA takes place this year.
She kindly wrote this report from the main exhibition, AIR (Artists In Residence):
The juried show features 16 works arising out of a 3 month residency each selected artist undertook in Singapore, working collaboratively with local organizations.
Images Priscilla Bracks
Finally, We Hear One Another is a work by Kelly Jaclynn Andres that enables people to experience each other's soundscapes. Collaborating with the...
There’s a lot of work being shown at the Creative Capital workshop at Williams College that’s political and provocative, but not much that’s laugh-out-loud funny. Thank god for Golan Levin .
Levin is a Pittsburgh-based artist and a professor at Carnegie Mellon. He’s interested in the phenomenon of interactivity, and currently interested investigating vision tracking as a way of producing artwork that looks back at you. There’s been great work done that’s sensitive to the position of the viewer - the beautiful video installations of my friend Camille Utterback , the lovely, meditative “healing pools” that Brian Knep showed today. Levin’s work is built around an even more complex technical hack - it tracks your eye movement to figure out where you’re looking and...
I spent yesterday in a conversation at the Berkman Center about possible models to support “difficult” journalism - important news reporting that’s hard to support fiscally. Today, I’m at an event at Williams College, my alma mater, at a meeting of Creative Capital, a summer retreat for over 200 artists, consultants and advisors.
Creative Capital is investigating alternative models to support innovation in the arts. Supported by the Warhol Foundation and other arts funders, CC gives money to artists in a very interesting way. They give modest grants to artists throughout their projects, in the early phases of planning, to support a premiere or opening, and to promote the work. At the same time, CC gives lots of professional support and training, helping artists develop...
I’ve spent three days hanging out at the Creative Capital retreat at Williams College (Editor's note: For full disclosure, Worldchanging's Alex Steffen has also been a consultant at this retreat in the past). Creative Capital is an arts development organization that supports artists both fiscally and via extensive coaching - these retreats give the artists sponsored a chance to show their work, and a couple of days where artists and consultants can work closely together. It’s intended as a sort of “venture capital” model, where succesful artists are expected to pay back the foundation. That’s not likely for many of the artists supported, but a small number have returned some or all the money invested by Creative Capital.
The most striking piece of work I saw at the...
Two nights ago, Canadian photographer (and Worldchanging Chairman Edward Burtynsky was speaking at the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco, proposing a 10.000-year gallery to go along with the Clock of the Long Now, as part of their ongoing Seminars About Long term Thinking.
C. N. Track No. 1
For those not familiar with the project, among many other endeavors, the foundation is planning to build a mechanical clock in a remote mountain site, designed by Danny Hillis [Pati Hillis, Danny's partner, has served on Worldchanging's board - editor.], which will run for ten-thousand years along with a library. Practically all the foundation's projects aim to provide counterpoint to today's "faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better" thinking. The foundation's work is very...
Storm Media Group founded by Obi Asika is a multimedia,film production and broadcast facilitation company. The groups components include:
-StormInteractive
-IBST Media
-Storm Records
Read related LadyBrille interview with Obi Asika...
Marissa Fick Jordan discusses Wire Weavers at......
A quick project seen last month at the RCA Summer show. This one is by Design Products (platform 11) graduate and engineer Benjamin Males:
The Static Obesity Logging device, part of Target set of projects, can be installed almost anywhere. The casing of the innocent-looking device conceals a computer, digital and analogue inputs and outputs and a camera. The system is able to remotely calculate Body Mass Index and communicate the data via wired and wireless networks.
The purpose of the device is to raise a series of slightly disturbing questions. Surveillance technologies are becoming increasingly important and invasive in our daily life (especially in the UK). How far can it go? Could we envision that one day surveillance technology will have a role in healthcare? Could it...
Stewart Brand writes up Ed's talk thusly:
Photographer Edward Burtynsky made a formal proposal for a permanent art gallery in the chamber that encloses the 10,000-year Clock in its Nevada mountain. The gallery would consist of art in materials as durable as the alloy steel and jade of the Clock itself, and it would be curated slowly over the centuries to reflect changing interests in the rolling present and the accumulating past.
Photographs in particular should be in the 10,000-year Gallery, Burtynsky said, “because they tell us more than any previous medium. When we think of our own past, we tend to think in terms of family photos.”
But photographic prints, especially color prints, degrade badly over time. Burtynsky went on a quest for a technical solution. He thought that...
Readers in San Francisco have the opportunity tomorrow to hear Worldchanging Chairman Ed Burtynsky deliver a Long Now Seminar. Ed will be talking about his ideas for long-term intergenerational communication through art:
There should be a gallery that collects, displays, and sifts such works over centuries and millennia, and develops ways to preserve them. That is exactly Burtynsky's plan--- a 10,000-year Gallery to accompany the 10,000-year Clock. His presentation will explore and demonstrate the idea.
I'd bet this is going to be a hell of an interesting talk.
It's at the Fort Mason Center, it's $10, and the details can be found on the Long Now site.
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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Arts at 8:18 AM)...
Variety reports on Focus Features Africa First Program which:
Will award 5 African filmmakers $10,000 in financing for post or production work on a narrative short that makes use of local African film industry resources. Filmmakers selected for the grants will retain the copyrights to their projects as well as artistic, budgetary and editorial control with support from a team at Focus.
via...
While in London i went to see a few photography exhibitions. And yes! i realize i wrote a couple of days ago that i'd focus on the RCA show this week but i can't keep that promise, i'm starting to bore myself. Now one of those photo shows is called freshfacedandwildeyed and it marks the launch of an annual exhibition presenting the most striking work by visual arts graduates from BA and MA courses across the UK. There were 25 photographers selected. Some of them had all my attention:
Dewars being filled. Cryonics facility, Phoenix, Arizona
Murray Ballard's Cryonics series explores the practice of preserving dead people or animals by freezing them at extremely low temperatures, in the hope that science will be able to revive them in the future. The photographer traveled to a...
The largest part of the pharmaceuticals and chemicals we take go through our bodies and eventually end up in waste water. As water and waste treatment plants haven't been designed to filter them, the content of our medicine cabinets are eventually passed into the water supply. In London, tap water comes from surface water which implies that traces of our medicine can end up in our drinking water. This results in local differences in tap water, based on the food and drugs we ingest.
Tuur van Balen, one of the graduates of Design Interactions at the RCA, decided to explore this issue in a project which imho had the perfect balance between speculation and solid anchorage into reality.
The way people live and behave in each zone of London can be reflected in the quality of the tap...
Revital Cohen's final project at the Design Interactions department looked at how cross-breeding man with machines or other species can open up new design opportunities and a space for debate (see her previous project the Telepresence Frame.) I realize that most of the readers are familiar with this concept of 'design for debate' but to avoid any misunderstanding, let's just remind that design for debate explores how design can be used as a medium to draw attention to the social, cultural and ethical implications of new technologies. The resulting design proposals do not provide answers, but they make complex issues tangible, and therefore debatable (via).
Revital's Life Support project looks for way of disconnecting people from the therapeutic machines and cold technologies...
I found this edition of the PHotoEspaña festival amazingly good. One of the most thought-provoking shows, Committed Places, Topography and the Present, displays the work of ten photographers who use the genre of topography photography as a medium to go beyond the representation of physical places and reflect on a series of social, historical or political issue. These photographers know how to work their public: first you grab their attention with a spectacular or intriguing image then you tell them the story that lurks behind the print. Some of the participating artists were familiar to me (Geert Goiris , Walter Niedermayr and Taryn Simon) but i discovered other photographers worth a mention and some praise:
Beate Gütschow, S #22
The show opens with Beate Gütschow's puzzling...
The Helga de Alvear gallery in Madrid is currently running a (very timely) exhibition on the controversial topic of Extraordinary Rendition. The expression was coined by the Bush administration to define new legal measures designed to sidestep the existing Human Rights system and deprive some individuals from its protection in the name of the fight against terrorism.
Detainees at Camp X-Ray, at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
The Patriot Act, for example, expands the authority of US law enforcement agencies for "terrorism investigation." It limits -when it does not completely abolish it- citizens' right to privacy or freedom of expression, allows for kidnapping and confinement of persons without charges, without trial or a detention period as has been happening in Guantanamo...
We are living in food mayhem: yesterday morning a nutritionist was complaining on French tv that because the country had turned its back on the usual bread and jam breakfast in favour of American-style fat and sugar-loaded cereals, the population was at risk of fattening. In the afternoon, i was reading in La Repubblica that the soaring costs of pasta, bread, fruit and vegetables are making Mediterranean diet harder to afford. Italians are eating more cheap processed foods high in fat, sugar and salt (via WSJ.) The whole continent is complaining about the food crisis. Meanwhile, bananas are dying, eating local might not always be that energy-efficient after all and a livestock meltdown is under way across Africa, Asia and Latin America. An alarming report states that native breeds...
It's not everyday that Dick Cheney gives its title to an art exhibition.
In the weeks following September 11, the U.S. Vice President justified a steep increase of surveillance measures by explaining that "Many of the steps we have now been forced to take will become permanent in American life. They represent an understanding of the world as it is, and dangers we must guard against perhaps for decades to come. I think of it as the new normalcy." Almost seven years later, the collection and sharing of personal data by governments, luggage searches, Internet monitoring, and wiretaps have indeed become part of a "new normal" in American life.
View of the exhibition space
The New Normal brings together 13 artworks which explore private information. All the works have been...
To help people picture their impact, photographer Chris Jordan has been diligently adding to his consciousness-raising series Running the Numbers, which puts statistics about consumerism into perspective by capturing them visually.
When we covered the first installment of this series, we were taken aback with his ability to make jaws drop and minds expand in a single shot. If you haven’t seen his work before, I recommend taking a look. His talent for illustrating how our individual choices build mountains of consequences (literally) is worth exploring.
In his Running the Numbers series Chris Jordan pairs imagery with statistics in hopes that images representing quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone. Jordan says,
“Statistics can feel abstract...
In an Afromusing interview Dan of Just A Band said that:
Kenyanimation isn’t actually a Just A Band project, but I work as an animator, and I put up my JAB animation projects there. That blog was set up to bring together animators and animation fans who are from/work in Kenya, just to show people that there actually is such a thing as Kenyan animation, and hopefully be a launching point for...
Business Daily reports on the appearance of video halls that cater largely to the Nollywood Film audience and asks the question, can they be monetized and formalized?
“Every African country has the equivalent of a pirate cinema audience that runs into the thousands....The challenge for film-makers, distributors and exhibitors is how to turn this grey market into one that functions at a price...