Internacional (en inglés) (10 unread)

   ionarts

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  In Brief: Cold Snap Edition

  Posted: 12-February-2012, 6:45pm CET by Charles T. Downey

  Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond. L'Arpeggiata, dir. Christina Pluhar, Los Pajaros Perdidos, with P. Jaroussky Paul McCreesh directs the Gabrieli Consort in a performance of Haydn's The Seasons, with soprano Christiane Karg, tenor Allan Clayton, and bass-baritone Christopher Purves, from the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. [France Musique] The

  
  

   e-flux shows

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  The Armory Show 2012

  Fetched: 12-February-2012, 3:14pm CET

  The Armory Show, the leading international contemporary and modern art fair, will take place from Thursday, March 8 to Sunday, March 11, 2012, on Piers 92 and 94 in central Manhattan.  The Armory Show ? Contemporary and The Armory Show ? Modern will offer visitors unparalleled access to the most important artwork of the 20th and 21st centuries in New York City.  For its fourteenth edition, The Armory Show will inaugurate three exciting programming initiatives. Armory Film, curated by the Moving Image Fair, will feature an international selection of contemporary video and experimental films; Solo Projects, a section dedicated to single artist presentations, will debut on Pier 94 featuring eleven leading young dealers from around the world; and the fair will launch its new Media Lounge where on-site programs including Armory Film, Open Forum, the lively talk series, and Armory Performance will take place.

Conscientious

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  The Problem with Western Press Photo

  Posted: 12-February-2012, 7:52pm CET by Joerg Colberg

  

  This World Press Photo of the Year 2011 was taken by Samuel Aranda. There are many categories and as many winners, but there is only one big winner, and Aranda's photo it was. A post on the New York Times' Lens blog noted that the image "has the mood of a Renaissance painting" - which, of course, is true. And that's exactly one of the problems here. Jim Johnson already noted that the image in fact does not just reference Renaissance paintings in general. It assimilates Christian iconography (which was produced before and after the Renaissance as well): The Pietà, "depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus" (I'm including just a few examples in this post). If you have followed the news over the past decade even just tangentially, you might realize that using a visual language that could not be more Christian to depict an event in a Muslim country might pose a problem. (more)
  

  These kinds of debates always center on photographs, though, and I think that that's a problem. As a photograph, Aranda's image is rather successful. As I said, it mixes Christian iconography with an event in a Muslim country, thus hinting at what should be obvious: Human suffering is independent of religion. But that doesn't mean that this photograph should be used to illustrate the news, unless efforts are made to educate viewers what they're actually looking at (there's much more than "the mood of a Renaissance painting"!).

  A viewer has to not only be aware of the iconography behind the image, s/he also has to understand how it was possibly used here to send a message. These kinds of nuances, however, are alien to the world of the news in the 21st Century. Instead, what we typically see in the news are world events seen from our - usually limited - perspective.

  Take, for example, Tim Hetherington's photo of a tired soldier: This is not a photograph about Afghanistan. It's not a photo about the situation there, it doesn't say anything about the suffering of people there. Instead, it focuses on a soldier from the West, and the photograph expresses what we all feel: We're tired of that war (without really understanding what's going on there).

  If you look through the series of winning photographs of World Press Photo (I'm talking about the main winning image here, not the many others in the various categories), pretty much every photograph expresses something very specifically seen through our, Western, eyes. Photographers, of course, do their best to take good photographs. But what we see in the news, in newspapers, magazines, and on websites, is a carefully selected number of photographs conforming to usually very specific messages.

  This is not to say that all media are biased (even though in reality many are), but that they are produced from a very specific background, usually our Western one. And it is that background we see reflected in World Press Photo. If we called it Western Press Photo the name would be a bit more accurate.

  The World Press Photo 11 gallery says that 5,691 photographers of 125 nationalities submitted work. Doesn't that show that I'm wrong, that it is in fact a World Press Photo? No, it doesn't. As I said above, photographs in the news were first taken - by an obviously international group of people. But then they were selected/edited, and that typically involves a small number of people from an even smaller number of countries. You just have to go to, say, Al Jazeera's website to often see very different images (of course, the narrative here is that they are biased).

  So we have a problem, a problem that has actually increased over the past few years. We have seen a great many photographers going to remote places, taking photographs. We have seen the news media, especially online, using more and more images to present events. But we have not seen any efforts to use these images to educate viewers what they are actually looking at. For this flood of images in the news to really make sense - to tell us more about the world - we need more context, we need better explanations, and we also need an increased visual literacy. We need to learn how to question images, to ask what we are actually looking at.

  If we don't get that then we'll helplessly stare at all these images, to project what we already know onto them. Samuel Aranda's photograph provides a good opportunity: It's easy to see the veil, it's easy to see the pose (the expression of human suffering and of compassion), it's easy to see (or at least somewhat realize) the very specifically Western visual imagery. But it's quite a bit harder to put all that together and to then find out what we are really looking at.

  And you cannot focus just on one aspect. It's just not that simple. You have to weigh all the different aspect and find out what your reading says: What does the image depict? What does it say about our own cultural and political background? To what extent do we something because we want to see it that way? In other words, to what extent are we using a photograph to illustrate your own belief system?

  Unless we learn how to get beyond our simplistic readings of photography, we'll simply be stuck with what we might as well call Western Press Photo. We won't get closer to understanding all those events that we currently grasp only as one-dimensional labels, lacking all context ("The Arab Spring"). We will continue sending soldiers to foreign countries, not really understanding what's going on there (despite all those photographers going there trying to tell us!), not really asking whether that makes sense, and then pushing those same soldiers to the margins once they come back home.
  

  

  

   artblog

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  Shelley Spector Working at NextFab Studio and Sarah McEaneany at Tibor de Nagy

  Posted: 12-February-2012, 6:15pm CET by andrea kirsh

  NextFab Studios is a high-tech shop in West Philadelphia that enables architects, industrial designers, and artists to create prototypes or small runs of products. Its staff of twenty includes engineers, designers, electronics specialists, photographers, and others who are available for training and technical help. I met Shelley Spector there last week to see what she?s been doing during the past six months that she?s had a residency at NextFab through Breadboard, an organization at the University City Science Center that promotes community outreach around technology and manages the Esther Klein Gallery, among other projects.

  

  Shelley Spector ?Dreck Groove Wallpaper (One)? (2011) reclaimed cardboard, courtesy Bridgette Mayer Gallery, photo: Shelley Spector

  Any artist who makes ?things? that involve construction would think she had died and gone to heaven at NextFab. Its technical possibilities are endless; the difficulty is surely in making choices. Shelley concentrated on the computer-controlled laser cutter and sewing machine, which meant developing a proficiency with both the hardware and software (proprietary to each machine for most of the high-tech fabricating equipment); she said that took about two months.

  

  Shelley Spector with parts for the computer-controlled sewing machine at NextFab

  The work from the residency, a project addressing the nexus of consumption and environmental change, will be exhibited at the Esther Klein Gallery; Dreck Groove runs from Feb. 17-March 30, 2012.  Shelley used the computer-controlled sewing machine to produce a series of small embroideries whose imagery derives from weather mapping. What appear to be abstract patterns on textiles, decorated with the industrial version of traditional women?s handwork, were taken from graphs of fluctuating temperatures over time, infrared satellite photography, and charts of the spread of nuclear fallout. One embroidery lists all the names given to hurricanes during 2011. The decorative quality of the work makes the underlying criticism apparent only on second glance.

  

  Shelley Spector, several small embroideries from ?Dreck Groove? courtesy Bridgette Mayer Gallery

  Shelley used the laser cutter to create frames for the embroidered cloth and to cut out units from scavenged, consumer-product packaging which she will assemble to cover several walls (hence her description of the collaged work as wallpaper).  She learned a lot about her neighbors in the process of collecting sufficient gift boxes, food cartons and other household waste from their recycle bins; indeed, her project is a sort of alternative recycling. The units create a pattern that, at a distance, reads as a mid 20th-century modern design, until one gets close enough to read the writing and recognize the familiar imagery from boxes for cereal, crackers, and plastic bags.  This is the visual landscape of American domestic life.

   

  

  Ian and Scott, engineers at NextFab Studio

   

   

  

  Sarah McEaneany ?Baseball? (2010) tempera on wood

  I ran into Sarah McEaneany at the most recent First Friday gallery openings as she was getting off her bike in front of the Vox Building, then laughed when I saw the image used (below) as the announcement of her current exhibition at Tibor de Nagy Gallery (through March 10, 2012). Many of the paintings record a life of leisure activities (watching baseball, camping out in Florida, on the coast in Brittany, hiking in a wildlife preserve) except that a painter?s work is never done, and even when she doesn?t picture herself drawing (which she does while floating in the Dead Sea), you know that a sketchbook is close at hand.

  

  Sarah McEaneany ?Philadelphia Winter? tempera

  Most of the works are in a smaller format than those in her last exhibition at the gallery, and a number  show a particular sensitivity to landscape, from wetlands to trees in winter.  My favorite showed the artist at an open window, on her birthday, and most of the painting is occupied by patterns of various trees  surrounding an open field of snow that suggests the as yet unwritten story of the year, or years, to come.

we make money not art

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  Farming the Unconscious

  Posted: 11-February-2012, 2:07am CET by Regine

  

  70% of chicken, the UK's favourite meat, is currently produced in an unethical and unsustainable manner. The welfare provided in intensive farming systems is insufficient and always will be. At the Centre for Unconscious Farming, welfare is eliminated. Chickens have their brain stem separated from their neocortex and are unconscious throughout the growing period. Their homeostatic functions continue but they are oblivious. continue

  
  

  

  

   ionarts

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  From Inside Shostakovich to God's Doorstep in Under Two Hours

  Posted: 12-February-2012, 9:01am CET by jfl

  Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from the Kennedy Center.On Friday evening, the National Symphony Orchestra under Christoph Eschenbach repeated its program of Shostakovich?s Violin Concerto No. 1 and the Bruckner Ninth Symphony. The evening served to underline the magnitude of the gift that Eschenbach has brought to Washington, and of the fine artistry of violinist Nadja

  
  

   e-flux shows

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  Art Folly 2012_Cubrick

  Fetched: 12-February-2012, 8:01am CET

  The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea (NMOCA) has opened an exhibition titled ?Art Folly 2012_Cubrick?, a work by architect Chanjoong Kim to the general public. The exhibition will run from January to June just outside the museum in the plaza of Seoul Grand Park, under the concept of 'A Meeting of Art and Architecture', as part of the public art project of NMOCA. With the start of "Cubrick", this exhibition will expand the scope of conventional art to several outdoor spaces. The work was created by stacking 42 cubes made of fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP). The architect made only one type of 3D-cube, which has six different kinds of surfaces.
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  New publications

  Fetched: 12-February-2012, 8:01am CET

  Alongside its exhibitions and its artists-in-residency programme, Casino Luxembourg ? Forum d'art contemporain regularly publishes catalogues and artists' books relating to its artistic programme. In 2011, new publications, whether monographs or collective catalogues, were thus released. Rather than mere documentation about the exhibitions, these publications are complementary to the projects as they provide a platform for concepts and collaborations that did not find a place in the exhibitions themselves.
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  Michael Snow

  Fetched: 12-February-2012, 8:01am CET

  Michael Snow's exhibition, SOLO SNOW. WORKS OF MICHAEL SNOW., is realised with the collaboration of Akbank Art Center (Istanbul), Le Fresnoy (Studio national des arts contemporains) and Galerie l'Uqam. The exhibition, curated by Louise Déry with the collaboration of Ali Akay, contains works of Michael Snow that are reminiscent of illusionism. Born in 1929 in Toronto, Michael Snow is one of the most interesting figures in contemporary video art due to the works he has been producing since 1962.

   the making of

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  Verner Panton X IKEA Chairs: Almost A Set

  Posted: 11-February-2012, 1:21pm CET

  
  image: ragoarts

  A couple--wow, almost three--years ago, when I was deep in my IKEA colabo phase, I posted a roundup of explanations for why Verner Panton's melamine-on-MDF Vilbert chair didn't sell that well when Ikea launched it in 1993-4.

  Now, on the occasion of Rago's upcoming auction of five Vilbert chairs, with an estimate of $3-4,000, another version of the chair's origins has come to my attention: that the Vilbert was a limited edition, a low-production collaboration with a high-profile designer, dreamed up by Ingvar Kamprad as a brand enhancer, like Karl Lagerfeld's H&M collection. In this scenario, selling only "about 3,000" Vilbert chairs worldwide was not a failure, but part of the plan.

  

  In any case, despite a lot of onesies selling--or not--for far less, I will guess that Rago hopes its set of five is worth twice the EUR 1600 Quittenbaum got for six Vilbert chairs in 2006. Perhaps someone with a chairless Guyton/Walker breakfast nook will prove them right.