Art criticism

I'm pretty busy with the last preparations for the performance I've been writing about recently.In the meantime, if anyone is into more theoretical and art-critical issues, I've been following an interesting (though very expert sounding) discussion about the role (and lack...

Reading about contemporary art history

Max Ernst, Woman/She-Bird (1921)One of Cologne Dada's exhibitions was held in a space that could only be entered through a men's lavatory. It was promptly closed as an outrage against public morality on the grounds that one of the works--a 1920 Ernst collage titled The...

Work-in-progress in the movie business

At John August's excellent blog about screenwriting, you'll find some great advice for becoming a successful screenwriter (Hollywood style). One of the tips is - try and show your work-in-progress to as many people as possible. I find it fascinating how different the pragmatic, scarily down-to-earth...

Rehearsal pics

(more pics and commentary here)

Technorati: art, contemporary art, vvoi

Drawing poetry in the digital age

Pencil in the obvious by Amanda Auchter is a simple, charming work (in Flash) based on the idea of book illustrations/drawings. It is image-ined poetry, drawn-out and drawn-away, an enchanting little tale of seduction, in a graphically appealing setting. My only problem...

Open rehearsals

Today we're having a rehearsal open to the public. I'm quite nervous. I don't like the idea at all, although I was the one who suggested it. But I do have a problem with showing a work-in-progress, I guess I'm extremely old-fashioned in that sense. Works-in-progress are...

Font Love

Here's a project for all font lovers: Genotyp. It is about combining fonts to create new, hybrid forms. It is funny, intelligent and original. It's only a pity the selection of the primary fonts is so small. But still, one can really pro-create some great fonts.


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Don't waste stuff

A few days ago I've written about the art*o*matic, an automatic cheap art vendor. Well, what if this experience went further? What if, instead of selling and buying, we would be exchanging?Swap-o-matic is all about that: exchanging, trading, instead of buying. Giving away...

Doubt in contemporary art

It is not the first time this happens. The doubts are serious. They do not concern the reception, but the creation of art. There comes a time when the sacrifice the creation requires is such that the work itself seems ridiculous. Why the suffering? For the final satisfaction? At this particular time...

(Almost) Against Video Art

Like so much Art Tech of recent years, video environments resemble world's fair "futurama" displays with their familiar nineteenth-century push-button optimism and didactism.

- Allan Kaprow, "Video Art: Old Wine, New Bottle" (1974)

New tendencies in performing arts

The above is the topic of a "debate" (conference? panel discussion?) I have been invited to participate in. Any thoughts?

Into uncertainty

Katherine Bradford's art at first might seem more like a comic strip.Wait. Give it some time. Observe the man without a face, the translucid water, the feet almost hilariously sticking out, as if everything were all right.Swimmer, Man (2001)He is going to drown. He cannot...

Good Ideas, Bad Art

Jeff Koons, Puppy (1998)Good art is rare. But if I were to judge by the descriptions, it nearly always appears as great. Artists learned how to write about what they do. They learned how to express themselves in the PR world. The strange thing is, they learned this much...

Post-theater

One of my tasks as the director of Goat Island when making a performance is to foreground the not seen and background the seen. To do this requires:1. the formation of attention2. slowing the traffic of the mind3. an enclosed encounter area4. spaces between5. not dance,...

Raw Contemporary Art

A museum in southwest France is exhibiting "raw" but often powerful art by the self-taught which was never intended for a public showing.The museum is so relaxed that visiting pupils sometimes take a picture back to their school to study it at leisure."Here, visitors are...

Cheap, good art. Yes, it's real.

How much would a work of fine art have to cost for you to buy it? Less than a CD? Less than a meal at a restaurant? Ok. The Art*o*Mat is what you need. With works of genuine art (size: 54mm x 82mm x 21mm) priced at $4-5, it's pretty affordable. And, if you have good taste,...

Of Politics and Art

What is the universal? Can we have universal values? Any society that aims at maintiaining justice is based on values it believes to be the best. What happens when cultures meet? How do we deal with the otherness of others? Is it possible to be simply "tolerant", and consider...

Hacking to be a museum guide

A new, creative way of using podcasting. The Art Mobs "movement" (actually an ongoing student project at Marymount Manhattan College) developed a way of remixing/integrating high, low, marginal and off-the-record art. Here is how hacking goes MOMA:Students make their own...

Transparent billboards

Transparent billboards in Bordeaux

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HuMan Ray

Man Ray, (1943) Man Ray Statement "I am an old man nowIn sixty years you can do a lot of work.I did a lot of things in sixty years,my paintings, my photography, my objects.I change all the time.I have periods were I do one thingthen for...

Preparing a performance

I have been working on a ("site-specific") durational performance.It's about intimacy in times of distance, political, social, personal distance. It's about the possibility (?) of revealing and getting closer. The images you see are the "prototype" of the main structure.Two...

(Off Topic) What makes a blog popular

As Wajcman (p.11) notes, “qualities associated with manliness are almost everywhere more highly regarded than those thought of as womanly.” In this case, discourse practices that construct weblogs as externally-focused, substantive, intellectual, authoritative, and potent (in the sense of both...

Breathing

I have just discovered a musical piece called Vvoi, by someone (person? group?) called meta. I'm happy about the coincidence (I had nothing to do with it), since I like the piece. I might even use it in a (durational) performance I'm preparing (providing the author permits...

Sculpting your way out of sculpture?

"It is clear that I often craved to bring sculpture into a more direct involvement with the common experience of living.At such times I felt there must be a more direct way of contact than the rather remote one of art.Initially this may have been no more than an attempt...

Logo

How do you like the new New Art image? It comes from here:

Surface

"The skin is what is deepest" - Paul Valéry(From what I understood, Paul Valéry's idea was that, paradoxically, our surface is what makes us seem so human. Under the skin, there is only flesh - animal flesh. Maybe our secret is hidden within the skin? Or maybe humanity...

Interaction

I just read my last post. It made me think about the nature of the two works. Is interactivity in art really a value?

Touch Me

We-make-money-not-art published a post a few days ago about Touchme, an interactive installation by the Dutch group Blendid:Simply press a part of your body or objects against the frosted glass surface, and you'll leave a kind of imprint for you and others to see, as the...