Portuguese young talent

Diana Silva, Heart Necklace (2003)(This is a neckless made with the crochet technique, I believe)ps.: I have just bought bluetooth for my laptop, at last, which will allow me to post pics and films from my mobile phone. Meaning - expect more terrible quality "new art" photos...

Cities/People/Bodies

Is there a surface that goes beyond itself? How deep does it go? Can we go so far to the surface of the picture, we go beyond it? It is only skin, matched and resampled as in a game, as in a text. And what are they really saying through the skin? This is who we are? This...

Workshop

I'll be directing a workshop next week in Montemor-o-Velho, entitled "Between Performance and Theater" (Portuguese link). I want to explore the zone between acting, enacting, performing and participating, so it should be a lot of fun and pretty challenging.Technorati: performance, performance art, art,...

Birdwatching (1)

During the Serpa seminar, I did some filming. The goal was a specific type of (experimental) documentary, but the bad quality of sound made it unviable. One of the filmed sequences, though, came out amazing: a group of birds flying around in the setting southern sun.Every...

Blur Building

My girlfriend has made me discover the Blur Building, by Elizabeth Diller and (husband) Ricardo Scofidio (Diller&Scofidio - notice her name comes first, very nice and rare!), or rather, the recordings of it (scroll for the article), as it was disassembled after the...

Portuguese multimedia

The Portuguese center for digital arts Atmosferas has been quite busy recently. First, they made a retrospective net exhibition of Portguese net art in the last years. Now, they (along with Etic, the media art school they are a part of) are starting a 2-year Masters course...

For now

Seyed Alavi, Not Here (1990)

Technorati: art installation, installation, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Of art and terror

Art in the age of global terrorism.

Technorati: art installation, installation, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Googlography

As part of the Day-to-Day Data exhibition which presents several "artists who collect, list, database and absurdly analyse the data of everyday life" (curated by Ellie Harrison), Jem Finer's On Earth as in Heaven recreates the map of heaven - on earth. The idea is to localize...

Questioning modernism

Art by people like Richard Serra leaves me confused. Not that I'm shocked, not at all. I just find it, well, unconvincing. The huge steel plates, the massive cubes, the imposing shapes... it seems like a simplicity that's, well, out of date. I'm really having difficulty...

Portuguese folk

Here, have some Portuguese music. This one comes from the north of Portugal. I've discovered it recently, and I was stunned. Its similarity with Corsican poliphony fascinates me. At the same time, it hasn't had the privilege of a commercial promotion, so it is slowly fading...

A Sudden Gust of Wind

Jeff Wall, A Sudden Gust of Wind (After Hokusai) (1993)




Katsushika Hokusai, Ejiri in Suruga Province (a sudden gust of wind) (19th century)

Technorati: photography, visual art, fine art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Sweet, sweet art

The Polish National Gallery of Contemporary Art Zachęta has just announced it will have publicity in the form of candy. (No, not a sculpture of candy. Just candy.) This is the result of an open contest, won by Michał Rokita, a 24-year-old architecture student from Krakow. The candy is to be distributed...

Modern-day Bosch?

Alessandro Bavari definitely has the ambitions of being a modern-day Bosch. I'll leave it up to you to judge.

Technorati: digital art, fine art, visual art, photography, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Conservative

It's been a while since my last visit to the angry and consistent Mark Vallen at art-for-a-change. If you feel like your love for the avant-garde needs a clear adversary, pay him a visit.

Touch yourself

With Mollycoddle, Christine Liu wanted to explore the relationship that people have with their clothes.Mollycoddle is a dress with a hunger for love and attention. Its wearer needs the dress for obvious (coverage) or nonobvious (personal) reasons, and in turn, the dress...

Digital pinhole

Simple, yet brilliant: create your very own digital pinhole camera (digital camera not included). You can also opt for the alternative polaroid pinhole (a.k.a. pinholaroid).

Technorati: photography, art, contemporary art, vvoi

A very forced entertainment

I have just mistakenly erased a very large review of Agatha Christie, a show by Teatro Praga.The below text is all that's left.Teatro Praga is currently the most popular - and renowned - "experimental" theater in Portugal. The sort of work they do actually aims at being...

Hybrid

Calling something "hybrid" is just too easy. The word refers to a combination of two or more species, suggesting some original purity of form which is then combined with other pure forms to create the hybrid.When applied to the arts, it subtly introduces a biological lecture,...

Remapping the world

Mappingworlds is an initiative of changing social (and international) awareness through redesigning maps through non-geographical criteria, such as hospitality, asylum applications, or rivers and floods (okay, that one's geographic). (via)Technorati: art installation, installation,...

Retro innovation

Kee, designed by Shira Miasnik , is a motion-based digital music instrument. The user modifies the digital output by tilting and rotating the wooden disk. Movements can define endless parameters: manipulating Kee in different directions, angles and speed changes...

Send your video art/documentaries now!

22nd Kassel Documentary Film and Video FestivalNovember 8 - 13, 2005- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -LAST CALL FOR ENTRIESDeadline: August 1st, 2005Reglement & Application Download: www.filmladen.de/dokfest - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -...

Earthbed

An old installation of mine.

Technorati: art installation, installation, visual art, fine art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Slightly off-topic (against hi-tech)

Several years ago (about 1999) I worked as an English teacher in a language training center that had a military technology company as its biggest client. We used their technical guides and prospects as teaching material. It seemed pretty hi-tech, but I never really thought...

Rabbit Field - and others

Rabbit Field is an installation where rabbit-like, inflated forms react empathically when one of them is being deflated (i.e. squeezed or poked by the spectators), causing a "ripple wave" within the bunny society. The bunnies also reproduce quickly, increasing in numbers...

Very Lost Highway

For David Lynch fans. (click on "1=1", the title of the work) For me it's just another consequence of the sillyness of Lost Highway and most of his other films.

Technorati: movies, internet art, net art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Art Blogging

It is never going to be a main-stream activity. A few medium-size names might appear here and there, but art blogging simply doesn't go well with creation. It's a question of time. Of focus. What interests you? Is it art? Or your art? If it is the latter, whyever would you wander away to dangerously...

Floating

Erin Johnson, I Love You to Death (Chicago, 2005)

Technorati: installation, art installation, performance, performance art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

A few good links

Personal World Map - don't judge a world by its coverWhat good are the arts? - a light-hearted reflectionThe Long Tail of Art - aiming to give digitally-curious artists a little moneyHidden horoscope - just a description of just a school project, but it inspiresBusan Biennale - design a work of art...

Guerrilla Girls on tour in Poland (2003)

Part art, part feminism, part tourist publicity. Here's a piece of a diary I found by the famous Guerrilla Girls.

Technorati: performance art, performance, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Quote

...to pretend that a man standing on a hill could be doing everything except just standing is simply divorce from life

-Merce Cunningham

Technorati: dance, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Once a year

It's my birthday!

After the avant-garde (?)

A recent article by Margo Jefferson in the NYTimes (free subscription required) about the avant-garde (focusing on theater and the performing arts) is far from what I would call revolutionary or even very useful for someone already acquainted with contemporary art languages, at least if we read it on...

Falling once again

You want falling? Here is falling.First, take your time to watch. Just watch and let yourself become hypnotized, frustrated, angry.Then use the mouse.Take control. And feel even worse.Can't this provide the feeling of sublime?(Oh, but I don't want it to provide the feeling of sublime!)(via)Technorati:...

Hymen

Artificial hymen, that is. Developed by the art studio/laboratory VivoLabs, HymNextTM is an actual organic tissue grown in a laboratory. The prototypes were grown from rat smooth muscle tissues and blotting membranes. The artists/producers point out that the HymNextTM are...

Against the (universal) avant-garde

Tadeusz Kantor, Panoramic Sea Happening (1967)From the time of Verdun, Voltaire's Cabaret and Marcel Duchamp's Water-Closet, when the 'status of art' was drowned out by the roar of Fat Bertha - DECISION became the only remaining human possibility, the reliance on something...

Delete! update

More from the Delete! project.["But you know - anyhow, i feel free!"]["I need consumer information! (Argh!)"]["Blue would have been nicer"]Apparently yellow was chosen also because it allowed the ads underneath to be seen. Interesting. Very interesting. Also (as my girlfriend,...

Further

An old picture.

Deleting money

The Delete! project, by Christoph Steinbrener and Rainer Dempf, was an "installation" in the middle of the tourist zone of Vienna, Austria. It seems like a logical consequence of The Untitled Project. In TUP, the erasing of all written signs was symbolic - made by manipulating...

2 boxes and 1 self-portrait by Lucas Samaras

Untitled (1965)

Box (1963)

Photo-Transformation (1973)

All works by Lucas Samaras.

Technorati: visual art, fine art, art installation, installation, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Art for London 2012

When London bids to participate in the (2012) Olympics, it means business. And culture. Which is why the bid comes accompanied by a wonderful program: 40 Artists, 40 days. Basically, it is a publicity for Britain and its artists:In the final 40 days of the campaign we...