London Urban Space (so many hats)

Birds Everywhere

Projekt No.1, 1969. Cover art by Hubert Hilscher (from Pattern and Shape)

Dirt is Matter Out of Place: Thanks all d'être venus!

Taking Photographs in Museums (a published thesis)

In 2010 le Musée d'Orsay in Paris banned photography-taking by visitors. Targeted at visitors, French intellectuals seemed to be the most affected by this new regulation: what about the museum's mission? Didn't the collections belong to all of us? Was this to increase postcard revenues? Outraged academic blogs were uploaded, photographing mobs entered the Musée in protest and articles nervously written, but the ban is still in place and visitors continue to stretch their arms in front of Monets to photograph lily pads. Museum visits, like any 'special' event (see below the image of St Peter's Square during the Pope's election), have become fascinating instances to observe how living the experience is increasingly cohabiting with its own mediation. 

La Documentation française's recent publication Les visiteurs photographes au musée ponders about this evolution from a legal as well as anthropological and technological perspective. The "problem" isn't new. Wanting to reproduce special artifacts (like art works) is decades old (think cave-paintings and hunted animals, Roman sculptures and emperors, royal painters and kings, daguerreotypes and dead children), but till quite recently this was mostly reserved to elites and limited in production. Today, as cameras become smaller, better at capturing light in dim spaces and drastically cheaper, photography-making is a practice available to practically anyone above the age of four with a smartphone-owning parent. In the book, the editors Serge Chaumier, Ann Krebs and Mélanie Roustan brought together a multi-disciplinary bunch of researchers to think about questions like: what are the laws in place to restrict museum photographers? What are these regulations' foundations? What are the strategies museums engage in to encourage or use this growing practice? And obviously why are visitors taking photographs in the first place? 

Back in 2008 I wrote my Masters thesis about why people take photographs of the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum (this has become a chapter in their book). The iphone was a few months old back then, and things have changed a whole lot since, but overall the roots of why we archive visually have not radically shifted. Through photographs we reassure ourselves that we wouldn't forget, we commodify objects or situations that may feel overwhelming, we curate ourselves for others, we gather evocative material to socialize with others, etc. What evolutions in technology have, in fact, done is affected the experience of the now, and hence the museum experience itself... What the book makes clear is that what is at stake here is finding a way to insure that the museum's mission is fulfilled with the museum's reality taken into account.

[In a similar vein I came across this video recently. It makes a good case for street fashion photography's arguable existential crisis: too many street photographers taking too many street photographs is killing the authenticity of the genre, and of the street, and of the fashion, and of the street fashion, and of all its players... argh, existential angst, where has authenticity gone?]

TAKE MY PICTURE from GARAGE Magazine on Vimeo.

"Dirt is Matter Out of Place": A walk, installation and panel in Montréal

For those of you who know about my pigeon obsession, the beast has morphed into an installation, a walk and a panel for the anti-curatorial exhibit Springtemps at the gallery Articule in Montreal from March 29th to April 14th.

The difference between a pigeon and a dove is arbitrary because there is none: the dove is simply a white pigeon. So while we can observe these birds under viaducts we can find them as symbols of the holy spirit in churches as well.

Inspired by the work of anthropologist Mary Douglas, "Dirt is Matter Out of Place" is an installation in the gallery Articule as well as a walk and a panel. The project explores how these birds, once war heroes, illustrate our ambiguous relation to dirt, prejudice and aesthetics, and hopes to imagine solutions to better share Montreal with its fauna.

Join us on April 7th for a pigeon-walk in the Mile End led by biologist Luc-Alain Giraldeau followed by a panel discussion in the gallery with Luc-Alain Giraldeau, Laurent Lussier, urbanist, François Messier, pigeon-breeder, and myself, Chloé Roubert, anthropologist.

1:30 pm at Parc du Portugal on St Laurent and Marianne to begin the walk.
3 pm release of pigeons at Articule
3:15 pm panel at Articule

Articule
262 Fairmount W.
Montréal Québec
H2V 2G3 Canada
(opened tues to thurs 12h–18h, fri 12h-21h, and sat–sun 12h–17h)

%%%%%%%

Pour ceux qui connaissent mon intérêt pour les pigeons, l'obsession s'est transformée en une installation, une marche et une table-ronde pour l'exposition anti-curatoriale Springtemps de la galerie Articule à Montréal du 29 mars au 14 avril.

La différence entre un pigeon et une colombe est arbitraire puisqu’elle n’existe pas: la colombe est simplement un pigeon blanc. Si on peut observer ces oiseaux sous les viaducs, on les retrouve aussi comme symbole du Saint-Esprit dans les églises catholiques.

Inspiré par le travail de l'anthropologue Mary Douglas, "Dirt is Matter Out of Place" est une installation dans la galerie Articule ainsi qu'une marche et une table ronde. Au travers de ces oiseaux, anciens héros de guerre, le projet explore notre relation ambiguë à la saleté, empreinte de préjugés; et propose d'imaginer des solutions pour mieux partager Montreal avec sa faune.

Retrouvez-nous le 7 avril pour une marche-pigeon guidée par le biologiste Luc-Alain Giraldeau suivie d’une table ronde avec Luc-Alain Giraldeau, Laurent Lussier, urbaniste, François Messier, éleveur de pigeon et moi-même, Chloé Roubert, anthropologue.

13h30 Parc du Portugal sur St Laurent et Marianne pour le début de la marche.
15h lâcher de pigeons à Articule (262 Fairmount O.)
15h15 table-ronde à Articule

Articule
262 Fairmount O.
Montréal Québec
H2V 2G3 Canada
(ouvert mardi au jeudi 12h–18h, ven 12h-21h, and sam–dim 12h–17h)

(poster Chris Tucker; photo Layne Gardner, for more on the pigeon go to http://www.npausa.com)

The colour of the past

Toutes proviennent de paris1914 où on retrouve des photographies couleurs du début du 20ème de Paris et ses environs. [Remarquons les chevaux sur les quais de Seine.]

Quai de Seine, Paris, Sans date

Jardin des Invalides, VII° Arrondissement Paris, 1909

Le départ du dirigeable Zodiac III, Bétheny, 28 Août 1909

Amulets at the Pitt Rivers

An amulet is "anything worn about the person as a charm or preventative against evil, mischief, disease, witchcraft, etc" (Oxford English Dictionary). For more of the 5000 amulets the Pitt Rivers Museum has archived go to the website Small Blessings.

To End 2012 Merrily with Pigeons

Zoo Architecture

Pop Palimpsests

A palimpsest comes from the ancient Greek palimpsesetos, literally meaning “scraped clean and used again.” Archeologist Paul Basu used the notion to express how the constructed past is a projection of our present mindset: “practical and discursive memories from different periods become intermeshed such that one period is remembered through the lens of another.”

The History Channel's latest ads dabble in similar ideas: different times in same spaces are superposed suggesting we forget but need to remember, as well as marking how the black and white past is a creation of the colourful present.

Basu, P. 2007. ‘Palimpsest Memoryscapes: 

Materializing and Mediating War and Peace 

in Sierra Leone’ in F. De Jong; M. Rowlands 

(eds), Reclaiming Heritage: Alternative Imagina-

tions in West Africa, Walnut Creek, CA: 

Left Coast Press p. 234.

Project: Accumulation

I'm presenting the work and paper Accumulation I collaborated on 

with Drop Legs (Lesley Braun) 

in NYC tomorrow at the Graduate Student Conference on "Critical Information" at the School of Visual Arts (SVA).

Architecture's Bi-Annual Event

I was in Venice last week and it was great.

Hornaday with Baby Bison at Smithsonian

"William Temple Hornaday, Chief Taxidermist of the United States National Museum from 1882, Curator of the Department of Living Animals, and the first Superintendent of the National Zoological Park, with a baby bison known as Sandy, probably on the grounds adjoining the Smithsonian Castle. This is probably the bison calf that Hornaday brought back from his 1886 summer field trip to Montana. The calf lived only a short time."

From The Smithsonian Archives

Montreal: Pigeons Everywhere

Phillips Square, Montreal, 1960s

Dominion Square, Montreal, Québec, Canada, ca. 1950. From CSTMC/CN Collection.  

Winners of the Animal Architecture Awards

Bat Cloud is a project bringing awareness and public visibility to bats and their critical role in our ecosystem. Installed in Tifft Nature Preserve, a park-like wooded setting developed on a former landfill in the industrial zone of Buffalo New York, BAT CLOUD is a hanging canopy of vessels that is designed and constructed to support bat habitation. From afar, the piece appears like a shimmering cloud, hovering in the trees. Closer up, viewers from below would be able to see plants hanging from each vessel. At dusk, onlookers can catch sight of bats emerging from the habitation vessels.

For more: http://www.animalarchitecture.org/urban-animal-award-winners/

Presidential Summer Pants

Lyndon Johnson ordering custom-made Joe Haggar Jr. pants (because they provide more room in "the crotch, down where your nuts hang") from the White House in 1964 (right before going to a funeral):

Two Images in the New Yorker

This is the layout of last week's pages 38-39 of the New Yorker. The article is about sports, marketing, stardom and money. The New Yorker's illustration for the article is a photograph of a Banksy street art piece; it reveals the writing's main thesis. In an uncanny echo, page 39 presents a wonderful Gillette ad which, with similar cues (fence, black man, physical activity involving height, etc) let's you know what's up: just buy deodorant.

Purposefully or not, I think this is great.

Pigeons, Doves, and Magic

The Senses

The New York Times has recently posted two short videos rendering the senses in interesting ways. The most recent is the raw and simple footage of a deaf man describing his experience of the assumable Haitian earthquake, and the second, on ansomia, records, although slightly unsubtly, the testimonies of people who do not have a sense of smell. (And both bring up food.)

Beyond Nationalism: Honorable Medals and Infographic Olympiads

In the earliest modern Olympics humans excelling in the arts also received gold, silver and bronze medals.

When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was founded in 1894 with the French Baron Pierre de Coubertin's hopes that men should be educated both physically and intellectually (competing in sports not wars), the arts were part of the games too. Five artistic competitions were introduced and architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture oeuvres inspired by sports would combat for gold. After 1954 this event fizzled, replaced by the slightly less competitive cultural olympiads.

The 8-Bit Games!

Anyways, I agree with Coubertin: I like critical minds more than I like nationalism, so it's nice to see all the creations that have emerged from thinking about sportive prouesses not just as physical competitions but as signs of global realities that should be challenged. For instance Gustavo Sousa has come up with these simple infographics using the Olympic flag's five rings to illustrate data from each of the five continents - from Coca Cola sales, to total populations and CO2 emissions per capita. And the Guardian reported on a team from Imperial College and the Royal Statistical Society determining in real-time the actual amounts of medals won for each country in relationship to GDP or population... so for instance while China may have officially won 24 medals, in relation to its GDP it has a petty 0,95, and while Columbia has 2, according to the study it has won an honorable 4,59.

And all the rest...

Cul-de-sac de l'Évolution: Carcharodon Megalodon

Requins, peur, mort, myths et chasse:

Published: OWT on Reprocess

Some of the images I found on Google Books were published in OWT's Manchester School of Art 13th Issue on the theme "Reprocess." According to the zine's topic they were printed over past OWT pages (in other words reprocessed): "Submissions from the OWT back catalogue form a background layer of pre-existing themes, ready to be manipulated and reprocessed by new work. This changes the context and makes new interpretations while initiating serendipitous collaborations. GF Smith Colourplan and six-colour Riso printing help add further variables. No two zines in the run of 150 are the same."

For a the rest of the zine's potential pages: http://owtcreative.com/reprocess.html

Found Public Art Fund

"Ilha das Flores": A Tomato, Thumbs and Pigs for a Short Explanation of Capitalism

Isle of Flowers (or Ilha das Flores in Portuguese) is a 1989 Brazilian short film by Jorge Furtado. Following a tomato from garden to dump, it delivers dry narration, witty editing and eclectic visuals for an unexpectingly cruel message.

Animals and Humans: What is Art, What is Beauty?

The topic and works of the Grand Palais' current exhibition seem worth a visit. Displayed slightly lower for the child in all of us, the exhibit goes over the European art scene's take on animals. In the words of the curator Emmanuelle Héran, it gathers all art depicting animals and touches upon a variety of ideas -- the cultural norms of beauty (why is a toad ugly and a horse honorable?), or the role human historical developments since the 16th c. had on our relationship to animals (for instance if during the colonial years the endless discovery of new species meant animals were symbols of bountiful imagination, today the predicament of their extinction is underlying all of their artistic portrayals). There's art, aesthetic theory, human and natural history to produce this:

Beauté animale : présentation de l'exposition by Rmn-Grand_Palais

And my favorite little creatures - birds - are represented by the iconic Dodo, whose myth is complexified here:

La véritable histoire du Dodo by Rmn-Grand_Palais