Twitter: An Insignificance Awareness Engine?

While this video is quite funny, I think thinking about this idea in relation to social web networks more generally would be as interesting as this is (somewhat) funny. Till then:

Hell No? The New Museum's latest use of 'we'

"Hell No!" was taken in March 2010 in Williamsburg, NYC

The New Museum opened its latest show Free tuesday night. It's hard to judge an exhibition during an art opening, mostly because it's a party and not a time to look at a new hanging (interestingly the after-party is the only part of the night that suggests the true purpose of such gatherings). Anyways, because of that I wouldn't judge the curating but I will judge the curatorial statement.

Inspired by “ Dispersion” (2001–), an essay by artist Seth Price, the show brings together works that tackle "the increased dispersion of culture, by examining how its circulation and reception has changed across mediums from print, to video, and to the web. In light of the way we now experience political events and pop culture, Price offers a new description of public space and questions the viability of public art as we understand it."

So Free is about the increasingly free-flowing circulation of information in 'our' day and age, its implications and how it has affected 'our' relation to and in public space. While this is definitely a theme worth an exhibition (and many more), there's a disconcerting use of all-encompassing words - such as we, culture, pubic space, dispersion, information - that dilute these complicated realities into smooth processes and make the art/show difficult to take seriously.

The most obvious of these vacuous uses is of the term 'we'.

Who is 'we'? Is it the artists' and New Museum staff's class and generation? People born between the Oil Crisis and the fall of the Berlin Wall, with high degrees, a certain creative edge and all living in NYC (12 out of 21 of the artists) or at least a Western metropole (all artists)? If that is the case, then yes that 'we' does have a different way of exchanging information and experiencing the public realm, otherwise the 'we' must be nuanced - put more bluntly exchanged for "the New Museum's target audience." It isn't a question of how the 'we' excludes those who do not own a computer, do not speak English or are living under the level of poverty but rather considering the people who are part of the Western 'popular culture' and 'public space' are not necessarily following youtube trends, responding to Yahoo! answers, staying updated on their urban landscape via Google Maps and socializing on chatroulette.

In a way the use of 'we' illustrates the paradox of the net art community: they make claims and believe they are asking questions on the  popular while dialoguing only with a niche of people who aren't part of the popular.

If this is what defines an avant-garde I think the show would have been better off reconciling the popular this avant-gardism claims to embody with the popular of the 'we' the museum says it wants to explore.

This video accompanies this post just because it's web related, and it sums the both very popular (we've all seen at least one of these) and very exclusiveness (who has seen all of them) of 'web' culture.

Snaps of the Fall: The Train and Lake Massawippa

A Talk in Brooklyn - Tall Tales of the Totem Pole: The Intercultural Biography of an Icon

This is a 400$ dress made by NYC based designer Lindsey Thornburg.

More importantly Aaron Glass will be giving a talk on the history of the Totem Pole as an iconic object next Sunday. Since the first European contact the totem has progressively come to symbolize Native American culture as a whole - as if it had preserved all the qualities of a culture and tradition lost. Problematizing the issue Glass will touch upon the changes the totem underwent since early colonialism and the reasons for its now cult status (in theme parks, in fashion - see image - or within more serious repatriation and heritage issues).

Glass is an anthropologist teaching material culture at the Bard Graduate Center in NYC, where he is also a museum fellow.

The talk will be given October 24th at the Observatory Room at 543 Union Street (near Nevins) in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

It's 5$ (800 times less than the dress) and will convince you how stupid the dress is too.


... Afterthoughts: Totem and Taboo

Among the many things I gathered at last night's talk: 1913 Freud publishes "Totem and Taboo", Totemism in 1960s scholarship, more totem poles went up between 1970 and 2000 than from 1870 and 1900, the white man's fur trade in the late 18th century brought new more efficient tools and glues and better brighter paints, 1937 Disney comes out with Snow White:

CNN Turkey and Jacques Villeglé

CNN, an American info channel, might have been in need of refurbishing it's image in the somewhat Middle Eastern country of Turkey (aka we are American but we don't take sides), and as a result CNN Turkey has come up this advertisement campaign with tagline ''Stories with the full background'' (found at Wooster Collective). 

I don't know if the ads aptly represent the media company's stance in the country, but I find the images to be great.

They remind me of Jacques Villeglé (Rues Desprez et Vercingétorix - “La Femme”, 1966):

Delicate messages with everyday objects: Roman Signer at the Swiss Institute

I went to New York's Swiss Institute last night for a beer tasting. Unlike yesterday's weather, art can be dry, so vernissages are accompanied by alcohol.

The Swiss Institute is showing works by Roman Signer - who's water explosions in boots (Water Boots, 1986) might be familiar - in all four areas of the space till November 13th. 

Exhibiting mainly videos, the central room offers 'art installed' seating - wooden chairs including a mechanically rocking one - to look at an assortment of videos from his past pieces. In the back room three of his films are projected, including wonderful Iceland (2008) - two ducktaped black umbrellas stumbling, pulling, flying, thrusting each other together through the country's windy grey steppe landscapes. The umbrellas' violent yet stunning dance seems to soften Sartre's "l'enfer c'est l'autre" statement, by suggesting the beauty this hell implies.

My favorite piece, however, was in the first large room. Similar to the delicate irony of Céleste Boursier-Mougenot's work at the Curve with electric guitars and birds, for Piano (2010) Signer placed ping-pong balls on a grand piano's cords. Framing the instrument with two large fans, their wind-power sway the balls randomly to create subtle and unpredictable sounds. The piece is suggestive, simple and deep, and questions what cultural norms and the labels we attach to them are worth.

This is a short but worthwhile retrospective of one of Switzerland's most well known contemporary artist.

Roman Coppola and Wes Anderson Commercial: Branding the next Pabst Blue Ribbon

What beer comes after Pabst Blue Ribbon's underground cheap appeal withers? After the Pabst Blue Ribbon drinker gets a job, a vespa and a bachelor pad in Paris? Stella Artois seems to think it should: once the hipster blooms into a full grown (childfree) bobo (bohemian bourgeois), he will want Stella (and date French cute women). mon amour: Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola for Stella Artois.

OK GO's (music) videos as video performance (art)

Since their treadmill choreographed music video and youtube sensation (53,000,000 views) Here It Goes Again in 2006, OK GO has achieved the tricky operation of staying cool by continuing to impress us - at least me - with their music videos' creativity and wit. So good actually, it's hard to know if the music is catchy because of the band's musical talent or because of the band's visual performances. 

Earlier this year OK GO came out with This Too Shall Pass, a 4 minute music video based on the Rube Goldberg's chain of events machine. Like Here It Goes Again the real-time unedited quality of the short, and the way everyday objects play off each other to obtain unexpected lifelike qualities gives it an undeniable awe factor. And in many ways the same exact awe factor the Swiss artist duo Fischli/Weiss went for when they created their famous The Way Things Go with teacups, tires, explosions and buckets of water in the studio/loft in 1987.

A parallel that yet again brings up the rather banal question of what gives art it's aura (see Gaga vs. Jana).

OK GO's This Too Shall Pass (2010)

The Way Things Go by Fischli/Weiss (1987)

More recently OK GO's latest music video End Love brings up the same question: a mix of time lapse and stop motion, teletubbies, tamed geese and endurance, it's worth some great thought-out video art performances - minus the boredom. In particular:
- Tuner prize recipient Martin Creed's 2008 piece Work 850, a sprint athlete running every 30 seconds between 10am and 6pm the 86-meter dash from one end of the British Tate to the other, for four months; 

- Chu Yun's This is xx (2006) shown at the New Museum's Younger Than Jesus Triennial, of a female participant sleeping in the museum/gallery space after having taken sleeping pills; 

- of course John Baldessari's iconic 1971 I am Making Art; 

- and wonderful Guido van der Werve's The day I didn't turn with the world (2007) a beautiful 9 minute stop motion film of the artist in the North Pole turning in the opposite way of the sun for 24 hours.

OK GO's End Love (2010)

Guido van der Werve The day I didn't turn with the world (2007) (extract)

Curatorial Project: Within Which All Things Exist and Move - Closing Party and Catalogue Launch

The catalogue is printed and Pop Montreal was very generous - we have beer reserves till spring.

Thanks to everyone who came to the show, the closing vernissage and/or helped with putting all the parts of the exhibit together - the art, catalogue, curating, hanging or party.  

It's been a great success and hopefully was material to challenge the spaces within which all things exist and move!