What in the World is Art: An Example from the Field

A few days before the 2012 Whitney Biennial opened, a web page with the museum's logo, template, language and a similar url (www.whitney2012.com instead of www.whitney.com) announced the institution's decision to give up on certain "generous corporate donations" by terminating its partnership with the Deutsche Bank and Sotheby's. According to this release by resigning from such benefits the Whitney was acknowledging and, especially displaying its role in upholding "a system that benefits collectors, trustees, and corporations at the expense of art workers" (I would add art lovers). The Whitney was taking a stance against the Deutsche Bank's corporate conduct (the bank just settled a legal dispute of $202 million for reselling knowingly shaky mortgages between 2007 and 2009) and deploring Sotheby's recent internal policies (the lock-out of its art handlers while making record profits and increasing its director's revenue from $2.4million in 2009 to $10.3 million in cash and benefits in 2011).

The world of art is a weird one that exists through the belief that certain "things" have magical-like forces over us. Often these magical qualities are explained by using intellectual concepts, discussing production prowess or expressing notions of aesthetics, while actually most of these "things with agencies" gain their aura through the tricky powers of financial markets. So for a museum to use its own existence to reveal the inner-workings of this weird cosmology - for instance museums may use artists because their sponsors need to sell things that may gain value if the museum uses this artist's work - was impressive, almost as impressive as good art. That excitement, however, lasted only until I learned the website was a hoax and experienced the Whitney biennial's overall blandness.

If that fake virtual press release was the most creative project to come out of the Biennial, I'm also excited to say that their hoax is part of a series of fake press releases and that their latest has just denounced the Whitney’s recent actual request for donations from blue-chip artists of work valued over $500,000.

"Take The Kids Off The Streets": Jane Jacobs vs. The Modern Urban Aspiration

The Colour of New York's Troubles

In this very very witty and pretty graph by artist Andrew Kuo one can read smart data with a New York City biased twist.

The Idea Behind Virtual Search Engines

The Smartest Thing - People Watching

This is an amazing 1979 ethnography (by William H. Whyte) with (pre-cellular phone) footage of urban spaces, aka it's a team that spent months people-watching and deconstructing social behavior to think of ways to build 'better' cities. It includes a bird lady, the art of chair ownership, girl watchers, people mimicking people and the power-dynamics of food.

Before Skateboarding Gets Cool Again, Replacing Fixies and Demonstrating Yet Again How Generic Cool-looking People Are

In New York City cool men have skateboards. Gliding from Williamsburg's bike lanes to Soho's tarmac, New York City skateboarders are not trashy teenagers with a lot of teenage angst, they are cool creative minds wearing Barbour jackets and Yuketen boots. It's a slow but emerging trend and I predict that in five years time skateboards will have replaced fixies. 

Since I have found fixies to be a ridiculous embarrassment to the human race (humans = lambs), before I get just as upset about how trendy skateboards are about to be, here is a touching mini-doc on a young Charity in Afghanistan called Skateistan:

Why New York can sing it's the center of world openly, and how other cities do the same thing differently

Praising New York, "a concrete jungle where dreams come true," Jay-Z's Empire State of Mind is a hit beyond the Big Apple. Yesterday in the tight department of Les Galeries Lafayette in Paris, hesitating between white woolen tights and apple green cotton ones, I listened attentively to the lyrics. The structure is catchy - an emotional chorus, concise and pleasing beats and builds that are hard to stay cold to. In addition to this steady recipe for success, Mr.J sings about the endless golden possibilities nyc offer whoever you started out to be (himself included) through a variety analogies including the Virgin Mary, Eve and Jesus, sports teams, neighborhoods, the World Trade Center, diversity in music, Robert De Niro and Bob Marley. A glorified rehashing of the american dream.

As I paid attention to the video and words, I wondered how other cities had been sung about by its own. I looked into the cities I've lived in - Paris, London and Montreal - and this is the palmares I came up with: 

For Paris, Teki Latex who embodies the Parisians' love to hate themselves and hence inability to sing about Paris in any other way than by using ambiguous irony; the Montrealers, Malajube, who with a DIY creative approach dilute their love for a provincial town into an endearing glass roof effect situation seen from within a fridge; and Blur for London - because even without a video - their sounds captures the terrible wit with which Londonders talk about the grayness of a city most would never want to leave because it's the only place where museums are free, beers are cheeper than water and Indian food better than in India.

Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys for Empire State of Mind (2010):

Teki Latex feat. Lio for Les Matins de Paris (2007):


Malajube for Montréal -40 (2006):


Blur for London Love (1994):