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Back to my posting about Postopolis, the amazing 5-day blogathon of discussions, interviews andpanel talks themed around landscape and the built environment and brought to us, lucky bloggers, by Storefront for Art and Architecture in collaboration with the adorable people of Foryourart. I prayed the Twelve Olympians, i cursed and almost cried but i have irremediably lost all the notes i took during the second day of Postopolis. Dan Hill has however posted a series of thoughts he gathered on the second day of his visit of LA and he's going to blog the talks more extensively over the next few days. At least that's his plan. Let's flock to City of Sound this week then. Below is a meager overview of Day 2 on planet Postopolis (with, i'm afraid heavy emphasis on the people i had invited):
David Basulto and David Assael from Archdaily and plataforma architectura did a live interview of Sarah Johnston & Mark Lee. Basulto and Assael were only doing live interviews. They basically asked the same questions to each architect "What is architecture for you?" "What is the role of an architect?", etc. So at the end of the series we could compare and discuss the wide range of answers provided by the speakers (some came prepared, others seemed to be somewhat nonplussed by questions they didn't see coming.) Sarah Johnston had the most wonderful combination of shoes-socks i've seen in ages. Oh! and btw, the work of Johnston MarkLee studio is worth a few jaw drops. Robert Miles Kemp gave a compact and compelling talk about the way robotic technologies and interactive interfaces might impact architecture in the very near future. There will be more of that in his upcoming book about Interactive Architecture
They didn't mention the cow-powered methane collector they developed in 2006 but i can't resist linking to it. Bryan from the absolutely wonderful Subtopia had invited the editor of Polar Inertia, everyone's favourite website for anyone interested in seeing photos that reveal the networks and patterns that define the contemporary city. The talk was dense and as packed with idiosyncrasies as the website itself. The evening ended with a lively debate about Stephanie Smith's project to turn America into a nation of commune members. The idea is obviously not new and comes with all sorts of hippi-esque connotations but Stephanie aims to infuse it with a new spirit: the individual as well as the common good will be kept in balance. People should this time adopt the balance because she will show them how much sense it makes: they will save money and time by entering or forming a commune. Besides the project Wanna Start a Commune starts with a business plan because Stephanie believes in doing well by doing good. Check out NPR's podcast about the project.
Sigh! That was a lame post, let's hope i'll do something better tomorrow. |
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The first day of Postopolis is over. It went way better than i expected (and expectations were high.) We are on the rooftop of The Standard hotel which means looking at each other with a smug smile on our face that says "we're so lucky to be here". Problem is that the smile literally freezes as soon as the sun goes down: it gets cold beyond my worst nightmare of a night sleeping rough in Tobolsk (only slightly kidding here.) Bring your blanket and moon boots tonight or follow us on the webcast! Don't expect full reports as days are pretty busy but here are a few highlights of Day One on Postopolis planet:
I had the immense pleasure of kicking off the series of talks by introducing Fritz Haeg (how can anyone be both laid-back and so stylish?) whom i had invited precisely for his dedication to engage with everything but architecture. You might remember that i had interviewed him briefly two years ago about Edible Estates, a project that challenges the lawn, this "carpet of conformity", by inviting families to replace their front lawn with food-producing vegetable gardens. Fritz discussed Edible Estates (look out for his next garden in New York in June), gave an overview of the performances and various education activities he organizes but he also explained us briefly another of his projects: Animal Estates.
Launched at the 2008 Whitney Biennial, the project that attempts to integrate animals in our landscape, in particular indigenous species that have disappeared because of human habitats and settlements. The customized dwellings are designed to encourage the resettlement of wildlife in urban neighbourhoods.
Next came a presentation of the work of experimental architecture group fabric by Patrick Keller who proved once again that Swiss architecture rocks (check out this other talk by his colleague Christophe Guignard) and a live interview of Yo-Ichiro Hakomori of wHY Architecture by the two David from ArchDaily & Plataforma Arquitectura. Been very impressed by the thought-provoking and quiet answers of the Americano-Japanese architect and blown away by the picture of one of the most striking building he designed: Royal/T, LA's first Japanese-style cosplay café.
Bryan from Subtopia had had the great idea to invite Michael Dear Professor of Geography, USC and author of the book Postborder City (must get my hands on that one asap). A few noteworthy observation Dear made: the future of the city is already at work in L.A., there is no urban center, just a big sprawl and several urban centers here and there, the population is in majority latino; even if the U.S. managed to close their borders, the latininization of the country would still be unstoppable because of natural birth; diversity is the strongest feature of this society and we should embrace it instead of looking for questionable ways to avoid it; the border is everywhere we go, that's the frontera portatil, the border to go, etc.
Geoff Manaugh invited Jeffrey Inaba who commented the shift architects must face because of the current crisis: going from private commissions to public ones, accepting a part of blame for the ambitions of their previous clients and reassessing the actions and strategies to undertake in this new climate. Sounds heavy? The talk was actually very witty, not particularly on the optimistic side but still energizing and sprinkled with ironic observations that went from gums on the pavement to extreme temperatures in Kazakhstan.
Image on homepage: Postopolis flickr set by Storefront for art and architecture. |
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Storefront for Art and Architecture and ForYourArt have invited 6 bloggers to curate Postopolis! LA, a live five-day event of near-continuous conversation about architecture, art, urbanism, landscape, and design to be held in Los Angeles from 31 March to 4 April 2009. The 6 bloggers are David Basulto of ArchDaily/Plataforma Arquitectura, Geoff Manaugh from BLDGBLOG , Dan Hill of City of Sound, Bryan Finoki of Subtopia , Jace Clayton from Mudd Up!, and me (we-make-money-not-art, in case you had forgotten where you've just landed.) The speakers come by the dozen. They are listed, scheduled right here and all of them are awesomissime. The location is as swanky as it gets, it's the Rooftop Terrace at The Standard, Downtown LA. Entrance is free.
The new media art-y crowd might be particularly interested in the following talks: Postopolis is part of Los Angeles Art Weekend. |
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Setting up an exhibition about today's ecological and economical crisis is a delicate exercise: it seems that everybody has done one such exhibition before you and invited the same artists as you. This year's edition of The Game Is Up! , a festival organized by one of my favourite art centers, the Vooruit in Ghent, Belgium, was brazenly titled How To Save the World in 10 Days.
The press material warns you right from the start that the festival is not going to provide fail-proof recipes to get us out of this mess. From small interventions to grand utopian visions, from ecological labs to socio-political dystopias. It's a given that this festival won't save the world. But as Marge Simpson once said to her husband Homer : "I do not hate you for failing, I love you for trying."
As written above, The Game is Up! chose challenging themes, it set out to embark on much trodden tracks and was conscious of it at every step. Yet, the festival's clever mix of low tech, no-tech and high-tech installations, performances, graffiti, workshops and debates managed to amaze and inspire me, even if i only managed to spend two hours there to see the exhibition. There was something likely to appeal to anyone: children, the usual art and tech crowd, the crowd that likes art but doesn't get tech so much, the cynical and the hopeful, passersby who actually never step inside Vooruit, etc. The design of the exhibition was lovely (the fact that Vooruit building is spectacular helps), it was distributed over several floors and featured wooden panels indicating the titles of the works, seats to peruse documentation and watch videos but most of all, there was a fantastic selection of projects: First there were the cars. A pair of wooden SUVs, the monstrous polluters still popular around Europe, that had crashed into each other right inside the Vooruit cafe. Since 1998 (thus way before ideas of sustainability and recycling became buzz-worthy), Martin Kaltwasser and Folke Köberling have been throwing works made of recycled materials at the face of consumer culture.
Called Crushed Cayenne, the sculpture mocks the omnipresent car. And so does the other work Kaltwasser & Köberling were showing in the festival exhibition: Autos zu Fahrrädern, two bicycles made out of the material recuperated from one car in one of Graz' squares. The artists brought the vehicles to Ghent by train and rode around the city with the quirky-looking bikes.
The street performances of the German duo didn't stop there. They even distributed car condoms in the street. The condom were to be placed on the exhaust pipe of your car to catch exhaust fumes. Video!
There ware more cars and bikes stories in the exhibition rooms upstairs where videos documented several of Michel de Broin's projects. Shared Propulsion Car is an '86 Buick Regal stripped of its engine, suspension, transmission and electrical system and outfitted with 4 independent pedal and gear mechanisms for passengers to act as self-propulsion motor. The vehicle retains the illusion of the mass-produced luxury automobile, but is reduced to a shell that now has a top speed of 15km per hour.
Another video showed De Broin pedaling around a park in Kreuzberg, Berlin, on a bicycle that transforms kinetic energy produced by the cyclist into smoke. As the artist explained, It's the reverse of how ecology is used normally, the smoke produced is not polluting. It's the sign without the effect. Video.
De Broin created a new work for The Game is Up! Shelter is a post-catastrophe shelter crafted with 36 old Vooruit tables. The legs of the tables point outwards to guard the impenetrable interior of the sculpture against the continuous threat of the outside world. Video of the making, plus interview of the artist. Because saving the world is best done out there in the streets than between the walls of an art center, the festival had also invited Moose to do some "reverse graffiti" on the backside of the Vooruit building (with the help of Mathias Timmermans and Reinout Hiel.) The patterns drawn into the pollution are both incredibly poetical and alarming as they show the extent of the dirtiness of our streets. Video interview of Moose.
Perhaps the most meaningful project for me was the hands-on Seedballing workshop that FoAM Brussels & Foamlab Amsterdam had organized for children and families during the festival. Seedballing is a practice that aims to return native and often vanished flora species to cities and suburbia. The most eco-friendly version of seedball, developed by Masanobu Fukuoka, consists in mud-and-clay balls that contain a mixture of organic compost and different seed species meant to complement each other.
After the workshop, seedballs containing seeds of plants that used to grow around Ghent, but have died out were scattered on appropriate sites during a guerrilla gardening walk. When the rains come, the mud and clay break apart, exposing the seeds to elements that lead to their growth. In each location whichever seeds are best suited thrive in their protected mud starter-home. The seedballed sites were then mapped and added to google maps of urban edibles.
Natalie Jeremijenko installed her Environmental Health Clinic in the middle of a noisy and very polluted roundabout in Ghent. Anyone could take an appointment and tell her about their environmental anxieties during the consultation. She'd listen and instead of handing out a prescription, she will advise concrete actions to improve the environmental factors in patients' own neighbourhood. Check out Vooruit's video: And if you speak dutch, you might want to watch the video of two patients explaining their environmental concern and the suggestion that Natalie gave them over' the consultation.
Annemie Maes, from the So-on collective, covered a wall with pictures, texts, magazines (which you can download as PDF), videos, and interviews that documented her field research at Barefoot College. In this Indian community, illiterate grown-up women are technically trained so they can take their fate in their own hands and provide their village with sustainable energy. The collective believes that their knowledge and experience could inspire the rest of the world to find solutions for climate and environmental issues. After their visit at Vooruit, members of the public and artists alike could take a taxifiets (taxibike) to be driven home safely.
Ah! also worth noting, Antoine Schmitt had installed an LED version of Time Slip in the cafe. The news ticker manipulates incoming news by transferring it to the future. Thus, "A plane crash in Madrid killed 153 people" becomes the even more direful "A plane crash in Madrid will kill 153 people". Schmitt confronts the viewer with the control - or lack thereof - over his own fate in a universe where time and cause have become unstable concepts. All my images: Credit photo on the homepage: Reinout Hiel for Vooruit Previously at The Game is Up!: Billboard Liberation Front's talk at Vooruit, Ghent. |
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STRP Art & Technology festival in Eindhoven has a pretty impressive programme this year. There's going to be live music and cinema, performances, a symposium i'll have the honour to moderate, exhibitions, films, workshops, etc. I've got 5 day tickets for April 8th - 13th. Anyone interested, just send me your name and email address to reg at wmmna dot com.
UPDATE: Sorry, it's been fast, the tickets have been distributed. |
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I think i'll have to put a stop soon-ish to this avalanche of posts about ARCO, the contemporary art fair that closed 10 days ago in Madrid. But there's still a couple of stories i owe you. On top of the list is a report on Expanded Box, ARCO's section that specializes in new media art and video art. I'll focus on the former. Obviously. Art critic and curator Domenico Quaranta curated the programme with an eye on selecting artworks that feature both a marketable appeal and a critical approach of the cultural impacts of media and technologies. I think Quaranta was the ideal man for the job. He's digustingly young and as such doesn't come with the preconception and 'burden' of the old new media art crowd. He's nevertheless extremely well informed, respected by the nma family and has proved his caliber on several occasions, in particular last year when he curated Holy Fire, art of the digital age together with Yves Bernard at iMAL in Brussels. Everthing could only run smoothly.... The press release quotes Quaranta who explains that the programme "showcases a type of art that looks outside the parameters of contemporary art to art developed on the Net, the art produced in research centres and labs and that has all the potential to change our present-day notion of art. A change of perspective that should not scare collectors or art lovers, because these works are representative of the information society and of the globalised world we all live in."
Before i give more details about the artworks exhibited, allow me to write a few words about the experts' forum i participated to. Between Fields, New Media Art Between Isolation and Integration, Inter-disciplinarity and Media Specificity, chaired by Domenico Quaranta.
Because i had been suffering from a particularly vicious flu that week, i had to miss the first presentations. Fortunately, Geert Lovink dedicated a blog entry titled Discussing the Crisis in New Media Art @ ARCO Madrid to the talks of Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito , the charming and witty authors of the book At the Edge of Art, and to the one of Roberta Bosco, a journalist who has been covering media art for the mainstream and more specialized Spanish and Italian press with a remarkable knowledge and passion for the genre.
I regrettably missed Geert Lovink's talk. But i did catch the following speakers: HMKV has a talent for showing new media art works in a 'transversal' and very approachable way. The exhibitions of the Dortmund center focus on phenomenon that go way beyond the new media art sphere and take technology and media as a starting point to demonstrate their wide-ranging imprint on culture and life in general. Inke Arns illustrated that point with one example taken from the show Art in the Age of Intellectual Property: a copy of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office certificate. Kembrew McLeod, a professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa but also a prankster, trademarked in 1998 the phrase "Freedom of Expression®" as a comment on how the intellectual property law is being used to fence off culture and restrict the way in which people can express their ideas. Trailer of the documentary Freedom of Expression based on McLeod's book of the same title: After Inke it was my turn. I'll spare you that part and offer you a video of dazzling Demis. Media artist and curator Zhang Ga gave a wonderfully well-researched presentation on the many links that tie closely new media art with other art forms, demonstrating how much media art refers to and owes to many of the most important contemporary art movements. Zhang Ga also gave an overview of Synthetic Times - Media Art China at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing (part 1 and part 2 of my review of the show). Finally he mentioned the art fair dedicated to new media art galleries that he is curating in Shanghai. Joasia Krysa was the last to speak. She analyzed brilliantly Cao Fei's RMB City and its bankable success, both online and offline. Now a quick selection of the pieces shown in the Expanded Box exhibition: One of the most popular art pieces of the Expanded Box section was a 3D animation piece by John Gerrard, on view at the booth of Galerie Ernst Hilger contemporary.
Grow / Finish Unit (Eva, Oklahoma) 2008, is a representation of an unmanned pig production site near to Boise City, Oklahoma. The scene represented unfolds in real time over the course of one year, its light conditions through dawn and dusk match that of the local site. At this start of the industrialised food production chain, pigs are raised on corn which is grown using nitrogen derived from oil and gas, thus rendering the occupants of these sheds in essence, oil derived pigs. At no point are the many thousands of occupants of the eight sheds visible, as this is the case in reality. An autonomous virtual wind animates the surface dust, creating the principal movements in the piece. However, a single transport truck pulls to each building every 6-8 months and waits for 1 hour. As in many of the artist's works the public can manipulate the frame to navigate a large arc around the scene.
Joan Leandre had a spectacularly suggesting video at Project Gentili. The piece puts viewers inside an unmanned flying vehicle that slowly glide over locations that are part of everybody's culture (from Disneyland to Chernobyl) yet, acquire an uncanny pattern when seem from above. Check out rhizome's interview with Joan Leandre and the PDF catalogue of the exhibition, it's bilingual italian / english.
Thomson & Craighead' homage to John Cage's Prepared Piano (a piano with its sound altered by placing various objects in the strings) was minding its own business at the booth of the ARC Projects gallery from Sofia. Unprepared Piano is connected to a database of music MIDI files compiled from the web, no matter whether they have been intended for piano only or for a variety of instruments. The electronic scores are then "performed" automatically according to a simple set of rules.
UBERMORGEN.COM's EKMRZ Trilogy engages in a shrewd and critical with the cultural consequences of media and technologies. The booth of Fabio Paris Art Gallery which hosted their installation was certainly the most creatively designed of the section . One of the pieces exhibited was awareded the ARCO Beep new media award this year.
The award for the 'artwork everybody wanted to try' goes to Compass by Belgian artist Lawrence Malstaf and presented at the booth of the Fortlaan 17 gallery. Domenico Quaranta images |
