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The REACTIVATE!! exhibition at the at the Espai d' Art Contemporani de Castelló, near Valencia (Spain), being an almost endless source of wonders i tried to cover last week (see REACTIVATE!! Part 1, Urban reanimations and the minimal intervention and REACTIVATE!! Part 2, Instant urbanism), i still have a last story in my magic bag to share with you: Some of the projects presented in Castellon were commissioned by the contemporary art center to engage in a site-specific fashion with the theme of 'remodeled spaces and minimal interventions.'
The most poetical installation was created by ex.studio, two Barcelona-based Mexican architects Patricia Meneses and Iván Juárez with an impressive portfolio chock-full of projects that investigate and experiment with new ways of relating space with society. Designed as minimal spaces for auto-reflexion, the Refugios Urbanos are 6 suspended semi-transparent pods that temporarily invade the building of the EACC and its public space. Looking like chrysalids, the flexible structure can only contain one person. Its very delicate walls allow the inhabitant to enjoy privacy as well as a softly blurred view of the surrounding world.
Refugios Urbanos proposes new ways to inhabit and imagine space where people are both part and parcel of the city and isolated from it in order to better contemplate it. A second project worth its weight in blog ink is María Navascues, Ramón Francos and Celia García's Atomish Garden It all starts with the Pet Garden! At the opening of the Reactivate!! exhibition, visitors were invited to adopt a piece of garden. Each of them would take home a plant or plot of land to take care of it. Like real pets, owners can take them along for a walk in the street. They also require a lot of care and attention. The flower pot comes with a code giving pet owners access to the Petgarden website that gives them all the necessary instruction to pamper their botanical pet. Besides, they can share with other woners the story, health news and adventure of the plant on a blog. Current technologies enable thus the various parts of this 'atomized garden' to form a community able to stay in virtual but close proximity. All images courtesy of Espai d' Art Contemporani de Castelló. |
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Born 20 years ago, ISEA, the International Symposium on Electronic Art has the objective of discussing and showcasing creative productions that apply new technologies in interactive and digital media. While i'm spending my last hours in quiet and sweaty Turin, Brisbane-based artist Priscilla Bracks is in Singapore because that's where ISEA takes place this year. She kindly wrote this report from the main exhibition, AIR (Artists In Residence): The juried show features 16 works arising out of a 3 month residency each selected artist undertook in Singapore, working collaboratively with local organizations.
Finally, We Hear One Another is a work by Kelly Jaclynn Andres that enables people to experience each other's soundscapes. Collaborating with the Mixed Reality Lab, Kelly made bonnet's fitted with a speaker and an extra 'ear' - a cone at the back of the bonnet that funnels sound to a microphone embedded in the fabric. Signals are transmitted to a speaker in the bonnet of a partner user, via mobile telephone blue tooth. This is a really cute idea that could - for a moment - draw users out of our regular ocular-centric approach to the world (though I would really have like the volume on my speaker to be louder as it was difficult to hear the sounds over the input of my own sonic environment. We can often readily remember things that we see, events that happen, or even the tastes of food, but how often can we recall sounds that we experience, beyond those deliberately injected into the soundscape such as music or words?
Run Silent; Run Deep by Nigel Helyer (UK/Australia) & Daniel Woo (Australia) collaborating with the Marine Mammal Research Laboratory, provides an 'audio portrait' of Singapore - in particular the area around the harbour. The interface of this work enables you to move through a stylized 'map' of the city, listening to sound recordings made using hydrophones in areas corresponding to coloured circles on the map. Surround sound in the installation space, gives the sense of a 3 dimensional map, and hand drawn images laid over the map gives it cartographic feel.
To create DIY GORI: seed_1216976400, Jee Hyun Oh (South Korea) collaborated with the Laboratory of Control and Mechatronics. The work focuses on the open source culture of the internet, and experiments with the idea that 'objects exist as evolving pieces of digital data in cyberspace where they are continually remixed by users.' To create the work, the artist selected the word 'Gori' - which in Koean means 'open hook' or the fastening and loosening of human relationships - and planted it as a 'seed' on the internet by posting the word and details of the project on a wiki. The word was then propagated on various sites. The many instances of its use on web pages was then printed on rolled corrugated for display in the gallery. The visual effect of the card is reminiscent of rolls of paper, and more conventional means of storing information.
Quartet by Tad Ermintano collaborating with HOMEVR at the Institute for Infocomm Research is an interactive quartet of instruments which are played by the audience acting as orchestral conductors. 4 video screens and photo-sensors are mounted above beautifully crafted traditional instruments. An audience member standing in front of the work is seen by photo sensors that trigger the conversion of their movements into sound.
Aurora Consergens (2008) is a collaboration between Hora Cosmin Samoila, Marie Christine Driesen and the Mixed Reality Lab. Gorgeous patterns are created on a video screen from visualizations of electro-magnetic energy given off by audience members wearing head sensing gear. I spent a long time playing with this artwork and found that the patterns do actually change radically, as I thought of different things. I was told that it works better with two people, so I sat with artist Clea Waites and we tried to think of similar things at the same time. The finer patterns apparently come from detecting the brain's alpha waves, and funnily enough thoughts about the beauty of the patterns, and other beautiful things like trees and sex, seemed to generate clear, defined, unusual patterns, which the attendant remarked he had not yet seen generated by other users of the work. At other times patterns ranged from noise to bigger less defined patterns. There were a couple of works in the show dealing with water as their subject matter. One might be forgiven for thinking that has something to do with the fact that it rains all the time here, and the assumption is that water must therefore, be plentiful. But in truth water is as scarce here in Singapore as it is an many more arid parts of the world. A huge percentage of the water used is recycled back into drinking water, but much of the new water released into the drinking supply, is imported from Malaysia. Whilst there are a few storage reservoirs, Singapore simply does not have enough room for a centralized water catchment area, and tanks are built into apartments (though I have seen it done in Brisbane where I usually live).
The Sourcing Water project by Shiho Fukurara, Georg Tremmel and Yousuke Nagao in collaboration with the Singapore-Delft Water Alliance looks at the ancient practice of dowsing to find water across the island. Dowsing is a practice of using a forked rod (usually wooden) to find underground water. A dowser walks around with the rod which responds by tilting up or down if water is present (in response to magnetic energy). In this work the dowsing rods were enhanced with GPS and motion sensors, with a view to collecting data and creating a map of potential water sources. This map, and other interesting visualizations of data relating to Singapore were presented as a video projected map laid over a three dimensional plinth in the shape of Singapore island. However, the artists were not able to make any findings about the scientific validity of dowsing as they discovered that all maps of Singapore's ground water are 'classified' documents which authorities weren't able to release.
Clea White's The Water Book: An encyclopedia of water, looks at all water's properties both creative and destructive. The artwork is an interactive film installation where words relating to water are projected through a tank of water. This projection changes as people touch the water's surface. The effect is visually beautiful as the light streams through the water and up onto the darkened ceiling above the tank. Even the ripples on the water surface caused by touching can be seen in these reflections, and on a screen projection also in the gallery space. This clever use of light transforms a tank of water - a substance often taken for granted and rarely considered in an aesthetic sense - into a precious object of beauty.
The Eastwood - Real Time Strategy Group (Vladan Joler and Kristian Lukuc) have created another modification of the commercial version of the game Civilization. In this work, Civilization V, game play centres around the contemporary dream story of building a technology company empire. Players choose their company and instead of warriors and generals, employ CEOs and lawyers to build an army to win the war for market-share dominance. The work critiques the use of affective labour by gaming companies and social networking sites, to produce profit for shareholders without any real benefit to the creator/user. These concepts are brought to the fore in the games various interface options such as Advisors where you can build your company's proficiency in Folksonomy (the art of classifying people into demographics), Viral Marketing, and Love Bombing (heaping love onto new members of a social group ( a technique most often associated with religious cults that is now used increasingly in social networking web forums.
The underlying code and logic of this game is the same as the original commercial version so the underlying strategy remains essentially the same: find the resources in the economy that make you successful. However unlike the original game these resources go beyond the obvious to include resources of the new economy such as loneliness, depression and boredom, which are a key to the popularity of social networking sites. This version was completed just 11 days ago so it's not yet available for download, but I'm told that it will be available from www.eastwood-gropu.com within a week or so.
Another great work in the show is Gendered Strategies for Loitering by Shilpa Phadke, Shilpa Ranade and Sameera Khan. This work features dual video screen images, a game and a sound recording of the artists discussing the differences between women's freedom to loiter in Singapore and Mumbai. I felt the sound recording was actually the best part of this work as the artist's discussion prompted me see a gendered approach to being in public space I had never thought about before. Their basic premise was that in Mumbai whilst men regularly loitered in café's, on the street etc, smoking, chatting and enjoying the act of doing nothing, women were generally denied this pleasure because a woman seen to be doing nothing in public was viewed suspiciously, or worse, as a prostitute. This attitude I think speaks volumes of the objectification of women when a women cannot simply 'hang out' without casting doubt upon her respectability. To be in public, women must be seen to be moving with a purpose. Ie she should have some reason for being there. So if a woman is waiting for a friend on the street, she would stand at a bus stop and not on the street corner, to clearly demonstrate she is waiting for something. The artists contrast this with loitering behaviour in Singapore which is apparently gender neutral. The difference in Singapore they say, is that no-one loiters. Everyone must have a purpose and move about the city in a very defined, well regulated way. Extra cold air pours out of ducts above the entrances to railway stations to discourage loitering at the doors. Little footprints painted on paths direct on which side one should walk. Even foreigners living in the city who have a culture of loitering, do so in regulated way - the Indonesians gathering in City Plaza on a Sunday, the Indian and Tamil constructions workers in Little India on a Sunday. I actually experienced this work on a Sunday and went out to Little India to test the theory. Though the streets were a sea of humanity, I was one of only 4 women I saw walking around Little India that evening - an uncomfortable, but revealing experience. Thanks Priscilla! AIR (Artists In Residence) runs at the National Museum of Singapore, through 3 August, 2008. |
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Another project from the RCA Design Interactions show. This one made me laugh so much: In wealthier neighbourhoods, the size of the house and how well maintained the garden is, often represents status. The Grass Scanner is a device designed by Alice Wang to measure how green the grass is. Using 3 Pantone Color Cue devices, it takes reading from 3 random patches of the grass and outputs a Pantone colour code for one to compare. With the codes, one can refer to the PARKTONE cards which contains average grass colours of Royal Parks and other green areas in the UK for people to match up with their own garden.
As grass condition in different areas of a given park may vary, each area was measured several times before an average of the data was used to create the PARKTONE card. Relate: Mugs for a perfect tea. |
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Back in July, while i was visiting Documenta 12 in Kassel, i saw a 16-metre-long flower-bed raised above the ground, with 70 packets of seeds sprouting from the grass, each of them carrying worrying labels that documented the latest form of Colonialism: biopiracy.
Biopiracy describes a new form of "colonial pillaging" in which western corporations reap profits by taking out patents on indigenous plants, food, local knowledge, human tissues and drugs from developing countries and turning them into lucrative products. Only in few cases are the benefits shared with the country of origin.
Biopiracy targets particularly countries known for their exceptionally high level of cultural and biological variety: Mexico, India, Brazil, Indonesia and Australia. This process is also referred to as "internal conquest" in analogy to the "external conquest" of colonialism. In her Siegesgärten (Victory gardens, 2007) installation, Vienna artist Ines Doujak criticized the bio-politics of EU and the USA which turn a blind eye on the ruthless economization of nature and of life. The seed packets sprouting from the flower-bed informed visitors about global exploitation, genetic engineering and monoculture. On the front of the packets are photo-collages showing drag queens and kings and fetish secual practices set in exotic natural settings. On the back, the conditions and consequences of biopiracy are described and illustrated using real examples of the practice.
"We fear an increasing dependency on large corporations that seek to control global food production and agriculture by means of patents, from milk to bread and from baking grains to energy plants", explained patent expert Christoph Then (via no patents on seeds.)
This is an eye-opening book (at least for me). I don't think i'll ever shop the same way again. Except that it's not going to be easy. I can boycott a few cosmetics but how could i live without the giant which has been accused of being the "biggest threat to genetic privacy" for its alleged plan to create a searchable database of genetic information: Google? In her book, Doujak retraces many cases of biopiracy, while giving a context for the practice. In 1980, Ananda Chakrabarty became the first person to receive a patent for a transgenic organism, a bacterium he had engineered to digest oil. Previously, life forms had been excluded from patent laws. The landmark patent has since paved the way for many others on genetically modified micro-organisms and other life forms. 5 years later, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office allowed GM plants, seeds and plant tissues to be patented. And by 1987 animal patenting followed. Today even human gene sequences, cell lines and stem cells are permitted. Corporate interests can thus corner life forms for the lifetime of a patent and have a monopoly on their exploitation. With the advent of nanotechnology comes the rise of what the Captain Hook Awards call the nanopirates, those who claim ownership of the molecules and even the elements that everything is made from.
As Ines Doujak writes in the book: There is a clear distinction between research of public resources in the interest of all and corporate theft and privatization of the same resources.
The stories collected by the artists are fearsome, here's just a couple of them: - Genetic material from members of some indigenous communities in Brazil and Venezuela can be purchased for 85 dollars through the Internet. It is unclear whether the samples were obtained with the full and informed consent of the individuals and of the Brazilian government. Another issue is whether there are guarantees in place to ensure equitable distribution of the knowledge and profits generated from the samples.
Some of the cases described in the book are comforting, they show how organized action can reverse unfair processes. That's what happened with quinoa, a plant cultivated in the Andes for 6000 years. In 1994, scientists from Colorado University were granted a patent to a Bolivian species. This means they could also control the rights to any hybrids created using the Apelawa variety, including many traditional varieties grown by peasant farmers in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Chile as well as varieties important in Bolivia's quinoa export market. As the president of the Bolivian National Association of Quinoa Producers said at the time: "Our intellectual integrity has been violated by this patent," he said, "Quinoa has been developed by the Andean agriculturists for millennia, it wasn't 'invented' by researchers in North America." Protests proved successful: the patent was dropped in 1998. A second case with annulment of a questionable patent concerns the Hagahai people (Papua New Guinea). Their first contact with the outside world was in 1984. Viruses and illnesses resulted in this contact decimated the Hagahai to such extent that they were under threat of extinction. Foreign researchers administered the vaccination needed but also took some DNA samples (without their knowledge). They discovered that the people is immune to leukaemia and degenerative neurological illnesses. The genetic qualities of the Hagahai were patented in the United States. Worldwide protests led to the annulment of the patent. More images |
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According to the Antarctic Treaty signed in 1959, the continent's territory is a protected ecosystem and as such cannot be used neither for military purposes nor commercial exploitation. The Antarctic contains 70% of the planet's fresh water reserves in the form of ice and, today, its name evokes the slow melting of the ice caused by global warming. In 2007 Lucy + Jorge Orta went to the inhospitable land on an artistic and social research expedition.
The tents, survival kits, videos and mobile aid units created by the artists as a result of their expedition to the edge of the world are having their first public showing at the Hangar Bicocca in Milan. Hangar Bicocca is real big. Before being a space dedicated to contemporary art, it was a vast industrial factory that manufactured bobbins for electric train motors. The star of the exhibition is Antarctic Village. Made of 50 dwellings that bring out the images of refugee camps broadcast on tv, the installation is a symbol of the plight of those struggling to cross borders and to gain the freedom of movement necessary to escape political and social conflict. The temporary encampment was envisioned as a free, neutral territory in a place where living conditions are so extreme that it imposes a situation of mutual aid and solidarity, no matter your nationality.
The tents are hand stitched with sections of flags from around the world, along with clothes and gloves, symbolising the multiplicity and diversity of people. A recent UN source states that 2.2 million migrants, mainly from the African and Asian continents, will arrive in the rich world every year from now until 2050. The artists go beyond their comment on the free circulation of individuals across the whole planet by proposing an amendment to the Universal Declaration of Human Right that would include the right to free circulation, on par with merchandise, economic flows and pollution.
The Antarctica exhibition is also an occasion for presenting other works created by the couple over the last five years, addressing social, environmental and humanitarian issues: mobility, migration, climate and environmental crises, and human rights: - Orta Water, everyday objects and mobile prototypes which allow for water gathering, purification and distribution. They were designed for the part of the world population whose access to food and water is put at risk by the consequences of environmental crisis and free market privatization.
- Urban Life Guard, the famous series of survival figures created by the artists for their urban performances. The structure is made of stretchers, camp beds, resistant garments and modular devices, which, in case of situation of crisis or danger, can be assembled and used as sleeping bags or shelters.
- some M.I.U. (Mobile Intervention Unit): industrial, ex-army vehicles or ambulances converted into first aid units for civilian populations. They are outfitted with an array of emergency equipment that range from water filtering systems to temporary dormitories. On the exterior, quotations, sentences or images recall the fate of those who are forced to immigrate for survival. Stationed at hangar Bicocca was Nomad Hotel, a reconditioned military four-wheel truck with micro living quarters and a transformed Red Cross ambulance, from which visitors can claim their Antarctic World Passport, created by the artists to offer a symbolic access to all the countries in the world.
Among the new works which have been commissioned for the Milan exhibition is a fascinating and poetic wall installation of life jackets Life Line.
My flickr set. Lucy + Jorge Orta's Antarctica expedition is on view at Hangar Bicocca in Milan until June 8, 2008.
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Today people will look down on you if your art space doesn't have an exhibition dedicated to ecological issues on its agenda. Unsurprisingly, Milan still hasn't organized anything worth mentioning but her little neighbour, the enlightened and chilly Turin, did. The show is called Greenwashing. Environment, Perils, Promises and Perplexities and is on view at the Fondazione Rebaudengo until May 11, 2008. Here's the premise: The diverse practices represented in the exhibition do not just point the finger at the degradation of our planet, they also make more tangible the contradictions and responsibilities that we encounter personally and as a society. Art here does not necessarily proclaim a 'correct' ethical or green choice, but allows the possibility for broadening and analysing our perceptions and actions.
The 25 artists and groups selected not only engage with emissions' offsetting, food miles, environmental marketing, ecological footprints, and other eco-conscious issues but they also bring attention to their political and social consequences. Many of the works selected are extremely good at making environmental issues less abstract and remote from our daily reach. I'm glad i had the opportunity to see all these pieces in one go. That's what thematic exhibitions are for, right? However, i couldn't see much past the simple gathering of works, they have this environmental streak to keep them together but there is something missing in the curatorial vision. I don't know the secret to curating an exhibition with a scope and breath which will go beyond the sum of all the works it gangs around but it sure is puzzling when the multiplier symbol is missing. Still, this exhibition provides enough food for thought for people who are naive enough to believe that they can sleep soundly in their organic cotton bed linen just because they recycle glass, never print any paper unless they have no other choice and always bring their own bags to the supermarket.
Initiated by Gustav Metzger, the RAF campaign upholds that the art world - artists, curators, critics, gallerists, collectors, museum directors, and art bloggers too i guess - could or should swap planes for less carbon dioxide-emitting transports. The RAF acronym deliberately echoes the Royal Air Force - the aerial warfare branch of the British military - as well as the militant left-wing group known as the Red Army Faction. The message is communicated by mass-produced leaflets first distributed during Sculpture Projects Münster last Summer. The Turin version of the leaflet is available in art galleries and inserted into international mailings in connection with the exhibition.
BP's environmental record is pretty appalling. In 2000, British Petroleum changed its name to BP (Beyond Petroleum) and chose a yellow and green sunflower-like as its logo in a bid to highlight its interest in alternative and environmentally friendly fuels. Nevertheless BP was named one of the "ten worst corporations" in both 2001 and 2005 based on its environmental and human rights records. The Bruce High Quality Foundation's installation Beyond Pastoral (Shroud of Turin) grows out of a project that the BHQF initiated for an exhibition in New York in 2007, which consisted of a 1/5 scale model of the BP petrol station located opposite the gallery, underneath which thousands of lemons and limes were arranged in the form of the BP logo.
Each fruit was wired with electrodes and together they generated enough electrical current to illuminate the model. The irony of this seemingly earnest demonstration of an alternative energy source lies in the fact that the citruses quickly started to rot, posing a health hazard. Besides, transporting the fruit had required hundreds of liters of fuel. The Turin version of the work presented only the beautifully parched carpet of lemons and videos documenting the New York installation. Beyond Pastoral exploit the power of faith, images and advertising in the new found religion of 'green' to further test the sustainability, credibility and authenticity of both corporate critique and supposedly miraculous technological promises.
A few weeks ago, i was in a museum bar in New York and almost fell of my chair when i was served a bottle of San Pellegrino, a water that (i think) comes from Lombardy in Italy. Minerva Cuevas's installation in Turin echoes our absurd and eco-damaging fetishism for "exotic" waters.
Égalité (2003) also involves the sabotaging of a corporate graphic identity. Owned by the Danone group, Evian is probably the world's best-known bottled water. Considering that the global market for bottled water multiplied more than 1000 times in the last decade - its average price is more than that of petrol - Cuevas has kept the shape and design of the bottle intact. Bar one detail: she replaced the familiar brand's lettering by Égalité, as in France's motto, 'Liberté, égalité, fraternité' (Liberty, equality, fraternity), subtly pointing out political issues linked to water throughout the world nowadays.
There is little equality as far as access to water is concerned, and those who have a seemingly unlimited access to it would rather pay ridiculous prices for something that comes almost freely from a tap.
Wilfredo Prieto's Estanque installation is a congregation of crude oil barrels choreographed to look like an idyllic lily pond habitat complete with water puddles and a live frog (which had left the building when i visited the show).
Petroleum oil, which is itself an organic substance, is converted by the sheer iconic power of its container into a symbol of all of the ills of our fossil-fuel dependency. Yet the sculpture inevitably suggests the prospect of eco-advertising, as if its graphic visual summary of apparent amphibian-petroleum harmony could perfectly lend itself to an audacious company marketing department in a bid to demonstrate their 'green' industrial principles.
Simon Starling's ironic C.A.M. Crassulacean Acid Metabolism belongs to the artist's fascinating series of "cactus works." This installation is made of functioning cast iron radiators shaped like cacti and connected to a boiler with copper piping. The title of the work comes from a biochemical pathway that is a complex variation of photosynthesis, whereby some plants acquire carbon dioxide during the hours of darkness, minimizing thus eco-physiological stress and water loss from their leaves by avoiding gas exchange during the hot part of the day. C.A.M. opposes the supremely efficient and economical cactus strategy with the slightly ludicrous man-made radiators that expel heat into the exhibition space. Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, whose life-sized clay hippopotamus had charmed me so much at the Venice Biennale in 2005, presented photos that document a participatory performance event they staged on the island of Vieques in March 2003 together with local residents and activist groups protesting against the U.S Military occupation of the island. The U.S had bought the land from the Puerto Rican government and had been using it for military exercises, and as a firing range and testing ground for bombs, missiles, and other weapons. The military experiments brought together with them severe ecological damage.
Allora & Calzadilla designed rubber shoe soles to be worn during actions of protest. When activists illegally entered the bombing range, they left behind indented messages for the US military staff. The imprints were a way of reclaiming the disputed territory, giving new power to the term "landmark." Today the contested territory, though still contaminated and debated, is a wildlife reserve under the protection of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Verdict: Greenwashing is a moving exhibition worth taking the train for if you ever come to Milan this month for the Salone del Mobile. I'm sure there will be some inspiring projects and gadgets presented this year at the international furniture fair. I wonder if any of them will have the strength of most of the artworks i discovered at the Fondazione Rebaudengo the other day. I went camera-crazy again. GREENWASHING will run at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo centre for contemporary art in Turin, Italy through 11 May 2008. Related: Book review: Worldchanging: A Users Guide for the 21st Century; Ecological Strategies in Today's Art (part 1 and 2). Previously at the Fondazione Re Rebaudengo: Murakami exhibition in Turin. Image on the homepage: Amy Balkin, Public Smog, 2004. |
