we make money not art

The Meat Licence Proposal, interview with John O'Shea

2012-01-31T10:14:50Z

Image credit: John O'Shea

Because he is interested in the ethics and dilemmas of eating meat, John O'Shea is looking into schemes to achieve a more compassionate meat consumption. Since 2008, the artist has been working on Meat Licence Proposal. Under the law proposal, citizens willing to buy or consume a certain type of meat would need to obtain a licence to do so first. And the only way to acquire the licence is to slaughter the animal yourself.

If you happen to be in The Netherlands right now, head to Stroom in The Hague where O'Shea is showing two works related to The Meat Licence Proposal as part of the Food Forward, an exhibition presenting scenarios for the future of our food based on the work of artists and designers.

The first work in the show features the responses recorded on the streets of Manchester to The Meat Licence Proposal. The audio fragments are presented within a bespoke technological interface (developed in collaboration with artist and developer Tom Schofield) which makes connections between the recordings and actual written legal documents which support but also sometimes contradict claims that people made in response to the proposal for a new law.

Black Market Pudding. Photo credit: John O'Shea

The second piece is Black Market Pudding, a real and ethically conscious food product of a new type. The project involves making the traditional blood sausage but this time using blood from a living pig. Black Market Pudding is also supported by a business plan that would ensure a fair deal for farmer, animal and consumer.

O'Shea is currently working within the Clinical Engineering department of the University of Liverpool in collaboration with Prof. John Hunt on Pigs Bladder Football , a football ball grown from living cells, for Abandon Normal Devices Festival as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

Image from the Pigs Bladder Football project

Plenty of reasons to be willing to interview John, then!

Hi John! You have been working on the Meat Licence Proposal since 2008. After 4 years developing and presenting the proposal, do you think you're getting closer to seeing it accepted?

I can positively say that, following several consultations, dinners and public meetings, I think that many of the ethical and legal challenges for implementing a law like the one being proposed have been fleshed out.

The Meat Licence Proposal is a much more developed discourse than when it began as a web dialogue in 2008. Since then, there seems also to have been a steady increase of alternative ideas around meat consumption and production entering the mainstream consciousness in the UK, particularly through television programmes focusing on the origins of meat products and celebrity chefs advocating nose to tail approaches and so on, so I think that the cultural environment is more ripe than ever for this kind of law to work.

However, despite any small successes The Meat Licence Proposal may have had in terms of consciousness raising around apparent discrepancies between the products and processes in our food supply, I really don't think that we are any closer to making the proposed meat licensing law an actuality for the UK. I think that I would have to take responsibility for this lack of progress in terms of actually getting the law accepted, which has mostly been down to a failure on my part to properly understand how our laws are made within our democratic society.

Fortunately, through research with Newcastle University (and the Law School there) I have begun to get a more proper understanding of the actual way in which food producers, supermarkets and other large corporations actually relate to the legal and democratic process of lawmaking around food. As I understand it now, the way things really work is pretty much the opposite to what one might expect: where The Meat Licence Proposal has started from a position of principle (people who are comfortable eating meat should be comfortable with killing animals) and attempted to extrapolate a policy from there, our actual laws and regulations around food, rather than being pro-actively constructed based upon an existing value system, are in fact developed quite subversively, in reaction to particular products and trends which emerge and are successful within the free market.

Photo credit: John O'Shea

How have ordinary meat-eaters but also lawmakers and politicians reacted to the proposal so far? How much support/opposition has the proposal encountered?

One of the pieces on show within the Food Forward exhibition (entitled "The Meat Licence Proposal, 2012") features a whole series of short audio pieces which are recordings of people on a Manchester High Street giving their opinion and gut-reaction to the law as it is proposed. These views vary wildly but most people seem very apprehensive about the idea that they would have to get involved with animal slaughter in order to consume meat. There is a great deal of skepticism too about how a proposed meat licencing law could work in practice; however, these logistical questions are for the most part already dealt within existing parts of UK and European law and this is what the work attempts to demonstrate, through literally using a video projector to "shed light" on over a hundred different legal statutes.

My practice is, of course, as an artist, and, to begin with I wanted to wait until the proposal had reached a reasonable level of development before approaching "professionals" and "specialists" in government and law. My justification for this quite oblique strategy is that, having been subject to innumerable laws for my whole life, I thought it would be interesting to have a go myself, on my own terms. More recently, I have been in contact with legal scholars at Newcastle University Law School and for them, The Meat Licence Proposal presents and intriguing case, since it does not operate in a way which we might expect laws to behave - it is an object of curiosity.

A few years ago I also had a brief conversation with a high ranking UK government minister about the proposal and their view was, regardless of his own opinion on it, any law which might be seen as unpopular in the short-term presents a difficult case for government (hence the very long consultation period before the inevitable implementation of UK wide bans on smoking in public places.)

Black Market Pudding at Stroom. Photo credit: John O'Shea

What was the inspiration for the proposal?

The Meat Licence Proposal in itself is not a particularly original idea - I had discussed this kind of thing many years previous with friends and it crops up sporadically on internet forums, at dinner parties and down the pub. I think the element which distinguishes this work is my decision to actively work towards making the idea for a law which would control meat into a legal reality. That strategy didn't come from a moment of "inspiration", as such, but like most of my work, actually emerged from a much more sustained period of anxiety around a blatant contradiction (at the time I ate meat pretty much every day, but had never killed an animal) and also the claustrophobic legal infrastructure which appeared to me to be impenetrable. I just wanted to get involved in these two parts of my daily experience and, to begin with, an activist approach seemed most appropriate.

If the proposal is enacted as law one day, how would it be put into effect? Would there be specially designed slaughter houses that anyone can enter to kill a pig and get a license? Would the killing be made following a special ritual? Using special weapons or tools? How would the law affect the distribution of meat?

These questions are very important, and I think that the suggestions you have made are probably not far off the mark. Discussions around the actual logistics of making a workable meat licencing law are still very much at the centre of this public research and development. To take the points you have made specifically: In my opinion slaughterhouses would not require very significant physical changes in how they work - instead changes would be needed at the level of policy.

At the moment you or I would typically not be permitted to enter the majority of slaughterhouses in the UK, even to see what is happening, since these are private enterprises. The right of entry is one of the first things which would have to change and I would see this as being in a similar realm to laws enabling citizens to enter courts of law and witness legal process. I think we should have similar guarantees of transparency around hidden processes in society since, at the end of the day, we are the consumer of these products and should be allowed to witness how they are made if we choose. Regarding taking part in the act of slaughter - again, there are various systems in place which allow subtle, often religious, variations on how the slaughter takes place and I think much could be drawn from existing regulation of special allowances around these methods. An illustrator, Chris Rodenhurst, with whom I have worked on several elements of how the proposal has been presented to date, produced a lovely set of sketches to suggest potential new tools for citizen slaughter. Like anything else, once this engagement with killing is happening on a national scale it will be in the hands of designers and marketers to determine exact specifications for new kinds of execution devices.

Marcus the sheep was reared by pupils of Lydd Primary School. Given the choice to keep him as a pet, or sell it for meat, the children voted by an overwhelming majority for the lamb to be sold for meat. Photo: IMAGES INTERNATIONAL

When i read about your proposal, i thought 'great! the emotional stress of killing an animal might put people off meat' but recalling the sad story of Marcus the sheep, i'm not so sure anymore about how much people can be moved by animals.

In your opinion, how would the law affect the way people see animals and consume meat?

Yes, I remember this Marcus the sheep story being all over the media at the time; for the "animal loving" (and mostly meat eating) British public it seemed to pose a kind of conundrum i.e: "Why has the killing of this particular animal caused such outcry?" I think the answer lies in part with the peculiar cultural and emotional distinctions made, across the world, between animals kept as "pets" and animals kept to be slaughtered for food. I think, even more important, in this case, is the act of giving the animal a (human) name which demands an identification at the level of the individual animal which would not be usual in the context of slaughter, where animals are numbered. "We are going to butcher Marcus..."

The aim of The Meat Licence Proposal is to facilitate a more coherent engagement with both animals and meat. Those people wishing to eat meat would obtain their licence by actively taking part in the slaughter of an individual animal (which would correspond to the type of meat which they would like to eat.) I think that there is a strong likelihood that some people may be put off, but this it important to keep in mind that this is certainly not a pro-vegetarian law and, surprising as it may seem, some people may find that they actually enjoy killing.

Image credit: John O'Shea

Can you tell us about the Black Market Pudding that you're showing at Stroom in The Hague? Will it really be manufactured using blood from a living pig? The description on Stroom's page says "In purchasing and consuming Black Market Pudding we are keeping the animal from slaughter - no animals are harmed!" How would this ensure that the animals won't suffer?

Black Market Pudding is my own culinary invention. It is a subtle variation on the traditional black pudding which is a blood sausage dish of the UK and Ireland made using congealed pigs blood, oats and different herbs and spices. I have devised my own special recipe for what I call Black Market Pudding where, crucially, the key ingredient (pigs blood) is obtained without any animals being slaughtered; this is the unique selling point: No animals are harmed.

I worked with Stroom over several months prior to the Food Forward show to establish a supply-chain in the Netherlands in order to obtain blood from living pigs in a way which is legal, humane and safe. For the show I made several Black Market Puddings in the kitchen at the gallery, using blood from the living pigs and these are presented within a refrigerated deli-counter as "real" proof-of-concept products. An important aspect of this work is that it is not speculative or representational in a way which might be expected within a future oriented show: Black Market Pudding is already "real".

Of course the true reality for Black Market Pudding would be for this delicacy to be for sale on the open market and this is an aim about which I have spoken at length with Karen Vershooren (curator of Food Forward). Over the course of this year I will be attempting to set up a legitimate production and sales operation for Black Market Pudding within Europe and I have made a simple website where people can register their interest. The challenges in bringing Black Market Pudding to market would be quite great I think, especially within the UK (where I am based) because it is difficult to work with animal blood in the food chain since the BSE crisis (where dried pigs blood found within animal feeds was seen to be a contributing factor). If the product were to be sold, it would be necessary that it be subjected to all of the regulations which would face any food innovation for human consumption and perhaps in this instance (where the process is different to the normal order - the animal is not killed) perhaps new laws would have to be developed for this.

I hope that Black Market Pudding can be seen as a continuation of consumer trends towards food products which contain not only their intrinsic value as foodstuffs and sources of energy but also a kind of additional ethical value which is quite difficult to quantify. If we think about the "fair trade" and "free range" labels, people are paying extra to opt out of a system which they believe to be exploitative; with Black Market Pudding I am proposing a similar business model. The name "Black Market" hints at the fact that this product operates outside of the normal order of things and the idea would be that the Black Market Puddings are sold at such a premium that, not only are you buying a delicious product, but also you are buying the animal out of the regular supply chain and ensuring it will not be slaughtered. This business model presents a fair deal for the producer (who is compensated) the animal (which gets to keep its life) and the consumer (who has this unparalleled piece of mind).

There is I suppose one caveat with Black Market Pudding and that is, by going outside of the regular carnivorous foodchain, where humans, as flesh-eaters, would consider themselves to be at the very top - here we are taking blood from an animal which is alive and so our own position in the hierarchy changes - as animals consuming the blood of another living animal we are explicitly "parasites" and so the real question for the market is whether people would be comfortable with that designation.

What are the MLP next steps?

At the very beginning of January 2012 I made a statement on the front page of The Meat Licence Proposal website explaining that there would be a change of strategy. Over the last several years I have focused my energies on a democratic approach, engaging directly with processes of law-making and suggesting that a new law could (and should) be developed in a public and transparent way, by citizens themselves, in a similar way to open-source development models which operate within software culture.

These kinds of initiatives can continue I think but it is my view now that the overall approach needs to be much more market-oriented and, once Black Market Pudding is established, I will be looking to identify more products and strategies which can close the gap between product and process (especially in meat production).

I'll leave you now with an anonymous quote from one of the participants of a 2010 consultation exercize:

"Ultimately, The Meat Licence Proposal must engage and identify with the values of 'the market' where production (killing animals) is about making money, and consumption (eating meat) is about getting what we want."

Thanks John!

The Very First Game of Pigs Bladder Football to Take Place in The 21st Century, a video by Tim Brunsden

Check out The Meat Licence Proposal at the Food Forward exhibition, Stroom, The Hague, NL. The show is curated by Karen Verschooren and remains open through April 1, 2012.

Don McCullin, about the London homeless

2012-01-30T08:11:09Z

Don McCullin, Aldermaston, Great Britain, early 1960's

A few months ago, I read there was an exhibition of photographs by Don McCullin at Tate Britain. I thought "That one can wait, it's going to for ages and everybody knows the work of the award-winning war photographer anyway." That was very presumptuous of me. I finally went to see the show and it is now clear that i had underestimated the impact his images would have on me. Especially his portrayal of the homeless living around London from the late 1960s to the '80s.

Don McCullin, East End, London, 1973

Don McCullin, Jean, Whitechapel, London, c 1980

While looking for images online, i discovered that in 1989 McCullin had made a documentary for BBC about the London's homeless, a sharply growing problem attributed to the failure of social policy: changes in the UK social security system, shortage of affordable housing, closing down of long stay hostels.. have thrown young people, the mentally ill, former soldiers, even entire families in the streets.

"I started seeing people sleeping in shop doorways and when I went to Third World countries people would refuse to believe there were poor people in England," McCullin explains in the video below. "But there were many, many untold truths about this country, we had poverty, we had unemployment, we had a class system that wasn't convenient, all kinds of things that people who lived outside of England wouldn't have understood, so when I started walking the streets of London and seeing people sleeping in shop doorways, even I was shocked."

TateShots: Don McCullin

The photos in the exhibition were mostly taken in the East side of London. The area is now attracting a different crowd .

Don McCullin, Homeless Irishman, Spitalfields, London 1969

Also at Tate are spectacular b&w images that shows the toll that industrialization took on the countryside, images of Berlin during the construction of the Wall and the landscapes McCullin is now shooting to try and forget the horrors of the wars he has spent decades to document.

Don McCullin, A lone anti-war protester confronts police in Whitehall during the Cuban Missile Crisis, London, 1962

Don McCullin, Early morning, West Hartlepool, County Durham, U.K., 1963

Don McCullin, Early morning, West Hartlepool, County Durham, 1963

Don McCullin, Slum clearance, Liverpool, Great Britain, late 1960s

Don McCullin, Girl and laundry, Bradford, Great Britain, early 1970s

Don McCullin, US troops, West Berlin, West Germany, 1961

Don McCullin, American soldiers on high alert monitor East German forces in Berlin, Germany, 1961

Don McCullin, Berlin 1961

And if it's McCullin's war photos you're after, then head to the Imperial War Museum for Shaped by War: Photographs by Don McCullin.

The Nikon F camera saved Don McCullin's life, it stopped a bullet while he was covering war in Vietnam

Audio slideshow: 'Shaped by war'.

Don McCullin's work is at Tate Britain through March 4, 2012 and at the Imperial War Museum through April 15, 2012.

H.O.R.T.U.S. (Hydro Organism Responsive to Urban Stimuli)

2012-01-27T15:03:50Z

If you're in London you might want to swing by the Architectural Association School and check out H.O.R.T.U.S. (which stands for Hydro Organism Responsive to Urban Stimuli.) To be honest i'm not sure what to think about this one but it's been a slow week art-wise for me so i'll throw the information in this post in the hope that it will help me make up my mind about the project.

ecoLogicStudio, H.O.R.T.U.S. installation at AA. Photo: Sue Barr

With HORTUS, the architects from ecoLogicStudio are inviting the public to become cyber-gardeners and "invent new protocols of urban biogardening."

There's a bright green carpet on the floor and hundreds of intravenous-style bags are suspended above our heads. The bags are in fact photo-bioreactors and they form a 'greenhouse' that hosts nine different species of algae, from chlorella to algae found in London's canals. Visitors can blow into flexible plastic tubes, fostering the growth of the algae with their carbon dioxide and activating the oxygen production.

The plastic bags carry a QR code. You hold up your smartphone, scan the code and are directed to a page of information about the algae you've just 'fed' with your breath. Large containers are distributed between the algae bags, they host bioluminescent bacteria that automatically fed through a pump with air from the oxygen released.

The greenhouse cohabits with a virtual garden that feeds on visitors' scans and tweets about the exhibition. Their 'interaction' with the algae shape a garden rendered in real time on a screen.

ecoLogicStudio, H.O.R.T.U.S. installation at AA. Photo: Sue Barr

I wasn't much impressed with the QR codes and the virtual garden created by tweets but it turns out that the project is much more than just another demonstration of how 'nature meets buildings meet the virtual.' H.O.R.T.U.S. is one of the manifestations of ecoLogicStudio's exploration into the role that algae might play in our future life: to produce nonpolluting hydrogen-based energy, to filter water or take a more important role in our alimentation.

The architects recently had the opportunity to try and test their idea on a larger scale in Simrishamn in Sweden. The Swedish Municipality is in need of new urban ideas to help boost its economy: the fishing industry is declining and young people are leaving the area.

ecoLogicStudio came up with an Regional Algae Farm plan that involves a series of algae-related urban activities and architectural prototypes.

H.O.R.T.U.S. enables the public to engage directly and simply with ideas and systems that might form a larger part of our life in years to come.

Interview with Jani Leinonen

2012-01-25T07:47:52Z

On January 31, 2010 a life-size statue of Ronald Mc Donald was abducted from a McDonald's fast food joint in central Helsinki. The kidnapping took place in broad day light as the video below demonstrates:

How Ronald was kidnapped (more on The Free Ronald's channel

A few days after, the kidnappers, a group of health-food activists called the Food Liberation Army, uploaded a video message on YouTube threatening to 'decapitate' Ronald if the hamburger corporation failed to answer questions about the quality of its food and its work ethics. The only unequivocal the FLA received was a stern warning that the company "does not negotiate with criminals." So poor Ronald was guillotined. Only that it was only a copy of the stolen figurine that lost its head. The 'original' one remained intact.

Somehow, the Finnish police managed to discover the identity of one of the food activists: artist Jani Leinonen. They raided his home, seized mobile phones and computers, threw him in jail for thirty hours and heroically freed Ronald the "hostage".

It wasn't the first time Leinonen's artworks engaged with food products, satirizing and dismantling their symbols and marketing strategies but this action proved too much for the authorities and the fast food chain. As Leinonen explained in an interview "I thought I was just stealing a store decoration, but I must have done something much worse."

I discovered Jani Leinonen's work at the Venice Biennale back in 2009. The cardboard signs he had bought from beggars across the world were framed and gracing the dining room of the Danish and Nordic Pavilions curated by Elmgreen & Dragset. He had actually bought these signs from people asking for charity and i still remember vividly how uneasy their presence at the swanky art event made me feel.

From the series Anything Helps

Jani Leinonen, Rejected Ideas For Cap'n Crunch Advertisements, 2009

Jani Leinonen, Coulrophobia, 2009. Photo: Johanna Viljakainen

Thanks to the kind help of James Hudson, i got in touch with Jani Leinonen and bombarded him with questions about the beggars signs, his crazy sexed-up versions of cereal boxes for children, experiments with selling contemporary art works by the bulk as if they were vegetables and of course i was curious about the aftermath of the Ronald affair.

Kidnapping of Ronald McDonald was reported on Fox News

What happened after the Ronald affair? I read about the whole ordeal with the police and how the fast food decoration eventually went back to the restaurant. Is the police still looking at you suspiciously? Has McDonald's banned you from its restaurants?
But more more generally, do you think that Food Liberation Army brought the right spotlight on your artistic career? Or looking back, do you think you should have handled things differently?

Fortunately I was not banned from McDonald´s restaurants because I do visit them often. I keep telling myself it´s artistic research but I think I am lying even to myself. We just got the final charges via mail a few weeks ago. I and two other FLA members are charged with forgery and fraud, and the trial will be held in June in Helsinki. The prosecutor claims that the repair form of a fictional statue repair company we left at the table at McDonald´s is a forgery. Even more surprisingly he claims we committed a fraud and tried to profit economically by kidnapping Ronald. I am very happy about the chance to make my case in trial. We are planning to invite the best food specialists and art scholars to witness that our action was art and and served a revolutionary purpose.

Of course, there are many things I would have done differently. Then again, there was no way of knowing that, for example, the police would be doing a six man raid at my home just because we took a plastic store decoration. The project happened mostly in the web and media, and the debates it started and the attention it got there, were beyond all my expectations.

Food Liberation Army: A carpenter crafted the Alvar Aalto style guillotine from traditional Finnish crafts wood birch

How about the Food Liberation Army? Are you planning to do more actions or did the whole army retire?

I created the Food Liberation Army to allow myself to make art both anonymously and without tagging it art immediately. FLA gave people an impression of activism, which I think my art is really close to. My cover was blown when the cops threw me to jail and the press found about it. But before that it was amazing to follow the confusion of people when they had no idea if the kidnapping was the real thing, or a marketing stunt, or art, or what. The most interesting discussions sparkled out of genuine interest in the issues the FLA brought up in the letter of demands. I think FLA will continue its work but I will deny having any part in it.

Jani Leinonen, From the series All bad that happened to others is now happening to us, 2008. Photo: Jami Saariniemi

You seem to be fascinated with branding. Is it a coincidence that many of the brands you target are associated with family and children? Have any of the cereals makers ever reacted to the way you subvert their packaging?

I read a study that the most unhealthy food products are the most dazzling by the appearance, and those are of course kid´s products. The first time I used packages in my art I received a threatening letter from a Finnish company called Raisio. I had painted on their age-old Elovena oat meal packages. There´s a girl in a traditional Finnish national costume in the cover and I had painted her in Niqab, or as a call girl, or a suicide terrorist. Their lawyer wrote in the letter they have a right to claim financial compensations because I have damaged their trademark. They dropped the case after getting a lot of bad publicity which was in those days my only weapon against these giant corporations. That was the first time I realized that these colorful and seemingly innocent images are dangerous.

Liverpool, England, from the series Anything Helps

Anything Helps, 2009. Installation view at the Venice Biennale

I remember seeing the Beggar Signs at the 2009 Venice Biennale. The website of the project says "The incomes from selling the installation and all the donations will be spend on raising the awareness of globally rising class-differences and poverty through thought-provoking actions." What happened after Venice? Did you sell some of those signs and used the money to set up actions? Was Hunger King one of those actions?

I sold the whole thing and the money has been waiting for a good use in a high interest bank account. If I recall correctly, the selling price was around 14 000 euros, and the buyer was one of the richest men in Switzerland. I started buying the signs from beggars already in 2006 without knowing what to do with them. The first two I bought with something like 5 dollars in San Antonio, Texas. The more I bought the worse my conscience got, and I started increasing the purchase price. The last ones I bought with about 40 euros. it was not until 2009 I realized the money I payed and got from the process was so integral that I had to use it to help these people who created the work.

Jani Leinonen, Hunger King,

I read on your blog that the Left Alliance party office had asked you if you'd design a poster for the presidential campaign of their candidate. Is that something you could do? Would you be interested in becoming the Shepard Fairey of Finland? Why or why not?

I did do the poster, and he did not make it to the second round. Perhaps it was my fault. We had 8 presidential candidates this year, from 8 different parties. The only regret I have is that I got the most brilliant idea too late. I will save it for the next elections in six years.

Art Super Market , 2006

I admire your attempts at making and showing art outside of the usual art context: Hunger King, Food Liberation Army and Art Super Market for example. How did the Art's Supermarket work go? Where did you get the idea for it? Which kind of customers did it attract? Why didn't you open it for longer than 3 weeks?

I show art outside its usual context because art has a reputation problem. When people realize a certain object or event is art, their attitude changes. To most people art is this weird, all-allowing, bourgeoise peculiarity. That´s why I spend a lot of time hiding the art from my projects. Hunger King, FLA, Art Supermarket, they were all made they way it took people long to realize they were art. Or perhaps they never did. People react so much stronger when they perceive things as real, as something they cannot put in a box right away.

I also think the job of an artist is to make prototypes, create ideas that change the rules of how people think things are. It´s not our job to take these prototypes to mass production. Art Supermarket was a test of an idea. We opened it just to make a point, not to start a profitable business. I don't have the patience to start doing the real work of running the daily tasks of running a supermarket. I was fun to see it work for 3 weeks, that people did come into a supermarket that sold art like sausages and actually bought works. The place looked so real some people actually came shopping food.

Riiko Sakkinen, Beijing Roast Duck Rights, 2010

Finally, could you tell us about other Finnish artists whose work you admire?

My all time favorite artist happens to be Finnish: Riiko Sakkinen.

Thanks Jani!

Rome, from the series Anything Helps

Magazine review - MCD#65 The culture of green tech

2012-01-22T11:18:08Z

MCD#65 The culture of green tech is a bilingual (french/english) magazine. Each edition brings the spotlight on one particular theme. Previous issues of MCD focused on the Internet of Things, Media Labs in Europe, Gaming, Digital Festivals.

Here's how the green tech issue is introduced: The inventors of digital and "post-digital" creation are raising issues about production and energy under a new light: they are already testing solar-powered 3D printers in the desert, using sand as raw material. Soon buildings will swap peer-to peer energy through photovoltaic systems, you will make an open source box to know the number of available public bicycles down in your street, you will no longer run after a bus, it will come to you. Some web artists are even providing us "the first in a promising line of tireless, unstoppable, robotic class warriors"!

In this issue, you will discover how technological creativity is here to help saving the planet, and how each one of us is a potentially actor regarding these ideas meant to make the world more sustainable.

Luzinterruptus, Radioactive Control

As you can guess from the excerpt above, MCD is aimed at a broad audience. You don't need to be an art&tech aficionado to enjoy the essays and interviews. Content, style and design are everything but intimidating (well, the cover is a bit daunting.) And if you're already pretty versed in digital culture, you might still learn -or rediscover- a thing or two. A few French initiatives on the topic of green tech for example, such as artists, associations and designers' eco-experiments in Nantes, European green capital of 2013. Or Bureau d'études's ideas for a Parliament which brings humans, animals and plants closer together. There's also a conversation between Jean-Baptiste Labrune and artist David Guez and an interview with Art Orienté Objet about their appeal to list Lake Clifton as a World Heritage Site. The French duo hope that the move will save the thrombolites, rock-like structures built by micro-organisms and often regarded as the earliest geographical features of primitive life on Earth (sign the petition over here.) There's also a fascinating interview with Hugo Sossah. Founder of Ashelvea, a French company that claims to manufacture 'the cleanest computers in the world' (or rather, as Sossah concedes "the less polluting ones"), he is struggling to convince French banks to help his business grow as much the high demand for his 80% recyclable computers would require.

Plenty of usual suspects on the international front: Critical Art Ensemble, HeHe, FoAM, Joshua Allen Harris, etc.

And a couple of names i wasn't familiar with.

Image © Stanley Greene / Noor Images

The work of photojournalist Stanley Greene appears in a series of essays about the human cost of our addiction to electronics. One of the essays offers a list of artistic works that engage with the war waged to control coltan. Another text from this group of essays explores Greene's E-Waste Trail, a photo documentary series "that tracks the afterlife of our electronic trash, as corporations and governments make irresponsible, yet lucrative, deals, at enormous injury to the world's most vulnerable citizens."

Other notable articles include Eric Kluitenberg's look into the way we inhabit our current 'technological ecologies' and celebration of the Whole Earth Catalog, an American counterculture catalog first published in 1968 and dedicated to the alliance of technology and ecology.

MCD#65 The culture of green tech is a timely publication. 2009 saw plethora of festivals, exhibitions and conferences dedicated to sustainability, 'greener planet' and ecology. I attended so many of them i ended up turning into a cynical eco-phobic. The following year, culture moved to other issues (financial crisis, anyone?) but the relevance of an artistic reflection on green living and green tech is as high as ever. MCD#65 proposes an intelligent, critical view that goes beyond the monolithic 'green is beautiful' moto and looks into the dilemma and contradictions of green tech.

The opening article illustrates the point by putting into graphics and numbers the carbon footprint of our digital lifestyle. Switching to digital involves less paper, less DVDs, less transports but it also energy-devouring data centers. France's 38 million web users produce over 376 000 tons of CO2 per year. That's the equivalent of a European city inhabited by 45 000 people.

A few pages are also dedicated to the 'eco-festivals', techno music festivals that offer sawdust toilets, solar panels, reusable cups, etc. The author of the article asks whether they are a valuable attempt to limit the pollution that any festival create or little more than an exercise in eco-marketing.

MCD#65 comes with lucidity thus, but also with enthusiasm and energy. I'm looking forward to see what their upcoming issues will be about.

I do need to say something about the translation though. I started reading the version in french and as usual, i was baffled by the French's fear of adopting english words. So you get words like le pair à pair instead of peer-to-peer. There were a few more gems but that one kept me laughing for hours. Anyway, halfway through the mag, i decided to skip to the english version of the text and all i can say is "Guys, get a professional translator!" If I, who makes Maurice Chevalier sound like Henry Higgins , finds errors of english in almost each paragraph then you'd better hire a proof-reader or a translator whose mother language is english.

You can buy MCD#65 The culture of green tech as well as other issues of MCD in PDF format or order the paper version.

Image on the homepage; HeHe, Toy emissions (My friends all drive Porsches), New York, 2007.

Samsung Art + Prize

2012-01-17T16:13:41Z

The press view for the Samsung Art+ Prize at BFI Southbank in London dragged me out of bed earlier than usual today. It did allow me to discover that taking the tube at rush hour is not as hell as people claim. You get to admire lovely ladies speeding through the corridors while dexterously applying make up with one hand and holding the mirror in front of their face with the other.

Torsten Lauschmann, Digital Clock (Growing Zeros) 2010. Still from film. Courtesy The Artist; Mary Mary, Glasgow

Anyway, i don't know if the Samsung Art+ Prize is indeed 'the UK's first digital media art competition', but it is remarkably good. The selection of artworks, that is. I'm far less enthusiastic about the way they are exhibited. First, there was no indication of the author and title next to the works, you have to guess or to wait for the credits at the end of the film, when they exist. Also i'd advise you navigate the rooms carefully. It's so dark bench corners tend to hit your knees when you least expect them.

Most of the works are screen-based. The prize is sponsored by a manufacturer of TVs after all. There are even two 3D pieces to ensure that the audience will marvel at the flawless technology (as i did.)

I spent an hour and a half watching the works of 10 technologically-inspired artists. There is so much to watch and take in that i might have to go back again. I think i need to repeat here that the show is wonderful. Please, please, don't miss it if you're in London in the coming days.

Thomson & Craighead, A Short Film about War, 2009. Courtesy of the artist

One of my favourite pieces is Thomson & Craighead's A short film about War. The two screen documentary artwork is made entirely from material found online and uploaded under Creative Commons (Copyleft) license. In ten minutes the movie travels around the world to war zones as captured through the collective eyes of Flickr, and as witnessed by military and civilian bloggers.

The documentary film is accompanied by a second screen that logs the source of the images, blog fragments and GPS locations of the content appearing in the documentary. The artists offer this tautology in an attempt to explore and reveal the way in which information changes as it is gathered, edited and then mediated through networked communications technologies or broadcast media, and how that changes and distorts meaning -especially for the world's users of high speed broadband networks, who have become used to the treacherously persuasive panoptic view that Google Earth (and the worldwide web) appears to give us.

You can watch it online but the larger the screen the better.

Thomson & Craighead has a second work at BFI. Horizon is a clock made out of images accessed in realtime from webcams found in every time zone around the world. The images are rather unspectacular but ordered as a global electronic sundial as they are, they keep visitors fascinated for longer than you might expect.

Neil Cummings, Lapdogs, 2009

Neil Cummings's Lapdogs is a satirical trailer for a show that would follow the format of the reality TV programme Faking It TV. Its main protagonist, an Egyptian street-cafe waiter, is taken on a crash-course in "how to become a successful international contemporary artist in one month." From getting an 'artist' haircut to learning how to accept criticism.

The work pokes fun at the phenomenon of ordinary people turned stars thanks to reality tv shows as much as it lampoons the rock star status that artists have achieved in contemporary culture. But there's more to the work. Since RDF media own the property rights to the Faking It TV format, the figure of the working class [the street waiter] is doubly exploited: as entertainment and as property.

Doug Fishbone is showing two works at BFI. They are as amusing as ever.

Untitled (Hypno Project) is another two-screen work. On the left, twelve people are watching the short video made using subliminal images that we see on the other screen. What makes their experience of the film different from ours is that these people have been hypnotized by a professional stage hypnotist, each having been given specific suggestions instructing them to respond in certain ways at different visual and aural cues.

Douglas Fishbone, Untitled (Hypno Project), 2009

The results are startling. The group of people reacts in the most unexpected way following cues we know nothing about. One of the men was particularly excited by the frogs in the video.

Part 1

Part 2 is online as well.

Fishbone says, "Their reactions raise a broad range of questions about manipulation and behavioural conditioning, and the relativity of perception from one individual to the next. How natural are our responses to our environment, and how accurate are our perceptions?"

Doug Fishbone, Still from Elmina (Fight), 2010. Photo by Thierry Bal. D. Fishbone. Courtesy of the Artist

Another of Fishbone's film was selected for the prize. Elmina stars the very white and very American artist in an otherwise completely Ghanaian production. The film will be released as a low-cost mass-market DVD and VCD in Africa and on African immigrant markets, The rest of us will be able to buy it as a limited edition in the art world. (i wrote about it last year.)

Torsten Lauschmann is showing Digital Clock (Growing Zeros). I can't remember how many artistic versions of the digital clock i've seen over the past few years but this one is as good as any. Have a look:

A couple more images of the works selected for the Samsung Art + Prize:

Semiconductor, Magnetic Movie, 2007. Courtesy of Semiconductor

Doug Fishbone, Still from Elmina (Fight), 2010. Photo by Thierry Bal. D. Fishbone. Courtesy of the Artist

Doug Fishbone, Elmina, 2010, production still. Photo by Thierry Ball. Courtesy the artist and ROKEBY, London

Hiraki Sawa, Installation shot: Did I?, 2011. Courtesy of the Artist

Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Walking After Acconci (Redirected Approaches) 2005. (Production still) Photograph: Anne Worthington. Courtesy of the artists and Kate MacGarry, London

Erika Tan, The Syntactical Impossibility of Approaching with a Pure Heart, 2008. Courtesy of the artist

The Samsung Art+ Prize is on view at BFI Southbank in London from January 18 to 29th.

You can vote for the Samsung Art+ Prize Audience Award over here. Votes must be received by January 24th.

Health & Safety Violations - interview with Ben Woodeson

2012-01-15T16:24:33Z

A wire brush spins around randomly, threatening your open-toe sandals. A motion-activated vacuum pump sucks out the air from a gallery space: the longer viewers remain inside, the less air for them to breathe. A cobble stone is rotating on a rope. The sole purpose of that kettle is to spread red acrylic paint on your shoes. An electric fence criss-crosses the path that leads to an art gallery or the bar. Elsewhere a randomly activated tripwire awaits visitors...

Ben Woodeson, Subservient shoe brush open toed sandals thing, 2010

Ben Woodeson, Health and Safety Violation number 7, "9/10 of an iceberg is hidden from view", 2009

There is nothing even remotely safe in Ben Woodeson's works. In fact, they purposely run on hazard and liability waiver forms. Sometimes they even require safety helmets. Woodeson is from the United Kingdom, a state notorious for its stringent regulation and enforcement of workplace health, safety and welfare. Almost every artists you'll meet in the UK have their own share of H&S-related misadventures to tell.

Woodeson's work uses everyday objects and materials to deride and confronts head-on these often absurd rules. The pieces in his Health & Safety Violation series entice visitors to be brave and come nearer as much as they repel and unnerve them. In the coming weeks, Woodeson will present new works at transmediale in Berlin and at The Florence Trust in London. The installation he will show at the TM festival is A seemingly innocent sculptural curtain bisects the foyer space obstructing the visitor's default routes. Avoiding the work requires a conscious detour while also engaging with it requires a willingness to take risk - an "interactive" piece that does not pretend to be harmless.

Ben Woodeson, Health & Safety Violation #2 - Shocking, 2009

Ben Woodeson, Basic rough as fuck spinning spring jump out of your skin hazard, 2010

I've decided not to go to Transmediale this year (first time in 8 years) but i'll be in London to tell you about what he'll be showing at The Florence Trust. In the meantime, a short interview will have to do....

You've exhibited works that involve a very high degree of risk of injury or death to visitors in several art galleries in the UK. How did you avoid the Health and Safety hassle?

Ha! I don't really try to avoid it, it is part of my practice, I think the dialogue between the exhibiting institutions and myself forms a layer of implied meaning within the work. Most of what I do does entail some form of risk, but the Health & Safety Violation's are a specific group of works, where that risk is overtly presented. This is through a clear and obvious physical danger or sometimes via titles that the gallery is forced to acknowledge and negotiate how the works will be presented. Let's face it with titles like Spinning cobblestone (high speed crack your skull open bleed through your ears version) I'm not really hiding the risk, it's right there shouting; they're not coming to me thinking I'm going to show a nice, safe, comforting watercolour...

How many 'no you can't" and "yes maybe but then you'd have to change this and this" have you met with the Health and Safety Violation series? Do you compromise?

Masses! Seriously though, I'm expecting in fact I'd say I was requiring the galleries to compromise so, I'd be a real hypocrite if I wasn't prepared to be flexible. Besides as I mentioned, the dialogue forms a layer of implied meaning within the work. As with any negotiation, there are things that you can or can't compromise on. I'm not prepared to lessen the work by corrupting it or compromising it is such a way that alters the meaning and basic experience that the viewer has. However, within most works there is usually some room for give and take.

As artists I think we become adept at the dialogues with institutions, curators and other artists; the pragmatics about what goes where and all that sort of thing. I'm definitely not a foot stomper or a diva. Things usually come to some form of organic conclusion that fits all concerned. I'd rather pull a work from a show than compromise too far, but, the reality is that the artists, the curator and the gallery all want a show to be as good as possible, the rest is mostly details.

Ben Woodeson, One Shot Pretty Sculpture, 2011. Matches, fuse and random timer

Do you observe visitors? Does it take long before they leave their role as a viewer and become an 'adventurer' of Health and Safety Violation?

Nice question! I certainly do observe, in fact I often film the openings of the shows. I need to answer in a sideways manner: Quite a lot of the recent works are different from the early Health & Safety Violations in that they have become eventful, previously the works such as Spiral Twist Hazard (featured recently on WMMNA) would randomly activate / deactivate / wait and repeat.

Ben Woodeson, Health & Safety Violation #15 - Spiral twist hazard, 2011. Image by Marcos Morilla

A lot of the newer works including ones from the new Causality series are still randomly activated but they only trigger once, their activation has become catastrophic. Examples include One Shot Pretty Sculpture where 2000 matches burn and spell out a text or Ball Droppingly Awesome Glass Sculpture where with no fanfare or warning a small mechanism drops a large steel ball into the middle of a sheet of glass. Both works are irrevocably altered by their activation; the resulting debris then forms a kind of sculptural performative afterlife. I used to hold a position that if my works were switched off they were as invalid as for example a switched off video monitor. However, these recent works are made to be experienced in several states and the exhibition(s) therefore evolves depending on the state of the works.

Ben Woodeson, Ball Droppingly Awesome Glass Sculpture, Ball bearing, glass and random timer, 2011

So, coming back to the question, the viewer is sometimes held in a kind of prolonged anticipation: What is it they are actually seeing? Quite often they've signed a liability waiver at the entrance, so they already have this sense of potential danger and heightened awareness, what they don't have is knowledge of what is or is not safe... The random timing on even the repetitive works means it's hard for them to pigeon hole works as safe, not safe etc. The works often function quite abruptly so rather than there being a sense of things about to happen, there is more a sense of things maybe about to happen but no one is quite sure. The abruptness with it's consequent shock is definitely a fundamental factor in many of the works.

I think there is also a big difference in the adventuresome experience of those present at the opening night and those who visit in quieter circumstances. I do tweak the timings a bit so that some stuff does happen at the openings, and a lot of those people present usually know some of what I do, so in a way as a group they've already crossed over into the adventurer role. By contrast a visitor to a comparatively empty gallery might have little or no prior knowledge of my practice, and there might not be other viewers whose behavior could give clues.

The works are visceral and demanding, their in-your-faceness forces both experienced and inexperienced viewers to physically engage and take the adventure.

Can you tell us about your new Causality series? What is it about?

The Causality series are a new group of works started when I was preparing for my recent show at Elevator Gallery; so far they tend to be less direct. Something happens which then has a result, whereas the Violations switch on and off, there is no direct sense of cause and effect. The Causality works are no less challenging and dangerous, but somehow as I mentioned earlier, becoming more of a specific event rather than a repeating one.

In A Perilous Environment Positively Oozing With Pain and Suffering twelve panes of glass are held angled by fishing twine, a computer randomly selects one of the twelve and ignites a wire wool fuse. The fuse burns the twine causing the glass to crash to the floor. I think the difference between the two groups of works is quite organic; they're all confrontational, challenging and possibly a wee bit dangerous, some just seem to intuitively belong to one or the other series.

I'm definitely still working on the Health & Safety Violations for example I'm just finishing a big new piece called Health & Safety Violation #36 - Bite you on your ass and kiss your socks goodbye for Transmediale in Berlin at the end of January. I'm also concurrently working on the Causality series some of which I hope will be ready to show at the Florence Trust open weekend.

Ben Woodeson, A Perilous Environment Positively Oozing With Pain and Suffering, Glass, wire wool fuses and random timer, 2011

You are a Florence Trust resident this year, what are you planning to work on during this residency?

The Florence Trust residencies are really pretty special, time is whizzing by, we're about half way through, in fact the Winter Open is the weekend of 3rd February (PV on the Friday night). For me it has been an interesting time in that I had planned to develop new works that while still clearly fitting within my interests would maybe be more versatile and flexible. However ironically 90% of the new works I've made have been just as difficult and confrontational as ever and so far I don't see any signs of that shifting. I work quite intuitively; balancing concept, material and activity, and maybe it's the church or whatever, but versatile and flexible suddenly seems far less interesting and engaging when compared to fear, fire, gravity, electricity, breaking glass and general sculptural carnage; in other words all the usual stuff that floats my boat.

Thanks Ben!

Previously: Experimental Station - Part 1, In the Laboratory.

Photography Calling!

2012-01-13T17:05:13Z

I've seen a number of photo exhibitions over the past few days. I might try and find time to write about Arctic Convoys, 1941-1945 which i saw at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. In the meantime this post is going to be about some of the photo exhibitions i saw in Hannover this week. There is a solo show of Alice Springs' work at the Kestnergesellschaft. She was Helmut Newton's wife. The works on view are competent, a bit too Newton-esque for my taste and rigorously black and white. Mostly fashion shots, and shots of fashion designers. She did make a wonderful series of portraits of members of the Hell's Angels though. I wish i could reproduce on the blog every single image from that series. Sadly, i cannot find any trace of it online (please, please, drop me a line if you've spotted them.) So i'll leave that one aside.

Gerhard Gronefeld, Junge Stockenten auf Holzente geprägt, Seewiesen, Germany, ca. 1958

And i'll go ahead with the two images that got stuck in my head during my trip to Germany. The first one shows Ducklings conditioned to follow a wooden duck. It's by Gerhard Gronefel, photographer of poignant moments in the Germany of World War II. And then of course i almost had a heart attack when i saw the Cheshire cat grin of Dieter Bohlen from the Modern Talking (the Modern Talking!) was plastered on all over the bus stops i walked by. Germany, I love you!

Still, the magnet that got me to Hannover wasn't a piece of musical (and fashion) history but Photography Calling!, an exhibition at the Sprengel Museum that explores 'documentary style' photography from the 1960s to the present day.

The work of 31 photographers are part of the show. You can never go wrong with the likes of Diane Arbus, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Lee Friedlander, Martin Parr, Thomas Struth Tobias Zielony, Thomas Demand, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Wolfgang Tillmans and Jeff Wall. Most of the works exhibited are jaw-dropping. However, i now have the feeling that i have seen this kind of exhibition one time too many.

Laura Bielau, Carte de visite - Lab Girls (from the series COLOR LAB CLUB), 2008

Zielony followed young people hanging around the desert city Trona outside Los Angeles.

Tobias Zielony, Lighter from the series "Trona - Armpit of America," 2008

Tobias Zielony, Ramshackle, from the series: Trona - Armpit of America, 2008

Tobias Zielony, Dirt Field, from the series: Trona - Armpit of America, 2008

Tobias Zielony, 13 Ball, from the series Trona - Armpit of America, 2008

Thomas Struth, South Lake Street Apartments IV, Chicago, 1990

Diane Arbus, A Jewish Giant at Home With His Parents in the Bronx, NY, 1970

Diane Arbus, The King and Queen of a Senior Citizens Dance, N.Y.C.

Diane Arbus, Retired man and his wife at home in a nudist camp one morning, N.J, 1963

Diane Arbus, A Young Brooklyn Family going for a Sunday Outing, N.Y.C., 1966

William Eggleston, Untitled (Memphis-Tennessee), 1972 from 14 Pictures, 1974

Nicholas Nixon, Hyde Park Avenue, Boston, 1982, From Photographs from One Year, 1981-82

Martin Parr, St Moritz. St Moritz polo world cup on snow. Spectators at the event. 2011.

Wolfgang Tillmans, Onion, 2010

Wolfgang Tillmans, Tukan, 2008

Stephen Gill, Untitled - From Coming up for Air, 2008-09

Lee Friedlander, Philadelphia, 1965

Photography Calling! remains open through 15. January 2012 at Sprengel Museum Hannover.

How to Start a Revolution

2012-01-10T09:12:20Z

Yesterday evening i went to Foto8 in London again for the screening of How to Start a Revolution, a documentary tracing the global influence exercised by the work of Gene Sharp, the world leading expert in nonviolent struggle. Investigative journalist Ruaridh Arrow who directed the movie was there to introduce the film and later on to answer our questions. He was accompanied in the Q&A by Jamila Raqib. She's Sharp's close collaborator and the executive director at the Albert Einstein Institution, a non-profit organisation Sharp founded in 1983 to study strategic non-violent resistance.

Although the American academic's seminal essay From Dictatorship to Democracy: A conceptual framework for liberation has toured the countries living under dictatorship for decades now, i only got to know his work last Summer when Willem Velthoven told me about it on a day i was visiting Mediamatic in Amsterdam.

Sharp believes that non-violent struggle has a greater chance of success than violent resistance, because violence is typically the most powerful weapon used tyrannical regimes and they will always have the upper hand. His booklet From Dictatorship to Democracy (which you can download as a PDF) provide a list of 198 "non-violent weapons", including mock awards, alternative communication system, wearing of symbols, pray-in, boycott of elections, withdrawal of bank deposits, consumers' boycott, renouncing honours, etc.

The book was first published in 1993 to support the opposition movement in Burma and was circulated among dissidents. Anyone seen carrying the book around was sentenced to seven-year prison terms by the regime. This kind of manual for toppling dictators has since inspired opponents of oppression in places as far apart as Thailand, Ukraine, Serbia, Estonia, Iran, China, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, and more recently in Syria, Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Sharp's work which is committed to the defense of freedom, democracy, and the reduction of political violence doesn't always receive the praise one would think they deserve. Some regimes have accused him of being a CIA agent and the Albert Einstein Institution he founded struggles to find funding.

The film How to Start a Revolution uses extended interviews with Gene Sharp. Now in his mid-eighties, Sharp hardly ever leaves Boston where he runs the non-profit Albert Einstein Institution and dedicates his free time to orchids. There are also long contributions from his assistant Jamila Raqib, and from Robert Helvey, a retired US army colonel with whom Sharp worked in Burma and who has remained his ally since, training activists in various parts of the world to practice peaceful resistance. The film also includes testimony from key players in the Serbian revolution and activists involved in non-violent unrest in the Middle East.

How to Start a Revolution has been described as the unofficial film of the Occupy movement and was shown in Occupy camps in cities all over the world. In an Q&A with Aljazeera, Gene Sharp's reaction to the question What advice would you give to the Occupy movement? was the following:

I think they need to study how they can actually change the things they don't like, because simply sitting or staying in a certain place will not change or improve the economic or political system.

This is Ruaridh Arrow's first documentary and it has already received numerous awards. It's easy to understand why: we are in critical need to hear more about Sharp's thinking and the film traces the impact of his work with clarity. It's an energizing movie, it gives hope in a time when newspapers deride any attempt at optimism. However, the film isn't flawless. The music was a bit too emphatic, with trumpets and pathos to highlight the moments when tyranny hits the dirt. The images didn't need added drama. Neither did i need to witness anyone's parking skills at length. It would have been helpful to be able to read on the screen for more than 2 seconds the names of the interviewees. But these are minor grudges. I wish How to Start a Revolution was available online. Like Sharp's booklet, it should be distributed widely.

How to Start a Revolution film will be shown in the UK Houses of Parliament on 1 February. Check out the facebook page to read about upcoming screenings.

Weaponized architecture

2012-01-04T14:24:16Z

Representation of the project Weaponized Architecture in Area C. From far, the building looks like a fragile Bedouin encampment (Weaponized Architecture: The Impossibility of Innocence, Barcelona: DPR-Barcelona 2011)

In Weaponized Architecture, architect Léopold Lambert looks at how architecture is conceived or instrumentalized as a political weapon.

Lambert's study explores the power of architecture as a political weapon through history, from the wide 'boulevards' designed by Haussmann to allow for an easy movement of the artillery and cavalry in Paris to the mobile fences deployed by police forces during the G8 in Genoa to control mass demonstrations.

However, the core of his research looks into a very precise situation: the impact of the Isreali occupation on the Palestinian built environment, in particular in the West Bank where the movements of people and goods are strictly conditioned and governed by colonial apparatuses such as separation barriers, checkpoints that hinder Palestinian movements on their land, militarized destruction of Palestinian homes, Israeli civilian settlements within the West Bank, limits imposed on the natural extension of Palestinian villages, segregated transport infrastructures.

Separation Border -on Palestinian Territory- and Israeli settlement of Pisgat Ze'ev in East Jerusalem. Photo by Léopold Lambert

Example of an Israeli civil settlement in the West Bank. Rimmonim in the region of Ramallah on the road to Jericho. Photo by Léopold Lambert

In Léopold's own words:

In fact, the State of Israel masters the elaboration of territorial and architectural colonial apparatuses that act directly on Palestinian daily lives. In this regard, it is crucial to observe that 63% of the West Bank is under total control of the Israeli Defense Forces in regards to security, movement, planning and construction.

Lambert's project doesn't stop at the analysis of colonial architecture in Palestine. His study goes further by 'dramatizing' a Palestinian active resistance to the occupation.

The 'Architectural Disobedience' Lambert suggests takes the form of a covert Palestinian shelter which would serve both Palestinian farmers and the Bedouins population. The 'Qsar' would allow onsite agricultural production and function as a caravansary for the Bedouins and their flocks.

The Weaponized Architecture research will be published in the coming days by dpr-barcelona. I'll come back with a review of the book and an interview with Ethel Baraona Pohl and César Reyes Nájera from dpr-barcelona as soon as the volume is out. In the meantime, i asked Léopold Lambert for an interview. And so did Ahmad Barclay who interviewed him as well. The themes and ideas their discussion touches upon in Arena of Speculation are fairly different from the ones i'm focusing on in this post so i'd recommend checking out both interviews.

The daily rhythm of the Qasr is organized by the working activities of the two populations, farmers and shepherds. Both spaces, agricultural and pastoral are clearly determined but intricated into each other, thus maintaining a form of negotiation

Hi Léopold! It is difficult to remain indifferent and cold when reading the reality described in the first half of the book -in which you establish the power of architecture as a political weapon in Palestine. Do you think it is possible to write about the situation endured by Palestinians and remain neutral and impartial?  I was interested in the way you describe the Western vision of the Palestinian situation because you've experienced it from a European as well as a US point of view. Whereas i've only observed it as a European living and working in Europe and i was under the impression that in Europe we are fairly more sympathetic (although irritatingly impotent) to the Palestinian cause. Reading the post you wrote after having seen a debate on French TV made me realize I might be very wrong in assuming this European 'solidarity'. What's your view on this? Are we so blind in Europe?

The first question about neutrality and impartiality reveals indeed the way people think in Europe. In the difference of American policies in this matter which clearly support Israel, Europe tries to be more neutral in their decisions. However, this neutrality is the real trap. Neutrality is what maintains the status quo since 1967 by considering that both nations, Israelis and Palestinians are equally belligerent and should become more reasonable. I don't think that a lot of people who went there with an open minded approach share this vision of things.

The facts are that, at the exception of considering that (Jewish) divine law is the prevailing form of territorial justice, there is an objective and daily transgression of the international law by the State of Israel. Whether you consider this region of the world as one country hosting both people, or if you consider that there should be two states for two different populations, the legal problem reaches the same conclusion. In the former case, we can evoke a civil situation comparable to the South African one during the Apartheid (1948-1994), and in the latter case, we can observe, with the presence of about 500 000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a violation of the article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) which stipulates that the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

This illegality throws the bases of the indignation that indeed prevents and should prevent a lot of people to remain neutral. In order to enter in resistance to act against what appears as clearly antagonist to our personal -or collective- ethics, we have to "choose a side". It does not necessarily mean that people of this "side" need to agree on every topic that are involved here -and there are a lot- but that this group of people are in solidarity to resist against what their ethics interprets as oppressive.

This is the difference between justice and resistance. Justice has to tend indeed towards impartiality and neutrality. Resistance begins with the absence of justice and engages into the concerned antagonism as a pure necessity. In other words, resistance appears to the one who is caught in this process as the only thing to do in accordance to his (her) personal system of interpretation of the world.

The Jewish people, citizens of Israel know very well this process as they have been persecuted in the worst way the human kind has ever been. However, when they constituted a State and an army -let us not forget that the three years long military service is compulsory for every male and female citizen of Israel- they became the dominant body that pathologically abuse of its power over another. What Gilles Deleuze calls the becoming (devenir) revolutionary is therefore allowed to them only if they also enter in resistance against this dominant power along with the Palestinian people and the rest of us.

Representation of the architectural project Weaponized Architecture in Area C near Salfit (West Bank). The building is composed of three architectural layers: An upper layer of tents camouflages the building and provides shade. A surface layer claims a piece of territory via a shotcrete uneven terrain which is used as a small agricultural platform. The last layer is subterranean; it can be used as a storage for agricultural goods as well as a shared shelter for the farmers and the Bedouins

The second part of the book describes a Disobedient work of architecture for two Palestinian populations. The proposal is extremely ingenious with its set of tents that camouflages the underneath dwellings and construction site. Could you describe it to us briefly?

I will begin by describing what this particular architecture is disobeying. The 1993 Oslo Accords signed secretly by the Palestine Liberation Organization -which was pretty much transformed into the current Palestinian Authority- with Israel, organized the West Bank in three areas. Area A -and Area B to some extents- that includes the biggest Palestinian cities -except Hebron- allows the Palestinian Authority a relative territorial autonomy while Area C, on the contrary is entirely under the Israeli Army control which does not allow any form of Palestinian construction. Area A and Area B constitute islands of territory on which the Palestinians have a relative autonomy. This territory is indeed made of islands as Area C occupies 63% of the West Bank and surrounds the two former areas, thus constituting what can be called metaphorically the Palestinian Archipelago.

West Bank metaphorical map of the Palestinian Archipelago drawn by the author based on 2010 data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

The concrete consequences that result from this territorial repartition is that Palestinians of the West Bank cannot build and live on most of the territory that has been attributed to them by the 1949 Armistice Agreements. In addition of that, it is often difficult for them to circulate between those islands as their movement is filtered by various apparatuses of control that the Israeli State has been developing.

Those apparatuses are actually the most expressive examples of my thesis which claims that architecture is inherently political and can be either conceived or instrumentalized in order to be used as a political weapon. In the book, I establish an inventory of what I have been calling colonial apparatuses that Israel has been designing and using and still uses in order to control the Palestinian daily lives. This inventory is something that I present a little bit like a reportage but really, nobody describes them better than Eyal Weizman in his book Hollow Land.

West Bank map of the Israeli Colonial Apparatuses drawn by the author based on 2010 data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

I am approaching little by little the project here, but I still need to precise who this architecture is involving. I distinguished indeed two parts of the Palestinian population that suffer particularly from the Israeli occupation and those apparatuses I just talked about. The first one is constituted by those who live thanks to agriculture and whose land has been mostly confiscated or who cannot access it; and the second one is the nomadic ethnicity of the Bedouins who are very limited in their movement.

The program of this disobedient architecture, built in the Area C near the Palestinian city of Salfit and the very large Israeli settlement of Ariel, is therefore a small agricultural platform associated with a caravansary for the Bedouins. The architecture of this building recounts its combinative strategy of camouflage and reclaim of the land. It is constituted by three layers that have different levels of fragility: a set of tents on the outside that give to the building an aspect of fragile Bedouin settlement, a concrete based agricultural platform on the land and finally an underground dwelling connected to Area A by a tunnel.

In a potential scenario in which the building is discovered by the Israeli army and partially destroyed. It thus becomes a ruin still victoriously claiming a piece of territory. Children of Salfit find in it, an unexpected ideal playground, both frightening and attractive

Your scenario also involves the discovery of the Qasr by the Israeli Defense Force. Why is it important to build the Qasr if it's likely to be left in ruins eventually?

This part of the scenario is useful for me to state that this building was not designed as a solution to the conflict. I don't believe that architecture can be considered in any way as a vector of resolution. Only the application of the law can veritably brings something that can be called a solution to the conflict. Architecture can be used to resist but cannot really solve problems in depth. That is what I mean by stating that architecture is systematically a weapon.

Let's go back to the project's scenario though. The first layer of tents would indeed be very easily destroyed by the Israeli army in case of invasion. The two others layers, however, are spatially and materially built in such a way that it would actually require a very substantial amount of energy for the I.D.F. to veritably demolish them completely. The building would therefore remain in the state of a ruin, slowly invaded by the rocks, dust and plants of the land and the children of Salfit would probably find in it a stimulating playground. In 1949, after the Nakba, the very new state of Israel destroyed systematically and absolutely all the former Arab villages on its territory in a symptomatic form of erasing the Palestinian mark on the land. Having this building remaining as a ruin is therefore a resistance to this architectural eradication and constitutes in itself a certain victory by reclaiming a piece of land.

The subterranean dwelling/storage/caravansery is the space that farmers and shepherds have to share together in a continuous negotiation of cohabitation

Have you identified other existing strategies of Palestinian disobedience related to architecture and urban planning?

In terms of disobedience relative to a practice of space, the first example that comes to my mind is the Sarhats (walks) regularly accomplished by Raja Shehadeh in Ramallah's hills within Area C. Raja is a lawyer who works particularly within the Israeli legal system to resist against the expropriations of the Palestinian land. I interviewed him for the book about this matter. He is also an author and wrote a book entitled Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape that recounts how he practices his freedom of movement by walking in those hills. This approach is very interesting as it is de facto non-violent yet resolutely transgressive as it escapes from most apparatuses of control.

Two other examples I can think of, which are not disobedient as such but register more in the domain of architectural resistance, both in their own way. The first one is well known to any architect who got interested in this conflict in the last decade: Decolonizing Architecture initiated and operated by architects Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal and Eyal Weizman have been conducted several projects and exhibition that question the role architecture can have to participate to the creation of a Palestinian state in the hypothesis of its emergence. Among other projects, they developed strategies of re-occupation of the Israeli settlements that would have been emptied by either a justice decision or the potential (unlikely) result of negotiations.

The second example in that matter is brought by the association Riwaq that started in 1994 to elaborate a National Register of Historic Buildings. This inventory, although it may look that is focused on the past, really organizes a present resistance to the Israeli effort to destroy Palestinian buildings but also constitutes a common heritage to the Palestinian people, and therefore something to unite about.

Do you see your book as a kind of 'weapon' as well?

Yes, definitely. Although it might then be not more powerful as the small hand catapults that consisted most of the weapons the Palestinians were ever able to use against the Israeli Defense Force's tanks and bulldozers, it still constitutes a form of resistance in itself, a refusal to submission, and therefore a contribution to the construction of a collective identity.

Thanks Léopold!

Anri Sala (winner of the Absolut Art Award)

2012-01-03T12:58:20Z

I discovered the work of Anri Sala only a few months ago but once i looked into it, i started seeing his work everywhere. Back in September 2011, i was invited to the Absolut Art Award in Stockholm to see some of his videos, attend a screening with popcorn of 1395 Days without Red and interview the artist. A few weeks later, Anri Sala had a solo show at the Serpentine Gallery in London. The show is now closed. I've waited far too long to write about Anri Sala's work.

Anri Sala, No barragan no cry, 2002

Sala is a video artist but somehow, he outgrows the title. He makes films of course but each of them enters in a dialogue with local weather conditions, architecture, history, live performances, sound, language, public participation, etc. Even more interestingly, he seems to play his own works against each other.

Many of Sala's works are stuck inside my head, even months after having seen them. Let's start with the first video i saw:

Anri Sala, Le Clash, 2010

Anri Sala, recipient of the ABSOLUT ART AWARD 2011, in a film by Thomas Nordanstad

On what looks like the outskirts of a city, a lonely man is slowly playing Should I Stay or Should I Go? on his music box. Somewhere nearby, a man and woman are pushing a music box on a cart that plays the same punk-rock tune.

But there's a third instrument playing the famous riff of the song: an abandoned concert hall where The Clash played in the early 1980s. Microphones were placed inside the building and the music reverberates with a melancholy that the original tune didn't have.

Le Clash is an homage to punk-rock song Should I Stay or Should I Go?. It is also almost a reenactment of the concert the group gave in that building in Bordeaux. But the once influential rock and punk venue is derelict, its future uncertain, just like the relationship the song is talking about.

Installation view, Serpentine Gallery, London, 2011. Photo: Sylvain Deleu

The show at Serpentine added a further layer to the movie: a glass pane was fitted with a music box that visitors could play. The music was the same as the film's soundtrack. Sadly, it was broken when i visited the show.

Score, 2011, Installation view, Serpentine Gallery, London, 2011. Photo: Sylvain Deleu

3-2-1, 2011, Performance view, Serpentine Gallery, London, 2011. Photo: Sylvain Deleu

In the site-specific installation, Score, the perforated score used in the barrel organ is part of the architecture of Serpentine gallery. The perforated pattern is carved through walls covering the windows in one of the exhibition spaces, translating sound into a different materiality and creating openings to the park, letting the natural light sneak into the gallery and intertwining the sounds of the park and the sounds of the gallery.

Anri Sala, Thursday 16.07.2009 (Why the Lion Roars) (detail), 2011

The lion of Why the Lion Roars is the Metro Goldwyn Mayer one. The lion usually roars to signal the start of a movie, the start of the viewer's disconnection from the outside world. In Sala's piece, the animal roars each time the temperature outside of the cinema room goes up or down. The installation is based on a temperature chart made up of several movies. Every degree Celsius represents one movie. A film like Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville is associated with cool temperatures, a romantic drama will evoke the Summer. Whenever the temperature outside the exhibition building changes, the movie on display inside changes, too.

If you're lucky, the temperature outside won't bulge and you'll be able to watch Ninotchka till the end. Most of the time, however, only fragments of various length of the films are screened.

Why the Lion Roars is the temperature-cut version of a fiction based on a true story: the weather.

Anri Sala, Answer Me, 2008

Answer Me was filmed in Berlin's listening station Teufelsberg, which means "Devil's Mountain" in German. It's actually just a hill but a hill made from the rubble of postwar Berlin and a military-technical college designed by Albert Speer (Adolf Hitler's chief architect), is buried under it. Later on, the NSA built a listening station on top of the hill to monitor Soviet and East German communications.

In the film, a woman attempts to end a relationship, but the man stubbornly plays the drum to silence her. Her appeal is lost in the spectacular space of the Buckminster Fuller-created geodesic dome and even after the man has stopped playing the drum, the whole drama is deafened by the long echos reverberated in the building structure. But the role of the building doesn't stop there, the frequencies of the man drumming are amplified by the dome, causing the skin of a drum abandoned next to the frustrated woman to vibrate and its drumsticks to bounce.

Anri Sala, 1395 Days Without Red, 2011

1395 Days Without Red, 1395 without being able to wear red or any other bright colour that might be easily spotted by one of the snipers positioned in the hills surrounding Sarajevo during the siege that lasted from May 1992 till February 1996. The film relives the trauma experienced day after day by people caught up in the siege.

The camera follow a woman crossing the city. Each crossing, each alley, each street commands a change of pace. She often has to pause when she feels that the next few meters will expose her to shootings. Then she holds her breath for a moment (i found myself doing the same) and runs till she has reached a safer street. The city's topography alternates exposure and protection, fear and relief.

As the woman moves through the deserted city, an orchestra rehearses Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 6, Pathétique elsewhere in the city. She seems to rehearse the music in her head too, using it as the soundtrack of her perilous journey through the city under siege.

Anri Sala receiving the Absolut Art Award during the price ceremony in Stockholm

The ABSOLUT ART AWARD was instituted in 2009 to celebrate the vodka company's 30 years of creative collaborations (which started by chance during a dinner attended by Andy Warhol i was told.) After giving the award to Keren Cytter in 2009 and Rirkrit Tiravanija in 2010, the third annual ABSOLUT ART AWARD went thus to Anri Sala. He clearly deserved the recognition.

The jury's citation reads: "Anri Sala's work offers a unique way of looking at the world that combines reflection on history, memories, and consciousness of the instant, with an absolute awareness of presence and disappearance. He possesses a special talent for precise and subtle displays, and a unique ability to conceive installations and architectural proposals including sound, image, sculpture, film and live performances."

Gamerz report

2011-12-31T14:04:33Z

I can't seem to hold their flash website against the Gamerz festival. It remains one of my favourite events of the year.

Fondation Vasarely. Image credit: Luce Moreau

Dardex-Mort2Faim, The Forger, 2011. Image credit: Luce Moreau

Choeur Itineris concert. Image credit: Luce Moreau

Niklas Roy, Ping, Augmented Pixel. Image credit: Luce Moreau

The 7th edition of GAMERZ took place last November in postcard pretty Aix-en-Provence. As its name suggests, the festival presents video games, interactive works and a playground atmosphere but gaming is more a pretext than the whole raison d'être of GAMERZ. The free exhibitions, performances, concerts and conferences embrace all kinds of art forms that refer to or use digital technology. So yes, Gamerz offers machinima and AR video games but also paintings, light performances and choir singers.

I like GAMERZ because it's eclectic, because it makes me discover plenty of artists i had never heard about before but also because it reminds me that festivals should be left more often in the hands of artists. They take risk, follow their whim, trust other artists barely out of the academy, and care little about sticking to genres and formulas.

TRYONE, Le Canon. Image credit: Luce Moreau

TRYONE, Two Shoots, 2011

TRYONE, Two Shoots. Image credit: Luce Moreau

Talking about taking risks....
GAMERZ invited TRYONE and their Canon on wheels to shoot paint in Aix en Provence. Only that they surprised everyone by targeting the walls of Aix-en-Provence's Art School during the night. I thought it fitted really well the building but the organizers of GAMERZ weren't so sure the artistic intervention would be welcomed by the School.

Paul Destieu, Fade-Out, 2011. Photo by Otto-prod

Paul Destieu, Fade-Out, 2011 (making of.) Photo by Otto-prod

Paul Destieu, Fade-Out, 2011. Image credit: Luce Moreau

One of the most popular pieces in the exhibition was Paul Destieu's Fade-Out, a video that records the progressive burying of a drum set under gravels. The gravel hitting the percussion parts produces a rhythm section, which rapidly turns into a sound and visual chocking. I watched the video a first time for the images and came back to it, just to take the sound in. The sequence shot proposes experimentation around the technical state of Fade-out, by materializing the decrease of sound and visual signal, until a complete silence and disappearance.

Monsieur Moo, Meule 2 Foin, 2011. Image credit: Luce Moreau

Monsieur Moo's Meule 2 Foin (french for haystack) is a big hay ball that emits loud sound when you push it. To turn the loud noise into a melody, visitors have to keep a certain, equal pace. It looks like the most elementary way to 'interact' with an artwork: you just have to roll it around. In fact, the work's sole ambition is to cheer up visitors. However, once you're in front of the ball, you realize it's not going to be a piece of cake. First of all the hay ball is ultra heavy and you might need some help in order to get it rolling. Add to that that the surface around the hay ball is slippery and you're in for a good sweat moving that damn ball around.

Mr Moo imposes a forced walk that illustrates his mocking analysis of mobility and interactivity issues in contemporary art.

Dardex-Mort2Faim, The Forger, 2011. Image credit: Luce Moreau

Le Faussiare (The Forger) by artists' collective Dardex-Mort2Faim (Quentin Destieu, Romain Senatore, Sylvain Huguet and Stephane Kyles) is a robotic arm that counterfeits the autograph of famous artists. The work is intended to satisfy an audience that has elevated famous artists to the rank of major rock stars but also to set the artists themselves free from any unwanted social obligation towards the public. So far the robotic device only fakes Andy Warhol's autograph but it will soon offer art fans a databank of famous artists' signatures to chose from.

Antonin Fourneau, Oterp, 2011. Image credit: Luce Moreau

Antonin Fourneau was showing the work in progress version of Oterp, a mobile phone game using a GPS sensor to manipulate music in real time, depending on the player's position on Earth. Players have to locate and capture sounds in their surrounding, the more sound creatures they catch, the more sophisticated the music becomes. I played with Oterp at the exhibition opening. It was fun to be that rude girl walking through groups of people having conversation and frustrating not to be able to catch a creature because that would have implied jumping into a pond. What makes Oterp stand from similar dérive-like games is the quality of its design. The music was created by Jankenpopp and Thomas Michalak aka T M. The graphic designer is Syclo. They all did such an outstanding job that players tend to stick to the game longer than they would normally.

Servovalve, Dipterous experience, 2011. Image credit: Luce Moreau

Dipterous experience is an archaic visual process combined with a micrographic device paying tribute to flies... some fruit burst open so that you may enjoy it better. No idea how to explain this one clearly, i guess you just have to pop your head into Servovalve's Dipterous Experience.

Image credit: Luce Moreau

ELIZA meets an old Olivetti typewriter in Gauthier Le Rouzic's TypeWriterBot. Ask the typewriter a question and it will engage in a conversation with you, greeting you with a 'hello, night bird!' if it's late, asking you about your hopes for the national elections if there's a political election running at the moment and answering your most stupid questions with humour and astuteness. Reading through the printed conversations, it immediately appears that the typewriter is far wittier than the humans.

Image credit: Luce Moreau

Josh Bricker, Post Newtonianism (War Footage/ Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare Footage), 2010

Isabelle Arvers curated a Machinima exhibition for GAMERZ. All the details can be found on her webpage so i'll only highlight Josh Bricker's Post Newtonianism, a two channel video that shows side by side images from the video game Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and actual war footage taken from cameras mounted on American military aircraft during the first Gulf War in 1991 as well as during the recent occupation of Iraq. There are bombing of vehicles, military targets, shooting of insurgents and oppositional forces. The sound track mixes the audio from the video game with the sound of a classified material released in 2010 by Wikileaks showing Apache helicopters killing two Reuters reporters and attacking, wounding or killing other targets on dubious grounds.

The pictures from both sources are disturbingly similar. Josh Bricker's experiment is a simple but effective analysis of why images should be watched with a certain suspicion. The documentary value of this film is not only on what we see, but on how incapable we are to recognize the origin of the images our own society produces.

I wanted to embed directly the video in this post but YouTube first asked me to login to 'verify' that i'm 18 or older and when i tried to do so, the page said that "YouTube is not available for wmmna.com". But here's the link to the video and my blog will make do with the comment from the artist:

And with that i'm wishing you all a happy 2012!

Previously: Arena at Gamerz festival.
And from last year's edition of GAMERZ: Machinimas at the GAMERZ festival, Project NADAL, Report of GAMERZ 2010.

Book Review - Art & Activism in the Age of Globalization

2011-12-27T15:12:28Z

Art & Activism in the Age of Globalization: Reflect No. 8, edited by Lieven de Cauter, Ruben de Roo and Karel Vanhaesebrouck (available on amazon USA and UK.)

NAI Publishers says: Should artists be activists? Is activist art one of an artist's primary responsibilities or a pointless sideshow on the fringes of serious politics? The philosopher, writer and art historian Lieven de Cauter, Ruben de Roo and Karel Vanhaesebrouck explore this theme in collaboration with other thinkers and doers in his new book Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization.

In a time of globalization, populism, hypercapitalism, migration, War on Terror, and global warming, artistic engagement is vital. Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization takes the measure of contemporary activist art. What is the role of art and activism in the polarized, populist society of the spectacle? Art & Activism examines both the criticism of engagement as a mere pose and the need for cultural activism in today's society. Urban activism and activism by anonymous networks are also investigated. Special attention is devoted to the effects of the War on Terror on activism in practice. The book concludes with a theoretical framework for contemporary activism and an impassioned plea for genuinely political art.

Errorist International, Operation BANG!, 2005

It is traditional in the blogosphere (is anyone still using this word?) to close the year with a 'best of' post listing the 10 most popular stories, the best exhibitions seen, the gadgets that have changed our life. I wish i could do it, it's excellent for traffic. Alas! i have the memory of a mongoose and i'm too lazy to go through the archives of the blog. But i can safely declare that the best book i've read in 2011 was Art & Activism in the Age of Globalization.

A number of books about art and activism have landed on my doorstep over the past few years but this is the first one that takes as its premise the fact that activism, protest, subversion, disruption, criticism, community, resistance, etc. have become little more than buzzwords. Punk has lost its bite and essence and is now little more than a fashion trend. Che Guevara is more famous for the t-shirts his face sells than for the role he played in the Cuban Revolution. Subversion has been the cornerstone of Madonna's rise to pop power for decades. The discursive fringe has reached the mainstream. Resistance is hip! Subversion is cool!

The popularity of these terms have depleted them from any meaning or strength. Well almost... Today you can land a commission or assignment from public institutions and private sponsors by writing application that claims that your 'subversive' artwork will raise 'a healthy debate in the community'.

The editors of the book have therefore found it necessary to come up with a new word to define a powerful strategy that connects art and political engagement: subversivity. Subversivity is a disruptive attitude that tries to create openings, possibilities in the 'closedness' of a system.

The quality of the book extends way beyond its premise. Art & Activism in the Age of Globalization is composed of 30 essays by artists, art historians, philosophers, cultural critics, social scientists, curators, theatre directors, etc. I expected at least one or two of these texts to be bland, too scholarly, or cliché. But all i read was solid and relevant. There were a few repetitions but i never grew tired of the thoughts, experiments and ideas shared in the book.

The texts jumped from one discipline to another: visual art, theatre, architecture, hacktivism, urbanism, performances. They discussed artistic and activist practice in Europe and North America of course but also in Syria (exploring the form activism can take in a country where public activity is closely monitored by the State), South Africa, Argentina and other countries which ought to appear more often on the contemporary art map.

Unlike many books i review on the blog, this one contains very few images. Two to be precise and that includes the one on the cover. I didn't really miss the images and discovered a few artistic/activist projects that would have deserved an individual post:

Renzo Martens, still from Episode 3, 2008

Ruben De Roo takes Renzo Martens' film Enjoy Poverty as a platform to explore how artists can stimulate the political consciousness of the consumers of tragedies that we ('Western' audiences) are. A few years ago, Martens went to the Democratic Republic of Congo to launch a two-year project that examined the exploitation of one of Africa's major exports: images of poverty and suffering. The artist traveled with a blue neon billboard that read ENJOY POVERTY and worked with Congolese photographers, teaching them how to sell images of suffering to Western media and aid agencies.

Christoph Schlingensief, Bitte liebt Österreich / Please Love Austria, 2000 (Image: Baltzer)

In their remarkably powerful and compelling essay, members of the collective BAVO call for socially committed artists to abandon "NGO art" (mostly art devoid of any political stand for fear of loosing subsidies) and urged them to be 'really political' by developing strategies and practices of resistances that stretch the limits of their discipline in the direction of radical politics. They gave Christoph Schlingensief's Please Love Austria as a meaningful example of art engaging with politics:

In 2000, shortly after Jörg Haider's far right party became part of the Austrian government, Christoph Schlingensief set up a camp for asylum seekers in a shipping container outside the Vienna Opera House. Twelve asylum seekers lived in the container for 6 days, their lives streamed over the web in a kind of Big Brother show, and the audience were invited to vote their least favourite players to exit the container and be deported to their native country. Decorated with a banner saying Ausländer Raus! ('Foreigners out!'), the container became a flashpoint in Austria's national and racial debate. One of the outcome of the work is that, at the end of the show, antifascist action groups stormed the container and freed the immigrants (who were actually actors.)

Alfredo Jaar, Lights in the City, in 1999

Gie Goris mentions Alfredo Jaar's Lights in the City as an example of art work that fuels a debate in society and unsettles without resorting to easy provocation.

The artist installed red light on the Copula of the Marche Bonsecours, a landmark monument in the centre of Montreal. The lights were connected to homeless shelters located 500 yards from the building. When a homeless person entered one of the shelters, they could press the button that would make the top of the building glow red.

Eventually all the shelters for homeless people in Montreal could be wired and connected to the Cupola. This way, a major landmark and historical monument in the city would be acting as a non-stop lighthouse, producing endless, painful distress signals to society. With enough media coverage and public outrage and support triggered by these ongoing distress signals, homelessness could be completely eradicated from Montreal, Jaar explained.

The strategy worked so well that the commissioning authority ended the intervention.

The book ends with the most honest plea: to burn the book (or burn your brain) because subversion (or subversivity) can be undermined by essays, books, intellectual jargon and 'radical' theories.

Image on the homepage: Steven Cohen, Chandelier, 2001. Photo: John Hogg.

The Family

2011-12-24T10:48:08Z

Since the end of the year is usually the time for me to spend day and night watching British tv dramas (anything with police, villains, Sherlock or Gene Hunt will do), i thought it would be fitting to blog about an exhibition i saw a few days ago at Foto8 gallery.

Dave Thriston and Warren Pyle at an unlicensed boxing match at Oceana, In Kingston Upon Thames. From Jocelyn Bain Hogg, The Family, 2008-2011

Joe Pyle, the leader of the notorious Pyle crime family, at home at 4 a.m. after the boxing match. From Jocelyn Bain Hogg, The Family, 2008-2011

Over 10 years ago, Jocelyn Bain Hogg followed and portrayed the protagonists of organised crime in South London. Gangsters, funerals, big rings, big cigars, diamond-encrusted knuckle duster, more funerals, pimps and prostitutes, etc. His book The Firm pictures them all.

Charlie's wake at the Horn of Plenty, Bethnal Green. From Jocelyn Bain Hogg, The Firm

Bruce Reynolds at Reg's graveside, Chingford cemetery. From Jocelyn Bain Hogg, The Firm

Mickey at home with Maria and Chanelle. From Jocelyn Bain Hogg, The Firm

Charlie Kray's funeral, 19 April 2000, Chingford. From Jocelyn Bain Hogg, The Firm

More recently, as he was working on a project documenting teenage gun and knife crime across Britain, the photographer found himself driven to go back to London gangsterland and have another look at the people who were supplying weapons and drugs to housing estates. The characters he met are the heirs of the gangsters whose every day life Bain Hogg had followed in the late 1990s but if they are the new generation, these men are also aware that the heydays of the British mob are long gone:

Joe Pyle senior and the Kray twins, the old-school Godfathers of British crime, have died since The Firm was completed in 2001 and in 2008 I found a fractured society of British criminals with little or no organization and leadership who are vainly competing, as many businesses have to do, with international competition.

Russians, Albanians, Kosovans and Turks rule the UK underworld now but the indigenous villains still wear their heritage on their sleeves, talking business at unlicenced boxing matches and night clubs and working with their Jamaican brothers - the Yardies - for a slice of the criminal pie.

The Family picks up where The Firm left. Joey Pyle is dead and Joe Pyle Jnr has taken over. Together with brothers Mitch, Warren, Alan (adopted by Joey Pyle to ensure that business would stay in the family should something happen to his son) and associate Teddy Bambam, Joe forms the core of The Family (dubbed by the US press "The Sopranos of Mitcham".)

Roy "Pretty boy" Shaw and Freddie Foreman at Ceasar's. From Jocelyn Bain Hogg, The Family, 2008-2011

The Pyle brothers (Mitch, Warren, Joe, Alan and Teddy "Bam Bam"). From Jocelyn Bain Hogg, The Family, 2008-2011

Mitch Pyle, Warren Pyle and family friends pay their respects at the grave of old Joe Pyle in Mitcham Vemetery. From Jocelyn Bain Hogg, The Family, 2008-2011

Teddy Bambam outside the Beauchamp bar in Knightsbridge with his henchman, Rocky, and "J." West London. From Jocelyn Bain Hogg, The Family, 2008-2011

A party at the Beauchamp Bar with Don John and Lady Alicia. From Jocelyn Bain Hogg, The Family, 2008-2011

Jocelyn Bain Hogg, The Family, 2008-2011

Teddy Bambam comforts his niece at the funeral of his father, Ossie Inton Barnett. Sreatham, South London. From Jocelyn Bain Hogg, The Family, 2008-2011

Teddy Bambam's extended family at his father's wake in Dulwich, Southeast London. From Jocelyn Bain Hogg, The Family, 2008-2011

Jocelyn Bain Hogg, The Family, 2008-2011 (book cover)

One thing is sure: i can't imagine the men picture above being as soft-spoken as the Krays were in 1965 (let alone being invited by the BBC to talk about their innocence):

You can get the book The Family on amazon UK. At the moment, amazon.com is only selling The Firm.
The Family is exhibited at the Foto8 Gallery until 14 January 2012.

Review of the Frieze Art Fair

2011-12-19T16:46:39Z

Paul Simon Richards for Live from Frieze Art Fair this is LuckyPDFTV. Photo by Polly Braden. Courtesy of Polly Braden/ Frieze

As many of you probably know, i love contemporary art fairs. Yes, it's pure porn art and there's too much to see, most of which is quite frankly bad. But there are good surprises as well and i don't mind spending hours in front of painted horrors if at some point i stumble upon a piece that will move me. I'm that easy. Besides, art fairs expose me to works and artists i would otherwise never have accepted to look at.

That's how in mid-October i found myself in Regent's Park, London, clutching my hard earned press pass (did they make bloggers sweat to get an accreditation!), expecting to be blown away. Year after year, i had read about the Frieze art fair in mags and newspapers. It looked extravagant and fearless. It looked like an art fair i would enjoy.

Alas! What the 173 galleries exhibited inside the gigantic pavilion was a bit uneventful.
Maybe the euro crisis had compelled gallery owners to be cautious and somewhat conservative in their selection of art works. Maybe my expectations were too high. I walked from corridor desperate for some excitement to photograph.

I was keen to see Pierre Huyghe's crab living inside a Brancusi head but i never managed to locate it. I didn't manage to miss Christian Jankowski's 65-metre yacht though. Made by a specialist boat builder, the luxury ship could be purchased at the merchant's prize for €500,000. Or for €625,000 if you fancied having the artist sign it. The references were obvious (Duchamp, financial crisis, bling culture, etc.), the whole point not so much.

Of course it wasn't all pain and gloom. The PM3 of the talks are online, there was Nathalie Djurberg! there was Nathalie Djurberg!, i ended up in The Guardian (albeit in a photo gallery showing people who confuse art fairs with fashion shows) and i did find works that make this post worthy of a quick scroll down:

Michael Landy, Credit Card Destroying Machine, 2010 (Thomas Dane gallery). Photo by Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Frieze/ Linda Nylind

Michael Landy was showing a Tinguely-inspired eccentricity that shred your credit card in exchange of a drawing by the artist. You might remember that 10 years ago Landy spent 2 weeks destroying all of his worldly possession in an empty store on Oxford Street.

Over some 20 years, street photographer Igor Moukhin chronicled rallies and protest marches across Russia.

Igor Moukhin, Resistance (XL gallery)

Seb Patane, Untitled, 2011 (China Art Objects Galleries)

Brian Griffiths, Bear Work Wear (black), 2011 (Vilma Gold gallery)

As i screamed earlier, there was Nathalie Djurberg! there was Nathalie Djurberg!

Nathalie Djurberg, Woods, Gio Marconi. Photo by Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Linda Nylind/ Frieze

In Encounter(s), Tejal Shah collaborated with artist Varsha Nair. Wearing a straightjacket, outstretching their bodies, they wrapped themselves around pilars, across stairs, through gates and against other pieces of architecture. The work amplifies the paradox of our highly networked reality wherein technology variously connects, only to ironically distance us.

Tejal Shah, Encounter(s), 2006

Marina Abramovic, The Levitation of Saint Teresa, 2010 (Lisson Gallery)

Probably my favourite painting at the fair:

Miriam Cahn, Herumstehen, 2005 (Elizabeth Dee gallery)

In case you were wondering 'how much does the work below cost?', i found some figures online: In Frame, the section in the fair for young galleries showing solo artist presentations supported for a second year by Cos, sales were also substantial. François Ghebaly sold out their Patrick Jackson booth, selling Dirt Pile on Table (roots&glass) (2011) priced at $9,000; two versions of Heads, hands and feet (2011) for $15,000 and 3 dirt pile sculpture for $20,000 all to significant international collectors.

Patrick Jackson, Head, Hands and Feet (black) + Head, Hands and Feet (red), 2011 (François Ghebaly Gallery)

Wolfgang Tillmans. Faltenwurf (Grey), 2011 (Galerie Chantal Crousel)

Dawn Mellor, South African Gallerist Kristen Scott Thomas is showing neo-institutional critique works by Zurich based artist Chaz Bono, 2011 (Team Gallery)

Ken Okiishi, Manhattan Transfer (Alex Zachary gallery)

Tobias Zielony, Yet Untitled (#14), 2009 (KOW Berlin)

Tobias Zielony, Powwow, 2009 (KOW Berlin)

Alex Hartley (of the Nowherisland fame) was showing what looked like a photo of the Unabomber cabin. Close (very close) inspection revealed that it was a sculpture with the architectural model carved and built into the photography of the landscape itself. The series is on show at Victoria Miro this Winter.

Alex Hartley, Waiting for Daylight to End (Kaczynski Cabin), 2011

Cinthia Marcelle, O Cosmopolita, 2011

This is the billy-goat costume that Paweł Althamer wore to travel the world on the footsteps of a Polish children's-book character.

Pawel Althamer, The Billy-Goat, 2011

Glenn Ligon, Negro Sunshine, 2006

No art fair is conceivable without at least one work from Elmgreen and Dragset (i spotted 3 at Frieze):

Elmgreen and Dragset, The Fruit of Knowlege, 2011

Taryn Simon, The Wailing Wall, Mini Israel, Latrun, 2007

Cornelia Parker, 30 Pieces of Silver (with reflection), Frith Street Gallery

Matthew Brannon (Casey Kaplan Gallery)

Oleg Kulik, Kulik vs. Koraz, 1997 (XL gallery)

Sorry i have no title nor author for the following works:

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Photo on the homepage: Paul Simon Richards for Live from Frieze Art Fair this is LuckyPDFTV. Photo by Polly Braden. Courtesy of Polly Braden/ Frieze.