we make money not art

LA Zombie: The Movie That Would Not Die

2010-02-09T06:41:37Z

Who would have thought i'd end up blogging about a splatter movie on wmmna? I'm not talking about any horror flick, i'm talking "gay-porn zombie film", a genre which i assume is under-represented in contemporary art. Written and directed by Bruce LaBruce and starring porn actor François Sagat, LA Zombie is on view at the Peres Projects gallery in Berlin, along with a dozen new works on canvas.

Bruce LaBruce, LA Zombie 10, 2010. Painting - Silkscreen on Canvas

It was a bit of a hard core spectacle for someone like me who has no interest nor experience in the genre(s). I'm still wondering how i'll manage to convey the happiness and sense of beauty that the film gave me. There's something respectable about a porn movie that you watch inside a renowned art gallery. You might be shocked but you're never ashamed. Bruce Labruce's other queer cinema horror film Otto; or Up With Dead People debuted at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, the artist has contributed to magazines such as Vice, Index, and BlackBook, he also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Even his main actor, a muscular porn star recognizable by a tattoo designed to give the illusion of a hairy scalp has gained some gravitas when he was asked by fashion designer Bernhard Willhelm to model the 2007 Spring Summer collection. The film itself was inspired by The Gleaners and I by experimental French film maker Agnès Varda.

Outside view of the gallery

View of the exhibition space (image Peres Projects)

I doubt LaBruce bothers much about making you and me and other art lovers comfortable. Just like Murakami delights in selling his art in both prestigious art galleries and shops merchandising fugly brown monogram bags, LaBruce doesn't seem too eager to drawing a line between art and porn. He told Salon: "All of my work has been about that line. You can situate yourself on either side of the line without really altering the work itself. I could take a picture for Honcho magazine, but can take the same image and put it in a frame in an art gallery, and it becomes art. For me that speaks to the arbitrary nature of those labels." A soft-core version of L.A. Zombie will tour film festivals this year. You can expect to find the hard-core DVD gracing the shelves of your favourite sex shop in the spring.

Bruce LaBruce, LA ZOMBIE 05, 2010. Painting - Silkscreen on Canvas

LA Zombie was shot in Los Angeles. Guerrilla-style. With almost no budget. The main protagonist rises from the sea, with as much clout and allure as Ursula Andress herself in that famous Bond scene. He's a zombie or maybe he's just a bit deranged and fancies himself as an undead creature. He sports canine teeth and is dressed like a homeless. Good looking young guys get killed or die in accidents. He finds them, gives them the fuck of life right into their wound, they open their eyes. They have become zombie too and lead the life of tramps around LA. People don't seem to even notice their presence.

The trailer:

Bruce Labruce LA Zombie: The Movie That Would Not Die runs at Peres Projects in Berlin until April 24, 2010.

Crowbot Jenny

2010-02-08T06:55:31Z

How about more works from the Design Interactions work in progress show?

Fashion Design by Aephie Huimi + Photography by Hitomi Yoda

Crowbot Jenny is a reclusive girl who prefers to spend time surrounded by technology and animals rather than with humans. To better communicate with the birds, she built the Crowbot. Perched on her shoulder, the crow-shaped robot can vocalize a variety of crow calls to control and converse with her bird army.

The Crowbot: Technical Support by Louise Porter

Hiromi Ozaki (Sputniko!) developed the character to explore the world of animal intelligence and interactions. Placing the issues in the context of anime and manga is far from trivial as the genres frequently discuss complex topics about the future, technology and society.

Hiromi worked with two world specialists in crow intelligence, Prof. Nathan Emery and Prof. Nicola Clayton, who provided her with samples of rook calls (the ones flocking in London parks are usually 'rooks', not crows.) Hiromi then reproduced and used the calls to attract, repel and engineer the behavior of rooks in Finsbury Park and Hyde Park.

Crowbot test

Crowbot Jenny is also going to find her way in a film based on the character and the scientific research with the University of Cambridge. Finally Hiromi plans to write and perform outdoors a Crowbot Jenny song featuring crow calls - which will hopefully please the human crowd as much as the crow one.

Illustration by Nasos (N.C.Empire)

The exhibition is on view until February 10th at the Royal College of Art in London.
Previously: The Gesundheit Radio.

The Gesundheit Radio

2010-02-07T07:45:08Z

On Wednesday i had an alas far too short look at the Work in Progress show of the Design Interactions department Royal College of Art in London.

One of the projects i liked is by James Chambers .

Chambers postulates the existence of an experimental research group within Texas Instruments. Mostly active in the '70s and '80s, they called themselves the Attenborough Design Group (after the famous English naturalist) and examined how behaviours in nature could be applied to design.

Their first product was the 1972 Gesundheit Radio. Developed to protect early microprocessors from dust, the radio featured a sneeze mechanism that expelled dust from inside the casing every six month. A bellows system extracted dust from inside the unit, blowing waste from two outlets located on the front. Should the environment the radio lives in be particularly unclear, a convenient SNZ button enabled the user to activate the sternutation.

Gesundheit Radio from James Chambers on Vimeo.

Chambers is investigating the potential of other animal actions to be used as defense for a 'family' of between 3 and 5 products. In addition, he is re-interpreting the standing hard drive from last year (see video of the hard drive in action) as a portable floppy disk drive in the late 80's to fit in with the Attenborough Design Group timeline.

Various sneezing mechanisms developed by James Chambers (photo by d & r)

The exhibition is open all weekend and will close on Tuesday 9 February at 6pm.

East Side Stories. German Photography 1950s-1980s

2010-02-05T20:55:09Z

5 days in Berlin is a frustratingly short time if you're planning to follow half-closely what is happening at Transmediale and want also to see some exhibitions around town. I'll bring back what i can. Such as this lovely exhibition titled East Side Stories. German Photography 1950s-1980s at the Kicken Gallery.

View of the exhibition space with what the gallery website proudly calls the 'movable element'

As its title suggests, the show features some 30 black and white pictures from photographers who portrayed life at the time of the GDR, mostly in a way that steered away from the official GDR iconography. Under the regime of East Germany, photographers had a degree of licence denied to other artists - largely because the state did not regard photography as an art form (via).

Evelyn Richter, Pförtnerin im Rathaus (Receptionist in the Town Hall), Leipzig, c. 1975

Sibylle Bergemann, East Berlin, 1972 - 1996

Sibylle Bergemann, Ohne Titel (Gummlin) (Untitled [Gummlin] (1984)

East Side Stories. German Photography 1950s-1980s runs at the Kicken Gallery in Berlin until April 17, 2010.
Related stories: Objectivities: Photography from Düsseldorf and Art of Two Germanys, Cold War Cultures.

The worst condition is to pass under a sword which is not one's own

2010-02-04T18:31:22Z

If you happen to visit Tate Modern in London, make sure you don't miss The Level 2 Gallery. It's a small gallery, by one of the exits, you could easily pass by it without noticing its existence. That would be a pity because the current exhibition, The worst condition is to pass under a sword which is not one's own, is dedicated to one of the latest projects of Michael Rakowitz. Yes, he's the Rakowitz of the paraSITE shelters.

Coming Soon - The Moon, The Stars and The Sun 2009

The worst condition is to pass under a sword which is not one's own uses drawings, artefacts and sculptures to weave an unexpected network of connections between western science fiction and military-industrial activities in Iraq during and after Saddam Hussein's regime.

Saddam Hussein's fascination with the iconography of Jules Verne's novels and the Star Wars films is at the center of the project but the whole narrative is far more complex. Almost too complex to absorb in just one visit. Rakowitz will drive you to the Battle of Fleurus, Hulk Hogan's hours of glory, Gerald Bull's superpower artillery, the caricatures and inventions of Paris wonder boy Nadar (that's actually where Rakowitz got my philandering attention back, Star Wars and US military are a bit too Americano-exotic for me), the adventures of Sputnik and of course the war, the invasion, the politics.

Michael Rakowitz, The worst condition is to pass under a sword which is not one's own, 2009. Installation view at Lombard-Freid Projects, NY. Courtesy of the artist and Lombard-Freid Projects

The key element is the Swords of Qādisiyyah monument in Baghdad. This triumphal arch, otherwise known as the Hands of Victory, commemorates Saddam Hussein's declaration of victory over Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. The invitation card for the opening ceremony back in 1989 featured the heroic proclamation, "The worst condition is for a person to pass under a sword that is not his own or to be forced down a road that is not willed by him." Rakowitz recreated the arch in the gallery space. His version of the monument is tackier than the original which in turn -i'm sorry to say- is even tackier than a Star Wars poster. The sculptural pieces is made of plastic toy soldiers, wood and pages strip from Sadam's own books. The red and green of the sabers echo the colours of the Iraqi flag. The plastic soldiers are not any toy btw. They are G.I. Joe, the figurines introduced in the '80s to capitalize on the success of Star Wars action figures and popularize the American military. See? I told you it was a complex show. Your mind keep bouncing back from a slice of history to Hollywood entertainment and back again.

Michael Rakowitz, Victory Arch 2009. Installation view at Tate Modern. Courtesy of the artist and Lombard-Freid Projects

In this and other aspects of the project the artist explores how powerful contemporary mythologies derived from popular culture have informed the collective unconscious.

The Lord, The Homeland, The Leader 2009. Courtesy the artist and Lombard-Freid Projects

Sgt. Slaughter 2009. Courtesy the artist and Lombard-Freid Projects

The exhibition is shock full of information you can count on to impress your guests at dinner parties (not sure yet whether it's a good or bad thing to write):

-in 1991, on the eve of the first Gulf War, the Star Wars theme music played as Iraqi soldiers marched underneath the monument for TV cameras.

The worst condition is to pass under a sword which is not one's own, 2009
Installation view at Tate Modern. Courtesy of the artist and Lombard-Freid Projects

- Hussein's eldest son, Uday Hussein shared his father's fascination for Star Wars fan. He had the design of Darth Vader's helmet copied to complement the uniform worn by his agents responsible for assassinations and intimidation.

- rumour has it that on the occasion of his execution, Saddam's smiling face, complete with beret, was sighted on the moon.

Man on the Moon, Part II 2009. Courtesy the artist and Lombard-Freid Projects

The worst condition is to pass under a sword which is not one's own, curated by Ann Coxon and Rachel Taylor, runs at Tate Modern until May 3, 2010.

Previously: Michael Rakowitz' Dull Roar at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (NL), Camping on the parking space and paraSITE shelters.

Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize

2010-02-02T02:03:42Z

One of the highlights of Summer for me is the BP Portrait award at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Yesterday i visited its photography counterpart: the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, an award and exhibition that celebrate contemporary portrait photography, whether it's editorial, reportage or fine art. Not very rock 'n' roll but consistently good. Because all i have the time to write today is a lazy post, i'll leave you with some of the images i found most striking:

Group of friends at Barceloneta Beach by Lluis Artus. From the series La Platja (The Beach)

Murder, Juvenile Prison, Russia 2009, by Michal Chelbin. From the series 'Locked'

Daniele Ramos, winner, 23 'Miss Penetencaria' prison beauty contest, Rio, Brazil by Zed Nelson. From the series Love Me

Toy Soldiers, 2008, by Paul Murphy

Anna and Anete, Endive Packers, by Tom Stoddart. From the series People of the Land

Huong, In Hanoi 2008 by Adam Nadel. From The Series A War's Legacy - Birth Defects In Vietnam

Cotton Logan, Cowpuncher, People's Valley, AZ, by Jane Hilton. From the series Home on the Range

Oxana 2009 by Noga Shtainer. From The Series A Home For Special Children

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition is on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London until February 14, 2010.

Lyon Biennale - The ex-sugar factory

2010-01-31T09:36:15Z

Last week''s episode: Lyon Biennale - Pedro Reyes.

Biennale of contemporary art in Lyon chose The Spectacle of the Everyday as its seemingly unglamorous theme.

Adel Abdessemed, Sept frères, 2006

As Curator Hou Hanru explained: In today's world existing means being part of the spectacle - that's the situation we're in. Everything's spectacle: any image in a magazine, any exhibition, etc. And in that same world there's also what's called the "everyday": a living, shifting terrain on which people come up with all kinds of ways of resisting the implacable logic of consumption as embodied in the spectacle.

The idea for the Bienniale is to use the spectacle to spotlight this invisible world of the everyday and the ceaseless creation that goes on within it.

HeHe, Toy Emissions (My Friends all drive Porsches), 2007

The Spectacle of the Everyday celebrated contemporary artists who believe that art has to offer more than a spectacle, that it can reinvent itself through engagements with the challenges brought about by everyday life. I was surprised to read that the biennale had been panned by critics in France. The Spectacle of the Everyday was trying to give too many lessons. In a simplistic way and without much regard for form, they wrote. I'm not haughty enough to believe that none of us deserves to be reminded of a few unpleasant facts once in a while. While some of these lessons might not always be very subtle and well-articulated, they have at least the merit of trying and opening up a space for reflection.

The event was distributed into several venues in and around Lyon. Which is great if your idea of a fun time in Lyon involves spending hours inside buses, trams and metros.

The main exhibition venues is La Sucrière, a former sugar factory on the River at the edge of the city. La Sucrière showed the most compelling artworks, it also presented the most coherent and intelligent exhibition. It was down-to-earth, accessible to all audiences and didn't feel the need to play the provocative card. In that respect, the exhibition reached quite competently its purpose to bring contemporary creation closer to everyday life. I doubt i'll blog about the other venues though.

Eko Nugroho, cut the montain and let it fly, 2009. Photo : Blaise Adilon

One of the external walls of the exhibition space became the canvas for Eko Nugroho's Cut the Mountain and Let It Fly , a 70 by 15 meter-long mural.

Rigo 23, Gauche Droite, 2009. Photo: Blaise Adilon

Meanwhile, the silos of the ex-sugar factory have been painted in black and white by Rigo 23. The letters say "Gauche" and "Droite" ("Left, right"). And that's exactly the position of the silos if you raise your head while entering the exhibition space. "Unless," say the exhibition guide, "you turn round, of course, in which case it's the opposite. Turning round: the minimal experience that casts doubt on the strictly relative values of our certainties." I'll let you ponder on that.

Tsang Kinwah, Let us Build and Launch a Blue Rocket to his Heaven, 2009

Tsang Kinwah's wallpapers cover the entrance hall. From afar, they look like delicate flowers in the decorative-art style of William Morris. Until you stop and realize they are patterns made of words that are at odds with the floral ornament: "Vive la France", "The Glory of Human Beings", "Il faudrait les supprimer", "Where is God," and "Fucking Heaven".

All of the above makes me wonder why nowadays the only paintings deemed worthy to enter a biennale of contemporary art are site-specific paintings, wallpapers or graffiti.

Kin-Wah TSANG, The Second Seal - Every Being That Opposes Progress Shall Be Food For You, 2009. Photo: Blaise Adilon

Kinwah spread its magic again on the upper floor at La Sucrière. This time with an animated video version of his coloured texts. Both menacing and seducing, the sentences descend like lava on the walls the space, they bounce on the floor and gradually ignite the whole room. They talk of battle, purge, wretched land and the necessity to educate oneself. They utter haiku-like aphorisms "One race, one colour", "The horse, the sword and the festival", "The sun, the earth and red", "one people, one country". The title of the artwork doesn't dispense more cheerfulness. The Second Seal - Every Being That Opposes Progress Shall Be Food For You refers to the Apocalypse of John. The Second Seal bringing about war and a soldier with a sword riding a Red Horse.

Dan Perjovschi, The Everyday Drawing 1, detail, 2009. Photo : Blaise Adilon

The now ubiquitous Dan Perjovschi graced 2 floors of the Sucrière with his white chalk on black wall drawings.

Everyday, the artist sent by email a drawing inspired by what made the headlines of the press. The Biennale staff then erased one of the drawings on the black board and dutifully copied the new one instead. Cynical, spot-on, the commentary responds to the latest news while addressing at the same time the -alas immutable- issues of our time: the distribution of wealth, globalisation, religion, migrations, the art market, global warming.

Michael Lin, What a Difference a Day Made, 2008. Photo : Blaise Adilon

Michael Lin bought the entire stock of a hardware store in Shanghai, cataloged all its content, had it shipped to Lyon and rearranged it, adding music, video and performance. The objects of "What a Difference a Day Made" are presented according to colour, shape and use into elegant wooden displays, as in a natural history museum. The installation reminds us that the modest everyday existence of an obscure shop is also part of our collective memory - and something maybe capable of becoming a work of art in its own right.

Société Réaliste, EU Green card lottery : the lagos file, 2006-2009. Photo : Blaise Adilon

The Green Card can be won in a free lottery organised on the Internet by the American government. The project EU Green Card Lottery mirrors the program and suggests to Americans that they should reverse the immigration flow by demanding a green card to Europe. The moment Société Réaliste ("Realistic Society") launched the website of the project, it was besieged by demands from Third World candidates unaware that it was a fake.

The installation at the Biennale invites visitors to take the point of view of the immigration officer who has to review myriads of identity data and portraits of candidates for the European Green Card.

As the artists explained in an interview for Provision Library, the project addresses immigration management in our 'globalized,' 'cosmopolitan' world: Whereas it is considered a primary right for citizens to choose where they want to live, as soon as it concerns a non-Western person, this right vanishes.

Xijing Men, I love Xijing-the Daily Life of Xijing President, 2009. Photo : Blaise Adilon

Beijing literally means "Capital of the North"; Nanjing "Capital of the South"; and Tokyo/Dongjing "Capital of the East". Where is the Capital of the West then? The Xijing Men (3 citizens from nations that have experienced tense relationships through history: the Korean Gimhongsok, the Chinese Chen Shaoxiong, and the Japanese Tsuyoshi Ozawa) have decided to build it, little by little, for the city of Xijing (西京, "West Capital") does not yet exist on the maps.

Over the past few years the Xijing Men have embodied a city that moves with the exhibitions they take part in. Each of the performances and actions of the Xijing Men group brings them closer to their ultimate goal: the integration of a fictional place as a city in its own right into the virtual world of Google and interactive maps.

After their organization of rival Olympics for which they turned art galleries on the outskirts of Beijing into fitness centers and after the chance "discovery" of forged historical texts, the Xijing Men went a step further towards the creation of the western nation. This time they have "reconstructed" inside the Sucrière the apartment of the president of Xijing Land. The Xijing flag, heaps of sand, a few cactus, furniture, a stage and videos is all it took to both embrace and disgrace nationalist ideals.

Jiechang Yang, Underground Flowers, 1989-2009. Photo : Zacharie Roy

Yang Jiechang meticulously disposed 3,000 painted porcelain reproductions of human bones, inside wooden frames as if they were excavated artefacts. "Underground Flowers" is a consideration of the passing of time and the cruelty of political regimes. The artist left China at the age of thirty-three, at the time of the Tienanmen events. The dissolution of the Eastern Bloc, the end of the Cold War and the geopolitical reorganisation of the world date from this same period: they would shape Yang Jiechang's life and inform his oeuvre. During the Biennale 991 bones were sold to the public - one only per visitor - in return for a minimum donation of 10 euros to Entretemps, an association which provides emergency accommodation in and around Lyon.

Manipulating Reality - How Images Redefine the World

2010-01-28T07:51:53Z

Previously: Community Performance in Google Street View and 20.12.53 - 10.08.04.

Beate Gütschow, S#14, 2005

Last week i introduced briefly Manipulating Reality, a show that ran until January 17 at CCCS in Florence. This truly enjoyable exhibition explored the way photographic images and videos represent reality as much as they can construct and betray it. The issue has taken a key importance in a society where images have gradually taken over the role of words as a vehicle of communication.

Manipulating Reality presents a selection of 23 artistic approaches that work through photography and video to develop possible models of reality. Its aim is not to understand whether photographs can convey reality but how this can occur. The works exhibited represent different artistic strategies addressing the construction, reflection or distortion of reality in images. In addition to investigating the value of documentary photography today, many of the artists presented reflect in part the conditions of the tool of photography and adopt known artistic techniques such as collage, presentation in model form, abstraction and the assemblage of different elements.

Thomas Demand, Presidency (detail), 2008

To visitors in a hurry or unaware of who Demand is and what he is capable of, the exhibition opens in an offensively un-spectacular way with Thomas Demand (see his other work Haltestelle.)

His Presidency series is devoted to a place we have seen countless times on tv and cinema screens: the U.S. President's Oval Office. The office, seen from different angles, is empty of any human presence. At first sight, it looks like a mere photographic reproduction of the real office until a closer examination reveals that it is the photograph of a paper model.

Demand never set foot inside this symbol of supreme power. Basing his work on images encountered in newspapers and magazines, he meticulously crafted life-sized models made of paper and cardboard. Their sole purpose was to be photographed. After the shooting, they were destroyed.

Thomas Demand, Presidency V, 2008

Interestingly, Presidency was commissioned by the New York Times Magazine, a publication which has undoubtedly at his disposal bags of photos taken in the real office. The frontal image of the desk in the Oval Office made the cover in November 2008, immediately after the presidential elections. Demand's images does not offer any clue as to the identity of the president working there. The artist's version of the famous office addresses not only the illusion of power but also the illusory authenticity of photography in a society where communication goes hand in hand with "digital revolution".

Tatjana Hallbaum, In Between / Simulation n° 5, 2006

In Between / Simulation n° 8, 2006

The setting of Tatjana Hallbaum's IN-BETWEEN photos is impeccable: an emergency squad works composedly around a plane disaster, a building destroyed by an earthquake waits tranquilly to be surveyed by a rescue team. The pictures look fake and doctored. They are not. At least not completely.

The catastrophes never took place, they are mere training exercises to prepare personnel of the police, fire-fighting and civil defense departments should a real disaster occur. As the title of the series suggests, the artist's interest is focused on the space 'in between', the one that separates reality and fiction. Hallbaum describes her works as follows: "The work is questioning the gap between 'true' and 'false', 'reality' and 'fiction'. It should show that photography circumvents this. The question is not what reality is, but how we can represent it."

Ilkka Halso, Theatre II, series "Museum of Nature", 2008

The haunting Museum of Nature series by Ilkka Halso portrays a distressingly believable vision of a future when the only nature to enjoy will be the one that has to be preserved, just like a work of art, inside a museum.

Elena Dorfman, Valentine 4, series "Still Lovers"

Elena Dorfman, Lily 1, series "Still Lovers", 2004

Like the IN-BETWEEN series, Still Lovers documents a niche phenomena in which fiction is made to be confused with reality. Elena Dorfman met men and women who have made the famous RealDolls part and parcel of everyday domestic life. The dolls come with a heavy aura of porn but Dorfman's images are intimate, not sexual. They explore the emotional bonds created between ordinary-looking people and their silicon partner.

Gregory Crewdson, Untitled, 2001

Gregory Crewdson's works brings this idea of manipulated reality to Hollywood level. Metaphorically and literally. seem to defy any attempt to define them. One moment they evoke high-definition stills from big budget movies. Next, they remind viewers of Dutch paintings. Or maybe a scene from a fantasy video game. Set in the most generic American suburbia, the puzzling scenes leave viewers wondering what has just taken place or what is going to happen.

Although Crewdson works with a team of professionals one might expect to meet on a cinema production, it's only after an elaborate process of digital editing that this effect of hyper-reality and "hyper-visuality" arises in both the details and the ensemble.

My images on flickr. Photo on the homepage: Cigarette, 2007 © Sarah Pickering.

Manipulating Reality - The Day Nobody Died

2010-01-28T04:11:39Z

I spent quite a bit of virtual ink on Manipulating Reality, a show that closed about a week ago at CCCS in Florence: Community Performance in Google Street View and 20.12.53 - 10.08.04.

This exhibition explored the way photographic images and videos represent reality as much as they can construct and betray it. One of its section was dedicated entirely to the treatment of images in the context of war.

Adam Broomberg / Oliver Chanarin, 01-07, The Day Nobody Died, 2008

As James der Derian notes in his essay for the exhibition catalog: No State or state of mind can exercise full authority in the contemporary infosphere - which of course does not stop many from trying.

Images and politics are of course intimately intertwined. A clamorous example is offered by the German and Italian fascist movements in the 1930s. Inspired by the techniques of agitprop of the Russian Revolution, both governments used the relatively new media that were photography, radio and film to bolster their power through visual messages where propaganda and reality appeared to be one and only.

The issue was brought to the public attention more recently when the Pentagon imposed a strict blackout on media coverage of US soldiers' coffins returning from Iraq (a censorship which seemed to extend to art portraits of living but reclining soldiers.) The ban, in force since the Persian Gulf war, was eased last year.

Artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin followed the British army in Afghanistan as embedded photo reporters in June 2008. Embedded reporters are expected to 'document' the conflict while complying with the rigid directives of military command. Only the images that make it through their censorship process are published.

The Brother's Suicide, 2008. Exhibition views. © Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina, Firenze; Valentina Muscedra

Instead of running after bullets and casualties, Broomberg and Chanarin exposed a roll of 76.2 cm wide and 6 m long photographic paper to the sun for twenty seconds every day. The result, titled The Brother's Suicide, is a series of abstract, mostly white images, with colourful marks where the light and the heat triggered a chemical reaction on the paper.

The next step of their work in Afghanistan is The Day Nobody Died, a video that traces the return of the cardboard box containing the roll of photographic paper. The artists followed the soldiers and filmed them as they had to load and unloading the roll of photographic paper from one military base to another. The same gestures are repeated as the soldiers and the box step inside on Chinooks, planes, buses, tanks and jeeps. The object bore no meaning nor probably any sense for the soldiers who become the involuntary protagonists of an absurd performance encapsulating the repetitive nature of military life outside the battleground. A touching and quirky moment in the video sees the soldiers watching the reality show Big Brother under a military tent, with the big cardboard box 'sitting' among them.

Adam Broomberg / Oliver Chanarin, 01-07, The Day Nobody Died, 2008

The choice of communicating their experience on the war front through abstract and formalistic representation might seem almost irrational. When it is impossible and even forbidden to faithfully communicate the pain and horror of the personal tragedy of soldiers waiting for the moment to fight or die, The Brother's Suicide and The Day Nobody Died force us to reflect and imagine what we do not see and what we are not told.

What Broomberg and Chanarin seek to demonstrate with this paradoxical work of "anti-documentation" is that their images are equivalent in terms of truth content to the photographs of embedded reporters approved by military censorship. Their abstract painting of light bears witness to the reality of the conflict in the same almost paradoxical way as the work of the war photographers, which in any case does not present the truth.

Lyon Biennale - Pedro Reyes

2010-01-27T11:54:48Z

Lyon's 10th Biennale for Contemporary Art, titled The Spectacle of the Everyday, closed on January 3, 2010. There were so many works and ideas i wanted to blog about that i didn't write anything. So far. While i'm working on the big Biennale post, here's a few words about two works by one of today's most interesting artists.

Pedro REYES, Palas Por Pistolas (Pistols Into Spades), detail, 2008
50 shovels detroyed with decovered metal from 1527 destroyed weapons voluntary donated from the population of Culiacan Mexico. Photo : Balise Adilon

Pedro Reyes does the most thoughtful, honest socially-engaged works.

Palas Por Pistolas ("Pistols into Spades") is a row of seemingly mundane garden shovels. The tools were made using the metal of 1 527 weapons collected in Culiacán, a city in western Mexico that counts the highest number of handgun deaths in the country. Almost everybody in the city knows someone or has a family member who has been killed. Reyes, in collaboration with the Culiacán Botanical Garden, invited people to exchange firearms for food stamps. The firearms were crushed by a steamroller, melted and refashioned into 1 527 gardening tools.

Pedro REYES, Palas Por Pistolas, detail, 2008. Photo : Balise Adilon

The spades are used for planting trees everywhere the work goes on show. Agents of death have been turned into champions of life.

Last Fall, an educational arboretum comprising some twenty different varieties of trees were planted at the Hospital for Mothers and Babies in Bron, close to Lyon (there's a video online if you're dying to see French people planting a tree.)

Pedro REYES, Palas Por Pistolas, detail, 2008. Photo : Balise Adilon

Reyes' El Atlas de Innovación Ciudadana (The Atlas of Citizens Innovation) maps Mexican artists, activists and organizations who look for solutions to the social, economic, cultural and environmental challenges of XXIst century Mexico. The Atlas features the work of 100 inventive groups or individuals who have committed to bring change into their life. The Atlas has been designed as a portable exhibition. It takes the shape of a box containing 100 posters, each of them detailing a different case study: its context, the way it works, what experts think of it, a bibliography, interviews with the Agents of Innovation behind the project, etc. The posters can be assembled like a puzzle and form the landscape of the city.

50 000 copies of the Atlas toolkit have been printed and distributed in Mexico and other countries.

Yoga in Prison

Previously: Reyes' Bicitaxi, a light, mass-produced vehicle that provides transport services for short distances in the center of Mexico city.
Related: Teresa Margolles' work for the Mexican pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Craftwerk 2.0: New Household Tactics for the Popular Crafts

2010-01-26T09:39:02Z

Craftwerk 2.0: New Household Tactics for the Popular Crafts, an exhibition curated by Clara Åhlvik and Otto von Busch for the Jönköping county museum in Sweden, has been prolonged to March 21, 2010.

Image by Cross-stitch ninja a.k.a. Maria Halvarson

I'm going to get out of my comfort zone and write about an exhibition which, alas!, i haven't visited. Still i felt the post was due because 1. god knows if i'll ever set foot in Jönköping to report about this show or any other one for that matter, 2. Craftwerk presents the work of talented Swedish (and non-Swedish) artists/crafters i might otherwise never have got to know.

The pieces on display -whether they stem from activism, relate to techno-enhanced textiles, or are objects anyone can buy on Etsy- challenge today's conceptions of economy, durability, sustainability as well as the public's expectation of what art and design can be. Interestingly, the title of the exhibition plays on the idea that Alexander Dorner, director of the Hannover Museum during the 1920's, had of a modern museum. He defined it as a Kraftwerk, a dynamic and flexible powerhouse that would embrace other fields and disciplines and consequently function as a bridge between the art and society as a whole while. That's exactly what the workshops, lectures and the Craftwerk exhibition at the Jönköping County Museum are trying to achieve.

Elizaveta Kameleon Yankelovic's necklace

Blurb about Craftwerk 2.0: New Household Tactics for the Popular Crafts:

Over the last decade there has been a surge in crafts among young practitioners, often combined with political aspirations and networked efforts over the internet. From being a personal hobby the textile crafts have gone public and methods, techniques and tools are shared among users in ways similar to what we have seen in internet phenomena like Facebook and Wikipedia.

Craftwerk 2.0 explores the new "updated" textile crafts that are developed by a new generation of serious amateurs, innovative craftsmen, engaged entrepreneurs and political practitioners. Once again the home is the workshop where economic and ecologic innovation happens - not only in the labs of the industrial expertise. After decades of outsourcing, the new modes of production are in the hands of the layperson.

Now how about a few works and artists i've discovered while reading about the exhibition?

Ulrika Erdes, Public Embroidery

Ulrika Erdes has been embroidering on bus seats as a means to reclaim public space with textile crafts and to bring more feminine expressions into a cold functionalist and masculine world. You're invited to be take her cross-stitch patterns on the bus with you today!

Åsa Ståhl and Kristina Lindstöm, Stitching Together. Photo by Otto Von Busch at the Malmö Festival 2009

Stitching Together, by Åsa Ståhl and Kristina Lindstöm, is a "hacked" digital sewing machine. People forward the machine one of their personal SMS and it dutifully embroiders it.

Rüdiger Schlömer, Schalalala. Photo credit Göran Sandstedt

Rüdiger Schlömer's Schalalala is a a fan scarf remix project. Using the Remix-Interface software, football team fans can mix and match elements of existing scarves to create individualized knitted fanscarvess. Et voilà! The humble fan scarf becomes a social media in itself. Schlömer created a special edition of fan scarf letter archive especially for the workshops at the exhibition, using the typographies of popular local teams.

Lisa Anne Auerbach, Body Count Mittens

The number you can read on the first hand of the Body Count Mittens is 1524, it's the number of American casualties in Iraq on March 23, 2005, the day Lisa Anne Auerbach started knitting the mittens. 8 days later she began the second mitten. The number had jumped to 1533. The amount is much higher now.

Zoe Sheehan, Shopdropping. Faded Glory Ruched Shoulder Tank (China Red), 2003. Left: purchased item - Right: photograph of duplicate

Zoe Sheehan bought for a few dollars a series of garments at Wal-Mart, copied them by hand, using matching pattern, fabric, and embellishments. She then sew the tags from the original item into the duplicate and 'shopdropped' it on the Wal-Mart rack for potential sale at the original price.

Cross stitch ninja, Homes for all

In 2008, there were a number of squats all over Sweden as a protest to the housing shortage, in particular in biggest cities. "Cross Stitch Ninja" a.k.a. Maria Halvarson (part of the famed online collective Radical Cross Stitch) decided to make a cross stitch based on a photo from an article about one of these squatting actions. The text on the banner says "Homes For All".

Views of the exhibition space:

Photo credit Göran Sandstedt

Craftwerk 2.0: New Household Tactics for the Popular Crafts exhibition will continue until March 21st at the Jönköping county museum (Sweden.)

Erin Dollar, I Made You a Beard (you can get yours over here)

Super K Sonic Booooum

2010-01-25T09:08:55Z

Photo credit: Nick Ballon

Super-Kamiokande (Super K) is an underground neutrino observatory in Japan. 1000 meters under the surface of the earth, a tank containing 50,000 tons of extremely pure water and surrounded by over eleven thousands golden photomultiplier tubes keeps watch for supernovas in our galaxy. The photomultiplier tubes register the amount of light created when a neutrino meets an electron of ultra-pure water. The encounter is marked by a real Sonic Boom, an explosion faster than the speed of the light. On the computer screens of scientists who study the phenomenon, a sonic boom looks like a ring of blue light that travel to the surface.

Scientists postulate that neutrino, one of the most abundant building blocks of nature, can give us insights into the basic nature of matter, the universe, and the laws of physics. Yet, scientists know almost nothing about neutrino. As David Wark, a physics professor at Imperial College London, explained: "Just because a physical law takes place, it doesn't mean that it is obvious on a scale that we are built to comprehend. A human might have the same chance to understand the ultimate theory that my cat has to do calculus, but I hope not."

Andreas Gursky, Kamiokande, 2007 © Adagp, Paris, 2008 : Andreas Gursky / Courtesy: Monika Sprüth / Philomene Magers (bigger version of the image)

Last November, Nelly Ben Hayoun (designer of The Soyuz Chair) invited the public to join scientists from Imperial College London and Queen Mary University of London for a voyage aboard a dinghy through the seas of particle physics. Not in the real Super-K but in the SHUNT lounge, a night-club buried 10 m under the London Bridge area.

Photo credit: Nick Ballon

Called Super K Sonic Booooum, Nelly Ben Hayoun's installation/performance attempted to demonstrate the visual equivalent of one of those massive sonic booms that take place inside Super K each time a neutrino meets an electron of extremely pure water. As ultra-pure water doesn't exactly abound in London clubs, the designer used the water from the nearest fire hydrant and turned the place into a 15 by 5m long swimming pool. Before stepping inside the rubber dinghy, participants were requested to don a pair of white boots, a white coat, a helmet and listen to the security measures: do not touch the machinery, keep your hat on at all time, declare any rocks in the mine.... Five Imperial College London physics researchers, and seven PhD students are currently working on the T2K neutrino oscillation experiment, which uses Super K. Three of them, Professor Dave Wark , Dr Yoshi Uchida and Dr Matthew Malek, jumped on board to guide and inform visitors through the world of particle physics. And all around people, 600 balloons. Inflated one by one.

The balloons inflated at SHUNT represent the 'photomultiplier tubes' which cover the surface of the Super K. Super K Sonic Booooum re-creates the rings of blue light and a massive explosion (designed by sound artist Tim Holden) punctuates the experience every 10 minutes.

Image credit: Hayeon Yoo

Super K Sonic Booooum aims to make arid, hard-core physics more accessible to the general public, to help them understand the power of elementary particles that are everywhere around us without us ever noticing them. Every night during the performance, 170 people queued to get the neutrino experience.

If you happen to be in London on February 11, at 6 pm, Nelly Ben Hayoun will be giving a talk about Super K. To participate, please register at the AlterFutures group page.

Previously: The Soyuz Chair by Nelly Ben Hayoun and The Cloud Project by Zoe Papadopoulou and Cat Kramer.

Book Review - Chroma: Design, Architecture and Art in Color

2010-01-22T10:41:34Z

Chroma: Design, Architecture and Art in Color, edited by interior architect Barbara Glasner and independent author and consultant Petra Schmidt (who is also the author of Unfolded - Paper in Design, Art, Architecture and Industry.
The book is available on Amazon USA and UK.

Publisher Birkhauser says: Designers and architects have to make decisions regarding color every day. But how does one find the necessary inspiration? The appropriate color? How do other designers and artists deal with the issue? With "Chroma," the Greek word for color, as its title, this illustrated book provides answers to these questions and makes it clear that color is much more than mere decoration - it is one of the central problems of creative work. In the process, "Chroma" embraces the sensuous experience of color, inspiring and seducing the reader with unusual projects, from industrial products to color field painting. The book presents works by younger designers like Stefan Diez and Arik Levy as well as famous artists like Ellsworth Kelly.

All of the works are presented in large-scale reproductions and also in a kind of color gradient, in which they are assigned to the chapters "monochromatic," "multichromatic," and "achromatic." The spectrum encompasses all conceivable shades and combinations, from brilliant and colorful through tasteful and subdued all the way to black-and-white contrasts. An additional chapter analyzes the work of outstanding artists, architects, and designers like Gerhard Richter, Konstantin Grcic, and Sauerbruch Hutton, who grapple with color to an unusual degree and have formulated characteristic chromatic worlds. An alphabetical index provides background information on the artists and studios selected.

Carsten Höller, Rhinoceros, 2005

The book is delightful and colours are dangerous. They'd make you buy and like almost anything. Hundreds of photos illustrate the importance of colour for turning buildings and vases alike in drab to fab and glorious. The first 273 pages immerse you in colours. The volume begins on a pale mayonnaise hue and evolves gradually to the deepest black via the most vibrant or faded pink, red, yellow or blue. I didn't see much turquoise, that so-called 'colour of 2010', though. Without any text to disturb the chromato-orgasm, you're left to make your own conjectures and connections.

MVRDV, Studio Thonik, Amsterdam, 2001. Image by Maarten Helle

Following the complaints of the neighbours, the orange building had to be repainting in green:

(image)

Richard Woods, Renovation, Wimbledon, 2005

Verner Panton, Multi-functional living unit, 1966

Carsten Höller, Hippopotamus, 2007

MVRDV, Didden Village, Rotterdam, 2007

(image)

Carsten Höller, Reindeer, 2008

Valerio Olgiati, House for a Musician, Scharans, 2007

Peter Haimerl, Das schwarze Haus, Krailing, 2006

Did you ask for multichromatic?

John Baldessari. Beast (Orange) Being Stared At: With Two Figures (Green, Blue), 2004

The purely chromatic experience is followed by interviews with or essays about mighty colour-wizards: designers Fernando & Humberto Campana, Konstantin Grcic, Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, architects Sauerbruch Hutton, UNStudio and artists Rupprecht Geiger, Gerhard Richter, Anselm Reyle. No a single woman then. The texts reveal the role of colour in their work, the way they combine it with shapes and materials, the control they might or might not have on the shades they use, the ones that intimidate them or those that have had a particular importance in their own story.

Nothing will prevent me from closing this story with yet another Carsten Höller:

Carsten Höller, Upside Down Mushroom Room, 2000

Winners of Europan Norway - the Vardø site

2010-01-20T13:59:34Z

The winners of the Europan 10 competition have been announced a few days ago. Europan is a European federation of national organisations, which manages architectural competitions followed by building or study projects. Only young European architects are invited direct their ideas and visions to issues of city development, urban planning and architecture.

Being a jury member of Europan Norway has certainly been one of the highlights of 2009 for me. Not only because i learnt so much (though i'm not so sure that the jury learned much from me!) but also because one of the sites we had to get to know turned out to be extremely interesting under several aspects.

First of all, Vardø is ridiculously beautiful:

Photo by Øystein Rø

Vardø and the Arctic Ocean. Image by kalev kevad

Image by domestictimes / Augusto Mia Battaglia

Then there's the location of Vardø. It is Northern Norway's oldest and easternmost town and as such is swept in darkness 2 months of the year and exposed to cold winds from the Arctic. The motto in Vardø's coat of arm is most suggestive: Cedant tenebrae soli - darkness shall give way to the sun.

Vardø was once a prosperous trade centre with strong ties to Russia. In recent years, however, the place has been hit hard due to the changes in the fishing industry, previously a corner stone of the society. Young people are leaving the area due to the harsh weather conditions and what appears to be unexciting professional perspectives. With its strikingly beautiful landscape and charming architecture, Vardø has its place on the touristic map. If you want to visit it, a boat will sail you there and give you one hour and not one minute more to have a tour and sail to your next destination.

Image by Tynesider

The projects submitted to the competition for the Varø site had to respond to the Europan 10 topic of Regeneration: in areas with a strong identity but with obsolete functions, how can spaces be adapted to a new dynamic of uses? In the case of a site such as Vardø, the regeneration involves changes in the use(s) of the site rather than a modification of the space itself.

The jury looked for proposals that dealt with strategies, and investigated the historical and geographical context. Each of the winning entries is fascinating in its own way. Taken together they form a truly thought-provoking perspective on what young architects can bring to local urban challenges.

The winning project, Repositioning the Remote, puts forward several possible short-, medium- and long-term strategies for the regeneration of Vardø. The runner up project, Datarock, devises a bold but pragmatic strategy. The honorable mention, The White, is an out of this world meta-project that invites us to imagine the contribution that mythology could bring to the future of the Norwegian city.

The First Prize went to Repositioning the Remote

Oh! This is nice, i can copy paste the text on the competition website as i'm the one who wrote it ages ago for the catalog Europan 10 in Norway - Book of Results:

The strategy proposed by Repositioning the Remote is articulated around short-, mid- and long-term objectives which embrace the cultural, industrial and ecological facets of Vardø.

First, cultural spaces would take the place of abandoned industrial structures, providing a boost to the local community and attracting interest from outside the area. The winning team forecasts that by 2030, Vardø will play an important role in Norwegian energy production by monitoring, exploiting and servicing nearby oil reserves. Concurrently, Vardø will consolidate its unique position as an outpost of ornithology and marine biology in the Arctic, protecting the fragile ecology of the Barents region.

In the distant future, Vardø will have to face pressing challenges which range from finding a place in Norway's post-oil economy, meeting the effects of global warming and raising aquacultural and hothouse production to a higher level of self-sufﬁciency. Repositioning the Remote suggests that Vardø take advantage of its powerful offshore Arctic winds to create energy for local needs, while distributing the surplus to the southern regions. Vardø's harbour will be reconﬁgured to face the rising level of the sea, encouraging new modes of production in the process. In the meantime, the interstitial and reconﬁgured harbour area would be welcoming a 24-hour sunlit greenhouse to produce Arctic char and stock king crab for trade abroad.

The authors of Repositioning the Remote are: Team leader Ana Reis (Portugal) with the contribution of Ross Langdon, (Australia), Kelly Doran (Canada) and Louis Hall (UK)

The runner-up is Datarock

Dark perspective

Isn't this fantastic? I can close my eyes and copy/paste the text explaining Datarock because i wrote it as well for the catalog.

Datarock turns the daunting remoteness and Arctic climate of the city into its biggest advantage, while at the same time providing an answer to the world's ever-growing need for the storage of digital data. In fact, Datarock suggests the creation of a brand new industry for the area: the data centre. Also called a 'server farm', a data centre is a facility that stores digital information made available on the Internet. Far from being as intangible as the goods they store, these infrastructures require huge amounts of energy to cool down. Installing them in extremely cold but inhabitable regions is therefore a natural solution.

Data in landscape

Datarock is not designed to function as a separate entity, but rather to service Vardø. The warmth continuously produced by the data centre would be used to heat new and existing public spaces while answering the daily needs of the city's inhabitants. The data centre itself is fused within the landscape; half buried, half submerged, it appears on the horizon like a rock from which three luminous cubes emerge. Located on the edge of the city limits, it evokes the atmosphere of a lighthouse.

Datacentre tourism

Interestingly, the project proposes that this industry would create a new form of 'digital tourism' in Vardø. People will flock to see the material face of the Internet, while sustainable energy practices will exploit the heat produced by the massive machines for various facilities in the area.

The authors of Datarock are: team leader Gauthier Le romancer (France) in association with Guillaume Derrien (France).

The White received an Honorable Mention

The Myth is dying. It is about to be defeated. There is a war between the two worlds: Rationality and Myth. By these two phrases from Adorno and Horkheimer The White states the historical and mythological context of the high north in the minds of the Europeans. The White calls upon ancient cartography and the texts by the likes of Dante Alighieri, Gilles Deleuze, Senecae to question the sensibility of envisioning Vardø under its sole oil-producing, tourist magnet or business potentials. The White might not propose the most straight-forward and factual solution but it certainly brings a new twist on the Vardø discussions. The discussion we had during the jury process and the ones that all the winners of the competition will have very soon in Vardø to reflect on the new profile and strategy for the city. The White has a slight Italo Calvino touch. It reminded me as well of the work of Etienne-Louis Boullée which i discovered as a teenager in one of my favourite movie, The Belly of an Architect.

The White invites Vardø to embrace its geographical position at the border of reality and mythology. Vardø is the gate to the unknown. In the architects own words: The collective unconscious characterized Vardø as the last city of the North, populated by devils, witches, monsters and men praying to the Moon.

Colonizing Vardø would correspond to the fall of Myth, to the decay of its own identity: as Odysseus destroyed the Sirens imposing his reason to their irrational song. Therefore, to reject the logical fate of Vardø we enhance the power of Myth. We do not expect to reverse the machine of rationality but rather to erode its internal processes inserting a worm of doubt.

The authors of The White are: team leader Federico Perugini (Italy), in association with Francensco Marullo, (Italy), Valentina Signore (Italy) and Alejandra Climent Monsalve (Spain.)

More information about the competition and the winning entries in Europan 10 in Norway - Book of Results, edited by Espen Røyseland and Øystein Rø.

20.12.53 - 10.08.04

2010-01-18T16:47:55Z

Previously: Community Performance in Google Street View.

Last week i introduced briefly Manipulating Reality, a show that ran until January 17 at CCCS in Florence. This truly enjoyable exhibition explored the theme of the manipulation and reconstruction of reality through photographic images and videos.

Moira Ricci , Da nonna - "20.12.53 - 10.08.04", 2004-2009

One of the artists whose work i discovered while visiting Manipulating Reality is Moira Ricci, a photographer and video artist who gained fame and critical respect for a series of photos she never shot. 20.12.53 - 10.08.04, which appears to have been born out of the artist's desire to investigate her personal past and memory, embodies the views put forward by Roland Barthes in his celebrated Camera Lucida: photography endows the past with a certainty so solid as to be equivalent to the present, thus blurring the boundary between reality (what was) and truth.

Moira Ricci, Mamma e Zia Carolina - "20.12.53 - 10.08.04", 2004-2009

Moira Ricci, Zio Auro, Cla e mamma - "20.12.53 - 10.08.04", 2004-2009

A series of amateur photographs from a family album are lined-up on the walls of the gallery. They star the same people whose fashion style evolve as the photographs turn from b&w to coloured by hand to slightly yellowed colour. As your eyes go from one image to another, you realize that two women keep appearing. An elegant woman with black hair who parties, goes to Milan with her fiancé, makes babies and gets older and a slim young woman with a long sad face alla Modigliani, upon whom time seems to leave no trace.

The young woman is Moira Rossi. In the images she stands slightly aloof and stares intently in the direction of the other woman, as if she'd hope that the lady would turn and acknowledge her presence. That other woman is her mother who died in 2004. On 10.08.04 to be precise. Hence the title of the series.

Moira Ricci, Fidanzati - "20.12.53 - 10.08.04", 2004-2009

Moira Ricci, Mamma con maestra - "20.12.53 - 10.08.04", 2004-2009

Digital processing of the old photographs of her mother's life enabled the artist to appear beside and observe her mother in the moments that, at the time, were thought worthy to be 'immortalized.' Ricci carefully chose her clothes so that they would match the fashion of the time, she adjusted the lighting to fit unobtrusively in the portraits and cast herself as a shy figure at the edge of the photo.

The reconstructed images manipulates both the present and the past, building a bridge that enable her to try and reach out to her mother virtually in various moments of her life.

To be continued...