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Sony World Photography Awards 2012

2012-05-13T07:59:26Z

Last week, i visited the Sony World Photography Awards 2012 at Somerset House. I object to paying £7.50 to see and exhibition which title starts with the name of a brand. I feel cheated when the show closes with a shop selling goods manufactured by the above-mentioned brand and i don't look kindly to being forbidden to take pictures (which i do mostly because it helps me document an exhibition i plan writing about) because that would mean that i won't shell out more ££ to buy the booklet of the exhibition. That said, the photos selected and exhibited are so remarkable that i still feel like recommending that you go and see the World Photography Awards if you're in London.

Here's some of my favourite images.
Starting with the ones i'd buy if i could afford it.

Cristina De Middel, The Afronauts series 10, 2012

Cristina de Middel's The Afronauts won 2nd prize in the Conceptual category. The series pay homage to Zambian school teacher Edward Makuka Nkoloso, who started an unofficial space program in his home country in 1964. His ambition was not only to beat the Americans and Russians to the moon but also to send a rocket with twelve astronauts and ten cats to Mars. Fundings for the Zambian space programme never materialized.

Cristina De Middel, The Afronauts series 10, 2012

Next on my list is the 3rd prize in the Sport category because you don't often see politics and social issues covered in a winning Sport photo series:

Andrew McConnell reports on Gaza Surf Club. Under Israeli blockade, the Gaza Strip is regularly referred as 'the largest open-air prison on earth'. With no recreational space to speak of, the Mediterranean, alluring in spite of the sewage, is an immense source of release for the local population. Surf is still a fledging sport, numbers being kept low by a dearth of equipment.

Andrew McConnell. From the series Leaving Gaza

I was quite taken by the Winner of the Nature and Wildlife category:

Jacek Kusz, Burmese Peacock Softshell Turtle. Zoo Wroclaw, Poland

And now in no particular order:

Alejandro Cartagena's Car Poolers won the 3rd prize in the People category for the images he took between 7 and 9:30 AM on one of the busiest highways in Monterrey, Mexico. They offer an intimate view on how car-pooling is practiced by workers in Mexico but also reflect the excessive growth in Mexico where suburbs are being built far from the urban centers, leading to greater commutes and consumption of fossil fuels.

Alejandro Cartagena, Untitled Car Pooler #3

Alejandro Cartagena, Untitled Car Pooler #13

Donald Weber was one of the first photographer allowed to enter the exclusion zone that surrounds the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. He's the winner of the Current Affairs category. "Odaka lies on the north-eastern coast of Japan. It was once home to 13,000 people, but today it is almost a ghost town. When the earthquake and tsunami of 11 March (2011) triggered blasts at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, a 20km radius exclusion zone was imposed by the Japanese government."

Donald Weber, Life in the Exclusion Zone, Fukushima, Japan

Weber's shots find a sad echo in the 3rd prize of the Still Life category. Rena Effendi met some of the people who, 25 years since the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, still inhabit the restricted area around Reactor 4, named the Zone of Alienation. They are mostly elderly women who chose, just days after the accident, to return home. They live alone, harvesting contaminated food and berries known to absorb radiation, having outlived their husbands and children.

Hanna Zavorotnya butchered a pig for the New Year holidays in Kapavati village. Chernobyl, Ukraine

Gas masks scattered on the floor of a school lobby in the abandoned city of Prypiats. Chernobyl, Ukraine

Horns of deer in Galina Konyushok's shed, hunted and consumed in the Zone. Hunting and farming is forbidden due to high radioactive contamination levels in local vegetation. Chernobyl, Ukraine

Alessandro Grassani (3rd prize in contemporary issues) spent part of a Winter in Mongolia, a country of 3.000.000 inhabitants, almost half of them living on top of each other in the capital, Ulaan Baator. With the Dzud, the hard Mongolian winter, becoming longer and snowier, thousands of nomad herdsmen, who saw their animals die of cold, were forced to move their Gher to migrate towards Ulaan Baator, in the slum which has developed around the city known as "Gher District".

Alessandro Grassani, Environmental migrants: the last illusion. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

3rd in the Nature and Wildlife category is Palani Mohan's work following the world's last remaining eagle hunters. For centuries, Kazakh nomads have roamed the steppe. When the modern borders were drawn, the Kazakhs found themselves cut off from their homeland, forced to settle on the arid, wind=scoured plains and foothills of the Altai mountains of western Mongolia.

Palani Mohan, Kazakh Eagle Hunters

I should stop going to these photo exhibitions, they've made me obsessed with Mongolia.

Nature and Wildlife was a very strong category. The 2nd prize went to:

David Chancellor, Safari Club, Dallas, Texas, from the series Hunters

Mitch Dobrowner won the Iris Photographer of the year with a series that portrays storm systems in Tornado Alley.

Mitch Dobrowner, Rope Out. Regan, North Dakota

The Sony World Photography Awards 2012 can be seen at Somerset House, London, until 20 May 2012.

My Name Is Janez Janša

2012-05-09T18:16:15Z

Five years ago, three artists legally changed their name to Janez Janša and joined the conservative Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS.) So far, so almost normal. Except that Janez Janša is also he name of the leader of the party and Prime Minister of Slovenia. Suddenly there were more Janez Janšas acting together within the same physical and media space.

Their experience is being turned into the documentary My Name Is Janez Janša in which individuals, artists and academics ponder about the meaning and purpose of one's name from both private and public perspectives.

A debate arose in the media and art circles around the three Janez Janša's artistic gesture: What was its intent and significance? Was it a political critique? A work of activism? Pure provocation?

Followers of the politicians didn't leave much space for discussion and subtlety when they launched a defamatory campaign and declared that My Name Is Janez Jansa was little more than a work of pornography. The cover of a recent issue of the conservative magazine Reporter illustrates the manoeuvre (the still images published on the cover are actually from Bruce La Bruce and Rick Castro's movie Hustler White which has been quoted in My Name Is Janez Janša.)

The artists have now opened a crowdfunding call to ensure that they'll be able to finish the post-production of the film and distribute it widely.

I contacted the three Janez Janša, asked them to tell us more about the movie, the name change, the defamatory campaign and immediately realized that they haven't lost any of their sense of humour in the process:

It's been 5 years already since you decided to change your names (Davide Grassi, Emil Hrvatin, and Žiga Kariž) to Janez Janša, the same name as the Prime Minister of Slovenia. I'm sure you were expecting that it would have an impact on your everyday life but what were the effects of the new names on your work as an artist?

Janez Janša: Let me correct you first. My legal name is Janez Janša while the politician's legal name is IVAN Janša. He has been called Janez since his childhood, but he never changed his legal name into Janez Janša.

Janez Janša: Interestingly enough, when he appears in front of the court, as he is involved in many legal cases, he does it with his legal name Ivan Janša while in his political life, when he represents Slovenia, when he signs state documents, he uses a pseudonym, Janez Janša.

Janez Janša: I was expecting him to change his legal name in the same name we have, Janez Janša.

What has the experience brought you?

Janez Janša: My life didn't change because of the name changing. I still live the same kind of life and my artistic work is still my main profession.

Janez Janša: Shakespearean Juliet maintains that the name of the rose does not affect the sweetness of the rose itself. Yet, it is right my new name that makes now other people smell me different.

Janez Janša: The name is what you put forward when you introduce yourself to others. It streams your figure into public life. Other people use your name much more than you do. When you change your name, you don't change yourself. You change your "interface". That is why your name change affects other people more than it does affect you.

Janez Janša: ...as one's death. It affects more relatives and friends than the one who actually died.

How do you feed the discoveries and experiences of the past 5 years into your work as artists?

Janez Janša: They basically feed by themselves into our work as artists because the name change practically merged our art with our life.

I read this afternoon in El Pais that the documentary had faced censorship. Can you explain us what happened exactly?

Janez Janša: This issue around our documentary is far from being over so I wouldn't use the pass tense here. It is rather difficult to summarize the whole story. Maybe the best is if you can point your readers to the on-line document that contains the chronology of facts. Then they can make up their minds about the issue. I'm not even sure I will call this a case of censorship. It's more a case of "preventive media pillorying", an attempt to disqualify the work in front of the public opinion before it even get released...

Janez Janša: ...this way creating conditions for the public opinion to easily accept the censorship that might follow. The rhetoric used for achieving this goal is of a very populist kind. All the media close to the conservative government agree to define the movie as a "merely pornographic" and "highly offensive" product. A kind of "art" that shouldn't be allowed any further to be supported and produced with taxpayers money.

Janez Janša: The funny thing is that all the discrediting arguments are based on "something" that "somebody heard" that "someone else has seen". No one of the journalists attacking us has actually seen the work as the movie is not even finished yet.

But were you not expecting to be challenged and criticized when you decided that the 3 of you would adopt the name of the PM of Slovenia and join his own party? Surely that gesture must have been interpreted as a political position? And probably not as one that pays homage to his person and politics? How did he react to it?

Janez Janša: The first reaction by the Prime Minister was silence, and his silence was a very clear reaction. There was a lot of speculation in the media whether our name change is to be understood as a gesture of support or criticism to the politician.

Janez Janša: It is only in February 2011 that Janša, at the time the leader of the opposition, commented on our gesture. In an interview he gave for the 1st channel of the National Radio he said that he was receiving invitations to appear in front of the court and invoices for fines related to crimes we've done.

My Name Is Janez Jansa (excerpt #43)

Janez Janša: After Janša made his public statement also conservative media and intellectuals started to comment on our name change especially highlighting the way public money were spent and for which kind of "politicized art". Some of the progressive critic instead maintained that by changing our names we helped the politician to himself to the public under a better light. Other accused us of doing a mere marketing operation to gain more visibility and therefore get more money.

Janez Janša: But all of them basically agreed on the fact that this name change would be a short exploit in our careers and that soon we will all change our names back, or further.

Janez Janša: Well, they were right, at least in my case. I've changed back my name to Žiga Kariž in January 2009 and now I'm still using Janez Janša as a pseudonym especially when I do some work with these two guys, Janez Janeša and Janez Janša...

Thank you Janez Janša!

The documentary My Name Is Janez Janša is in its post-production phase, and it needs financial strengthening. Help the artists finish the film and reach worldwide audience.

American Dreamers

2012-05-08T15:44:36Z

Nick Cave, Various works. Exhibition view at CCC Strozzina. Photo Martino Margheri

Thomas Doyle, Null Cipher, 2006

American Dreamers, the exhibition currently on view at Strozzina, Center for Contemporary Culture at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, invites us to question what remains of the American dream in this age of weak economy, war on terror and housing crisis.

Does the American dream still exist? What is its future in an era in which the promise of happiness and economic prosperity seems to clash with an increasingly complex and difficult scenario?

America's sense of invulnerability is long gone and whether they live inside or outside the country, people are now struggling to hold on to the American dream. Recent reports even show that for first time since Depression, more Mexicans leave U.S. than enter.

Will Cotton, Consuming Folly, 2009-2010

How do contemporary artists react and comment on the situation? While many of them have chosen to document the social and economic crisis, others are using it to build a refuge, an alternative world made of fantasy and illusions. This second reality might sometimes present a veneer of nostalgia and hedonism but it always comes with a dark undercurrent. In some cases, the imagined reality steps right into dystopia.

But have no illusions about American Dreamers. There's nothing 'exotic' and distant about it. It also (alas!) holds a mirror to a Europe where social welfare policies are at risk, economic unease is growing in households and market-wide, austerity measures spark protests and far right votes (this morning hit me with worrying stories about Greece and Verona.)

Eleven artists have been invited to show their vision of what is left of the American dream, here's a quick selection:

Nick Cave, Soundsuit, 2010 and Mating Season, 2011. Photo Martino Margheri

Nick Cave, Soundsuit, 2010 and Soundsuit, 2011. Photo Martino Margheri

Nick Cave, Various works. Exhibition view at CCC Strozzina. Photo Martino Margheri

Nick Cave, Soundsuit, 2010 and Mating Season, 2011. Photo Martino Margheri

Nick Cave, Soundsuit, 2010. Photo Martino Margheri

Soundsuits! Soundsuits! Nick Cave's wearable sculptures are made of beads, feather, sequins and fabrics found in thrift stores but also discarded fake fur, human hair, twigs, etc. Even children's toys. When worn by dancers during street or gallery performances, the Soundsuits take a life of their own, shifting volumes, producing different sounds depending on the materials they are made out of.

By physically sheltering the wearer from external gaze, the Soundsuits neutralize their gender, age, race and class. The soundsuits also act as carapaces where wearers can retreat from reality. Moreover, the spectacle they create during public performances projects spectators into an alternate reality.

Christy Rupp, Various works. Exhibition view at CCC Strozzina. Photo Martino Margheri

Christy Rupp, Great Auk, from the series Extinct Birds Consumed by Humans, 2005-2008

Christy Rupp, Dodo, from the series Extinct Birds Consumed by Humans, 2005-2008

Christy Rupp, Brinkiness, 2007-8

Christy Rupp's skeletons of Extinct Birds Previously Consumed by Humans evoke the remains exhibited at museums of natural history, but they are actually made from bone fragments of chicken and turkey that she collected from rubbish bins outside fast-food restaurants and barbecues. The Strozzina shows a Dodo, a Great Auk and a Moa, three flightless birds that were erased from the surface of the earth because of reckless hunting. The bird species consumed in fast food joints might not be extinct but, raised in intensive factory farming, they are nevertheless the victims of man's greed and disregard for basic animal welfare.

Will Cotton, Abandoned (Churro Cabin), 2002

Will Cotton, Various works. Exhibition view at CCC Strozzina. Photo Martino Margheri

Will Cotton's paintings also allude to hyper-consumption but in a cotton candy, cupcakes and all things syrupy way. Drawing inspiration from 18th century French Rococo painters, from Tiepolo and 1950s pinups, his works seem ethereal and insouciant but a closer inspection reveal underlying fears of decadence and over-indulgence. Consummation of Empire, for example, directly points to Thomas Cole's five-part series The Course of Empire, which even in the 1830s was sounding a warning bell about American imperial ambitions.

Cotton recently worked as Art Director for Katy Perry's California Gurls, transferring his saccharine painted universe into music video. He certainly has all my admiration for getting Snoop Dogg into that cupcake suit.

Katy Perry, California Gurls ft. Snoop Dogg

Richard Deon looks back at golden-era America with paintings that restage drawings from 1950s civics handbooks.

The main protagonist of the works is a dapper man in a suit. He's stern, he's standing tall and keeping his hands at his sides but the nostalgia for a more glorious time stops here. The figure in suit is also submitted to absurd juxtapositions and erroneous perspectives. He is surrounded by mysterious symbols and placed in inadequate settings and historical references.

Richard Deon, Weehawken 2, 2008

Richard Deon, Various works. Exhibition view at CCC Strozzina. Photo Martino Margheri

Home is the center stone of middle-class American culture. They are bigger, more comfortable and immaculate than anywhere else in the world. But in Thomas Doyle's sinister settings, there is something worryingly precarious about the American home. Families tend to their garden, chat in the kitchen or come back from grocery shopping without realizing that the whole world around their home is about to crumble.

There's no clearer metaphor for the real estate bust that is hurting so many householders.

Thomas Doyle, Various works. Exhibition view at CCC Strozzina. Photo Martino Margheri

Thomas Doyle, Acceptable losses (detail), 2008

Thomas Doyle, Acceptable Losses, 2008 (detail)

Thomas Doyle, Flying for Effect, 2010

Thomas Doyle. Exhibition view at CCC Strozzina. Photo Martino Margheri

Thomas Doyle, Various works. Exhibition view at CCC Strozzina. Photo Martino Margheri

I took some photos, they are as awful as ever.

American Dreamers remains open Strozzina, Center for Contemporary Culture at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence until 15 July 2012.

The Chronocyclegraph

2012-05-06T16:43:13Z

I can't remember having ever been disappointed by any of the exhibitions on show at Fotomuseum in Antwerp. The current shows are particularly worth the trip to the city (one of my favourite places in the world and it's a mere 30 minute ride from ugly Brussels.) The main exhibition is dedicated to photographers who capture the past, another one is about young Belgian photographers, a third show explores subjectivity through history and on the top floor is a fascinating installation by Zoe Beloff. The work took as its point of departure America's longest running comic strip to explore the influence of cinema on the movement of the body and the mind. I might come back to these exhibitions in the coming days.

Beloff's exhibition contains a number of historical documents. Some of them show chronocyclegraphs of sportsmen and factory workers. I had never heard of the chronocyclegraph before.

Motion Efficiency Study, c. 1914. National Museum of American History, Behring Center, Division of Work and Industry Collection

From image verso: "Chronocyclegraph of Roger [Howey?] champion golfer." circa 1915. Collection: Frank B. Gilbreth Motion Study Photographs (1913-1917). Repository: The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives

The technique was developed by Frank Gilbreth and his wife, Lillian in the early 20th century to improve work methods. The couple employed time-lapse photography to reduce a complete work cycle to the shortest and most efficient sequence of gestures.

To look for this optimal "relationship of human effort to the volume of work that the effort accomplishes", they attached a camera to a timing device and photographed workers performing various tasks. The motion paths were traced by small lamps fastened to the worker's hands or fingers.

Method of attaching light to hand for cyclograph pictures. Light ring on hand holding hammer while pulling a nail. Date: 1913. Collection: Frank B. Gilbreth Motion Study Photographs (1913-1917). Repository: The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives

They called the essential elements of their subjects' movements therbligs.

The Gilbreths later built wire sculptures based on the trail of light created by the movement of the worker's hand.

The objective of the research was to minimize arm movement and hence speed and ease manual work. Gilbreth's findings were used in assembly lines but they also found their way into other contexts: Gilbreth was the first to propose that a nurse would assist the surgeon, by handing them surgical instruments as called for. He also devised the standard techniques used around the world to teach army recruits how to rapidly disassemble and reassemble their weapons even when blindfolded.

From image verso: "Chronocyclograph of surgeon sewing." circa 1915. Collection: Frank B. Gilbreth Motion Study Photographs (1913-1917). Repository: The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives

From image verso: 'Wire model of foreman on drill press. This shows "positioning" in the midst of "transporting."' Circa 1915. Collection: Frank B. Gilbreth Motion Study Photographs (1913-1917). Repository: The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives

From image verso: "Same study as photo #1291." Chronocyclograph on a turret lathe. In image "Photo 1281, April 10, 1913. Stereo Motion Orbit Operation On L C8. New England Butt Co." Date: 1913. Collection: Frank B. Gilbreth Motion Study Photographs (1913-1917). Repository: The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives

From image verso: "Assembly [packet?] of arranging in an 'obvious sequence' the parts of a shoe string machine. This study resulted in enabling the worker to do over 3 times as much - (see paper by John G. Aldrich, Amer Soc. Mech Engineers Transactions 1. Date: 1913. Collection: Frank B. Gilbreth Motion Study Photographs (1913-1917). Repository: The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives

Chronocyclograph of golf champion- Francis [?] , circa 1915. Collection: Frank B. Gilbreth Motion Study Photographs (1913-1917). Repository: The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives

From image verso: "Left hand of drill press operator 'Positioning after transportation' (this study resulted in cutting the time in halves)." Machinist with light showing hand movements, circa 1915. Collection: Frank B. Gilbreth Motion Study Photographs (1913-1917). Repository: The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives

From image verso: "2 cycles on drill press showing 'HABIT' positioning after transporting. Note the 'hesitation' before 'grasping.'" Circa 1915. Collection: Frank B. Gilbreth Motion Study Photographs (1913-1917). Repository: The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives

More images: Frank B. Gilbreth Motion Study Photographs (1913-1917) at Kheel Center Labor Photos.

The Immortal, life-support machines keeping each other alive

2012-05-04T05:48:45Z

A number of life-support machines are connected to each other, circulating liquids and air in attempt to mimic a biological structure...

The Immortal - preview from Revital Cohen on Vimeo.

Revital Cohen managed to track down and acquire a Heart-Lung Machine, a Dialysis Machine, an Infant Incubator, a Mechanical Ventilator and an Intraoperative Cell Salvage Machine. She connected the discarded organ replacement machines together and had them 'breathe' in closed circuits. The machines of The Immortal keep each other alive through circulation of electrical impulses, oxygen and artificial blood.

Salted water acts as blood replacement: throughout the artificial circulatory system minerals are added and filtered out again, the blood gets oxygenated via contact with the oxygen cycle, an ECG device monitors the system's heartbeat.

As the fluid pumps around the room in a meditative pulse, the sound of mechanical breath and slow humming of motors resonates in the body through a comforting yet disquieting soundscape.

Photograph by Revital Cohen

Cohen has long been investigating how machines, peripherals and even animals can work as extension of the body or substitutes of body parts. This time however, the human body has been removed from the scene. Yet, its presence and fragility can still be felt...

The medical machine - whether in use or not - is an object which transcends its materiality. Designed and created to perform a single, most meaningful function, we never subject these devices to a critical investigation as industrial products within the context of material culture.

Photograph by Revital Cohen

Far from being just assemblages of tubes and circuits, the machines intersect with our culture, fears and beliefs. The Cell Salvage Machine, for example, blurs the boundary between technocracy and the metaphysical. The machine suctions, washes, and filters blood so it can be given back to the patient's body. The cell saver is used on patients, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, who have religious objections to receiving blood transfusions. As for the infant incubators, they used to be part of freak shows before being adopted by hospitals.

But more tellingly, each of these objects is the product of our attempts to conquer biology (and our own mortality) with engineering.

Photograph by Revital Cohen

The Immortal will be part of Superhuman, an exhibition exploring human enhancement that will open at the Wellcome Collection in London on July 19 and run through October 16, 2012.

Compulsion

2012-05-02T08:48:54Z

4:29pm Van Nuys, 2012

Compulsion, an exhibition of new work by Alex Prager, i saw a few days ago at Michael Hoppen gallery is so impressive I'm breaking out of my habit of writing about exhibitions mere hours before they close.

In Prager's part film noir, part fashion shoot work, heroines wear impeccable make-up and synthetic wigs, pose as if they were in a Hitchcock movie, breathe through an atmosphere worthy of David Lynch, and are submitted to ordeals inspired by the images of crime photographers Weegee and Enrique Metinides. The stories might take place in Hollywood-like settings but they promise to never end on a happy note.

The Compulsion in the title might refer to our compulsion to gape at other people's tragedy. Underlining the voyeur theory are the dramatic close-ups of eyes that accompany some of the stills.

3:56 am, Milwood Avenue, 2012

1:18pm Silverlake Drive, 2012

4:01pm Sun Valley, 2012

Eye #3, 2012

Eye #7, 2012

11:45pm Griffith Park, 2012

3:14pm Pacific Ocean, 2012

2pm, Interstate 110, 2012

7:12pm Redcliff Ave, 2012

Compulsion #1, 2012

Along with the colour photographs, the artist is showing La Petite Mort, a short film starring French actress, Judith Godrèche.

La petite mort, literally "the small death," is a French idiom for orgasm. In Prager's film, we hear the voice of Gary Oldman saying that "the act of dying, and the act of transcendent love, are two experiences cut from the same cloth."

The main protagonist of the short film navigates the mystery of death through a series of experiences that involves being ran over by a steam train, being stared at by a gathering of stern-looking people, meeting a man and drowning in a river. The action unfolds very slowly but somehow all of the above takes place in a couple of minutes.

Film Still #1, 2012

Film Still #4, 2012

Film Still #5, 2012

If you're in London, New York or (lucky you!) Los Angeles, go and see that show.

La Petite Mort (Trailer.) Written and Directed by Alex Prager

Alex Prager's Compulsion is showing at the Michael Hoppen Gallery, London until May 26. The work is also shown at Yancey Richardson Gallery in New york until May 19, and at M+B Gallery, LA until May 12.

Book review: Utopia & Contemporary Art

2012-04-29T11:02:51Z

Utopia & Contemporary Art, edited by Christian Gether, Stine Høholt and Marie Laurberg. (available on amazon UK and USA.)

Publisher Hatje Cantz writes: Utopia has become a controversial concept, spanning the field between the belief in an ideal society and the dystopian nightmare. Within the last decade, the contemporary art scene has witnessed a return of utopia and utopian thinking. Whether detectable as an impulse, critically reassessed as a concept, or cautiously or daringly articulated in a specific vision--utopia continues to matter. This publication investigates the meanings of utopia in contemporary art. Theorists, critics, and curators discuss the different ways of thinking and performing utopia in contemporary art from a broad range of angles. The essays explore the current relevance of utopia as well as how people in different societies live, think, act, and imagine.

The two parts, Utopia Revisited and Utopian Positions, provide both a theoretical backdrop for the reformulations of utopia in contemporary art as well as examinations of specific utopian stances in connection with the three-year utopia project at ARKEN Museum of Modern Art and solo shows by Qiu Anxiong, Katharina Grosse, and Olafur Eliasson.

Olafur Eliasson, Din blinde Passager (Your Blind Passenger), 2010. Photo: Studio Olafur Eliasson

Utopia & Contemporary Art is a collection of essays by curators, art critics, academics and art historians who explore the meaning and place that the concept of utopia has taken in art. The first part "Utopia Revisited" illustrates the resurgence of utopia in contemporary art. Although utopia as a governmental precept has fallen from grace after a series of misguided attempts to put it into practice in the 20th century, the art world is now welcoming the concept back into its critical discourse. Utopia as a mode of thinking can inspire us to take a break from reality and think beyond what is already existing. 'Utopian' artworks do not necessarily require from us to take their ideas literally. Their objective is rather to elicit a moment of reflexion and inner questioning "to which extent could the art proposal work?" "how does it compare to the world i live in?" etc.

Because the book is a collection of essays about the topic, there are some repetitions in the Utopia Revisited part, with most authors feeling they have to remind us of Thomas More. Each text, however, bring a different outlook and perspective on utopia in art.

View inside the book

Richard Noble's contribution kept on bringing issues that are otherwise often ignored by enthusiastic artists, curators and critics: how most utopian art is made by artists from bourgeois background, paid for by rich collectors or state institutions and how it has virtually no impact on society nor the political world. How difficult it is to make a political work or art that is effective as an artwork or as a political act or both. Or how to distinguish between an utopian artwork from a political artwork. How the impact of a political artwork is influenced by the context (Noble gave the example of the reason behind Ai Weiwei's arrest for tax evasion: a project that involved displaying publicly the list of the names and ages of the victims of the Szechuan earthquake, an information that Chines authorities had suppressed.)

Another essay worth mentioning is the one by Jacob Wamberg in which he maps the utopian tendencies of modern art movements depending on whether they are located in 'virtual' space (the one of autonomous consciousness, think Kandinsky), the 'real' space (the one that directly engages with architecture and design, think Bauhaus) or in between (in the social sphere, think Situationism, Fluxus, Dada, etc.)

View inside the book. Unrealized Art Projects

The second part of the book, Artists Projects, is pure joy. It opens with a selection of Unrealized Art Projects that Hans Ulrich-Obrist has been collecting since 1990. He has amassed thousands of texts, drawings, and correspondence that documents projects which, for some reason, never saw the light of the day.

Things get even better in the third and last part of the book, Utopian Positions. In The Claim for New Territories, Ildiko Dao and Simon Lamunière, look at communities founded by artists. From Yoko Ono and John Lennon's Nutopia to micro-nations, to a borderless city built on Second Life, up to the more viable The Land, a self-sustaining and transdisciplinary project created by Rirkrit Tiravanija and Kamin Letchaiprasert.

Cao Fei , Whose Utopia, 2006

Ilya Kabakov, The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment, 1988

And perhaps because each culture has its own idea (or perhaps experience) of what constitutes an utopia, the final essays examine artists' utopian projects in different territories: Rachel Weiss considers the form and role of utopia in Cuban art, Inke Arns gives a tour the Utopian in Eastern Europe, and Hou Hanru explores the Chinese contemporary artists' reaction to the rise of the consumerist society in their country.

In the background: Battery house by Francois Roche and Philippe Parreno, at The Land Foundation, Thailand, launched by Rirkrit Tiravanija and Kamin Letchaiprasert, 1998-

Views inside the book:

ZOO, or the letter Z, just after Zionism

2012-04-25T16:17:52Z

On Tuesday, i took that decrepit and charming train that goes from Liege to Maastricht to visit one of my favourite architecture centers: NAIM / Bureau Europa.

Part of a research on the relationship between architecture and conflict, their current exhibition ZOO, or the letter Z, just after Zionism explores the constructive and destructive forces of architecture through the work of Israeli architect Malkit Shoshan.

The show is an approachable and moving extension of the book she published a few years ago: Atlas of the Conflict. Israel-Palestine. The book was mapping literally and figuratively the appearance of a nation at the detriment of another one and highlighting the influence that political agendas have on urban planning and architecture. But instead of displaying countless maps at Bureau Europa, the curator and architect found inspiration in a story that toured the world in 2009: the one of the zebra of the Gaza zoo.

Because they couldn't afford to buy and smuggle a real zebra through the tunnels like they did with the other animals, the owners of the Gaza zoo used masking tape and black hair dye to paint a donkey into a zebra. It was an instant hit with children.

Image: Bureau Europa

The exhibition ZOO, or the letter Z, just after Zionism has turned Bureau Europa into a small zoo. The first animals you meet in the gallery --if you visit it during the weekend-- are donkeys. Unpainted and peacefully eating their hay. They symbolize the daily struggle to lead an almost 'normal' life in the Gaza Strip where regular trade continues to be prohibited, where almost no construction materials or raw materials is allowed to enter, where the population is isolated and subject to electricity cuts of 4 to 8 hours per day, where there is no longer access to regular, clean water and where, according to the World Food Programme, "The evidence shows that the population is being sustained at the most basic or minimum humanitarian standard."

Apart from the donkeys, Bureau Europa also hosts rats. Nested in tunnels, running around or playing on a wooden wheel. The lovely rats evoke human beings living in an area, the Gaza Strip, that is running out of space. The Strip has one of the highest densities in the world. Add to that its inhabitants are not allowed to construct nor rebuild what has been destroyed by bombings (or the Israeli practice of moving through walls) since construction material is denied entrance in Gaza. There's no high rise building, no tower, no skyscraper to make room for parks, cultivation and proper public infrastructure.

Image: Bureau Europa

In 1958, John B. Calhoun conducted over-population experiments on rats. The ethologist provided a group of rats with food and water but the size of their cage was considered sufficient for only 50 rodents. As the population grew there were soon too many rats for each to have its own territory and the animals became increasingly stressed. Males became aggressive. Mothers neglected their infants. Cannibalism began. The rodents had lost the ability to live harmoniously together.

Image: Bureau Europa

Fortunately, Gazans manage to keep a remarkable sense of humour and many still hope that peace might one day prevail. Hence the third group of animal present in the gallery: doves.

The walls and windows around the installations are covered in posters that illustrate and provide facts and figures about the history of zoos around the world, the human zoos of the 15th to 18th century, how most of the animals of the Gaza zoo had died of starvation or because of bombing during the Israeli war on Gaza, how wild animals are smuggled through the tunnels, the movement for animal rights, the black market, architecture in Gaza, living conditions in the Gaza Strip, etc.

Elsewhere, a strip of sand suggests that the Gaza Strip used to be a place of rest for travelers.

Image: Bureau Europa

Apart from the installations, Bureau Europa also exhibits books related to the topic of the show as well as a series of short documentaries or tv news reports such as the one below (it broke my heart so i've never watched it till the end):

Gaza's only zoo is up for sale

But why bring zoo and Zionism together? According to Shoshan, the origins of both can be traced back to the Age of the Enlightenment: the classification of nations (Jewish people had none at the time) and the classification of nature. The urban zoo emerged at the same time as the ideology that calls for the establishment of a homeland for Jewish people was gathering strength.

Image: Bureau Europa

ZOO, or the letter Z, just after Zionism remains open at NAIM / Bureau Europa through 20 May 2012.

Sometimes i actually see fun exhibitions

2012-04-22T14:39:44Z

The title of this post is a nudge to an old friend i met by chance while i was on my way to the BIP, the International Biennale of Photography and the Visual Arts in Liege. I hadn't seen him in ages and when i told him what my job was about, Didier looked at me in horror and said: "God! That must be soooo boring! Poor you!"

I'm sure he's never going to read these lines, bless him, but that won't stop me from carrying on with my miserable existence and turn my attention back to the BIP.

The precedent editions had the kind of politico-social theme i like so much. This year, the curators decided to take things lightly with a theme that revolves around love and a title like Only You Only Me. I'm not going to hold their choice against them. Given recent events and the number of beggars who stopped me in the streets, it's obvious that the city is in dire need of amusement and kindness.

To my surprise, i had a fantastic time visiting the main exhibition at the MAMAC, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. I'll probably come back to the whole exhibition with a long post. In the meantime, let's just have a look at two photographers that made my Sunday.

Jean-Claude Delalande creates settings and scenarios that he inhabits with his partner, his son Valentin and his ever-deadpan expression.

In this bitter family album, the protagonists never look at each other, they perform the most mundane tasks, go on holiday with the same torpor that'd have on a supermarket trip, they iron, have showers, answer the phone and lead a joyless family life.

La lettre (The Letter), 2005

Les courses (Shopping), 2007

La barque, 2004

In another room was the photo story of Miyoko Ihara's grandmother Mrs Missao and her cat, Fukumaru.
From Miyoko Ihara's statement:

"We'll never be apart!" says the grandma to her little cat. Both of them live in a tiny world, with dignity, with mutual love. Still today, under the blue sky, Missao and Fukumaro work in the fields and in these natural surroundings, where they shine like the stars.

Miyoko Ihara, Missao & Fukumaru

What is it with Japanese cats, eh?

Only You Only Me, the Liege International Biennale of Photography and the Visual Arts, remains open through May 6, 2012.

Previously: Territories at BIP 2008, BIP 2010 Equilibrium and Accident, BIP 2010 - Out of Control, Berlin, BIP 2010 - The Theater of Authority.

Welcome to the Republic of Abkhazia

2012-04-19T17:21:54Z

Since 2009 writer and filmmaker Arnold van Bruggen and photographer Rob Hornstra have been touring around Sochi (Krasnodar Krai, Russia), a small city on the Black Sea that will host the Winter Olympics in 2014. The choice of Sochi is not the most opportune one. Not only does the area boasts exceptionally mild Winters by Russian standards, it is also located in close proximity of some of Russia's most unstable regions. Hornstra and van Bruggen currently have a show at Foto8 gallery in London that focuses precisely on one of those regions: the Republic of Abkhazia.

Sukhum, Abkhazia, 2010 - Sea terminal (for ferries) in the center of Sukhum. On the left side cafe Apra

You might never have heard of Abkhazia and that's probably because only a handful of countries regard it as an independent state.

Abkhazia broke away from Georgia after a short, violent civil war in '92-'93 and only Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and the atoll of Nauru recognised it as independent state in 2008.

The 13 month long war killed between 20,000 to 30,000 ethnic Georgians and between 2,500 and 4,000 Abkhaz. Over 250,000 Georgian refugees were displaced. Abkhaz 20,000 became refugees.

The artists spent four years witnessing and documenting the country's attempts to repopulate with new immigrants a country that is ravaged by the war, almost empty and in great economic distress.

In 2007 we first visited a refugee centre in Tbilisi, where we interviewed Georgians who had fled from Abkhazia during the war in 1992-1993. An estimated 250,000 Georgian refugees have since been living in 'temporary' accommodation, such as former student apartments, old primary schools and abandoned hotels. Every Georgian president has promised the refugees that he would end the frozen conflict and that the refugees would soon be able to return to their homeland Abkhazia. When we visited these refugees in 2007 in a totally rundown former student apartment in Tbilisi, they had already spent 14 years in their 'temporary' accommodation. But we could still detect a faint glimmer of hope among the refugees we spoke to.

In 2010 we visited many of the refugees we had met in 2007. All hope was gone. It was distressing to see that the situation had not improved for any of them.

Small selection of images with text found on Time Machine (as well as on a leaflets inside Foto8 exhibition space):

Pitsunda is a resort town on the shore of the Black Sea. In October 1964 Nikita Khrushchev was vacationing in Pitsunda when he was deposed from power. There are many hotels for Russian tourists, who frequent the area in summertime.

Shamgona, Georgia, 2010

A blue painted wooden kindergarten has been used as a shelter for refugees. In the early 1990s for the ethnic Georgians forced to flee Abkhazia were housed in student flats, hotels and schools across Georgia, with the promise that they would soon be able to return to their homeland.

Tbilisi, Georgia, 2010 - Altar of Mediko Zarandiya (56) in a refugee kommunalka on the outskirts of Tbilisi

A kommunalka is an apartment building in which dwellers share facilities like toilet and kitchen. Until the early nineties this building was used as student housing. Since the Georgian - Abkhazian war, the building has been occupied by Georgian refugees from Abkhazia.

Tkuarchal, Abkhazia, 2010 - Ainar (7) in his class in Tkuarchal. He wants to become the president of Abkhazia

The image that Abkhazia wants to present to the world is one of a real country, with all the institutions and infrastructure that it involves: schools, healthcare institutions, administration, police stations and a prison. That's right, the whole country has only one prison but then there are only some 240,000 inhabitants in Abkhazia.

Sukhumi, ABKHAZIA, 2007 - Sergei Vasilyevich Bagapsh, President of the Republic of Abkhazia since 2005

Dranda, Abkhazia, 2010 - Director of Dranda, the only prison of Abkhazia

Abkhazian police man and peace keeper Eric Amichba (33) in Azhara, 2009

In the shadow of the war between Georgia and Russia in August 2008, a small war is still playing out. With Russian support Abkhazia captured the officially demilitarised Kodori Valley, a remote mountainous region on the border of Abkhazia and Georgia. Since then, Georgia has attracted another 2,000 refugees. As a notable exception, Abkhazia allows journalists to visit the region.

The Sochi Project: Empty Land, Promised Land, Forbidden Land remains open at Foto8 in London through April 21, 2012.
More info about The Sochi Project. Images on Borotov, Time Machine and INSTITUTE.

Previously: The Sochi Project.

If this blog became a radio programme

2012-04-18T17:58:19Z

On Friday at 4pm, set your radio to 104.4fm if you live in London and your browser to http://resonancefm.com/ if you don't. That's when the pilot for programme i've recently recorded for Resonance104.4fm, London's edgy, radical, art radio is going to be aired. The focus of the programme is art & science/technology.

Revital Cohen, Guilt Adjuster from the project Genetic Heirloom

Tuur Van Balen live hacking of yoghurt on stage at the NEXT NATURE Powershow

Critical designers Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen were kind and kamikaze enough to join me in the studio for the first episode. We've discussed topics as diverse as the beauty of life support machines, pigeons that poop soap, using design to infiltrate synthetic biology, collaborating with scientists and communicating the complexities of a projects that explore the impact of science on society.

The last part of the broadcast takes the form of a quick agenda of exhibitions to see in and around London if you're interested in art&tech/science. I'll update this post with a podcast of the show if you can't catch it on Friday afternoon.

Futures episodes won't be aired before next month. A new one will be broadcast every week, last 30 minutes and focus on an artist or collective whose work i admire such as London Fieldworks, Anna Dumitriu, Zoe Papadopoulou, Ruairi Glynn, Thomas Thwaites, Tom Keene, c-lab, Semiconductor, etc. I've also been sent on a mission to get Bruno Latour.

The ten last minutes of each programme will be dedicated to the agenda, and once in a while i'll add audio snippets from the festivals i attend as a speaker or blogger.

So if you are curating, organizing or participating to an art&tech/science event in the UK in the coming months, do get in touch and i might plug it in the agenda.

The same goes for anyone who'd have a great idea for a title, i'm far from happy with the current one, Artists in Laboratories.

Finally, i'd like to thank Tom Besley and Richard Thomas of ResonanceFM for trusting me with a microphone. I know i wouldn't want to listen to my silly voice and silly accent on the radio.

Brains: The Mind as Matter

2012-04-16T04:26:16Z

Helen Pynor, Head Ache (detail), 2008

Featuring over 150 artefacts including real brains, artworks, manuscripts, artefacts, videos and photography,Brains: The Mind as Matter follows the long quest to manipulate and decipher the most unique and mysterious of human organs, whose secrets continue to confound and inspire.

Examination of the skull and brain: method of removing the brain after it is severed from the body. Henry W. Cattell, 1903. Wellcome Library, London

Katharine Dowson, Memory of a Brain Malformation, 2006

As the intro to the exhibition says, the works displayed include real brains. Complete brains, bits of brains, brains that have been freeze-dried, dessicated or galvanized. The slices of Albert Einstein's brain seem to gather much attention from the press and visitors alike. I doubt the fascination would have filled its original owner with euphoria. He had indeed expressed the wish to be cremated intact.

The remains of the physicist are in awkward company. They are shown next to a phial of tissue allegedly coming from William Burke's brain. With his accomplice William Hare, Burke made a living from murdering poor people and selling their bodies to Dr Knox's anatomy school. He was hung on 28 January 1829. Ironically, Burke's body was dissected, exhibited to the public in the Edinburgh University Museum and souvenirs were made and sold from his skin.

Other brains on show includes the one of suffragette Helen H Gardener, the left hemisphere of mathematician Charles Babbage's brain, and the segment of a suicide victim, with a bullet lodged in it. This one came with a text explaining that bullet wasn't "the fatal one".

Installation view of 'Brains: The mind as matter'. Courtesy: Wellcome Library, London

Unlike previous exhibitions such as Dirt: The filthy reality of everyday life,High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture or War and Medicine, Brains: The Mind as Matter has a seemingly very specific, very narrow focus: the brain. Not even the mind, just the physical organ. Yet, the exhibition branches out into issues of ethics, history, and reminds us that while some of the moments in the history of neuroscience are glorious, others are downright disgraceful. The exhibition displays a number of instruments designed to measure the brain. The one below was developed by Sir Francis Galton, the 'father of eugenics'. Using a variety of 'anthropometric' devices, Galton sought evidence of links between physical appearance and the supposed evolutionary progress of different population groups.

Headspanner, c.1896. The Galton Collection, University College London

This kind of discourse was particularly well received during the Nazi period. A series of photos and letters document the case of 3 brothers, Alfred, Gunther and Herbert K. aged 3, 7 years old and 15 months. They suffered from a rare hereditary neural disease and were likely murdered in 1942 and 1944. Their mother was told that they had died of pneumonia. Like many other people suffering from neural disease, they have probably been gassed or drugged, their brains harvested and examined by neuropathologists who went on to continue eminent careers long after the war. As for the specimens taken from the victims, they were used by researchers until recent decades.

Daniel Alexander, Children's cemetery: the grave of Alfred, Günther and Herbert K (2003)

The quest to understand the functioning of the brain is as grandiose and challenging as the one to send men in outer space. Brains: The Mind as Matter can keep you in the rooms of the Wellcome Collection for hours on end. It's an absorbing, educational and at times disturbing exhibition.

I was particularly fascinated by the photos amassed by American neurosurgeon Harvey Williams Cushing. Taking pre- and post-operative photographs were part of his practice. Two examples below:

Pre-operative photograph of female patient with craniopharyngioma, 1919. Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, Yale University

Many of the patients in these photographs presented with much more advanced tumours than would normally go unchecked today. The 15-year-old subject of this photograph suffered years of headaches, nausea, convulsions, restricted development and impaired vision before being referred to American neurosurgeon and pioneer of brain surgery Dr Harvey Cushing. She was in and out of hospital for the next 12 years, although the final letter in her file, from her father in 1931, strikes an optimistic note and thanks Cushing for his care.

Pre-operative photograph of male patient with pituitary adenoma, 1914. Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, Yale University

An excess of growth hormone caused by a tumour of the pituitary gland in the brain can result in acromegaly and gigantism, where the person grows very tall and suffers a coarsening of the facial features, enlarged hands and feet, and thickening and wrinkling of the scalp. Unfortunately, this patient died after his second operation; his skeleton was preserved and photographed in comparison with a normal specimen.

More images from the show:

Electrode head board, Bristol, England, 1958. Courtesy: Science Museum

Santiago Ramón y Cajal

Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Parasagittal section of the cerebellum, 1894. Image courtesy of Cajal Legacy, Instituto Cajal (CSIC), Madrid

Spanish Nobel Prize-winner Santiago Ramón y Cajal, whose pioneering research at the turn of the 20th century gave us an understanding of the microscopic structure of the brain. Cajal had aspired to be an artist, but his father had insisted he follow the family tradition into medicine. He nevertheless made hundreds of drawing to illustrate brain structure.

Corrosion cast of blood vessels in the brain, 1980s. Gordon Museum, King's College London

Daniel Alexander, 'Haus 40, interior', Brandenburg State Hospital, 2011

Installation view of 'Brains: The mind as matter'. Courtesy: Wellcome Library, London

Left hemisphere of the brain of Charles Babbage. Wet specimen (human tissue), 1871. Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons, London

English mathematician Charles Babbage donated his brain to be analyzed. He is regarded as a "father of the computer", having invented in 1822 the 'Difference Engine', a mechanical computer complete with printer. One of his assistants was Augusta Ada King, the Countess of Lovelace.

Trephination set. Sirhenry, Paris, 1771-1830. Science Museum, London

Trephines are the surgical devices used for trephination, or trepanning. The basic practices and tools have remained largely unchanged for centuries. Among the trephines themselves, with their cylindrical blades, are a large brace to hold the trephines during drilling, two rugines to remove connective tissue from bones, two lenticulars to depress brain material during surgery and a brush to remove fine fragments of bone.

Installation view of 'Brains: The mind as matter'. Courtesy: Wellcome Library, London

Brains: The Mind as Matter remains on show at Wellcome Collection in London until 17 June.

Previously at the Wellcome Collection: Mind Over Matter, Dirt: The filthy reality of everyday life, Art, bricks, domestic dust, High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture, Exquisite Bodies at the Wellcome Collection, War and Medicine exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London.

Mind Over Matter

2012-04-14T06:22:15Z

The Wellcome Collection in London has recently opened Brains: The Mind as Matter, a fascinating and informative show that explores what humans have done to brains in the name of medical intervention, scientific enquiry, cultural meaning and technological change.

The result is a series of rooms filled with representations of brains, as well as real brains in all their possible states and guises: measured, galvanized, dessicated, modelled, sliced, freeze-dried, diced, scanned, pickled. I'll be sure to share the gore with you in a future post.

Ania Dabrowska, After I'm Gone series: Headrest, 2011

Exhibitions at the Wellcome Collections often incorporate a few artworks among the historical facts, stories, videos and objects. The latter are usually so compelling that i hardly pay any attention to the art pieces. That would have happened this time too were it not for Mind Over Matter, a collaboration for which artist Ania Dabrowska and social scientist Dr Bronwyn Parry have given a visibility to the medical research on dementia.

Finding a cure for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's entails undertaking research on human brain tissue drawn from people who were affected by dementia and people who were not. Mind Over Matter demystifies what happens behind the doors of brain bank laboratories, and in so doing actively seeks to rehabilitate, even celebrate, the practice of bodily donation in the public imagination.

The exhibition at Wellcome only features a segment of the whole project. Namely, a the portraits and stories of people who contribute to the research against dementia by choosing to donate their brain as well as a series of photos taken at the Brain Bank Laboratory, The Cambridge University Hospital. Hygienic and crude, the lab images unveil what happens to the brain after the donors' death.

Ania Dabrowska, Brain Donors series: Mr Albert Webb

Ania Dabrowska, Brain Donors series: Eddie Holden

Ania Dabrowska, After I'm Gone series: Fresh Brain, 2011

Ania Dabrowska, After I'm Gone series: Ustensils, 2011

Brains: The Mind as Matter remains on show at Wellcome Collection in London until 17 June.

Jeremy Deller: Joy in People

2012-04-08T08:57:31Z

A belated review of the exhibition Jeremy Deller - Joy in People...

Life Is to Blame for Everything, banner by Jeremy Deller, outside the Hayward Gallery in London. Photograph: David Levene

It's always daunting to write about an exhibition that so many articles have commented on already. We've all read that Jeremy Deller won the Turner Prize in 2004. That he has never been a good drawer nor a talented painter. In fact, his teacher strongly advised against art school (a suggestion i fully understand if Deller is to blame for the mural painted behind the screen that shows the documentary So Many Ways to Hurt You, the Life and Times of Adrian Street, see photo below.)

Jeremy Deller does art outside galleries. It thrives in 'low culture' and it is usually ambitious, socially-engaged and unexpected. Indeed, most of his career is built on looking for art in the most unpredictable places, working with the public or with people who have particular knowledge or skill but who wouldn't otherwise be associated with the contemporary art world. They include unemployed miners, brass bands, a campaign banner maker, fans of Depeche Mode, a glam rock wrestler, experts in battle re-enactments, etc. He even collaborated on an art project with nightclub owner and trendsetter Peter Stringfellow.

In late February, a retrospective of Jeremy Deller's work opened at the Hayward gallery. It is called Joy in People and joy is precisely what it brings.

Exotic Adrian Street and his father, 1973. Photo : Dennis Hutchinson

Jeremy Deller, Valerie's Snack Bar, 2009. Photo Linda Nylind

It should be tricky to exhibit the work of Jeremy Deller, an artist who doesn't produce artefacts but experiences, happenings and interventions. Out there. In the streets. Neither you nor i were there. Consequently, the show includes many videos and video documentation of some of his works. But there's also a reconstruction of Valerie's snack bar in Bury market, Lancashire. You can sit down and get a free cup of tea. There are people hired to read texts to make you melancholic, people on hand to discuss their experience of war in Iraq, t-shirts, photos of his 'failed' artworks, an introduction the world of re-enactment aficionados, music videos, magazines, a replica of Deller's teenage bedroom where he organized a solo show while his parents were on holiday, etc. Many art critics wrote that it was all a bit 'second hand'. But if it was, it was good enough for me. I spent a whole afternoon visiting Joy in People. I'll probably go back before the show closes.

Most of the works on show are very well documented already but i'm going to highlight two that i found most irresistible.

The show had a whole section, titled My Failures, that documents the projects Deller never realized.

One of them is a proposal for Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth. Deller wanted to place on top of the plinth a life-size model of Dr David Kelly, the biological warfare expert who committed suicide in 2003 following the media frenzy provoked by his comments on the British government's dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

'I had two ideas for the Fourth Plinth that I suggested to the committee, the first was for a destroyed car from Baghdad - a victim of the Iraq occupation - called "Spoils of War (Memorial for an Unknown Civilian)". The other was going to be a mannequin of Dr David Kelly [who committed suicide in 2003 following the controversy his comments on the British government's dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq] just sitting on the edge of the plinth, facing Whitehall, because some people may have forgotten who he was. They were both ways of deflating the meaning or effect of public sculpture, basically to act as an antidote to the sculpted men who had done things in battle.'

So Many Ways to Hurt You (The Life and Times of Adrian Street), 2010. Photograph: Linda Nylind

I wish So Many Ways to Hurt You, the Life and Times of Adrian Street was available online somewhere (there's only a short extract of the film.) So Many Ways to Hurt You documents the life of glam rock wrestler Adrian Street Street was born into a coal mining family in Wales in 1940. He was sent down the mine at a very young age, fled to London at 16 to pursue a career as a model for bodybuilding magazines and professional wrestler. One day he realized that the way to stardom was through a glam rock persona that would tap into the homophobia of the macho wrestling world. And so he started designing and cutting his own costumes, wearing garish make-up and extravagant platinum hair-dos. He'd blow kisses to his opponents or make silly dances to further provoke them.

Street now lives in Florida, he's still wrestling but I haven't got a clue about what happened to his singing career:

Also in the exhibition:

His 2001 film The Battle of Orgreave reconstructed the famous and violent clash between police and striking miners in 1984 with the help of historical re-enactment societies and former miners.

Jeremy Deller, The Battle of Orgreave, 2001

For 1997's Acid Brass, Deller invited a brass band to play acid house tunes. The video at the Hayward shows the actual performance but just the soundtrack makes my day.

The History of the World demonstrates the intertwined histories of traditional brass band music and the acid house scene of the late 1980s.

The History of the World, 1997. Photo Linda Nylind

It Is What It Is or how to get people to sit and discuss about the war in Iraq using a car wreck.

Jeremy Deller, It Is What It Is, 2009 (detail)

Jeremy Deller, The Search for Bez, 1994. Photograph: David Levene

Jeremy Deller, Open Bedroom, 1993. Recreation for Joy in People. Photo LInda Nylind

Jeremy Deller, Exodus, 2012. Photo Linda Nylind

Mural by Stuart Hughes in Jeremy Deller Joy in People. Photo by Linda Nylind

Don't miss The Posters Came from the Walls, a brilliant, witty and charming film about fans of Depeche Mode around the world. It's in the gallery upstairs, by the entrance. And it's free.

Jeremy Deller - Joy in People remains open until 13 May 2012 at the Hayward Gallery in London.

More in the I Love Jeremy Deller series: Adrian Street, Queen Bitch of pro wrestling, Baghdad, 5 March 2007, Ed Hall, the art of protest banners and The Steam Powered Internet Machine.

Visualizing Sound - Representations of Sound in Contemporary Creation

2012-04-04T16:45:02Z

Believe it or not, i enjoy sound art pieces more than many visual art ones. The reason why i hardly ever write about sound art is because i find it particularly challenging to write half intelligently about sound works. And in most cases, i cannot even rely on spectacular images to hide the shortcomings of my prose. The second confession i need to make is that i don't care for music. At all. I don't notice its existence, nor its absence. Yet, i love sound art.

The LABoral art center invited me last week to the opening of a sound art exhibition and luckily for me, this one came with a strong emphasis on the visual presence of sound.

Visualizing Sound - Representations of Sound in Contemporary Creation stems directly from the LEV (Laboratorio de electrónica visual - Visual Electronics Lab) Festival. Launched at LABoral in 2007, the festival focuses on the convergence of electronic sound creation and visual arts.

Visualizar el sonido [Visualizing Sound] brings the same line of enquiry into the white walls of the art center. The result is an exhibition where sound and image perfectly balance each other. Some works give a graphic, architectural and physical presence to sound, others reveal the sound produced by physical objects we'd otherwise regard as perfectly mute.

Lucía Rivero, Soundtrack for someone who has been turned round having the bearing of one who's going away, 2011. Photo Marcos Morilla

I realize that Gijón is not the best connected city on this planet but there aren't many sound art exhibitions as accessible and relentlessly satisfying as this one. So if you happen to be in the area in the coming month (or fancy a luxurious easyjet trip from Stansted or Geneva airport), don't miss this show.

Here's some of the works you will see/hear:

Versus is a dialogue between two origami-shaped sculptures placed face to face.

At regular intervals, one of the sculptures produces sounds. Meanwhile, the other machine listens, records and analyzes the sounds. It also moves according to the frequencies of the sounds. Immediately after that, the second sculpture plays back the recorded sound, but it adds to it any disruption caused by the reverberating space and the voices and sounds made by visitors entering the space.

David Letellier, Versus, 2011

Visitors are intruders in this conversation, their every noise and presence degrades the communication. Over time, the original sound gets more complex and unpredictable. The memory of past events is on hold for a moment, until it is reproduced, degraded, and then forgotten, replaced by the present.

The video 20 Hz shows a geomagnetic storm occurring in the Earth's upper atmosphere. This kind of temporary disturbances of the Earth's magnetosphere are caused by a solar wind shock wave and/or cloud of magnetic field which interacts with the Earth's magnetic field. That might sound like a far-away phenomenon but these storms do affect our bodies, communication systems and energy structures.

Semiconductor worked with the data collected from CARISMA (the Canadian Array for Realtime Investigations of Magnetic Activity) and translated the space weather phenomenon into image and sound. We hear tweeting and rumble caused by incoming solar wind, captured at the frequency of 20 Hertz. Generated directly by the sound, tangible and sculptural forms emerge suggestive of scientific visualizations. As different frequencies interact both visually and aurally, complex patterns emerge to create interference phenomena that probe the limits of our perception.

The Creators Project has a stunning video interview with Joe Gerhardt and Ruth Jarman of Semiconductor.

Waves is perhaps the work that best sums up the concept of the exhibition Visualizing Sound. A long stretch of rope is hold tightly between two poles. Left to its own devices, the rope remains immobile and soundless. But as soon as visitors approaches, the rope starts spinning, hissing and adopting sinusoid and times, almost menacing volumes.

The installation physically represents a series of waves in space while generating sound by the very physics of motion. By cutting through the air, the rope at once creates volume and produces sound, configuring a single element.

Daniel Palacios, Waves, 2006. Photo Marcos Morilla

Table d'harmonie would be compelling enough as a silent installation. It's graphic, puzzling and it evokes drawings as much as natural or post-industrial landscapes.

The small crates are made of black corundum dust and a loudspeaker is laid out in the center of each. The sound piece is composed with the help of a software programme of granular synthesis, a method by which sounds are broken into tiny grains which are then redistributed and reorganised to form other sounds.

Pascal Broccolichi, Table d'harmonie, 2010. Photo Marcos Morilla

A couple more for the road:

Ryoichi Kurokawa's rheo: 5 horizons has the whole church at Laboral Ciudad de la Cultura to himself. The audiovisual compositions are so jaw-dropping that showing any work in its vicinity would have been cruel.

Ryoichi Kurokawa, rheo: 5 horizons, 2010. Image by Nacho Martínez-Useros for tenmagblog

Cylinder literally sculpts music and other sound samples.

FABRICA , Andy Huntington, Cylinder, 2004. Photo Marcos Morilla

Visualizing Sound - Representations of Sound in Contemporary Creation is curated by Cristina de Silva Marbán & Nacho de la Vega from Fiumfoto. The exhibition remains open at LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón until 25 June 2012.

The 6th edition of L.E.V. Festival at La Ciudad de la Cultura, in Gijón, Spain.

Also on view in LABoral: Experimental Station.