Superbells. Supertunias. Superbenas. Super small. Super large. Super great. Super sucky. Super bloomer. Super fruiter. Super foliage. Super flowering. Super yields. Super disease resistance. Super narrow. Super broad. Super weeping. Super tall. Super short. Must be time for the Super Bowl.

Since this is Super Bowl XLVI weekend, let’s take a look at some plants from 46 years ago and today that received awards for excellence.

The 1966 All-American Rose Selections were ‘American Heritage’, ‘Matterhorn’, and ‘Apricot Nectar.’

Photo of Rosa 'Apricot Nectar' at the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden, taken October 2004 by Stan Shebs (Wikipedia).

The 2012 winner is ‘Sunshine Daydream.’

Photo courtesy of White Flower Farm.

For the All-America Selections® 1966 we have considerably more plants. The All-America awards are for seed propagated plants. In vegetables there was lettuce ‘Butterking’ and winter squash ‘Gold Nugget.’

Photo courtesy of bestcoolseeds.com

Flower winners were snapdragon ‘Bright Butterflies,’ dianthus ‘Red Monarch,’ marigold ‘Spun Yellow,’ verbena ‘Amethyst,’ and pansy ‘Majestic Giants White Blotch’ and ‘Majestic Giants Mix.’

Photo courtesy of harrisseeds.com

Things have changed since then. In 2012 we have vegetables winning the 2012 Flower Award. Ornamental peppers have won before (‘Black Pearl’) and they win twice this year with ‘Black Olive’ and ‘Cayenetta.’

Photo courtesy of All-America Selections®

A third Flower Award goes to vinca ‘Jams ‘N Jellies Blackberry.’ Loving this color.

Photo courtesy of All-America Selections®

The AAS Bedding Plant award goes to salvia ‘Summer Jewel Pink.’ The vegetable award goes to watermelon ‘Faerie.’

You can find more on all these plants and how they are selected at the All-America Selections® website.

The Perennial Plant Association wasn’t around in 1966 but the 2012 Perennial Plant of the Year is Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost,’ a great selection of a great species.

Photo courtesy of Walters Gardens.

Photo courtesy of Walters Gardens

And the music? Topping the charts of Billboards Hot 100 the first week of February 1966 is none other than Miss Petula Clark.

And the women are still topping in 2012 with Adele.

The African Queen (1951). United Artists/Photofest ©United Artists.

The African Queen (1951) is an interesting anomaly in film history.  An American director, with American stars, in a British film.  Director John Huston was under suspicion from the House Un-American Activities committee in the early 1950s, and as a result he moved to Ireland.  He set up a British film company and made several features before he returned to the US in the early 1960s.

This caused The African Queen to be in precarious position for many years.  The original negatives, in the old Technicolor three-strip format, were in storage in England.  It is quite expensive to reprint three-strip negatives on modern film, and that expense is compounded by the location of the materials.  There are only a few labs in the world that can reprint three-strip negatives today, and they are all located in the U.S.  The British owners usually would license the film to a particular distributor only for a limited time, which made it even less likely that new prints could be made.  Studio executives are hesitant to spend $100,000 reprinting a film that they are only leasing.

The last film prints of The African Queen were made in the United States for a reissue in 1967.  These prints were literally beaten to death through multiple screenings in drive-ins and grindhouses.  Projectionists routinely broke the film and spliced it back together carelessly, sometimes losing many frames in the process.  By the 1990s, there were only a few projectable prints left.  By 2000, the rights shifted to another studio, and those old prints were abandoned.

At this point, I have to step out of character.  Normally, I can report as an impartial observer, but as a film historian and collector, I personally became part of this story.  Since I have a reputation for being able to find difficult-to-obtain prints, I would frequently receive calls from repertory theaters asking for a copy of  The African Queen.  I didn’t have one–no one did–but I kept looking.

In 2003, a collector called me, telling me that he’d acquired the last three prints of the film from the previous distributor.  They were in the legendary Technicolor dye transfer process, but they were so tattered that no one wanted them.  Knowing that the original materials were out of reach, I thought it might be worthwhile to try to combine the three prints into one.

Fortunately for me, Technicolor was a forward-thinking laboratory, and they marked every print with uniform edge codes.  Every foot was marked with a code like 1A006, which in this case means Reel 1A, 6 feet from the start. With sixteen frames in a foot, it becomes only an exercise in counting to restore the print.

I carefully screened each reel and made notes about which was the best one.  Using the best for the reference, I cranked through it by hand until I felt the first splice.  I located the footage markers, counting how many frames were missing.  I then went to one of the other prints, found the corresponding frames, cut them out, and spliced them into the “good” reel.  Each one of these took 20 minutes or so to do, and had to be very carefully checked so that only the correct frames were restored.

The African Queen is on five and a half reels.  There were 150 splices in the first reel alone!  It took two weeks for me to get through the whole feature.

Normally, I would have preferred to use whole scenes and reels that were better in one print than in another.  I didn’t have that luxury.  There were several occasions in which two of the three prints were missing the footage I needed, so there was no room for being picky.

The resulting restored print runs very nicely, even though it sounds like a machine gun going through the projector, which, fortunately, is a sound that only the projectionist hears.  The new distributor was more than happy to issue theaters a license to show the restored print, because they didn’t have one of their own.  This print of The African Queen has been screened in Europe and all over the United States.

In the intervening years, the negatives have been reprinted and The African Queen is now available in new prints.  However, this print is still in demand by museums and repertory theaters, because it is the only print in general circulation that is in the original Technicolor dye transfer process.

Dye transfer Technicolor gives a beautiful, rich range of color that modern processes only approximate.  This print shows that off beautifully, with lovely photography by the legendary Jack Cardiff.  It also shows one of the limitations of the old process: color balance between prints was often a problem.  Some were a little more blue, others a little more yellow.  There are a few points at which alert viewers will notice a sudden color shift as the restored print changes its source.

The African Queen is undeniably a classic, with extensive footage of real African locations, some shot for the first time in color.  The screening on January 27th will be one of the rare times it can be seen as it was originally photographed.  Bring a friend, a drink and a couple of good, strong mosquito nets!

When I joined the project team for the Art & Nature Park nearly five years ago, the IMA’s journey of park development was well underway.  The process would eventually span a decade or more, culminating in the grand opening of 100 Acres in June 2010.  Now, the recent announcement of the Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion as a awards/2012/architecture/RuthLilly/index.htm">2012 National AIA honor award winner has provided the final underscore for the initial launch of 100 Acres, as well as a new standard for the park as it moves into the future as a space in constant evolution.

Although the park as a whole was a wide ranging, multi-faceted project, the Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion always served as the nucleus for the entire endeavor, and in my mind the benchmark of success or failure for the park overall.  The constant challenge throughout the development of the park was to implement eight unique, autonomous commissioned artwork installations and a network of landscape and infrastructure improvements, yet weave them together into a coherent, holistic visitor experience.  It became apparent early in the process that the Visitors Pavilion was to be the center point, around which the rest of the park would live in context.  It was important that the park be a place for multi-faceted experiences, a place which celebrates the gray areas between man and nature, between art and architecture, between carefully programmed experiences and organic, meditative spaces.  The role of the Visitors Pavilion was at the same time clear and elusive: to serve as the flagship space where these gray areas could be called out.

The first set of development drawings I saw in 2007 showed the essence of the final product, but in a much different incarnation.  Marlon Blackwell Architects had been working hand-in-hand for years with landscape architect Ed Blake, artist Mary Miss, and the IMA project team to develop the comprehensive architectural plan for the park, and a structure known as the Interpretive Pavilion was the architectural workhorse of that plan.  It was to serve practical needs such as shelter, restrooms, and a hub for communications.  It was also to serve as the programming hub for the park, providing a home for educational initiatives, events, and temporary exhibitions.

The form of the building was already well developed, the genesis of which had been Marlon’s study of dried, fallen leaves on the property.  The structure incorporated folded planes and playful manipulation of light and shadow, and provided interior and exterior spaces which blurred the lines between the experience of being part of the structure and being part of the surrounding landscape.  This original incarnation was significantly larger than the final Pavilion, incorporating three separate pavilions, each serving a different purpose, tied together by an outdoor deck space and shade canopy.

This first iteration of the Pavilion design lived within an overall park scheme that was at a crossroads.  The years of early design development were transitioning into implementation, and the project team was re-evaluating the scope of the entire project from the ground up.  It was as if the park plans were in the form of a bloated manuscript, and we were now working through the editing process.  Budgetary constraints were considered, but even more important were the questions of scope in relation to the  philosophy and character of the project.  The park emerged with a new direction towards a lighter environmental touch and a more graceful balance between art, nature, and architecture.  As a result, the interpretive pavilion underwent an editing process of its own.  The structure became significantly smaller, finally consisting of one single interior pavilion that could serve multiple purposes and provide a more intimate visitor experience.  This streamlining of the practical requirements for the structure allowed Marlon the opportunity to design a building with the size, proportion, and delicate placement necessary to create the characteristic I find most impressive about the final product: a sense that it is in balance with its site, that it fits the scale and spirit of its surroundings.  Like the philosophy behind the structural engineering of the building, it is exactly what it needs to be, nothing more and nothing less.

The national AIA honor award is a reminder of the power and potential of that editing process.  As with any project, the design and construction process involved a constant stream of value-base decisions, weighing design intent, materiality, quality, and craftsmanship, against budgetary constraints, timeline, and feasibility.  In the end, the difference between a great building and a spectacular one came down to that stream of decisions.  In hindsight it’s easy to see why and how those decisions worked, to see how certain edits and changes resulted in a stronger, more focused final product, to see how the eliminated items were not missed, or to see how those that the team fought to retain are now the most beloved.

Those seemingly serendipitous results could not have been achieved without the diligent work of a tight-knit project team with a common vision and trust in one another as stewards of that vision.  The Hagerman Group, general contractors for the project, was involved early in the long development process of the park, working hand in hand with the IMA and the design team.  The longevity of those relationships and the trust established over the years formed the foundation for the day-to-day cooperation, complex problem solving, and care needed to create an AIA award worthy final product.

In the end, the value of architecture is in the experience of inhabiting it, and it is extremely gratifying to know that those jurors who experienced the pavilion for the first time, with fresh senses, were left with something powerful.  In the context of the other award winners past and present, I hope the building has the potential become an ambassador in Indianapolis for the power of great architecture.  I like to think that the AIA has awarded the Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion for its ability to leave visitors not with a mental image of the structure, but with a sensory memory of their experience, and hopefully the presentation of the award will bring an even wider audience to experience the space for themselves.

Juliane Zelwies, Hamburger Diagram

Saturday, August 8th, the Laundromat kicks off its 2009 season with The Burger Group Show – a one-day exhibition complete with selections from The Laundromat Flat File and a menu of 'conceptual burgers.' The show features work by returning Laundromat artists, as well as newcomers who will be exhibiting their work with the space this fall.

Each participating artist has crafted a 'conceptual hamburger' that references the study of art history, or art-related concepts. The artists will be writing descriptions of their respective burgers for the menu, and cooking their creations for patrons. Founder and director of the Laundromat, Kevin Andrew Curran, sees the menu as a "tongue-in-cheek" opportunity for the artists to make commentary and fuel artistic discourse.

Curran does not intend to teach visitors a formal lesson, but he does see the potential for artists and visitors alike to indulge in "some (serious) fun with the idea of creating and consuming hamburgers that are playfully engaging art history." The show also provides an opportunity for the Laundromat to display works from the space's rotating Flat File. Artists included in the File lend their work to the Laundromat for one year, after which the drawer may be offered to another artist. In this way, Curran hopes to increase the number of artists whose work may be viewed in the flat file, while simultaneously increasing the geographic diversity of the collection.

The Burger Group Show will be held at the Laundromat gallery on Saturday, August 8th, from 6-10 PM. Participating artists include Chris Deo, Sarah McDougald Kohn, Maria Walker, Jonathan Allmaier, Scott Wilson, Ben Godward, Joe Protheroe, Ianthe Jackson and Liz Atzberger. Conceptual burgers will be on sale for $5 to $20, and visitors are invited to take home a copy of the menu.

Installation view of Tattoo at Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts. Via gallery.

Tattoo at Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts is a multimedia exploration of tattoo art and its ever-changing role in society. The exhibition includes paintings, photography, sculpture and film, as well as a few empty bottles of Jack Daniels littered about the gallery for an something like an authentic, tattoo parlor feel. We caught up with Cullen, the director of the gallery, and asked about her inspiration for the show and her take on tattoo art.-- S.K.

Stephanie Korszen for ArtCat: What was your inspiration for situating the work of tattoo artists within the context of a fine art gallery?

Kathleen Cullen: The inspiration is really the everyday. You need only sit down at a café or bar, or stand at a traffic light, to grant your eyes the opportunity to admire the body art on others' skin. Additionally, one of the artists I represent, Max Snow, served as the catalyst for this exhibition. In 2008, Max documented the stories of Latino gang members in L.A., for whom tattoo art serves an important role in self-identity. Max also wears part of his identity externally in the form of body art.

In the 1930s, Herbert Hoffmann photographed people and documented their fantastic stories before they were sent to prison by the Third Reich. He developed a great respect for these people, whom he saw as hard-working and unpretentious. Many bore the simplest of tattoos on their arms and hands – historically a sign of degeneracy. Over the years, tattoos have broken free of this inherent link to all things degenerate, to the point where they now have the potential to serve as a status symbol on par with designer handbags. Bruce Willis, on the cover of W Magazine, sports tattoos. Supermodels adorn themselves with body art. We see biker motifs, as well as Maori, Japanese, and sailor themes – rich codes to decipher on other’s bodies.

AC: You’ve discussed tattoo art as an intercession between the arenas of popular and high culture. How have you mirrored this comingling of cultures in your gallery space?

KC: We have everything from a Keith Haring poster, graffiti tattoos, tattoo-inspired furniture
and a film, Mark of Cain, by Alix Lambert. This film was part of a ten-year project during which the Lambert interviewed criminals in Russia. Lambert’s project inspired David Cronenberg to review the Russian criminal tattoo codes for the well-known movie Eastern Promises, starring Vigo Mortensen and Naomi Watts. Lambert reveals the hidden history behind Russian tattoos, as well as their complex symbolism.

Installation view of Tattoo at Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts. Via gallery.

AC: How did you conduct your research for this exhibition?

KC: We began by researching books and articles on the tattoo subculture from the 1930s
through the 1950s, and then followed the evolution of the tattoo further into the punk generation of the 1970s and 80s. Tattoos have transcended their stereotypical role as the mark of a lowlife in the first half of the twentieth century – though youthful sailors often flaunted tattoos as a rite of manhood – to arrive at a socially-accepted norm. Represented in our exhibit are biker, Maori, Japanese and sailor motifs.

Also included is Larry Clark's Tulsa tattoo. Like Danny Lyons, Clark blurred the lines between observer and participant. Lyons photographed unwanted, hated bikers. A common underlying theme for the artists represented in the exhibition is the desire to share an emotional closeness with their subjects. The resulting works are not merely documents; they are empathetic portraits.

AC: In presenting tattoo art, all of the works on display also portray the tattooed. Do you feel that the meaning of a tattoo is inherently tied to – and thus dependent upon – the individual’s identity?

KC: The meaning of a tattoo is intrinsically tied to a person's identity, because without the individual, the tattoo is rendered meaningless. If the individual was done away with, the tattoo would become an image devoid of significance.

The deadline for receipt of applications is 1 March 2012.

For more information please contact Antoinette Tostivint via email at antoinette.tostivint@frieze.com

 Jim Sanborn's cryptographic sculptures, pieces on atomic energy, and large-scale projections might already seem familiar. Installed in front of the CIA headquarters, the ciphers in his sculpture Kryptos have puzzled many a code-cracker (three out of four of the coded sections have been solved), and he has been the subject of several museum shows. The artist answered a few questions we had on his work via email:     

There's often something hidden in plain sight in your work.  In public installations like Kryptos (at the CIA plaza) and A Comma, A in Houston, among others (I'm thinking also of the Covert Obsolescence and Archeotranscription pieces), it's letters/word/code.  How does written communication affect your work?  Is there a background story that drives these pieces?

Prior to the Kryptos commission my work documented hidden or invisible natural forces, Earth’s magnetic field etc. For the Kryptos piece and for the 20 years since, the hidden forces/content in text and language have taken over.

For most of my life both of my parents worked at the Library of Congress, My father as the Director of Exhibitions and my mother as a photo researcher, this privileged access to the historic record was tremendously enabling. The texts I chose for my public projects were heavily researched at the L.C. and in these works in particular the International, Classical, and Native American texts were used to encourage collaboration among cultures to fully decipher. Like Kryptos, the other public works are designed to exude their information slowly.

The “background story” is either above, or resides in the following: The Archeological record offers us a frustratingly fragmented view of the past. Though fragmentary, this archeoview is pregnant with secrets yet to be discovered and is thrilling in its potential. Secrecy is power even if it is just a little something kept from view, buried, so to speak, in the matrix of everyday life.

For the past 30 years, my task as an artist has been to release this hidden information at a rate commensurate with its importance, and at the time of my choosing so as to prolong the experience of discovery. As we all know, artwork that gives up its form or content quickly is soon forgotten.

Eerie luminescence is a part of many of your pieces from a print of an autoradiograph to projections on arresting landscapes and thrown across buildings. How do you think of light? Are you interested in the objects that provide light or make it seen (e.g, projector, radiograph)? Does evolving technology alter the way you consider your work? Respond anyway you'd like: What do you think of when you think of landscape, affect, and uranium? 

The large format projections I did in the mid 1990’s offered some relief from the psychological burden of the secrecy work, i.e. Kryptos, Covert Obsolescence and the Archeotranscriptions.

After completing Paleos a commission for MIT in Cambridge, I duplicated the projection system I used there, threw it and a generator and a 4x5 camera in the back of my Jeep, left DC and headed out west to areas very familiar to me to begin the Topographic Projections and Implied Geometry Series.

The tortured, sculptural, landscapes of Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming, were so familiar because I had spent two decades there collecting materials for my work on natural forces. This “collecting” regimen began to wear on my environmentalism, so I completed the large format projections as a way to affect a large landscape without effecting it, to leave no trace, etc. The resulting large digital prints, and the project as a whole, was a bit tongue-in-cheek. At that time, the digital manipulation of art photography was just revving up, and I decided to develop a series of real-time images that appeared digitally manipulated but were not.

The final western US projection trip in the fall of 1998 followed a summer projecting in Ireland for the Sirius Project residency, and it led me to White Sands, New Mexico. This intensely beautiful landscape was ironically juxtaposed to the site of the first atomic bomb test. And not shying away from irony or questionable personal safety, I began my ten-year dalliance with nuclear physics, uranium and nuclear fission as art.

The Atomic Time and Terrestrial Physics installations both studied that moment in scientific research when technology takes over from pure science. The difficulties with this transition notwithstanding, the seductive nature of nuclear science is reinforced by the stunningly powerful imagery it can produce. From the shocking visage of a hydrogen bomb explosion to the deadly blue-green glow that emanates from highly radioactive materials, these particularly toxic light sources are mysteriously fascinating and are a far cry from the recently banished incandescent bulb.

The Pirate Bay just announced a new file type available on the site: "physibles," digital files for 3D printing. It expects in 20 years you'll be downloading sneakers. In the meantime there are lawn darts and plastic toys:

We're always trying to foresee the future a bit here at TPB. One of the things that we really know is that we as a society will always share. Digital communication has made that a lot easier and will continue to do so. And after the internets evolutionized data to go from analog to digital, it's time for the next step.

Today most data is born digitally. It's not about the transition from analog to digital anymore. We don't talk about how to rip anything without losing quality since we make perfect 1 to 1 digital copies of things. Music, movies, books, all come from the digital sphere. But we're physical people and we need objects to touch sometimes as well!

We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles. Data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical. We believe that things like three dimensional printers, scanners and such are just the first step. We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare sparts for your vehicles. You will download your sneakers within 20 years.

The benefit to society is huge. No more shipping huge amount of products around the world. No more shipping the broken products back. No more child labour. We'll be able to print food for hungry people. We'll be able to share not only a recipe, but the full meal. We'll be able to actually copy that floppy, if we needed one.

We believe that the future of sharing is about physible data. We're thinking of temporarily renaming ourselves to The Product Bay - but we had no graphical artist around to make a logo. In the future, we'll download one.

Photo by John Powers

Earlier this month, Dutch artist/economist Hans Abbing, author of Why Are Artists Poor: The Exceptional Economy of the Arts, lectured at Artists Space, the first of a series of open forums organized by W.A.G.E. Artists John Powers and William Powhida attended the event. I asked over email for their thoughts on the talk - JM:

John Powers:

I didn't read Hans Abbing's book, but I did listen to his lecture carefully, with an ear to the fact that he is an economist, and that he's a Dutch economist, not an Austrian one. So when he voiced his suspicions of subsidies, he is doing so as someone who comes from a nation with a lot of subsides for the arts, it was clear that Abbing is not Friedrich Hayek. He was, for instance, very quick to say that it was unfortunate that all Americans don't benefit from universal health care. I do think the title of Abbing's lecture was misleading. the subject he seemed to be addressing best was not why artists are poor, but why aren't artists like other poor people - when he talked about that I found his ideas really interesting. 

Abbing observed, "artists are what a Marxist might call less “alienated”; that statistically we (artists) have the educational and family backgrounds similar to professionals, but that choosing to become (and remain) an artist defies the logic of a career choice. Abbing said art does not seem to be a choice, but something that artists feel compelled to do despite the obvious economic downsides- that art is less a profession and something closer to a "vocation": something we are called to do, and that we are able to answer that call not because we come from wealthy families, but because we come from families that don’t count on us for financial support (this jibes with the artists I know).

What I got from Abbing, was not that with more subsidies come more artists, but that no reasonable amount of subsidies will raise artists out of poverty because of the low value we (as a group) put on not being poor. I don't see that as an indictment (Abbing may), I see it as a very hopeful sign. As societies grow more affluent, I very much like the idea that more people self-identify as artists. Perhaps that means that the End of History is a bunch of happy, well-educated poor people.

Because there is so little attention given to fine art by economists I very much enjoyed hearing an economist’s ideas applied directly to the world of galleries and artist studios, rather than trying to glean lesson about the artworld from economist’s descriptions of drug dealers and cabbies. For that reason alone, I’m glad Bill invited me to join him that night.

 

William Powhida's notes from the lecture

William Powhida:

When W.A.G.E recently proposed a collaboration around this series of open forums, I was introduced to the writings of Hans Abbing. When I first read Poor Artists, a chapter from his forthcoming book, Value of Art, I recognized many of the paradoxical and contradictory relationships between ‘being artist’, as Abbing defines it, and income.  While I agree with critic Ben Davis that Abbing’s conclusions in his earlier book, Why Are Artists Poor, about the value of subsidies for the arts are flawed, I found Abbing’s writing to be a valuable  attempt at demystifying stereotypes of poverty in the arts.  It also provides some perspective on how and why poor artists are able to persist and even celebrated when we consider poverty to be a social problem, not the result of specific choices, or a ‘work preference’ by artists over consumption.  This aspect of Abbing’s writing is what inspired W.A.G.E, not his explicit conclusions that government subsidies in Amsterdam do not raise the overall incomes of artists (Or as Davis argued with John and I after the lecture that it subsidizes the wrong kind of art, conceptual art, in Abbing’s conservative view).

Unfortunately, I found Abbing’s fragmentary lecture to be much less effective than his written analysis.  The lecture ended up confusing, boring, and even antagonizing the large audience and it was (painfully) clear that not only cultural differences contributed to this, but also his lack of understanding of the contemporary art market in the last decade.  His choice of anecdotal descriptions including references to ‘greedy dancers’ and ‘disliking poor people’ added to the tension with the audience, who I felt were hoping for more radical solutions to the glaring problem of income inequality in the arts, which is effectively concentrated into the hands of a small group of super star artists,yet is still equated with certain kinds of success and failure.  Given the recent efforts OWS arts-related groups like Occupy Museums and Arts and Labor, Abbing’s lecture came across as rather conservative and frustrating. 

For me, despite the problems with Abbing’s lecture or conclusions about subsidies, his writing serves an important role by explaining how the ‘exceptional nature of art’ leads to seemingly unresolvable paradoxes including the persistent denial of economic activity associated with art.  This traditional denial of the commercial aspect of art, which is seen as a threat to its autonomy, makes it difficult to even discuss issues like income inequality or artists’ fees.  The value of Abbing’s analysis is not in his conclusions,  but in his particular effort look clearly at the economic and sociological dimensions of the artist’s vocation, and not deny them through our shared language.  We don’t call collectors ‘consumers’ or galleries ‘shops’ because we don’t want art to be a product or a commodity, we want it to be a cultural gift free from commerce.  W.A.G.E chose Abbing because they are both suggesting that we need to talk about the ‘dirty’ and impure parts of art; that it’s work, that it involves money, that people run businesses, and that we need to ask impolite questions about finances and money. 

The positive results already emerging out of Artists Space are an encouraging sign that those in power; directors, curators, board members, etc., need to hear directly from the people, the artists, creating the very objects, ideas, and performances upon which the institutions depend.  It should be painfully obvious, but Artists Space doesn’t exist without artists including unknown, emerging, and underrepresented artists whose practices may not serve the market.  So, W.A.G.E has started a discussion that asks us to talk about the parts of the art that we often minimize or pretend aren’t really important, because art isn’t about money, right?  It’s deeper, more profound, autonomous, and Sotheby’s doesn’t exist and there are no art handlers currently locked-out from their jobs either while precious objects trade for millions. 

 

 Huong Ngo is part of Fantastic Futures, a 2011 Rhizome Commissions winner for their proposal, Fantastic Futures

Acting the Words is Enacting the World, 2011 more at Enacting the Words Photo: Dwayne Dixon

Your Rhizome commission is a continuation of the Fantastic Futures project (which already includes recordings of birds in Baghdad and someone making tea in Brooklyn). It seems to be another in a continuing series of projects exploring contemporary education practices and ways of learning like Secret School and "How To Do Things With Words." How do you see this project fitting into your larger educational practice? What sort of transformations do you hope to see in education that could result from a project like Fantastic Futures?

Yes, it’s continuing a collaboration with a group of students in the US (in particular at Parsons The New School for Design) and at the University of Baghdad, that began with And Longing is No Longer Sleeps (the project that we did for the exhibit “How to Do Things With Words”), and further develops some of the collaborative processes from Secret School (a curatorial and discursive project about pedagogy), Acting the Words is Enacting the World, a project with artist Hong-An Truong and a group of young folks completed this past summer, and generally the strategies and techniques that I use in my classes.

Our goals for Fantastic Futures are fairly modest: we aim towards facilitating a diversity of exchanges (experiential, social, political, etc), advocating for a free and open cultural commons, leaving a gesture that serves as a collective protest against past and future violence. Nevertheless, I always secretly hope that something from our collective process is transformative for all involved.

In an interview for the Walker Art Center, you talk about preferring to keeping these education oriented projects 'outside the realm' of artistic context. Yet in their presentation and mode, these projects often seem to have artistic elements. I'm interested in what you see as separating the two.

I understand the importance of an artistic context for having critical reflection of the work, but the life of the art need not be limited to that. Currently, I’m working on projects that are online, that are performed in people’s homes and music venues, that are tested and developed in the classroom, and that are worn on people’s bodies. Some of these lives might be represented in an art context, but that might just one slice of its existence in the world. It’s a new way of working for me, but I find it to be a refreshing challenge to discover a daily existence with my work. I’ve been reading Christina Kiaer’s Imagine No Possessions about the Constructivists’ relationships to their everyday objects―one of camaraderie rather than ownership. It is a beautiful way of thinking that might be worth revisiting.

Your multi-media installations and sculptures such as Stratocumulus and Kosmolet seem quite fanciful and relatively other-worldy but also seem to have a distinct social and collaborative component. Even as you maintain the aforementioned separation between the two modes, do you find that ever they inform one another? How do you see sculptures like Dark Star functioning in your practice? 

There are some projects like Escape and Pop-Up Studio where the objects are quite integral as functioning architecture and metaphors for social structures. Right now, I'm working on a collaborative project with Or Zubalsky about the Mercury 13, a group of women tested to become astronauts in 1959-1963 (the program was jointly shut down by Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and NASA for political reasons). So far, the project involves research, videos, performance, and even music but this micro-architecture seems to find its way back into my practice, so I see inflated, blobby futuristic clouds in my horizon. Actually, I always thought of the Dark Stars as black holes, so maybe I should say... in my event horizon!

Age:

64 going on 13.

Location:

Yes! I am a body that exists in this world. It is usually in Brooklyn or Manhattan these days, but would like to be in Mongolia or Antarctica ... soon.

How long have you been working creatively with technology? How did you start?

I think of language as my primary technology, so in that case, I started speaking Vietnamese as a child and then English once I started school in the United States. Speaking of, I was just reading a book about reading (Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid) about how your brain wires itself differently depending on which language you learn first. My brain operates differently in Vietnamese than in English or even if I am learning a new language today. Noticing these subtle differences has helped me understand how the brain learns and responds to different demands at various stages in life. 

My dad has an engineer-brain and would always bring home motors and things for my brother and I to tinker with, so I started to learn to fix mechanical and electrical objects when I was around 8. My mom and my grandmother always wrote poetry and made things with their hands, so I learned technology needed to construct objects and metaphors from them. As far as digital technology, I took a Turbo Pascal (!) class in high school and used to program fun things on my graphing calculator. 

Describe your experience with the tools you use. How did you start using them?

I don't have set tools, but prefer to stay versatile and use whatever tool is appropriate. I love learning and creating new processes for construction. My sister gave me a book when I was 10, I think it was called Crafts and Hobbies or something. It covered all of these different “traditional” skills for construction. I loved it! I think I tried everything in the book, down to découpage and macramé. Hobbies are a very powerful foundation of the secret revolution. 

I came to digital technology because it was a new way to construct. Like many other people, my first response to web programming and animation technology was NOT to make websites for businesses, but to make weird flashing spazzy clicking breathing living things that could operate in such a different way from everything I knew in the world. It's still refreshing to see artists revive these original pleasures even as these technologies have become more ubiquitous.

Did you study art in school? 

Yes, but my first love was always science. I was a shy child and just wanted to learn about how the world worked. I adored making my own microscopic slides and being outside looking at bugs, mosses, the sky, etc. I memorized bird songs and animal tracks. I didn't study art seriously until college, but even then was attracted to artists/scientists like James Turrell or Étienne-Jules Marey who devoted their lives to understanding and representing phenomenology, or the limits thereof. I came to the art world because it offered another way of exploring these early epistemological interests.

What traditional media do you use, if any? Do you think your work with traditional media relates to your work with technology?

I always return to sewing and collaging, which are like sketching to me. I love words and they find their way into my work in mysterious ways. The more I can relate the corporeal to the technological, the richer the work is for me. 

Are you involved in other creative or social activities (i.e. music, writing, activism, community organizing)?

I play music with Or Zubalsky as The Youngest (and sometimes Juviley). I've just started playing songs written by Bertholt Brecht with a group of friends at the Whitney Independent Study Program. We perform under the super geeky name: The Society of the Brechtacles. I also play music with housemates and with my family (we just had our annual talent show). I'm a big advocate for social and economic justice, so I do community organizing and activism that is related to my art practice.

What do you do for a living? Do you think your job relates to your art practice in a significant way? 

I teach. This is hugely related to my art practice as an organizer and an advocate for social justice. I also try out a lot of games, performance strategies, and facilitation techniques in the classroom.  This last semester, I taught a class called [Un]Fashion in the integrated design program at Parsons where the students developed their own processes for garment construction. This class was incredibly helpful for me in returning to a consistent object-making practice and rearticulating the importance of material research and knowledge. It was also an interesting place to discuss the OWS movement and economic inequality. These students have the tools to bring about a revolution!

Who are your key artistic influences? 

Yoko Ono, Virginia Woolf, hollAnd, Lewis Carroll, Samuel Beckett. Right now, I'm really into Olivier Messiaen, to whom I was introduced by a friend Sam Ishii-Gonzalez. Look him up on YouTube. Wow. I’ve also been listening to Mountain Man nonstop recently. These ladies are the business.

Have you collaborated with anyone in the art community on a project? With whom, and on what?

Yeah, I have some steady collaborators with whom I've worked with through the years. Most notably, I've worked with my good friend Hong-An Truong on quite a few projects that have really long names: Acting the Words is Enacting the World (along with a fantastic group of students), AND, AND, AND - Stammering: An Interview, and The Book of the Record of the Time Capsule of Cupaloy Made to Withstand the Effects of Time. On Fantastic Futures, I work with Or Zubalsky, Andrew Persoff, Ali Salim Abood, and a slew of amazing students from the US and Iraq. There are many more wonderful collaborators: Caroline Woolard, George Monteleone, Alexander Stewart, Colin McMullan, Rob Allen (a friend who I’ve know since middle school), Melanie Crean, and even Rhizome’s own Mark Tribe! 

Do you actively study art history?

Sure, though I am much more interested in a more general category of visual culture because I can then explore many different histories and sites of reception. I love learning about the history of photography because of its connections to scientists, artists, and amateurs. I also love it for bringing art to a crisis and revealing art for what it is--a human construction that finds value not just in its use, but also in the structure of belief around it. I studied with Jonathan Crary at Columbia University for a couple of semesters and I really appreciate his perspective on modernity and visual history. Even though he’s often talking about the 19th century, his work always feels like a fresh perspective on our own cultural moment.

Do you read art criticism, philosophy, or critical theory? If so, which authors inspire you?

Yes, here's an eclectic assortment of philosophical badasses that have inspired me over the years (This feels like the funniest shout out ever): Bell Hooks, Myles Horton, Paolo Freire, Roland Barthes, Gayatri Spivak, Jorge Luis Borges, Deleuze and Guattari, Judith Butler, Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, Friedrich Nietzche. What all of these folks have in common for me is that they are interested in revealing the invisible and questioning existing structures of power, which they usually do in their own beautiful, sometimes humorous, always radical way.

I used to read a lot of psychoanalysis--Freud, Jung, Lacan--they still resonate with me though I now have a healthy skepticism and critical distance from them. Through the art program that I’m in, I’ve been reading a bit of David Harvey, Stuart Hall, and Raymond Williams. Currently, I'm reading Pamela Lee's Chronophobia and Nicholas de Monchaux’s beautiful Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo that Nancy Lim turned me onto.

Are there any issues around the production of, or the display/exhibition of new media art that you’re concerned about?

I’m concerned about a general blind march towards technology and a conflation of novelty with progress. I have noticed more than a few museums that have turned contemplative spaces into zones of overstimulation with screens, lights, and buttons that beg for attention but don’t ask for attentiveness. I’ve seen students building huge power-guzzling contraptions that perversely are meant to speak about some vague notion of sustainability and artists that are still making “arm-waving” installations that ask participants to wave their arms or dance to actualize the work.

These versions of programmed interaction do not replace the important work of critical inquiry, poetic engagement, social and political empowerment, or epistemological investigation that art has the capacity to do. Having attended a graduate program in Art & Technology, I’m also guilty of either having made these kinds of things or thinking about making them. Maybe it’s a phase we go through in having access to all of this newness, but hopefully one that we can move past. Perhaps I am wrong and there is something productive in this tension between the pleasures of experimentation and the necessity of criticality. I suppose that’s where the art is.

In regards to our society’s relationship with technology in general, I’m much more concerned with the increasing commodification, privatization, and regulation of our social relations and leisure time, the erosion of speech rights online and off, and the potential dissolution of net neutrality. The ideal of the internet as a commons is something for which we can and should fight.  

I think about the future quite a bit. “New Media Art” (the term already feels quite old) has the ability to reference both our present moment and invoke our society’s ideals about the future, so I wonder how within this discourse, we can imagine our future with fewer gadgets and other possessions (but ones that we learn to repair and care for), more time for each other, and more art in our every day. That would really be fantastic.

Erik Stinson, untitled, 2010 

go upstream young man: drugs, guns, advertising and the nyc art world 1700-2010

i’m seeking a legnthy

ethics-agnostic history of

corporate america from

dutch manhattan to

google silicon valley.

can anyone help me?

time is running out.

i think i’m being

followed, my phones

are tapped and all

i want is an entry

level job

Erik Stinson, Untitled, 2011

executive microsystem

three small, harsh

cubes in

concert with

your massive

pulsing

ego circa

1998

teen dads let it all hang out

we went out

to the salt flats

with a 12 rack

of bud and talked

about new

young starlets

Erik Stinson, Untitled, 2010

Anonymous asked: why r u gay

whoa internet literary scene strikes again

‘for the fans’

The TAZ may have remained a fringe work if it wasn’t for “cyberculture,” which proved among the more resilient memes in alternative art and culture from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. The original electronic networks that became the prototype for today’s commercial Internet were developed in the 1980s, a development of the first interconnected computer channels produced in the 1960s for US military purposes. As François Cusset summarizes: “These networks embodied, for some, a space for resistance, a social dead zone, a territory that was still imperceptible, in whose shelter they could build a new community and undermine the ruling powers … the first groups of hackers emerged [forming] in Bruce Sterling’s words, a veritable ‘digital underground’.” In cyberculture’s incandescent popcult moment, the gritty noir futures of cyberpunk science fiction, built upon the template forged by the ascending reputations of novelists William Gibson and Sterling, and extrapolated from present-day technological developments, were cited as metaphoric portrayals of a real world in thrall to the nascent Internet and to the implications for mediated life it held. Cyberphile magazines like Mondo 2000 (and later, Wired and 21C) spliced cyberpunk attitude with digital culture’s bleeding edge, carrying advertisements for dialup modems, CD ROMs and pixel-art software in between articles and interviews exploring every facet of cyberculture: From body modification to the emergent politics of the net, from new strains of cyberpunk fiction and rave music to the “bumper sticker libertarianism” leaking from cyberculture’s startling new cachet.

Fermented within this heady “frontier” atmosphere, manifestos were abundant. John Perry Barlow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation drew up a Declaration for the Independence of Cyberspace, demanding that the net – “the new home of Mind” – be forever self-governing, forever free from corporate and governmental restriction. Douglas Rushkoff produced a book-length vérité document of “life in the trenches of cyberspace” (or “Cyberia”), where “cyberians” “believe the age upon us now might take the form of a categorical upscaling of the human experience onto uncharted, hyperdimensional turf … Whether or not we are destined for a wholesale leap into the next dimension, there are many people who believe that history as we know it is coming to a close.” But with its call to “dowse” for potential freezones within the globalised economy, couched within an explicit terminology that drew upon Sterling’s work and the jargon surrounding the “Web” and the “net,” the TAZ quickly became the clarion call. “Bey,” the so-called “anarchist Sufi,” seemed to deliver precisely the kind of liberated mind state that Barlow had so dramatically hoped would be delivered, and that Rushkoff had so eagerly tried to imagine. Effectively, the TAZ became a blueprint for a full-scale ecology that could be inhabited by true believers

...

 

We would like to take a break from our daily posting to thank this month’s sponsors. These are the organizations and companies that keep us publishing, so be sure to check them out!

The January issue of Wired includes a long read on Ian Bogost's Cow Clicker:

Bogost threw together a bare-bones Facebook game in three days. The rules were simple to the point of absurdity: There was a picture of a cow, which players were allowed to click once every six hours. Each time they did, they received one point, called a click. Players could invite as many as eight friends to join their “pasture”; whenever anyone within the pasture clicked their cow, they all received a click. A leaderboard tracked the game’s most prodigious clickers. Players could purchase in-game currency, called mooney, which they could use to buy more cows or circumvent the time restriction. In true FarmVille fashion, whenever a player clicked a cow, an announcement—”I’m clicking a cow“—appeared on their Facebook newsfeed.

And that was pretty much it. That’s not a nutshell description of the game; that’s literally all there was to it. As a play experience, it was nothing more than a collection of cheap ruses, blatantly designed to get players to keep coming back, exploit their friends, and part with their money. “I didn’t set out to make it fun,” Bogost says. “Players were supposed to recognize that clicking a cow is a ridiculous thing to want to do.”

Bogost launched Cow Clicker during the NYU event in July 2010. Within weeks, it had achieved cult status among indie-game fans and social-game critics. Every “I’m clicking a cow” newsfeed update served as a badge of ironic protest. Players gleefully clicked cows to send a message to their FarmVille-loving friends or to identify themselves as members of the anti-Zynga underground. The game began attracting press on sites like TechCrunch and Slashdot.

And then something surprising happened: Cow Clicker caught fire. The inherent virality of the game mechanics Bogost had mimicked, combined with the publicity, helped spread it well beyond its initial audience of game-industry insiders. Bogost watched in surprise and with a bit of alarm as the number of players grew consistently, from 5,000 soon after launch to 20,000 a few weeks later and then to 50,000 by early September. And not all of those people appeared to be in on the joke....

The Frieze Art Fair Stand Prize sponsored by Champagne Pommery has been awarded to Gavin Brown’s enterprise.

The winner of the Emdash Award 2011 is the video and performance artist Anahita Razmi, who is based in Stuttgart.

Carmody Groarke are to be the new architects for Frieze Art Fair.  Since establishing their firm in 2006 Kevin Carmody and Andrew Groarke have become known for their diverse portfolio of work, quickly building a reputation for forward-thinking design, winning two RIBA awards in 2010.

The Frieze Art Fair Stand Prize sponsored by Champagne Pommery has been awarded to Sadie Coles.

Frieze Art Fair is delighted to announce that the winner of The Cartier Award 2010 is Simon Fujiwara. 

The other day, a friend of mine sent me an email to talk about crowdfunding. He had supported various projects on Kickstarter, but the overall experience had left him jaded (his word, not mine). He wrote that while he had essentially received what had been promised, a couple of nice surprises notwithstanding he still felt disappointed. He also wrote that he would not fund future projects by some of the photographers he had given money to because he felt he had been "treated like a cash cow". (more)

I think crowdfunding is a great idea. I think crowdfunding has the potential to solve some of the financial problems so many photographers are struggling with. But crowdfunding is more complex than it would seem: First, you have to find the people who will give you money. And then, you have to make sure they're going to be happy.

You'd imagine that if you give people what they give you money for that should be enough. But I actually don't think that's how this really works. Let's say you need $1,000 to produce something, so you "do a Kickstarter," and you say that if someone gives you $50 they'll get whatever it is you want to produce. Let's say you find all those people, you send out a thank-you email, spend some weeks on producing whatever it is you want to do, and then you send it out to your supporters. That's my friend's experience. It's essentially just a slightly more unusual way of shopping, isn't it? You prepay, and then you get your product. I don't think that's a good approach to crowdfunding.

At the very least, approaching crowdfunding that way is a lost opportunity. After all, if people are interested enough to give you money don't you want to make sure that those same people might give you money again in the future? Wouldn't that be nice? In other words, wouldn't you want to give them the feeling that your project is not just some shopping experience?

Isn't this problem essentially the same problem you face as a photographer with your images? There are thousands and thousands of other photographers out there - how do you differentiate yourself? Let's be realistic, unless (until) you're famous your photographs are probably not going to be enough. You have to do some PR. But you need to do the PR smartly so that you won't be yet another person sending out an email that's little more than "Hey, look at my website!"

Crowdfunding is more complex than that: When you have a funded project, people are already - literally and emotionally - invested in you. As with any investment, you want to make sure your supporter's return-on-investment is maximized. Giving them what they paid for is good. But you want to give them more. Treat the people who supported your work not as customers, but as patrons - patrons in the old sense of the work. Think of them not as current supporters but as potential future supporters.

Thus, make sure to communicate with them about whatever it is you do. Send them updates, and make sure the updates are meaningful and don't feel like a chore. The more engaged you are with your supporters, the more you give them the feeling they're not just convenient cash cows for you.

In a nutshell, I see crowdfunding as bringing the idea of patronage to the web. There is an element of commerce involved, but the crucial aspect is not the commerce. Instead, it's the relationships artists can establish with their supporters. Artists need those relationships. In the past, these kinds of relationships were usually established with wealthy collectors only. Now, crowdfunding offers the chance to establish them with a much larger, much more diverse, much more democratic group of people. Artists ignore this aspect of crowdfunding at their own peril!

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Eye To Eyebeam is a series on Eyebeam's resident artists and fellows. It includes interviews, photos, and other news and is authored by Eyebeam intern Katherine DiPierro. These interactive posts offer visitors to the site the opportunity to learn more about Eyebeam's diverse residents and fellows.

Each week, you'll see interviews profiling individual Eyebeamers. Artists who have already engaged in conversation about their projects include:

read more

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
_____________________________________
:MARGARET BOWLAND HARRIS,
:(A.K.A.) MARGARET BOWLAND,
:Case No : _____________
:Plaintiff,
:
:v.
:COMPLAINT
:PURSUANT TO THE FEDERAL TORT CLAIMS ACT 28 U.S.C. 1346(b) & 2671-2680
:Defendants.
:THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION &
THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY,
_____________________________________

Plaintiff, by and through counsel, alleges as follows:

PARTIES, JURISDICTION & VENUE

1. Margaret Bowland Harris (“the artist”) lives and has a studio in Kings County, Brooklyn, NY. The artist’s professional name, under which she shows her paintings and is known to the public is Margaret Bowland.
2. The National Portrait Gallery and its parent organization The Smithsonian Institution, both located in Washington, D. C. are two of the most prominent museums and cultural forces in the United States. Both organizations are a part of the United States government.
3. This Court has jurisdiction over this matter and venue is proper because the artist’s residence in Kings County, NY is within the
jurisdiction of this Court. 28 U.S.C. 1402(b) & 1346 (a).
4. The artist initiated her claim by filing a Standard Form 95
with the office of the General Counsel of the National Portrait Gallery on January 12, 2011. This date is within two years of the date of the incident or occurrences which form the basis of this claim.
5. The artist was notified on July`22, 2011 by the Office of the General Counsel of the Smithsonian Institution that her claim had been denied.
6. All preconditions for an action based on the Federal Tort Claims Act having been established, the artist then timely filed this
Complaint.

THE PAINTING AND THE PORTRAIT COMPETITION

7. The artist created a painting in oils on canvas entitled “Portrait of Kenyetta and Brianna,” (“the painting”). The painting is approximately six feet six inches tall and six feet wide and depicts three life size female figures.
8. The painting was exhibited at the Klaudia Marr Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico from October 17, 2008 to November 29, 2008.
9. The Klaudia Marr Gallery was owned and operated by Klaudia Marr (“Marr”).
10. On or about November 15, 2008, the artist was notified that the painting had been selected for the Outwin Boocheever Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery (“the NPG”) in Washington D. C.
11. The NPG sent a shipper to pick up the painting at the Klaudia Marr Gallery and deliver it to the NPG on or about November 29, 2008.
12. The artist signed an Incoming Loan Agreement (“the agreement”) dated November 29, 2008 with the NPG. The period of the loan was March 1, 2009 to October 1, 2010.
13. On February 26, 2009, in an email to both the artist and Marr, the NPG stated that Marr had acknowledged that the artist was the legal owner of the painting. Marr never objected to the statement by the NPG that the artist was the legal owner of the painting.
14. The exhibition of paintings from the NPG portrait competition (the exhibition”) opened on October 23, 2009 and ran almost one year, closing on August 29, 2010. The painting was named one of six finalists in the competition and at the end of the show was awarded “The People’s Choice Award.”

THE RETURN OF THE PAINTING

15. Under the terms of the agreement, the painting was to be released by the NPG at the end of the exhibition only to the lender (the artist) unless the NPG was timely notified otherwise in writing by the lender.
16. The artist never notified or authorized the NPG to release the
painting to anyone other than her.
17. Under the terms of the agreement, in case of any change in legal ownership of the painting during the period of the loan, the new owner shall give the NPG legal proof of such a change as soon as possible.
18. The NPG never received notice or legal proof that the ownership of the painting had changed from the artist to anyone else.
19. The credit line used by the NPG during the exhibition and in the catalogue of the exhibition was “From the collection of the artist.”
20. As the exhibition drew to a close, the NPG sent the artist two emails about returning the painting. These emails were sent to an email address that the artist had not used for over a year instead of to the email address the artist had been using for numerous emails between herself and the NPG during the past year. The artist did not receive the emails sent to the old address.
21. The NPG had the artist’s telephone number and street address but did not try to contact her through them. The artist never received any U. S. mail, overnight delivery service mail or telephone calls from the NPG about to whom the painting should be sent.
22. The NPG sent a “carbon copy” to Marr of its second email to the artist on August 27, 2010.
23. Not quite nine hours after the NPG cc’ed Marr with its email to the artist, Marr sent an email to the NPG directing that the painting be sent directly to her client, David Naylor of Santa Fe, New Mexico (Naylor).
24. Despite these facts: that during the exhibition the painting had been credited as being “From the collection of the artist;” that the artist had never authorized the NPG to send the painting to anybody but herself; that the NPG had never received any notice or proof that the painting had an owner other than the artist; and that, once the NPG attempted to confirm where the painting should be sent, the NPG had never contacted the artist by telephone, U. S or overnight mail or by the current email address in its possession, NPG shipped the painting to Naylor.
25. When the artist learned that Naylor had the painting, she contacted him several times in an attempt to either get the painting back or to receive payment for it. Naylor claimed to have already paid Marr for the painting, and to date he has neither returned the painting nor paid the artist anything for it.
26. Marr has never paid the artist anything for the painting.

FIRST CAUSE OF ACTION
BREACH OF CONTRACT

27. By signing the Agreement, the NPG was contractually responsible for returning the painting to the artist.
28. The NPG was in breach of the Agreement when it shipped the painting to Naylor.
29. As a consequence of the NPG’s breach of contract, the artist has been deprived of a valuable work of art which lawfully belonged to her.

SECOND CAUSE OF ACTION
NEGLIGENCE

31. The NPG owed the artist a duty of care to insure that the painting be returned to the proper person.

32. The NPG failed to take reasonable steps to insure that the painting was shipped to the proper person.
33. Failure to take reasonable steps to insure that the painting be returned to the proper person makes the NPG negligent in its duties to the artist.
34. As a result of the NPG’s negligence toward the artist, the artist has been damaged by being deprived of a valuable work of art which is lawfully hers.

WHEREFORE, plaintiff requests this Court to award compensatory damage of $100,000, against the United States of America, the Smithsonian Institute and the National Portrait Gallery and such other and further relief as appears reasonable.

Dated: January 19, 2012
New York, NY

Prison guards placed Villar Mendoza in solitary confinement after he initiated the hunger strike on November 25, his wife said. He told his wife he was stripped naked and placed in solitary confinement in a small, cold cell. The last time she was allowed to visit her husband was on December 29, she said.

President Obama’s thoughts and prayers are with the wife, family, and friends of Wilmar Villar, a young and courageous defender of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Cuba who launched a hunger strike to protest his incarceration and succumbed to pneumonia.

Villar’s senseless death highlights the ongoing repression of the Cuban people and the plight faced by brave individuals standing up for the universal rights of all Cubans. The United States will not waver in our support for the liberty of the Cuban people. We will remain steadfast in our outreach to the Cuban people through unlimited Cuban American family visits and remittances, purposeful travel, and humanitarian assistance to dissidents and their families in support of their legitimate desire to freely determine Cuba’s future.

Sunday, February 5, 2012, 2:00 – 4:00 PM
Test Site
FREE with Museum Admission
Please Register in Advance HERE and bring a book

Join Seattle choreographer and experimental dance filmmaker Karn Junkinsmith for an afternoon workshop to be held in conjunction with the Henry’s presentation of Erwin Wurm’s One Minute Sculptures. Throughout the duration of this presentation visitors will have the opportunity to engage in a variety of participatory experiences designed to explore the concepts introduced in Wurm’s Sculptures and question definitions of sculpture by encountering their own unexpected relationships with everyday objects.

Utilizing the four elements of dance, time, space, energy and the body we will play with a book to construct and witness our collective one minute sculptures. Relax into present moment, breathe, dream, imagine, remember, stretch, reach, spin, jump, ask, open heart, receive, give, move with feeling. This workshop will utilize everyday objects so be sure to bring your own book to work with.

Karn Junkinsmith is a Seattle choreographer and experimental dance filmmaker. Karn’s dance film work began in 1990, when she collaborated with Lena Sharpe on GIRLS FIND WAYS TOGET THERE, a dance of three female archetypes: Joan of Arc, witch and pregnant virgin. Her directorial debut, the whimsicalDAY OFF, produced in association with Northwest Film Forum and shot by Lynn Shelton screened at Lincoln Center, BUS STOPscreened at the Red Cat in Los Angeles, and ALCHEMY OF THEORACLES screened at Local Sightings. THE CHRONICLES OFCLEO & JACK shot on 16mm black & white is a story told with pictures, music, skateboarding and dancing screened at Northwest Film Forum’s Local Sightings and the Sans Souci Film Festival in Boulder Colorado in 2010. Her most recent film NIGHT FALLSON JACK AND CLEO shot by Ben Kasulke on super 16 screened at Local Sightings in October of 2011.

See her films HERE

January 28
2 – 4 pm
Molly’s Cafe at the Henry

We hope you will join us on Saturday, January 28th from 2-4 PM in Molly’s Cafe at the Henry Art Gallery (UW campus) for an inspiring afternoon of student readings from recent Poetry and Creative Writing classes, and a performance from Acting & Movement class students.  Admission to the museum is free for anyone coming to experience this showcase and all are welcome. We appreciate your support and look forward to celebrating the achievements of our students with you on Saturday!

Path with Art is a local nonprofit organization that produces free arts-based classes and events at partner sites where adults are receiving services and/or are welcome. By bringing together social service providers, arts organizations, and artists, we provide adults the opportunity to engage in the creative process as a unique means to improve and rebuild their lives. Annually, Path with Art produces 20 classes, facilitates 12 Access Art outings, and hosts biannual student exhibits.

As any good collective would, in 2005 the members of Instant Coffee drafted a “manifesto” of sorts. In it, they define themselves and their objectives in terms of their caffeinated namesake: Instant Coffee “mimics the real thing without the pretense of being better. It isn’t that much easier to make, but that much is reason enough to justify its particularities.”

After 12 years of artistic production, from the Disco Trailer to the Light Bar, Instant Coffee (the artists, not the beverage), are in no need of justification. Their upcoming prospective retrospective will take place throughout the Western Front as an exhibition, a residency, a publication and a series of talks and events.

Instant Coffee artist collective video trailer for Feeling So Little Yet Doing So Much, their prospective retrospective at the Western Front, Vancouver

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Feeling So Much International Prospective Lecture Series
For this series Instant Coffee has invited a number of important curators representing key moments in the collective’s 12 year history, as well as moments to come. Moderated by Caitlin Jones.

This series is generously supported by Jane Irwin and Ross Hill.

Bernd Milla
Thursday, March 8, 7pm
Bernd Milla, Director of the Kunststiftung Baden-Wuerttemberg will reflect on exhibition praxis and possibilities for artists’ work and presentation.

Lise Nellman
Thursday, March 22nd, 7pm
Lise Nellman of Sparwasser HQ in Berlin will speak about Instant Coffee and collaborative curatorial practices.

Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy
Thursday, April 5, 7pm
Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy, curator of contemporary art at Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and agent for Documenta 13 will speak about her curatorial practice.

STORE FRONT
Every Saturday Instant Coffee will be selling furniture and other special items from their new “West Coast Modern” furniture collection, and will on occasion be joined by other designers and artists, including Robert Klein and Samuel Roy Bois.

As part of STORE FRONT each Saturday Instant Coffee has invited artists, critics and curators to host a series of low key events.

Making Sense of Things Together
Saturday, February 25th, 12-5pm
As a response to IC’s motto “Get Social or Get Lost,” join artist and critic Amy Fung for an endurance performance/lecture for which she will assembling a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of a Jackson Pollock painting she inherited at an Edmonton garage sale.

Paper Doodle
Saturday, March 10th, 2-5pm
Khan Lee, Kim Kennedy Austin and Graham Kaye will doodle with paper.

General Joke Store
Saturday, March 10, 2-5pm
Artists Aaron Carpenter and Jonathan Middleton have been honing their joke-writing skills over the past year or two. The General Joke Store provides the opportunity to purchase some their recently crafted jokes. An assortment of jokes will be on offer in the “knock-knock”, “lightbulb”, and “chicken crossed the road” genres, as well as a selection of rude and off-color jokes, sure to alienate you from your friends and co-workers.

Track Day
Saturday, March 31st, 5-9pm
A slot-car race tournament hosted my Matt Smith.

Paint it Pink
Saturday, March 17th, 12-5pm
Bring it in, Instant Coffee will paint it pink

Pyrography (woodburning) Workshop
Saturday, March 24th, 2-5pm
Come, burn a design on a piece of wood and make a button!

OTHER EVENTS

Bild N Sound
Goethe Satellite @ Instant Coffee
Saturday, March 10, 8pm
A project by the Goethe-Institut in cooperation with Instant Coffee and Revised Projects

Instant Coffee together with Bernd Milla brings together German artist videos with Vancouver musicians. Milla has programmed a selection of silent videos by German artists, including Hans-Christian Dany, Mirko Martin and Sebastian Stumpf, and in response, Instant Coffee will program Canadian musicians to play a live score.

Island Pavilion Launch
Friday, March 16th, 7pm
Island Pavilion is a Vancouver based production studio specializing in the printing of original and limited edition artworks. The artworks produced with IP are distributed online through www.islandpavilion.org, including work by Christian Oldham, Krist Wood, Nicolas Sassoon, Petra Cortright, Robert Lorayn, Sara Ludy, Francoise Gamma, Laura Brothers, Alexander Peverett, Tabor Robak and Sylvain Sailly.

GOOD NEWS Issue 05 Launch
Saturday, April 7st, 2pm
Instant Coffee will publish the next in their series of “one question” handmade journals. GOOD NEWS Issue 05 will address the question “ What constitutes a successful failure?”

Wood Whittling Club
Feb 29th, March 14th, March 18th, 7pm
Every second Wednesday Instant Coffee will host an informal gathering of artists and anyone who wants to whittle and socialize. Wood will be provided, but bring your own carving tools.

Classical Reading Group
March 6, 13, 20, 27, 7pm
Every Tuesday in March Instant Coffee will host a reading group for TALE OF TWO CITIES by Charles Dickens, a relevant classic for discussing present economic issues. By the way it is the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens.

Tony– and Emmy Award–winner Cynthia Nixon discusses her role in “Wit,” where she portrays a brilliant and exacting poetry professor undergoing an experimental treatment for cancer. A scholar who devoted her life to academia, she must now face the irony and injustice of becoming the subject of research.

Elizabeth Dowling Taylor tells the story of Paul Jennings, who was born into slavery on the plantation of James and Dolley Madison in Virginia, and later became part of the Madison household staff at the White House. Her book A Slave in the White House is based on correspondence, legal documents, and journal entries rarely seen before, and reveals attitudes toward slavery of the 19th century.

Paula Broadwell embedded with General Petraeus, his headquarters staff, and his soldiers on the front lines of fighting and at the strategic command in Afghanistan to chronicle the experiences of this American general in the crucible of war. Her biography All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, calls him the most transformative leader the American military has seen since the generation of Marshall. She looks at Petraeus's career, his intellectual development as a military officer, and his impact on the U.S. military.

Yes this is exactly right! Thank you!

Our future lies not in more literate regulation - as the Call to Action on
the Occupy Wall Street website advocates but which is doomed to subversion
and exploitation by the masters of literate misery - but on iterative and
unpredictable dialogues between real people online and off. Verily, our
future lies in the Army of Love and Software!

In my recent blog post, "Wall Street Occupied by Interactivists" (
http://youareyourmedia.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/wall-street-occupied-by-interactivists/)
I wrote:

"Wall Street is Fort Monologue. It is an epicentre of literate capitalism,
an ivory tower without ears to hear. It is a paper palace divorced from all
experience, from suffering and compassion, from love and joy. It is rule of
ledgers. Rule of policies and laws. Rule of dividends and debt, all defined
on and by paper. It is a monological fortress. A one-way broadcaster
broadcasting control of the earth, turning processes into property,
communities into colonies, and just

I'm not sure why the Saatchi Gallery chose to call its new exhibition Gesamtkunstwerk, other than that it is a German word and the work in the show is all German.

We’re excited to announce that our new Art Forums are up and running! We’ve completely rebuilt the art forums and we’d like to invite you to check them out. There’s still work to do and the content is pretty thin right now, but we think they are a huge improvement over the old ones. Most of the forums are open to everyone but you must be registered to post & reply to topics.

Please note, that even if you were a registered user of the old forums, you will still need to re-register in our new system.

Forum Features

• Community posts – calls for artists, art competitions & contests, our exclusive art & artist requests
• Classifieds – art space available, help wanted & needed
• Member Lounge – site feedback, support, and frequently asked questions

And we’re working hard to add more topics & content!

Discover David Hockney in a workshop comprising an interactive slide talk, a visit to the exhibition and a practical hands-on session.

RA Learning Studio; 10.15am–1pm

Charges: £3 per person plus exhibition entry (all visitors – including Friends...

LONG SHOT is a 24 hour photo marathon that celebrates photography, creativity, and our greater community, while raising funds for education and outreach programs at Photo Center NW. The event is open to everyone, using any camera, anywhere. At lease one image from each participant will be featured in the LONG SHOT exhibition at Photo Center NW on July 23,2011.

Sign up for LONG SHOT and follow our lead to the marathon on June 17-18! We have over 100 people already signed on to participate, but we want to know how YOU will spend 24 hours with your camera. Will you be up all night? Take a few pictures and hit the hay? Are you up for some late night diner meals or watching the sun rise (from wherever you may be on June 18)? How about a road trip? Find out more about LONG SHOT here and learn how your participation contributes to Photo Center NW, a non-profit art center that serves YOU

All participants will have a chance to show their best work in the Photo Center gallery during the LONG SHOT exhibition and celebration on July 23. Round up some friends and sign up for a photographic adventure culminating in an epic party in celebration of photography and creativity!

Here’s how it works:

1) Sign Up
2) Seek Pledges & Support
3) Shoot During the 24 hour Marathon June 17-18, and then
4) Submit Your Best Work!

"Photo City Sagamihara 2011 Professional Category" Exhibition
at Shinjuku Nikon Salon (Shinjuku area)
(2012-01-31 - 2012-02-13)

Award-winning works from the 11th edition of this photography festival.

Kazuhito Tanaka "Untitled Composition"
at Maki Fine Arts (Kyobashi, Nihonbashi & Kudanshita area)
(2012-01-28 - 2012-02-18)

The photographer won the Tokyo Frontline 2011 Photo Award and this is his first Tokyo solo exhibition, which will transform the whole gallery space into a new installation using photographs taken in an abandoned elementary school. [Image: Kazuhito Tanaka “Untitled Composition” (2010-11) color photograph]

South Korea's most prestigious film festival said Wednesday it has chosen Taiwanese director Tsai Ming Liang as its Asian Filmmaker of the Year.

The Pusan International Film Festival praised Tsai's work over the past three decades for pioneering unexplored areas that overcome the limitations of the art film industry.

"He is renowned for seeking fresh ways of communicating with his audience... We can find the root of his endless spirit of challenging himself and the borderlines of art in his earlier works in the 1990s."

The Hong Kong's Asian Film Festival now wishes to honour me before the end of the month. And so soon after I leave the picturesque shores of Oman, I should be heading further east to receive what I believe, not so much a personal recognition, but one that comes to me as a member of the film industry of India and indeed India itself,

"One Show 2011" Exhibition
at Advertising Museum Tokyo (Ginza, Shimbashi area)
(2012-01-12 - 2012-02-12)

Introduces the winners of "One Show" international advertising awards, including the ten top works from the One Show Interactive showcase of award-winning digital ads from the last decade.

"The Best of the Yamatane Collection" Exhibition
at Yamatane Museum of Art (Nakameguro, Ebisu area)
(2011-11-12 - 2012-02-05)

In 2011, the Yamatane Museum of Art celebrates the forty-fifth anniversary of its founding in 1966 as Japan's first museum specializing in Nihonga. To commemorate that milestone, the museum has selected the finest works from the approximately 1800 in its collection for a special exhibition entitled "The Best of the Yamatane Collection". The core of the collection consists of Nihonga acquired through deep relationships with illustrious artists who played leading roles in the world of painting from the Meiji through the Heisei periods, including Yokoyama Taikan, Uemura Shōen, Kobayashi Kokei, Yasuda Yukihiko, Okumura Togyū, Kayama Matazō, and Hirayama Ikuo. The museum's collection of paintings by Hayami Gyoshū, a Nihonga artist of almost mythical status, is unrivaled in quantity and quantity. The collection's range also extends beyond Nihonga to include Edo-period Rimpa and literati paintings, ukiyo-e by artists such as Tōshūsai Sharaku and Katsushika Hokusai, and modern Western-style paintings. The eighty paintings in this special exhibition will include five paintings that have been designated Important Cultural Properties: Iwasa Matabei's Court Ladies Enjoying Wayside Chrysanthemums, Tsubaki Chinzan's View of Mt. Kunō, Takeuchi Seihō's Tabby Cat, and Hayami Gyoshū's Dancing in the Flames and Camellia Petals Scattering. It will also exhibit works such as Higashiyama Kaii's Rising Tide that were specially commissioned by the museum, paintings whose fame has spread through their use on postage stamps, such as Murakami Kagaku's Nude, Fukuda Heihachirō's Bamboo Shoots, Hayami Gyoshū's Dancing in the Flames (Important Cultural Property), and Okumura Togyū's Cherry Blossoms at Daigo-ji Temple, and hidden treasures of the museum such as Kawai Gyokudō's Hills and Streams in Autumn, which was first shown after the museum moved to Hiroo. The exhibition will consist of two periods, with a complete replacement of the works on display for the second period. Each will provide a rare opportunity to view a large group of masterworks in one setting. Through this exhibition, we hope that visitors will be able to enjoy to the full the essence of the Yamatane collection. 1st period: November 12 - December 25, 2011 2nd period: January 3 - February 5, 2012

"Two Hundred Selected Masterpieces from the Palace Museum, Beijing" Exhibition
at Tokyo National Museum (Ueno, Yanaka area)
(2012-01-02 - 2012-02-19)

In 2012, which marks the 40th anniversary of the normalization of relations between Japan and China, the Tokyo National Museum is holding an exhibition of masterpieces from the Palace Museum, Beijing. The site of the Palace Museum, Beijing, was formerly the residence of 24 Chinese emperors from the Ming-dynasty Emperor Yongle to the Qing-dynasty Emperor Puyi. In addition to its own glorious architecture, it houses a collection of more than 1.8 million artifacts. This magnificent exhibition consists of a selection of 200 masterpieces from that collection and is split into two sections. The first section features the simultaneous display of 41 Song- and Yuan-dynasty calligraphic works and paintings not previously shown outside the palace (some works for a limited period), as well as masterpieces of court and literati paintings, must-see works by three of the best calligraphers of the Song period, and masterworks of calligraphy by Yuan-period literati. Boasting a tremendous array of fabulous bronzes, jades and other artifacts, this lineup can be described as a defining exhibition of the Palace Museum. The second section centers around four portraits of Emperor Qianlong, whose reign marked the Qing dynasty’s golden period. This section seeks to understand the abundance of world views held in the Qing dynasty. There is also an area that attempts to recreate, using existing artworks, a portrait of Emperor Qianlong in which he is depicted surrounded by various masterpieces.

Kenji Yanobe "Sun Child, Child of Taro"
at Taro Okamoto Memorial museum (Omotesando, Aoyama area)
(2011-10-28 - 2012-02-26)

The last in a series of events held to commemorate the 100th birth anniversary of Taro Okamoto, this exhibition showcases the work of Kenji Yanobe, who grew up playing on the site of the 1970 Osaka World Expo. The highlight of the show is a large sculpture called "Sun Child" that was made specially for this exhibition. Gallery talks: November 30th, December 14th, January 18th, February 8th (all Wed, at 14:00). [Image: Kenji Yanobe, “Sun Child” (2011) drawing]

Jack Goldstein Exhibition
at Rat Hole Gallery (Omotesando, Aoyama area)
(2012-01-25 - 2012-03-25)

Rat Hole Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of the late artist Jack Goldstein (1945-2003). Jack Goldstein’s performances, films, paintings, and sound works of the late 1970’s and early 80’s helped define the early stages of post-modernist art. A leading member of the Pictures Generation in New York that initiated a paradigm shift in art focusing on the critical examination of images, he has served as a major influence on many artists who came after him and has been called one of the most important artist’s artists in the last 30 years. On view from January 25 until March 25, this exhibition marks the first time for Jack Goldstein’s work to be shown in Japan. Jack Goldstein was born in 1945 in Montreal, Canada and moved with his family to Los Angeles when he was a teenager. Goldstein received his initial training at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and then went on to earn a master’s degree as a member of the inaugural class at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1972. During his time at CalArts, he was a student of and teaching assistant to John Baldessari, where the primary focus of Baldessari’s famous “post-studio-art” class was the analytical investigation of imagery produced by the mass media. Goldstein created a number of minimalist sculptures early on in his career, but soon turned to performance and film. During the 1970s, Goldstein divided his time between Los Angeles and New York, and from 1973 he began to produce a group of color films using professional technicians and special effects from the film and entertainment industry. With flashes of color and spectacularization undermining the iconic architecture of the image and the “place” of the viewer, these films were interrogations of media, technology, and spectacle, showing the artist’s fascination with appropriated Pop culture and Hollywood imagery. One of the most famous of these color films is "The Jump" (1978), a twenty-six second loop film projected onto a red painted wall, which will be shown in the exhibition at Rat Hole Gallery and was also screened at last year’s Venice Biennale. In "The Jump", made using altered footage taken from Leni Riefenstahl's documentary of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Olympia, the image of a somersaulting high board diver is rotoscoped, tinted gold, scattered with stars, and placed against a void-like black background, out of which the figure repeatedly dives. Goldstein’s use of the rotoscoping technique strips the image of all identifying references, and the element of spectacle overpowers physical matter. Along with other members of the Pictures Generation, which takes its name from the landmark 1977 “Pictures” exhibition at the Artist’s Space in New York City and also included artists Robert Longo, Sherrie Levine, Troy Brauntuch, Goldstein’s examination of the image was based on an attitude of conceptual distance, in reaction to the extreme dominance of technology and media in post-war American society. In 1976, Goldstein commenced with a new body of work, "the records". These were colored vinyl records of sound recordings sourced from commercial archives that conjured intense visuals with titles such as “Burning Forest” or “Wrestling Cats.” These audio works served as a further abstraction to his films and were also designed as “images” to be installed on a wall without the possibility to play them. Goldstein conceived his records as both sound carriers and visual objects, saying “the records, they’re sounds as image, so I saw them as pictures.” Altogether, Goldstein produced eight record works, each of which differed with regard to design, size, and playing time. Out of the eight works, three consist of a series and one of these series, A Suite of Nine 7-Inch Records, will be on view in this exhibition. Jack Goldstein’s oeuvre spans sculpture, performance, film, sound, photography, and painting. Central in his work however are primarily the 16mm films and records made in the 1970s, which can be considered among the finest examples of post-conceptual work from this time period. This exhibition will provide a unique and rare opportunity to view among Jack Goldstein’s most famous film works - a selection of ten short 16mm films from the period 1974-1978 including "The Jump", "MGM", "Shane", and "Butterflies" - as well as a display of his record series. [Image: Jack Goldstein “The Jump“, 1976 16 mm, color, silent, 26’. Courtesy of Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne and The Estate of Jack Goldstein]