I am stuffed into the Storefront for Art and Architecture on December 9th with a subway car-load of smart, good-looking white people listening to three gods of October talking at the “Clip/Stamp/Fold Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X” exhibition. Actually, as the exhibition, curated by Beatriz Colomina and a team from Princeton (see clipstampfold.com). It’s Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois and Hal Foster.

My thanks to the editor for pointing out the part of my last post that had some legs...
I'm working on the '70s now, and am never unsurprised how certain problems and conversations reassert themselves. (Oh yes, it’s structural, and the structure becomes clear through the repeated refrain.) In this case it is the late '60s reluctance of U.S. museums to exhibit "tech art," work which then consisted of installations and environments, proto-interactive, with lots of lights, pneumatics and computer control. Collective resentment at this refusal was one grievance leading to the formation of the Art Workers Coalition in New York. Today U.S. museums refuse to have much to do with "relational" work, or, er, social sculpture, the construction of situations – this very vagueness of its naming shows that the museums have copped out. The only way this kind of work comes into institutions at all is under cover of technology. Then it is sidelined into the video/film and media program, with participation limited to the geekily inclined among the museum audience.

Max Payne Cheat

As I was participating to Art+ Games for my biggest pleasure last week end, invited by Yves Bernard from imal.org, i intended to the talk given by Dirk from Jodi.org
It was really interesting to listen to him talking about their last project "Max Payne cheats only" http://maxpaynecheatsonly.jodi.org/ saying that it is a readymade and that everything is in the game.

This is the best thing on American politics I have read in a very long time.

The Surreal Politics of Premeditated War
by R.W. Behan

Published on Sunday, December 3, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
blogged here with the permission of the author R.W. Behan

George W. Bush, who proudly claimed the mantle of “war president,” was keenly rebuked in the recent mid-term election. The event was notable, but it merely continued the surreal politics of premeditated war—a politics that has dominated the last six bizarre, hideous years of our nation’s history.

Book Review of Jean Baudrillard’s Pataphysics

Reviewed by Joseph Nechvatal
at The International Journal of Baudrillard Studies (IJBS)
http://www.ubishops.ca/BaudrillardStudies/vol4_1/nechvatal.htm

metaphysicsCURATED BY ROBERT C. MORGANMETAPHYSICS AND THE VIRTUAL
JOSEPH NECHVATAL AND HUSTON RIPLEY
The Roger Smith Lab Gallery
DECEMBER 14-23, 2006

OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15TH, 630-9PM

This exhibition will focus on the works of two artists whose endeavors in the realm of an aesthetic/conceptual practice represents an overlay between the rehabilitation of metaphysics and the virtuality of the information age.

YVES KLEIN
CORPS, COULEUR, IMMATÉRIEL
5 OCT. 06 - 5 FEB. 07
The Centre Pompidou / Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris

Long live the immaterial!
-Yves Klein, The Chelsea Hotel Manifesto

Yves Klein is for me, and many others, the most important French artist after Henri Matisse. This may sound somewhat appalling to some, as Klein enjoyed only a very concise, but invigorating, seven-year artistic career. But I will clarify this controversial judgment by pointing out his historic relevance to our era of digital culture. The emphasis here will be on Klein’s conceptual articulation of the spatial and the ephemeral/immaterial in relationship to our current actual state of virtuality. Indeed the subtitle of the exhibition, CORPS, COULEUR, IMMATÉRIEL (Body, Color, Immaterial), itself brings out the salient viractual (*1) aspects of Klein's art.

"Quand les Ondes Balancent"
Une Exposition de Brett Ian Balogh
Vernissage mardi 5 décembre à 17h
Exposition du 5 au 11 décembre de 15h à 19h
Ecole d'Art d'Aix-en-Provence
1 Rue Emile Tavan
13100 Aix-en-ProvenceBrett Ian Balogh - Spectrum

Brett Balogh, artiste américain vivant à Chicago, prépare actuellement un MBA à la School of the Art Institute of Chicago au sein du Département art et nouvelles technologies. Il est depuis quelques mois en résidence en France à l’École Supérieure d’Art d’Aix-en-Provence dans le cadre du programme d’échange culturel franco-américain FACE.