Neglectful of this blog I have been. Returned from Europe months ago, I embarked on a round of conferences – in later October I did "Trans" the visual culture conference at University of Wisconsin-Madison, "Art in the Contested City" at Pratt Institute, and then "Continental Drift" at 16 Beaver both in early November in NYC. All these shindigs were illuminating, from very different points of view.

More on the political art world flutter of the moment...
In discussing Cheryl Meeker’s take on Chris Gilbert’s resignation from the University of California at Berkeley art museum, I neglected to include the URL for her excellent piece: http://www.nyfa.org/level3.asp?id=484&fid=6&sid=17

What exactly is the show that occasioned this resignation? It is the second of Chris Gilbert’s exhibitions which I have considered from afar, never having seen them and making do with only the sketchiest of descriptions. The “Now-Time” show includes videos of Venezuelan factories. That is, it is a series of documentary works representing the revolutionary changes within the processes of production in the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez. Given that a former U.S. presidential candidate on the right has suggested that the CIA should kill Chavez (which most have viewed as an only somewhat hysterical expression of current policy), it is fair to say that this exhibition brings no cheer to the U.S. State Department.

Thursday June 22 2006

Objectives and Objectivity

Hi Friends,

I’m happy to be back in NYC. And to be posting on the Thing. I was teaching in Georgia this year, outside Atlanta. It has taken me a while to get back into the spin here…

On my way back home in mid-May I visited first Earthaven, an eco-village outside Asheville, N.C., for an overnight stay. The place is off the grid except for telephone. I checked my email using homemade hydroelectric power from a stream. Crapped in a composting toilet. In Baltimore I ate crabcakes at the food court. It’s true, New York doesn’t know what a crab cake is. Then I stopped in to chat with Cira Pasqual Marquina, curator at the Contemporary Museum. She had just opened her new show, “Headquarters: Investigating the Creation of the Ghetto and the Prison Industrial Complex” (through August 27, 2006). We went to Red Emma’s infoshop and had lunch. Cira’s partner Chris Gilbert had left for Berkeley to serve as Matrix curator at the University of California museum there…