NeoCon's 7 Terror War(s)

March 4th, 2007
Jonathan Schwarz:
The Seven War Memo
http://thismodernworld.com/3595

Hey, Congressional Democrats? Now would be a good time to use that subpoena power of yours:

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see a replay in what happened in the lead-up to the war with Iraq — the allegations of the weapons of mass destruction, the media leaping onto the bandwagon?

Simon Starling
Inventar-Nr. 8573 (Man Ray), 4m - 400nm, 2006
(detail)
80 6x7cm black and white transparencies, 2x Gotschmann Slide Projectors, Kodak Dissolve Control Unit, CD and Player
Duration 8mins.

Simon Starling at Casey Kaplan, Chelsea, NYC, until March 24.

I first saw the steamboat slide show on v2v. Thanks, v2v makers!
Go and see it at the gallery anyway if you can, it's a marveleous show.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any bigger, it does. The art market and art fairs have gone into overdrive. The most interesting one to me is Art Basel Miami and all the other satellite art fairs that are presented in Miami at the same time. The two most prominent spin offs are SCOPE and NADA (new art dealers association). Here in New York there are three main art fairs in February, the Gramercy International, SCOPE and DIVA (digital international video art). As an artist, I’ve participated in several art fairs here and in Europe. They are fun in an odd way. The fun part is that there is minimal curating. Contemporary galleries are invited if their artist are of a certain style or the gallery is so prestigious that having it participate ensures that other galleries will pay their fees for their booths. After all, an art fair is a cash business. It’s also a sort of simulation (ala Jean Baudrillard) of the art world, a snap shot of the current market.

Painter Charline Von Heyl recently described Americans' disconnect between the personal and political this way: "While almost everything in the outer world feels messed-up, our inner lives aren't altogether messed-up." The current art world, awash in money and success, is shot through with a similar disconnect.

To some, the art market is a self-help movement, a private consumer vortex of dreams, a cash-addled image-addicted drug that makes consumers prowl art capitals for the next paradigm shift. This set seeks out art that looks like things they already know: anything resembling Warhol, Richter, Koons, Tuymans, Prince, and Wool could be good; any male painter in his thirties could be great. To others, the market is just a jolly popularity contest, or as New York Times reporter David Carr put it about having his own blog, it's like "a large yellow Labrador: friendly, fun, not all that bright, but constantly demanding your attention."

I attended this year’s College Art Association conference in New York last week. In a room mobbed with hundreds of women, an exciting panel took place as part of the Feminist Art program. It was organized by Suzanne Lacy with her guests Martha Rosler and Nato Thompson. (Lacy is the social sculptor who wrote about “new genre public art” ten years ago; Rosler is an internationally famous political artist; Thompson is the curator who organized the Interventionist show at Mass MOCA, and is soon to move to Creative Time in NYC.) Here are my raw notes with interpolations in brackets.