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Goodbye Death Star

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hats
 Goodbye Death Star
 

Swing Space Open House

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Please come help us celebrate the end of our Swing Space, to see work by this season's THING.residency artists and to hear about our new office location.

OPEN HOUSE
Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2006
6:00 - 8:00 PM - FREE
32 Avenue of the Americas (between Canal and Walker)
New York City
RSVP recommended: rsvp@lmcc.net

Featuring new work by Swing Space grantees:
Oscar Alzate
Aissa Deebi
Dave Eppley
Joshua Howard
Timothy Hutchings
Cynthia Lovett
Pamela Matsuda-Dunn
THING.residency artists: Daniel Pflumm, Jan Gerber, 0100101110101101.org and Luka Frelih


Dark Places

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Dark Places

An experimental group exhibition

Curator: Joshua Decter

The Santa Monica Museum of Art presents Dark Places, conceived and curated by Joshua Decter, with an installation design by the architectural collective servo. An experimental group exhibition, Dark Places features the digitized works of 76 international artists and architects, organized into eight “curatorial scripts." The show is comprised of the simultaneous interplay of eight distinct micro-exhibitions. These sequences of works are displayed via eight projector units incorporated within a translucent architectural armature suspended in the museum’s space. Relationships among art, architecture, media, and technological design are reanimated here, generating a new kind of immersive environment—the hallucination of a futuristic noir scenario inside the frame of the museum.


New From Autonomedia/CAE Defense Fund

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Here's a mid-January update on some of what's been going on around Autonomedia.

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1. Critical Art Ensemble: trial update, new book
2. Shut Them Down!: New book on the G8 protests in Scotland
3. 50% off 2006 Autonomedia Jubilee Saints calendars
4. Some highlights from the Interactivist Network

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1. Steve Kurtz (and by extension, the Critical Art Ensemble) was denied a motion to dismiss his trial last week in Federal court. Critical Art Ensemble are the collective authors of a series of Autonomedia books analyzing the authoritarian uses of science and technology, particularly where these mechanisms operate with a positive, "everyone's a winner" face (the full-stomached promises of food genomics, for example, or the healthy-and-smart-kids promises of the reproductive industries). Not content to be armchair critics, the CAE also produce art and performance that brings their analysis to museum and gallery audiences and into the public sphere, demystifying the spectacle of what they've called the "military techno-security cineplex."

Of course, this got Steve in big trouble with the security-happy administration, and for close to two years now he's been under investigation for an artwork found in his home at the time of his wife's death. The absurdities of the case seem apparent to nearly everyone except the court itself, which insists on draining everyone's resources to pin a mail-fraud charge on him.

There is good news, though. Despite these many months of strain and stress, CAE has another book in the pipes, scheduled to be published in the early Spring of this year. It's called "Plague March", and rips apart the fear economy at the foundation of bio-warfare alarmism. That's all I'll say about it just now, except that one of the appendices to the book comes from Claire Pentecost, of the CAE Defense Fund, analyzing the real reasons the State has chosen to prosecute Steve's case. This text is well worth reading online at our Interactivist site, at the following address: http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=05/05/30/2348202

Also, please read the forwarded email at the bottom of this Autonogram, from Lucia Sommer of the Defense Fund, and check their website from time to time: http://www.caedefensefund.org

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Autonomedia has recently collaborated with the Dissent Network in the UK to produce "Shut Them Down! The G8, Gleneagles 2005, and the Movement of Movements", a new collection that takes as its starting point the protests in Scotland last summer. Not content to just rehash what went on there, the book addresses issues fundamental to the globalized resistance to capital, such as the nature of openness and "horizontality" and limitations of the "activist" identity. More on the book, including a table of contents and list of contributors, is at http://www.shutthemdown.org, and you can order the book from our new online bookstore. We'll be shipping these books as soon as they're received from the UK.

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50% off Saints calendars! Another tradition of mid-January around here (aside from hot buttered rum-soaked toboggan races across the East River with Team Autonomedia) is trying to sell off the remaining Calendars of Jubilee Saints still in our inventory. $4.98 gets you a fresh copy here.

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Interactivist Info Exchange: Recent Headlines

Please make a regular visit to our online Interactivist Info Exchange. Read a story, leave a comment, engage, debate, illuminate! Here are some recent hotties:

http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=06/01/17/2225239 is a recent interview with Italian Autonomia philosopher/agitator Paolo Virno, discussing his history, immaterial labor, etc. (and http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=05/12/27/0513241 for Steve Wright's discussion on some of the same)

http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=06/01/07/1727205 on the recent death of Zapatista Comandante Ramona (and http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=06/01/03/1459209 for Marcos' transition to Candidate Zero)

http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=05/12/13/1414210 for an analysis of Chomsky's anarchism.

http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=06/01/03/199257 for efforts by WalMart employees in Florida to use collective action and mutual aid to deal with problems on and off the shop floor.

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Attack of the Schmoozebeasts

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In an unusual attempt at self-preservation I've tried to avoid the current revival of feminist furor in the art world being stirred up by Roberta Smith and her consort, (buddy boy) Jerry Saltz, but my curiosity was sparked by this Artforum Diary posting on a recent panel on "Feminism" by Rhonda Lieberman.

(I'll give you time to read it. Trust me, it's funny).

Schmoozebeasts? Have I been sleeping or am I behind in my Yiddish? Will this replace the increasingly tiresome "hipster"? Please? It rolls off the tongue like a boiled pierogi. And I'll take anything over the repulsive "art fag"; it wasn't funny the first time around and it's not ironic now. It's just sad. Really really sad.

About the panel: I thought Joan Snyder drank herself to death in France years ago. Oh, right, that was Joan Mitchell. Sorry, my mistake. And, yes Joan, men are to blame for everything bad in the world but can we also take some credit for the good things? We're not all Julian Schnabel, you know. Some of us are sensitive pussycats like, say, Richard Serra? Why is it that a bonehead like Schnabel is always the target. Too afraid to take on the real tough guy, hey?

When Collier Shorr first appeared everyone always referred to her as Richard Prince's boyfriend so I'm not sure how much sincerity is behind her statements of admiration for Snyder, or anyone.

Barbara Kruger is, of course, always right (just ask her!) and though "direct address" is out of style right  now in favor of all that relational stuff I hope she'll dump academia and be back on the bullhorn soon. Kruger designed commercial book covers early on in her career -- I had an Aldous Huxley paperback  with a cover by her at one point  --  and she definitely knows what she's talking about in terms of media. Po-Mo princess Cindy Sherman, on the other hand, watched movies. She's right: Victim/Aggressor are absolutely two sides to the same coin. I guess you could say I'm a Kruger butch rather than a Cindy Sherman femme.

Tamy Ben-Tor's work I don't know so it's hard to decide whether she or Joan Snyder made the dumber statement.

My question is: Why did four intelligent and respected artists let Roberta Smith set them up like that?

A more considered and thorough (but much less funny) account of the panel by Mira Shor is here along with a piece on an earlier panel with Vanessa Beecroft.


VJ: Live Cinema Unraveled

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VJ Live Cinema
 "VJ : Live Cinema Unraveled" is now available for purchase!

 
It is a signed, limited edition book on VJing and VJ Culture. The launch party last Saturday in L.A. was a success, and the book is available for the general public online, via the book site. Payments can be made using PayPal (with or without an account).

http://www.vj-book.com

Probing into topics such as technological mobility, audience, environment, and codes of the medium, it explains the various dimensions of this emerging practice. Part design, speculative theory, reference and practical guide, this book links live cinema with its historical origins, and then describes the various offshoots and branches that are occurring now in the twenty-first century on a global scale.

If there are any questions, you can get in touch via this email address: info(at)vj-book.com


Troika Ranch at Eyebeam

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Troika Ranch
Presented by Troika Ranch in association with 3 Legged Dog


January 18 - 28, 2006
8pm nightly
540 W. 21st St.

EYEBEAM is pleased to host

16 [R]EVOLUTIONS
 Presented by
TROIKA RANCH
 IN ASSOCIATION WITH 3 LEGGED DOG

 Lush imagery vibrates against funnel clouds of physicality as Troika Ranch presents 16 [R]evolutions on January 18-25 & 27-28, 8pm at Eyebeam. Tickets are $20 at the door.

For more info visit http://www.troikaranch.org/16revs

 


ARCHIVE: Keith Sanborn on Wolfgang Staehle's "Untitled" (2001)

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Keith Sanborn's catalogue essay on Wolfgang Staehle's "Untitled" from 2001:

Untitled

Keith Sanborn

Mankind, which in Homer’s time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order.

  —Walter Benjamin, The Artwork in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility

 

Excursus

Wolfgang Staehle’s installation, 2001, ran at Postmaster’s Gallery in New York City from September 4 to October 11; by means of the events of September 11, it seemed to pass from interesting to extraordinary.

Read more


le podcasteur et le workshop

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GH Goes to France
 
 

Remembering Jam Echelon Day 2001/1999

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Links and Resources to Echelon Information, plus the 2001 and 1999 link archive from the first Jam Echelon Day are included below for your reference:

2001