performance
Josh Harris and QUIET: We Live In Public
The recent commercial release of We Live In Public, a documentary film by Ondi Timoner (which won a Grand Prize at Sundance in January and also screened in April at New Directors/New Films at MoMA), has focused attention on Josh Harris, the erstwhile dot.com millionaire who presided over Jupiter Communications and Pseudo TV, and who funded various downtown New York arts projects in the late 90s and early noughties, culminating (at least for me) with QUIET: We Live in Public.
QUIET was a heady but deranged bit of social sculpture, enlisting 150 artist/participants to live communally in a bunker housed on three floors of a loft building at 353 Broadway at the end of 1999. It envisioned a Brave New World of surveillance, control and loss of privacy, both predicted and facilitated by the Internet. Harris imagined that these long standing dystopian issues would be given technological feasibility through an interlocking network of computers and webcams. It would re-invigorate the pan- in Panopticon.
Performance Power Grab, and MoMA Gets a Sehgal
January 1, 2009. On reading Erica Orden's "Collecting Smoke" text in New York Magazine examining MoMA's upcoming two year performance art initiative, which includes a Marina Abramovic retrospective and the acquisition of Tino Sehgal's The Kiss, all under the direction of the very enterprising Klaus Biesenbach, I felt compelled to jot down a couple of thoughts. A version of the text below also appears as a comment under my pseudonym on the New York Magazine site.
Klaus Biesenbach and Glenn Lowry, 2004
Tino Sehgal was selected for the German pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale, was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize, and has been a darling of a small but influential coterie of international jet setting curators of which Biesenbach counts himself a particularly ambitious member. So it is not surprising to see MoMA finally buy one of the "constructed situations" pieces, following the lead of the Tate and the Walker. To paraphrase another Sehgal work, "This Is Not New", especially for a curator eager to establish his bonafides over an entire realm of artmaking.
Plazaville
Plazaville is a new media video art work. It is based on the classic 1965 movie Alphaville by Jean Luc Godard. It is set in 21st century New York City. The scenes from the original Alphaville are being re-enacted, interpreted and improvised upon by the artists, actors and videographers. The piece uses the internet as one means of distributing the short video clips. This is somewhat like a serialized program but is not in any order. Viewers can download new scenes as they become available on iTunes and youTube. The videos can be viewed on iPhones, computers and large screen HD televisions.
wj-s workshops and performances in Perugia, Italy, le arti in citta, 4th of oct 08
On Tino Sehgal
Taken from my postings on the Artworld Salon thread Considering “Tino Sehgal”, with the addition of images found online.
First post:
The artist’s refusal to create a physical object, even the photo document of a performance, is an implicit critique of the status quo, a dogmatic assertion of non-compliance. As Andras notes, the significance of this gesture depends entirely on the prevailing power structure, on what in fact is being rejected. It can be a potent argument when aimed at a corrupt, repressive political regime that would be quick to censor the content in any case.
Port Huron Project 5: The Liberation of Our People
Port Huron Project 5: The Liberation of Our People
WHAT: Public reenactment of a 1969 speech by Angela Davis, performed by Aleta Hayes
WHEN: Saturday, August 2, 2008. DJ set by Youth Radio at 5:00 PM, speech at 6:00 PM
WHERE: DeFremery Park AKA Bobby Hutton Park, West Oakland, CA
Artists re-create seminal events
Artists re-create seminal events from the turbulent decade for Port Huron Project.
By Diane Haithman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 19, 2008
On May 2, 1971, about 200 uniformed police surrounded the perimeter of
Exposition Park while 30-odd plainclothes officers circulated through the
crowd as farm labor
leader César Chávez delivered a brief but impassioned speech decrying the
Performances by poets Fiona Templeton, Lawrence Joseph, and musician John King 6/18
HP Garcia Gallery is delighted to announce a poetry reading and music event with highly acclaimed poets Fiona Templeton, Lawrence Joseph, and musician John King, taking place at the gallery on Wednesday, June 18 at 7-8:30PM. To celebrate the last 10 days of the ongoing exhibition “Present”, curated by Jay Murphy, Lawrence Joseph will read his sensually and politically charged poems.
Review of DEEP TRANCE BEHAVIOR IN POTATOLAND
Review of DEEP TRANCE BEHAVIOR IN POTATOLAND
(A RICHARD FOREMAN THEATER MACHINE)
by Joseph Nechvatal
DEEP TRANCE BEHAVIOR IN POTATOLAND Photo @ Paula Court
