I am taking a hiatus from blogging. The posts I now add will be unedited and unpolished, please forgive me. I am using this platform as a storage place for interesting things. I am currently focusing on editing wikipedia articles on contemporary art instead. I encourage you to do the same and to follow still very active blogs like hyperallergic, c-monster, bldgblog, and more. thanks you.

#OccupyWallStreet

CLICK PHOTOS TO ENLARGE


Iconic Brooklyn bridge. This is just after I climbed the fence to the pedestrian walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge to have a better view

I had no idea that everyone left of the road would be arrested, around 500 people

The first person to be arrested.






Police shoving us away from the side of the bridge. This made me think a lot about public space. When does an action become political? When does public space become no longer public? If this had been tourists photographing the manhattan skyline, there would be no pushing involved.

Cuffed with zip ties and waiting.

This is a shot of the accredited journalists photographing the event. they had one area where they were allowed to be. Apparently a Huffpost reporter was arrested.

Detained protesters being bused to jail in a NYC public bus. Thanks MTA. You are always late when I need you for work.

Officer Rudolph lost his cool and began shoving onlookers. Nobody was arrested, maybe because we were on public space and complying with the police.





"Scientists Reconstruct Brains’ Visions Into Digital Video In Historic Experiment" here
We will soon be making appropriation movies of our dreams. literally.

What does it look like to fly over the Earth on a spaceship? find out, here

Clement Valla's online collaboration of tracing a line, pretty fantastic here
World population: 6,775,235,700
Population of NYC: 8,364,000


If the entire world population migrated into large cities we could fit all of the world into 810 cities of NYC's population.


If all of those cities were the population density of Manila, at 111,576 people per square mile, then we could fit onto .09% of the entire Earth's land surface.


Imagine having only 810 airports to maintain, only 810 cities connected by high speed railroads, only 810 massive public transit projects, virtually no need for cars, and 99.9% of land untouched or farmland.

Nato Thompson
Artists and Activists: Curating Socially Engaged Projects
the video at artlog. here
there is also a show, Living as Form, organized by creative time that is up in NYC until October 16th. looks good. here
"What is Sunday Soup?

The Soup Grant is a grassroots model for funding small to medium sized creative projects through community meals. The basic formula is that a group of people come together to share a meal and that meal is sold for an affordable price. All the income from that meal is given as a grant to support a creative project. Grant applications are accepted up until the meal, everyone who purchases the meal gets one vote to determine who receives the grant. The grants are completely unrestricted and will be awarded at the discretion of the customers. Granting projects affiliated with Sunday Soup in different cities operate based on their own needs and context. The meals are more or less elaborate in different places and some people have presentations by potential grantees or past grantees as part of the event. Please check the individual profiles for more information.

Why do we do it?

The Soup grant generates independent funding and sparks dialogue about the availability and distribution of resources within the mainstream arts establishment. In an environment where governmental support for experimental art practice is minimal at best, and private support is dictated by the values and priorities of granting foundations, innovative and potentially controversial work is compromised in order to fit within categories deemed “fundable.” With Soup, community participation in the grant funding and selection process is key. Applying for a grant is intentionally simple and un-bureaucratic in order to encourage broad participation. This enables us to stimulate and promote experimental, critical and imaginative practices that may not be eligible for formal funding. The Soup grant, while raising money, also serves as a way to build a network of support and community that reaches beyond purely monetary assistance. We like to think of it as an open platform to discuss ongoing projects with new audiences, meet new collaborators, and share ways of working.We encourage others to organize their own alternative funding program. We see this project as adaptable and user-friendly to all sorts of different contexts. Any of the elements may be modified to fit your particular situation."
Nato Thompson on "Socially Engaged Art Outside the Bounds of an Artistic Discipline"
http://vimeo.com/27289754

Parking Day

Park(ing) Day, Flint
"PARK(ing) Day is an annual, worldwide event where artists, activists, and citizens independently (but simultaneously) turn metered parking spots into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public parks and other spaces for people to enjoy. PARK(ing) Day is a non-commercial project, intended to promote creativity, civic engagement, critical thinking, unscripted social interactions, generosity and play."

more
image taken from here
5% of Americans believe they suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity. The cell phone companies of course deny this as a disease but there are some studies coming out that suggest it could be real. FOOT NOTE NEEDED. A population of these sensitive citizens is growing  in rural West Virginia where all wireless technology is a banned so as to not interfere with the radio telescopes in the region. This geopolitical hiccup now has turned into a safe haven for people with this alleged disease.
 
One resident was living in a Faraday Cage just to feel normal, now that she is living in the small wireless free town in west virginia she is free to walk around. 

Collaborative Public Art-Money Tree

 Money Trees trees plants currency

"in several wooded areas around the UK, passersby have been stopping for decades (if not centuries), meticulously hammering small denomination coins intro trees." more

I think that to create collaborative works like these in the past you always needed a religious edge to turn it into a tradition or a ritual. I find the above practice very beautiful, and I feel public art works in today's cities are really lacking where this is succeeding. Our culture certainly doesn't embrace the sacred very well in a public sphere. 



thanks Kbay. who has a sweet gimmebar which is a cool new everyone should check out. here

Pech Kucha NYC-“Dimensions of Urban Design”

"As a preamble to New York City's first Urban Design week, the Institute for Urban Design and Pecha Kucha New York would like to invite you to “Dimensions of Urban Design”. Each speaker will describe one of the projects of the moment that will shape tomorrow through 20 slides at 20 seconds a slide. The Department of City Planning's Chief Urban Designer Alex Washburn will present a 6 minute and 40 second overview of the history of New York's City's urban design trends leading up to this moment. The program will begin at 6:30 pm on Monday September 12, 2011 at Le Poisson Rouge."
more

No Longer Empty

No Longer Empty


"No Longer Empty embraces a fresh perspective on creating, presenting and experiencing art.


No Longer Empty works with internationally recognized curators to feature established artists alongside lesser known or new artists, using limited resources without sacrificing quality.  The synthesis of area and site research drives each curatorial theme and the selection of artists.  The curatorial premise and the physical realities of the location provide artists with an alternative to today’ s art world status quo allowing them to expand their practice through site commissioned work.

No Longer Empty presents art in environments that are free and accessible to all.  Our multi-locational exhibitions engage directly with each community drawing on the resources and connections of community groups to provide meaningful programming.  Utilizing vacated spaces in the urban context, we act as a catalyst for revitalization and economic opportunity for local business through the increased flow of visitors that these exhibitions attract. 

At the heart of the experience is community engagement and benefit. Our presence in each neighborhood is focused on encouraging local participation and attracting new visitors to the neighborhood.  We nourish and build relationships with the people that come to our exhibitions, the community around our activities and the artist community we form around us.  

No Longer Empty redefines public art through temporary site -specific exhibitions that draw together the vitality of the contemporary art world and the values of building community.

Each exhibition site becomes a cultural/educational hub where a community of artists, educators, scholars and the public come together to create and experience art, free of market imperative and institutional constraints.

We offer a public service that involves, includes and inspires."
bldgblog combines forces with columbia's studio x which is a global network of active spaces around the world that house lectures, shows, discussions, and more. I need to go to these. more

Jonathan Zittrain: The Web as random acts of kindness | Video on TED.com

Jonathan Zittrain: The Web as random acts of kindness | Video on TED.com
Hyperallergic's curated kickstarter page. good way to find good things to fund. curated advertising. here

Canada's national multi-cultural program, Culture Days:
"Culture Days is a collaborative pan-Canadian volunteer movement to raise the awarenessaccessibility,participation and engagement of all Canadians in the arts and cultural life of their communities." here
insidelook linz 2005
Drain pipes repurposed into hotel rooms. slum architecture. more

Colin Stetson Take Away Show


more

Citizens Contribute


"WITNESS uses video to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations. WITNESS empowers people to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice, promoting public engagement and policy change.


WITNESS envisions a just and equitable world where all individuals and communities are able to defend and uphold their human rights."


Architecture for Humanity utilizes the ability of architects to solve real problems, by spreading architectural designs around the globe through Open Architecture Network, an open-source community of architects and designers working to confront real problems all over the world.

...and to draw a bright white line with light

Last week, I had the wonderful privilege of seeing Uta Barth's newest photography series at the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been my favorite photographer for some time, but this was the first opportunity I had to see her work in person. I was blown away by the crispness of her images, the streams of light that sometimes looked like washes of bright color, and the quiet meditative sensation of losing myself in her work.


In her newest series, "...and to draw a bright white line with light," Barth photographed the action of pulling her curtains to create undulating light forms that stream across the 15 large panels, hung slightly below the standard gallery height of 60". After staring at each of the images, my eyes slipped out of focus and saw the images not as window blinds and sunshine, but as rich texture that faded in and out of my view, and light that cascaded in the form of pure white streaks, rich against its darker shadows. If it weren't for the guard's nervous tapping on the door handle, I could have stayed in that room all day, with only the subtle humming of the lights and air conditioning, and the pure sensation of seeing light and texture in its most beautiful and elegant form.

- Jessica

Lorena Turner


Rubik's Cubes, 2008.  Some really beautiful photographs by Lorena Turner:


It is not expected that as consumers we be concerned with the actual production of the items we purchase. In fact it makes us more effective consumers to maintain a perspective that is abstracted from that process. When we buy the basic goods we use on a daily basis, there is an assumption they are clean, untainted, absent of a history. Made in China asks us to reconsider that.
For this project, items made and packaged in China were purchased in US department stores and bodegas. They remained in their original packaging until they were dusted for fingerprints and then photographed under black lights. This process allowed for the evidence of another's touch, quite possibly the person involved in constructing and packaging the item, to be revealed.
Made in China highlights the human factor and invisible history in each object's production, and forces us to reconsider the relationship those who are leaving their fingerprints on each item may have with it.
Made in China is not intended to comment on the scale or absurdity of our consumptive practices, but to remind us that we are only one factor in that equation.
For more on this project, watch Michael Itkoff, Editor of Daylight Magazinetalk about it here.
Also, a review of the July 2011 exhibit in The Architect's News:
Made in China with a human touch

Be sure to check the rest of her work out. Here
Thanks Ira

One Day On Earth


One Day on Earth - Motion Picture Trailer from One Day On Earth on Vimeo.

thanks Kbay

David Zwirner Announces Second Annual Summer Pop-Up Bookstore



During this year's Chelsea Art Walk, on Thursday, July 28 from 5-8 pm, David Zwirner's pop-up bookstore will stay open late to sell rare and out-of-print books, signed artist catalogues and monographs, DVDs, posters, collectible show cards, and more.

If you can't make it during the art walk, the bookstore will also be open July 25-August 5 from 10-6 at 525 West 19th St. I'll be sure to check this out during my trip to New York.

- Jessica

JR and Inside Out


JR, known for his huge portraits pasted all over the world has started this collaborative project. Replacing the faces of rulers and famous people with portraits of you and me. more and more

Robert Montgomery

Artist Robert Montgomery
Artist Robert Montgomery
two works by Robert Montgomery. I saw these on booooooom blog. Someone commented saying that he should write poetry... I thought that was interesting, because I think that the top work could easily be considered installation poetry, or poetry+ as I commented... I am glad he uses his voice by replacing advertising space, instead them for a book. I would definitely enjoy running across one of these works.
Another comment caught my attention, saying that people should donate money to replace advertising around them with art like this. I wonder if there is a way to do this? The audience for billboards could easily pool together money and 'curate' their block, with images and text they want to see. Maybe images that will make you feel content and beautiful instead of ugly and needing...


image taken from here

This of course reminds me of Felix Gonzalez-Torres. One of my favorite ideas of his was his images that the gallery or museum curator would place on billboards around a city. These simple, wordless, photographs would give unexpected aesthetic consideration to a common location. Nice. Yet, the museum is still funding and curating, isn't there a way to crowd-source this? I think so.



Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age


Clay Shirky's talk about his book: Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
In this video he mentions crisis mapping which I had only heard of, but sounds really revolutionary, more about that here. I don't know if this process, which started in 2007 in Kenya, has spread to Syria, Egypt, Libya, and all the other countries that could really benefit, but I hope it has. I also was really taken by Shirky's mention of lolcats, by saying that there were pornographic novels printed before scientific journals. We are just scratching the surface of the internet's potential, it makes sense that we see a rise in a lowest common denominator, like porn or lolcats, so it is really exciting to see tools like crisis mapping begin to emerge...

more books you should read if you are interested in the future of technology here


Sherry Turkle and Robots


here

Alexander McQueen


(gets interesting 37 seconds in...)
I was just given a private tour of the McQueen show at the Met, here, and it was absolutely amazing. I was expecting to see weird fashion that nobody could afford, instead I saw amazing art and performative objects... that nobody can afford. I guess fashion and art are  more related than I thought.

MEGAPOST: New interpretations of the photograph

While photography seems to be a concrete medium with dependable kinds of outcomes, many artists today are exploring the possibilities of the camera through radical materials and manipulations, and sometimes without using a camera at all. Contemporary photography is anything but consistent, and every bit as exciting, unpredictable, and challenging as any other medium.



Johan Berggren prints his images on non-traditional surfaces. Above, Shelf R-S, printed on cardboard, and Untitled #2 (Burn Out series) printed on a silk scarf. Like modernist painters who abandoned the traditional canvas, Berggren alters the surface of his print as if to ask, "When is a photograph no longer a photograph?" I especially love the silk scarf because it's so unassuming and looks like something you could find in a nice boutique. But your association with the scarf would surely change once you saw it in a gallery setting and understood that the original image was a photograph.




Another photographer who recalls modernist and post-modernist painting is Pia Howell. She uses a cameraless process that is still mind-boggling to me: in the darkroom, she filters raw colored light through stencils and patterns to create these images directly on the paper. These look nothing like photographs, and yet they're made in the tradition of the photogram, which was one of the earliest cameraless methods of creating photographs in the darkroom. These genre-bending images also remind me of work by painter Tauba Auerbach



Although motion-blurred portraits are not necessarily a novel idea, the process behind this series absolutely is. Vanessa Ban and Andrea Fam collaborated on this series, This is not the Body; this is an image of the Body, in which they turned the power of the photographer over to their subjects. The nude subject is left alone with the camera for 25 seconds, during which time they are allowed to alter the manipulation with the movement of their own bodies, and can do so independently of the photographer's wishes or expectations. The photographers, then, are the ones who are treated with a surprise at the end of the project. 

- Jessica

Steve Lambert


Steve Lambert has both poignant social criticism and aesthetically engaging art, a rare mix. He now is asking for your help to create this capitalism truck, which we here at contemporary art truck fully appreciate, more at his website here and hyperallergic here.

You Are Still Alive

Clark Stoeckley: Artivist


Clark Stoeckley has organized some hilarious protests (above) and has taken the contemporary art truck idea to wikileaks (below) More here



Read some articles about the WikiLeaks truck at GothamistWikileaks MovieArt of the Prank

The Yes Men



In an article about the top ten Art-Hacks in the past 100 years, I was really impressed by the Yes Men's satirical video attacking Dow Chemical for Bhopal. This is a work of art that resulted in a $12 million dollar loss! I've never heard of an artwork as effective... watch the Yes Men's trailer here. Here is what was said: 
Dow Chemical “Help” Announcement by The Yes Men (2004)
The Bhopal disaster might be one of history’s worst industrial catastrophes, caused by a leak of methyl isocyanate on December 3, 1984 at an Indian pesticide plant owned by Dow Chemical—death estimates range between 3,700-11,000 with over 120,000 permanently injured. For the incident’s twentieth anniversary, culture jamming activists The Yes Men created a fake Dow Chemical website boasting that “[a]s a publicly owned corporation, Dow is unable, due to share-price concerns, to accept any responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe." This led to widespread press backlash, culminating in Dow Chemical spokesman Jude Finisterra announcing on BBC World that Dow planned to liquidate its India assets for a $12 billion campaign to provide medical care and victim compensation. Dow Chemical scrambled to discredit the report, but not before its stock declined in value by $2 billion.
more here at the creators project.

Eraser as Art?

Green Science Endangered Wildlife Giant Gorilla Pencil Eraser
While walking through the MoMA's gift shop, the Endangered Species Eraser, specifically the gorilla, struck me as being a very successful interactive art piece. As you go through you menial-daily tasks, you will slowly force this gorilla into dust, serving as a constant reminder of how your actions effect the world... Call me the product of hippy parents, but this is one good eraser.