UN Ceeling

A $23 million ceiling painting featuring hundreds of dangling icicle was unveiled Tuesday at the United Nations. Spanish abstract artist Miquel Barcelo used more than 100 tons of paint with pigments from all over the world. 

(http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/19/worlds-view/)

Here are some pics:

VIDEOS: Vs.

Vs.



A guy wrestling with the church by Carl Johan Engberg


http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=291087

Readings: Things I was thinking about in relation to Collectivism Readings

The Collective Camcorder in Art and Activism by Jesse Drew
&
Artists' Collectives by Alan W. Moore

Drew particularly emphasizes early video collectives working with and against "the spectacle." Is there any possibility of an 'ethical spectacle?'

Both essays tie various collective's practices to the concerns and expanding technical and conceptual possibilities of their moments - particularly emphasizing reactions to Reagan/Thatcher. What sorts of practices might the current moment suggest?

Neither article pays much attention to variation in collaborative practices. Video and performance, as particular examples, can both become messy very quickly without a guiding directorial eye. How do we deal with a sort of tension between polish and egalitarianism in communal practices - particularly where polish might quite tactically (or strategically as, perhaps in the case of public access tv) serve the ends of a project?

NYTimes Article

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/arts/design/15cott.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1

XCO EVENTS: 090219/Art and Revolution at El Kilombo Intergalactico

STUDENTS, FACULTY & LOCAL ARTISTS (AND REVOLUCIONARIOS)
...IF YOU'D LIKE TO PARTICIPATE (NOT MUCH TIME LEFT) see bottom of message

Please forward this opportunity to organization members, apologies for the cross-listings!

PANEL EVENT: ART AND REVOLUTION
February 19, 2009 (Thursday)
6:30pm, at El Kilombo Social Center
324 West Geer Street, Durham NC 27701
(919) 688-8768
Directions to Kilombo: http://www.elkilombo.org/directionstospace/directions.html

6:30pm: LIVE TROVA MUSIC, GALLERY OF COMMUNITY ARTWORK
**Nueva trova is a movement in Cuban music that emerged around 1967/68 after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, and the consequent political and social changes.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nueva_trova)

7:00pm: PANELISTS
**Speaker I: Fred Moten, Department of English at Duke University; author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition
**Speaker II: Robin D. G. Kelley, Department of American Studies and Ethnicity; author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, and Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression
**Speaker III: Representative of El Kilombo

PANEL DESCRIPTION
This event in El Kilombo's ongoing series addresses Art and Revolution. We have planned this panel in celebration of a tradition of Art/Work that participates in remaking the world, through the collective, creative process of building democratic practices. It is clear to us that the creative use of music and language and color is essential to this endeavor, but we do not limit our definition of 'art' to the isolated, aesthetic object; we mean to reclaim 'art' and 'creativity' in the service of the creation of a more just system of living. We look to the US Black radical tradition for inspiration, with guest speakers FRED MOTEN, author of In the Break: the Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, and ROBIN D. G. KELLEY, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, and the forthcoming Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. A representative of El Kilombo will conclude the panel.

SERIES DESCRIPTION
An enormous political crisis is emerging in the United States, involving the privatization of public goods, the elimination of public space, the marketization of political representation, the displacement of poor communities—in short, the privatization of wealth and the socialization of misery. All evidence seems to suggest that these watershed transformations resulting from global capitalism are picking up speed. If one were to listen to prevalent media discourse, however, the global supremacy of the US, our dysfunctional party-political system, and the power of neoliberalism will survive the coming crisis unscarred. The perspective from below is somewhat different. History teaches us, and the debacle of the current financial crisis bears out, that the brunt impact of these changes will fall hardest on working class and people of color communities. Furthermore, it was from below that the "modern world" was made possible, and it is here (away from the cameras and microphones of those above) that another world is already under construction. In this context, the El Kilombo community speaker series provides us with a space to think strategically about the struggles that must be continually developed in the face of this gathering storm. We will examine these transformations through multiple lenses, in conversation with national and international guest speakers on issues including: the relation of movements to electoral politics; gentrification, the logic of racialized power, and the central importance of territorial control; and the inspiration of global struggles for dignity and autonomy.

Things Unseen, the El Kilombo Speaker Series, will continue through April and will include:

Part 3: THE END OF AN ERA: THE NEW UNREST AND THE EMERGING COMMONISM
March 3, 2009 (Tuesday)
7:00pm, at El Kilombo Social Center
**Speaker: Gustavo Esteva, "Deprofessionalized intellectual"; founder of the Universidad de La Tierra in Oaxaca; author of Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures

Part 4: GLOBAL MOVEMENTS FOR AUTONOMY--EUROPE
April 4, 2009 (Saturday)
5:00pm, at El Kilombo Social Center
**Speaker: Angel Luis Lara, Musician and sociologist; Lara conducts research at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid

--------------------------------------------------------------

El Kilombo will be holding the second event of an on going series.
To accompany the panle ?Art and Revolution,? El Kilombo would like to
display artwork by community members. We seek works not limited in medium size
and material, from both trained and self-taught artists. This can include
drawings, painting, photographs, prints, etc.

If you have a work you are interested in sharing please contact Kency Cornejo
with a brief description and dimensions as soon as possible.

Kency.cornejo@duke.edu
______

XCO EVENTS: 090210/REPORT/Content/W.Ewald & B.Cook-Disney

Brett Cook and Wendy Ewald discussed their individual interests and histories in working with communities to create art, as well as several of their collaborative art projects. Brett has worked in the past with graffiti, often as a representation of community. This developed into an interest in public display of community art, and his work morphed from portraiture that expresses concern about local conditions to work with a more positive tone, typically involving the ideals and identity of a community. In both cases local citizens were directly involved in the production of the art, although more so in the latter case. He has also worked on pieces that suggest collective community memory, particularly the June Jordan mural in New York. Wendy Ewald has had a longer career in working with community art. One of her earliest projects, to which she recently returned, is the photography of the Innu with an emphasis on how they perceive their own culture. She did a similar reflective project at an all-girl’s school, where the women did portraiture corresponding to a single word. Wendy has also done work in Richmond and in England, where she photographed an individual and designed a portrait with words from the image. These are placed in strategic outdoor locations, either to remind communities of their integrity or outsiders of commonly unseen people.

Brett and Wendy discussed at length a project they collaborated on at Amherst college, which has a severe divide between faculty, students and staff. They held a workshop where they took pictures of individuals of each category, had a large group of mixed faculty, students and staff paint outlines of them onto canvases, and had a huge party where everyone from all three categories was invited to celebrate and paint in the images. After their completion by Brett, the works were placed in sets of three-one portrait from each category- across campus for a year. This work was designed to forge lasting relationships between participants, help break down some of the barriers between perceived categories of people, and to emphasize individuality.

Griffin and Sabine

I had to read this book for English class called "Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence". It was really interesting the entire book is made out of postcards and letters that ttwo characters send to each other. The art is really interesting and the story line too...at the end we do not know whether one character made up the other and consequently whether the entire correspondence is fake. 

Here is the cover of the book (in the center is one of the postcards)

• The second image is of my favorite postcard

the

LINKS: The New Eco-Feminism & The Politics of Food Film Series

LINKS: The New Eco-Feminism & The Politics of Food Film Series

http://www.duke.edu/womstud/ecofeminsm.html

A New Eco-Feminism?

As many may know, a discourse emerged in the mid-1970's that aimed to investigate the connection between feminism and earth and animals. These women called themselves Eco-Feminists and generated many ideas about the nature of women, the plight of animals, and the need for conservation. Due to a whole host of theoretical and practical conflicts, this project was never seriously embraced by academic feminists. Duke Women's Studies New Eco-feminism project hopes to revisit these questions, and develop theories and methodologies that will resonate within academic feminism today. We learned from E2T that there is a great need for further study of conservation, land use, and animal advocacy, not just from the perspective of science but from the humanities and interpretive sciences as well. We believe that contemporary feminist theory has much to offer such an engagement. Despite the fact that our eco-feminist foremothers may have been entrenched in essentialist ideology in their formulations, we believe their questions were the right ones. What can feminist thinking offer in response to the many global crises we face today including massive development, deforestation, animal torture, extinction, habitat loss, pollution, and global warming? A lot, we think. Won't you join us in forging a new approach to earth and animals and an updated agenda for a New Eco-feminism?

For more information contact Kathy Rudy (krudy@duke.edu ) or Ranjana Khanna (rkhanna@duke.edu ).


THE POLITICS OF FOOD FILM SERIES - Sponsored by the Women's Studies Program and the Film/Video/Digital Program. Presented as part of the Screen/Society film exhibition program.

XCO EVENTS: 090218/World Social Forum 2009/FHI Reports

XCO EVENTS: 090218/World Social Forum 2009/FHI Reports

"Global Movements: Report from the World Social Forum"

Come hear reflections on the 2009 World Social Forum from members of the FHI's Annual Seminar, Alternative Political Imaginaires.

Franklin Humanities Institute
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
12:00pm - 1:00pm
240 Franklin Center
Street:
2204 Erwin Road (Parking available at Duke Medical Center decks)
Durham, NC

Contact Info
Phone:
6681901
Email:
fhi@duke.edu

XCO EVENTS: 090210/QUESTIONS/Wendy Ewald & Brett Cook-Disney...

My question for VISITING SPEAKERS: WENDY EWALD & BRETT COOK-DISNEY

What is the role of the artist in the collaboration, and what are the aesthetics of collaborative pieces?

XCO EVENTS: 090210/REPORT/CONVERSATION/W.Ewald & B.Cook-Disney

VISITING SPEAKER: WENDY EWALD & BRETT COOK-DISNEY

Notes & Responce to Discussion 

In the discussion Wendy and Brett tried to address some of the questions we asked:

Adam: What issues with negotiated identity did you encounter in your collaborative work?

Mycah: What are the extents and limitations of collaboration?

Lydia: How do you get an audience involved without explaining too much?

Cameron: Horizontality: how do you keep from dominating?

Violeta: What is the role of the artist in the collaboration, and what are the aesthetics of collaborative pieces?

Sowmya: How do you perceive ownership in such projects?

Roshen: How do you get people to sacrifice something to be part of collaboration?

 My Reflections From The Discussion

During the presentation, I could not help but question to what extent is their work is truly free from a dominating imposition of personal ideologies. It seems that many aspects are controlled, which, in my opinion, are key to the production of a work of art. For instance the materials used (charcoal, pastels), the intensity of colors and the presence of thereof as opposed to black and white, the outlining of the image (1^st done by the artist) and even the choice of the picture, are all important aspects manipulated by the artists. I think that there is little artistic leeway given to the other collaborators. How different would the pieces look if they were painted, shaded in black and white with charcoal, outlined originally by the others involved?  I think what they do as a collaboration is unique and inspiring on many levels, but I cannot help but question whether they should let the communities dictate more in terms of the artistic process.

Key Notes Addressed

• Wendy and Brett talked about how they start with simple ideas such as the "Alphabet" and then ask a group of people for instance the Latino kids in Durham "what does language mean" and ask them to choose words that they feel are particularly their own. 
• Coming up with projects one needs a place of inquiry, not a direction however because the latter imposes too much of personal ideology. It is not about directing someone else, but letting them dictate how they wish to be perceived. Truly, it is a practice of being an open person. 
• Projects have evolved from being an immediate response to an newspaper article or an event to an over time project about a neighborhood. 
• Failure is an opportunity for breakthrough. 
• Negotiation stretches further than finances; in collaboration we are all negotiators. 
• In the West, tradition art does not foster collaboration, and often meaning /perception is imposed by the artist.
• Is there a time when conflict and tension is a positive force in collaboration? The answer: a definite YES by both Wendy and Brett. 
• It is important to let people decide whether or not they wish to participate. 
• If you do not create your own experimental community then you are a part of someone else’s. 

LINKS: The Corporation (film)

Provoking, witty, stylish and sweepingly informative, THE CORPORATION explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Part film and part movement, The Corporation is transforming audiences and dazzling critics with its insightful and compelling analysis. Taking its status as a legal "person" to the logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask "What kind of person is it?"

Taken from: http://www.thecorporation.com/index.cfm?page_id=2


This film concludes that many of a corporation's profit-driven actions are parallel to that of a diagnosed psychopath.

PRESENTATION: High Red Center

The Ochanomizu Drop,
1964/Cut Piece, Yoko Ono, 1965

High Red Center

This was a Japanese group of performance artists briefly active in the mid 1960’s. They worked both individually and as a group. Affiliated artists were Jiro Takamatsu, Genpei Akasegawa, Natsuyuki Nakanishi, and to a lesser degree, Yoko Ono.

High Red Center did a series of performance art pieces and public demonstrations designed to emphasize the performance’s incongruity with the modern world. The medium, the happening, was selected to suggest the spontaneity of the event. Although closely influenced greatly influenced by Gutai, High Red Center had stronger focus on reflections on social interactions, society, and humanness in their performances. One artist, Nakanishi Natsuyuki, covered his face with clothespins and walked around the streets of Tokyo, observing the responses of passers-by. After he was done, he pinned the metal clothespins to a canvas and burned it, thereby destroying all traces of his work (except photographs) and its material, art market value.

Clothespins Assert Churning Action

5th Mixer Project (performance/happening)

1963

The artists also did several performances that directly challenged the consumerist nature of modern society. For example, they did several “drops” where they would take various consumer goods such as machines and clothing and drop them from a height. They would then gather them up, put them in a random locker somewhere in the city and give someone the key. This emphasized a total disregard for modern consumerist behavior, both in the demonstrated apathy to the items and in the act of giving them away.

The Ochanomizu Drop

performance/happening

1964

A similar performance took place during Japan’s preparation for the Olympic games, where the Japanese government reorganized the city and altered some social conventions. For example, they encouraged citizens to engage in more sanitary behaviors such as not spitting on the curb. High Red Center dressed in face masks and lab coats and scrubbed the streets, mocking the policies of the government. This was as much a demonstration as a commentary on the mentality of the society, as they were not bothered but believed by many of the bystanders.

Movement to Promote the Cleanup of the Metropolitan Area (Be Clean!)

performance/happening

1964

In a performance with a similar agenda, in 1964 Yoko Ono staged Cut Piece, a performance where she sat still on the stage and invited the (paying) audience to cut away her clothing with scissors. This piece revealed issues such as the objectification of humans (and women) through financial contract and the sometimes crude desires enabled by permission, thus allowing this piece to be easily read as a critique of capitalism.

PRESENTATION: Gutai

1955 Laceration of Paper/1956 Second Gutai Installation

Gutai

Shozo Shimamoto and JiroYoshihara founded Gutai together in 1954, and it was Shimamoto who suggested the name Gutai, which means (again, according to this source) “concrete”. This group had a considerable influence on fluxus, but worked primarily in installations rather than happenings.

A common assertion is that Gutai was primarily fascinated with the destruction of material and its properties thereby revealed. Although this was an element of their work, Gutai was primarily interested in the interactions between different materials in a composition, the interaction between artist and material, and the specific actions of an artist that generated creative content.

Thus, Gutai did several pieces with considerable control over the art and a minor or nonexistent emphasis on destruction. For example, the 1955 work Challenge to the Mud featured a man wrestling with clay in a pit filled with mud and gravel, with images being taken of the event. On hands and knees, the artist sat in the mud and lifted, squeezed and punched it, while the gravel in the mud cut into his body. Other works involved artists swinging over a canvas and painting with their shoes, exploring the properties of paint and the dynamism resulting from the influence of the artist. Another repeatedly exhibited work was by Atsuko Tanaka, where she dressed in a suit of lights and would move about, demonstrating the visual effects of light and electricity when combined with the actions of a human artist. This work was also a commentary about the increasingly electronic life of human in a world full of commercial household goods, pushing the performance from the realm of art into the everyday.

Many of their works, however, did focus on the material’s destruction. Many pieces demonstrate the interactions between the artists and the material, often with a lack of complete control on the part of the human. For example 1955 Laceration of Paper, pictures were taken as an artist smashed through a row of sheets of paper. In 1956 throws of color, the artists fire jars of paint at a canvassed wall. Both these works demonstrate the interest in the material’s properties as it is destroyed- how the paper interacts with the artist, how the glass embeds in the canvas. In the respective cases, the artist then selected the most evocative images or cut the canvas, demonstrating a final act of control and artistic influence.

Image: Experimental Communities

Image: Experimental Communities

http://cricketbread.com/blog/2009/02/05/new-blood-in-the-old-body/

PRESENTATION: Antfarm

Antfarm was an architecture and design group that was founded in 1968 by the architects Chip Lord and Doug Michels, who were later joined by Curtis Schreier, Hudson Marquez and Douglas Hurr.

They wanted to challenge the the stiff conventions of the dominating style in modern architecture and particulary the Brutalist movement of the 1960s and 70s. Accordingly, they developed a a lot of giant inflatable structures.

They were also critical of massmedia and the constricted world view it offered. In satirical documentaries like “the Eternal Frame” they questioned the nature of collective memory and construction of truth in the media by reenacting the Kennedy assassination.

Another famous video and performance they did was “Media burn”, where they drove a customized Cadillac through a pyramid of burning televisions. (See below)

One of the large installations they created is called “Cadillac Ranch”, and consists of ten cadillacs buried halfway into the ground, standing with tail up in a row in Amarillo, Texas.









image 1: www.materialsystems.org/ wp-content/myimages/2..
image2: www.stretcher.org/.../ Cadillac-Ranch-horizon.jpg

Presentation: The Futurists

The Futurist movement was founded by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909. 

They disdained what they perceived as Italy's backwardness and rejected everything in the past. They were optimistic about the future: the industrialization, war and revolutions. 

And they loved everything modern: the automobile, the streetlight, the airplane. 

They began painting in a neo-impressionistic way. After the group went to Paris they were influenced by the cubists. The futurists believed they went beyond cubism and other expressions of the era, and created their own style with representation of motion and emotion through a technique they named dynamism. 

image: www.actuallynotes.com/ images/russolo_Carra_Ma...

Image: Experimental Communities