Katharina Grosse Entwurfsskizze, 12.2009 Studio Katharina Grosse
KVB
Four internationally renowned artists have been chosen to create artistic concepts for the stations of the new North-South Municipal Railway. With this, an art project of international standing will be created, aimed at raising people’s awareness of the city beneath the city.
Earlier this year Ronzo created some incredibly detailed replicas of the dragons that mark the entrances into the City of London – albeit with the exception that they had been re-formed to be sculptures of Ronzo’s making rather than the emblem of one of the world’s leading financial districts. He called the silver painted figures clutching coins ‘Crunchy’ and explained at the time that they marked the point where we should be celebrating the end of the recession (the economy had reportedly just grown by an altogether not too convincing 0.1% just as the bolts were being driven in to the pavement to secure the pieces). I managed to track down a couple of survivors (and found the remnants of one that had been lost) a couple of days later. Sadly none now remain but Ronzo has now released a three part video showing their installation. Interesting viewing – especially as this area is one of the most closely monitored square miles in the world. Pictures of the Crunchy’s appear under the video link below.
A few weeks ago, and against my better judgment, i stopped by Decode: Digital Design Sensations at the Victoria and Albert in London. The exhibition showcases recent developments in digital and interactive design through three themes: Code, Interactivity and Network.
I have nothing particularly flattering to write about the exhibition. I wish i had done like Furtherfield and visited the Digital Pioneers exhibition instead. The exhibition takes place at the V&A as well but doesn’t benefit from as much advertising as Decode.
In theory, Decode looks like a very glam affair. In reality, it has a bit of a fancy thrift shop feeling with all the works crammed in a confined and confused space. I was left in shock when i saw how little space each work had to breathe while all around me a group of school girls were laughing their way from one work to another, frantically waving their arms/head/some bathroom appliances in all directions in order to trigger some kind of reaction… sorry “interaction” from the works. The code section of the show wasn’t a much more pleasant experience. I had to fight my way through a narrow corridor jam packed with people taking pictures or videos of the strikingly beautiful works on screen. I’m glad the exhibition is such a success. I’d even go as far as confessing that i’m perversely happy that interaction and digital design are being thrown in the direction of the broad public in such an informal way.
Damn! it’s not like me to bad-blog an exhibition like that. Maybe i was not the right audience for that kind of exhibition but then maybe i am because some artists whose work i admire are participating to the show. Stanza is one of them.
As his bio says, Stanza is an expert in arts technology, CCTV, online networks, touch screens, environmental sensors, and interactive artworks. Recurring themes throughout his career include, the urban landscape, surveillance culture and alienation in the city.
Sensity on a round globe display tested at County Hall London (Live data on globe 2006). Image copyright stanza
His artworks have won prestigious awards and have been exhibited all over the world, from the Venice Biennale to the Tate Britain, from the State Museum in Novorsibirsk to the Biennale of Sydney. I blogged so often about his work, it’s quite embarrassing. Stanza is exhibiting Sensity at Decode. Some 20 custom made environmental sensors units are distributed in the V & A Porter gallery and around the city of London. They measure, light, noise, sound, humidity, and temperature. The data is turned into a online real time visualisation of the space for everyone, whether they are gallery visitors or city planners, to see and ponder on. Sensity V & A opens up a discourse about networks and surveillance technologies and questioning the social political fabric of the landscape around us (more details and pictures about the V&A version.)
The Decode exhibition wasn’t that bad. After all, it gave me an excuse as good as any other to blog this little interview with Stanza about his work.
How visible are the sensors in the city?
Actually I don’t advertise where they are exactly, they are too expensive to loose. The visability is virtual and presented via its GPS location. All the data is presented online via XML feeds that are open source.
Do you have to keep them hidden lest they get stolen or damaged? How do you select the location of the sensors?
The location is based on the network and the distance apart one can place them so that they still transmit and send data. But you’re right, having them stolen is a big issue since I cannot afford replacement
Do you need a special authorization to place the sensors and collect the data?
In theory yes, in practice, I don’t. There are more complex issues about security of space and surveillance. In fact because of the potential of this project for larger scale urban monitoring, noise and pollution monitoring in real time I am surprised I haven’t been approached to develop this on a larger scale.
By measuring all sorts of physical data the sensors reveal also some social aspects and variables of the environment. The text that presents Sensity states that “The output from the sensors display the “emotional” state of the city”.
So what is the emotional state of the city?
The condition of change of time represents the emotional state as measured by the varying sensors.
Do you perceive patterns according to the time of the day for example?
The patterns and shapes in the visualisation are what is being affected by the real time environmental conditions.
Well the time of day affects the patterns that are relayed to the screen.
The sensors have time stamp, light, temperature, humidity, GPS, noise and sounder
What can the ‘general public learn from Sensity?
I want the public to explore new ways of thinking about interaction within public space and how this affects the socialization of space. The project uses environmental monitoring technologies and security based technologies, to question audiences experiences of the event and space and gather data inside the space.
The project also focuses on the micro-incidents of change, the vibrations and sounds of the using these wireless sensor based technologies.
Imagine walking out the door, and knowing every single action, movement, sound, micro movement, pulse, and thread of information is being tracked, monitored, stored, analyzed, interpreted, and logged. The world we will live in seems to be a much bigger brother than the Orwellian vision, its the mother of big brother.
Can we use new technologies to imagine a world where we are liberated and empowered, where finally all of the technology becomes more than gimmick and starts to actually work for us or are these technologies going to control up, separate us, divide us, create more borders. With the securitzation of city space create digital borders that monitor our movement and charge us for our own micro movements inside the system.
The data is also used to create visualizations in an open source environment. Other online users can also re- interpret the data and interrogate the various sensors in the network as this is open sourced as well (xml streams).
How about you?
What I have learnt from mixing the cities and creating mash-ups online with the data from various city set is that there is a new space, a 4^th space, a new world of possibilities.
These works are focused on the wider picture of city experiences which are being played out in real time. This sort of experience of multi nodes and multi threaded spaces, demands a refined gathering of data, a sensitive accumulation which can then lead to some kind of modeling and visualization. [audible and visual (mils)-representation] of the social network as it exists and is impacted upon.
Do you navigate cities differently after you have submitted them to Sensity?
Within this project no…..and it’s a good question. However within a project like soundcities.com the experience and the relationship to place is different. Soundcities is my online open source database of city sounds from around the world, that can be listened to, used in performances on laptops, or played on mobiles via wireless networks.
The project soundcities is completely made up of found sounds and soundscapes from the thousands of samples I collected.
The sounds of cities also give clues to the emotional and responsive way we interact with our cities. Cities all have specific identities, and found sound can give us clues to the people that inhabit these spaces, as well as provoking us and stimulating our senses in a musical way. Within soundcities the aim is to create an online aural experience that evokes place, both as literal description but also developed musical composition. The sounds of cities evoke memories. So this idea of assent gathering of sounds creates a different feeling that the gathering of data.
With sensity although we are the body in the data space; we again control it but because its on a micro scale it’s harder to relate to. That’s why a project like Sensity is so important.
You’ve installed Sensity in many cities around the world. How is the V&A one different?/
The way Sensity is exhibited can be scaled up and this depends really on the commitment of the host organization.
I now have several version of this artwork.
A local version can be made and then projected and also shown online. I have already made versions for several cities. In this case I test and deploy my sensors and make the visualisation.
Making it real time so sensor data isn’t recorded but real time. This involves set up of technology, adding some code to router, using my sensors, using my computers, set up of the sensors in the correct location, programming them, replacing batteries and care for the duration of the show and insurance. In this case I test and deploy my sensors and make the visualisation and leave the sensors and the computers running all the time.
How it looks in the gallery or the actual displays ie, what it is seen by the audience. It can be experienced on plasma screens, projected or shown on 3d globes. Once the visualisation is made there are a numbers of ways to present it.
The Decode show is a much longer term real time colloborative deployment of my two networks in the gallery and across the city. I can monitor all the sensors remotely tell the gallery to change batteries, etc. The issue is that the V & A and their technical team has to be able to support the technical needs of the work.
What becomes of the data once the show is over?
None of the data as the system is set up is archived…. it’s all real time. I do plan to allow the database to have a history but this now requires further funding and development.
A design competition to paint five blocks of Broadway in Times Square
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Open to all New York City artists and designers
Due: April 16, 2010
The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City invites eligible artists, designers, organizations, and non-profits living or operating within the City to propose temporary design solutions to renew the surface treatments at all five plazas and smaller ancillary spaces located on Broadway from 47th to 42nd streets. These temporary surface treatments will enhance the plazas while a long-term capital reconstruction project is initiated for the Bowtie beginning in 2012 in partnership with the Department of Design and Construction.
The final selected design shall be translated into a surface treatment by a contractor selected by the New York City Department of Transportation. The selected artist shall be awarded a design fee in the amount of $15,000 to be funded by the Mayor’s Fund.
The design is expected to be installed by mid-July. The temporary treatment will remain in place for approximately eight months and will be monitored and maintained by the Times Square Alliance. The deadline to submit proposals is Friday, April 16, 2010. Questions and answers will be posted to http://www.nyc.gov/dot. Details on how to submit questions are contained in the RFP.
The design competition is project of New York City DOT in partnership with the Times Square Alliance. www.TimesSquareNYC.org.
ReNEWable Times Square Project Information
http://www.nyc.gov/dot
Direct Download of RFP
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/renewable_tsq_rfp.pdf
Public Art Program of the Times Square Alliance
http://www.timessquarenyc.org/arts
March 17, 2010
MATTHEW MONAHAN
B. 1972 in Eureka, California, lives in Los Angeles
“It’s interesting to see how inanimate the figure can be, how figurative art dies, how it scars, how it shatters into mere things, how it turns to dust . . .”
Wednesday, April 14
HUMA BHABHA
B. 1962 in Karachi, Pakistan, lives in Poughkeepsie
“The idea of monument and death is the ultimate raw material of art.”
Wednesday, May 12
THOMAS HOUSEAGO
B. 1972 in Leeds, England, lives in Los Angeles
“Our generation sees modernist art through the lens of pop culture, not the other way around.”
This spring’s Public Art Fund Talks series which features Matthew Monahan, Huma Bhabha, and Thomas Houseago – three artists whose works reinvent and extend the language of figurative sculpture for a new era. Neither literal portraits nor traditional monuments, their works push the expressive potential of sculptural forms and materials, marking a renewed interest in the figure in contemporary art. These artists are also featured in the upcoming Public Art Fund exhibition Statuesque, opening June 2, 2010 at City Hall Park. Public Art Fund Talks are organized by the Public Art Fund in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
Talks begin at 6:30 pm
The New School, John Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues)
Tickets: single talk: $10; full series: $20; students: FREE
To purchase: visit www.publicartfund.org or call 212.980.4575
Eli Klein Fine Art 462 West Broadway, 212-255-4388
Soho
March 4 – April 22, 2010 Opening: Thursday, March 4, 6 – 9 PM Web Site
ZHAO BO: VIBRANTCITY
Eli Klein Fine Art is proud to present Zhao Bo’s second solo exhibition in New York, his first at the Gallery. Through his paintings, Zhao Bo records the monumental cultural and political shifts in China, shown from the perspective of Chinese people. China’s opening to the West in the late 1980s ushered in a new era and these paintings provide a snapshot into this unique period. He clashes Communist and contemporary icons together in the same scene, revealing that Chinese society is more interested in adapting to contemporary culture than adhering to staid traditionalism.
Mocking the social realist propaganda of Communist China, Zhao Bo replaces the ideal Chinese worker or citizen with an ostentatious cartoon. The bright colors and enthusiastic poses express the vitality and exuberance of this new Chinese generation. Rather than revering Chairman Mao and principles of Communism, these wide-eyed figures revel in the glow of billboards and luxury goods. Yet, their placement in front of important Communist markers, such as Mao’s tomb or signs proclaiming, “Long live the people,” is a constant reminder of the government’s presence.
Zhao Bo received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in Chongqing, China. His works have been exhibited in museums in China and the United States including the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Art Museum of Shanghai, the He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen, and the Art Museum of Chongqing.
ZHANGGONG: MISSPANDA
Eli Klein Fine Art is proud to present Zhang Gong’s first solo exhibition in the United States. Zhang Gong’s work parodies instantly recognizable Western art, demonstrating the effect of Western popular culture on contemporary Chinese society.
In his most recent works, Zhang Gong incorporates cartoon characters with scenes from modernist Western paintings and other popular images. These juxtapositions simultaneously satirize and question ideas about what constitutes high art and originality. His own unique creation, Miss Panda, interacts with the Western characters in chaotic scenes. Miss Panda often finds her way into famous Western paintings, reminding the viewer that Western art, once banned, has now been assimilated into the collective consciousness of modern Chinese society. Through his works, Zhang Gong brings historic and contemporary art into dialogue with one another.
Zhang Gong’s paintings record the change in Chinese society and a shift toward a more global outlook. The characters from Western media are instantly familiar to their audience. The cartoon nature of the pieces implies humor, yet the subdued colors, repetition of the characters, and incongruity with their surroundings causes tension.
Zhang Gong received his Master of Fine Arts from the Central Academy of Arts and Design in Beijing and is currently a Professor in the Animation Department at Qinghua University. Zhong Gong’s works have been exhibited at the Kunstmuseum in Bonn Germany, the Singapore Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai. Zhang Gong’s animations have been selected for prestigious international film festivals throughout Asia, Europe, the United States, Australia, and Latin America.
_Both exhibitions will be on view at Eli Klein Fine Art from March 4 through April 22, 2010 and are accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by the Today Art Museum in Beijing, China. Both artists will be present for the opening reception on Thursday, March 4 from 6 – 9 PM.
For further information, please contact the gallery at (212) 255-4388 or info@EKfineart.com._
Harmonious and humane, the sculptures of this lost African city have a greatness that any civilisation would recognise
In his television series Civilisation, the great Kenneth Clark speaks of Raphael. Standing in the Raphael rooms in the Vatican, he admits that on first sight they can seem insipid, and quotes Sir Joshua Reynolds, who acknowleged the same problem. Reynolds warned his students that when they finally reached Rome they might find Raphael’s frescos disappointing, but urged them to persevere until they did find them beautiful and moving. It’s a lovely moment – you half expect Clark to say he finds Raphael a complete bore. But he doesn’t. “Well,” he says with a beatific smile, “I’ve spent a lifetime doing just that. And can I tell you it is worth it.”
Recently, in responding to other comments posted here, I wrote that art is soft stuff, demanding a subjective response. That is true, in part, but it is not the whole truth. The more correct statement would be: most art that we encounter demands a subjective response from us, which is very much a product of our reaction; but there is a type of art whose greatness pre-exists and survives us, and whose authority makes our like or dislike of it seem irrelevant.
This kind of art is classic art – classic because it seems to exemplify such clear values, to address such fundamental cognitive faculties, that its merit is absolute, and a failure to be moved by it is, essentially, our own failure.
I found myself thinking this yesterday, not in the Raphael rooms, but in the exhibition Kingdom of Ife, which opens next week at the British Museum. The art of this medieval city in west Africa has all the qualities I call classic. It is deeply in love with harmony, proportion and beauty. It is also humanely observed and crafted with genius. Yet I found myself wondering: will it be that easy to enjoy these sculptures in a crowded gallery, and will the aesthetic grandeur of Ife grab everyone as intensely as it deserves to? And what I have to admit is: it doesn’t matter. The highest art has a godlike disdain for our passing moods.
Then I noticed a nice detail. The British Museum’s own superb example of a brass head of a ruler from Ife was bought for it by … Kenneth Clark. The same man who spent a lifetime looking at Raphael instantly appreciated this. Of course he did. He knew a classic when he saw one.
Longwood Art Gallery at Hostos Community College 450 Grand Concourse, 718-518-6728
Bronx
March 3 – May 8, 2010 Opening: Wednesday, March 3, 5 – 9 PM Web Site
…in the City: Memory, Places and Spaces is inspired by the city’s unique urban flavor, socio-political, and economical issues as well as its inhabitants. Longwood had invited artists whose works comment on issues of displacement, migration, development, and urban planning. The show, curated by Juanita Lanzó, includes installation, mixed media, painting and video by Michael Paul Britto, Suzanne Broughel, Jerry Gant, Jayson Keeling, Juan Fernando Morales and Luis Stephenberg.
Kate Werble Gallery 83 Vandam Street, 212-352-9700
Soho
March 6 – April 10, 2010 Opening: Friday, March 5, 6 – 8 PM Web Site
Kate Werble Gallery presents Christopher Chiappa’s first solo show in eight years, High Fructose Corn Syrup. In this exhibition, Chiappa employs self-portraiture as a technique to heighten psychological and cultural decay. The title, High Fructose Corn Syrup, is a reference to the artist’s transition from adolescence into adulthood, and his realization of the disappointment of human experience. A daily Coke drinker, he hit puberty just as Coca Cola’s formula switched from using sugar to high fructose corn syrup.
Chiappa uses a simple switch of the ordinary to emphasize an omnipresent disequilibrium in the photographic portrait of the artist in his studio, I Always Knew It Would Come To This. Wearing his usual self-dictated uniform of a white shirt, black pants and Nike Prefontaines, the picture represents the madness of the everyday – his shirt is on his legs and his pants and shoes on his arms and torso with his head popping out of a hole cut in the crotch.
Cloaking the gallery in black plastic, Chiappa aims to push the viewer to re-evaluate the physical gallery: anything can happen within the space. His uniquely American sculpture, Cornball, becomes a handmade icon; a basketball covered in kernels of corn. Cornball layers one recognizable American thing onto another, referencing pop culture as well as Koons’ suspended basketballs.
Unordinary tension builds within Hermit Crab, a video manipulating common childhood pet Hermit Crabs in a way that depicts power and abuse. The artist’s head is cropped out of each frame as he methodically glues each of the twenty-five hermit crab shells together to form a circle. The crabs’ behavior during the gluing evokes human struggle and strategies for coping as a group. Although the crabs were not hurt in any way, an unsettling, uncomfortable feeling prevails.
Christopher Chiappa was born in West Chester, PA in 1970. He has held solo exhibitions at Fredericks Freiser Gallery in New York and participated in various group exhibitions including the Philadelphia ICA, Western Bridge, Moss, Andrea Rosen Gallery, Modern Art, and James Cohan Gallery. He currently lives and works in Long Island City, NY.
An installation of Chiappa’s stools is shown concurrent to this exhibition at the design store Moss at 150 Greene Street New York, NY.
Long before newspapers, stories were told around the campfire or written in pictures on cave walls. Stories of victory and defeat in war were transmitted by runners carrying the news. Letters from soldiers — albeit censored — also told stories of war, and then peace. We have a more sophisticated way of telling stories now but really not much has changed. News communicates facts, opinion and gossip. Several works in Temple Gallery’s Philagrafika show deal with these issues and while this reporter can tell you about what’s in the gallery, the big news is that two bodies of work, by Swoon and Carl Pope, are outside on the streets. I have an opinion about these works – they’re great — but I haven’t seen them. So here’s how some news starts. You read that I said it’s great and you now maybe think of it as great because you read it, and pretty soon, voila, it’s great.
Francesc Ruiz's newsstand at Temple Gallery
Francesc Ruiz thinks that packaged news (news in newspapers and magazines) is no news at all. In his faux newsstand in the middle gallery space Ruiz created the perfect news mimic with magazines, newspapers, lottery tickets all illuminated by the classic newsstand fluorescent light. This kiosk has all the news a Philadelphian would need. And some of it is free — you can take home a newspaper and a magazine for your reading pleasure. But therein lies the rub. Whereas Ruiz’s publications adopt the tropes of the print news media (the typeface of his “The Wall Journal” for example carefully copies that of the Wall Street Journal) the written content is a mishmash of nonsense phrases that seem like they were translated by Google from an Urdu poetry site.
Francesc Ruiz, detail of the newspapers on view at Temple gallery
One of my Flickr friends commented on the newsstand: “Wow, a lot of work went in to that, it’s quite amazing.” This is an opinion and a true fact. A prodigious amount of work went into the creation of the many publications on view. And what is amazing, even more than the quantity of matter, is the content — or lack thereof. Ruiz recycles his nonsense texts and his many graphic images throughout all of the publications so that a particular paragraph (or image) is repeated on numerous pages and under various headlines. These headlines — “New Uses of Time in the City,” ”The Will Eliminate the Sports Fields,” and “Fidget Will Prohibit” — all contain the same “story.” Some pages are upside down and the cumulative weight of nonsense in this helter-skelter topsy turvy news world is overwhelming, a little funny and depressing, since in the end Ruiz got it right: The value in many news publications is less than meets the eye and mind.
Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries made a video/audio piece that tells a story of a girl, two guys, a fistfight and the aftermath. Whether it’s fiction or fact, gossip or news, the story flies onto the screen as words with a rat-a-tat-tat speed to the syncopated rhythm of a great jazz soundtrack. Call it an op ed piece, the internal monolog by the boy who loses the girl is wry, self-questioning and self-effacing. Yet it communicates much about human relationships, and asks some questions about fighting (war) and winning or losing (peace?). The work is as ephemeral as a story told around the fire and it has the same kind of mythic quality being both a little slippery but gripping and memorable. Unlike Lawrence Weiner’s conceptual word art Heavy Industries’ piece is modest and ephemeral. It’s one of the best works I’ve seen of late and in its edgy treatment of human relationships I want to compare it to Jayson Musson’s polemical word-driven ramblings which hit you like irreverant jokes then hang around your mind with their greater content about the human psyche.
Thomas Kilpper's installation at Temple Gallery
Thomas Kilpper’s installation of photographs, video, wallpaper and flooring made of cardboard banana crates tries very hard to make a point about political disenfranchisement. And in fact it makes its point too fast. The oil barrel in the middle of the room with sticks bearing the names of troubled countries is overkill that I took in so quickly I didn’t break stride before moving on.
Superflex, likewise, with its worktable for students to make hanging lamps is a quick political piece. The website says this piece is about copyright infringement. All the images that appear on the hanging lamps are copyrighted lamps. So the students are either breaking or not breaking the copyright. OK, copyright is an important issue for an artist, and students should be thinking about it. But before I read the web writeup this is what I thought: The obvious reference in this piece that is using (free) student labor is to sweatshops ripping off their (often child-aged) workers. I am ok with either interpretation (and I think both work) but in either case, the piece broadcasts its message(s) too quickly.
Political art is tricky. By giving you too much information/attitude/material, political art can be too direct. It can do too much work for you leaving you the viewer without need to think for yourself. Kilpper’s and Superflex’s installations are both too direct. You read the piece very quickly and move on. Heavy Industries’ and Ruiz’s pieces are both indirectly political and thus leave the viewer with some room to interpret and digest. They are more satisfying conceptually, and actually, aesthetically as well.
As for Swoon and Pope, I have an opinion based on an intuition. My gut tells me these artists have made great works. Just the fact that they are sitting out there on the streets says they are doing the job of political art creating surprises that shake you out of your normal routine and ask you to contemplate something other than your next meal or when the next Septa train will finally arrive at the station. You can get a map to locate Swoon’s works but there’s no map for Pope’s and as soon as the snow melts it’s time to go hunt them down.
I’m going to Twitter this post now for everyone sitting around that campfire. Maybe it’ll go up on the Facebook campfire page also.
