The Helga de Alvear gallery in Madrid is currently running a (very timely) exhibition on the controversial topic of Extraordinary Rendition. The expression was coined by the Bush administration to define new legal measures designed to sidestep the existing Human Rights system and deprive some individuals from its protection in the name of the fight against terrorism.

Detainees at Camp X-Ray, at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

The Patriot Act, for example, expands the authority of US law enforcement agencies for "terrorism investigation." It limits -when it does not completely abolish it- citizens' right to privacy or freedom of expression, allows for kidnapping and confinement of persons without charges, without trial or a detention period as has been happening in Guantanamo since 2002.

The gallery invited four renowned artists to reflect on the issue.

Elmgreen and Dragset, Phone Home, 2008

Phone Home (2003), by Elmgreen & Dragset, is the only work on exhibit that has not been created specifically for the show. The installation looks at the loss of the right to privacy in communications. Five telephone cabins are lined up in the gallery. A note informs visitors that they can call anyone they want in the world for free. Of course there's a trick: the conversation you are planning to have will be broadcast in the gallery, recorded and a table with audio players and headphones will enable future visitors to listen to what you said.

Under the new rules of extraordinary rendition, physical and psychological torture is justified. Spanish Inquisition-like methods of torture get toned down but that's because some of them are given new names, like waterboarding, in an attempt to disguise their true meaning.

Santiago Sierra, Público iluminado con generador de gasolina, 2008

True to his wam bam approach, Santiago Sierra chose to address torture and one of its most commonly applied methods: the sleep deprivation of detainees for days and months. A huge spotlight operated by a generator are the only elements in Público iluminado con generador de gasolina [Public illuminated by oil generator]. Unfortunately the gallery had run out of oil (another very timely issue) when i went there and the installation was turned off.

Alicia Framis, Welcome to Guantanamo, 2008. Image courtesy of Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid

Alicia Framis is presenting the first part of a wider project called Welcome to Guantánamo Museum. The installation documents the key elements that would form this hypothetical museum on the US detention centre in Cuba. Scale models, drawings, prototypes, floor plans and structures are exhibited together with an audio piece created with Enrique Vila Matas and Blixa Bargeld. The project echoes our society's need to museify everything, think of Auschwitz and Alcatraz. Should we recoil at the idea of turning horror into a tourist attraction or should we decide that such museums are not a necessary evil, a way of ensuring that atrocities are not forgotten?

Alicia Framis, Welcome to Guantanamo, 2008. Image courtesy of Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid

The proposal for a Guantanamo Museum will include a selection of exhibition objects and merchandising that reflect the museum's theme and motto -- Things to forget. There will be a Le Corbusier chaise longue turned into an electric chair, a non-existent mailbox, shoes which contain inside their heels a system to allow prisoners to commit suicide, a series of orange clothing and objects designed by Framis together with students during workshops, furniture for the museum will be designed and built using the material of inmates' cells, etc. At the same time a sound room will recall the names of all the caged prisoners in Guantanamo.

James Casebere, Flooded cell #2, 2008

James Casebere made photos of what he calls Flooded Cells. These images conjure up allusions to prisons, claustrophobic and oppressive spaces somehow reminiscent of Piranesi's fictitious and distressing prisons (carceri) yet also referencing the method of torture by simulated drowning.

Extraordinary is part of the Off programme of PhotoEspana. You can see the show until July 19 at the Helga de Alvear gallery in Madrid. My images.

Related stories: Trevor Paglen's talk at Transmediale, Interview with the Institute for Applied Autonomy, They make art not bioterrorism, Tracking the Torture Taxis.

Hola! I'm in Madrid stuffing myself with the sublime tortilla de patatas and checking out the projects developed this month at Medialab Prado as part of the now illustrious Interactivos? workshop. The theme of this edition is Vision Play, the public presentation is tomorrow June 14 at 6.30 pm and it's going to be extremely good.

Meanwhile the Photo Espana Festival is all over the city. Here's just an appetizer from one of the many exhibitions i've seen today:

Words, 2008

Heart of Gold, Félix Curto's solo show at La Fábrica Galería, takes its title from a song by Neil Young. It features ten photographs taken by the Spanish artist while he was visiting the Mennonite communities in America.

After the Goldrush, 2008

Dreamin´man, 2008

From the press release:
The Mennonite communities in America work the land and lead simple lives, with no cars, electricity or any other modern conveniences. All of this is an expression of their understanding of the Christian faith, and they guard their privacy extremely jealously, totally isolated from the outside world. Currently, there are Mennonite communities in 82 countries, with over a million and a half members. The members of this community are, as the artist says, "good people, united by a strong spirituality that is never mentioned and yet is perceived at all times. Life in the community turns mutual respect and assistance into something that is completely normal, routine. They are reserved men and women, but if they empathise with you they will open their hearts to you." The atmosphere in the Mennonite communities, not unlike that of a Western film, is pervaded by the philosophy of non-violence.

Curto has something of a traditionalist himself. He keeps using the Nikkon 801 AF, 35 milimeters his mother gave him almost 20 years ago. He doesn't use a tripod, nor does he require the help of an assistant. He takes only one picture in each situation. Using a digital camera would therefore make no sense to him.

Heart of Gold, 2008

Hear of Gold runs until July 19 at La Fábrica Galería in Madrid.

The Barcelona-based group Platoniq (aka Susana Noguero, Oliver Schulbaum, Ignacio García and Joan Villa Puig) gained world fame a few years ago when they launched Burn Station, a mobile self-service system for searching, listening to and copying music and audio files with no charge. Legally and under a Copyleft Licence.

Burn Station

With the motto "taking the Internet to the streets" and inspired by the way the web works, Platoniq explores new models to distribute, shape and share information, knowledge and cultures.

At the Banquete_nodos y redes, an exhibition that recently opened at LABoral, Platoniq was presenting Banco común de Conocimientos[BCC] (Bank of Common Knowledge), a kind of lab platform that engages with new ways of enhancing the distribution channels for practical and informal knowledge.

BCC in Barcelona

Inspired by an Internet shaped by the collective effort of thousands of distributed agents who publicly shared their knowledge to achieve a common goal, the BCK project is based on the firm belief that creating, sharing, transmitting and exchanging knowledge in the public sphere is a key element to the growth and development of our societies.

The Bank of Common Knowledge exports the dynamics of Free Culture and the Copyleft philosophy to general processes of knowledge generation and transmission among citizens. Work processes and methodologies are researched while the production of content, mutual education and citizen participation is carried out for the purpose of giving free access to the knowledge generated by the communities in which the Common Knowledge Bank is installed.

For more details, check the video presentation:

After having seen the Bank of Common Knowledge project at the Banquete_nodos y redes exhibition, i thought "hey, look! here's a fantastic opportunity to ask these guys a few questions!" And here i am:

You set up a BCK-2008: Free Knowledge Market last March in Barcelona. How
did the whole experience go?

Actually, we've already set up 4 free knowledge markets (this was the second one in Barcelona) during the last two years of the Bank of Common Knowledge development. Previously we also had built BCK's active nodes in Cambridge UK (Wysing Arts Centre) and in Lisbon, both ending up with the open organisation of a market.

The last Bank of Common Knowledge happened in Barcelona in April. Exchanges of knowledge took place in 3 spaces with the help of 80 volunteers.

The Bank of Common Knowledge Markets are made possible through the offers and requests that BCK receives from citizens: How does a consumer cooperative function?, How can i share wifi with my neighbours?, Is it possible to earn money through collaboration instead of competition?, Is it possible to unfreeze patent-protected scientific knowledge? What can we learn from traditional cultures in the economic context? How can we regularize immigration documents in Spain? How can we set up a wiki without computer?

BCC Lisbon

The Market of the Bank of Common Knowledge attempts to cover a wide range of topics and materialize them through free workshops and manuals for urban survival. A gathering of transgressive and generous experiences by individuals and communities who put into practice various forms of autonomy in daily life.

Those exchanges are recorded and published online under a copyleft license in order to guarantee that knowledge keep on circulating.

Besides, experimenting with new forms of participation and organization is fundamental for BCK. The BCK organization is always open and follows dynamics made of cooperation, documentation of the whole process and a responsability distributed among all the persons involved. Anyone interested can participate to BCK, either by joining the internal organization, or by offering or requesting knowledge or even by helping us produce contents to be distributed online.

BCC in Cambridge

The first days of exchange took place in November 2006 in Barcelona's CCCB cultural center. Then in 2007 in Cambridge and more recently in Lisbon.

The main topics we focus on are:

EDUCATION (P2Pedagogy)
Experiments in the transmission of knowledge.
Generating educational methodologies and systems which augment the possibility to turn each moment of one's life into an opportunity to learn.

ECONOMY
Models of auto-management of cultural projects. Exploration of economic systems sustainable for free culture.

ECOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
Going beyond the creation of free contents to engage also in strategies of exchange and recycling of knowledge in danger of disappearing.

PUBLIC SPACE
Investigating the various use of public space related to the transmission of knowledge. Exploring the existing possibilities to use public space for collective activities of exchange (guide of places and actions required to be able to use them).

CITIZEN RIGHTS
What are our rights, what can we do in case of abuse, experiences of communities who work to improve life in common.

Video of the Cambridge's market:

Video of Lisbon's:

How receptive is the general public to the concept and opportunities offered by BCK? Or is it mostly the "creative commons" crowd who is enthusiastic about the project?

The copyleft and the free culture crowd is naturally more receptive to the BCK project and to horizontal dynamics of knowledge sharing. Nevertheless, in order to make the free culture not only free, but public, the main objective of BCK is to apply the positive effects and strategies of the free software movement and p2p systems to the areas of education and citizen participation, setting free the full potential of individuals and collectives through self-determination, autonomy and infinite networking.

BCK is organized as an open source model of knowledge transfer, a laboratory for inventing and trying out new forms of production, education, organization and distribution, involving new roles for producers and receivers, experts and amateurs, teachers and students...

Again, anyone interested in taking part in the BCK's internal organization structure (teams) is welcome to do so.

Right now we are working on several strategies to lay the foundations of this mutual education network, offering every individual the chance to share their current interests with other, similarly motivated peers in the fields of ecology, technology and communication, alternative economies, civil and human rights, public space use or any knowledge to make life easier and more autonomous.

We are currently testing various knowledge transmission and communication formats, such as games, demos, workshops, first person experiences, challenges, first aid kits or take away theory. These activities are documented in a set of video manuals or knowledge capsules currently being produced for inclusion in the Bank of Common Knowledge.

However, the main goal of the project is not to build an online video archive, even if that would end up being one of the consequences. The real challenge for the Bank of Common Knowledge is to build a model of transmission and free exchange whose social organization and self-training strategies can be easily replicated.

What makes you think that you are on the right path and that the quest for a free exchange of knowledge is more than an utopia (that's my pessimistic and cynical side speaking here)?

BCK is one of the many projects that has emerged of a society where peer production and peer governance present new opportunities for individuals and groups to create value together. We try to place these new developments in both a historical context and a future oriented context. This is no utopia anymore, copyleft and the sharing of knowledge is a functional revolution.

Regarding feedback, after a long year of development, traveling, meeting people, giving workshops about BCK in different countries during the last year (lastly in Shanghai, México City and Casablanca where a node is under construction) made us realize it would be more than useful to produce a BCK manual focusing on how to build/organize/sustain local Banks of Common Knowledge, or any collective production/trading community on the basis of our experience and the experience of others. This is actually the most frequent demand to the Bank of Common Knowledge.

To fulfill that demand, we're actually developing a set of exercises/manuals which explain and apply methodologies and ethics of social and free software to social community building, looking at "atomization" of knowledge and civic participation on the basis of P2P networks and protocols. So this is clearly about P2Pedagogy.

All these games/exercises are performed offline, although they are inspired in social software and social open networks functionalities, their aim is clearly to help people to understand, practice, decide, find their own protocols of networking and encourage civic engagement and community building/sustaining. An example of it is the social tagging game we presented at LABoral, which is about applying folksonomy to offline social networks using post it notes.

The main questions the games and BCK itself try to resolve are:
Suggestion or main questions to resolve:

Atomization on a large scale (such as in the Debian APT package manager or the CVS version control system) has allowed large software projects to employ an amazing degree of decentralized, collaborative and incremental development. But what other kinds of knowledge apart from software can be atomized, and how?

Does atomization kill community?

How can we formally translate Ubuntu's like project governance in social and public space? How can we explain notions such as decentralized budget, decentralized trust etc and other human protocols that sharing and peer production involves?

Among the first public actions that BCK undertook over the years 2006 and 2007, the Platoniq group launched a research project that looked for new perspectives which would enable, on the one hand, broaden the network of BCK collaborators and, on the other hand, improve and stimulate the development of its structure, content, strategies of dynamization or the economical sustainability of the initiative, the same way one would do during the beta testing process of a software project.

To achieve this objective we entrusted several experts with a series of exercises/games that allowed the simplification of ideas, strategies and concepts related with the various technological protocols and philosophies that form the basis of the Bank of Common Knowledge, in an attempt to communicate it to a non-initiated public. Among this group of experts are the researcher Ismael Peña Lopez, Juan Freire (biologist and hyper-active blogger who explores the interaction between urban space, social networks and digital spaces), Michael Linton (creator of the mythical LETSystem in the '80s), Gregor Gimme, one of the initiators of the online community for video learning Sclipo, Enric Senabre (technological coordinator of the Observatorio para la CiberSociedad), Dmytri Kleiner (polemical leader of Dialstation, a project of "venture Communism"), or the sociologist, biologist, economist and expert in barter networks in Latin America Heloísa Primavera.

The S.O.S. project

Now a question about a project which was not exhibited at LABoral but which
i nevertheless find intriguing. The S.O.S. project is a kit to communicate
and exchange knowledge in public and private space inspired by the Speaker's
Corner. How did you use this kit and how did people react to it? Which kind
of situation did it give rise to?

Actually The S.O.S (stands for Science of Sharing) project is still under heavy development. It hasn't been tested on the streets yet. We plan to release both a software and a mobile unit which are the core of the project during a set of actions due to be held next autumn in various middle sized cities of Catalunya.

The kit contains a battery-powered sound system with microphones, a computer and an FM radio transmitter, mounted on a scooter that will serve as a 'knowledge delivery / recovery service' to facilitate temporary knowledge-exchange actions.

In a few words, and to maintain suspense till the autumn, the S.O.S project seeks to adapt the techniques of peer-to-peer media sharing to collaborative, peer-to-peer education, allowing discrete chunks of information to be broken down and passed on via a network of volunteers, this is about atomisation of knowledge and atomisation of the city. S.O.S is an analog tracker, connecting peers and seeds, reclaiming public space 2.0 of the knowledge city

S.O.S will be the result of the lessons learnt with the BCK project, as well as four years of public domain research and development, working on the burn station project, a free software-based open source project, that seeks to generate an alternative model of production and distribution of copyleft music in the public space.

Burn Station

In the case of Burn Station, the objective was to put in practice a 100% collaborative system based on three interacting communities: net labels and artists that feed the database, software developers and groups administrating local Burn Stations. An attempt to strategically combine the experience of peer-to-peer networks with the Jamaican sound system culture. (P2P on a Face 2 Face basis)

An important lesson learnt from the BURN STATION software development: test, share and further develop software in the streets before publishing it on the net. It is the best and the most rigourous software testing model imaginable. Definitely inspiring...

Nevertheless, the most interesting thing about Burn Station for us is that it has been autonomously reproduced in schools, social centers, libraries and universities in Europe and South America, demonstrating its value as an educational tool. That's exactly what we expect to happen with the S.O.S project altough the challenge is more complicated this time because there is no consumerism involved here (free distribution is not enough!), no music involved, just raw production of collective knowledge from scratch. We need to build and drive our own networks! Back to the future of commons!

Video documentation of Burn Station

Other work participating to Banquete_nodos y redes: Sightseeing telescope reveals open wifi networks in urban space.
Banquete_nodos y redes runs at LABoral in Gijón, Spain until November 3, 2008.

The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock, by Steven Jacobs (available on Amazon USA and UK.)

010 publishers write: In the films of Alfred Hitchcock, architecture plays an important role. Having worked as a set designer in the early 1920s, Hitchcock remained intensely concerned with the art direction of his films. In addition, the 'master of suspense' made some remarkable single-set films, such as Rope and Rear Window, that explicitly deal with the way the confines of the set relate to those of the architecture on screen. Spaces of confinement also turn up in the 'Gothic plot' of films in which the house is presented as an uncanny labyrinth and a trap. Furthermore, it became a Hitchcock hallmark to use famous monuments as the location for a climactic scene. Last but not least, Hitchcock used architectural motifs such as stairs and windows, which are closely connected to Hitchcockian narrative structures (suspense) or typical Hitchcock themes (voyeurism). Apart from dealing with these issues extensively, Steven Jacobs discusses at length a series of domestic buildings with the help of a number of reconstructed floor plans especially made for this publication.

1966 "Torn Curtain," Director Alfred Hitchcock. 1966 Universal. - Image MPTV.net

This is one dangerous book for people like me who don't need an excuse to jump in the sofa and watch a Hitchcock movie instead of staying in front of the computer to work. Still, no matter how many books have been written about the "Master of Suspense" i never felt compelled to read any. Until this one.

Author Steven Jacobs claimed that he had written a monograph about an non-existing architect which make more sense than one might think at first sight. After all, movie directors and production designers have been known for using film sets as an intermediary to reflect on the city of the future. Having designed more models than built houses didn't prevent architectural studio Archigram to be one of the most influential and iconic architectural studios ever. Hitchcock didn't advance the slightest step in that direction. His art did not explore possible or futuristic architecture but remained grounded in what was available at the time of films, with a marked preference for old-style furniture and bourgeois mansions (think Victorian or his own house near Guildford.)

Lobby Card from Vertigo (1963 reissue). Image tcmdb

The Wrong House (a title referring to the 1956 movie The Wrong Man) is roughly made of two parts.

The first part of the book, the theoretical one, is by far the most fascinating. It explains in details how Hitchcock regarded set design as crucial element of the drama, used both domestic elements and touristic sites as protagonists in the story but also extended the architectural language to camera movements and positions, editing and other cinematographic practices.

1954, Rear Window

Most of the settings for his movies were mounted in studio, where Hitchcock had total control over the shooting conditions. The most bourgeois house was often represented as a space of oppression, danger and a provider of the uncanny. The interior is stuffed and closed, keys give the viewers access to the murder room, and each step on a stair advances the denouement as much as it delays it. Other buildings, even the public ones, are not necessarily safer, perversion lurks behind motel doors, museums are made for mysterious encounters.

1948 James Stewart, Alfred Hitchcock, and Cast on the set of "Rope." 1948 Warner - Image MPTV.net

In location shootings, the film director had a field day toying with crowds and playing with urban icons. The former gave him some great opportunities to insert his famous cameos. The later included the Golden Gate Bridge, the British Museum, the UN Headquarters, Mount Rushmore which are so intimately connected to the films shot there that it can be said that Hitchcock tailed tourism as much as it stimulated it.

Still from Vertigo, 1958

1959, North by Northwest (via filmposters)

The second part of the book, made of case studies that dissect meticulously the architecture and internal design of 26 houses from 22 different films, is a bit overwhelming. When Jacobs hasn't been able to trace drawings of sets built in the studio, he reconstructed the floor plans of these houses, mostly on the basis of what he saw in the films. Each movie is investigated from an architectural point of view. That's how The Balestrero House in The Wrong Man is analyzed under the perspective of Kitchen sink claustrohpobia, Bates house and motel are defined as schizoid, Sebastian house in Notorious is a place for Nazi hominess and that's how Rebecca discovers that Manderley is in fact Bluebeard's Castle.

Plan of the ground floor of Manderley in the film Rebecca

I wouldn't say that The Wrong House is an architecture book. As i am much more interested in architecture than cinema i was surprised to see how metaphorically the term "architecture" was used along its pages. But then i also like to be surprised once in a while....

I'm back from Asturias which was as lovely as ever. We even had real vegetable to eat this time. The LAboral Art and Industrial Creation Centre in Gijón was opening Banquete_nodos y redes, Interactions Between Art, Science, Technology and Society in Spain's Digital Culture, an exhibition initiated by Karin Ohlenschläger and Luis Rico.

View of the LABoral shop and of the inauguration party right above it

The press conference started with a string of surprising figures listed by LABoral's Director Rosina Gómez-Baeza Tinturé. In its 14 months of activity, the centre -which has given itself the mission to foster the interaction between art, society and technology- has hosted the work of 261 creators (45 of them come from the region of Asturias), 54 workshops given by some 90 teachers to more than 3000 participants. Add to that many concerts, conferences, debates and other activities. Amazing, even for a space that covers more than 14.000 m². Which reminds me that it would be good to come back one day on the design and architecture of the centre. The public bathrooms only are worth the visit, i feel like stepping inside 2001: A Space Odyssey each time i enter there.

LABoral bathroom and a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey

Banquete_nodos y redes presents more than 30 digital and interactive works that critically and creatively explore the notion of Network as a shared matrix, not just from a technological perspective but also from a socio-cultural perspective. I'll be back with a lengthier overview of the exhibition and a small interview with its curator, the art critic Karin Ohlenschläger, later on but right now i wanted to share with you one of the best projects i saw in Gijón last week.

You've probably read about Clara Boj and Diego Diaz before, either in some media art catalog or on this blog, i interviewed them a few months ago about their project AR Magic System, their Lalalab studio and their interest for the visualization of wifi networks.

For the LABoral exhibition, the Valencia-based duo developed a sightseeing telescope named Observatorio (Observatory).

Observatorio builds upon Boj and DIaz' 2004 project Red Libre Red Visible (Free Network, Visible Network) which was born in an optimistic time when it seemed possible to achieve an utopia made of wireless, open communication networks managed by social groups offering services to the local community. At that (not so distant) time, several city governments offered free access to the WiFi network, sometimes in the entire city. The CMT (Telecommunications Market Commission) denounced those city governments for unfair competition with telecom companies, the free wifi municipal projects were canceled, and grassroot groups started installing, maintaining and extending open WiFi networks throughout Spain.

Today, some companies have adopted new tactics based on the deceptive slogan "Share your WiFi". Companies like FON, and commercial projects such as Whisher and Wefi exploit the current infrastructure of access nodes to the Internet in urban space to provide coverage to the whole city if it were an open, shared structure.

Obervatorio reflects on this scenario by informing viewers about the current state of wireless networks located in the area where the device is installed. The sightseeing telescope, installed on the Laboral tower, tracks and shows where Gijon's wifi networks are located in real time. You can visualize them on the screen of the telescope, swing it around and see which areas have a denser wifi coverage, and get additional data such as which ones among these networks are open or private. Because Observatorio is programmed to try and connect to any open network available in the area, it can send the information from the observation tower to the exhibition hall, where it is displayed on a big screen. If there is no open networks detected in the area, Observatorio remains separated from the main exhibition space, located in another building. A modification of these networks is also offered, showing an ideal configuration in which the local residents of large areas in the city could gain or share access to it.

Image courtesy LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial

After having installed Observatorio, the artists discovered many more open nodes than they expected. While testing the project at their studio in Valencia, they couldn't find more than 5% of open networks. In Gijón the percentage is higher, around 30% in the LABoral area.

From the tower Observatorio can reach theoretically almost the whole city of Gijón. The device comprises a high power uni-directional WiFi antenna with a 30º aperture, able to detect wireless networks within 1 to 4 kilometers depending on the number of obstacles encountered; a video surveillance camera with a telephoto lens with the same aperture as the WiFi antenna; and a viewer which, like a periscope, offers a real time image taken by the camera, with the WiFi networks detected by the antenna placed geographically on it.

Banquete_nodos y redes runs at LAboral Art and Industrial Creation Centre in Gijón, Spain, until November, 03, 2008. The exhibition will then travel to the ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Kartlruhe, March-July 2009.

More sightseeing telescope: The timetravel telescope, the Jurascope and the Elastic time and space telescope.

Also related: Wifi Camera Obscura.

The Gustav Zander's institute in Stockholm, founded in the late nineteenth century, featured 27 of the physician's custom-built machines.

Via Hugo Strikes Back! and boingboing. More images and information in Cabinet Magazine.

About time to finish off my reviews of New York art shows. Only two left. One is over -but god was it good, the other one runs until June 21.

Quality, 2008

The one exhibition i could not miss was Tom Sachs' lineup of new works at the Sperone Westwater. The show is called Animals so there's a fair amount of pieces which explore the presence of the animalistic in our everyday lives but there's also some quirky machines and installations.

Sachs cultivates a trashy aesthetic. Each of his sculptures is hand made by piecing together plywood, foamcore, synthetic polymer paint, hardware, and found or scavenged objects such as phone books or police barricades. There's no Prada Death Camp nor Chanel guillotine in the gallery this time but the titles and content of some of the works are nevertheless sure to get the public's attention.

Negro Music, 2008

Detail of Negro Music

First there's Negro Music which you could regard as interactive. It's a big white-painted box with a retro gangsta-style boombox inside, you insert your hands inside orange rubber gloves, rummage inside the box, select a k-7 of your favourite "negro" music, fiddle with the control buttons and play the music as loudly as you wish inside the gallery.

Waffle Bike, 2008

And Waffle Bike! Sachs has even crafted a mighty waffle-maker-bicycle, complete with a mini-fridge, a cage for chicken to lay fresh eggs as well as components to hold ingredients like whipped cream, and others we have never heard of in waffle-heaven Belgium like Pam cooking spray, and lingonberry jam.

Detail of Waffle Bike

Hardcore is already the third in a series of large-scale gun chests inspired by Renaissance dueling cabinets. The huge cupboard is shockfull of handmade wooden guns along with the tools that were used throughout their fabrication.

Hardcore, 2008

Details of Hardcore, 2008

Exhibiting these cabinets is not without a risk. As art on trial reports, Manhattan art dealer Mary Boone displayed one of them in her gallery back in 1999. The cabinet contained homemade guns but also a vase containing live 9-millimeter cartridges which visitors were invited to take as souvenirs. Ms. Brown was arrested by the police and charged with unlawful distribution of ammunition. When it was determined that the homemade guns were functional, police added unlawful weapons possession charges.

Then there are the Animals which give the tile to the show. There's a couple of installations made to please some of them such as La Guardia, an impressive tower for the exclusive use of cats and featuring a litter box requiring minimal cleaning chores, a McDonald's that serves cat food, a Japanese Zen garden with a video of clouds and birds chirping, and a penthouse with a paw-operated catnip atomizing spray.

Hours of Devotion, 2008

There's a white whale on a black piano and a tiger lamp. Most of the show is just good old Sachs fun, bricolage and subversion. The public loves it so why should Sachs change the magical formula?

The real surprise (at least for me) were the pyrographic works depicting cruel fables. They are conventional in their making and very La Fontainesque, although one suspect that most of the stories end very badly for whichever weaker creature stands in the way of the choleric wolf or the lecherous lion.

At Sperone Westwater until June 21. My Tom Sachs images.

Previously: Tom Sachs at the Fondazione Prada in Milan.

There is an end in flight, 2008

Trumpets of triumph, 2008

why on earth?, Anthony Pontius' solo exhibition at 31 grand closed on May 24 but i liked it so much that i can't help mentioning it here. Pontius recontextualizes historical imagery, stories and concepts in the today's world, mixes past and present techniques, and builds a universe which under some aspects looks familiar but is difficult to interpret and understand at first sight. The second sight doesn't help much but that doesn't prevent his paintings and studies from being utterly charming.

About time to finish off my reviews of New York art shows. Only two left. One is over -but god was it good, the other one runs until June 21.

Quality, 2008

The one exhibition i could not miss was Tom Sachs' lineup of new works at the Sperone Westwater. The show is called Animals so there's a fair amount of pieces which explore the presence of the animalistic in our everyday lives but there's also some quirky machines and installations.

Sachs cultivates a trashy aesthetic. Each of his sculptures is hand made by piecing together plywood, foamcore, synthetic polymer paint, hardware, and found or scavenged objects such as phone books or police barricades. There's no Prada Death Camp nor Chanel guillotine in the gallery this time but the titles and content of some of the works are nevertheless sure to get the public's attention.

Negro Music, 2008

Detail of Negro Music

First there's Negro Music which you could regard as interactive. It's a big white-painted box with a retro gangsta-style boombox inside, you insert your hands inside orange rubber gloves, rummage inside the box, select a k-7 of your favourite "negro" music, fiddle with the control buttons and play the music as loudly as you wish inside the gallery.

Waffle Bike, 2008

And Waffle Bike! Sachs has even crafted a mighty waffle-maker-bicycle, complete with a mini-fridge, a cage for chicken to lay fresh eggs as well as components to hold ingredients like whipped cream, and others we have never heard of in waffle-heaven Belgium like Pam cooking spray, and lingonberry jam.

Detail of Waffle Bike

Hardcore is already the third in a series of large-scale gun chests inspired by Renaissance dueling cabinets. The huge cupboard is shockfull of handmade wooden guns along with the tools that were used throughout their fabrication.

Hardcore, 2008

Details of Hardcore, 2008

Exhibiting these cabinets is not without a risk. As art on trial reports, Manhattan art dealer Mary Boone displayed one of them in her gallery back in 1999. The cabinet contained homemade guns but also a vase containing live 9-millimeter cartridges which visitors were invited to take as souvenirs. Ms. Brown was arrested by the police and charged with unlawful distribution of ammunition. When it was determined that the homemade guns were functional, police added unlawful weapons possession charges.

Then there are the Animals which give the tile to the show. There's a couple of installations made to please some of them such as La Guardia, an impressive tower for the exclusive use of cats and featuring a litter box requiring minimal cleaning chores, a McDonald's that serves cat food, a Japanese Zen garden with a video of clouds and birds chirping, and a penthouse with a paw-operated catnip atomizing spray.

Hours of Devotion, 2008

There's a white whale on a black piano and a tiger lamp. Most of the show is just good old Sachs fun, bricolage and subversion. The public loves it so why should Sachs change the magical formula?

The real surprise (at least for me) were the pyrographic works depicting cruel fables. They are conventional in their making and very La Fontainesque, although one suspect that most of the stories end very badly for whichever weaker creature stands in the way of the choleric wolf or the lecherous lion.

At Sperone Westwater until June 21.

Previously: Tom Sachs at the Fondazione Prada in Milan. Image on the homepage Tom Sachs, Mandala (detail). Courtesy Fondazione Prada Milano. Photo Attilio Marazano.

There is an end in flight, 2008

Trumpets of triumph, 2008

why on earth?, Anthony Pontius' solo exhibition at 31 grand closed on May 24 but i liked it so much that i can't help mentioning it here. Pontius recontextualizes historical imagery, stories and concepts in the today's world, mixes past and present techniques, and builds a universe which under some aspects looks familiar but is difficult to interpret and understand at first sight. The second sight doesn't help much but that doesn't prevent his paintings and studies from being utterly charming.

From what i can learn from the press we are living in food mayhem: yesterday morning a nutritionist was complaining on French tv that because the country had turned its back on the usual bread and jam breakfast in favour of American-style fat and sugar-loaded cereals, the population was at risk of fattening. In the afternoon, i was reading in La Repubblica that the soaring costs of pasta, bread, fruit and vegetables are making Mediterranean diet harder to afford. Italians are eating more cheap processed foods high in fat, sugar and salt (via WSJ.) The whole continent is complaining about the food crisis. Meanwhile, bananas are dying, eating local might not always be that energy-efficient after all and a livestock meltdown is under way across Africa, Asia and Latin America. An alarming report states that native breeds are increasingly being supplanted by Western farm animals, which may be less well able to adapt to their new environment in times of drought or disease. In Europe, some 98 per cent of vegetable varieties have disappeared over the past century and EU regulations are hastening the decline.

Yummy healthy insecty snack seen in the streets of Beijing

Mind you, researchers have devised new but rather unappealing ways to have us enjoy food like never before: fish are being trained to catch themselves, we'll be able to choose between meat from cloned animals and in vitro meat and encouraged to get better proteins by snacking on insects.

Matias Viegener and David Burns have added the corn issue on the table.
You might know them for their ongoing collaboration with Austin Young: Fallen Fruit, a project which encourage people not only to map "public fruit", fruit which grew on private trees and fell on public spaces, but also to harvest and plant fruit parks in under-utilized areas.

Back in 2004, Matias and David worked on an installation which i discovered only recently. That year, Fritz Haeg (of the Edible Estates fame) and Francois Perrin produced and curated the GardenLAb experiment. Set in a 1942 supersonic wind tunnel, the event explored the relationship Los Angeles residents have with their environment by experimenting and speculating on current and future ecologies.

The "Coop Wind Tunnel"

Corn Study humourously addresses the future of human food production and the ongoing consequences of issues that range from the latest developments in genetic manipulation, mistreatment of plants and animal species, corporate control and profit motivation, diminishing genetic diversity, modification of our ecosystem, privatization of ownership of plant's genome, etc.

Corn Study, detail (Figure 0038), 2004. Photography Austin Young

One of Corn Study's objectives was to develop a new relationship with the corn species.

Through the use of audio and autosuggestion the artists deployed Aldous Huxley's theories of hypnopedia: the most powerful educational device being unconscious suggestion to the embryo to maximize its developmental potential.

The school is set up on ten tabletops with different learning stations, with the corn seeds learning through audio speakers as well as by the use of electric fans behind a row of books, which carry knowledge through the air like pollen. In this program of accelerated learning, the individual kernel is not expected to learn everything -- the species as a whole will absorb the knowledge collectively. The variety of knowledge bases is hoped to heighten the corn's wisdom, especially since despite their enormous acquisition of knowledge, humans have acquired so little wisdom.

As the artists conclude in their presentation of the project: While it may take many generations before the outcome of our experiment can be demonstrated, we are hoping for positive mutations and raised consciousness in the corn, to be passed along to other species. At this stage of global development, humans can no longer be entrusted with full stewardship of the environment. Perhaps if other species can intervene, they will do a better job.

I asked Matias and David to tell me more about the school for corn species:

We've been hearing and reading about genetic manipulation for years now. I sometimes think that consumers got used to it, accepted the idea and wouldn't mind buying and eating GMO (or even cloned meat when it lands in our supermarket fridges.)
What exactly should we be worried about? What is different in the new forms of manipulations Corn Study comments on?

While we were interested in genetic manipulation we wanted to work away from it. The basis of Corn Study was the idea that corn had been studied and manipulated more than any other plant than perhaps soybeans. While we're disinclined to GM foods, it seems clear that all our agricultural foods have been manipulated for millennia. So we wanted to refocus the question of GM foods into the broader question of how humans have studied and changed our foods without any seeming consideration for the nature (or the education) of the foods themselves. What if we could give the corn some agency of its own, educating it about its human hosts. Our ironic goal was to find a way for the corn to gain some power over its own fate, to "speak out" if it could, by learning more about us and both the good and the bad of the human universe.

What does corn education involves exactly? Could you guide us through the whole curriculum?

While there was a lot of specific material, there was no defined curriculum for the corn school. Or maybe a better way to say this is that we could have endlessly kept adding educational material to the school. Here's a quote from the original text that was distributed to visitors:

"The curriculum is composed of texts, lectures and readings in political science, history, psychology, philosophy, foreign languages and cultural studies; we have tried to select materials that help outline the background of our global socioeconomic, political and environmental circumstances. For the student's personal growth we include tapes on self-actualization, meditation, hypno-suggestion, and personal dynamics. The songs are mostly pop music from the 60's and 70's, chosen to reflect the optimism of a time now fallen by the wayside. Included in our coursework are Noam Chomsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Marxist theory, Mahatma Ghandi, Winston Churchill, Neil Armstrong, Machiavelli, Plato, Immanuel Kant, Abraham Lincoln, Anthony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Lao Tzu, Gloria Steinem, Elizabeth Vandiver, greek myths, Howard Zinn, Ken Wilber, Malcolm x, Michael Moore, Ralph Nader, Lyndon B. Johnson, Al Sharpton, Terence McKenna, Aldous Huxley, Paul Scheele, Michael Pollan, Henry Thoreau, various international Pimsleur language audiobooks, The New Christie Minstrels, Melanie, Paul Williams, Ray Charles, The Carpenters, Cher, Three Dog Night, The 5th Dimension, Donovan, Bread, Dolly Parton, Jefferson Airplane, Sly and the Family Stone, the Doors, and John Denver."

Do you welcome both "natural" and modified corns in your classes? Is there any segregation?

We welcomed all corn to the school, including GM corn. We tried for a good mix of modern hybrids and ancient or "heirloom" corn varieties. We don't think one group is in any way superior to the others. The idea was to empower the species as a whole to make collective decisions and perhaps take actions to both improve their lot in the world and deflect any more human mismanagement of it. Halfway through the design we realized that all seeds of all species should be welcomed to the school, without distinction between crops and weeds, the good or the bad, which are all values that come from humans and not from nature itself.

Giant Iowa corn

Why did you choose to work with corn? Wouldn't animals seem like a more natural and rewarding choice?

We worked with corn because of the place it holds in American culture. Americans consume more corn products than any other nationality (and in recent years corn has been blamed for a host of our health problems.) We love animals but this sort of project was hard enough to mount with the immobile corn plants... it's hard to think how we would have done it with a herd of cattle.

I read that plants communicate. Do you expect your corn students to spread their newly acquired knowledge to their companions?

It's certainly possible for plants to communicate, and perhaps we succeeded in communicating with them, and that our ideas got passed along the botanical spectrum. Of course the real audience for Corn Study was human. We felt that in addressing the corn, the humans might consider seeing the universe from a less human-centric position. Just as we have no preconception about how these ideas would flow through to the plants, we were very open to how they might arrive to the human spectator. A key to our work here is the use of play combined with what we think of as vital issues of our times. Much of our work plays on corniness as a way to be serious, on the relation between pure, purposeful aesthetic or cultural ideas and the low, foolhardy kitsch of the ordinary world. We're not interested in art that's pedantic, but we do care about conveying ideas and questioning values. We're not especially interested in art that creates objects either, but we are invested in the way in which artmaking expands the variety of containers for ideas (and can make things in general look nicer).

Thanks Matias and David!

All images are from the installation at GardenLAb.

Related: Nigel Helyer´s Host, in which an audience of several crickets attend a lecture concerning the sex life of insects and Aron's School for Frogs.

I'm back from New York for more than a week and getting ready for new adventures in little Europe. Time to turn a page on the transcontinental trip by throwing in a couple of posts the best exhibitions i saw while i was in Manhattan. Some of them are still up till the end of the month, others have already closed their doors. Here we go...

In the collective exhibition AMERIKA: Back to the Future, David Herbert, Anthony Goicolea, Marcus Kenney, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy play with American icons. The artists vision is somewhat dark, critical (how could it not be) but often humorous. Starship Enterprise is re-visited by future cavemen, Mickey Mouse goes on a size-zero diet and a burnt-down chain retailer's suburban storefront aimlessly rotates on a plate.

Marcus Kenney, The First Americans, 2006

My favourite by far were Marcus Kenney's assemblage of discarded and old magazine clippings, book illustrations, old receipts, stamps, wallpaper etc. to create nostalgic imagery dealing with contemporary issues. The stars of his compositions are weird children, young women setting foot on distant planets or a girl walking on crutches painted with the motifs of the U.S. flag, etc. A closer look reveal the figures of U.S. presidents and American natives. The colourful and (at first sight) cheerful collages are hinting at some of the pages of American history which do not tend to make its citizens very proud.

Marcus Kenney, Like a Good Neighbor, 2008

On view at Postmasters through June 21, 2008. More images.

I walked to the edge of the art Chelsea area to see Actus Reus, Tamara Kostianovsky's solo show. Ready to be butchered beef carcasses were hanging on hooks. Disturbing and so "life"-like that the gallery almost smelled of meat, the animals were made out of discarded human clothes.

Actus Reus is the second part of The Proper Animal, a three-part multidisciplinary program comprised of three solo exhibitions by artists who utilize sometimes disturbing animal iconography to bring ethical considerations into play. The next episode, a show by Julian Montague, looks equally fascinating and as it will focus on spiders i suspect it will be equally repulsive as well.

Closed recently at the Black and White Gallery, Chelsea. My images.

I got to discover the work of Dutch collective Antistrot by chance. I was in the building where they are having a solo exhibition to see another show. I happened to take the wrong corridor and enter the wrong gallery. That was for the best. Wild and powerful styles manage to cohabit almost peacefully on Antistrot's paintings: animals you'd see on the walls of your favourite city, gangster faces you encounter mostly in fanzines, monsters like you'd get in a fairy tale without happy ending and busty girls being well... mostly very busty.

Ich Möchte Fliegen Können, 2008

Current members of Antistrot are Paul Börchers, David Elshout, Johan Kleinjan, Silas Schletterer, Michiel Walrave and Bruno Ferro Xavier da Silva, with additional help from Charlie Dronkers.

Video:

Antistrot from Saratecchia on Vimeo.

What we do is Secret is at Sara Tecchia Roma New York until June 21. My antiimages, also on artnet.

Shot in coastal waters and regions as far apart on every aspect as Australia, Japan, Antarctica, Kuwait, Iraq and California, An-My Lê's photographs examine intersecting themes of scientific exploration, military power, environmental crises, fantasies of empire and the vast ungovernable oceans that connect nations and continents.

An-My Lê, Target Practice, USS Peleliu, 2005

An-My Lê, Oden, Swedish Ice Breaker, McMurdo, Antarctica, 2008

Although the themes and settings are deeply grounded into reality, the images give an eerie feeling. The structures, military equipment, boats and landscapes captured by the photographer seem almost too big and out of this world to be true.

Seen at Murray Guy (the show is now closed)

Shuli Hallak's photographs document cargo in its state of transit between production and consumption. Almost every manufactured product humans consume spends time in a shipping container, yet most of us have little clue about the process by which goods are actually transported.

New York Container Terminal, 4, 2005

Fascinated by cargos, the photographer embarked on a container ship in New York and traveled to Florida, crossed the Panama Canal and ended the journey in Guayaquil, Ecuador to pick up some bananas.

CSAV Chicago, 2005

On view at Moti Hasson through June 28.