Mel Chin, Safehouse, 2008, existing house, stainless steel, steel, wood, plywood, Gatorboard, lead-encapsulation paint, automotive body and paint finishes, brass thumbtacks, 6,000 unique “Fundred Dollar Bills,” 18' x 22' x 40'.

via Artforum Critic's Picks:

via Artnet:

OH YES THEY DID!

The stunt involved a great number of people, including an art professor at Hunter College, a couple of actual (disgruntled?) staffers of the Times itself, the Williamsburg collective Not An Alternative and the activist art team known as the Yes Men (a.k.a. Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, who go by many other aliases).

The fake paper itself is an impressive piece of work. Sharply written and stylistically acute, the 14-page special issue breathes a sense of defiant idealism that is largely missing from the fake news industry these days. Though shaped as a parody, the meticulous Times clone actually sets out quite reasonable policy goals for a progressive administration.

It is dated July 4, 2009, and meant as a sort of missive from a more hopeful future. Though reportedly six months in the making, the publication very much captures the "Obama moment" -- a profound sense of possibility, mixed with a broad rejection of the politics of the last eight years and a sense of urgency about the present.

While headlines about the war and the economy catch the eye, it is the below-the-fold feature, "Popular Pressure Ushers Recent Progressive Tilt," that sets the tone. Here’s the lede: "The spate of reform initiatives undertaken by the Administration and both houses of Congress can be attributed directly to grassroots advocacy, according to a comprehensive study due out this month." The point of the project overall, the organizers say, is "to help jump-start our imaginations" about what is possible right now, if people are willing to fight for it, a theme that is repeated over and over throughout.

Here are some other highlights: [read on]

via email:

Artists Space and Printed Matter are pleased to announce the podcast of The Three: artist – activist – feminist, a round-table discussion featuring AA Bronson and Ute Meta Bauer in conversation, moderated by Chrysanne Stathacos.

This Blue Room event was held at Artists Space on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 5:30pm.

The Three: artist – activist – feminist brought together 30 invited guests from diverse backgrounds. The small size facilitated easy conversation, and refreshments were served. The round-table coincided with Printed Matter's exhibition Fierce Pussy and PS1's Wack! exhibition.

The 90-minute conversation reflected on feminist artist/activist actions of the late 1980s to mid 1990s and the effect these issues or actions have on us today.

To listen to the podcast please go to www.artistsspace.org/index.php/site/webcast_permalink/the_three_artist_activist_feminist

Included in the scope of the conversation were:

• Informationsdienst (Information Service) was a project by Ute Meta Bauer, Tine Geissler and Sandra Hastenteufel from 1992-94 touring to 15 different venues, including alternative spaces and museums. Silvia Kolbowski edited a presentation in October No 71, MIT Press, 1995;

• fierce pussy actions were carried out by Nancy Brooks Brady, Joy Episalla, Zoe Leonard, Carrie Yamaoka, and others in New York City from 1991 through 1994. The publication fierce pussy includes tear-out facismile posters from the period, suitable for wheat-pasting (Printed Matter, Inc., New York, 2008).

• The Abortion Project, a collaboration by Kathe Burkhart and Chrysanne
Stathacos, commemorated the Manifeste de 343, a bold demand for
women's reproductive rights published in 1971 in Le Nouvel Observateur, France. It was presented at Artists Space, Simon Watson Gallery, Real Art Ways, Hallwalls, and New Langton Arts between 1991 and 1993.

• Time Capsule: A Concise Encyclopedia by Women Artists, was edited by Robin Kahn with introductions by Kathy Acker and Avital Ronell, and contributions by more than 500 women artists from all over the world, including Kenya, the Czech Republic, Russia, and Cuba (SOS International and Creative Time, New York, 1995).

• PAD/D (Political Art Documentation/Distribution archive), an artists' collective conceived by Lucy Lippard in 1979, was active through 1988. Its archive was organized by Barbara Moore and Mimi Smith and donated to the MOMA Library.

Participants: Ute Meta Bauer / AA Bronson / Chrysanne Stathacos /
Judith Barry / Nancy Brooks Brady / Kathe Burkhart / Mia Enell / Joy Episalla / Catherine Facerias / Nancy Friedmemann / Maxine Henryson / Robin Kahn / Joan Jonas / Laura Kaplan / Silvia Kolbowski /
Mark Krayenhoff / Elisabeth Lebovici / Zoe Leonard / Amy Lipton /
Mark Looney / Barbara Moore / Miriam Schaer / Saher Shah /
Susan Silas / Mary Anne Staniszewski / Ginger Brooks Takahiashi / Rebecca Quaytman / Martha Wilson / Carrie Yamaoka / Octavio Zaya

Artists Space Staff: Mirelle Borra / Benjamin Weil / Meredith Johnson / Amy Owen / Hillary Wiedemann / Stephanie Howe

The New AGO, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

I spent last week in Toronto eating and drinking with friends and going to art openings, the major one being for the re-opening of the Art Gallery of Ontario (new building/re-design: Frank Gehry). Here are pics from the opening for the artists in the Permanent Collection, November 13, 2008.

I was there with Bill Jones, my partner in crime, whose piece "Elevations Levitations and the Twist," is in the AGO's permanent collection. Here's an image of the original installation, followed by an image from the new AGO installation:

Bill Jones: "Elevations, Levitations and the Twist," 1974, Colour and black and white photographs mounted on wood, dowel legs, 1.2 x 12.2 meters (4 x 40 feet). Installation view, Bill Jones, a Survey, The Vancouver Art Gallery, 1976. Collection, The Art Gallery of Ontario.
[back to Bill Jones catalogue index]

Bill Jones: "Elevations Levitations and the Twist (detail)," shown at Toronto's A Space in 1974 and now in the permanent collection of The Art Gallery of Ontario; presented as part of the reopening exhibitions at The New AGO in November 2008. (photo: J.Garnett)

Bill Jones at the new AGO (General Idea installation; photo: J.Garnett)

more on the new AGO via NYTimes:

Gallery Italia, the new AGO (photo: J.Garnett)

Architecture Review | Art Gallery of Ontario
Gehry Puts a Very Different Signature on His Old Hometown’s Museum
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
Published: November 14, 2008

TORONTO — Frank Gehry has often said that he likes to forge deep emotional bonds with his architecture projects.

But the commission to renovate the Art Gallery of Ontario here must have been especially fraught for him. Mr. Gehry grew up on a windy, tree-lined street in a working-class neighborhood not far from the museum. His grandmother lived around the corner, where she kept live carp handy in the bathtub for making her gefilte fish.

Given that this is Mr. Gehry’s first commission in his native city, you might expect the building to be a surreal kind of self-reckoning, a voyage through the architect’s subconscious.

So the new Art Gallery of Ontario, which opened to the public on Friday, may catch some fans of the architect off guard. Rather than a tumultuous creation, this may be one of Mr. Gehry’s most gentle and self-possessed designs. It is not a perfect building, yet its billowing glass facade, which evokes a crystal ship drifting through the city, is a masterly example of how to breathe life into a staid old structure.

And its interiors underscore one of the most underrated dimensions of Mr. Gehry’s immense talent: a supple feel for context and an ability to balance exuberance with delicious moments of restraint.

Instead of tearing apart the old museum, Mr. Gehry carefully threaded new ramps, walkways and stairs through the original. As you step from one area to the next, it is as if you were engaging in a playful dance between old and new.

The original building, an imposing stone Beaux-Arts structure completed in 1918, grew in fits and starts over nearly a century. A wing designed to match the original style was added to the main building in the 1920s; a modern sculpture center and gallery shop, clad in precast concrete, were built in 1974.

The most damaging addition, however, was a two-story structure that the architect Barton Myers grafted onto the front of the old building on Dundas Street in the early 1990s. The addition’s low brick form was intended to make the museum more accessible but ended up looking cheap and tawdry. The central entrance was also moved off to one side, which meant that visitors had to pass through a labyrinth of spaces before reaching the heart of the museum.

Mr. Gehry’s first task was to clean up this mess. He tore away that addition, restoring a grand, central point of entry. He consolidated all of the museum’s commercial functions — bookstore, cafe, restaurant, theater — at one end of the building, reasserting the primacy of the museum and its art while creating a vibrant communal enclave at that street corner.

The new glass facade, swelling out one story above the sidewalk, seems to wrap the building and embrace passers-by below. Its faceted glass panels, supported by rows of curved wood beams, evoke the skeleton of a ship’s hull or the ribs of a corset. At either end of the building, the glass peels back to reveal powerful crisscrossing steel and wood structural beams.

The unpretentious materials bring to mind one of Mr. Gehry’s most powerful early works: his own 1978 house in Santa Monica, Calif., which he described as “a dumb box” wrapped in a skin of chain link, galvanized metal and plywood.

Yet an even greater strength of the museum design is how it suggests the interrelationship of art and the city. The bottom portion of the glass overhanging the street angles back slightly to reflect the facades of the pretty Victorian and Georgian houses across the way; the upper section tilts back to reflect the sky. Just above the glass facade, you glimpse the top of the new big, blue box that houses the contemporary-art galleries, its blocky form balanced on top of the old building.

The results are refreshing. Mr. Gehry doesn’t put art on a pedestal; he asserts its importance while wedding it to everyday life. The rest of the design unfolds in a meandering, almost childlike narrative. An exposed stud wall frames the entrance, blending into the classical stone shell while adding a touch of warmth. From here, a long sinuous ramp snakes its way through the center of the lobby. The ramp, which provides wheelchair access but can be used by anyone, is an odd conceit. Yet it serves the purpose of slowing your pace as you move toward the galleries, prodding you to leave outside distractions behind.

As you travel deeper into the building, you experience a delightful tension between old and new. From the lobby you enter a court framed on four sides by the original museum’s classical arcades. A glass roof supported on steel trusses has been cleaned up, and on a sunny day a heavenly light pours into the space from two stories above.

At the far end of the court, a spectacular new spiraling wood staircase rises from the second floor, punching through the glass roof and connecting to the contemporary gallery floors in the rear of the building. The staircase leans drunkenly to one side as it rises, and the tilt of the form sets the whole room in motion. When you reach the first landing, the stair rail keeps rising rather than becoming level with the floor, so that your view back across the court temporarily disappears and then returns. It’s as if you were riding a wave.

This is a textbook example of how architecture can be respectful of the past without being docile. All the old spaces and the memories they house are brought lovingly back to life.

Mr. Gehry shows the most restraint in the galleries. Some have been left completely untouched, and others, like the Thomson Canadian gallery, have been subtly tweaked. Big wooden baseboards have been added to keep the eye upward, focused on the art. Doors are cut into the corners of some of the galleries so that you enter them diagonally, which preserves wall space. (One flaw is a series of rails at waist level that were designed to allow you to lean to view smaller paintings; they cast a distracting shadow on the wall, and the effect is fussy.)

Mr. Gehry seems to have had more fun with the contemporary galleries. Big wood-frame windows offer views onto the park at the back, and skylights funnel sunlight into the upper-floor spaces. The galleries are conceived as big white cubes with a few smaller, boxy spaces arranged inside, shifts in scale that give curators more display choices. They also add an element of surprise: you’re not always sure what to expect when you round a corner.

The climax arrives in the Gallery Italia, a long, narrow sculpture corridor just behind the new glass facade. The entire composition snaps into place. The facade’s gorgeous curved surface cleaves you close to the old building. Gazing toward the ends of the hall, where the glass curls over and then peels back, you think of the gills of a fish opening up to let in air.

As you watch the figures jostling outside and then turn to the sculptures, urban life and art seem in perfect balance.

And suddenly you grasp what’s so moving about this place, despite its flaws. The exuberance is here, of course. But something else tugs at you: the architect’s humility in addressing the past.

via NYTimes 'City Room' blog:

Cooper Union removed a banner showing a 1953 Picasso portrait of Stalin from the facade of its historic Foundation Building on East Seventh Street. (Photo: Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times)

After complaints to the city Buildings Department, and concern from the Urkainian community in the East Village, Cooper Union removed a giant banner with a reproduction of a Picasso drawing of Joseph Stalin. That decision has outraged Lene Berg, the 43-year-old Norwegian artist who included the banner as part of her one-woman art installation, ???Stalin by Picasso, or Portrait of Woman with Mustache,??? in the school???s historic Foundation Building, on East Seventh Street.



???I didn???t get any explanation of what happened,??? Ms. Berg, who is based in Berlin, said in a phone interview this week. She said Cooper Union officials removed the banner last Friday, five days after it went up, without consulting either her or Sara Reisman, associate dean of Cooper Union???s School of Art and the curator of the exhibition.

???They took it down before I even had a chance to know what was going on,??? she said. ???In a sense, I think it???s self-censorship on their part.??? She said she asked Cooper Union to close the entire show, because the banner was an integral part of it. ???They ruined my show, my work,??? she said.

In a statement issued to Cooper Union staff members and students, the university said it removed the banner after the Buildings Department, which had received complaints about it, pointed out the school did not have a permit for it. The school also said the removal of the banner occurred as a ???gesture of respect for our neighbors,??? since this year marked the 75th anniversary of a famine imposed by Stalin that killed millions of Ukrainians.

The famine began in 1932-1933 as the result of Stalin???s collectivization of agriculture. Millions of independent farmers, known as kulaks, perished. (The deaths were largely overlooked by Walter Duranty, a correspondent for The New York Times who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for a series of articles about the Soviet Union, articles that were later discredited as too credulous of Soviet propaganda. The Pulitzer board declined in 2003 to revoke the award, and The Times does not have the award in its possession.)

Although Ms. Berg is no Stalinist ??? her art installation is intended to be a critique of contemporary politics and the power of representation ??? the image of the Soviet leader upset many in the historic Ukrainian community that has thrived in the East Village since the 1940s. Although many Ukrainian-Americans have moved away, the neighborhood remains a cultural hub.

???I was surprised when the banner went up, and I am pleased that it came down,??? said Jaroslaw Leshko, the president of the board of trustees at the Ukrainian Museum on East Sixth Street.

Mr. Leshko, a professor emeritus at Smith College, said: ???I am an art historian and a profound believer in creative freedom of expression. That will never change.???

But putting a giant Stalin banner on the face of the school???s headquarters was insensitive, he said.

???Perhaps the banner can still be viewed in another context, inside the building, without an aggressive public face,??? he said. ???That would satisfy everybody, certainly me. I want the image to exist as a work of art and to have an appropriate presentation.???

Mr. Berg, who is based in Berlin, said the brouhaha over the banner was ironic, because the original Picasso image was not, in fact, seen as sympathetic to Stalin. Commissioned by Louis Aragon, a Stalinist sympathizer, for publication in a French Communist weekly newspaper, Les Lettres Fran??aises, the image was viewed as unflattering of the Soviet leader, and prompted widespread condemnation of the artist by French Communists, she said.

Below is a statement released by the Cooper Union, as supplied by Claire McCarthy, the school???s director of public affairs:

On Friday, Oct. 31, the city???s Department of Buildings ??? after receiving complaints about Lene Berg???s banner installation entitled ???Stalin by Picasso, or Portrait of Woman with Mustache??? ??? informed the Cooper Union that the three banners installed on the fa??ade of the Cooper Union Foundation Building were in violation of city permit regulations and had to be removed. The Cooper Union is in the process of resubmitting permit applications to determine if the banners can be reinstalled.

In addition to this development, the Cooper Union was made aware that this year marks the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor, the decimation of the Ukrainian population through imposed famine, which took place in 1932-33 under Joseph Stalin???s rule. If we are granted permits to reinstall the banners, installation will not commence until after the New York Ukrainian community???s commemoration events on Nov. 15, as a gesture of respect for our neighbors.

In the meantime, at the wish of the artist Lene Berg, the gallery component of the show ??? two videos and two book projects ??? installed in the Houghton Gallery will be closed until further notice.

via Southernist, 10/30/08:

ART/SCENE: Prospect.1 New Orleans opens 11/1

Photo: Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times.

Jeffery Corrick, artistic director of the Wings Theater in the Federal Archive Building, said his new annual rent would be $90,000 and his budget is $100,000.

via NYTimes:

Village Nonprofit Groups Say They Are Surprised by a Steep Rise in Rents
By DAN LEVIN
Published: October 13, 2008

The Federal Archive Building, a sprawling Romanesque Revival structure near the waterfront in the West Village, has played many roles since it was built in 1899. For decades it was a fortress where government documents gathered dust, before becoming a post office and then falling vacant.

In the early 1980s, when the western edge of the Village was rather forlorn, the hulking building was reincarnated as a habitat for the wealthy and a haven for nonprofit cultural groups and social service providers.

Most of the 10-story building, which was transferred to state ownership from the federal government in the 1970s, was converted into 479 luxury apartments, as well as commercial space. Part of three floors and the basement were leased at below-market rents to four small theater groups and to four organizations helping drug addicts, the elderly, small literary publishers and advocating for gay rights.

But now, some of those organizations, which helped revitalize the neighborhood, are facing huge rent increases that could force them not only from the building but from the neighborhood.

The neighborhood is much nicer than when the nonprofit tenants moved into the raw spaces in the archive building, on Christopher Street between Greenwich and Washington Streets. Gleaming high-rise buildings line the once-decayed waterfront, and gentrification has long since pushed out many of the neighborhood’s artists, musicians and playwrights.

Celebrities walk tiny pedigreed dogs past the D’Agostino supermarket in the building’s southern end, while office workers head to yoga classes at the Crunch gym in the building’s northern end.

Some residents complain that the loss of four theater companies would further deplete the West Village’s cultural heritage. “We’ve seen over and over again that the pioneers who made the Village the Village end up being forced out,” said Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. “There is a certain unease in the neighborhood about our western edge being turned into the condo coast. While it may be great for real estate values, it’s not great for making a community.”

In the early 1980s, state officials gave the Rockrose Development Corporation permission to convert the vacant red-brick building into luxury apartments, but with a condition: The company would have to set aside 54,000 square feet for local nonprofit groups whose rent would be 80 percent of the market rate .

The lease that those tenants signed with Rockrose was for 25 years, and it expires at the end of this month. During the summer, Rockrose informed the nonprofit tenants that their annual rents would increase by as much as 500 percent, according to a statement by the developer at a recent meeting of the local community board’s zoning and housing committee.

The announcement sent many of the tenants into a panic.

“We and Rockrose live in different universes,” said Jeffery Corrick, the artistic director of Wings Theater, which has produced new plays on its small basement stage for 18 years. Mr. Corrick said Rockrose told his organization that its monthly rent would increase to $7,500 from $1,500.

That translates to an annual rent of $90,000, while the group’s annual budget is $100,000. “What’s reasonable to them would, in effect, drive us out of business,” Mr. Corrick said.

Other tenants also said they were surprised by the size of the increase. Jeffrey Horowitz, the founder of Theater for a New Audience, which runs a drama program that introduces Shakespeare into city public schools, said Rockrose told the group in July that starting this month, its annual rent would rise to $70,000 from $22,000. “There was no warning,” he said. “It takes a year to raise funds for fiscal budgets, and even then it would be impossible. They’re doing this in a way that is frankly brutal.”

Patricia Dunphy, a vice president of Rockrose, said the nonprofit organizations knew an increase was coming because they were warned that their rents would be raised once the leases expired. “This was not a big surprise,” she said.

Local elected officials have become involved in the dispute, hoping to find a way to allow the nonprofits to keep their spaces. The community board is pressuring the Empire State Development Corporation, which owns the property, to work out a compromise.

“These not-for-profits perform a lot of important services, and now they’re being priced out of the neighborhood they helped found,” said Brad Hoylman, the chairman of Community Board 2, which covers the area.

The development corporation and the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, have said they are meeting with both sides to find a solution. But it is unclear how much state officials can do, because Rockrose signed a 99-year lease with the state on the building in 1982, making the company the effective landlord.

Some of the nonprofit organizations, including Heritage of Pride, a gay advocacy group, and the Village Center for Care, a health services agency that receives government financing, said they had reached a verbal understanding with Rockrose on an increase they could afford.

They are waiting to see what the negotiations might yield. “We’re a microcosm of what’s happening to nonprofits all across the city: the costs of rent, transportation and health care make it really tough to stay in New York,” said Arthur Webb, the chief executive of Village Care. “But Rockrose made it very clear they wanted us as a tenant.”

Some of the nonprofits noted that the increase came at an especially inopportune time for fund-raising. “Foundation giving is tied to a foundation’s stock portfolio,” said Jeffrey Lependorf, the executive director of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, a tenant since 1991. “To find new money in this terrible economic climate will make this very difficult. We need time so we aren’t forced out and made homeless.”

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Bill Jones & Ben Neill perform at Monkeytown., originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

Here are some pics and a video from last night's performance at Monkeytown...

Bill Jones + Ben Neill @ Monkeytown from joy garnett on Vimeo.

via email:

Hello!
Please be advised of the inaugural smudging of The Greater New York Smudge Cleanse this Saturday in Greenpoint! We will be meeting at the corner of Apollo St. and Norman Ave at 1 pm and processioning down to McGolrick Park (please see the map link below w/ all details or the event website)

It is supposed to be a sunny day, but in case of any threatening clouds or if you want more information on the project, please check the website:
www.nycsmudge.com

Greenpoint map; if you can't come this weekend, don't worry - there are three more events...

via nycsmudge :

The Greater New York Smudge Cleanse, a public art project by Jeanine Oleson, will waft through the streets of New York City. Witness the world's largest sage smudge stick ritualistically cleansing negativity from New York City at four different sites in October and November. This traveling public art project applies the ancient practice of smoking out dormant bad energies to contemporary challenges including environmental pollution in Greenpoint and Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn; gentrification driving queer communities out of Manhattan's West Village; and pre-election anxiety/U.S. economic imperialism on the steps of Federal Hall. Each event will include a procession followed by a gathering with food and community organizations, activists, researchers and performers including the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, Newtown Creek Alliance, and a tea party at the Stonewall Inn.

Smudging is an ancient practice of cleansing space with smoke from bundled and burned herbs, generally sage. The burning of herbs for emotional, psychic, and spiritual purification is common practice among many religious, healing, and spiritual groups. It is thought that the sage smoke attaches to bad energies and releases it into another space where it will be regenerated into positive energy. The world's largest sage smudge stick was built in New Mexico, where sage grows plentifully. It is 10 feet long—"Supersized" to combat negativity in contemporary times. Oleson's project seeks to cleanse New York and it's residents of eco-destruction, election anxiety, gentrification, heterosexism, U.S. imperialism, classism, racism and greed.

Saturday, October 11, 1 pm

Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Site of perhaps the largest oil spill in American history, Greenpoint sits on top of the 17-30 million gallons constituting the ExxonMobil oil spill, with no clear plan of how it will be removed and little attention paid to the health and welfare of those in the neighborhood.

Meet at the corner of Norman Ave. and Apollo St. and proceed to McGolrick Park, near the Nassau Ave and Monitor St. entrance. Nearest train is the Nassau Ave. stop of the G train.

Saturday, October 18, 1:30 pm

Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn

Gowanus Canal is a very polluted waterway known to contain STDs/PCPs, kill whales, and possibly hold the key to new strains of antibiotics! This smudge is part of Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club Oktoberfest celebration so there will be canoe rides in the Canal, demonstrations, and food.

Meet at 2nd St. and Bond St. near the Carroll St. stop on the F/G trains.

Saturday, October 25, 1 pm

West Village, Manhattan

A procession starting at Pier 45 and traveling across Christopher Street, home to generations of queer history, ending at the Stonewall Inn, a site of gay resistance. A party/discussion will occur upstairs.

Meet at Pier 45, east picnic benches then proceed across Christopher Street to the Stonewall Inn. Take PATH or 1 trains to Christopher St. station and walk west.

Monday, November 3, 1 pm

Federal Hall, Manhattan

The site of George Washington's inauguration as the first President, Federal Hall is a symbol of the United State's political history. This smudging is happening the day before the 2008 presidential election, an event that has stirred strong emotions/anxieties about the nation's future. Federal Hall is also located on Wall Street, the symbol of international economic control. This event also seeks to smudge away the bad energy associated with U.S. economic imperialism and current financial anxieties. Since it is impossible to actually burn on site, a series of dances, performances and talks are planned with the remainder of the smudge stick being given to individuals to burn where they deem necessary!

Meet on the front steps, 26 Wall St. (at Broad St.) Take the 2/3 or 4/5 to Wall Street, 1 or R/W to Rector Street, or A/C to Fulton Street.

Contact: Jeanine Oleson
nycsmudge@gmail.com

via Rhizome News, Oct 6, 2008:

Questions, Comments, Reactions?
By Marisa Olson on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 12:01 pm.

When the cinematic masterpiece Wayne's World was released in 1992, their tag line was, "You'll Laugh, You'll Cry...You'll Hurl!" Who among us couldn't say the same about the media blunders we've seen recently, in connection with the U.S. presidential elections? Brooklyn-based artistic duo MTAA dramatize this sort of overwhelming desire to emote in their newest project, Our Political Work, which they describe as Beckett-like. The "Waiting For Godot" playwright might well approve of their creation, which features 141 clips of the artists screaming, laughing, and yelling as they wait in vain for something to change. The clips are randomly strung together using generative software, not unlike the clips in their One Year Performance Video, thus locking them in a state of perpetual indignity. The longer one watches, though, the more they are called upon to consider the roles of the artists and the very nature of their "political work." Are they political agents or spectators? Are their blurts and indiscretions responses to the behavior of political actors, or are they themselves enacting politics? Take a look for yourself, online [also here]. The piece is hosted by Lisboa 20 Arte Contemporânea, whose LX 2.0 Project commissioned the work. - Marisa Olson

Image: MTAA, Our Political Work, 2008 (Screenshot)