catch-up, links, tidbits, etc

Hey All:

Been in Wales at this conference over the last 5 days or so, and lots has happened in the world since then, so this’ll be a kind of ranty catch-up of random and, depending on who you are and what you like, potentially unimportant things. Nicole and my presentations went pretty well, thanks for thinking of us – I’ll be posting a draft of the paper on implicitbody.net in the coming weeks; most important to me, got some great feedback on where to go from here with the dissertation. And I think Nicole is feeling good about the new directions in her own research. In no particular order:

New South African Art blogs: art matters and midnight kitchen. The former is anonymous and the latter is Rat Western – both are based in Joburg and both seem to be pretty good so far. I am ambiguous about anonymity, given I’m not sure what they are protecting themselves from and, at least with Robert Sloon, it feels like a faux humbleness (everyone knows who he is in “real life” – even tho no one knew who he was before the blog – and he’s more than willing to appear at exhibitions all over the world – mostly to exhibit himself…). What are the reasons, the real reasons, for anonymity in this case? All that said, glad to have more writing on SA art online, especially in joburg – go for it, “Jane” and Rat. Opposed to the former (or at least what she implied on her first post), I think we do need more “irreverent bloggers.” (Tho I question her judgment of “Art Heat’s … frank reportage sans pretension”; I appreciate Art Heat as much as the next guy  – and featured them on my site, and in Contempo, very early on – but until recently you had to wade through so much crap just to get any content at all; it was mostly/only about the Michaelis Clique and its inner-workings….) While I’m at it, SAartsEmerging features MTkidu this month.

Also new online: the networked music review blog, a new one by turbulence; nice piece on Red Burns and my alma mater, ITP, also known as the Harvard of Interactive (in the NY Times; the latter is an older piece from Newsweek)… New MTAA Commons Art Diagram for their iCommons Residence and also a 2-part interview on AFC (1 and 2). New Artthrob up – my fave articles include: thoughtful piece by Tavish McIntosh about Afterlife at Michael Stevenson; Sue Williamson on Gimberg/Nerf/Sacks/Young; Zachary Yorke reviews the companion book to this show, which sounds great and I hope to see it soon – I wonder if mine is the only artwork (as opposed to essay) in the book, or just the only one he mentioned; Michael Smith interviews Anthea Moys and Juliana Smith; finally, Ed Young reviews the Afterlife book, and as usual makes it more about himself than the “book,” but I think this may be the must read of this issue.

I like that most of this post was dedicated to SA Art. I may have something to say about some of the papers in Wales later. Day off today. More soon.