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07 April 2007 by nathaniel

london joling

My title for this blog not as clever as I think it is, but I did have a great time in London over the last few days. I’ll leave out the bits about how great my family is, and just illuminate some art highlights:

Wednesday. That was the art highlight.

It began by meeting up with Michael Szpakowski of DVblog and Scenes of Provincial Life (I did a great interview with Michael on Rhizome a while back) at the Tate, where we oooh-ed and aaah-ed at their permanent collection whilst getting to know each other more in person – we can both talk up a storm, mind you. Of course, there were pauses in front of many works, including (but not limited to) some by Beuys, Giacometti, Rothko and Bacon. Yum. We were thoroughly unimpressed by the Gilbert & George exhibition; we instead threw a few compliments at each other, and talked about upcoming and exciting work. He is one of my new Favorite People Ever. That’s him below.

michael szpakowski
Michael Szpakowski

We then hit up BFI Southbank (not sure what that stands for, but it used to be the National Film Theatre) to see the McCoys’ new exhibition, Tiny, Funny Big and Sad. The commission on the outside of the gallery, a piece called The Constant World, uses

a giant plasma screen and 36 live video cameras. A miniature film set on a many-armed mobile is suspended from the ceiling. It depicts a film noir-style story set in an imaginary city based on New Babylon, the unrealised brainchild of Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuys.

So you have all these mini sets in a mobile, and lots of cameras giving live feeds of them to the screen, which show the sets in a randomized sequence. This piece was admittedly more than a little disappointing – the sculptures were beautiful, but you could not see the mini sets because they were suspended too far away / high up; the video was lame because nothing was moving in it (might as well have had some beautiful stills of the film sets instead, maybe in a grid, than waste that plasma screen), and the text that they put in between each image added nothing. I almost left at this point, not realizing there was another room until Michael pointed it out, and we were both really glad he did.

The Traffic series (2004), installed in the Gallery, recreates the artists’ personal memories, each telling the story of a particular time, place or event that has become linked to the memory of viewing a specific film. One work in the series depicts the McCoys’ second date, when they went to see Godard’s film Week End at a cinema in Paris. Another recreates a more sombre evening spent in the cardiac ward, watching American Graffiti on a standard-issue hospital TV set.

Odd that their newer work felt like a step backwards, but The Traffic series was stunning, and did everything that The Constant World didn’t. We spent a good hour chatting about it, walking around it, feeling the relationship between the kinetic sculptures, the videos, and the live feeds in the kinetic sculptures that showed portions of the video. We then spent a good deal of time talking to the security guard, an actor named Matt, about how great it was that BFI’s gallery was starting off with work that engaged the space between Big Film and Fine Art, rather than just propping up their ongoing movie programs. Matt was impressed that, even before we realized these were actual films being depicted on each screen, Michael figured out the Godard; OK, so was I. He also said Kevin McCoy seemed nice when he came in, a major plus. I think, unless performing something, artist niceness should be mandatory.

mccoys: tiny funny big and sad

jennifer and kevin mccoy at BFI: tiny funny, big and sad. Top left corner shows The Constant World sculptures (I spared a pic of the video), and the rest are stills of The Traffic series video and moving parts, taken on my crappy mobile.

After this, we stopped in to the Courtauld Institute of Art for more ohs and ahs, this mostly over Manet and Cezanne.

Then we walked around London a bit, shared more thoughts, and head on over to HTTP gallery (House of Technologically Termed Praxis), the Furtherfield project space. Like my buddies at turbulence, these guys (Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett) are doing, and have been not so quietly doing, amazing stuff for a very very long time – supporting edgy and odd networked art and performance. Their gallery is a great experimental space on the edge of London, where they’ll be starting offline residencies soon (they’ve been doing online ones for years). Joburgers may remember the VisitorsStudio performance we did between London, Derby and the Premises. They are very clevah and fun. Marc and Ruth are also on my New Favorite People list.

http gallery and projects

Other than my New Friends, who I hope to be working with and hanging with soon again, I also saw the Surreal Things exhibit at the Victoria and Albert the next day. Oh, I love the Surrealists. They make me so happy….

Pics of family will be up on Sid’s site soon. That’s all I got for now.

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02 April 2007 by nathaniel

smith and western

Do you like my loaded gun pun?

On this month’s artthrob, Rat Western responds to Michael Smith about art criticism in Johannesburg. First, I must agree with Rat that this debate is getting really boring. But I’ve never backed down from depositing 2 pennies on the web…

Admittedly, I have to eat my words from last month a bit – “Michael also responds to Rat Western in the feedback section (a fair and funny and well-informed response all considered…”

Western’s response illuminates the contexts of her arguments, left out last month. Her point (tho tangential at times) is this: Smith denies an underground in Joburg and yet skips out on the Drill Hall, the Parking Gallery, the Bag Factory (etc). It’s not necessarily his responsibility to go to every show, but Rat’s final argument is, how can you dismiss these spaces when writing about exactly what they do (or, at minimum, try to do)? Not even mention them so as to publicly dismiss them, in fact, but rather, ignore them? This, she says, is “lazy” when writing about the power of critical writing vs the underground.

Although I mightn’t use her strong language, I could further Rat’s argument. Smith went so far, in his first article, as to praise Art Heat, a blog on art in Cape Town, whilst implicitly asking for a speaking back to power-like site in Joburg. This is a direct insult to SAartsEmerging, run by the same people who do the above spaces (including her, and founded along with me, Bronwyn Lace and Simon Gush), a site with a very specific purpose:

“Providing a free South African alternative to the gallery-driven and mainstream media platforms, SAartsEmerging.org is dedicated to featuring emerging South African artists, curators and arts personalities who are not generally, or have not yet been, written about – but who should be. SAartsEmerging aims to ‘discover’ and profile a variety of early-career non-stars working conceptually, and across disciplines.”

SAarts also avowedly gives preference to Gautengers. It, along with the above spaces, was ignored.

I think Michael Smith is smart; I like his writing, his thinking, his excitement; and I like the great article he did on my AOP show in last month’s artthrob. I’m also not comfortable with some of Rat’s insults (nor am I that fond of his) in this debate, and can see why her “fighting words” might be taken on. But she also offered to get involved, asked Michael to be involved in the spaces he didn’t write about (with the “power” of artthrob and/or Art SA behind him). We have to remember that these two publications are mostly the only potential connection the rest of the world’s art elite have to some of SA’s newer artists; to say “there is no underground in joburg” is to make it true for anyone who isn’t already involved in Joburg’s, actually existent, and thriving, emerging arts scene (I prefer that term, cuz I don’t know WTF underground means). He seems to have declined her offer.

read Rat’s response

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05 March 2007 by nathaniel

the art, she is throbbing

Nice issue of artthrob this month (feeling homesick). I’m not even going to get into it with Cape ’07 (formerly TransCape, and now it’s DEFINITELY “not a biennale” in South Africa), but some other great stuff to report…

First, a little self-promo, Michael Smith engages with my work at Art on Paper. A snippet:

The work proves, if any proof were needed, that Stern’s performative interests expand to include ‘performing’ a relationship to history, a quietly anarchic deconstruction of the creative person’s position in relation to history. This work, and much of the rest on show, reveal that Stern’s is a position of productive paradox, of signalling his debt to the historical archive of creativity yet resisting the impulse to politely replicate its terms.

It’s a very engaged and generous reading – an artist couldn’t ask for more from a critic. Thanks, Michael. Read more.

Minette Vari – a great video artist with Gothic stylings – also gets a nice review for her Goodman show. And, this side, fellow South African grad student in Ireland does this month’s ArtDiary. A bit closer to my heart – given my time in Joburg, and my initiating (with Bronwyn Lace and Simon Gush) of SAartsEmerging last year – Michael also responds to Rat Western in the feedback section (a fair and funny and well-informed response all considered, tho he does leave out that his review of Brendan Grey’s work is also a review of a friend he seems to work with frequently; please note that I do not think this a problem at all, but he might have done himself more service had he addressed that, given the first point he makes about insularity) and he also gives Dave Andrew and Rat a space for more discussion.

Emma Bedford, former curator at SANG (South African National Gallery, Cape Town) and Director of the new Cape-based Goodman Gallery (also a small article on that – if you didn’t know, we love Storm, her co-director), is the ArtBio this month. Also some interesting listings, including a Cape anti-avant-garde show curated by Kathryn Smith.

The biggest news, from where I stand, is the announcement of a Spier Exhibition replacement for the old Brett Kebble Art Awards. I think they’d be a little upset by the comparison, but it has the same chief curator, and is, like the Kebbles, the only large-scale exhibition in SA that offers both emerging and established artists any equipment they might need to see their visions through. HOWEVER, as several added bonuses, they are also giving fees to their artists, they are open to more interesting interdisciplinarity (shown by their selection of Jay Pather as co-curator), and they are committed to at least six years of the exhibition. I should also stress how much I appreciate that altho it is also a competition, the main focus is on the exhibition itself, more like the Whitney Biennial, I gather. Spier is building a museum on their wine farm to house the exhibition, which is just plain smart: they will have it permanently, so won’t have to pay heaps for rental, and they already have one of the most interesting art collections in South Africa, so why not have some place to house it the rest of the year?

update: Almost forgot! The most outstanding bonus of Spier vs Kebble is that there’s no Brett Kebble! That guy, despite his later committment to the arts, was a mining mogul with fraud allegations and questionable intentions (and a great PR firm). Spier, on the other hand, just makes nice wine, good money, and has always been committed to the arts. We like that.

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15 February 2007 by nathaniel

NCAD, Joburg art, media art calls

Sorry for the lack of postings lately, but as promised before the move to Dublin, that’s just how it’s gonna be (until such time as Bronwyn and Rat do the regular blogging they tentatively offered here; like most Joburgers, they’re busy with more than a handful of things, so…).

OK, catch-up spanning (and doing little justice to) about 4 weeks of "stuff," beginning with a talk I gave at Ireland’s National College of Art and Design on 18 Jan. A bit of an enlightening experience for me in terms of crowd response — I guess I’m used to the very animated audience that Joburg and greater South Africa offer, so when people listened without expression, I ended about 30 minutes into the presentation, thinking I had completely bombed (all the more disappointing, since it was a crowd of about 70 – 100 people, a good turnout, IMNSHO – In My Not So Humble Opinion). But alas! A great discussion persisted for another 45 minutes beyond my early end! Mostly very generous questions which led to great dialogue, a few compliments, and one very provocative accusation; I have to say I’m excited to be starting off with a discussion in this community, and hope my leaving the country a few days after the talk didn’t put a potential speed bump on what began there…. NCADers – let’s hang?

a-beeld.jpg

I won’t cover my own exhibition since both Bronwyn and I already mentioned it, but there was a nice piece in beeld that was more like a profile of me just before leaving, and I think Robyn Sassen may be writing a short text in the Jewish Report. I did manage to go see GordArt’s new space, with several good shows (am new to Zach’s work – nice), lots of red stickers and the usual enthusiasm and support every art scene needs. Gordon Froud should be thanked over and over again by emerging and established artists alike, for his ongoing contributions.

Also caught the last of the Parking Gallery (at least in its initial Joburg incarnation) collaborations, this one between Simon Gush and Dorothee Kreutzfeldt at the Drill Hall. It was a very funny performance piece called 3-point turn, where they hired Sam Metentji to go, the wrong way, down a one-way street in downtown Jozi during rush hour. Many debates ensued, but mostly laughs and good byes: Simon has since left for a 2-year residency at the prestigious HISK in Belgium; see you there in July, buddy.


 
all photos taken on my crappy cell phone

Sad to say I missed most of all the other goings-on in the art world, catching up on my own crap, but I hear the Guy Tillim show at Goodman was divine, and there’ve been a few workshops at the Bag Factory worth checking out.

And finally, a few calls:
You have til Monday to nominate yourself or a friend for the iCommons Artist In Residence in Croatia (use the Wiki).
Rhizome has its annual call for net.art commissions.
Turbulence has, probably, the most interesting net.art call I’ve ever seen: a collaboration with Art Interactive and Ars Virtua.
Ars Electronica Prix has been launched, with a few new categories.
Not new media (tho my proposal will be, if I get into the second round) there’s the Sasol Wax Art Award for South African mid-career artists.

I’m sure there are others, too. These are just the ones I’m currently working on or thinking about working on ;)

Hmm, that wasn’t really catch up so much as a few little things I’d been meaning to mention, but there you are. TFN (Ta For Now).

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19 December 2006 by nathaniel

NYC arrivals (the ITP, the grandstanders and the clash of cultures)

We arrived late on Sunday night from Dublin to NYC for the holidays, and boy does aerlingus have it down when it comes to passport control – we did it Irish side, so no waits in NYC. Sid was a bit cranky from no sleep on the flight, and mucho ducho jetlag, but “cranky for Sid” is still pretty OK, I’ve learned; the flight staff commented on how well behaved she was. Who knew?

Given her exhaustion, and the strange place, she was actually pretty amazingly friendly when we arrived on the Shaolin (Staten Island). Maybe she felt her roots, maybe she felt the love, maybe she recognized my parents. Who knows? She had many giggles and smiles between the grandparents, making them the happiest I think I’ve ever seen them.

Monday, after haircuts and a little baby clothes shopping with granny, we spent some alone time with Sid’s godmother, Nancy Young, in Manhattan. We know, like with Joao, she was the right choice – so great with our favorite lass. Then we sped over to the ITP Winter Show. Apparently, besides being the Harvard of Interactive, my alma mater was named one of Businessweek’s top 10 Design schools this year. Yay, ITP.

Admittedly, I was spending more time showing off my daughter to old friends I ran into, some of my favorite lecturers ever, than I was looking at the art. If you feel like looking up some of the great peops (so generous and wonderful and full of knowledge), try googling the likes of Red Burns, Marianne Petit, Tom Igoe and Dan O’Sullivan (not to mention Danny Rozin, but I didn’t see him there; and sorry for the lack of links, but this post is becoming epic).

As usual, the ITP show, with over one hundred interactive projects in a small Manhattan loft, was an overwhelming and saturated exhibition of lots of blink-blinkies, with heaps of potential grad students, former students, and gizmo-appreciators with their eyes popping out of their heads. It still impresses me to this day, tho I do get a bit sad knowing that I’ll probably miss all the most subtle and understated projects amidst the mayhem, because it’s just too much to take it all in; one simply can’t give these kinds of projects the time they deserve in an environment like that. Still, I did catch more than a few bits worth mentioning, so I’ll take time to play up three. (Note: I took terrible photos with my mobile that are on my flickr now, but the images you see below I found on the artists’ web sites, so consider them credited.)

I think my favorite room was actually one of the dark ones (what used to be a Mac Lab) displaying mostly video-like interventions. For example, there was Animalia Chordata, by Gabe Barcia-Colombo, an Oursler-like installation of people trying to escape from the bottles the were projected into. It was also interactive, in that the peops noticed you as you got closer and responded accordingly, but it was the beautiful and simple set-up of the video itself that made me happy. (As opposed to this photo, they were remarkably detailed – not just silhouettes.)


Animalia Chordata, by Gabe Barcia-Colombo

James Nick Sears’ and Leif Mangelsen’s Orb was more impressive as a display than as an artwork, but the applications are definitely on the creative rather than commercial side of things (tho I can see these as impressive billboards, too). “A persistence of vision display rotated into three dimensions creates a sphere of color animations,” this is basically a circle of LEDs rotated really fast, and timed perfectly, to make a “global,” spherical animation.


James Nick Sears’ and Leif Mangelsen’s Orb

And finally – and admittedly, my interest in this has more to do with how I might use the technology to eventually see undertoe into fruition – the Fantastic Piano, by So-young Park, Laurel Boylen, Shin-Yi Huang, Cho Rong Hwang. Quite a feat for an Introduction to Physical Computing class, this group’s project used water tanks with glitter in them, and pumps/air bubbles to swish them around, as their output. Hand-waving to make noise and water ensues, pictures at the link above.

After some playing with quite a few other interesting projects, I had dinner with a whole bunch of South African art-folks. There was Zingi Mkefa, a Joburg journalist at NYU on a Fulbright, Amy Kaufmann, the New Yorker / former Director of Constitution Hill and Sean Slemon’s wife, Dave Andrew and his wife Glenda, here on the Ampersand Fellowship. Was great to have my two homes meet up in one place (the East Village, no doubt!), and the pan-seared tuna at Apple was divine. We all agreed that Sid is the cutest baby ever.

Today, I’m off to meet Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City for lunch in Chelsea (hoping she can tell me what’s hot in the area), then a quick meet with Kate McCrickard, Director of David Krut Projects New York about who-knows-what, some time with my old friend Tony, and finally dinner with Greg Shakar, to see if we can finally make a plan for the aforementioned undertoe project, conceptualized at ITP circa 2001 (but still hot)!

More soon…

Archives

10 December 2006 by nathaniel

pixel plexus

For those of you missing links and rants and good ole fun around art and design in the form of a South African blogger, I’m sorry to have disappointed as of late. Still, I should mention that there has been a lot of movement of the blogging kind over on Andre SC’s site, PixelPlexus – a bit more of a bend toward "look what I found while surfing," rather than my attempts at regular gallery-hopping, but he’s a pretty good all-rounder with politics, art, fun, and quirky stuff, and how I keep up with the locals, so maybe you should, too.

I’ll be live from NYC next week, getting back into occasional posts then and in the new year. (And Bronwyn keeps promising that she and Rat will start writing about Joburg Art on this site any day now, so nag them if you seem them.)

Soon….

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