I have quite a bit of blog catching up to do – lots going on over here that I’d love to share – but have been a bit snowed under. Here’s one reason why:
I JUST SUBMIT MY 286-page PHD DISSERTATION. Like, less than a minute ago. No sh!t.
Slightly anti-climactic, and there’s still a defense and any edits they give me before I am “Dr. Stern.” But mostly, it feels good.
Last night saw the opening of Night Work at The Armoury Gallery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Some great responses, surprise guests, new show offers, decent sales – a really great Milwaukee debut for both me and Jessica (my collaborator). Thanks to everyone who helped, came out, etc. For those who didn’t make it, the show was a kind of “weekend pick” over at Milwaukee’s Journal Sentinel (where one of the gallerists also pitched the show), and it’ll be up for more than a month (including Milwaukee’s gallery night, on April 17th!). If you can’t make it, it’s brand spanking new work, so we still need to document it – I’m hoping to have some images and/or video online in the next few weeks. We’re really excited about the progression, so watch this space….
I will also be giving public lectures about my work this week, twice. First, I will take over a spot on Wednesday, April 1st, 7pm (in ACL 120) for the Artist Now! series in the Visual Art department, Peck School of the Arts, at UWM:
Artists Now! is a Wednesday evening lecture series designed for a broad audience with an interest in contemporary visual art. The series presents a diverse group of artists working across traditional, hybrid and emergent disciplines. Join these nationally and internationally recognized practitioners as they explore and expand the boundaries of creative visual practice today.
All lectures take place on Wednesdays at 7 pm in the Arts Center Lecture Hall, 2400 E. Kenwood Blvd. on the UWM campus. The lectures are free and open to the public.
I’ll give an hour’s worth of overview of my practice, some works, and a couple of the trajectories I’m aware of in them. But if you can’t make that, don’t worry! The very next day I will be giving a very similar talk (pretty much the same one, with perhaps slightly more on the tech side, and with the general variability that comes with my “performances”) as part of the Computation and Craft lecture series in the School of Architecture & Urban Planning (SARUP) – Thursday, April 2nd at noon in AUP 110, also UWM. See the flyer below (click for larger).
interactions, interventions and implications: computation and craft lecture at UWM
Finally, I’ll kind of be all over the Johannesburg Art Fair, in South Africa – well, my art will. I personally can’t attend, but I am: (twice) in the Internet Art in the Global South net.art exhibition, curated by Tegan Bristow; on Bad Form, an interesting show over at Blank Projects, curated by Christian Nerf and Kathryn Smith; featured in a talk by Wilhelm van Rensburg on contemporary printmaking (Gallery AOP); and will mostly likely also feature at the David Krut table. Should be an awesome fair – sad to miss it.
Hope to see some of you around these great events!
The newest contemporary art bi-annual of South Africa seems to have skipped a year (a year, not a round), but at least it’s still alive. From Africa Centre » home:
The first edition of Spier Contemporary was an unparalleled success. It attracted close to 20 000 visitors in Cape Town and Johannesburg and provided a national and international platform for the participating artists, with many artists commenting on the positive impact that the event has had on their careers.
The Africa Centre is planning the second edition of Spier Contemporary which is due to run in 2010. The submission date for the next competition will be announced in March 2009.
We would like to thank the participating artists, art collectors, buyers, arts media and the general public for their interest in, and support for the Spier Contemporary.
I’m guessing we can start watching this space.
More 50-50, keep / delete discussions around Wikipedia Art, but now the debate is on Rhizome, and by the gatekeepers of, and participants in, the art blogosphere. I particularly love Curt Cloninger’s response to Tom Moody on Rhizome. Moody is a kind of anti-Lichty, being just as voiciferous in his dislike of the project, as Lichty has with regards to what he deems as its importance. Yay, platform. Happy to provide it for both of you. You’re great collaborators.
iDC discussion has some nice tidbits, too.
The art work / page has been deleted from Wikipedia, approximately 12 hours after its birth. But it is not dead, merely transformed – performatively un-uttered and soon to be resurrected in an/other form. Watch this space for upcoming/ongoing press and archives and interventions that are all part of Wikipedia Art as a work. In the meanwhile, my favorite fragment of the piece thus far is the performance it engendered here and here. (These will be archived elsewhere soon, under the necessary GFDL license.)
It should be duly noted that:
Poor form, gentleman. We’ll have archives and updates live on WikipediaArt.org soon.
That’s right. The co-founder of Wikipedia has joined the Facebook Group for Wikipedia Art.
How’s that for some credibility? If only these guys agreed (still marked for deletion).
The group. Or click image to see that he is a member – this is for real, people.
Facebook Group for Wikipedia: member name, Jimmy Wales
