implicit art

Work in Progress: David Krut Arts Resource Opens a New Space on Jan Smuts Avenue

david krut workshop

Via DKW:

David Krut Arts Resource is a vibrant and ever-evolving organisation. Our latest venture is the opening of a brand new project and exhibition space at 142 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg. The new space, David Krut Projects, is an extension of the well-established David Krut Arts Resource up the road that incorporates a printmaking workshop, bookstore and headquarters for David Krut Publishing. Once David Krut Projects is operational, the printmaking workshop will extend into the former gallery at 140 Jan Smuts Avenue. We will sell our own books as well as a range of art titles from other South African publishers and Tate Publishing in both venues.
David Krut Projects will host exhibitions and art-related events every few weeks. The space will officially open on Saturday the 17th of March with an exhibition of prints by Bruce Backhouse. Upcoming shows include an exhibition of photographs by Angela Buckland and an interactive installation by Johan Engels and Robert Whitehead. Please join us fro these events and watch this space for more newsâ€¦

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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05 March 2007 by nathaniel

performative traces

â€œThe words were treated as a kind of incantation, as if they enveloped something of the desired event, contained its trace. Their repetition deposited a trace of the event in each of the contexts, gradually coloring the everyday world. Conversely, each context left its own trace in the words. It is as if the words were absorbing the relative perspectives, absorbing traces of the movements accomplished within them, as well as the movement from one to the other, blending the motion of acting the exemplary event with ordinary circulation through the world. The accumulation immobilizes [him] under its weight. He enters a state of passivity marked by heightened excitability.â€

– Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual, page 56

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26 February 2007 by nathaniel

Of course America is ready for a black president. Are you?

In the guise of a seer who has some sort of zeitgeist on the times, many cynics (mostly liberal ones, often people of color) keep posing the question, “Is America ready for a black President?” (Or just answer “no” when asked.)

I’ll Answer that one: of course we are.

Look at the polls.Â And a lot of these people are answering no, even tho they would vote for a black candidate (they just think everyone else is beneath them, less evolved, wouldn’t do so). Yes, there are some who won’t vote for a black man as the Commander in Chief, and there are some who may vote for him (implicit “him”: Barack) for no other reason. And these numbers may or may not cancel each other out (especially given that we need to consider who might be mobilized to vote in such an election).

But I have bigger issue with the question itself, given what it might lead to in my own party (er, the party I’m currently registered for). Voting for “who we think can win” in the Democratic primaries led to the last boring candidate. We need a leader. Someone who had vision on Iraq from day 1, can bring people of faith back to the party they belong in, wants us to end poverty and bring Universal Health instead of just making the rich richer. Do you really think that someone who would vote for Rudy or McJohn over Barack, for issues of race (consciously or unconsciously), would vote for Hillary or JohnE instead? That’s just silly.

If we don’t get Obama for president, it’s not cuz America is not ready, it’s because the Democrats aren’t – the primaries will decide, not the general election. I’m more and more impressed with this man every single day (that link on Iraq above, his foresight – wow. And please also take a look at his announcement speech…). Take him seriously – and do not discount him with a pretense of knowing superiority; you do yourself, and America, a disservice.

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22 February 2007 by bronwyn lace

Two days until the first ever African Photomarathon!

PhotographySA.com || The Bag Factory

Reminder: This Saturday, 24 February 2007
First African photomarathon to be held in Johannesburg
Description: On 24 February 2007, PhotographySA.com, in collaboration with the Bag Factory’s About Art programme, will organize the first African photomarathon in Johannesburg.

24 February 2007 8am – 8pm
photomarathon starting at The Bag Factory

3 March 2007 3pm – 5pm
panel discussion by professional Johannesburg photographers

15 March 2007 5:30pm for 6pm
photomarathon exhibition and announcement of winners

Update on Prizes:

The Bag Factory will be sponsoring two ipod shuffles (http://www.zastore.co.za/ipodshuffle06.php) for the winners and Crumpler (http://www.crumpler.co.za) will be sponsoring bags for the winners and a gimmick for all the participants.

Please also read through our safety guidelines. All participants will be required to sign a copy of these guidelines stating they have read them so why not save yourself some time before the event and read them now: http://photographysa.com/blogger/2007/02/photomarathon-safety-guidelines.asp

Johannesburg, 26 January 2007 â€“ On 24 February 2007, PhotographySA.com and the Bag Factory will organize the PhotographySA.com photomarathon 2007 :: Johannesburg. A photomarathon is an event, characterized by great length and concentrated effort and typically lasting 12 to 24 hours, where participants obtain a series of photographs on predefined subjects or themes. The city of Johannesburg has been selected for its unique dynamics and vibrancy and because of the large amount of active photographers and the relative lack of profiling opportunities for them.

The 2007 photomarathon will start at 8am on 24 February 2007 and will last for 12 hours. Each four hours, participants will receive four new themes at a new venue, moving throughout downtown Johannesburg. At the end of the event, at 8pm on the same day, participants have to submit exactly one photograph for each theme. In the week following, there will be a panel discussion by various prominent photographers working in Johannesburg and a professional jury will decide on a winning series and winning photographs from the photomarathon event. The winners will be announced at an exhibition of the works that will be hosted at the Bag Factory from 15 March.

To give every photographer the opportunity to participate, digital and analogue photographers can participate in separate categories. Participation costs 50 Rand, but early birds get a discount. Bronwyn Lace, the education officer for About Art, says “This is an enormous opportunity for both up-and-coming and established photographers to compete in a singular event in downtown Jo’burg.”

More information can be obtained straight from the website PhotographySA.com or by contacting Babak Fakhamzadeh at admin@photographysa.com or Bronwyn Lace at bronwyn@bagfactoryart.org.za. Participants can register through the website and in person at The Bag Factory.

About Art is the Bag Factory’s art education programme which focuses on stimulating, enriching and advancing the careers of professional practicing artists within its local community as well as its wider arts network. PhotographySA.com is a cooperative adventure of Ismail Farouk, and Rat Western, artists from Johannesburg and Babak Fakhamzadeh, traveling web guru from Iran. With the 2007 Johannesburg photomarathon, PhotographySA.com and About Art aim to bring together established and developing photographers in an adventurous and creative event which will truly cross boundaries.

PhotographySA.com
The Bag Factory
10 Mahlatini Street, Fordsburg, Johannesburg

Babak Fakhamzadeh
Bronwyn Lace (About Art Education Officer)

+27 76 5604079
+27 11 834 9181

admin@PhotographySA.com
bronwyn@bagfactoryart.org.za

http://PhotographySA.com

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20 February 2007 by nathaniel

happy birthday, blog!

This blog is 4 years old today.

I don’t recall being 4, really, but according to the stories I’ve heard, I mostly enjoyed it.

Lately I’ve been obsessing over scanner art on the Internet, trying to find anyone else who has been doing things on the more performative side (like Compressionism), and also remembering (I had forgotten) that I did a series of textile designs with scannings of water, spices and various other objects in 1993, when I was at Cornell. Wish I could find those files somewhere….

Been reading this Hansen book, which is oftentimes unnecessarily dense and self-congratulatory (whilst mocking other theorists), but it has more than a few great ideas that I certainly would never have come to on my own. Also started Brian Massumi’s 2002 book, Parables for the Virtual, and it’s kind of blowing my mind a bit; he’s such a generous thinker! One passage on writing (the whole introduction maintains this level of intimacy and playfulness along with the integrity and conviction of an inventor-writer):

The essays in this volume work through examples. The writing tries not only to accept the risk of sprouting deviant, but to invite it. Take joy in your digressions. Because that is where the unexpected arises. That is the experimental aspect. If you know where you will end up when you begin, nothing has happened in the meantime. You have to be willing to surprise yourself writing things you didnâ€™t think you thought. Letting examples burgeon requires using inattention as a writing tool. You have to let yourself get so caught up in the flow of your writing that it ceases at moments to be recognizable to you as your own. This means you have to be prepared for failure. For with inattention comes risk: of silliness, or even outbreaks of stupidity. But perhaps in order to write experimentally, you have to be willing to â€œaffirmâ€ even your own stupidity. Embracing oneâ€™s own stupidity is not the prevailing academic posture (at least not in the way I mean it here).

… page 18

And so on. I like to think I produce (in my various media, including text) much in the same way Massumi writes.

implicit art

art and ecology, fiction and geek stuff, culture and philosophy, parenting and life, etc

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Work in Progress: David Krut Arts Resource Opens a New Space on Jan Smuts Avenue

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the art, she is throbbing

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performative traces

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Of course America is ready for a black president. Are you?

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Two days until the first ever African Photomarathon!

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happy birthday, blog!