The current issue of Canadian Dimension magazine features an article about Art Threat by Ed Janzen. A Montreal-based artist and writer, Janzen's work has previously appeared our gallery.
Pick up a copy of CD on the newsstands, or download a PDF of the article from my website.
Posted by Rob Maguire on October 2, 2007 in
A few jems from the mailbags and newsreaders:
Posted by Rob Maguire on September 21, 2007 in
Xu Zhen | Maverick of the Chinese art scene, Xu Zhen has claimed to shave off the top 186cm of Mount Everest, and is touring the hunk of frozen water across the world.
From the editors at JOAAP:
Issue #5 of the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest
now available!!!
Contents
1. Issue #5 release! On Speech and talking
2. Upcoming Atlas of Radical Cartography- Journal Press book
Our fifth print issue is a 122 page book edited by Cara Baldwin, Marc Herbst and Christina Ulke. It was designed by Jessica Fleischmann and contains a section of color photos!
From the forward:
“Arguably, today the act of social networking is commodified more visibly and materially than ever before…This commodification shoudn't hinder us to work in relationship to one another and in a social and political context. Social memory with a sense of history and political demands seems to have undergone an accelerated and profound erasure. This rapid memory loss is facilitated by media consolidation and the plundering of public education programs to fund global mercenary actions.”
With this issue, we look at how cultural production (in art, music, speech, writing, interventions, video, and everyday life) attempt to create culturally based alternatives to oppression and war. Within the context of community and grassroots movements creating meaning for their participants and for broader society, again The Journal looks for ways to create counter-narratives and progressive social movements from the bottom up. From the bottom up- often meaning from a position of people having to do-it-themselves (outside traditional governmental or cultural institutions). This act involves trying to remember shared history, discuss potentially shared values, perform immediately shared ideals, and publicly debate or interrupt suspect truths, and on how it is to be together.
This issue is a collection of transcripts, performance transcripts, speeches, analytical essays, campaign critiques, interviews, email conversations and projects. We are not only presenting critical theory, we are also present to you documents and voices for you to critically investigate.
To order a copy, contact editors(at)joaap(dot)org.
Copies will be mailed in early September 2007.
Online version is available here.
Posted by Ezra Winton on August 21, 2007 in
The always clever Jonah Brucker-Cohen at coin-operated has create an open-source application for monitoring your own bandwidth. “Mr. T1” (the software is named after - you guessed it - the character from that grandest of grande fromage television shows from the 80s, The A-Team) constantly measures the exact speed of the connection by continually downloading a file from a remote server and calculating the average speed of data returning to a client. Depending on what your bandwidth is, you get a different quote from the man himself: “ISDN Fool!” or “Dial-up sucka!”.
Says Brucker-Cohen: "The "Mr. T1" project was created in response to my experience of working in many different lab environments where bandwidth speed has always been an issue concerning researchers and artists using shared Internet resources. The project examines this use and provides a constant sense of "background awareness" as to how fast the current connection is and if this standard is being met." Bruckner-Cohen says he also likes the playfulness of connecting fictional characters from mainstream entertainment with the naming conventions of modern communication systems such as the Internet.
Seems like a good thing to keep track of -- why, just this morning I’ve discovered that my “high-speed” internet account runs at a perfectly consistent “Dial-up sucka!” 68kbps. Hmmm…Perhaps the A-Team could drop in on my service provider and sort this out…
Posted by Michael Lithgow on July 19, 2007 in
Are you afraid of the dark? If so, New York artists Rees Shad and R. Stern want to ensure that you need not fear the light as well, lest you confuse a garden lamp for an IED. The two have recently launched the Declarative Lamp Project, on display in Kingston, NY as part of the towns Sculpture Biennial.
Posted by Rob Maguire on July 10, 2007 in
By Terry Fairman, originally published in the UK by a-n Magazine.
Every age rewrites its history in its own image. Each age produces art that reflects that image, whether consciously or not.
When power and patronage are in the same hands then social, religious or political agendas are clear, from Medici Popes to twentieth-century totalitarian regimes. Today, the link is less obvious and often a matter of contention amongst art historians – for example, the extent to which the Land Art movement in the final quarter of the last century – or perhaps that should read, the last quarter of the final century – was a response to the environmental crisis pointed up by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.
Commissioned art can often tell us what mattered to the chattering classes in any given period. There is a long history of a strong and productive association between the art community and Amnesty International reflecting the importance placed on human freedom in the period after World War II. We demand of our artists that they respond to present dangers. Criticism of the recent exhibitions of contemporary American art in London, at the Serpentine gallery and the Royal Academy, has commonly focused on the failure of American artists to respond effectively to post 9/11. [More...]
FULL STORY + COMMENTS
Posted by Rob Maguire on June 28, 2007 in
DAN WITZ | Killroy Variations | "During World War II, the saying "Kilroy Was Here!" began to appear as graffiti at home and wherever the American military traveled abroad. Eventually the saying, and the cartoon character that often accompanied it, came to represent America's worldwide presence."
The Yes Men have struck again! In a brilliant performance on June 15, Yes Men Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno posed as oil executives at the GO-EXPO - Canada's largest oil industry trade show which was held at Stampede Park in Calgary, Alberta. This year’s conference attracted more than more than 20,000 visitors and exhibitors from around the world.
Posing as ExxonMobil and National Petroleum Council (NPC) representatives, the Yes Men introduced Vivoleum to a 300+ crowd of oil execs. Vivoleum, they explained, was human flesh converted into oil, a future oil product that will capitalize on the catastrophe of global warming and the many deaths that it will cause.
The speech was accompanied by a 3-D rendering of the process of creating vivoleum.
During the presentation, candles were distributed throughout the crowd and attendees were asked to light the candles – supposedly made of Vivoleum -- in memorium to Reggie, a former ExxonMobil janitor. As the suit-clad listeners set about lighting their candles, the Yes Men played a video tribute to Reggie the Janitor.
It was the video that finally tipped-off organizers. As security guards ushered the Yes Men away from the stage they were swarmed by journalists to whom they continued to explain the process of rendering human flesh into oil.
"We're not talking about killing anyone," Andy Bichlbaum said to reporters, "we're talking about using them after nature has done the hard work. After all, 150,000 people already die from climate-change related effects every year. That's only going to go up - maybe way, way up. Will it all go to waste? That would be cruel."
The Yes Men were taken into custody by Calgary police and later released without charges.
Check out the photographs and press coverage at their website.
These guys are heroes!
Originally by Marisa Olson from Rhizome.org.
Posted by Michael Lithgow on June 18, 2007 in
By Lucine Kasbarian, originally published in Hairenik / Armenian Weekly.
A financier is provoked to discover himself, his life, and the world anew when he awakes one morning lost, bewildered and alone, having contracted retrograde amnesia through the night.
A photo assistant scribbles his phone number on a chalkboard prop photographed for a "Crate & Barrel" catalog, only to receive 15,000 phone calls from around the country. He organizes a “National Dinner Tour” to interview his newfound friends and make art from these encounters.
An “accent elimination course” spurs a New York woman to produce a sound-art pastiche and social commentary about cultural preservation and assimilation by trying to acquire her Lebanese-Armenian father’s and Finnish-Swedish mother’s foreign accents, while they unsuccessfully try to lose theirs.
In response to rampant shoplifting and gross consumerism, an artist collective leaves behind hand-crafted objects on grocery shelves to make political statements known as “shop dropping” and “culture jamming.”
These are some of the eclectic, eccentric, and enigmatic stories heard on Tania Ketenjian’s provocative programs airing on radio stations around the country and the globe. Many of her storylines emerge from the depths of creative expression—from the lives of visual artists, actors, writers or musicians. Other interviewees are not artists at all. The common thread throughout is that the voices, ideas and emotions brought to the airwaves—and facilitated by Tania’s own discernment, aptitude and finesse—serve to tell stories that often are not, and to spotlight or question prevailing standards, preconceptions and realities held and presented in our increasingly pre-packaged and sanitized world. [More...]
FULL STORY + COMMENTS
Posted by Rob Maguire on June 13, 2007 in
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