Contemporary ART

[globalarthobal]

ArtRank™ ranks emerging artists using qualitatively-weighted metrics including web presence (verified social media counts, inbound links), studio capacity and output, market maker contracts and acquisitions, major collector and museum support, gallery representation and auction results.

Ew, what's that smell? That, my fellow students, tumblrs, and WWW, is the smell of straightforward art world commodification. No shame. ArtRank is a freshly born website just this year that with the use of algorithms hopes to predict the general market values, or sellability/purchasibility of current contemporary artists' work on the market. There are six blatantly displaced rows of ranksings: 

Buy Now < $10,000

Buy Now < $30,000

Buy Now < $100,00

Early Blue Chip

Sell Now (peaking)

Liquidate (down)

  dis Magazine emailed a number of curators, artists, and critiques who appeared on the list, with varying responses. Most were critical of the power of influence that such a list could generate within the worlds of art markets, and values of then placed upon potential sales.

  Korakrit Arunanondchai’s reply asked for cultural producers to be responsible for the power that they possess to generate values and change culture. “You help make collectors look at artists like stocks and you take away the potentiality of a valuable discourse that could arise from certain artists.”

  Rob Horning said that “it offers people without money a scoreboard for a sort of fantasy baseball of contemporary artists, and reinforces the idea that contemporary art is essentially about monetary competition rather than “expression.” He goes on to conjecture that ArtRank is actually an overt project to discuss these very concerns about the art market and the game of prestige is put on display and trying to be upheld as an honest venture. His comments become more critical about those who have money, and those who don’t, being the rich are actually the creative force behind the artists that the contemporary art world so admires. Instead this art is just a tax break for the extremely rich.

  ArtRank, whether it is an evaluation of value for aid in the purchasing knowledge of the wealthy, or if it is trying to actually point out everything that could be wrong with that, something about ArtRank stinks and it has to do with attempt to succinctly commodify the personhood of an artist as a brand and their value of production. Ultimately, as we've discussed this term, one should always be skeptical of the art markets and the connection of gross commodification of any and all possible "expressions".

[globalarthobal]

POWRPLNT

"POWRPLNT is a digital arts learning and sharing collabortatory where creators of all ages can access software, inspiration, and share their work."

POWRPLNT provides a green space indoor garden through the use of aquaponics to merge the urban, digital, and natural. It is a non-profit space for creative collaboration. POWRPLNT's workspace contains software packed computers that are used in a series of free classes for student from the ages of 13-18. Adults are welcome to use the space on a donation basis for their own projects. The space can also function as a gallery ad most importantly, an open and inviting place for peoples of all backgrounds to come learn and work together.

  Classes are presented by new media art professionals who might specialize a class on specific topics like: 

·       fashion design

·       video production

·       music production

·       digital photography and editing

·       web-based hackery

·       illustration and animation

The founders are currently looking for crowd sourcing on indiegogo here. Basic costs include computer, space rental, software, and utilities. They will function as a pop-up space until a permanent location can be found. 

  Their goals are to provide a safe and healthy place for students as an afterschool zone for exploration in the digital arts while providing technological education for all ages. Their proposed system recalls net cafes intermixed with a museum and a creative thinktank aimed at helping the future tech artists become successful tomorrow.

[globalarthobal]

Christian Marclay's Bollywood Goes To Gstaad, 2013, Video and video installation

Christian Marclay's Bollywood Goes To Gstaad, 2013, Video and video installation

  While working on another project involved in site-specific installations on glaciers in Gstaad, Switzerland, Marclay caught site of the filming of a Bollywood movie on the hills below his location. He was apparently so intrigued by their presence in Gstaad that he devoted a film-editing project to his investigation of the phenomena. The "cut to Switzerland" is an actual term and trope in Bollywood films where the young couple in love is usually suddenly singing on the hills together or dancing without much transition from the landscape of India in the films. The point is that they are transported to a fantasy setting as a dream sequence or celebration of love. This cut used to be a “cut to Kashmir”, but as conflicts increased in that area, the location changed to the safer snowy mountains of Gstaad.

  Marclay’s subsequent work is composed of a collaging of footage from a few decades of Bollywood films that contain these cuts to Switzerland that were specifically in Gstaad. Cutting from the similar settings on scenes, characters can be found on trains, in helicopters, on the hills, at the airport, each scene moves from one similar place, to a cut of the same place in a different film.

  Rachel Aima, the writer of the New Inquiry article on the piece criticizes the new work against Marclay’s previous, The Clock. She wrote that the “cruel” precision of the cuts in The Clock contrasts the movements through the scenes of BGTG, where the actors seem to mesh into one “brown” person as their movements are repeated by the next actor or actress. In this way, Marclay’s own gaze, as a reflection of the origin of the piece is revealed. What he saw was a collection of Indians sticking out in Switzerland, and the film that he made was a bunch of Indians out of place in the Gstaad landscape. Marclay does not seem to be aware of this gaze caused by a trivial process of supposed similarities. Ultimately the editing acts as a reductive blending of one culture, a culture not understood by Marclay, approached with a brief intrigue and exocticism.

  “ And yes,BGTG drips with exoticization, fetish, cultural appropriation, and all the power dynamics that are implicit in a white man repackaging another browner culture to be consumed by the global jet set and art world fancies that frequent the socially gated Gstaad.” –Rahcel Aima

Here is the story from the New Inquiry.

Here is the interview with Marclay on Elevation 1049.

[hyperallergic]

Voguing Andy Warhol in Whiteface

Raja Feather Kelly / The Feath3r Theory, “Andy Warhol’s DRELLA (I Love You Faye Driscoll)” (2014) (photo by Aitor Mendilibar)

In the early 1980s, Andy Warhol posed in drag for a series of Polaroid portraits. Wearing heavy white makeup in works like “Self-Portrait in Drag” (1981), he exudes a ghoulish glamour. The platinum blonde hair, crisp white shirt, and pale-as-a-vampire face pack so much…

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[globalarthobal]

Referencing Andy Warhol's personified nickname Drella, might have come back to haunt him in Raja Feather Kelly's "movement based drag essay"/"vogue ballet" performance. Kelly and The Feath3r Theory are dressed in all white, including white face makeup, referencing Wahol's polaroid series, "Self-Portrait in Drag". Through a series of playful dances and comedy break, the performance focuses on Kelly's character, Drella, who again acts as a type of leader in the group, obviously envied and hated at the same by the others. “ They would call out her name, Drella, with the cadence of mixed feelings: begging for approval but also resentful of the power she holds over them.“ Kelly sees this performance as a way of “mocking you mocking me”.

The gesture of white-face in a way could be seen as a kind of scag drag, or tranimal drag, which does not focus on the complete concealment of masculine features, but instead allows for a beard hair to show through, placing more importance on what it means to bend genders. The white face can also be likened to the media pressure on black women, like Beyoncé to become white-washed on magazine covers and editorials; Kelly jokes during DRELLA, “Beyoncé is a lot like my father… a total letdown.”

More multifaceted than just a choreographed drag performance, another layer of meaning is revealed from historical connections when Warhol sat on a judging panel for the Miss All-American Beauty Pageant Drag contest in 1967, where Crystal LaBeija was scored lower than a younger white queen due to her appearance not being white enough. LaBeija, who you might know from the documentary Paris is Burning as one of the main “mamas” left behind pageants to produce the first drag ball in Harlem, which subsequently fostered the dance style of voguing, some of which was seen in Kelly’s performance of DRELLA.

DRELLA is a subversive yet sanguine foray into questions of gender, race, and art history that playfully captivates while performing a critical perspective. Drag in fine art is rarely accepted, let alone people of color in drag, except for maybe Lyle Ashton Harris's, America (Triptych) [Miss Girl; Kym, Lyle & Crinoline; Miss America], Silver gelatin prints, 1987-88 

The performers seem to be dancing in between binaries, not quite white or black, male or female, causing questions of fluidity, or maybe something more to surface. 

[goodghoulz]

The Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art

Organized by the National Center for Contemporary Arts, the Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art was founded in 2010 and takes place in Ekaterinburg, Russia. The overarching themes of this biennial deal with “material and symbolic production, industrial and artistic labor, the industrial and the post-industrial in the context of the city (en.uralbiennale.ru).” In accordance with this structure, the exhibition takes over local factory spaces. The first biennial, held in 2010, was titled Shockworkers of the Mobile Image, and was held in the Ural Worker Printing Press, located in Ekaterinbug, of which serves as the “hub of Russia’s resource economy”. Curated by Cosmin Costinas, Ekaterina Degot, and David Riff, this first exhibition consisted of 54 artists addressing ideas of image circulation, capitalism, and “the economy of free time” as a part of the main project. They also hold special projects, curated by Alisa Prudnikova, that are site-specific and aim to “change the public perception of industry, to bring plants and factories back to the quotidian urban context (en.first.uralbiennale.ru).”

Upon reading about the biennial’s main project, I found their discussion of reproduction to be particularly interesting and relevant to the idea of contemporary art in a globalized world. They talk about how the majority of the work in the exhibition is not original in that the work primarily consists of prints, videos, etc.  This notion then lends to a conversation about the unique art object and originality, and in reference to this the Ural Industrial Biennial claims they want to “show that extreme mobility and reproducibility are unalienable preconditions of art today, and more, that they are a place where intellectual production and politics can be activated and upheld (en.first.uralbienniale.ru).” In doing so, the biennial aims to subvert the idea that masterpieces can only exist as originals, and instead embrace the dissemination, reproduction, and manipulation of art in the contemporary globalized world. 

http://en.first.uralbiennale.ru/

[globalarthobal]

In 2012, the second edition of the Ural Biennial took place in Yekaterinburg with the focus on politics after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The main curator, Iara Boubnova focused on this idea of the artist as a type of mine “defuser”, or someone who recognized local dangers and is a “sapper” that then makes those dangers innocuous. The title of the main project was, “The Eye Never Sees Itself”, and consisted of 30 participating artists, many Russian, who exhibited within the platform of the Ural districts industry factories, some still active and some not.

In a way, the curator’s statement is extremely auspicious about the ability that an artist possesses to make change that one could become skeptical of the amount of power assumed. However, the curator writes,

“We are interested in how art fails in the attempt to save the world as much as in cases when it succeeds in its ambition. We are interested to show you how art tries to reinvent itself in order to better save the world while it equally fails and succeeds.”

Showing that the attempt or gesture, this production is an aim to produce change through audiences, an influence that one might hope will stick.

Boubnova’s statement also addressed the goal of the show to show the intersections of art within politics, economy, science, industry, and how the ambitions of this work incorporates other disciplines while remaining it identity as contemporary art. Boubnova was inspired by the global displays of activism that has taken to the streets of Cairo, Athens, and New York, claiming these people as the true heroes, not the artists.

  A new addition to this year’s edition was The Intellectual Platform of the Biennial, which consisted of a series of conferences, seminars, and roundtables open to the international arts communities with focuses on questions of appropriation and non-exhibitory strategies. 

http://en.second.uralbiennale.ru/

[goodghoulz]

Reading Response to Maura Reilly’s Introduction to Global Feminisms

1. According to curator Maura Reilly, what were the goals of the Global Feminisms exhibition?

Global Feminisms was an exhibition that adopted ideas related to transnational feminisms, not only...

[globalarthobal]

To add to your responses, here is my response to question two:

  2. What are 3 ways in which contemporary globalization has impacted the production of feminist art and the reception of women artists?

a. A desire to express the fluidity of what is feminist is a culturally global shift within women artists practices, which has become more inclusive of the differences of experience cross-culturally that aims to work against stereotypes and misconceptions of what is means to function as a woman within a globalized context.

b. Exhibitions like Global Feminisms are acts of cultural subversions from within the corrupted realm of the white, male, Western-centric art institutions. While groups like the Guerrilla Girls often go in and out of institutional spaces and public spaces to critique the exclusion of women artists and artists of color, there has also been an increase of protest from cultural producers within the institutions, although it is few and far in between.

c. Female artists perhaps act in more politically progressive ways than their male contemporaries focusing on anti-colonialist, anti-patriarchal, and anti-heterosexist movements, to produce work that then begins to inform feminist critiques of their surrounding and varying societies. These artists, curators, and critics working within global feminisms realize the fluctuating contemporary landscapes begs for new systems of organization of this type of work, as opposed to stale categorizations of chronology.

In Global Feminisms, Reilly credits a number of past exhibitions that she believes act, as what is mentioned in my response b, that feminist interventions should always take place from within the institution, acting as a cultural critique of the many biased museums across the globe. She believes that this exhibition, Global Feminisms, is acting as attempts to breakdown the white masculinity that dominated the art world institutions. Reilly’s argument is that although they tried to dismantle the lack of globally inclusive female artists, the shows Fusion Cuisine (2002), Post/feministische Positionen der neunziger Jahre aus der Sammlung Goetz (2002), and Girls’ Night Out (2004), fell short as an “international” display that tokenized the included artists of color or difference. She argues that Global Feminisms is a transnational curatorial feat that fairly balances and abolishes the binary of center/periphery by including a swatch of non-western female artists from all levels of class and social powers. 

From our discussion in class, and referencing Linda Nochlin’s, Why Are There No Great Women Artists? concerns arouse around whether or not this kind of women separation within the institutional sphere was still required. In Nochlin’s essay, she calls for women artists to become aware of their ability to separate themselves from the white masculinity, and that to really function as an equal, we should no long cry about our differences, but ignore them. Women should move into these spaces as equals and it is in their hands to do so. Thus, the question was begged, should there still be women only exhibitions? Does this kind of separatists conquering accomplish the ultimate goal of equality? 

[globalarthobal]

By Everyone, For No One, Everyday, Eva and Franco Mattes, 2014, Videos, multi media exhibit

  "We see so many images online that is it becoming hard to establish if an idea I had is mine or if I saw it on the Internet and forgot about it. Sometimes among them you see an artwork that you wish you had done or you think you had thought."

In the series, Agreements, Franco and Eva then purchase these ideas from these artists so that they own the conceptual idea. The first two ideas they have purchased will be on display as well as the contracts used in the transaction. 

Another piece includes Emily's Videos, which entail a removal of the artists from the production by depending on the viewer and a hired cinematographer. By putting out an online call to watch "The worst video ever", viewers can reply and then be visited by Emily who will then film their responses. The original video was apparently destroyed, but instead is lives on through the reactions of the hired viewers.

Random Act is another piece that can be found on tumblr here, is composed of crowdsource hired people from the darkest or unknown parts of the internet to realize a series of prompts. The artists do not know these people, where they are, or why they agreed to the project. The videos are posted as they are produced and are often copies of the same prompt.

The Others is a slideshow of 10,000 photos collected from unknown, random people’s personal images that were not meant to be seen by the world wide web, but could be similar to other images seen online often.

Working off of their mean thesis that everyone has become a producer online but if ultimately is not for anyone, Eva and Franco have composed a series of “scores” for others online as a collection of absurd, randomized, and crowd-sourced material that acts to reflect elements of the unknown or uncomfortable while also highlighting the copy-cat effects of the Internet and its ability to provide a structured anonymity of image plagiarism that is the “norm” online. Historically, they are acting like online outlaws taking hints from Fluxus, while harvesting the outcomes of these prompts. While their online presence reaches globally, the Matteses have dipped into the dark web to pull out much of their material, which is surprisingly mundane or generic; the images in The Others begins to looks similar, and photos are all taken of similar experiences or mile stones like weddings, graduations, etc. This idea of many-to-none is in direct response to the positive and celebratory voice of other net.artists who believe that their work functions as many-to-many. 

The artists' site can be found here.

[globalarthobal]

Project Proposal: The Bad Girls' Guidelines to the Internet and New Technologies

After talking with a number of individuals and reading anecdotal cautions and horrors online, I think that a positive project to begin would be a form of online activism and pedagogy geared towards young girls, teens, and women online. For whatever reason, school systems, interests, and skills in online and technological literacy and privacy for the female population are often overlooked or unknown. This project would work through a series of tumblr-ready images that contain information to aid in personal online privacy, copryright protections/artistic property, general resources online, how-to-guides for basic DIY technologies like teensy boards, making servo motors run, coding, and starting your own site.

  This project would require a fair amount of research and help from others to gather, organize, and then design the information. The images would align with the Bad Girls’ aethetics of girls culture, making it more easily digestible by blog communities like Tumblr. I hope that it would spread easily this way, so that the information and resources will become widely available to anyone who needs them. I imagine that this could expand into how-to vides where Olivia and myself, or guests would explain the more concrete aspects of technologies. Working as a girl collective, there are a number of other girl collectives who could either spread these images as well or help in the information gathering processes.

  Another aim of this project would be to level the playing field online; usually what is “acceptable” online in popular social media spheres or forums is decided by male populations. This leads to segregation where women are more likely to flock to female-focused forums, ultimately taking their voices out larger contexts and discourses. This project would encourage through uses of language young women online to be confrontational about problematic topics and become empowered to act as cultural producers in their own right. Everyone’s voices should be valued online, and everyone should easily be able to gain the skills and knowledge required to protect their identity and information online while experimenting with this technology in new and exciting venues.

[globalarthobal]

Voice of the Invisibles, Charbel Samuel Aoun, installation, 2013

  Currently on display at the Institut Du Monde Arabe in the exhibition, Syrie: Cris - Action / Artistes En Creation, the exhibition is composed of works by Syrian artists who have all decided to leave the country whether during times of relative peace or the current violent period. The curators view these now expatriates as peaceful ambassadors to their country in turmoil.

  Voice is a system of twelve analog phones connected to an exchanger, screens, and software that triggers calls through the phone. A viewer is then implicated to pick up and receive the call on the other line. A recorded voice, probably speaking in Arabic, will begin to recount a story to the listener. Participants are often provided a translated script so that they can understand what is being recounted to them. The audience member, possible no longer used to a cord-connected phone conversation becomes an actor within the installation, drawn into a listening space built from the nostalgic old technology of being tethered to someone at the end of the line.

  During a half a year that the artist was residing in Lebanon, he met with men and women who had shared their struggles and suffering, telling stories of how they left Syria or even tales of love. Aoun realized that these voices were marginalized, and would not be heard by anyone who could offer a helping hand, although that is all they would ask for. The list of people that speak in the piece is as follows: Amal, Fayçal, Caroline, Wadih, Khaled, Élies, Hana, Lina, Marie, Michel, Muhamad and Yussef and were between the ages of thirteen to seventy-five who are from Syrian or Syrian-Lebanese dissent. They share with the listener stories of their family, romances, their current realities or tragedies, and what they have discovered, each having an ear to hear out their testimonies through the engaged audiences produced through Aoun’s installation.

A method of cultural subversion that we've talked about before in class has to do with making the marginalized more visible, so that their needs as a community/society/culture can be met or understood in some way by some higher power. Once a marginalized person is given a voice or a channel to speak through, then they are given power. 

To listen to one of the stories from the piece click here. 

[globalcontempart-blog]

The Dak’Art Biennial has held a prejudice-free space for Contemporary African art. Held in Dakar, Senegal the first Dakar Biennale focused on literature with the title Biennale des Letters (the Biennale of Literature) and focused on Aires Culturelles et Creation Letteraire en Afrique (Cultural zones and literary production in Africa.

After 1992, the Dak’Art Biennale was introduced focusing on the visual arts, and by 1996-current, the biennial has dedicated itself to Contemporary African Art. It’s interesting to observe how this this biennial has transformed over time. In 1992 the Dak’Art Biennial didn’t give priority to African artists but instead focused on encouraging the sharing of experiences and dialogues between artists. The 1992 biennial still included promoting Aftrican Artists however it was not until 1996, after evaluations of the 1992 biennale, showed that they should focus on the promotion of African contemporary art. Today the Dak’Art Biennale stands as a “cultural proposal or the African Union.”  Individuals expertizing in areas concerning Africa and diaspora are able to show and express their reflections about how various challenges have been brought about by cultural impacts, and how to progress from those instances towards a better life. The image above is an example of one piece in the 2012 Dak’Art Biennale. Ndary Lo’s, ‘Windows’ which was exhibited in the 2012 Dak’Art exhibition at a former biscuit factory in the industrial section of Dakar. Ndary Lo was born in 1961 in Tivaouane (Senegal) and lives and works curently in Dakar.

Elise Atangana, Abdelkader Damani, and Smooth Ugochukwu Nzewi will conjoin together in the curating of the 2014 Dak’Art Biennale which begins on August 6th through September 5th.

[ellenjeannette-blog]

Reblog: Some artists in the Dakar Biennial…

For my “reblog” post, I would like to discuss the work of two black woman artists in the Dakar Biennial and how they are a part of the conversation of the representation of blackness in contemporary art. I will discuss the work of Arlene Wandera and Ato Malinda. 

Dollhouses are normally places of fantasy and innocence. But Arlene Wandera’s piece “I’ve Always Wanted a Doll’s House” is terrifying and disturbing. Faceless nameless black figures fight for survival and can be seen in compromising positions of struggle, often being overtaken by dripping white paint. There is not much on Wandera on the web (I wish there were interviews, but there are not as far as I can see) but from seeing her work, I think a lot of her work deals with the duality of blackness and whiteness, home and unrest, safety and instability, and shared experiences and identities. Arlene Wandera was born in Kenya in 1981 and currently works in London.  

I was also intrigued by the work of Ato Malinda, who lived between Kenya, the US and the Netherlands while growing up. Malinda makes work about the hybridity between the cultures she has been a part of and also the many experiences of non-heterosexual individuals in Senegal and elsewhere. Malinda’s work shares the stories of individuals persecuted or shamed for their sexual orientation, often in the intimate setting of a booth in which she tells a story to her viewer in a personal way. Malinda’s work is very personal and intimate in nature. Malinda makes work; she also curates shows in Senegal where she held a show of artists discussing sexual identity even as homosexuality is illegal in Senegal. 

[globalarthobal]

Its aim is to produce a space away from prejudice and presupposed perspectives on ethnicity and display a creative and innovative Africa. It is one of the only Biennials in Africa to work to this extent as a pan-African contemporary art biennial. The curators, artists, and organizers of Dak’Art refuse to be contained as singular types of art producers. Local artists, visiting artists, tourists and community members take part in Dak’Art.

  Dak’Art happens in museums, galleries, on a university campus, at a railway station, and in public gardens, involving the surrounding communities through different levels of exhibition and involvement. The Biennial features contemporary art and digital arts, although in the past it did have an exhibition of textiles, it is no longer featured. The biennial produces programs between arts students at the nearby university that then come to fruition during the exhibitions. Other programs include performance, happenings, concerts, fashion shows, school visits, and film screenings.

  Above is the piece, O.R.G.A.S.M. (As god wants and devil likes it), Kiluanji Kia Henda, photograph and object installation, 2011

The current edition is functioning under the theme of “Producing the Common”, which to the curators signifies the idea of intensely and tenaciously combined aesthetics and politics in art with the goal of connecting to current global and local issues. Sixty-one artists were invited to exhibit at Dak’Art, and all of them had never shown before in the city, a conscious choice curators saw as a way of being progressively moving towards increased visibility for new artists. Curator Abdelkader Damani expressed that he hoped to launch careers of some budding artists as well as establish more of a contemporary art market within the continent, which is something that hardly exists. Most African artists have to bring their work to the US or Europe in order to produce sales, which seems like an unstable and unattainable system even within this more easily traveled global environment.

Another interesting vein of work that appears at this Biennial is the neoliberal criticism many artists have brought into question. Artist Kiluanji Kia Henda’s O.R.G.A.S.M. (the Organization of African States for Mellowness) is an imaginary satirical production of an African NGO that provides grants to Western cultures. The invention of this organization is produced through a series of installed, staged photographs that include manipulated European politicians and the artists’ friends that are always in front of O.R.G.A.S.M.’s flag, which acts as a commentary on the branding of NGO charities.

  The Biennial is currently running from May 5 – June 8 (The dates on the site are in European order, so they’re confusing.)

[globalarthobal]

Theaster Gate, Dorchester Projects, 2009

  Started with the acquisition of an abandoned home in the Dorchester neighborhood shortly after Gates had moved there, a large-scale project of revitalization of the neighborhood was mounted by the aritist. With some communal help, it now houses a library sourced by the collection of “Johnson Publishing Corporation’s in-house editors’ library and a comprehensive collection of Ebony and Jet magazines founded by John H. Johnson”. Another part of the project is composed of a collection of records from the previous Dr. Wax Records, a business that previously resided in Hyde Park, which contains 8,000 vinyl records that visitors to the space can enjoy in the listening room. This collection has subsequently traveled across the country so that others can hear the unique collection.  Another collection inside of the renovated spaces contains the entirety of the glass slide collection of art historical images from the University of Chicago’s Art History department, It contains over 60,000 images that visitors and artists are encouraged to explore, research, and use within the provided environment. These small, yet communal libraries contained within the Dorchester Project encourages a diverse audience to feel ownership over intellectual property that is placed within a more inviting and culturally lively place of production set within a South Side neighborhood of Chicago. 

  From the beginning of the project, it grew from success to continue to acquire new buildings, causing the project to function through ever fluxing conditions while hosting performances, parties, and community pedagogical events. Dorchester Project has run off of grant moneys awarded to Gates and the repurposing of resources from all over the city. In ways, Dorchester Project is meant as an approach to revitalization of a forgotten neighborhood, but the structure of its production and funding causes one to be skeptical about its appearances of gentrification by the way that Gates focuses on the importance of a "shabby-chic" aesthetic not quite in step with the ideals of surrounding area. Another concern is how Dorchester is an example of a neoliberal production through the culturally imbued artist who comes into a place, thinking that it requires a face lift from a more understanding or "neighborly" perspective. The project does seem to boast great success with community involvement to general exploration.

[globalarthobal]

The Geopolitical Artist

What are 2 of the arguments put forth by contemporary globalization activists? What are 2 of the primary tactics used?

  Arguments

a. Geopolitical artists are concerned with producing a culture of the underrepresented through DIY media by exposing the underground, the marginal or the minority through means of high jacked media or production of entirely new routes of communication.

  b. Similar to the concerns of the Dadaist past, who wanted to de-structure the bourgeois ego, geopolitical artists aim to produce systems for “deconditioning and disidentifiction” the corporate “worlds/ideals”. They want to dismantle the corporate hegemony through techniques of subversion and free enterprises.

  Tactics

c. A broader tactic of subversion by geopolitical artists is the production of collectivism/temporary autonomous zones/culture jamming through the formation of politically charged groups that can be more or less permanent. These groups come together to initiate interventions within public spaces that produce these temporary autonomous zones or through the assemblage of different media types to then critique those medias.

  d. A tactic that groups like Bureau d’Etudes uses is the mapping the geographical breadth of the transnational corporate powers or the freeing of information about such formations. This allows general publics to become more informed about globalization topics and concerns through freely distributed media by person not invested for monetary gain.

~

The questions and responses are in reference to Brian Holmes' Do-It-Yourself Geopolitics: Cartographies of Art in the World from the text book Collectivism After Modernism, published in 2007 by the University of Minnesota Press.

~

Alfredo Jaar can be considered an example of a geopolitical artist, however his work is more often than not displayed within an institutional setting of a museum or Biennial, it still addresses concerns about pollution, corruption, and war. One of his most startling bodies of work, the Rwanda Project, approaches the topic of Hutu and Tutsi genocide that happened in Rwanda in the 1990s.

  In one installation, Real Pictures, 1994, Jaar had chosen sixty photographs that he had taken in Rwanda during and following the conflict. With those sixty photos, each was placed inside a black linen box, which symbolized a kind of burial of the image. Upon each box, white text describing the imagery, place, and date was inscribed upon them as a way of telling, yet unrepresenting the horrific. Each image was used in different structures around the space, some stacked higher or lower, resulting in multiple prints of the images, still buried, but 550 in total exist in the installation, causing the viewer to engage with each structure in different ways despite the seemingly similar appearance. Instead of putting graphic images on display, Jaar uses language as a way to kill the typical visual representations of media, and inciting a thoughtful response to tragedies.

[globalarthobal]

In protest of the Dia Arts Foundation in Chelsea, NYC, the No Wave Performance Task Force was responding to the space's retrospective of the artist Carl Andre and his relationship with the late Ana Mendieta. The NWPTF donned white hazmat suits, with the words, "I wish Ana was alive" scribed on them in sharpie. Together the group laid out a hand written banner with a similar sentiment, "I wish Ana Mendieta was still alive," on the ground in front of the entrance. An activist artist, Karen Malpede read from Christa Wolf's Cassandra, Christen Clifford spilled out the contents of plastic groceries bags filled with chicken blood and guts across the sidewalk and banner. This same material had been used by Mendieta in her own work as an artist and symbolizes her body in death. The smell of the rotting meat and blood could be experienced around the block.

  The protesters actions begged a couple of poignant questions about the exclusion of artists like Ana Mendieta from larger institutional representation and retrospectives, but more significantly the mystery that surrounds her death and relationship with the artist Carl Andre. During the height of Minimalism’s art world fame, Andre and Mendieta were a maried couple, both experiencing fame and success through their work. In September of 1985, Andre and Mendieta got into an argument in their Greenwich apartment, ending with Mendieta falling thirty-four stories from the window onto the pavement below. Andre was accused of murder, but the surrounding art world intervened within the legal proceedings, allowing Andre to be acquitted of the crime three years later. Ana Mendieta’s death sent a message to women artists during that time, that if they brushed too closely to fame, they could face violence.

  This history and context of the actions of the No Wave Performance Task Force highlight the still relevant need for feminism in the global art worlds. Although I did know of both Andre and Mendieta, I had no prior knowledge about their relationship and Mendieta’s cause of death. Protests and activisms like NWPTF’s produce vital dialogues about the lack of visibility of certain peoples, their stories, their backgrounds, and their importance. Violence still happens towards women, famous women to women with no power, globally. By making the private, public, groups like NWPTF allow for these conversations to be started. 

  To read more about the protest, click here for the link to the Hyperallergic article.  

[globalarthobal]

SOSka Group, Barter, 2007, video 6:54 min, video series

  Barter is an interactive system of trading that the SOSka Group consisting of 3 artists (Founded in 2005 by Mykola Ridnyi, * 1985 in Kharkov (UA), Ganna Kriventsova, * 1985 in Evpatoria (UA), and Serhiy Popov, * 1978 in Komsomolsk (UA) who live and work in Kharkov, Ukraine established as way to question the broader contemporary art market. The artists set up a small exhibition in a farmer's yard, and make available for barter printed images of art stars works like Warhol, Lichtenstein, Sherman, and Chuck Close. Surrounding villagers can then barter with agricultural goods for a print making a Chuck Close the price of a chicken or a bundle of vegetables. In this way, SOSka is providing a critique of the widely unattainable art market while also dispersing imagery of art that is actually not well known in the region. In this way, the video makes obvious the lack of art history’s ability to breach the rural landscape.

  Here, farmers and towns people barter for image simply because they look like their daughter or relate to a similar experience while the larger culture imbued in the artists and market values is lost on the new owner. Barter plays with art markets and values through a sense of humor while pinpointing the also absurdity of the value of contemporary art.

[globalarthobal]

"Global Art Off the Radar"

Turn On Art is a web-based reporting and interactive resource that aims to encourage dialogue around contemporary arts and culture and is not just some "webzine about the art market or art history". Instead, individual contributors produce articles that are shared on the simple platform support by IvoryPress. Authors focus on global currents of production that are off the grid and hope to share their insights and encourage dialogue. Turn On Art is a relatively new site with only a few articles, but the ones that I have read have helped yield new views and ideas while revealing something about unknown artist practices or cultural currents. Turn On Art contains relatable texts produced by artists, critiques, and art historians from a global perspective.

[globalarthobal]

The Carnegie International

  Inaugurated in 1896, Andrew Carnegie also founded the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh with the goal to collect “the old masters of tomorrow”. This included the foundation of the Carnegie Museum of Art, effectually founding the first contemporary art museum with the mission to collect and exhibition current, living artists in the United States. The Carnegie International was modeled after the Venice Biennial, showing an international contemporary spread of artists with few interruptions until the First World War. The International showed every fall as a means to generating a means of collecting contemporary artists for the Carnegie Museum and to function as a platform for modern art in an international setting. The industrialist, Andrew Carngie sought to educate audiences and bring the art world to Pittsburgh while establishing an encompassing collection and institution.

  The Carnegie International was one of the first Biennials to be founded, and has continued with the relatively same mission. An interesting contrast to some of the more grass-roots and communal Biennials, the International speaks to industrial wealth and the American desire to compete within the European art world of old masters by producing a cutting edge at the turn of the 20th century and height of new modernist forms. With these background, it is easily understood how the form of the International often lacked avant-garde art forms until the 1950s.

[globalarthobal]

'Art Worlds' and the Challenges of the Contemporary Museum Practice

1. Belting's essay identifies the rise of multiple contemporary 'art worlds' and the ways in which museums negotiate new practices, concerns, and audiences for contemporary art.  Identify and briefly explain 3 challenges facing contemporary art museums in the global age and 3 new roles the contemporary museums serves.

Challenges

a. Current museums that exhibit contemporary art have to deal with the past of Modernism and its autonomous and glorifying modernist structure of the art museum that often harkens to colonialist pasts. In this way, museums begin to expand from showing the ethnocentric and “universalist” art of modernism and aim to discuss the global art worlds. Again, another challenge appears: of how to collect responsibly keeping context, history, and profile in mind. 

b. Museums are a Western tradition, but they continue to expand outside of the West and into places like the Middle East and China. Art museums and Art history, which is also a western production, then leaves these newly produced spaces outside of the West without their own history or a collection to fill their walls with. This begins a tension between contemporary artists who might assume that the museum could function in their interest, however they must realize that museums serve communities.

c. Art museums have to adapt to the “living art” of contemporary artists; whose lives have a multiplicity in the way that contemporary artists who have produced work that is currently collected, are alive as well as the structures of contemporary art related to installation, relational aesthetics, and interactive works. These produce connections of space from local interactions into global production through other museums. This works helps fill the expectation of experiencing the global art worlds through the “mirror of the local.”

   In response to these contemporary, global challenges, museums have begun to respond to the changing landscapes of artworlds by addressing more encompassing approaches to audience, inclusion, and structure.

  Roles

a. Museums have begun to take educational stances, that then broaden the audience of the space for a community willing to take in more than just a “beautiful image”, but to learn from art as a social practice. Taking an educational direction, museums begin to focus on community needs and how to communicate art to new audiences through workshops, interactive exhibitions, and community outreach programs. 

b. Museums take a more community-focused mission by trying to communicate to local art practices while still taking part in the global art worlds. Museums listen to what would serve the community as a whole. A good example might be the National Gallery of Australia that began to show contemporary Aboriginal artists alongside other works of contemporary art. 

The Aboriginal Memorial, central Arnhem land, Ramingining, 200 Hollow log coffins, 1987-88

Each coffin represents a year of colonial occupation, and acts as a memorial to the subsequent loss of life by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people during 1788-1988. The path in between the  coffins represents the Glyde River, and each coffin stands in place of the specific homelands of the Aboriginal peoples. 

c. Another role museums have taken on is to present/support/promote localized biennials and triennials that relate to specific “art worlds”. Another Australian example is when the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane produced the 1993 Triennial to represent the Asia-Pacific art world, establishing a foil to the Western Venice Biennial. 

Walangkura Napanangka | Pintupi people | Australia b.c.1946 |Untitled (Tjintjintjin) 2006 | Synthetic polymer paint on Belgian linen

The question and responses concern's Hans Belting's essay, The Global Contemporary and the Rise of the New Art Worlds 2013, Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany