a visual note

heather m. o'brien

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Zarina, Companions of the End of the Night, 2013. Woodcuts mounted on Somerset Antique paper, 16 x 23 inches.

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Laure Prouvost, Wantee (still), 2013. Video

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A new island was formed off the coast of southern Japan Wednesday, November 20, 2013, after a massive underwater volcano erupted, unearthing the small islet.

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Classroom Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam 2013.

Educating Artists? is a two-day symposium organized by Gnyp Art dealing with recent developments in artist education. Addressing different educational models, the relationship between artist, tutor & student, between theory and skills, while approaching the subject from an 'outside' and 'inside'-perspective, the symposium attempts to reach for new and alternative methods in artist education.

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This month when cruising the urban landscape of New Jersey, you may come upon something that stops you in your tracks. Peppered amongst the sea of oversaturated billboards advertising hotel rates, all-you-can-eat buffets and upcoming sitcoms are 12 prints depicting the simple yet stirring image of an empty, white bed, unmade and slightly rumpled.

Gonzalez-Torres' billboard, "Untitled", was created in 1991, the same year Gonzalez-Torres lost his lover of eight years, Ross Laycock, to an AIDS-related illness. Gonzalez-Torres himself passed away of similar causes in 1996.

Full article here.

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Light and symbolism are used as a seductive power for those who cultivate power ... 

A recruiting station has been a feature of New York’s Times Square since 1946. By the late 1990’s, however, an initiative arose to rethink this building, the military’s most visible recruiting station. The commission for a modern successor came with a requirement that the design could be created within three months. Experimentation with colored fluorescents turned the attention towards the American flag. This flag need not be used merely as signage,  instead, it might be merged with the architecture itself to create an occupiable symbol. The final design is a glass and stainless steel box set on traffic median where Broadway crosses Seventh Avenue. Fluorescent lights coated in red, white, and blue 3M reflective gels ride between the custom window wall and its mullions. Both transparent and reflective, depending upon ambient light throughout the day and position of the viewer,  The U.S. Armed Forces Recruiting Station states its purpose with great clarity.  By night, however, the building hums along to the neon urbanism of the 42nd Street, already acknowledged as one of New York’s future landmarks.

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Enrique Metinides, "Untitled p 64," 1990. Courtesy the artist and Zabludowicz Collection.

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The Costa Concordia disaster was the partial sinking of the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia when it ran aground at Isola del Giglio, in Tuscany, Italy on January 13, 2012, with the loss of 32 lives. 

The ship is seen here on a ariel view via Google maps.

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Andrea Creutz with Sebastien Berthier and Shirin Sabahi

El Segundo Conbgreso de Artistas Libres Theater for gallery (installation and performance)

The Parties to this Convention: When capitalism and the academy follow the same impetus, only a disruptive silence can stop the machine from running

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Adalberto Libera, "La città ideale" (The ideal city), 1937. Print from glass negative, 18 x 13 cm.

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Alfredo Jaar, "Kultur = Kapital," 2012. Neon. Courtesy Thomas Schulte Galerie, Berlin.

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Gulf oil wells have been leaking since 2004 

Oil has been gushing from a group of wells south of New Orleans since a platform at the site was wiped out by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, and it appears that nothing is being done to staunch or control the leaking.

  Click here for more information.

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© Heather M. O'Brien

bits of colored cloth, performance rehearsal 2013

the piece will be performed LIVE on KChung Radio this Saturday, June 8 at 7pm. tune in at 1630AM in LA's chinatown in Los Angeles or online at www.kchungradio.org

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Police forced to retreat from Istanbul’s Taksim square as protests against the authoritarian neoliberalism of Erdogan’s proto-Islamist government grow.

Via ROARMAG.org

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Augmented world map of population density born in or after 1989 (facilitated by Ben Vickers)

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Know your history.

Memorial Day was started by former slaves on May, 1, 1865 in Charleston, SC to honor 257 dead Union Soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp. They dug up the bodies and worked for 2 weeks to give them a proper burial as gratitude for fighting for their freedom. They then held a parade of 10,000 people led by 2,800 Black children where they marched, sang and celebrated.