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Here's the story: an artist is fascinated by falling . He takes pictures of himself falling off different things: ladders, trees, buildi...
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He's been around for a while. In 2002, for instance, he made the world a better place by putting flags on high-tension electricity lines...
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The Tea Bag garden is a landscape made of stacked bags of garden soil. The bags, padded like a bench, are essentially soft plant containers...
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If you want to know what Tim Crouch's An Oak Tree is about, and what it is like, first read his own description . You can also read the...
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Truly great art has the strange effect of making us, the spectators, feel intelligent. - António Damasio , director of the department of neu...
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Exactitudes (= exact attitudes), by photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek, is an exercise in style (or rather was, from ...
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This house which is almost gone. Which still has the lines and weight of a house, yet could very well be called landscape. This house which ...
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Just so you don't think I'm ignoring you - check out some great projects by Marc Kremers : As found , a site with images found on th...
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In a comment in the Portuguese daily newspaper Público , my colleague Tiago Bartolomeu Costa commented on a controversial artistic residency...
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Brick of Coke is part of the Experience the Experience project by Monochrom ( from the site : monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy gr...
Saturday, 27 February 2010
Friday, 26 February 2010
The afterthought experience
Does it matter what the works are?
They are performative. More: they are performances. They are people doing things in exhibition spaces. They are things happening with people within an exhibition framework.
They could be happening to others (say, someone kissing). Or to you (say, someone talking with you).
You might never discover which part was the work. Yet somehow, you often do.
Once again: Does it matter what the works are? Once you experience something, what good is the analysis?
But we are pretty smart animals. We may experience, and still want to think about it. We may want to decide what we think, and if we will go to see this thing again or not. We may rework this experience in our mind until we decide, say, that this is just not enough. That a good ice-cream would have done the job. Or a meeting with a friend. Or both combined. Maybe in a museum. Maybe accompanied by a stranger, having a conversation about progress. The luxury of conversational art. Now isn't that progressive.
Then again, what is wrong with living a series of perfectly good conversations put into a gentle, clean formal frame? Can't we just accept this? What is it that makes one (me) so voracious?
Is it the fact I've never actually seen a Sehgal, done a Sehgal?
Isn't the picture enough?
Or the reviews that seem to make a huge effort in taking the mimetic weight off the image and putting some of it on words?
Paradoxically, all the effort put into keeping it live seem to make us focus not on the thing, but on this very effort. Would Tino Sehgal be at the Guggenheim had he allowed taking pictures? So what exactly is the work, here? How come I feel it so clearly, if it's all about presence? Or am I just feeling its double, its fake, the afterthought? But isn't that crucial in experience? Doesn't that re-constitute the experience once it is over? Can one re-construct something one did not experience in the first place?
You would have to have been there. The most dreaded sentence in the world. What are we supposed to do with it? Take a hidden snapshot?
Tino Sehgal is on at the New York Guggenheim until March 10.
Thursday, 25 February 2010
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
The End Is Never Nigh (A few sentences that never made it elsewhere)
The unfair balance of the picture.
The wider picture. The bloody wider picture always giving it the color that wasn't there in the first place.
Notice: the wider picture is never the first place. It comes as we back up, until we are nowhere to be found, impressed by the relation of the Thing with that wide horizon, that swift encompassing of the Other into the Thing.
The unfair balance of the picture. Nothing should ever be framed. Frames should be prohibited, forcing us into oblivion, into focusing on the End nearest us. Who knows how many Santa Clauses are necessary?
The unfair balance of the picture.
The pictures are by, in order of appearance, Diane Arbus, Mikołaj Chylak, Diane Arbus, Fischli & Weiss.
Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - The Muse
Click image for 954 x 1452 size.
From the Punch:
Father - That poet boy who comes around, he seems like an airhead to me. I will not allow him to drop by every afternoon.
Daughter - Oh but father, I am his inspiration. He can't work if he doesn't see me every day!
Monday, 22 February 2010
Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - A Well Deserved Reward
From the Punch:
Rosie (standing by the cookie cabinet) - Does none of the keys fit, Ricky?
Ricky - No.
Rosei - Then we'll wait for mommy to get home and give us some cookies for having behaved ourselves.
More Gentle Uncertainty
Video directed by Takafumi Tsuchiya (TAKCOM).
Sunday, 21 February 2010
Friday, 19 February 2010
Thursday, 18 February 2010
Another childish question inspired by a beautiful project
The video, directed by Johannes Nyholm, is both a music video for Little Dragon, and a pilot of Nyholm's short film Dreams from The Woods.
Visit
Two pictures from the Visit series (2007/8) by Filip Berendt.
The idea is so simple and to the point that it is irritating. Berendt put an ad in a newspaper saying he wants to make installations in people's homes out of the things he finds there and take pictures of them. Some people answered. He went to their homes, and, well, did what he said he would do.
The series won him the Sittcomm award last year.
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
The Landscape Is You
The runner-up, Alexander Thieme with his Embedded
... and this year's winner, Hank Schmidt in der Beek, with In den Zillertaler Alpen
Can you spot me?
What am I, within this overwhelming sight?
Am I a humble creature? Do I not see myself?
Or is it but a false humility, a false erasing of the onlooker's look?
--
I was told twice in the last two days that one should not make art in anyone else's name but her own.
You want it - you have it.
Hank Schmidt In Der Beek, you have just made my day.
Other candidates can be found here. Also check out their blog.
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Dreaming the book
Le Monde des Montagnes (The World of Mountains), an ECAL graduate project by Camille Scherrer
Nothing to stop us from getting lost. From deciding we no longer belong here, and using all our knowledge and craft to make this place just confusing enough to dream.
Be it an augmented reality, be it a book, a picture that can actually be moving. Be it our imposing of what's in our head, or rather, what dropped by for just a second, only to fool us into believing we own it, we are it.
Nothing to stop us from finding our way. With every single hesitating step we so confidently make into this our augmented reality, with more of you than I could ever have hoped for, with less of me than you would expect, with just enough of us to get the picture.
And move on. As if nothing really happened. As if.
(via)
Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - Benjamin Rabier, Monkey see, monkey do(silent story)
Monday, 15 February 2010
Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - Modesty
"Father - Poems! Painting! Sculpture! Why the devil don't you settle for just one art form? You'll never be perfect at any particular kind.
Son - I'm sorry father, but you forget Michaelangelo!"
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Saturday, 13 February 2010
The unwearable jewel
I love the CRA$H jewellery collection by Super Fertile because it's impossible to wear. Poor people can't afford it. Rich people would never dare.
So who is it for?
For us, of course.
Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - A Curious Distraction
Click image for 427 x 1290 size.
Jasper had quite a cold, and sneezed constantly, making loud noises and squirming.
Unfortunately,, while he was absorbed reading his newspaper, he forgot the tooth picker lying on the table.
And here's how his nose became like a porcupine, which greatly amused his friend Procupius, and his dog.
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Audience
Oh, what a dreadful question.
How embarrassing, how belittling, how pitiful.
1: what is the music?
2: can't we think of circumstances where it doesn't matter?
3 (with some leftovers): but aren't we losing something essential here? Some mistery we break to put it all into the social gesture, as if art really could be effective, as if it ever were, but what does that mean, how do we measure it, but doesn't it become too close to being measurable?
4: can't it be enjoyable? Can't it be blatantly focused on the audience?
This, of course, does not mean it can't be personal. On the contrary, one could openly use this focus and transform it through the connection of the two sides, as in Dan Graham's Performer/Audience/Mirror. But this ever-sacriligeous focus on the audience need not be objectifying, or at least not so openly. Think of applying the concept to the personal, the intimate. What sort of audience are we then?
Part 2 etc
How close to us. Ever closer.
Until, say, we reach the peak, we go beyond the intimate, beyond the sapiens, we give the monkey a camera, dreamfuly believing this is what the monkey sees, dreamfuly hoping (with a tad of gentle self-irony) that this picture, taken by our object, of us, brings us closer, tells us something more about this subject, when in fact it once again brings us back to who we are, as an audience, an audience that acts.
(more pictures taken by Nonja can be found here)
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
Almanaque Bertrand, 1934
- 250 escudos! What if I take the other one, the one that's a bit shorter?
- In that case it will cost you 300 escudos.
Monday, 8 February 2010
Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - Ridgewell, At an antiques store
Click image for 842 x 776 size.
Silvério, a noveau riche: Ah! These are genuine antiques!
His better half: Be careful with what you buy, Silvério. To me they look like second hand furniture!
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - The beginnings of a diplomat
Click image for 842 x 655 size.
From the Punch.
"Johnny (extremely bored, at a grown-ups gathering): Mommy, surely it's way past my bed time."
Saturday, 6 February 2010
Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - Useless excuses
Click image for 844 x 686 size.
From the Punch:
The aunt, visiting the little sick patient - I'm sorry I didn't bring you any gifts, Cahrlie, but I didn't see anything you might like.
Charlie - What did you see you thought I wouldn't like?
Thursday, 4 February 2010
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
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2010
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February
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- Almanaque Bertrand, 1934
- Reclining Deco lady
- The afterthought experience
- Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - Fatally short-sighted (...
- Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - Automatic cleaning cham...
- The End Is Never Nigh (A few sentences that never ...
- Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - The Muse
- Life Magazine, 1927, She Didn't Have a Leg To Stan...
- Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - A Well Deserved Reward
- More Gentle Uncertainty
- Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - A True Story
- Almanaque Bertrand, 1934
- Another childish question inspired by a beautiful ...
- Visit
- Vogue, Bon Voyage
- The Landscape Is You
- Dreaming the book
- Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - Benjamin Rabier, Monkey...
- Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - Modesty
- Gorgeous Deco Valentine Postcard
- The unwearable jewel
- Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - A Curious Distraction
- Audience
- Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - 57
- T. ENAMI in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE -- Septem...
- Almanaque Bertrand, 1934
- Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - Ridgewell, At an antiqu...
- Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - The beginnings of a dip...
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- Almanaque Bertrand, 1934
- Almanaque Bertrand, 1934 - The aeroplane in farming
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