Category: art

A couple of months ago, I wrote a NYT piece about artists’ unrealized projects. The piece quoted several interviews conducted by the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, who sees these unrealized projects as under-publicized and under-appreciated aspects of an artist’s work, especially compared to the high level of attention regularly paid to architects’ unbuilt proposals.
Well, Gregor Schneider’s Venice Cube 2005 is one piece that’s getting plenty of publicity. Schneider proposed building a large black cube out of scaffolding and fabric in the Piazza San Marco for the Biennale. It was reminiscent of the Kaba’a, which is at the center of Mecca. The proposal was rejected several times by Italian officials for what they now acknowledge were “political reasons,” to use the artist’s description. Schneider wanted to publish his documentation of the piece and the controversy–including emails between government officials and Biennale organizers, but he was forbidden to do so. His entry consists of six all-black pages in protest.
It would be interesting to see those emails. And to see this story get attention beyond The Art Newspaper, a worthy publication though it is.

Art in the age of global terrorism [theartnewspaper.com]
Previously: Unrealized Unrealized Projects
Buy Hans Ulrich Obrist Interviews: Vol. 1 at Amazon

Sarah Boxer is disappointed in–can I say it? too late–Janet Cardiff’s online piece, Eyes of Laura. Cardiff created a journal (don’t tell the bloggers, but she actually calls it a blog) for a bored security guard in the Vancouver art gallery which commissioned the piece.
Boxer seems to feel the work depends on a suspension of disbelief that is actually IS a work of art, particularly one by Cardiff: “Maybe the illusion of the Web site collapses because it is, paradoxically, too complete, too fleshed out.” I can’t imagine this is the case.
While the site doesn’t have opening credits or anything, Cardiff’s association with it is not as secret as Boxer seems to think. First there’s the site’s distribution. I’m sure it’s promoted/shown at the gallery itself, as any artwork would be. And as Zeke pointed out, the project launch was advertised on e-flux, the giant art world mailing list. Articles like Boxer’s mention it in the context of Cardiff. Googling either Cardiff or “Eyes of Laura” completes the circuit, too. The number of site visitors without a Cardiff clue must be miniscule/irrelevant.
As for the site experience itself, Boxer’s right, it’s too slick. What security guard’s blog asks you to check your media player preferences and tells you to get Flash before entering? From the get-go, it’s an intentional construct, an Online Experience. It’s true the red-on-red text (hidden in my browser) on the splash page gives only the fictional author’s explanation of her site, but Cardiff is mentioned multiple times in the source code. And of course, the domain name itself belongs to her.
On those terms, then, Eyes of Laura is The Idea (a fictional journal) plus the ideas and observations within it, which are thoughtfully, earnestly cryptic and fragmented, but self-consciously so (no “I’m scratching my butt, I’m so bored.” entries, but then maybe Laura just would never write that. Oh wait, I’m wrong: “June 28…Have you ever seen a ‘Spock Five’?”)
Compared to her audio walks, the online piece may feel over-produced, but it’s within Cardiff’s range: she’s done video tours, too, after all, and her Venice pavilion/theater was like a ride at an art world Epcot Center. As one who’s lost the trail on a Cardiff walk before (St Louis), and had her stage-whispered narrative play out over visuals I selected myself, the website’s degree of user control is welcome. I’d argue for even more–an actual blog format–even at the expense of some slickness.
Ultimately, though, Boxer and I agree on one point, if for different reasons. The character of Laura doesn’t quite work. Cardiff’s pieces are always mannered, and I’ve always taken them as extensions or iterations of the artist herself. A lot of art works that way; even when the artist doesn’t intend it to, it gets read that way. So when I read “Laura” explaining “her” site, like this:
“But remember this is all illicit and voyeuristic and illegal. Remember, I am putting my job on the line so you can see this stuff.”
I don’t hear a 25-year-old guard; I hear an artist in her late 30’s trying real hard to sound transgressive, to sound cool, to sound 25.
Eyes of Laura, an online project by Janet Cardiff [d’oh!]

When Seeing Is Not Always Believing [nyt]

Philip-Lorca diCorcia is being sued by this guy for taking his photograph on the street in Times Square in 2001. More precisely, he’s being sued for exhibiting it, selling it, and publishing it in books, and his gallery, his publishers, and unnamed others who distribute the photo are included in the complaint.
I got this image from the Guardian, which wrongly describes the image as taken in the subway. It was taken on the street, under a construction scaffolding. I ran into P-L several times while he was shooting this series. So sue me.

Photographer sued for taking portrait [gothamist]
Buy Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s Heads for only $22 at Amazon. While you still can. [amazon]

It’s a relief to know that some folks in Venice did know they were being targetted by Francesco Vezzoli’s Biennale-stopping Caligula trailer–and are fans of his work because of it. Our Other Man In Venice was like, “but that’s the whole point–it’s an institutional critique from within the system. Vezzoli is a hustler, and he sees how the system works and is exposing it. And still, he’s best friends with Miuccia.”
And after reading about Donatella’s costumes for the Caligula in W, and how Vezzoli describes the work as “mirroring the superficiality of the film industry,” in Vanity Fair, I’m confident that Vezzoli knows what he’s up to. He’d have to be on top of things to be able to shoot the trailer in March, and still able to plant these fashion magazine stories in time for the piece’s Venice debut. To paraphrase Choire Sicha, Francesco’s a master in the medium of publicity machinery.
I’m totally cool with a smart artist exploring–and even taking advantage of and critiquing–systematic vapidity. But it still bugs when the art world looks into the mirror that artist holds up and doesn’t recognize itself.
Related: Marc Spiegler’s look at the Biennale-hype Industrial Complex in Slate; actor Glenn Shadix’s report from the set of Caligula [‘deliciously over-the-top and outrageous and the food was excellent,’], plus photos and VF scans; ‘the best part of the film is the trailer’? on Jen Shiman’s 30-second Bunny Theater.

In the NYT, Edward Lewine talks to some collectors of video- and projection-based art to find out what it’s like to actually live with work that demands both attention and extra hardware.
I know collectors who have flatscreens propped all around the house and long shelvesful of viewing copies of their work; whatever they have playing when you visit, you still read and assess the spines of their VHS’s the way you would their book collection.
And although we have some TV’s that we’ve archived because the artist considers them integral, sculptural elements of the piece, there are other multi-channel pieces where we’ve gotten rid of all but one or two flatscreens (which now double as our TV’s) until we need to exhibit it again as per the artist’s original schematics.
But then there’s the projected piece, where I’ve duped 100 slides off of the dupe of the master that the artists provided [the slides burn out after a few weeks of constant projection]. And then I still have to scour ebay for good old slide projectors, because they sure don’t make’em like they used to.
PS what’s up with the Kramlich’s built-for-video Herzog & deMeuron house in Napa? Haven’t heard much of that lately.
Art That Has to Sleep In The Garage [nyt]
Watch an excerpt of Robert Smithson & Nancy Holt’s 1969 film, Swamp, which gets mentioned in the piece. [robertsmithson.com]

One of my top picks of 2004 for film/video art, Sleepwalkers, by the British collective Inventory, will be included in the first ever US installation of their work at White Columns. It opens Friday 17 June and runs through 23 July.
Sleepwalkers was filmed at an “Americana” festival in the UK, where Britons gather to celebrate such high-minded touchstones of American culture as monster trucks, RV’s, and big rig tractor trailers with huge, pimped out sleeper cabs in the back. If White Columns’ a-rockin’, don’t bother knockin’, just go on in.
Other People’s Projects: Inventory [WhiteColumns]
Previously: My 2004 Video Art Top Ten Seven

Why, copyright, for one thing. And a quaint, lingering fixation on outmoded technology for another.
Kim’s St Mark’s location got busted by the NYPD, the Feds–“everybody was here,” says one nonbusted employee–the other day, who confiscated all the computers and arrested four employees.
Although the store has been a speakeasy-type outlet for bootleg copies of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle and Todd Haynes’ Barbie doll classic, Superstar!: The Karen Carpenter Story, neither Barbara Gladstone nor Christine Vachon–as intimidating as they are–was behind the raid.
No, it’s an even scarier outfit–yes, it’s possible–the RIAA, who patted the NYPD on the head in a statement given to MTV. Apparently the problem was the store’s brisk mixtapes business, which, according to the RIAA, were largely “urban in nature.”
And speaking of urban in nature [sweet segue, right?], artist Janet Cardiff’s audio/photo walking tour of Central Park, which was commissioned last year by the Public Art Fund, was so popular they’re bringing it back again this summer. The piece, titled “Her Long Black Hair,” can be experienced by picking up a CD player, CD, and stack of photos at a kiosk on Central Park South, Thursdays through Sundays until Sept. 11, only between 10 and 3:30.
I guess we should be only slightly thankful the original equipment–a Victrola in a wheelbarrrow and a watercolor set–didn’t work out. It’s nice to know that Cardiff’s work is so popular, but it’s too bad there’s no easier way to distribute a 45-minute piece of audio and a handful of images to large numbers of people…a Magical Media Mover– call it the MMM for short–and some kind of player for it, a 3MP… Oh, I give up. Never happen.
Police Raid Video Store in East Village in Piracy Case [nyt]
Police Seize 50 Cent, Jay-Z Mixtapes In Raid On NYC Store [mtv, 50 Cent? You mean the guy who launched his career via mixtapes? Someone’s hatin’ the game here.]
Read info from 2004 about “Her Long Black Hair,” by Janet Cardiff,, which is being restaged June 16-Sept. 12 [publicartfund.org]

Good Morning, Cicely! Whether that’s Cicely Brown or Cicely, Alaska, only time will tell. WPS1 is broadcasting live from a party barge near the Arsenale, site of the Venice Biennale.
The web audio programs will should be up within a couple of hours days, max, of their actual creation, so if you’re the other [*cough*] art world groupie not in Venice at the moment , you can still follow along online someday.
But who cares what you think if you’re not in Venice, anyway? And if you are, you won’t care, because you’ll be gettin’ your WPS1 on over the air, via one of the 10,000 free WPS1 fixed-frequency radios being distributed to the masses of VIP’s. (And you’ve probably expended too much energy trying to get it upgraded for one of the 5,000 VVIP radios, which, although they look less cool, still, in an irrational way you can never adequately explain to your parents over Thanksgiving dinner in that leafy suburb you fled with disdain, signal your ascendance into the top third of your class, 67th percentile, which if you think about it, is barely passing. Hope they’re grading the art world on a curve.)
Anyway, by pumping out a low-power FM signal on the ground [sic] in Venice, WPS1 is making a play to become the local radio station for the art world’s small town. Entertain yourself with the notions of artmacher flashmobs and storming the Arsenale if you like, but it suddenly reminds me of Chris, the DJ on Northern Exposure, who later packed it all in, changed his name to Aiden, moved to the city, and hooked up with a neurotic sex columnist.

WPS1 Live Venice Broadcast Schedule [wps1.org, most of Monday’s shows are up. must be one helluva party on that barge]

Good Morning, Cicely! Whether that’s Cicely Brown or Cicely, Alaska, only time will tell. WPS1 is broadcasting live from a party barge near the Arsenale, site of the Venice Biennale.
The web audio programs will should be up within a couple of hours days, max, of their actual creation, so if you’re the other [*cough*] art world groupie not in Venice at the moment , you can still follow along online someday.
But who cares what you think if you’re not in Venice, anyway? And if you are, you won’t care, because you’ll be gettin’ your WPS1 on over the air, via one of the 10,000 free WPS1 fixed-frequency radios being distributed to the masses of VIP’s. (And you’ve probably expended too much energy trying to get it upgraded for one of the 5,000 VVIP radios, which, although they look less cool, still, in an irrational way you can never adequately explain to your parents over Thanksgiving dinner in that leafy suburb you fled with disdain, signal your ascendance into the top third of your class, 67th percentile, which if you think about it, is barely passing. Hope they’re grading the art world on a curve.)
Anyway, by pumping out a low-power FM signal on the ground [sic] in Venice, WPS1 is making a play to become the local radio station for the art world’s small town. Entertain yourself with the notions of artmacher flashmobs and storming the Arsenale if you like, but it suddenly reminds me of Chris, the DJ on Northern Exposure, who later packed it all in, changed his name to Aiden, moved to the city, and hooked up with a neurotic sex columnist.

WPS1 Live Venice Broadcast Schedule [wps1.org, most of Monday’s shows are up. must be one helluva party on that barge]