greg.org – Page 93 – the making of, by greg allen

Artificial Tuft Of Grass

Would you believe me if I told you this was Dürer’s Great Piece Of Turf and not an altered jpg?
In a fascinating and frustrating essay on aeon, art historian Noah Charney tries to very diplomatically address the fact that major museums are displaying reproductions of major works on paper by the likes of Egon Schiele and Albrecht Dürer. The museums often disclose this non-trivial fact very obliquely, or not at all:

That evening, art forgery was the subject of conversation in the museum’s stylish black marble restaurant. The patrons of the Leopold lamented that they could show their best Schiele drawings (the ones that drew pilgrims) only for a few months at a time. The rest of the time they were in darkened storage, to minimise their exposure to light, and reproductions were displayed in their place. Someone from the Albertina sympathised. She explained that Dürer’s marvellous watercolours, Young Hare and Tuft of Grass, are shown to the public only for three-month periods every few years. Otherwise they reside in temperature-, light- and humidity-controlled Solander boxes in storage. Had I had the chance to see them?
Indeed I had, and while I had been suspicious that something wasn’t quite right about them, I would be flattering myself to say that I immediately knew they were reproductions. Today’s printing technologies make it difficult to distinguish high-quality facsimiles from originals, at least not without taking them out of the frame and examining the back (which holds a wealth of clues about an object’s age and provenance), or looking at the surface in detail, without the interference of protective glass. In an intentionally shadowy alcove I could sense that something was off, but not exactly what.

“Three months every few years“? Did the Albertina leave the reproductions up when they loaned the originals to the National Gallery in 2013? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to just loan the reproductions, and let the originals rest in safety?
I wish Charney would have brought more contemporary notions of reproduction to bear here, beyond a namecheck of Benjamin. And the aeon context doesn’t help, teeing up with a clickbaity question “Is there a place for fakery in art galleries and museums?” and soliciting comments with a moot one: “When it comes to art, can a reproduction stand for the original?” When some of the world’s leading museums swap facsimiles as a matter of course, the answer is obviously yes. I’d just like to find out more about how they do it.
Is there a place for fakery in art galleries and museums? [aeon.co]
Previously: The Great Piece of Merch

‘Fake Rothko Sold To The DeSoles’, 2016, Elizabeth Williams

Elizabeth Williams, Fake Rothko Sold To The DeSoles, 2016, jpg of crayon on paper of posterboard of fake painting on canvas
OK, I hope other artists are sketching at the Knoedler forgery trial, too, because if Elizabeth Williams’ wonderful renditions of a fake Rothko installed in the courtroom is any indication, it is a rich and varied subject.

Elizabeth Williams, Domenico DeSole and Fake Rothko, 2016, jpg of crayon on paper of fake painting on canvas getting treated like a poster in the courtroom
Then in addition to classic courtroom scenes and portraits we could, for example, get an artist’s interpretation of the testimony of “red flags flying” and dealers “run[ning] like hell” at shady bargains.
The trial might not be over, so get on down there.
‘Red flags were flying’ around Knoedler fakes, experts testify [theartnewspaper]
Top US collector takes the stand in Knoedler trial

Untitled (Border), 2016

Untitled (Border), 2016, two 4×6-in. blocks of Azul Platino granite from Home Depot, as installed in some apartment in Washington DC
I am stoked to announce a new work which, depending on how the real estate market operates, should be available for viewing during CAA.
Obviously, Untitled (Border) owes a debt to Richard Serra, but the confluence of form, site, and source material-Azul Platino granite is from Spain-put me in the mind of Serra’s works at the Reina Sofia.

There’s Equal – Parallel: Guernica – Bengasi (1986), of course, which the museum somehow lost, and had to have refabricated in 2006.

There’s also his show at Reina Sofia in 1992 which included this pair of square steel slabs just owning the space in between and around them.

image: linneawest
I just found this uncanny photo from the Met’s Richard Serra Drawings show, which kind of gives me chills, it’s so similar. Assuming Serra is swapped out for a bowl of lemons and bodega oranges. [Which are not to be considered part of the work, btw.]
What I like most about Untitled (Border) is the way it attempts to define an abject liminal space, in this case a kitchen passthru right by a door. Indeed, except for obvious, the word that came to mind the most when I was making this piece a few minutes ago is abject. It practically jumped out of the picture in the real estate listing, fully formed and perfect. Like the work itself.
Anyway, Untitled (Border) will be on view this Sunday, Jan. 31, from 1-4pm, or by appointment.

EMPIRE ‘by Andy Warhol and John Palmer’

Well this looks very nice. It’s an original flyer for the premiere of Andy Warhol’s film Empire, being sold by (or at least with the approval of) Jonas Mekas. It will be signed and shipped with a personalized letter of authentication. Which is a nice touch. Otherwise it’s not clear to me what the going rate is for such ephemera, whether $1,300 for an 8.5 x 11 handout is ripoff or a steal.
Empire was made on July 25, 1964, but didn’t premiere until March 6th, 1965. It was a Saturday, and the screening began at 8:30. [Does that mean it ran in real time? Not quite. Filming began at 8:06 and ended at 2:42. Screening the film at 16fps draws it out to 8h5m.]
What’s interesting to me is the credit, “by Andy Warhol and John Palmer.” Palmer was an assistant to Jonas Mekas, and he is credited with the idea for Empire. [The 18yo had been using the Bolex his mom bought him to shoot the newly lit Empire State Building from the roof of Film Culture‘s offices on Park Avenue South.] Mekas pitched the project to Warhol and eventually helped run the camera, but it was Palmer who made the movie possible by securing the office in the Time-Life Building and the high-capacity camera needed to shoot nonstop for 6.5 hours.
Palmer’s early equal billing on Empire has not survived the Warholian glare. MoMA’s collection entry for Empire namechecks Mekas, but not Palmer; the film is credited solely to Warhol. It would be nice to straighten that out, History.
In her Screen Tests catalogue raisonné, Callie Angell wrote that Warhol “gave” Palmer co-director credit “because it was Palmer’s idea to make a film of the [newly] floodlit skyscraper, because Palmer worked on the film, and also because his mother, Mary Palmer, donated money to get the film out of the lab.”

ST253, John Palmer, 1966, image: Screen Tests catalogue raisonné
He posed for Screen Tests along with his then-wife, Factory star Ivy Nicholson. Their daughter Penelope was three months old in 1966 when she became the only baby to sit for a Screen Test.
Though he went on to co-direct the tragicomic Edie Sedgwick film Ciao, Manhattan, Palmer’s subsequent IMDb credits are primarily as a camera operator. I wonder if there are stories to hear, or perhaps more uncirculated flyers to procure.
UPDATE: Oh, it always gets better. greg.org reader Terry Wilfong sent a heads up for Palmer’s interview with Steven Watson in Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties. They talked about making Empire, including the lab’s refusal to return the film without payment in full:

[Palmer] called Warhol from a phone booth. “Ohhh, John, I don’t have any money to pay for thaaaat,” he said. “It will just have to stay in the lab.” Palmer suggested he could try to get the $350 from his mother; if so, he would have to appear on the credits as codirector. The phone went silent for fifteen seconds, Palmer recalled, and then “Andy, in a voice I never heard and will never forget, said, ‘Now you’re learning.'”

very rare original World Premiere bill for Andy Warhol’s EMPIRE 1964 [ebay]

Indifference, Fence-Sitting, Keeping Quiet, & Despair

A Gerhard Richter squeegee painting is coming up for auction in February. It is CR:725-4 fourth in a series of five large paintings [225×200 cm] made in 1990, a very busy squeegee year. From The Art Newspaper:

“The years 1989 and 1990 are the most sought-after in Richter’s works,” says Isabelle Paagman, Sotheby’s senior specialist, contemporary art. “During this time he really embraces the squeegee technique in his abstract paintings. More than half of Richter’s works from that period are in museums.”
Paagman says his use of grey in Abstraktes Bild also makes it highly sought after. Grey is of particular importance for Richter; in a 2004 interview he described it as “the ideal colour for indifference, fence-sitting, keeping quiet, despair”.

I’ve been looking at these late 80s and early 90s squeegee paintings a lot lately and am intrigued by this kind of financial sifting. Equally interesting is the use of indifference, fence-sitting, keeping quiet, and despair as record-breaking selling points. I hope it sells for £100 million.
Abstraktes Bild CR:725-4, 1990, 225x200cm [gerhard-richter.com]
Gerhard Richter painting being auctioned by Malekis could topple record [theartnewspaper.com]
A 2004 interview with Jan Thorn-Prikker that doesn’t include this quote was published in the NYT. [nyt]

Dust Breeding (Bull), 2016 –

Dust Breeding (Bull), 2016, dust, museum, reflection of Picasso sculpture.
Last week I went to see the Picasso Sculpture show at the Modern again. That’s when I noticed the extraordinary amount of dust on the window ledge in the last gallery. I took a picture of it with Picasso’s Bull in the reflection because it was amazing, and because it obviously reminded me of Dust Breeding, Man Ray’s photo of six months worth of studio dust and street grime settled on the surface of Duchamp’s Large Glass.

Man Ray, Dust Breeding, 1920, contact print, from Roxana Marcoci’s Photography of Sculpture catalogue.
I’ve loved Dust Breeding for a long time. Colby Chamberlain wrote a nice piece on it and Anthony McCall’s work in a 2009 issue of Cabinet on dust that has stayed with me for its conclusion: the antipathy between august art institutions and dust. I think MoMA has complicated Colby’s thesis.
My first comment on Instagram about wanting to donate a vacuum cleaner, but I kept thinking about Matt Connors’ noticing the same ledge situation I had, and having it trigger a similar reaction. After a couple of days, I decided to make the situation a work.
And since then, I’ve been wondering what the existence of such an artwork might mean for someone, or more precisely, what knowing it exists might do for the experience of seeing that ledge.
On the one hand, it might be amazing to have people think of me and my work when they glance out the window into the atrium. Isn’t that associative frisson better even than wanting to have an endowed Roomba drone named after me? Just think of the dialogues!
Right now the gallery is filled with jaw-dropping sculptures Picasso put together out of junk and scraps of wood, in a show that includes artworks made from cigarette-burned napkins. Dust blends right in. But in a few weeks, the Museum’s permanent collection will return in some form. What interaction might happen then? Duchamp put a little sign next to Large Glass: “Dust Breeding. To be respected.” Is it possible for that dust on MoMA’s ledge to engender respect?
Though I’m willing to find out, I’m skeptical. A few years ago, I pointed out to a guard on the 2nd floor that someone had written on the wall. She smiled benignly and informed me it was a Yoko Ono instruction piece. Which, of course it was. How cute. I was annoyed, partly for not recognizing it, but mostly that my good intentions had flipped back on me. Instead of being thanked for my civic responsibility, I was being schooled on Ono’s whimsy. I somehow doubt I was experiencing what the artist intended.

Whisper Pieces installed at MoMA in 2010, image: moma
Claiming MoMA dust bunnies as art might be seen as even lamer than Banksy, who surreptitiously stuck his own work on a museum wall and gloated about how long it took the museum to take it down. It’s just a stick in the eye of people who live to look.
Does declaring it an artwork just seem like so much ledge-half-full spin, a passive aggressive way to shame the Museum needs to break out the cherry picker and the Swiffer? Until I decided it was an artwork, I would have thought so. But now I feel actual dread knowing it’ll be gone. Some unknown day soon, maybe as soon as Walid Raad’s installation gets cleared out of the atrium, a Museum staffer is going to unceremoniously obliterate my piece. I’ll walk into the 4th floor to see some Naumans or Hesses or Broodthaers or whatever, and it’ll be gone.
But it will also be back; that’s not ten years of dust we’re looking at. And while Dust Breeding‘s parenthetical collabo right now is Picasso’s Bull, that will change too. And as it comes and goes, I’ll document its condition, and its neighbors. And if you see it, please take a picture and let me know. #dustbreeding
UPDATE WOW: From MTAA‘s Michael Sarff comes this bombshell of a project: the MoMA’s Dust Windows Community on Facebook, established OVER TWO YEARS AGO to document and appreciate the dust that gives “voice to time, memory and entropy set against the ideals of what a museum is often thought to reflex.”

@gregorg Jan 1, 2014. You are a bit late to stake out a claim but I’m willing to share the responsibility and stewardship 🙂

— michael sarff (@mriver) January 16, 2016

I am the prodigal dust son, make me as one of thy dust-loving servants!

[LOL. As I write this, Ann Temkin is actually live on Periscope, offering invited guests to honor Duchamp and the 100th anniversary of the Readymade, a term which first appeared in a letter the artist wrote to his sister on 15 January, 1916. Perfect.]
Previously, related: Untitled (Andiron Attributed To Paul Revere, Jr.)

Penn Station Photomurals By Raymond Loewy

A couple of weeks ago, David Dunlap looked back at the bad old days of Penn Station before the wrecking ball made it even worse.
And I found myself thinking the same thing as Michael Bierut, that Lewis Mumford’s “crowning horror,” a modernist, curved steel and glass ticket counter installed in 1956, was actually pretty sweet.

A quick search revealed the “clamshell,” as it was known, was designed by Lester Tischy, who had worked under Raymond Loewy.

In addition to designing the Coke bottle, Loewy was a consultant to the Pennsylvania Railroad. And as this 2011 Transit Museum exhibition of the history of Penn Station showed, Loewy filled the station’s main hall with photo murals to honor the 25,000+ railroad workers serving in the US armed forces during WWII.

The Times reported that the 40×25-ft headshots went up in February 1943. The photo above shows five, an engineer, a conductor, a soldier, sailor, and a marine. The paper said there were six, including a Red Cap porter. Also that models were used for all but the marine; so it would be interesting to know if the model for the Red Cap was black. Because that would be quite a monumental public depiction of an African American for 1943.

Penn Station’s History Lesson [archpaper]

Untitled (Re: Graham), 2016

Richard Prince, “New Portraits,” installation shot, Sept. 2014, Gagosian 976, image:richardprince.com
According to his copyright infringement lawsuit against Richard Prince, Rasta-fetishizing fashion photographer Donald Graham sells limited edition prints of his 1997 photo, Rastafarian Smoking a Joint in two sizes: 20×24 inches (ed. 25) and 48×60 inches (ed. 5).
A rasta/model/whatever named @indigoochild ‘grammed Graham’s image in February 2014. It was regrammed in May by another r/m/w, @rastajay92, three months later. In May Prince commented on it, then took a screenshot, which he eventually printed at 4×5′ and showed in his “New Portraits” show at Gagosian Madison in September 2014.

Donald Graham, Rasta Smoking A Joint, 1997-, Lambda print, 20×24, ed. 5/25, sold at Heritage Auction in Nov. 2015
In his complaint, Graham’s attorneys detail the alterations Prince made to Graham’s image, including making a screenshot, cropping, adding text and emoji, adding all the UI and empty space, and printing at low resolution and large size on canvas. Prince’s depiction is clearly of a photo on/in Instagram, with all that entails. It is clearly different in appearance, color, finish, and context, unless you’re seeking a significant amount of money, in which case these differences become invisible or irrelevant.
Unfortunately for Mr. Graham, he only registered his copyright for the image after Prince’s show, so even if he were able to prove infringement, he would only be able to recover actual damages. Since Prince sold his New Portrait to his dealer Larry Gagosian, those actual damages probably range between the profit from one 4×5 photo print and $18,500, Prince’s half of the $37,000 retail price for the IG works at that time.

greg.org, Study for Untitled (Re: Graham), 2016, Donald Graham Lambda print cut down and collaged on inkjet on canvas, 30×24 in., ed. up to 25, I guess
It strikes me that the quickest and easiest solution is to buy one of Graham’s prints, cut it up, and collage it on top of the infringing Prince. They’re already roughly the same size. For proof of concept, I’m glad to make a study using one of Graham’s smaller, 20×24-inch prints. As it happens, the only two ever to come to auction surfaced after Prince’s show: in November 2014 in Paris (EUR2600), and in Nov. 2015 in Dallas ($2,475). Delivery date’s a little uncertain, but at these prices, I’m sure we can make it work. Win-win-win.

18,262 Days

JAN. 4, 1966, New York’s traffic strike

just guessin’, tbh

Craft + The World =

The Renwick Gallery’s neon sign is utter garbage, and they’re defending it like it’s made of gold. It’s a ridiculous institutional embarrassment.
The Washington Post reports that the Smithsonian is concocting its own legal theories for stiffarming DC’s official preservationist fussbudgets, who are demanding the unapproved [and banal and tacky as hell] sign be removed immediately.
This groundless tantrum can only end badly. And for what? For WHAT? Some dumb slogan cooked up around some marketing department conference room, and then gee whizzed into existence at some misguided museum executive’s whim? This is the fight you’re going to pick, Smithsonian and Renwick?
Because it seems pretty clear where the Renwick got the idea for slapping a garish sign on a building: from Ugo Rondinone at the New Museum [lmao, Fred Bernstein sure hated the hell out of that sign, but wins for calling it “Hello, Kitschy.”]

image: dominiqueb/flickr
Or from Martin Creed at Tate Britain.

Work No. 232, the whole world + the work = the whole world, 2000, installed on Tate Britain, image: kunstkritikk.no
Or from Martin Creed at the National Gallery of Scotland.

Ibid., image: contentcatnip
Or from Martin Creed at the Christchurch Art Gallery (NZ).

Work No. 2314, 2015, image: radionz.co.nz
The difference between these signs and the Renwick’s is everything. Can they not see that? Is that what craft is now: arty minus artists? This will not end well, but it should end soon.
Signs of rebellion? Renwick Gallery is flouting signage rules, groups contend [washingtonpost]

Untitled (Glafira Warhol), 2015

Dan Duray has an excellent scoop on an unheralded auction last spring to liquidate the art collection of Glafira Rosales, the only person convicted so far in the Knoedler Gallery forgery scandal.
About 236 lots were sold by the US Marshals via their auction contractor. Only one, a portrait of Rosales herself, betrays any connection to the caper, but that doesn’t mean they’re unrelated. Most of the works were bought at auctions since 2010, which means they were presumably bought with proceeds from Rosales & co’s fake postwar masterpieces.
The obscurity of the sale and the omission of the works’ criminal connection practically demand a Glafira Rosales Provenance Project. Maybe in the new year.

Right now, though, I’ll just call out two fascinating works:
This 1957 drawing by Ellsworth Kelly is of David Herbert, a dealer and gallery employee who worked with key NY figures like Betty Parsons, Sidney Janis, and Richard Feigen. Herbert was also dragged into the center of the Knoedler scam; Rosales claimed that Herbert, who died in 1995, was the source for the paintings, which she said belonged to an anonymous, but totally fictitious, European collector. As Patricia Cohen described it when the Knoedler forgeries began to surface:

Herbert planned to use the works to stock a new gallery that was to be financed by the original collector. But the two men had a falling out, and the art ended up in the collector’s basement until his death.
Ms. Rosales does own a 1957 line drawing of Herbert by Ellsworth Kelly that was recently part of an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. What she does not seem to have, however, are any records that track the ownership of the two dozen or so Modernist paintings she brought to market.

Rosales had been introduced to Ann Freedman, Knoedler’s president, Cohen reported, by a gallery employee Jaime Andrade. Andrade was Herbert’s partner. He was, presumably, the one who sold or gave Kelly’s portrait of Herbert to Rosales. This is how provenance is made: it is inferred along a chain of relationships.

The other work is now my favorite. It is so perfect I have made it my own. Untitled (Glafira Warhol), 2015, is a poster for “Look at Warhol,” a 1970 exhibition at Galerie Thomas in Dusseldorf. It’s hard to top the Marshal’s lot description

Sheet folded at text in top margin and hinged to mat, full sheet = 35.75” x 26.75”. No frame, non-archival mat only.

That’s right. The master forger and con artist who sold dozens of modern masters to the most venerable gallery in the country without detection also folded a Warhol poster into a mat from Michael’s and tried to pass it off as a Warhol print.

In Glafira’s defense, she is not alone. The web is littered with these posters, which art grifters pretend is worth $1,500 or more, even as they sell from vintage poster shops for less than fifty bucks. The Marshal appraised Glafira’s handiwork at $85. It sold for $905. I can only assume it is because an astute connoisseur recognized the brazen shittiness of the hack as the ultimate souvenir of the whole Knoedler affair.
And while the original now resides in an unknown private collection, I will make Untitled (Glafira Warhol) as an authentic replica edition object as soon as the posters arrive.
Secret fire sale held of 250 works confiscated from dealer in Knoedler gallery scandal [theartnewspaper]
LOT: 104 (1) DRAWING: Ellsworth Kelly (1923 – ) Portrait of David Herbert 1957, sold for $15,200 [txauction, note: dead txauction links updated to archive.org]
LOT: 142 (1) SERIGRAPH POSTER: Andy Warhol [txauction]
Glafira Rosales’ collection runs from Item number 18381 to number 18616 [txauction]
Previously, 2013: What You See Is What You Believe: Barnett Newmans From The Knoedler/Rosales Collection
2012: Here’s that Knoedler Gallery Rothko

Representational Bild Of Abstraktes Bild

Untitled, 2006, 28x40cm, or roughly legal pad-size, “color print” on dibond, image: phillips
I’m still puzzled by this Gerhard Richter that sold in London a couple of weeks ago. It’s a photo of a squeegee painting mounted on dibond. The print is dated 2006, but the painting it’s based on is from 1999. There’s no useful provenance or any other documentation mentioned, and little is expected; the auction houses, and Phillips especially, regularly bail on providing even cursory info on off-season, entry-level lots like these. Time is money.
But the artist himself hasn’t published any info on it, either. It’s not mentioned in his exhaustive website, and though it seems related to other Richter photo versions of paintings, there’s nothing quite like it in Richter’s published editions.
Until very recently, that is. This picture seems to be a precursor to the Cage Grid giclee prints, which in turn led to the “facsimile objects” Richter collector and entourage member Joe Hage has started publishing as museum fundraisers. More on those later.

Abstraktes Bild CR:858-4, 1999, 50x72cm, oil on aludibond, image: gerhard-richter.com
Untitled (2006) is a photo of Abstraktes Bild 858-4. Both are on dibond panel, but the photo is 2/3 smaller: 28×40 cm vs 50x72cm. I’ve sized the two images above to scale for comparison. As its CR number suggests, Abstraktes Bild 858-4 is one of a series, a suite, actually, of eight squeegee paintings. Seven are on identically sized aludibond panels, and one is larger, on canvas. I have to think they were sold together out of Marian Goodman’s Sept. 2001 exhibition, because they have been shown a lot, and all together.
So someone got the full set, a whole roomful of squeegee paintings, and someone else got a small photo of one, a consolation prize? A bonus? A one-off gift to a friend or employee? I have no idea, which is one reason it interests me.
Untitled (2006) is a highly realistic representation of a completely abstract painting. Yet for all its apparent transparency, it hints at an aspect of Richter’s practice that is undocumented, or at least undisclosed. It’s like an update of Stella: what you see is what you don’t see.
9 Dec 2015, Lot 59: GERHARD RICHTER Untitled, 2006, est. £10,000 – 15,000, sold for £27,500 [!] [phillips.com]
Abstraktes Bild 858 and Cage Grid: Gerhard Richter and the Photo Copy

Untitled (Joan Collins Toile de Jouy), 2015

David Hammons Slauson Street Studio, Bruce Talamon, 1974, image: roberts and tilton
Like Jasper Johns a decade before him, David Hammons made prints of his oiled body. Hammons’ were more narrative, rich with content beyond just the impression of the artist’s own body.

Waiting Chairs, Gabriel Orozco, 1998, image: metmuseum.org
As is his wont, Gabriel Orozco found his narrative, this time in India, in the stone wall darkened by contact with the hair of people who rested against it as they sat in these seats. We don’t know who they were.
I am pleased to introduce a work that combines these two threads of presence and absence, specificity and universality, anonymity and celebrity, found object and markmaking.

Untitled (Joan Collins Toile de Jouy), 2015, 59 x 72 inches, patinated toile de jouy fabric, stuffing, wood
Untitled (Joan Collins Toile de Jouy) is a shaped work, a painting, really, comprising an upholstered headboard from Ms. Collins’ New York apartment, altered in collaboration over the years by her and, apparently, occasionally, (an)other(s).
Interested parties, or at least those interested in having physical custody of the work, should contact me quickly, before the 14th. That’ll give us enough time to get the headboard from the auction in LA. Me, I’m happy with it right where it is. And wherever it ends up.
Lot 43: JOAN COLLINS TOILE DE JOUY HEADBOARD [julienslive.com]
Previously, related: Untitled (Merce At The Minskoff)

Your Star, Skystar

Ice Watch, 2015, image: olafureliasson.net
The big Olafur Eliasson news out of Paris last week was obviously Ice Watch, the circle of ancient Greenland glacier fragments melting and popping in front of the Pantheon.

depiction of Your Star test flight, 2015, image: olafureliasson.net
This week Olafur is in Stockholm launching Your Star, a public art commission from the Nobel Committee. It is inspired, he explains, by the “space before an idea,” the space from which an idea emerges, the moment when you first register a curiosity or change. In this case, it is the change in the night sky over Stockholm caused by an LED tethered to a balloon, which is powered by a battery charged by a solar panel that captured the energy of the summer sun. Your Star is a new star that returns the light of summer to the dark night of Stockholm in December.

RT-LTA video still of Skystar 180 deploying from its monitoring station
But even if you’re still in Paris, you can get a sense that something is different in the sky, and change is afoot on the ground. @domainawareness notes that Paris intelligence officials have leased a surveillance balloon from the Israeli defense contractor RT-LTA Systems, to monitor protestors and other members of the public during the climate talks.

RT-LTA press photo of Skystar 180 deployed with 360-degree surveillance camera
The Skystar 180 was used in Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip last year, and is deployed near contested holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem, as well as throughout East Jerusalem and Palestinian areas in the occupied West Bank.

photo of olafureliasson work from nobelprize tweet 20151208

A new star rose above Stockholm last night! Your Star is a public artwork for the 2015 Nobel Week by @olafureliasson pic.twitter.com/id4qUH3Wl6

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) December 8, 2015

olafur eliasson my star metal sphere with a light at the bottom, image from olafureliasson's 2015-12-07 tweet, converted from png to jpg

Will it fly? Tonight, weather permitting, we’ll send Your Star into the Stockholm night sky https://olafureliasson.net

pic.twitter.com/Q2wxWOgiD5

— StudioOlafurEliasson (@olafureliasson) December 7, 2015

One is art, one is policing. One you watch, one watches you. It’s easy to think of differences, but Skystar and Your Star look so much alike that I have to wonder what else they have in common: they are both designed to exist in and affect public space. In his Nobel Week greeting, Olafur talked about the importance of public space:

It is where people come together, to exchange opinions, to disagree, to agree, and through doing all of this they help co-creating society. So does culture. I think it’s very important to keep our public space alive, resilient, and open for change and renegotiation.

Think of that in Paris, where protestors try to influence the political negotiators, primarily by influencing media narratives–and where the looming presence of police surveillance seeks to document what it can’t intimidate or silence by its presence.

O hi. I am here, watching you.
And now think of the original public sites where these aerostats are permanently deployed: occupied neighborhoods where Palestinians and Arab Israelis under decades-long seige or contestation where renegotiation takes place with rocks, bullets, tear gas, and bulldozers.
It turns out both Skystar and Your Star function by being seen. The former as a projection of power and potential deterrent, the latter as an inspiration. This turns out to bear an uncanny resemblance to the original Project Echo satelloon, which was created to be a visible presence in the sky, an inspiring beacon of American power and progress. It was also intended to acclimate people to the presence of satellites overhead, to normalize the eventuality of being watched by surveillance satellites.

When he originally conceived of a large inflatable satellite to win the hearts and devotion of the developing world, Wernher von Braun called it an American Star.
Your Star [olafureliasson.net/yourstar]
Jerusalem – Spy Balloons Give Police New View Of Jerusalem [vosizneias, the voice of the orthodox jewish community]

Kenny From The Block: A Capital X Arcades Project Showdown

I was going to post an actual review of Kenneth Goldsmith’s new book, Capital, then the attacks in Paris happened. And then I thought I would write about Benjamin’s The Arcades Project, which served as inspiration for Goldsmith’s compendium. But I found the texts about Paris that fascinated Benjamin to be completely unhelpful for the situation I was in. I lived and worked between New York and Paris for several years until 2000. I embraced the 1999 edition of The Arcades Project as a map into my adopted city. And now that map felt out of date.
This is all too much information, though, for what I have decided to do, since no one really needs my warm take on a book that is, by design, nearly unreviewable, about a city, New York, that is equally impervious to encapsulation.
So here is a mashup of Capital and The Arcades Project, excerpting texts from whatever page I turn to, in turn. Benjamin first, p. 306:

WB: Baudelaire
Baudelaire’s fatalism: “At the time of the coup d’état in December, he felt a sense of outrage. ‘What a disgrace!’ he cried at first; then he came to see things ‘from a providential perspective’ and resigned himself like a monk.” Desjardins, “Charles Baudelaire,” Revue bleue (1887), p. 19.
Baudelaire-according to Desjardins-unites the sensibility of the Marquis de Sade with the doctrines of Jansenius.
…
KG: Food-Chinese
Americans looked on with wonder and asked him what the name of the food was that his chef was preparing. His answer was “Chop Suey” which meant that it was a combination of mixed foods. He explained that it was a meal consisting of bean sprouts, celery and Chinese greens, plus amy more vegetables, with a touch of meat, usually pork. The guests begged him to let them taste it. They did. Immediately they clamored for more. Overnight, Chop Suey won widespread popularity.
Chinese residents in New York soon found a new field of endeavor open to them. They opened restaurants and called them “Chop Suey Houses.” Many of these original Chop Suey Houses still exist.

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