Dear Charlie,
are mainstream institutions refusing to take (new) media art seriously
or are (new) media art curators refusing to take contemporary art (or
Art with the capital A, as you put it) seriously? Since you call Cy
Twombly's work "infantile rubbish", and the kind of Art shown at Tate
etc... "hopelessly bankrupt as a form of cultural endeavour", I'm
starting thinking that the second answer is the good one.
>
> always be a struggle. It seems to me almost axiomatic that if moribund
> places like the ICA and Tate understood this stuff it would have
> failed
ok. so, according to your model, do we have to be worried if a
"moribund magazine" such as Artforum features "Untethered", the
exhibition curated by our beloved crumber Sarah Cook at Eyebeam, in
its "Critics' Picks"? Damn, the review is followed by a text about
Cecily Brown! http://artforum.com/picks/
New York
"Untethered"
EYEBEAM
540 West 21st Street
September 25–October 25
Tethered is cyber-law expert Jonathan Zittrain’s term for objects
hardwired to perform a single act; “Untethered” presents artworks by
artists who unlock items from this proprietary use and redirect them
toward aesthetic purposes. Organized by Eyebeam curatorial fellow
Sarah Cook, the show includes Eyebeam residents and international
artists who playfully transform everyday objects into participatory,
otherworldly experiences through technology. The exhibition opens with
Thomson & Craighead’s Unprepared Piano, 2004, a glossy Baby Grand
piano that selects random parts of ensemble scores from MIDI files to
perform its own music. In the experiential piece Nothing in It, 2008,
JooYoun Paek invites the spectator to unzip an average-looking bag to
discover startling sounds of alarms, dog yips, and sirens. Such
defamiliarization of everyday objects is the basis of Kelly Dobson’s
Blendie, 2003–2004, and Toastie, 2004, which require the audience to
growl and whir, mimicking the sound of the appliance, to turn it on.
An audio guide is available to help navigate which objects are
participatory, including Max Dean’s So, this is it, 2001, which
captures the viewer’s image on a clock face for a minute’s duration,
and NOR_/D’s Shadow Project, 2008, in which wall panels follow the
public’s movements. Some objects are rescued from technological
obsolescence, like Michel de Broin’s Dead Star, 2008, an asteroid-like
sculpture composed of used batteries. Others reprogram our
relationships with machines, such as Joe Winter’s Xerox Astronomy and
the Nebulous Object-Image Archive, 2008. Installed over the Xerox
copier is a series of rotating lights, whose constellation-like
patterns turn otherwise-speckled, black pages into something akin to
astrophotographic plates. Such work moves beyond hacking, converting
banal appliances into interactive, whimsical art objects.
— Lori Cole
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Domenico Quaranta
mob. +39 340 2392478
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home. vicolo San Giorgio 18 - 25122 brescia (BS)
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"Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are
incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful
beyond imagination." Albert Einstein
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