NEWSgrist: *Camera Austria: Hellstrom’s Emissary* Vol.4,
no.7 (Apr. 7, 2003)
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NEWSgrist
where spin is art
{bi-weekly news digest}
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Vol.4, no.7 (Apr.
7, 2003)
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CONTENTS:
- *Splash* Camera Austria: Hellstrom’s Emissary
- *NEWSgrist’s
Underbelly* post your own
- *Quote/s* Goya now?
- *Url/s* nyc2 canal; Suspended Gardens; Saul
Williams
- *De Maria’s Difference Engine* faceted + glittering
- *Visionary Call* Visual AIDS exhibition/contest call
- *Medium Rare* Mirapaul: Glen Ligon + conceptual webs
- *Sand
Castles* Iraq: Relief for bas-reliefs?
- *Book Grist* Pia
Dehne’s book signing; Flaneur
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*Splash* http://newsgrist.net
Thomas Hellstrom’s ‘Emissary’
digital c-print series
featured
in
Camera Austria Issue #81, March 2003
splash archived at: http://www.newsgrist.net/Splash_Hellstrom.html
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*NEWSgrist’s Underbelly*
Check for new posts, or post
your own news, press releases,
urls, opinions, rants, in the
Underbelly : http://pub11.bravenet.com/forum/show.php?usernum=870870569
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*Quote/s*
"What we need is a Goya
now. He would have done something
truly poisonous about this
fiasco in Iraq."
-- David Lee (editor,
Jackdaw Magazine) in 'Chapman Bros.
rectify
Disasters of War' in The
Guardian, March 31, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,925957,00.html
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*Url/s*
1) nyc2 canal
a pseudo real-time presentation
of ny ground zero
by doron golan, dated 2002-03.
http://www.computerfinearts.com/canal2/index1.html
2) Saul Williams: "’‘Not in
my name’ ZEN 12135 RD:24/03/03”
http://www.synchronicrecords.com
Free mp3s available now - All profits to charity
3) Suspended Gardens 2
by Alex Dragulescu
http://www.suspendedgardens.net
Suspended Gardens 2 is a hybrid
between an interactive Flash
game, a message board and a
simulation system that references
the current conflict in Iraq.
Users can choose from three types
of flowers whose growth is
influenced daily by various factors
(climate, population, oil, war,
other plants). The flowers carry
user-assigned text messages that
can be easily read by the
community at large. Watch the
garden evolve in real
time.
This site requires the latest Flash plug-in. Download it
at:
http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer
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*De Maria’s Difference Engine*
Wishful Thinking
by Anneke Bokern
Artnet Magazine, Mar 25, 2003
http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/bokern/bokern3-24-03.asp?C=1
In a large, clean room are 75
bars of polished stainless steel
laid out in rows on the floor.
They form a glistening geometrical
pattern which fills the space
with its presence. Faceted and
glittering, the metal bars
reflect the light, and can seem to hover
weightlessly above the grey
concrete. Seen from various angles,
a range of different shapes,
movements and directions can be
detected in the pattern. Above
the bars a nearly tangible tension
field arises and fills the room.
So this is the Computer Which Will Solve Every Problem in
the
World. It is nothing like a
computer, in fact. No chips, no hard
disc, not even a cable in sight.
Instead it is pure geometry,
proportion and beauty. Designed
in 1984 by the New York artist
Walter de Maria (b. 1935) for
this 40 by 40 meter hall in
Rotterdam's Boijmans Van
Beuningen Museum, the sculpture is
rarely exhibited due to its size and its specificity to
this hall. At
the moment it is the key work of
the exhibition "SHINE! Wishful
Thinking and Visions of the
Future in Contemporary Art," which
remains on view till Apr. 21,
2003. (Among the other artists with
works in "Shine" are
Paul Cox, Martin Creed, Jeroen Eisinga,
Daan van Golden, Christian
Jankowski, Rince de Jong, Liza Lou,
Tracey Moffatt, Saskia Olde
Wolbers, Roman Opalka, Gerco de
Ruyter, Maria Roosen, Fiona Tan,
Henk Tas, Fred Tomaselli,
Dr Wapenaar.)
Closer inspection reveals more of the mathematical logic
of De
Maria's sculpture. Three three-sided bars form the first
row, four
four-sided bars the second, five
five-sided bars the third, and so
on, until in the tenth row the
bars attain a 12-sided shape and
are nearly round. While the
distance between the rows always
remains exactly one meter, the
distance between the bars
slightly increases from row to
row, resulting in a subtle
curve in the field.
Beauty resulting from numerical logic -- is this the
solution of
every problem in the world? De Maria's
"computer" creates an
artificial world full of harmony
that stands in contrast to the
chaos of reality.
Proportionality and order reign in the museum
hall, but in order to grasp the
underlying complexity of the work,
you have to walk around the
floor sculpture, look at it from
different angles and even count
the bars. The metallic puzzle
has to be transformed into dry
figures before it reveals its
perfect beauty.
So, will this Minimalist computer solve every problem?
There's
enough to do at the moment (give world economy a prod,
make
peace in the Middle East). But it won't. After all, its
title is
formulated in future tense. De Maria doesn't claim that
the
computer can actually solve any problems. He just claims
that
it will, some day.
In this sense the computer sculpture belongs to the long
tradition of mankind's dreams,
such as the perpetual motion
machine, the fountain of youth
or the philosophers' stone. It is
part of the endless romantic
search for panacea and wonder
machines. At the same time it is
an ironic allusion to modern
man's unconditional belief in
technology and his hope that the
computer, which in the end is
just an adding machine, will
perform wonders.
But the sculpture doesn't give any answers. It offers an
artificial
ideal, which reality can try to
attain -- but never will. After all,
the future tense excludes that
the computer will ever fulfill its
task: It is a beautiful, but eternally unkept
promise.
ANNEKE BOKERN is a German freelance journalist and lives
in
Amsterdam.
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*Visionary Call*
Share Your Vision Art Contest
2003
Call
for Entries for work by HIV+ artists
Deadline for Submissions: June 16, 2003
Share
Your Vision is a national art contest and exhibition,
sponsored by Visual AIDS with
funding from Roche. The
Share Your Vision program was
created to help raise
awareness of the impact of
cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis on
the lives of people with HIV.
CMV retinitis is an AIDS-related
opportunistic infection, which,
if left untreated, can lead to
blindness. The contest is open
to HIV-positive artists who have
been affected by or touched by
CMV retinitis. The most
appropriate submissions will
address, discuss or represent the
artist¹s understanding of and/or
experience with CMV retinitis.
Selected works will be displayed
in an exhibition at Artists
Space in New York and included
in an accompanying exhibition
catalogue. Winning artists and a
guest will be invited to attend
the opening reception on
Wednesday, October 22, 2003. Prizes
will be awarded to winning
artists, with a matching gift to an HIV/
AIDS charitable 501(c)(3)
research or support organization of
the winner¹s choice. For more
information on Visual AIDS,
please visit: http://www.visualAIDS.org
Criteria
*
Artists must be HIV positive. Representatives of artists’
estates are encouraged to submit entries.
* Artists must be residents of the United States.
* All two- and three-dimensional work in any medium is
eligible.
* Artwork must be submitted in 35mm slide format. Original
works of art will not be accepted.
* Up to two pieces by each artist may be submitted.
* Artists must include a brief statement (see section
entitled
Artist’s Submission Statement). The artists’ statements for
winning pieces of art may also be included in printed
materials, including
the exhibition catalogue.
* Artwork must be available for exhibition in 2003-2004.
* If selected, original art must be available to be
reproduced
in printed form in an exhibition catalogue and other
materials
discussed above.
Deadline & Entry
Forms
Slides
and completed forms must be POSTMARKED by
Monday, June 16, 2003.
Entry forms are available on-line at
http://www.thebody.com/visualaids/share_vision.html
Or send a request to:
Visual AIDS
Share Your Vision
526 West 26th Street #510
New York, NY 10001
info@visualAIDS.org
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*Medium Rare*
A Wary but Interested Eye on the Web
By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL
ARTS ONLINE NYTimes, Mar 31, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/31/arts/columns/31MATT.html?pagewanted=all&position=top
Like a poker player tempted by the dice table, an artist
who
succeeds in one medium is often drawn inexorably to try
another. Strindberg painted. Julian Schnabel directs
films.
So it is not surprising that some artists, lured perhaps
by the
promise of a vast audience, have
been irresistibly attracted to
the Internet. Among those who
have experimented since the
Web was born are John
Baldessari, Karen Finley, Yoko Ono and
Tony Oursler. So far, such
artists have not hit the aesthetic
jackpot.
Yet the Internet still beckons. Glenn Ligon, a New York
artist
best known for his vaguely
legible paintings of texts by African-
American writers, is the latest
to try his luck. Mr. Ligon's roll of
the dice is
"Annotations," an interactive photo album created for
the Web site of the Dia Center
for the Arts in the Chelsea
section of Manhattan. An advance
look at the work shows that
although Mr. Ligon has not
rolled a perfect seven, he has not
crapped out either. The work is online
at http://www.diacenter.org/ligon
Initially "Annotations" looks like a typical
family photo album, in
this case including faded, fuzzy snapshots of Mr. Ligon's
relatives posing for the camera. But as one clicks on the
screen
to flip through its 20 pages, the album starts to
unsettle, and it
becomes clear that it is a work of fiction. First, one
realizes that
the captions reveal little about who is in a picture or
when it was
taken. Nor is there a chronological
progression, with familiar
faces aging as one ventures
deeper. Most startling is an image
unlikely to circulate after any
family's Easter meal: a murky
pornographic image of a man.
Who selected these pictures and
why? What unhappy scenes are
not being shown? These questions
could also be asked the next
time a family portrait of a
missing child or a lost soldier flashes
across the television screen. In
an interview last week Mr. Ligon
said that he had been thinking
"about the hidden histories of
family photo albums and what can
be represented in them and
what cannot." When picking
pictures for their albums, people are
highly selective in how they
portray their lineage and personal
history, frequently omitting
embarrassing or controversial
material. "Photo albums are fictions," Mr.
Ligon said.
In assembling "Annotations" he used his family's
snapshots, as
well as photographs bought at flea markets, in Greenwich
Village
shops and through online auctions. Clicking on each image
will
expose another picture, a few
cryptic words or, in several in-
stances, an audio clip of Mr.
Ligon singing songs appropriate to
the picture's era. But these
annotations defy interpretation.
Instead the annotations that
matter, Mr. Ligon seems to
suggest, are those the viewer brings to the
experience.
Mr. Ligon is not the first
artist to blend personal and found
memorabilia. He is obviously not
the first to challenge the truth
that photographs appear to
present. But in putting his work on
the Internet, where the line
between private and public space is
blurred, he shows how the family
album is an equally blurry
proposition: a private document
conceived for public
consumption. Yet viewing
"Annotations" on a screen feels as
intimate as leafing through a
friend's high-school yearbook.
Mr. Ligon is well aware of how
his work is enhanced by the Web.
"It's very different from a
museum space or a gallery space," he
said, "partially because
you can see it in private."
As with other online projects by
artists who are new to the
Internet,
"Annotations" is limited in how it uses the medium. It
does not link to other sites and
visitors cannot contribute. While
Mr. Ligon's work will benefit
from being freely available on the
Web, it does not need the Internet
to exist. It could be published
as a DVD.
"Annotations" is the 20th Web-based artwork that
the Dia has
commissioned since 1995. Other
artists include the choreo-
grapher Molissa Fenley and the
architects Elizabeth Diller and
Ricardo Scofidio.
Lynne Cooke, the Dia's curator, said the center favored
artists
unfamiliar with the Internet.
"Artists who work with something
where they don't know the rules
beforehand are more inclined to
push the envelope than those who
are already very dexterous,"
she said.
The problem with this is that artists who arrive new to
the
Internet do not always fully
grasp its capabilities or history as
well as digital artists who have
devoted themselves to that
medium. Yukiko Shikata, an
independent curator in Tokyo, said
that most artists who arrive
from other media "regard the Net as
the same as existing media and
just place their former works or
methods" there.
For instance "TimeStream," Mr. Oursler's 2001
Web project for
the Museum of Modern Art in New
York, is essentially a video-
art piece stuffed onto a
hard-to-navigate Web page. On the
other hand, Mr. Baldessari's
2001 project for the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Los Angeles,
"Still Life: Choosing and
Arranging," is a crude
complaint about how few choices there
are in so-called interactive art. But any number of
digital
artworks made the same point in the mid-90's.
As far as Wolfgang Staehle is concerned, everyone is
welcome.
Mr. Staehle is the executive director of Thing.net, an
online
resource for new-media artists.
In the mid-90's he invited
Mariko Mori and Vanessa
Beecroft, among others, to contribute
online works to his site. Mr.
Staehle said: "These guys are not
interested in being accepted
into the pantheon of Net art, but if
they want to put it out there,
let them. Maybe some people who
didn't see their work before will become acquainted with
it that
way."
There seems to be some truth to this. After a profile of
Ms.
Beecroft was published in The New Yorker magazine
recently,
her area of Mr. Staehle's site
became so clogged with traffic that
it was temporarily taken
offline.
For Benjamin Weil, head curator at Eyebeam, a new-media
center in New York, the issue
has less to do with the artists than
with those who commission them.
In addition to providing
technical assistance, cultural
institutions must also give them
sufficient time and information
to adapt to the medium. "It's
really a matter of guiding
people," he said, "and engaging them,
and letting them understand that
what they can do with this
medium is different from what they can do with
others."
In the mid-90's, while running
an early digital-art site, Mr. Weil
commissioned projects from Jenny Holzer and Lawrence
Weiner.
They are still intriguing works. Mr. Weil said the artists
adapted
well to the Internet because
"they are conceptual artists, so
they are much more idea-driven,
and form is something they
don't really care much for anyway."
But there is another possible explanation for why artists
from
other mediums struggle so mightily with the Internet: it
is just
too new. "I don't think artists quite get the Web
yet," Mr. Ligon
said. "Maybe it's too new to be thought
through."
Glenn Ligon's Annotations at Dia Center: http://www.diacenter.org/ligon
The Thing: http://bbs.thing.net
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*Sand Castles*
Why the Italians want to be in Iraq
" War will be catastrophic
for the Iraqi people. But it will also be
terrible for the country’s rich
archaeological heritage"
By Angela Maria Melilli
The Art Newspaper 3/21/03
http://81.112.115.148/allemandi/TAN/news/article.asp?idart=10931
ROME. After months of preliminary study, a group of
specialists
from one of Italy’s top restoration centres, the Istituto
Centrale
per il Restauro in Rome, were due to travel to Mosul, in
Iraq this
month, but have cancelled because of the allied invasion.
They
were to start restoration of the bas-reliefs in the
ancient royal
palace of Sennacherib.
The modern city of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest after
Baghdad,
rises on the banks of the Tigris near the site of the
ancient
Assyrian capital Nineveh. The cancelled project was the
result
of an agreement on antiquities between Italy and Iraq and
is
under the direction of the Italian Ministry of Culture. We
spoke
to Giuseppe Proietti, director of the archaeological
section at
the ministry, a few weeks before the invasion.
The Art Newspaper: How did this project come about?
GP: It began about a year ago, almost casually, during a
visit I
made to the royal palace in Nineveh. I was given access to
the
reliefs, and as a result I offered Italy’s assistance in
their
restoration. The Iraqis accepted immediately. This is why
the
plans were drawn up as an Italian/Iraqi joint venture,
although
the work so far has been mainly carried out in
Italy.
Given the imminence of a war in Iraq, what are the aims of
the
Nineveh project?
GP: We are on the brink of events which, I believe, a
large pro-
portion of the world would rather did not take place.
First and
foremost, a war will be
catastrophic for the Iraqi people. But it
will also be terrible for the country’s rich
archaeological heritage.
The aim of the mission was to arrest the advanced state of
decay of the bas-reliefs which
adorn the lower part of the walls
of the throne room, and of the
grand reception rooms in the royal
palace of Sennacherib in
Nineveh. The reliefs are carved on very
tall slabs of gypsum alabaster
and they recount the king’s
deeds: hunting, leading the
Assyrian armies into battle,
banqueting and so on.
Unfortunately rain and direct sunlight
have caused serious chemical and
physical damage. The project
also aims to train Iraqi
technicians to do the restoration work
themselves.
What is the state of play?
GP: In July and October last year we took a large number
of
photographs and stereophotograms [similar to x-rays] of
all the
reliefs, which have probably
never been recorded in this way
before, creating fairly
comprehensive documentation. We also
took minute samples of the
reliefs. During the summer we
worked on aspects of the project
in Rome: we catalogued the
photographic documentation,
analysed the samples and then
produced a report which we
delivered to our Iraqi colleagues.
In January we collected the final elements needed to
prepare
detailed restoration plans, and took action on a number of
specific problems, for instance the dilapidation of the
panels.
We were hoping to start restoration this month but have
post-
poned the trip. We also had a
trip planned for October, when we
hoped to restore the surface of
the reliefs and consolidate the
gypsum alabaster panels.
How long will this take?
GP: It is too early to say. Meanwhile, we are progressing
with
the design for a new roof for the palace, a new drainage
system
and the transformation of the site into a museum.
Will you use innovative technology?
GP: Certainly. Analysis of the building materials, and the
mapping of the damage to each
panel has ruled out the use of
metal ties. Instead we are going
to try carbon fibre ties, 1-2
microns in diameter, which have
one particularly useful char-
acteristic: once they have been
inserted they unravel and the
joins cannot be seen.
Who was funding the mission to Iraq?
GP: The Italian Ministry of Culture has provided several
million
euros for the project. For our own part, we have limited
the
expense by using staff from the ministry and from the
Istituto
Centrale del Restauro. We intend
to look for sponsors and
private partners for funding to
build the roof and to install the
drainage system and new
lighting. The president of CEA [the
electricity provider for the
municipality of Rome] has promised
me the help of his technical
staff in planning the lighting install-
ation.
Were there other Italian archaeological missions
working in Iraq?
GP: The Centro Scavi e Ricerche archeologiche from Turin,
directed by Giorgio Gullini, has been an important
presence in
Iraq over the last few year.
Last March they installed head-
quarters in Baghdad: the
Italo/Iraqi Institute for Archaeological
Science. Teams from the centre
are currently digging in Seleucia
on the Tigris (the largest Greek
city in the Middle East), at Atra
(a hugely rich Bedouin city, at
its most splendid during the
Antonine period) and at Nimrud.
The Italian presence in Iraq has
been constant, even after the Gulf War.
Do you have further plans for other projects in Iraq?
GP: Last October our Iraqi colleagues asked us to
collaborate
with them on plans for a new National Museum of Iraq,
which
would be the archaeological museum of Mesopotamia and thus
one of the most important
museums in the world. We also hope
to be able to carry on with the
creation of a comprehensive
database covering the whole
country, with the participation of
Iraqi technicians, specially
trained at the expense of our own
Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
This will be a computer archive of
dates and images, illustrating
all the works of art which were
looted after the Gulf War; its aim will be to assist
their retrieval.
Another project is to save some
of the few surviving vestiges of
old Baghdad, not the Baghdad of
the caliphate, of which very
little remains, but the 19th-century city.
How have the Iraqis received you?
GP: The atmosphere is one of great cooperation, not only
with
our colleagues but also with the
Iraqi people. It certainly did not
feel as though we were working
in a pre-conflict situation.
Sanctions have not produced
indiscriminate hatred of the West,
only of the American government.
Over the past 11 years
sanctions have mostly affected the weakest sections
of society.
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*Book Grist*
1)
I´M SO HAPPY I COULD DIE
by Pia Dehne
Hardcover, 320 x 220 mm, 200 pages
ISBN: 3-89980-666-2
published
by Art Berlin, January 2003
http://www.art-berlin.org/piaengli.htm
North American book launch and signing
at JOHN CONNELLY PRESENTS
a special one night event:
Tuesday April 8th, 6-8 pm
John Connelly Presents
526 West 26th Street, Suite 1023
New York, NY 10001
T: 212-337-9563
JCPRESENTS@CHEAPCREAM.COM
A special print edition and a selection of Pia Dehne’s
original
drawings will also be on display.
"I’m so happy I could die" is Pia Dehne’s first
catalogue
consisting exclusively of
drawings. Influenced both by Classic
German Modernism and the "ultra-brutal"
style of the Italian
artist Tanino Liberatore’s
"Rank Xerox" comics. Dehne has
captured over two years’ worth
of transitory images from her
everyday life: eighty drawings
based on snapshots which, taken
together, could make up an
associative "diary".
Situated between a personal approach and a formal
distance,
Dehne sketches urban life in New York and Berlin,
characterized
as it is by a longing for ecstasy as well as by
superficiality. The
fleeting moment of total happiness is so beautiful that
one could
just die: in reference to the song title of a Japanese
punk rock
band, Dehne’s drawing series unites a variety of
contradictory
attitudes.
“I’m so happy I could die" is both an authentic
testimony and a
stylistic construct that, not
entirely without irony, cites the
myths of the art establishment
as well as the club scene.
Regardless of whether Dehne’s
drawings depict an electro girl
band, people gathered at an art
opening, cowboys in Wyoming,
the deejay Westbam, the photographer
Andreas Gursky, or a
bartender somewhere in downtown
Manhattan - the autobio-
graphical tenor of these works
is always accompanied by the
basic character of the
represented subject.
Pia Dehne was born in Duesseldorf and studied with Markus
Luepertz at the Duesseldorf Art
Academy. She lives and works
in New York. Pia Dehne was the
first artist featured at the newly
founded Art Berlin Verlag. To be
informed about future projects,
contact Art Berlin
Verlag: Sandra Liermann, Torstraße 140,
10115 Berlin, Phone: 030 25762750
---------------------------------------------------------
2)
FLANEUR
An evening of (free) readings of
essays, stories, and poems by
Flaneur's peripatetic contributors. Among them: Jason
Bentsman, Miles P. Finley,
Rachel King, Alan Licht, Brendan
O'Malley, Rebecca Schuman, and Scott Zieher.
Thursday, April 10, 7:30 p.m.
Halcyon
227 Smith Street
(betw Butler + Douglass Streets, near the Bergen St.
F/G stop)
Brooklyn, New York
Readers:
Alan Licht is a musician and writer. His first book,
"An Emotional
Memoir of Martha Quinn,"
was published last year by Drag City
Press.
Rebecca Schuman's column "Nothing to See Here"
will appear
bi-weekly in the forthcoming magazine THE L. She is a
Virgo and
her hobbies are smiling and loving America.
Miles P. Finley is Flaneur's poetry editor. His poems have
appeared in The Paris Review and Parnassus.
Jason Bentsman's writing has appeared in FIRE, Spatial
Practices, Wild Poets, and Mama Said.
Rachel King is a writer, editor, and lexicographer whose
articles
have appeared in Newsday, Salon, TimeOut, and Art
& Antiques.
Scott Zieher is co-owner of ZieherSmith, a contemporary
art
gallery in Chelsea. His work has appeared recently in
Western
Humanities Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, and Emergency
Almanac.
Brendan O'Malley is an editor and drummer. He's not as
angry
as he once was.
============================
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