James Casebere/ Ryan Trecartin at the Guggenheim

James Casebere at the Guggenheim

When I saw the recent acquisitions expo at the Guggenheim, I found the dichotomy of my own work represented through the selection of works (its like when you read a book by an acclaimed theorist and you find ideas that correspond with your own - affirmation, it makes you feel, well, like your on to something, or, that at least you can't be too wrong..) and it made me happy. 

Theres the black and white stuff, the photographic which isn't, the loneliness and emptiness, the strange absence (which, I find it hard to tell: is this a representation of our time, or is it an absence in our time, a need we attempt to fulfill through these images?), architectural scenes, void. 

The work by James Casebere, whom I didn't know about before, wasn't the only ones that fit this category but the one I found most interesting. Heres some random stuff of his I found online: 

Supposedly all the picures are photographed using models of places that he built himself. 

The other pole in this dichotomy describes a sort of frenzy, a hunger, an ecstatic party, sick, insane and high. ///Im reading Baudrillard (Fatal strategies pg 114) "The media make the event, the object, the referent, disappear. But perhaps they only serve as support for a strategy of disappearance which would be that of the object itself"///: . Ryan Trecartin falls in this second category. I love his videos, they have that thing, that Barthes describes in Camera Lucida, "punctum". They are arresting. I'm not sure if I understand, if he is trying to communicate anything specific and I don't really care. It hurts in a good way, like scratching a scab...

(...)
But the new 20-year-olds…
Because things are accelerating so fast, when someone wants them to talk about “internet culture,” they’re going to wonder what the hell you’re talking about. They’re not going to understand the concept of it being separate. I think it’s going to cause a breakdown in dichotomies, and how people try to contain dialogue.

So the videos in Any Ever were largely made in a house in Miami. How long did you live there?
A year and a half. It only was supposed to be two months, and then it turned into this really large project. We kept renewing the lease and the house kept getting crazier and crazier.

It looks pretty wrecked by the last videos. What did the neighbors think?
Everybody was OK with it. In Miami it’s houses, not apartments. You can make a lot more noise. It was a really nice experience, actually. We made a shitload of noise, we lit tons of stuff on fire, and no one ever called the cops. When we were done with sets we would put them in our front yard. It started to look like a huge trash dump. Actually, I’m surprised I never shot a scene in it because it looked amazing.

How many people were living there?
It went up to about 15. But there was a lot of in and out, and the doors were always open. Nothing felt lived-in. Everything was from Target and Ikea, and none of it had any sort of life outside of the movie. We didn’t have a dinner table. We didn’t have anything. If we did, it was a prop, and it was broken.

That must have affected the project.
I like working that way. I’m really into accidents within a context. And I like what happens when you construct a whole space where everything psychologically connects with the idea. So no matter what… Let’s say everyone got food poisoning. We would have to use the beds and the props that were already there, and that would become part of a scene. Like all of this, it was as if there was no outside.
 
From an interview that you can find here: http://www.vice.com/read/ryan-trecartin-596-v17n11

Some stills

Which reminds me of Petra Cortwright (note I have only seen her work online but it looks really nice): http://www.petracortright.com/hello.html

and also Captain Credible, whom I saw at the Norberg Festival in Sweden last summer (2012). Random pictures:

 But maybe its just that they are all colourful and sort of violent... Ah, but isn't that a sign of our time...


NY, Brooklyn, with a fan on and lots of candles, 
12-12-28
  

Gabriel Orozco at the Guggenheim

Sometimes you see something, 
and without really noticing it gets into your head 
and it will possibly change how you work in the future. 
It was this one, and another - 
but Ill have to update that later: 

Gabriel Orozco at the Guggenheim NY.

NY
12-11-27
jetlagged but warm

The Chelsea Galleries: Parker (Rousseau), Ju, Wekua

Some inspiration from NY - The Chelsea Galleries

A bit late perhaps, but at least for archiving purposes. 
Lowres pics on my phone that will otherwise die without even 
entering the cybercemetery. Like all those papers, postcards, 
exhibit descriptions that after a year of floating around in my 
flat finally gets thrown in the garbage. I have a friend who 
keeps all of that stuff though - at least so she says...

-------Erik Parker: Bye bye Babylon at Paul Kasmin Gallery.   
Worth noting is that the colours in these quite larger paings were absolutely electric 
(you can't really see it in these photos). So toxic, and in the way the shadows are
 painted they are sometimes simulating a relation of objects and surfaces as 2D
 ( as a stageset built of flat painted boards) or 3D.  Theres an uncertainty created here -
 what is this place I am seeing - a toxic jungle, or a (toxic) stageset of a (toxic) jungle? 
Its cheerful and brutal and deceptive at the same time.

Henri Rousseau? Gone toxic - The difference between the beginning of 

the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century - the enemy 

as the violent other, or the enemy as a chemical distorsion, polution. 

In both cases seductive in spite of themselves.

I didnt however see Rousseau in NY. Just internet mindmapping.

 More chemistry, I assume its "IN".

 Mi Ju  Gaia at Freight + Volume. 
From the exhibtion text -

"The exhibtions's title Gaia refers to the Greek

earth mother goddess as well as the scientific 

Gaia Principle, proposing that all organisms and their 

inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated 

to form a single and self-regulating complex system, 

to maintin the conditions of life on our planet 

(James Lovelock). Mi explores the significance of Gaia 

pictorially, as it relates to today's ecological challenges."

 And then, on a completely different, somehow, tangent.  

Andro Wekua Dreaming Dreaming on the Gladstone Gallery.  
This was really good, well for me/ in my opinion. 
The pieces didn't self-evidently fit. The crisp nakedness, anti-drama of the 
space and the way it was lit. Some paintings that I really didnt like as 
singular objects, but that made sense, although yeah, perhaps in the 
way indicated by the title: Dreaming dreaming. I could feel this show physically. 
An awkward feeling of unsettledness that cuts through reality (Yes!)

I think thats the most interesting stuff.

Premiere night sleeping over in my new studio

Stockholm 12-11-01 

Turrell, Klein, WTC

And as I went through the corridor at the WTC, there was a landed spacecraft in one of the conference rooms, the blue light flowing through the mild curtains, everyone sucked into the blueness.
I thought of James Turrell and Yves Klein and it was like stumbling into a precious and mysterious secret. 

Stockholm
12-10-30

NEW YORK HAS BETTER ART?

NEW YORK HAS BETTER ART?
NEW YORK HAS MORE ART
THERE IS GOOD ART IN NEW YORK

We went to MOMA on a friday with free entrance. What was my thoughts on that? I could have figured it would be insanely crowded. Or not, The Modern Art Museum in Stockholm is seldom crowded like that. But then, it has no free entrance ever. But also, the experience of seeing is very different when its juxtaposed with the experience of being seen whilst watching art, or wacthing others when they are watching art at the same time as you are trying to watch it yourself.

So theres a lot of great art at the MOMA that simply escaped my attention. 
Heres some that didnt. 

Mondrian

Mondrian

 Malevich

 Malevich

Braque

Richter

All my excuses for the horrifying lack of quality in the photos, and I am well aware they are all men (ahh!).  

Stockholm
12-10-22 

NEW YORK

Notes on NEW YORK!!
NEW YORK NEW YORK 


Everybody seems to love it, they all talk about it. 
Did I get lost in translation somehow?
A couple of things struck me though as different and important. First the money thing. Money moves much faster in NY, it comes and goes, detached somehow, competely devalued and yet absolutely dominating. People get paid more (at least the freelanceing friends that I talked with, I guess this is not the case for poor chefs and "backstage" workers) than I would ever get in Sthlm, but their rents are higher and their life costs as well. So somehow they still seem to have a more nervous relation to money than I do, barely breaking even. (...)  Second its a very cool and self-aware place. I have always felt awkward with that, I can't identify. Third - and for sure the most interesting notion I had: So, I always look for the authentic in places. I know how retarded that sounds, and that it comes with its own form of exploitation, but this said I think there are some people who enjoy being a tourist and some people who don't. I don't. Lieven de Cauter writes in The Capsular Civilization about how we all turn into tourists in the postmodern city, including the permanent residents, and the cities becomes themeparks... Anyway; we found a diner around the corner of the hotel (Ok so we stayed only a couple of blocks from Times Square). It was a neat place, basic, felt authenic, very American (I have seen these types of places in innumerable movies - reality and hyperreality mixes so well). A friend of a friend, who was there at the same time, recommended another place - The Broadway Diner  - and we went there to have breakfast one morning. The place was, in my head, less authentic. They played 40s jazz and names of famous people who had eaten there were inscribed in plaques lining the walls. I didn't feel anything when I saw those names except more difficulty in claiming my own experience. What takes the place of my experience of the location, is the narrative attached to the names. And don't get me wrong, I love 40s jazz. Its the names I don't get. I have also never been to Madame Toussauds, I dont get that either. The interesting thing was, that when comparing my own position concerning the authentic American, and that of our friend of a friend, I realized that his choice of diner was probably more authentic American than mine. A couple of days later I bought "Travels in Hyperreality" by Umberto Eco at the Strand: 
from amazon site

"From Library Journal

This smorgasbord of 26 pieces ultimately focuses on the boundaries of realism as exemplified by the"hyper reality" of American phenomena like the Madonna Inn, wax museums, San Simeon, theme parks, etc. Though his tone is witty, Eco's purpose remains that of the semiologist. He is concerned about "the systems of signs that we use to describe the world and tell it to one another," and aims both to expose the "messages" of political and economic power and of "the entertainment industry and the revolution industry" and to show us how to analyze and criticize them. 

I haven't started reading it though. 

What is that? It reminds me of Shaun Tan's "The Lost Thing"























Stockholm, 
12-10-22

http://projektalidhem.se/

Projekt Ålidhem

Projekt Ålidhem är ett forsknings- och utvecklingsprojekt som sökt nya gestaltningsformer för konst i det offentliga rummet. Konsthögskolan har med ekonomiskt stöd av och i samarbete med Umeå kommun genomfört projektet. Från näringslivet har fastighetsbolagen Bostaden och Norrvidden bidragit med ytterligare ekonomiska resurser.

Studenter, lärare och internationella gäster har under ett och ett halvt år varit involverade i efterforskningar och diskussioner angående Ålidhems historia, arkitektur, miljonprogrammet och syftet med den offentliga konsten. Under hela projekttiden har hållits offentliga möten, presentationer och föreläsningar på plats. Ålidhems Intresseförening, biblioteket och ungdomsgården har varit viktiga samarbetspartners. Parallellt med undersökningen har de konststuderande utvecklat individuella verk som realiserades på plats under vintern och våren 2008.

Karaktären i ett forsknings- och utvecklingsprojekt är undersökande, kritiskt reflekterande och ska ha en öppen ansats till vad resultatet blir. För beställaren innebär detta, att satsningen skapar nya möjligheter för den framtida offentliga konsten. Konsthögskolans ansvar är att bereda de diskursiva fälten, så att de realiserade konstverken kan ses i ett större, internationellt sammanhang.

De tolv realiserade verken speglar bredden av nutida konstnärliga strategier för gestaltning av offentliga rum; från annonskampanjer i tidningar, nya bakverk, film- och bokprojekt, till skulpturer, trädgårdar och monumentala fysiska utsmyckningar. Några verk existerar bara för en kort tid, andra är beständiga, men gemensamt har de en upplevelse att erbjuda, en ny infallsvinkel på verkligheten.

http://tommarum.se/

Vad är Tomma rum?

Tomma Rum

Tomma Rum är en plattform för kulturellt och konstnärligt utbyte. Varje sommar arrangerar vi en vistelse på en mindre ort i Sverige. Tomma rum handlar om att mötas och att skapa nya former av samarbeten mellan konstnärer, kulturutövare och lokalbefolkningen på den ort vi besöker.
Tomma rum är öppet för alla som är intresserade av konst, kultur, människor och den ort som vi besöker. Konstnärer men även arkitekter, poeter, musiker, skribenter, fotografer och skådespelare av olika åldrar och nationaliteter deltar i Tomma rum. En speciell dynamik uppstår både inom gruppen och i det lokala samarbetet. Vi arrangerar utställningar, performance, filminspelningar, offentliga samtal med mera. Oväntade möten sker och både värdar och besökare stimuleras till nya synvinklar på lokala samarbeten och kulturliv.

http://tommarum.se/

Brendan Austin

Brendan Austin
Since that singular work struck me on the Affordable Art fair I will post a special here. 
Pics from his site http://www.brendanaustin.com

The artist writes on his site:  

 "The photographs are also protected by moral rights. The owner asserts his moral rights as author whenever his photographs are copied or distributed." 

It makes me realise that I know very little about copyrightstuff, and especially about moral rights. And I guess I feel insecure about whether or not Im violating those rights by reproducing the works here. (...) Fuck it, I have good intentions (remembering and being in awe ;-))), I dont earn any money on this and if Mr Austin doesnt like it he is welcome to tell me so. Except I dont post my email here so I simply hope he doesnt mind.

Happy to have seen some good stuff
Stockholm
12-10-04

AFFORDABLE ART FAIR

AFFORDABLE ART FAIR
Stockholm, Oct 3rd - 7th. 

I can feel the extent to which I am still learning the inner workings of the art world. It happens that I get irritated, frustrated, when I think of how much money goes around in the art world; a dense and topheavy industry carried on the backs of a producing class who most of the time barely make it to pay the rent and even less take part of the prestige.
The problem is that we - artists - seem to consider some things more important than money. This seemingly small difference in priorites has huge consequences. Anyway, from such a perspective, events like the Affordable Art Fair could really be understood as positive for the artists. (Note; this is only includes artists making objects, works that can easily be bought and sold). It attempts to teach the normative middleclass culture interested Citizen X how to become an art collector. By doing this the possibility increases for artists to sell their work and in a ridiculously far extension to earn a living of it.  

However - I also see devaluation in sight. The word "art" is so prestigious, and being an "art collector" means being part of an intellectual and cultural elite. To make the elite accessible to anybody it seems that the word art can be filled with almost anything. 
(...)
What is art? -----!!!")(€T(U"=OQ?"O`
Anyway - lots of what I saw isn't art. Sure, accounting for all possible different opinions anything could be art at any given time, but in my more limited definition, lots of what I saw isn't. Some was closer to decoration, and some felt like it pretended to be art, as if imitating what art looks like, without really getting the point. 
I felt a strong need to recontextualize some works that I liked, since they felt lost and plain when offered up this bluntly to be measured and weighed and sold. So profane. "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind." (Im sorry I couldnt help myself). 

These are some of the works that I found pretty, some of the artists I would like to meet in another context (It sucks, only men this time...).

 Perran Costi
Skybox Small - Kangaroo Paws

Pretty - I like the format, its inspiring. Yet, perhaps too pretty, too easy. Birds, skies, leaves.  

 
Carl Gustavsson
(Title unknown)

The photograph isn't great but the painting was beautiful. It reminds me of a film by my friend artist Sophie Valero, a film about a house that somehow seemed lost in time. 




 

Brendan Austin
Paper Mountain

I really like Austin's work. As a contrast to much of the art and non-art that I saw during the fair I think these maintained their strength, mystery and presence throughout. Very nice.  

Mathias van Arkel
Silicon-werk

Cute, for sure has presence. I like it, I want to touch it, I want to roll around in soft warm rolls of acrylic wax.

Jon Harvey
Fuck like Bunnies

I guess I liked this work more before I paid attention to the title (which was now..). Without title, its just such an extraordinarily weird object. Whats not to like? ;-)

















 

Stockholm
12-10-04
(And Im going to NY next week!)

Impossible choices/ It seemed like a good idea at the time

Impossible choices/ 
It seemed like a good idea at the time....

I saw a movie a while ago, Timer, that was the sort of second step to realise this thought. The thought actually began much earlier, when I in the role of political activist wondered if our goals, if/when realized could turn out to be the weapons that would instead be used against us. Freedom (as example) means something different in the face of dictatorship, free-market capitalism or, for that matter, in the face of freedom. But the freedom that we fight for, well, the fight is made possible by the collective structures that we fight against, and as more freedom is gained, such fight gradually becomes impossible. 

Back to Timer. The film itself is a typical romantic drama without any ambivalence or special charm. The plot twists around a future scenario in which people can get an implant that will - by matching the signal with the "right" other (with implant) - tell you how long time it will take until you meet your true love. So apart from the somewhat dodgy science it also holds on to the frustrating idea of "true love" - whatever. 

Ignoring the problem of shitty scientific explanations and temporarily accepting (...) the idea of true love, a worrying thought struck me when I watched this movie. I mean. Lets say someone actually invented something like this, an implant matchmaker with enough accuracy, then... what? What would happen to society, sociality, meeting people, the sexual tension, the being together with, and trying to adjust to, different people, because of love, instinct, feromones, adventure? How would the interaction across different groups, families, subcultures take place? Would such movement become irrelevant? Are sex and love the principal reason why we go into new social situations?

I think its safe to say that this little implant - if working - would change society, and somehow those changes don't seem so appealing. They are all..inwards bound, no boundaries are crossed, no adventures, no mistakes. As a whole, I think it seems like a bad idea. 
But.....- if someone offered me this - an implant that could assure me when, and that it would at all happen, I would meet my true love (euh!) how could I resist? Even if I didnt believe in it, how could I resist? For the off chance that it would work it would be irresisible.  

And I found another example of this, perhaps even more direct, the other day: I listened to the radio on a show about brain enhancement. They talked about dement elders regaining their memories through some sort of implants, and about how in the future they might be able to grow and implant the brainstuff that makes little children learn so fast. And yes(!) it is appealing. Yes, I would like to learn ten languages (awesome...) and remember more of the books that I read than where they are in the bookcase. But through these cheerful thoughts of quickfixes runs a suspicion that none of this will solve the actual problem to which this stuff may seem like a solution. More would be demanded from us in the workplace, a requirement to be brain-pimped if you want to get a job? We would ask ourselves if its right to pimp our children, or why not fall into the siblingdiscussion of genetic manipulation; should we pimp our babies even before conception? Does the implant come with a gene selection function? For those who want true love with blond hair and a physics degree for little blond genious babies?

The problem is - that if the possibility exists, available, it is irresistible. If it works its irresistible. And to not do when one, two, 15, 100, a million others have done it; "No, Id rather stay dumb"...yeah right. Still, it seems like one of these ideas that is cool when science fiction but potentially devastating if implemented largescale. Like. It seemed like a good idea at the time (back when we were stupid...). 

Are there any mechanisms nowadays by which a society, of conscientious individuals, could prevent such a development?


Stockholm
12-09-26

 
     

The collective identities and me

The power of post-it noting:

 "How do these happen - Not by in words referring to US (+def) and them (+def) but by collectively..."

I had an epiphany the other day - at a birthday feast for my mother. My sister gave her a book that have recieved a lot of mediacoverage lately (it has both eroticism and S/M!!) and I've seen it laid out in the front displays of the bookshops. She had also bought it for herself, and we were all giggling about the naughty read of the close future. At the same time in my head, I had the epiphany. I realized that this is the main difference, this is why I always feel like the outsider. It has to do with my approach to the simple fact that if everyone talks about something, if the book in question is everywhere then my reaction is to NOT read it, I don't like when things are too hyped - it's as if the shared experience overshadows my individual experience. Their reaction is to read it. 

Now - isn't this the most anti-elite of times? To dig into the subtleties..it seems that the rewarded attitude supports this sort of accepting oneself as one in a mass, but not only accepting, revelling. Like a collective high - no, the high of feeling part of something bigger, larger, something that in itself is high.

 "...denouncing
- Breivik, pedophiles, terrorism, smokers, Bashar al Assad, the ethiopian regime and leftist activists" 

And I can't help but again connecting this to what Chantal Mouffe talks about in "On the political". So - she discusses the liberal system adopted by the Western capitalist democracies as a system (of thought) that claims to be all-inclusive. A group of consuming individuals, rather than a "we" construed from the oppostion against "them". She doesn't agree - and points out that also this system is based on drawing a line between us and them, but since this division is denied within the political discourse, the differentiation is explained through moral rather than politics). And I've found it! Heureka! (Basically, from this perspective I can understand why I always end up as the outsider..;-)) but also how the "we" is constructed, where is this line drawn, at what junctures can we discern the rituals of inclusion and exclusion. For a contemporary list of basic rites see the post-it notes (oh, and I add cookingliterature/televisionshows/magazines on the embracing list).


"...embracing 
- Fifty shades of Gray, Facebook, Twitter, democracy, Schibbye & Persson, Anna Lind, non-smoking and Thai-..."

 Also, as I touch on in the final one (purple), lately it has struck me in the times posterior to great tragedies (for example the Colorado killings 2012, or Utoya 2011) how the collective rituals of compassion and grief to seem...well (dangerous territory I know) well exploited. It is as if we cant get enough. In a project text about some art I am doing I wrote:

"....attempts to deconstruct, and put in perspective, the idea of griefing - placing the recent public manifestations of grief in the more problematic realm of entertainment and culture-consumtion. As the western society slowly adapts itself to the values of liberal democacracy and capitalism, the pressures on the artinstitutions to entertain a larger public becomes more noticeable. Provocative artworks find a new, more accepting scene (in the name of liberalism), but their claims, and those of the institutions, to create a wider discussion seem to reep little return. We need to question the role of provocation in a media environment that feeds of emotional expressiveness, as we need to question the thesis that information inevitably leads to change. There seems to be an acceleration, as if, the more spectacle we get, the more we desire." 

And I think one of the functions is the spectacle, the kick of chock and horror, and I think another is that it offers a sense of collectivity, the kick of togetherness (against the morally deprived Breivik, terrorist or..) that is equally addictive..

"...land trips.
By participating in grand emotional rites/ events (what else brings us together and is so
non-polemic - pure..." 



Stockholm
12-09-17
Goodnight