Blog Directory : Listing Details
We Make Money Not Art details
Listing ID: 1282
Title: We Make Money Not Art
Description: Highlights the use and misuse of technology by artists, designers and media labs researchers.
Category: Arts, Art & Artists
Owner:
listed on: July 12, 2008 06:10:42 AM
Number Hits: 2 times
Recent Posts:
| Brussels Biennial: a quick walk through - 2009-01-03 14:56:20 |
| This new Biennial located right inside the area which Rem Koolhaas defines as the 'hollocore' was political, bold and intelligent if a little bit too much on the shambles side
Why a biennial in Brussels in 2008? Lazy answer: because every country has an art biennial so why shouldn't Belgium have one? Lengthier answer: The a first reason isgeographical: Brussels is positioned in the deeply urbanized region encompassing a large part of North-Western Europe which Rem Koolhaas calls theHollocore. As AMO explains:While Europe was once the birthplace of the metropolis, the future of the modern city is now being defined in the developing world. (...) Where the cities in the developing world explode into bigger, less containable metropolitan areas, urban Europe is in a state of entropy. No longer energized by growth, cities and towns drift off into a muddle of provincial sameness, leaving an urban vacuum. But, of course, modernity abhors a vacuum, and an infinite multiplicity of new forms of urbanity emerges to take the place of what has become redundant. The HOLLOCORE© is emblematic of Europe's new urbanity -- the amorphous super-region that links Brussels, Amsterdam, and the Ruhr Valley is urban Europe's non-event: it houses 32 Million inhabitants or 9% of Europe's population, yet has no city larger than one million inhabitants. Two thirds of its population lives in cities smaller then 200,000 inhabitants -- in places no one has ever heard of.
This contemporary urban landscape is a territorial metaphor of the European project: with no dominant cultural identity, devoid of a major city center and with no overarching governance. A second motivation for the event is thebirthdayofBrussels Expo '58, which closed its doors almost exactly 50 years before the Brussels Biennial opened. For many people the Expo '58 introduced the notion of 'modernity.'
Despite all its claims to be a truly multi-cultural and international city, Brussels cannot abstract itself from the national context. Which brings me to the third reason for the Biennial: as with all things Belgian, there is apoliticalpurpose (the event is "An initiative of theFlemishCommunity"). But that's a long story that passionates only the most Belgians among us and i must admit that my inability to take a clear stand puts me in the shoes of a second-class Belgian.
The two main venues for the Biennale 're-use' modernity. One is the ex-Post Sorting Centre which re-opened exclusively for the Biennial. The second one was a depressing corridor inside the Anneessens metro station. I might seen to grumble and snivel but i actually liked that biennial a lot. It was surprising, bold and intelligent if a little bit too much on the shambles side.
The start of my visit was fairly bleak. The first exhibition i saw at the ex-Post Sorting Centre wasOnce is Nothing, made of 'physically absent' artworks. Not that this would put me off, i managed to enjoy theSao Paulo Biennialafter all.Once is Nothingis based on a previous show, 'Individual Systems' part of the 2003 edition of the Venice Biennale . Devoid of any art piece, the room is nevertheless supposed to be 'full of memories and history.' The exhibition is a pertinent comment on the impossibility to replicate exactly one exhibition and on the pointless demand for innovation that characterizes most art biennials.
Things got seriously interesting further on with theTaller Popular de Serigrafia(Popular Silkscreen Workshop), a collective of artists and designers born with the protest movements in the wake of Argentina's economiccollapseofDecember 2001. TPS is part of a long history weaving political activism and graphic arts in Latin America (the collective's name is inspired by the early 20th centuryTaller de Gráfica Popularin Mexico).
TPS uses silk-screen printing as an affordable type of art to react quickly to political events and collaborate with different social movements. While they take part in acts and demonstrations they draw images on the clothes of the street protesters, create billboards, murals, posters and leaflets. Not only does TPS turn their works into an instrument of social struggle, they also make an act of creativity out of their protests as their creations are preserved after their original use and collected outside of the revolutionary context.
Annette Kelm's seriesPrefabricated Housesinvestigates the history of prefab houses, as developed from the late 19th century to the 1930s in Germany. The clichéd 'Swiss' chalets and 'Swedish' villas were designed by different architects and mass produced by factories during a time of housing shortage. The houses were affordable and could be dismantled without too much time nor effort. Intrigued by the high level of ornamentation displayed on each house, Kelm's photographs reveal a transition of industry and craft, functionality and fashion.By bringing together the notion of ready-made sculpture with the utopian ideals of modernist architecture, perhaps Kelm is suggesting the changed, if not compromised, contemporary position of both(via.)
One of the most formidable works on show was the 18,5 m long scale-model 'Vipcity' byLuc Deleu. The architect and urbanist has been working on a half-visionary half-utopian concept of 'Unadapted City' for some 12 years. Since living on the planet earth has become problematic due to a lack of space, urban spaces ought to be used in a more polyvalent manner. Deleu accordingly proposes an interconnected building activity that pervades the entire city and is aimed at offering the greatest possible freedom to individual initiatives at the micro level. The proposed volumes are the result of a study of the necessary surface and infrastructure: an adequate number of cinemas have been planned, but they can also be used as sports hall, mushroom farm or accommodation forhamadryas baboons(no, i don't know either what the baboons are doing here.)
As the lots were sold a story gradually unfolded. The story is set partly in the village ofBelgium, Wisconsin and features The Indian, the tiny economist and Wally Hope.Wally Hoperefers to a man who became an icon of freedom in the mid-70ties. After the auction it emerges thatThe Crying of Potential Estateis also the mediated version of the above auction. It was screened live from a mini TV-studio Potential Estate had set up in the basement gallery. In fact all visitors present on the evening of the auction shift position from extras in the film to actors playing the role of accomplices to a long-drawn murder. Potential Estate will offer the filmThe Crying of Potential Estateas a Gift to the Village of Belgium, WI (USA). The Gift, certified by an attorney at law, will be made possible by a number of private shareholders.
There is much more to say about the Biennale, how i discovered the stunning work of Juliaan Schillemans and how i finally managed to see (and like) Letter to Leopold,Extra City'scontributionto the Biennial. See also Pierre Clemens'video about the Brussels Biennial. My flickrset. TheBrussels Biennialruns until January 4, 2009. |
| Best wishes and a tour of your favourite posts in 2008 - 2009-01-03 14:14:28 |
| A look back at 2008 and best wishes from me and from the (rather unwilling) Caribbean Pirate and Spaghetti Man Happy new year dear readers! 2008 has been a bit of a 'detox' year for wmmna as i've been slowly drifting away from what had made the success (it's all relativity) of my blog: new media art. 6 months ago i didn't think i would write this but here we go: 'i'm starting to miss you, new media art. I still have my doubts and a few issues to settle with you but i would love it if you could give me another try.' Some of you might have noticed that the rss feed of wmmna is severely ill. It's been almost 3 weeks already. We are trying to fix it so bear with us. Let's kick off this year with a top 10 of the stories which you have clicked the most in 2008. Starting with a quick comment on the categories you've most perused:architecture(yes! yes! good choice!),sex(can't pretend i'm much surprised), thendesign(a category i've been trying to kill for almost 2 years now but it appears to be much stronger than i),art from japan,installation,wearable,art in berlin,art,gadgetsand finally my new favourite:activism. Now for the most popular posts:
I couldn't help but think at what my own top 10 would be. I was unable to list my 10 favourite posts of 2008 but i can tell you which exhibition has blown me away like nothing else ever did before. It was thePaul McCarthy retrospective at the S.M.A.K.I wish i could see that one again and again. I wish i could blog it again. |
| Jordi Colomer at the Jeu de Paume in Paris - 2008-12-31 09:37:34 |
| Jordi Colomer studies the way in which the modern city influences human behaviour and explores the ubiquity and drawbacks of modernism in the urban environment All i knew aboutJordi Colomerbefore entering hissolo showatLe Jeu de Paumein Paris was hisAnarchitektonseries, i was prepared for the absurd. I didn't know the absurd could make so much sense. Colomer's video installations focus on the contemporary city and in particular on the influence of urbanism on human behaviour. They toy with fake actors in real situations, fictions set in barren landscapes, artificial spaces, urban simulacra and architectural narratives. Behind their humour and irony, his productions never fail to reveal us something about the sociological and psychological dimensions of his subjects.
Colomer's aesthetics and architectural explorations pervade the whole exhibition. The videos are screened onto wooden panels, or in some makeshift structures, there is a battered trailer in the middle of one of the exhibition rooms and a mix-match of what looks like second-hand chairs are aligned against the walls.
Pozo Almonte, a body of works which was produced for the Paris exhibition, is a moving trip to one of the few surviving mining towns exploiting saltpetre (potassium nitrate) in theAtacama desertin Chile. Instead of documenting what was left of the mining activity, the artist went to the cemetery and photographed its constructions. Each of them looks like a small house that redresses the builders' meagre resources with inventiveness and personal creativity. Architecture without architects at its best. As Colomer explains:The cemetery is a sort of parallel city, well and truly alive, and full of thoroughly terrestrial little houses. It is an area shared by the living and the dead, where the latter seem to be merely on holiday. And yet this family architecture also looks like the decor of another world...
The Pope's protective vehicle, thePopemobile, is an icon that has traveled all over the world. Says Colomer:I wanted to put this highly meaningful image back into the street − in three-dimensional form but disencumbered of its Vatican pomp, with the nakedness of a prototype − so as to record the reactions of passers-by. The Popemobile's sacred dimension being already somewhat slight, it was chiefly a matter of desecrating its spectacular side and leaving only the bare bones. It was first and foremost a pretext for portraying a heterogeneous group of people, conjuring up a setting, creating a situation and just letting things happen... What kind of people were going past at noon on that summer day in 2005 in the fast-evolving area of Barcelona that lies along Diagonal Avenue in the Poble Nou district?
En la Pampais an attempt to find whether there is a place on earth that can 'resist fiction'. A man and a woman, chosen because they are not actors, are left free to perform all sorts of activities and discussions in the Atacama desert in Chile. Viewers quickly realize that the mere presence of the camera turns the experiment into a fiction that contaminates the desert itself.
Anarchitektonis a series of videos produced over two years and starring a quizzical personage called Idroj Sanicne. The films shows him cavorting around Barcelona, Brasilia, Osaka and Bucharest, brandishing cardboard models of buildings that are visible in the background. By doing so he stretches the boundaries of architecture, highlights its 'backdrop' character, drags reality into fiction and gains the attention of passersby in the process. Sanicne's performance evokes moments of angry protests, popular parades but also religious processions.
The work ofJordi Colomeris on view atLe Jeu de Paumein Paris until January 4, 2009. |
