Then Government denies artists entry (after £10.000 of aforementioned funding - government money - paid by taxpayers- is already spend on flights, hotels and visa application fees..) because they can not prove a stable bank account - now get this: because same government helped blast Iraq infrastructure.. anyone awake (in government)? What a waste of money, and I don't mean the artist's work nor the Cornerhouse for curating such a show...
Friday, April 30, 2010
visa policies madness?
Let's see if I get this right: taxpayers pay taxes to the government, government distributes money to art funding, funding is thus given to project involving 19 artists from Iraq for first major show of Iraqi artists in UK.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
producing
it is very curious how exhausting it is to spend a couple of hours taking photographs in a photo studio!
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
research material
more links for this project:
RICHARD NEVILLE wonders why society picks on art when there are so many other threats to children.
When Sydney police swooped on an upmarket art gallery on the eve of an exhibition of photographs by internationally renowned artist Bill Henson, pandemonium struck. Photographs of pubescent children were removed by police. The tabloid press applauded the censorship and described the images as "child porn". The gallery owners received death threats.
Paedophilia is a motherhood issue, and the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudds' personal opinion was that he found the work "revolting" and without "artistic merit". He told the Nine Network that "kids deserve to have the innocence of their childhood protected". Of course they do.
But why pick on an art, when trainer bras and sexy lingerie for 6 years olds are hot items, when 5 years olds go to beauty parlours and have makeovers to celebrate their birthdays, when the advertising industrys' use of very young "models" is morally questionable at so many levels, when ads for jeans are shot like pornography, when ads for lipstick are shot like pornography, when ads for cars are shot like pornography, and when 75% of the internet is pornography.
Why pick on Henson, one of the artists in the high school art syllabus for heavens sake, when our whole popular culture, what's on our telly, in our videos, our movies ,our mags and our newspapers, is shot through with exploitative and violent sexuality. Why worry about Henson when that celebration of sadism, The Passion of the Christ, was a world wide hit.
Why pick on an art photographer, when Paris Hilton's home-movie porno shot her to stardom, and matrons devouring their womens magazines at the hairdresser are tut-tutting about Britneys split-pink pole dance, when entertainers and sportstars of the ilk of the Beckhams have replaced saints as objects of veneration, and our mass media regurgitates all this vomit as though it matters. And we all gossip about it as though it matters, and meanwhile the ice caps are melting.
"Kids deserve to have the innocence of their childhood protected" - of course they do, but... as if. Are kids protected by the commercial TV channels beaming ads into their cots from the day their eyes open. Or when "wrong body" fears induced by the aforementioned use of "models" in advertising apparently causes children to suffer obesity, anorexia,and bulimia. Or when shopaholia replaces creativity and the goal of endless economic growth is not to be questioned, which is why the icecaps are melting. Kids are not protected when the environment isn't.
Kids are not protected when subjected to U.S. air strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, or when they are blown up by old American cluster bombs in Laos and Cambodia, which happens often and is reported rarely, because most of the space in the newspaper is devoted to the the Beckhams or Paris or Britneys' public meltdowns and the latest baby-bump sightings.
Why pick on an art photographer when the substance which powers our whole society - oil - is starting to dry up. At a time of global food and water shortages, our planet is entering an era of dramatic climate change, and the only obvious way out of the mess is nuclear power which will put the means to create nuclear weapons into the hands of more nutters with grudges.
Henson's disturbing images of pale pubescent nudes in eerie end-of-the-world twilight situations may well be a comment on the scenario described above - consciously or unconsciously. Artists often apprehend the times they live in. After all, the children he depicts are the ones who'll be left to live in the mess.
Meanwhile, can't we have scandals over things that matter more than budding pubic hair, like an $80 million corporate bonus being considered "fair", or that a sole tycoon can manipulate the media on several continents and be lauded. Come on you trusty boys and girls in blue; haul away the loan sharks, the polluters and the pedophiles - leave the artworks on the wall.
Monday, April 12, 2010
things to re-visit
things to look at again: http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/20100407/midcentury-architecture-experiments-on-film
http://www.textezurkunst.de/
to do: http://www.cafeoto.co.uk/programme.shtm
http://www.kunstforum.de/geschenkpakete.asp?paket=0
just ordered this book: http://www.versobooks.com/books/ab/a-titles/agamben_g_infancy_RT2.shtml
will do this: http://www.indianchampissage.com/services.htm
http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/ I like this
http://www.pulseconnects.com/
http://www.kadam.org.uk/index.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhrupad
http://www.dhrupad.info/
http://www.akademi.co.uk/index.htm
research material
Jeff Wall:
a yurt
Rob Voerman
Peter Bialobrzeski (case study homes)
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unrelated, but I kind of liked it: http://www.contextgallery.co.uk/?p=537
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Hayward Gallery Project Space
I like:
LES FRENCH (2008) is a project of two parts.
We first create ad-hoc configurations of bamboo, binding the joints with wound string, These frames are then sent to a bronze foundry and through a process of loss material casting, the fragile and unlikely structures transform to structural and permanent casts in bronze.
For the top part, with no predetermined idea in mind, we build the functional volumes of the furniture in response to the bronze pieces. Underlining the friction in permanence and value that takes place in the casting process, we wrap a lightweight fabrication in gum-paper strips.
The project is an exercise in process. It will grow to become a family of unique characters, that entertain a variety of principles for lifting volumes from the ground.
All pieces available at Gallery Fumi : www.galleryfumi.com
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Yale Course List
click on here and go to Yale
and the Dalai Lama at MIT World:
Learning to See in the Dark: The Roots of Ethical Resistance
Carol Gilligan
Where Morals Come From-And Why it Matters
Moderator: Christopher Moore PhD '98
Beatriz Luna
John Mikhail
Patrick Byrne
The Idea of Universality in Linguistics and Human Rights
Noam Chomsky
Elizabeth S. Spelke
Science Policy, Politics and Human Rights
Kurt Gottfried PhD '55
Sheila Jasanoff