Off Center

• Frida in Minneapolis: With a foot of fresh snow on the ground here, Mexico seems pretty appealing right now, but we Minnesotans will have to wait ’til fall to experience the real thing: the Walker will debut our touring exhibition Frida Kahlo. Commemorating the 100th anniversary of Kahlo’s birth, the show will feature 50-some paintings, plus photographs from Kahlo’s photo albums and other artifacts. After its Minneapolis premiere in October, Frida Kahlo will travel to Philadelphia Museum of Art (February through May 2008) and SFMOMA (June through September).

• (Kara) Walker Channel: The Walker Channel just added two new webcasts, Kara Walker’s discussion with artist Laylah Ali, and a conversation between Performing Arts Curator Philip Bither and jazz pianist Jason Moran on, among other topics, Moran’s recent release, Artist in Residence, featuring compositions based on works in the Walker’s collection.

• Bonami on China: Curator Francesco Bonami writes a fascinating piece on Chinese artists: “In China, you don't find a painter, and a sculptor, and a video artist, but rather one artist who is working on painting, sculpture, photography, video and (why not?) performance all at the same time. When I visited Liu Wei […], he offered me not only beautiful cityscape paintings but also architectural models of famous buildings, like St. Peter's Cathedral and the Empire State Building, made from the same rubber used to make fake dog bones… A great chaos under the sky was supposedly an excellent sign for Chairman Mao Zedong, and the same may be true for today's Chinese artists. Complexity and change is part of Chinese philosophy. To favor one medium over the others would be to impose a silly constraint. If all is possible in contemporary art, why limit yourself?”

• Typecasting: The much-blogged filmic ode to a ubiquitous typeface is getting a Minneapolis showing--the Walker just signed on to screen Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica on May 31. Here’s the national tour. And here’s the trailer.

• Cuddly Calder? A bunch of steel “eaglets” -- wee Calderesque sculptures -- were found under the Olympic Scuplture Park’s Calder sculpture Eagle early this month, apparently a guerrilla intervention by Vital 5 Productions.

• Quiltsrÿche: “Evil Rock Quilts“

Here’s the short of it: Steve Kurtz is an artist. The “authorities” end up visiting his house, for an unrelated reason. They see weird equipment, leading them think he’s a terrorist. Now he’s in trouble with the law. Jim Fetterley and Angie Waller created a video documenting Kurtz’s story:

On May 11, Steve Kurtz phoned 911 to report his wife of 20 years was unresponsive. When paramedics came to his house, one of them noticed that Kurtz had laboratory equipment, which he used in his art exhibits. The paramedics reported this to police and the FBI sealed off his house.

Authorities later said that Kurtz’s wife had died of “heart failure,” but he wasn’t allowed to return to his home for two days while the FBI confiscated his equipment, and biological samples. They also carted off his books, personal papers and computer.

The contradiction between the charges for possessing harmful substances and the county health commissioner assessing that no hazardous substances were found in the house leaves only the conclusion - that ideas, when misunderstood or disagreeable, are toxic.

Kurtz is one of the founders of the Critical Art Ensemble, a group whose beginnings in filmmaking over a decade ago have evolved into public performances and videos that educate the public about the politics of biotechnology. All of CAE’s museum and public performances are meant to not only inform the public about the ways their lives are affected by biotechnology, but also to dispel public paranoia that is generated by the media and a lack of understanding.

Steve became the victim of this paranoia, and through the extended powers of the US Patriot Act, he still awaits trial for mail fraud. If found guilty, could face up to twenty years.

More Details [via BoingBoing]

One must ask, if everything is a bomb or a bio-weapons lab, how can artists and technical people create? This story certainly has a chilling effect.

As an aside, the use of showing web pages and highlighting text in the video is a simple technique that I’ve seen more and more lately. It is interesting to see aesthetic style develop from technological necessity.

DIS-CONTENTS: INSIGHTS 2007
Daniel Eatock
A Performance
Tuesday, March 6, 7 pm

Shark © Daniel Eatock

This year, INSIGHTS, the design lecture series, kicks off with a homegrown hero: Daniel Eatock, a designer currently living and working in London, but formerly of Walker design intern fame. (1999) Check out his website and you’ll see the overall conceptual approach of his design practice. He exemplifies one of the themes that this year’s lectures attempt to explore: the overlapping roles of designer as author, editor and publisher.

We’re huge fans of Daniel’s and more than excited that he’s coming to the Twin Cities for what promises to be a fantastic evening. (Note the subtitle to the lecture - Daniel Eatock: A Performance) We recently asked him what he’s missed about Minneapolis and the Walker, and what he’s looking forward to when he comes back to town; needless to say, the response did not disappoint. (Read on below)

************************************************************************************************

Hello Jayme

THE INVITATION

I open Andrew’s email invitation on 19 December in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on
Flávia’s (my girlfriend, whom I met in Minneapolis) Dad’s computer in a small
workroom whilst the rest of our families made lunch in the adjoining
kitchen. Being invited by Andrew, being able to return to the Walker as a
former intern feels very special; it was a brilliant Christmas present!

WALKER

It was the first and only job I have every really had. I enjoyed the
pressures of having to do lots of projects well, very quickly. It was great
getting something back from the printers almost every week. It was the
perfect extension to the RCA, enabling me to explore further the ideas I was
interested in, in a live context.

Things I miss about Walker:
Michell Piranio’s coffee
Andrew’s very subtle but strong critiques
David Naj
Carpentry shop
Kathleen & Pamela’s corrections
Bookshop discount
Meeting artists
Rosemary’s collection of artist books, and her scrap book with Walker look-alikes

Looking forward to seeing the new building, meeting new people, saying hello
to Philippe, seeing the current shows, having lunch with you all.

UPCOMING PRESENTATION

Over the last few year’s my presentations of work have become less formal and
more works themselves. I am interested in the idea of a performance, or of
making works specifically for the context of a lecture.

Last week Flávia and myself did a performance/lecture at the RCA for design
students. She presented my work as if she were me, I presented her work as if
I were her. It became difficult to talk with clarity about each other’s work,
but as it was mainly improvised the result was a surprise both for the
audience and ourselves. I like the incomplete process where the final outcome is
unknown.

As part of my upcoming presentation I am planning on presenting three
previous performances:
Saying NO, performed at the recent Eye conference
20 Unrealised Ideas, each presented in 20 seconds, first performed at the
Pecha Kucha Night at the ICA
Chair Balance, an ongoing work

MINNEAPOLIS

Things I miss about Minneapolis:
Bob’s Java Hut
Cheapo Records
7th Street Entry
Pho Quan
The Wedge
Walking around the lakes
Feeling slightly removed from a really big city
Mason Jennings
Mayslack’s roast beef sandwiches
Radio K

Dan

************************************************************************************************

Thanks, Daniel! See you soon.
--Jayme

Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love is opening next week, and Kara Walker has been here since the beginning of the week working on the show. She’s been seen in the offices. But how do I really know she’s here? Because she has coffee creamer in our fridge:

This struck me as unexpected. We’ve all been working on various aspects of this show for a while now; to see it coming to fruition is rewarding. And this post answers the question that everyone wanted to know, but was missing from the Q&A Paul posted. Sadly, I still don’t know if she takes sugar in her coffee.

• Beloved Buildings: A Harris poll released yesterday to commemorate the AIA’s 150th anniversary ranks the “most beloved US buildings.” 1800 adults were ask to rank 247 buildings, selected by the AIA. Their top structure? The Empire State Building, with the White House taking second place. Three art museums made the top 50: the Met (17), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (24), and the National Gallery of Art’s West Wing (34). The Walker’s on there, too, at 117, trailing downtown Minneapolis’ Philip Johnson-designed IDS Center and ahead of Minnesota’s only other mention, Frank Gehry’s first museum design, the Weisman (129). The MOMAs--San Francisco (109) and New York (146)--made an appearance as well.

• Putting Apartheid to rest: “We can’t leave things in the dust without a decent burial.” So say the actors who lived through Apartheid in Farber Foundry’s Amajuba: Like Doves We Rise, being performed through Feb. 11 at Chicago’s Shakespeare Theater before coming to the Walker February 22-24. This theatrical funeral–or exorcism–is “a reminder of the power of the arts to articulate things politicians will not or cannot.” The Tribune gave it a rave review: “It’s masterfully staged. Music, movement and truthful storytelling are integrated with profound integrity and simplicity. The show doesn’t abandon the beauty of visual spectacle — it just takes its own kind of ownership.” (Few tickets remain; order here.)

• Street/Sounds: Street Level: Mark Bradford/William Cordova/Robin Rhode, opening March 29 at Duke’s Nasher Gallery, features artists who use found objects, vernacular vocabulary, or performance interventions to explore how “cultural territory is defined and space is transformed in urban environments.” Clamor, opening April 17 at the Serpentine, consists of a bunker/ruin/sound booth (image, top right) from which artists Allora & Calzadilla will sample music used in war, including Twisted Sister's “We're not gonna take it” used by the US to annoy Manuel Noriega in the 1989 Panama invasion.

• The Green Room: Elsewhere I’ve been writing on green art museums–which are few and far between–but now Eyebeam tips us off to a nice Guardian piece on green theater. Is theater, with its trash-bound sets, high heating bills, and global tours, the “eco-vandal of the entertainment world”? Maybe, but rather than laying blame the piece looks to efforts by the green-minded few, like Graham Eatough, director of Suspect Culture theatre company, who says, “We should champion the beauty of anachronistic artforms. If you asked a green activist to describe the ideal form of entertainment in 2050, it would resemble theatre: natural comings-together of communities to tell stories, without the wasteful production of artefacts.”

By now the big to-do in Boston last week should be familiar and likely fading into the landscape of forgotten news stories. Within the so-called hacktivist community, the initial reaction was a collective shaking of the head and saying, “you’re kidding, right?”, followed by a sigh of inevitable disappointment. Boston and the news media weren’t kidding, though many people certainly wish they were.

One of the more insightful commentaries on the episode comes from Matt Blaze, a security researcher. He discusses the nature of guerilla art and how we are slowly being trained not to trust anything we see or hear, and not just because of things like the Boston episode:

Guerilla advertising works only when it counterfeits the kinds of clues that allowed me to experience Keith Haring’s chalk posters in a credulous and emotional way. I’d never let myself do that today; I’d just wonder what they were trying to sell or when the movie was coming out. The impact is diminished if I have to wonder whether Andy Warhol was shilling for Campbell’s Soup, or Marcel Duchamp for Armitage-Shanks, but perhaps I will someday have to, just as I must now ask myself whether that email requesting updated account information really came from my bank.

In any case, the Graffiti Research Lab has responded to the original event:

The jury is still out on how this event will effect the cultural niche that this hacktivist street art exists in.

Photo from GRL.

Artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn just finished a huge public-art project in--and on--a favela on the outskirts of Rio de Janiero. Aiming to help favela dwellers shift perception of their home, they’ve incorporated local people in the conception and creation of the piece:

In order for the lives of people living in the favelas to improve, the popular perception of their neighborhoods must improve. The core of our idea is to help this happen by painting an entire hillside favela. Not in a uniform color, but with each house colored according to an elaborate plan so that the hillside will depict a huge image visible from prominent places in the city center. The exterior of every house will first be improved - exposed brick and raw concrete will be covered by a smooth plaster surface, enhancing its look and value.

The work will be planned and executed in full collaboration with the inhabitants of the favela.. a mix of political statement, social project and art. On one hand turning hundreds of slum dwellings into houses and on the other hand giving the creators, the favelados, a chance to show the rest of the world a different, positive side of their world. Since we want them to adopt the project and see it as their own it is important that all major decisions regarding image, design and colors are made by the favelados themselves.