After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans were urged to shop to keep the economy strong, advice that wedded patriotism to shopping. The suggestion sent Chicago-based photographer Brian Ulrich to the stores, but not to buy: he began documenting America’s peculiar and complicated culture of shopping at malls, thrift shops and big-box stores. A featured artist in Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes, Ulrich took both surreptitious and art-directed shots of the spaces and faces, not to mention the rarely seen back rooms, of our consumer landscape.
In January, Brian and I, friends since we met through Adbusters magazine years ago, discussed his three-part, multi-year Copia project. While his work offers a critique of — “and maybe a warning” about — overconsumption, it also arises from empathy, a we’re-all-in-this-together acknowledgement of the commercial world we live in.
Here’s a 12-minute audio slideshow of our conversation:
Consuming Imagery: Brian Ulrich Interview from Eyeteeth on Vimeo.
Just got an email from Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes:
Nancy Holt, Robert Smithson’s widow, recently sent an email out detailing specific threats to Smithson’s masterpiece, Spiral Jetty. Please take action before 7 pm ET today.
Yesterday I received an urgent email from Lynn DeFreitas, Director of Friends of the Great Salt Lake, telling me of plans for drilling oil in the Salt Lake near Spiral Jetty. See Attachments. The deadline for protest is [today] Wednesday, at 5PM. Of course, DIA has been informed and are meeting about it today.
I have been told by Lynn that the oil wells will not be above the water, but that means some kind of industrial complex of pipes and pumps beneath the water and on the shore. The operation would require roads for oil tank trucks, cranes, pumps etc. which produce noise and will severely alter the wild, natural place.
If you want to send a letter of protest to save the beautiful, natural Utah environment around the Spiral Jetty from oil drilling, the emails or calls of protest go to Jonathan Jemming 801-537-9023 jjemming@utah.gov. Please refer to Application # 8853. Every letter makes a big difference, they do take a lot of notice and know that publicity may follow. Since the Spiral Jetty has global significance, emails from foreign countries would be of special value.
They try to slip these drilling contracts under the radar, thatıs why we found out so late, not through notification, but from a watchdog lawyer at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the group that alerted me to the land leasing for oil and gas near Sun Tunnels last May.
Thank you for your consideration of this serious environmental matter.
• Barry McGee swindle: Swindle magazine interviews Barry McGee on surfing, his love of scooters, and how he got caught in 2004 for “painting a derogatory statement about our commander in chief.” (Here’s a glimpse of work McGee created for his ‘98 Walker show.)
• Documenting the dude: Chicago artist Jon Gitelson is photographing every item of his clothing that his girlfriend hides because she doesn’t want him wearing them, from some skanky wigwam socks to a coffee-stained polo.
• Moving images: For your online viewing pleasure, check out NewArtTV (a “new video magazine on contemporary art”), and the trailer for the forthcoming documentary based on the book Beautiful Losers.
• Googlegraphics: Ruth Kedar discusses her design for one of the world’s most ubiquitous marks, the Google logo as “subtle as to look almost non-designed, the reading effortless. The colors evoke memories of child play, but deftly stray from the color wheel strictures so as to hint to the inherent element of serendipity creeping into any search results page and the irreverance and boldness of the ‘I am feeling lucky’ link.”
• Modernist trailerpark? This excellent Flickr photo is tagged only “theater decor in Amsterdamse Bos.” Details anyone?
This shot, found on Flickr, reminds me of the “LUSH” tear-off sign I found in Minneapolis’ Uptown awhile back.
This post was supposed to be about The Task Newsletter, the weird and wonderful new project by Walker designer Emmet Byrne, former Walker designer Alex DeArmond, and Oakland-based designer Jon Sueda. I was going to write about the 3/4-sheets of “editorial byproduct” interspersed throughout the book (clippings from emails, websites and images), the excellent interviews (with typemaker Eric Olson and Amsterdam-based design duo Mevis & van Deuren, plus one conducted via iChat by Emmet, using a Mac at the Mall of America Apple Store, and Prem Krishnamurthy, at the big Manhattan Apple Store), and the issue’s catchall theme: “The Eclectic Slide.”
Then I got to page 62 and met Cat Lovers Against the Bomb.
An avowed dog person, I’m nonetheless enchanted, as Alex and his wife were:
As with any love affair, I suppose you start by describing the first time you saw someone: It must have been in the winter of 2004. My (now) wife and I were in the line at Seward Co-op in Minneapolis. It stopped us in our tracks, there amongst the new-age wall calendars: Cat Lovers Against the Bomb.
Every year since, the DeArmonds have been buying up these calendars, produced annually since 1984 by a peace group in Nebraska, for themselves and to give as gifts (”always with a fleeting sense of panic: ‘Will they get it?’”). Filled with black-and-white, amateur photos of cats, as well as the occasional trivia item about either cats or peace activism, it’s both the theme and the look that compels.
“The calendars are virtually indistinguishable from year to year, frozen in an aesthetic that suggests the days of 1980’s desktop publishing,” Alex writes. The images, shot by amateur photographers, “give you a glimpse into the world of both the cat and the owner. One chilling image showed a cat sleeping in a dish drainer. Sometimes you can’t wait for the next month so you can move on.”
For me, it’s the refreshing dose of earnestness in an irony saturated age. There’s an honesty here: the calendars are unabashedly political, aesthetically utilitarian, and ardently hopeful — without that humorlessness that sometimes afflicts left-of-center causes. OK, the punny attempts at levity, usually appearing as comments on the lower left side of each photo, sometimes seem to fall short — “Purr-ceptive Progressives Take the Lead” and “Pet Peeve: Human Ambitions of Power” — but on second read, they’re kinda, somehow, right on.
• Arts annual: City Pages concludes 2007 with a look at the artists of the year. This edition features offerings by the Walker’s assistant film/video curator, Dean Otto, who in an homage to Sen. Larry Craig’s “wide stance” selected L.A.-based filmmaker William E. Jones, who’ll next be showing his work Tearoom, a found film about gay sex in bathrooms, at the Whitney Biennial. Assistant visual arts curator Doryun Chong picked Minneapolis artist Ernest A. Bryant III, maker of mixed-media 2D works as well as a piece called “BBQ potlatch” — in which “he served people cooked chickens and collected leftover bones that he fashioned into a suit.” [Bryant’s 2005 work untitled, biggieman, power figure is pictured above.]
• Prime performers: City Pages‘ best-in-theater included Michael Sommers’ Walker-commissioned puppetry work A Prelude to Faust in its year’s-best, remounted to christen the new Open Eye Figure Theater, and former Walker staffer Jim Bovino tied for best actor in Lavender magazine’s annual rundown, for Flaneur Productions‘ rendition of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.
• Warhol’s staying power: Vita.mn, the Star Tribune’s free entertainment weekly, released its best-of list, too, and the Walker’s Picasso and Kahlo exhibitions took the top two spots in the “best art events” category. More impressive was the Walker’s Andy Warhol show. How good was it? It ranked sixth best art event of the year — despite opening in 2005 and closing in 2006.
• Sound-art radio’s finest: Some Assembly Required compiles the year’s list of interviews, conducted by creator (and former Walker employee) Jon Nelson. It’s a remarkable list of artists, including Steev Hise, Rob Swift, The Tape-beatles and other audio collage artists I don’t know but soon will.
• A post I wish I wrote: Regine Debatty at the unrivaled We Make Money Not Art writes what is luckily part one of a continuing series — Ecological Strategies in Today’s Art.
According to Star Tribune gossip columnist CJ, Grey’s Anatomy star Sandra Oh stopped by the Walker to see the Frida Kahlo show yesterday, but got sucked in by Tino Seghal’s work in the Medtronic Gallery. After the requisite wardrobe check (Oh was wearing knee-high leather boots), CJ continues:
…A Walker insider told me that Oh saw a lot of art but was particularly excited about Sehgal, formerly an artist-in-residence at Walker, because she knew who he was.
Sehgal specializes in something called “constructed situations.” He uses people at part of his art work, a conception of art that goes beyond its own materiality, it says at walkerart.org, which also noted that “Over the past seven years he has been known for making art without actually making any objects.”
Another unusual aspect of Sehgal’s interactive work was written about in a November New York Times piece by Anne Midgette.
The art of Sehgal, born in London and now living in Berlin, is “completely immaterial,” wrote Midgette. It “can be bought and sold without involving any objects whatsoever. His work is specifically conceived to function within the art world’s conventions; it is lent and exhibited, bought and sold. It is sold, in fact –now that Mr. Sehgal is becoming a star in Europe — for five-figure sums. The only stipulation is that his pieces cannot involve the transformation of any material, in any way. No written instructions, no bill of sale (purchases are conducted orally, in the presence of a notary), no catalogs and (to the dismay of photo editors in the art press) no pictures.”
I’m going to go out on a limb here and speculate that Oh appreciates Seghal’s quirkiness along with his art.
• Liberty: Raymond Pettibon does the NYT opinion page. Via Migwire.
• Literatest. That’s us. Minneapolis surpassed Seattle as America’s most literate city, according to new research by Central Connecticut State University president, Jack Miller. St. Paul comes in third in the study based on factors including newspaper circulation, internet access, and the number of bookstores, publishers and libraries.
• Balm for democracy. Aftershave, too. Greg.org highlights “1600 for Men,” a line of “Exclusive Fine Toiletries” 15% of the products’ sales go to charities and families of Secret Service personnel. According to the marketing copy, “1600 for Men® signature scent is crisp, cool and masculine created for ‘The Man’ of the house.” (Pictured: “Power Muscle Soak,” 16 oz. size.)
• mnartists.org wants your music: The state’s top online arts community announces the launch of mnSpin, a new “quarterly music contest featuring Minnesota musicians with winning tracks selected by panelists from the music industry.” Samples are due January 11, giving Doomtree writer/rapper Dessa, Minnesota Public Radio’s Chris Roberts, and Compass Productions A&R coordinator Kate Galloway little time to make selections for the first weekly edition, three songs of which will be showcased on mnartists.org and at the website of mnSpin sponsor Summit Brewery, as well as a compilation CD at the end of ‘08.
• Gondry Rewound: Remember that YouTube video, “Michel Gondry Solves a Rubik’s Cube With His Feet“? Wired reveals that Gondry created it by filming himself scrambling a perfect cube, then scrambling it with his feet — and running the footage backwards to create the illusion of pedidexterity… not entirely unlike his newest film, Be Kind, Rewind.
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