At last week’s Creative Time Summit in New York–an annual conference on the intersections of art and social justice–an array of presenters took to the podium, including artist Steve Lambert, philosopher/cultural critic Slavoj Žižek, filmmaker (and just-named MacArthur “genius”) Laura Poitras, artist and organizer Jeff Chang (who discussed his book Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop at the Walker in 2007), among many others. But from my vantage point, one of the most intriguing was by Hito Steyerl. The Berlin-based filmmaker and artist–whose work Red Alert (2007) was recently brought into the Walker collection, and who’ll be part of the exhibition 9 Artists, opening a year from now–addressed the question, “Is the museum a battlefield?” (more…)

Mungo Thomson, Negative Space (STScI-PRC2012-10a), 2012. Photo: Gene Pittman

“My work has been about negative space, in some respects: The overlooked, the void, emptiness,” said artist Mungo Thomson during a September visit to Minneapolis. “I had this idea to take that literally and make negative images of outer space.”

The result is the Walker’s new acquisition, the 93-foot-long mural Negative Space, recently installed outside the Vineland Place entrance. The piece reflects Thomson’s interest in what he calls “the dumb idea”–something simple blown up to grand proportions. In this case, he found a public domain photo taken by NASA’s Hubble telescope and using a basic Photoshop command inverted it. “Just click Apple-I,” he said of the work that’ll be on view for the next six months. “It takes two fingers.”

But like all conceptual art, the simplicity of the gesture can be deceiving. (more…)

The newest video by St. Vincent, who performed here in October, has a distinctly Walker vibe. Set in a white-walled gallery, singer Annie Clark is presented as a gigantic and uncannily realistic sculpture, one the video’s director, Hiro Murai, says is inspired by the work of Ron Mueck, whose Crouching Boy in Mirror is in our Lifelike exhibition. Pitchfork caught up with Murai and asked about the link to Mueck and about why he set the video in a gallery:

Pitchfork: Were you inspired by the artist Ron Mueck?

HM: Yes! People have a natural tendency to read emotions out of faces, so when you see a face that is hyperreal but without the life behind the eyes, it’s really off-putting and intriguing. Mueck’s sculptures are amazing, but the weirdest part was how all these people were huddling around and looking at them. It created this weird dynamic: The sculptures are three or four times bigger than everyone else in the room, and they feel like they have a lot of power, and yet they’re always vulnerable-looking. It felt very voyeuristic and weird.

Pitchfork: Is there something about the gallery context you wanted to translate?

HM: I love museums, but I always thought there was something funny about a group of strangers silently staring at works of inanimate objects together. Each person is having a very personal and maybe even emotional experience, but it’s in the confines of an extremely quiet and sterile room. From a visual standpoint, I liked the idea of setting a video in a space that was like a blank slate.

Pitchfork: What’s the role of the onlookers in the gallery?

HM: I like the idea of reading into people’s faces when they’re not emoting. Some people are fascinated, some are sympathizing. We had some amazing faces in that video. The narrative of the video was about setting up this oppressive dynamic between her and the audience.

Watch “Cheerleader” by St. Vincent:

Like any run-of-the-mill church-basement folding chairs, the ones in our Lifelike show are stenciled to show ownership. “NFTH” reads the black-spraypainted ID on the backrest of Robert Therrien’s gigantic steel chairs. But what do they stand for?

We’re told there’s a secret story about the letters’ personal significance to Therrien, but he’s not about to tell it. Mostly, the acronym just underscores the institutional nature of such mass-produced objects. But there’s more.

“NFTH” stands for “North Fremont Town Hall.” There is no such place, to our knowledge, but the name is a coded nod to the Fremont Town Hall, in New Hampshire, the place where the band the Shaggs played in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Now hailed by connoisseurs of “outsider” music, the band was made up of the three Wiggin sisters, who despite a deficit of musical talent were urged to form a band by their father, Austin. As Susan Orlean wrote for the New Yorker in 1999, the elder Wiggin got the idea from his mother:

“When he was young, she studied his palm and told him that in the future he would marry a strawberry blonde and would have two sons whom she would not live to see, and that his daughters would play in a band. Her auguries were borne out. Annie was a strawberry blonde, and she and Austin did have two sons after his mother died. It was left to Austin to fulfill the last of his mother’s predictions, and when his daughters were old enough he told them they would be taking voice and music lessons and forming a band. There was no debate: his word was law, and his mother’s prophecies were gospel. Besides, he chafed at his place in the Fremont social system. It wasn’t so much that his girls would make him rich and raise him out of a mill hand’s dreary métier; it was that they would prove that the Wiggin kids were not only different from but better than the folks in town.”

Of the Shaggs’ music, Orlean wrote, “Something is sort of wrong with the tempo, and the melodies are squashed and bent, nasal, deadpan. Are the Shaggs referencing the heptatonic, angular microtones of Chinese ya-yueh court music and the atonal note clusters of Ornette Coleman, or are they just a bunch of kids playing badly on cheap, out-of-tune guitars?”

Still, they found a sort of cult following: Frank Zappa reportedly said they were “better than the Beatles”; Irwin Chusid included them in his 2000 book, Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music; and their music has been re-released (spawning a tribute album, titled after Zappa’s quote, with covers by the likes of Deerhoof and the Dirty Projectors).

Here’s the Shaggs performing “My Pal Foot Foot”:

Assistant registrar Jessica Rolland examines the piece as it comes out of the crate.

Tuesday saw the arrival of an enormous partner to Robert Therrien’s gigantic folding table and chairs: Jonathan Seliger’s sculpture of an 8-1/2-foot-tall quart carton of America’s Choice Vitamin D milk. After being uncrated in Cargill Lounge, the bronze-and-enamel piece made its way to the Hennepin Avenue side of the building, where it’ll mark an entrance to the exhibition Lifelike, which opens this weekend. Dubbed Heartland,  the piece comes with a prominent “sell by” date of June 13, 2010, the year it was made. That same year, the piece was featured in a show at New York’s Jack Shainman Gallery called — fittingly – Spoils.

The Walker's Evan Reiter and David Bartley wheel the work into position.

The work is situated beside the glass wall facing Hennepin Avenue, giving drivers a clear view.

With only a week to go until Lifelike opens, more works are heading into a galleries. A look at the newest additions as they go into place:

Alex Hay’s fiberglass Paper Bag (1968) stands nearly five feet tall, with Chuck Close’s Big Self Portrait (1967-1968) in the background. Photo: Gene Pittman

James Casebere’s Landscape with Houses (Dutchess County, NY) #8 (2010) waiting to be hung. Photo: Paul Schmelzer

A detail shot of the ever-fascinating (Old) No One – in Particular #6, Series 2, a sculpture by Evan Penny. Photo: Gene Pittman

Hyper-detailed, down to the nosehair. Photo: Paul Schmelzer

Rendered in anamorphic perspective, the piece appears flattened when viewed from the side, but is startlingly realistic from the front. Photo: Gene Pittman

Charles Ray’s Bath (1989) being filled with 55 gallons of liquid.

A look behind the wall at Ray’s Bath and the pump that fills it. Photo: Paul Schmelzer

Measuring just 17 x 18 x 11 inches, Ron Mueck’s Crouching Boy in Mirror (1999-2000) appears to be checking out the reflection of Charles Ray’s yet-to-be-hung No (1991).

Rarely lent out, Duane Hanson’s Janitor (1973) came to us from the Milwaukee Art Museum secured firmly in a crate. Photo: Paul Schmelzer

A closeup of Hanson’s Janitor, before his glasses went on. Photo: Paul Schmelzer

With the opening of  Lifelike just a week away, more and more works are arriving. Assistant registrar Jessica Rolland caught this juxtaposition in Receiving the other day: Ron Mueck’s Crouching Boy in Mirror (1999-2000) adjacent the (suddenly nervous-looking) man in Evan Penny’s Old (No One – in Particular #6, Series 2 (2005).

Earlier: Installing Robert Therrien’s Giant Folding Table and Chairs

Curator Siri Engberg and assistant registrar Jessica Rolland beside Therrian's table and chair. Photo: Paul Schmelzer

Monday saw the arrival of what surely must be one of the world’s largest card tables. In anticipation of the February 24 preview of the exhibition Lifelike, Robert Therrien’s sculptural table — measuring just under nine feet in height — arrived via semi-trailer with four folding chairs, all crated. Made from metal and fabric, the 2007 work was loaded in through the Walker’s Hennepin entrance and installed in the Cargill Lounge. Here’s some photos of the process.

It took five workers to open each functional folding chair. Photo: Cameron Wittig

Each chair is the height of 3.5 standard folding chairs. Photo: Paul Schmelzer

The table is an accurate and working replica, down to the folding legs. Photo: Cameron Wittig

Photo: Cameron Wittig

Photo: Cameron Wittig

Like any church basement chair, each one is stenciled with identifying letters. Photo: Cameron Wittig

By dusk, the installation was complete. Photo: Paul Schmelzer