So many great films. I’ve been keeping a list of my favorite films for a number of years. Here is the current top five:
1. Trois couleurs: Bleu, Rouge, Bialy, Krzysztof Kieslowski (1993-94)
2. Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders (1987)
3. Sayat Nova (The Color of Pomegranates), Sergei Parajanov (1968)
4. The Perfect Human, Jørgen Leth (1967)
5. Annie Hall, Woody Allen (1977)
Daniel Joseph Martinez, Divine Violence, 2007, installation, from the 2008 Whitney Biennial, [source]
Strauss: What do you try to teach, Daniel? Give me a list of five things that you try to teach.
Martinez: I am not sure that the order means anything, but it is interesting to see where things come out. The very first thing on my list is discipline. Next is criticality. And attached to that with a hyphen is curiosity. Third on my list is generosity, and attached to that is responsibility. Number four is agency. Five is autonomy. And there is a sixth: a system of respect.
-quoted in Art Journal, Fall 2005
Timothy Hutchings, Battle of the Mass, 2007, single-channel video still
Julia Hechtman, Before the Fall, 2007, single-channel video still
Rupert Nesbitt, Atmosphere, 2007, single-channel video still
Nade Haley, Erik Satie, 1994/2008, single-channel video still
CONSIDERING THE MONUMENTS: VIDEO FROM THE EAST COAST
Curated by Megan and Murray McMillan
Project Space | 21 East 12th Street | 816.221.5115
Third Friday opening: June 20, 6-9 pm
June 20-July 19, 2008
Hours: Thursdays & Saturdays, 12-5 pm
Boston, New York City, Providence: these are three of the oldest and most historic cities in the United States. Each has been and is still home to a vast number of working artists and has had a front row seat for the first few hundred years of American art history. Considering the Monuments: Video Art from the East Coast looks at nine artists living in these cities. How do the artists who live and work in these cities contend with the weight of that history? How do artists living in these cities envision the future?
This diverse collection of videos, presented as a single-channel program of approximately 40 minutes, was curated by Megan and Murray McMillan, an artist-partnership collaborating in video, photography and installation. Based in Providence, Rhode Island, they are represented by Qbox Gallery in Athens, Greece and have exhibited nationally and internationally including at the National Museum of Art in La Paz, Bolivia, White Flag Projects in St. Louis, and Sound Art Space in Laredo, Texas. They are beneficiaries of several awards including grants from the Dallas Museum of Art and Purdue University, and recently participated in the 10th International Istanbul Biennial (2007) in Turkey.
The exhibition features recent video works by Pawel Wojtasik, Julia Hechtman, Timothy Hutchings, Joseph Tekippe, David Politzer, Brian Hutcheson, Rupert Nesbitt, Peter Owen, and Nade Haley. Whether exploring the new landscapes of public waste (Pawel Wojtasik’s Landfill), posing an apocalyptic entreaty (Julia Hechtman’s Before the Fall), merging iconic American tourist destinations with intimate storytelling (David Politzer’s Mt. Rushmore and Niagara Falls), or juxtaposing street-level images and GPS data to portray a walk around Manhattan (Joseph Tekippe’s 24 Hours Walking Manhattan: [Excerpt]), the artists represented in this exhibition consider the history and narrative of place and attempt to find their own place within it.
[detail]
[detail]
Thomas Demand’s installational photo show at the Hamburger Kunsthalle is at the front guard of conceptual photography. Steeped in scholarship and narrative — Demand has re-created the site of the burglary in the Embassy of Niger in Rome from which the stationary paper was stolen that then was used for forged contracts which the US intelligence services used as evidence to support the invasion of Iraq — Demand’s video and photos are still decadently visual. In his trademark trompe l’oeil of Office-Depot stylized empty rooms constructed entirely out of paper and cardboard, painstakingly photographed, Demand damningly shows this house of cards that was the catalyst for a senseless war.
Thomas Demand. Camera
4 April to 6 July 2008
Hamburger Kunsthalle
Hamburg, Germany
Bruce Nauman, Coffee Spilled and Balloon Dog
Lets face it: when you’re young you just can’t get everything. For me, one of those things was Bruce Nauman. There is just so little to it. But oh my, so much. His work Coffee Spilled and Balloon Dog contains a man trying unsuccessfully to make a balloon dog, and a dropped coffee cup. Both images suggest failure, yet failure never looked so good.
Hamburger Bahnhof is Berlin’s museum of contemporary art. From their website:
Artists Anna and Bernhard Blume, born in 1937, have significantly extended the genre of the staged photograph, and they number among its most renowned exponents internationally. In their frequently multipart, large format, black–and–white photoseries, this artistic couple stages temporal sequences within which they themselves act as protagonists. The scenes are often reduced, estranged, and above all odd: order and chaos seem to mutually condition one another, role–playing and convention inhere in each object, conditioning modes of behavior and provoking resistance.
Inspiring.
