“Unless you die young, it’s difficult to be a hero for ever. Heroes are commercialised. They succumb to what Norman Mailer called ‘exhaustion of the will’. Or they simply go out of fashion.”

A quick Google search reveals at least one instance of the phrase in a 1955 interview with Mailer by Lyle Stuart.

Lyle Stuart, "An Intimate Conversation with Norman Mailer," from Expose #49 (December 1955) in ed. J. Michael Lennon, Conversations with Norman Mailer. via Google Books

Mailer, Stuart, and McGuirk are all using this phrase in relation to the individual, but it seems to me equally applicable, if not more so, to upstart institutions, which inevitably, it seems, for a whole host of reasons, too often focus more on what they have done in the past, often successfully, than their motivating mission. When and how does a vision with unknown consequences that draws one along become a track that is pushing one forward?

Pierre Huyghe, "Or," 1995, Venice Art Biennial, 2007

March 5, 2010

Media Contact: Doug Ramsey, 858-822-5825, dramsey@ucsd.edu
Gallery Coordinator: Trish Stone, 858-336-6456, tstone@ucsd.edu

Sustainability and Art on Display at UC San Diego’s gallery@calit2

The University of California, San Diego has built a reputation for being one of the “greenest” campuses in the nation, and that reputation extends to an art gallery in the university’s California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), which is staging a new sustainability-themed art exhibition.

The gallery@calit2 goes green this spring with an exhibition by Chicago-based artist Sabrina Raaf, whose custom-built robotic sculptures and site specific installations include a series of experiments that address issues of sustainable practice, the construction of social spaces, and prototyping for modular green architecture. Curated by Steve Dietz, “A Light Green Light: Toward Sustainability in Practice” opens Friday, April 2, 2010, with a 6 p.m. panel discussion moderated by UC San Diego visual arts professor Jordan Crandall, followed by a reception.

Dietz has selected five of Raaf’s electronic and responsive artworks to be included in this exhibition: Translator II: Grower, Icelandic Rift, Light Green Light, (n)Fold, and Meandering River.

Sabrina Raaf, Translator II Grower

Translator II Grower, a robotic sculpture, measures carbon dioxide levels inside the gallery as they are generated by visitors, and actively draws the measurements in green ink as a field of grass on the gallery walls. Examples of these ink drawings will be on display on the first floor of Atkinson Hall.

Sabrina Raaf, Icelandic Rift

The Icelandic Rift sculptures are electronically-powered works that include mechanical systems, representing far-future visions of agricultural production and mineral mining in zero-g environments.

Prototypes and concept animations for Light Green Light, a lamp that unfolds into a netted tent for sleeping, and (n)Fold, a flat-fold design for dew harvesting and passive solar cooking, are also on view in the gallery.

Sabrina Raaf, Meandering River

Meandering River is a sculptural installation made up of thermal screen material that has had its surface milled robotically with meandering river designs. Its installation form is derived from self-organizing and meandering river mathematics. This thermal screen installation is also designed to cascade vertically in order to create a climbing surface for vines and thus support the growth of a vertical garden. A cascading instance of the Meandering River sculpture is hung in the six-story window of the Atkinson Hall stairwell, and a second, river-type instance will be viewed in the hall area on the first floor.

Raaf works in experimental sculptural media and designs responsive environments and social spaces. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at the Brandts Art Center (Denmark), Transitio_MX (Mexico City), Sala Parpallo (Spain), MejanLabs (Stockholm), Lawimore Projects (Seattle), the Edith-Russ-Site for Media Art (Germany), Stefan Stux Gallery (NYC), Ars Electronica (Linz), Museum Tinguely (Basel), Espace Landowski (Paris), Artbots 2005 (Dublin), Kunsthaus Graz (Austria), ISEA (Helsinki), the San Jose Museum of Art, and Klein Art Works (Chicago). The artist is the recipient of a Creative Capital Grant in Emerging Fields (2002) and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship (2005 &2001). Reviews of her work have appeared in Art in America, Contemporary, Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, Leonardo, Washington Post, and New Art Examiner. She received an MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1999) and is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Steve Dietz is Founder, President, and Artistic Director of Northern Lights.mn. He was the Founding Director of the 01SJ Biennial in 2006 and is currently Artistic Director of its producing organization, ZERO1: the Art and Technology Network. He is the former Curator of New Media at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he founded the New Media Initiatives department in 1996.

“A Light Green Light: Toward Sustainability in Practice”
by Sabrina Raaf
Curated by Steve Dietz
Friday, April 2, 2010 – Friday, June 4, 2010

Friday, April 2, 6 p.m. in Calit2 Theater, Atkinson Hall, UCSD
Panel Discussion with Sabrina Raaf and Steve Dietz
Moderated by Jordan Crandall, Associate Professor, Visual Arts, UCSD
Welcome by Ramesh Rao, Director, UCSD Division, Calit2

Friday, April 2, 7 p.m. in gallery@calit2, Atkinson Hall, UCSD
Opening Reception

Events are FREE and open to the public.
RSVP requested to Trish Stone, Gallery Coordinator, at tstone@ucsd.edu
http://gallery.calit2.net

Tyler Stefanich and Ben Moren, Phase Shift

“Come explore site specific works created especially for They Wont Find Us Here Gallery’s unique setting. Work addressing cold weather, the change from Winter to Spring, and the shifts that take place during these unique phases of transition.”

Saturday March 13 from 7-10pm.
3500 Bryant Ave. South (alleyside)

Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=372479239531

Colleagues and friends Sarah Cook and Beryl Graham have just published Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media. I had the privilege of writing the Foreword for the book, and this is, in part, how I discuss their thesis.

“Graham and Cook strategically define so-called new media as a set of behaviors, not as a medium. Once you go down this road, it becomes readily apparent that a similar strategy is equally useful for much of contemporary art. At one time, the new media of photography both changed the aesthetic understanding of painting and participated in the creation of a cultural understanding of (fixed) time and representation. At another time, the new media of video changed the aesthetic understanding of film while participating with television in the creation of a cultural understanding of (real) time and distance. The art most recently known as “new media” changes our understanding of the behaviors of contemporary art precisely because of its participation in the creation of a cultural understanding of computational interactivity and networked participation. In other words, art is different after new media because of new media–not because new media is “next,” but because its behaviors are the behaviors of our technological times.”

It is perhaps wishful thinking that this book will end the eternal recurrence of the same set of questions about what is new media, but it is a huge step forward.

“In Rethinking Curating, the sheer depth and breadth of intelligent reflection among a dedicated, global group of loosely aligned peers belie every summative, simplistic question or statement one has heard or made. “How much does it cost?” “What’s new about it?” “Why is it art?” “What’s next?” “It’s about process.” “It’s computational.” “It crosses boundaries.” “It’s new.” These questions and statements are not “bad,” but in this book Beryl and Sarah give them the context they deserve–the context necessary to move on to the real-world questions and issues of working with dynamic and emerging contemporary art.”

Buy it. Read it. Enjoy it. Ask some new and different questions.

In a related vein, see also my essays Art After New Media and  “Just Art”: Contemporary Art After the Art Formerly Known As New Media and the exhibition Sarah and I co-curated, The Art Formerly Known As New Media.

Wing Young Huie, University Avenue Project Save the date May 1, 2010

“In 2010 photographer Wing Young Huie in collaboration with Public Art Saint Paul will transform St. Paul’s University Avenue into a 6-mile public gallery of 500 photographs revealing the complex cultural and socioeconomic diversity of neighborhoods along this urban corridor. Photographs will be exhibited in store windows and on buildings and will be projected at night onto large outdoor screens accompanied by pre-recorded and, at monthly events, live music.” – http://www.theuniversityavenueproject.com/

Wing Young Huie, University Avene Project opens May 1, 2010

Auctioneer wanted. RT #WalkerArtCenter

Northern Lights is working with the Walker Art Center on an artist project this summer, and we’re looking for an auctioneer to work with us.

Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces, edited by Melanie Kloetzel and Carolyn Pavlik (University Press of Florida, 2009)

As the first anthology to specifically examine dance in non-traditional performance spaces, this title explores the work that choreographers create for alternative sites and examines the basis for their creative choices. Editors Melanie Kloetzel and Carolyn Pavlik (professors of dance at the University of Calgary and Western Michigan University, respectively) offer a combination of interviews with and essays by some of the most prominent and influential practitioners of site-specific dance, such as Meredith Monk, Joanna Haigood, Stephan Koplowitz, Heidi Duckler, Ann Carlson, Eiko Otake, and Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad of the BodyCartography Project. Site Dance is a significant and timely contribution to the public art canon–a must-read for dancers, choreographers, audiences, and public art administrators alike!

]]> http://northern.lights.mn/2010/02/at-last-a-book-on-site-specific-dance/feed/ 0 http://northern.lights.mn/2010/02/save-the-date/ http://northern.lights.mn/2010/02/save-the-date/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:41:12 +0000 mediachef http://northern.lights.mn/?p=2975 [/caption] I will write more about Wing Young Huie's amazing University Avenue Project (a part of which, Northern Lights is helping with), but in the meantime, here is a chance to get in on the ground floor, so to speak, and purchase some of Wing's photographs from along University Avenue in Saint Paul to benefit the 6-mile exhibition, which will open May 1.]]>

Wing Young Huie, University Avenue Project. Open House and Preview Fundraiser. via Public Art Saint Paul

I will write more about Wing Young Huie’s amazing University Avenue Project (a part of which, Northern Lights is helping with), but in the meantime, here is a chance to get in on the ground floor, so to speak, and purchase some of Wing’s photographs from along University Avenue in Saint Paul to benefit the 6-mile exhibition, which will open May 1.

Wing Young Huie, The University Avenue Project, Open House and Preview Fundraiser

Wing Young Huie, University Avenue Project
Saturday February 27, 2010
noon – 10 pm

Public Art Saint Paul and Wing Young Huie invite you to an Open House and Preview Fundraiser

An opportunity to support the University Avenue Project by purchasing a print from the exhibtion, before the exhibition opens!

Make your selection from 400 + photos
Non-editioned
Archival quality

Food and refreshments

Wing Young Huie Photography & Gallery
2525 East Franklin Avenue, Suite 100
Minneapolis, MN 55406

http://www.theuniversityavenueproject.com/

http://www.publicartstpaul.org/placemaking_tipa_uap.html

Wing Young Huie, The University Avenue Project, Open House and Preview Benefit

via Public Art Saint Paul

Wing’s 2000 Lake Street USA project.

Beatrix*Jar explain how to hack battery operated instrumental toys. via Remix Theory

Nice article about local circuit benders Beatrix*Jar (Bianca Pettis and Jacob Aaron Roske) by Eduardo Navos, who writes about their workshop at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

“The museum is redefining itself as a place which searches for ways to reveal the creative process in visitors, who can experiment with similar strategies that inform the creative drive of artists who actually have exhibits in the museum.”

Beatrix*Jar performed at The UnConvention in September 2008.

2009 stipend recipient The SINE WAVE ORCHESTRA, picture here at the 2006 01SJ Biennial

Deadline for applications 28 February

Stipends for Media Art of the Stiftung Niedersachsen (Foundation of Lower Saxony) at the Edith Russ Site for Media Art

Until the 28th of February it is possible to apply for three stipends for the execution of a new project in the field of Media Art and a residency at the Edith Russ Site for Media Art. The stipend and the residency take place between July and Decembre 2010, at least one month of the residency has to be spent at one of the guest appartments at the Edith Russ Site. The stipends consists of 10.000 Euro for the production of a new work which is proposed in the application. The application is only online at http://erh.alnovi.de/applications. You can also navigate to this site via our website www.edith-russ-haus.de where you also find further information. The final online application form has to be printed and signed and then mailed to the Edith Russ Site. The deadline is the 28th of February (date of postmark).

Edith Russ Site for Media Art
info@edith-russ-haus.de
Application form

Past recipients have included The SINE WAVE ORCHESTRA, Kristin Lucas, Cornelia Sollfrank, Eddo Stern, ubermorgen.com, Minerva Cuevas, and Johan Grimonprez, among others.

The Jury

Andy Cameron, Executive Director fabrica – The Benetton Group Communications Research Center (Treviso)
Susan Collins, Artist (London)
Steve Dietz, Artistic Director 01SJ Biennial (San Jose)
Sabine Himmelsbach, Artistic Director Edith Russ Site for Media Art (Oldenburg)
KH Jeron, Artist (Berlin)