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Public Address is a platform for wide-ranging discussion of innovative projects, and practices. Read here for news, announcements, and postings and sign up for our e-newsletter here.

Contemporary art is increasingly “untethered” and moves from the white cube of the gallery to any site – including the virtual – to engage the public in its own realm. Public art is an ever-expanding field of inquiry, with artists of all stripes exploring the public realm. Beyond murals, monuments, memorials (and the occasional mime) public art has become a vibrant and engaging practice. From the spectacular to the quotidian, permanent to ephemeral, sited to virtual, material to performative, conceptual to cinematic, we believe there are unprecedented opportunities for new art practices in our shared environment. This is the critical focus of Public Address.

Relational architect
Author
mediachef
Post
04.19.2010
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image: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Vectorial Elevation (2010) English Bay, Vancouver, Canada, Winter Olympics 2010 Photo by Doug Farmer (www.douglasfarmerphotography.com)

Image: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Vectorial Elevation (2010) English Bay, Vancouver, Canada, Winter Olympics 2010 Photo by Doug Farmer (www.douglasfarmerphotography.com)

Rafael has created remarkable “platforms for participation” around the world, with only one major U.S. public project to date, Pulse Park, at Madison Square Park in New York City. Great opportunity for those in Philadelphia area to hear him speak.

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Public art and volcanoes
Author
mediachef
Post
04.17.2010
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Theresa Himmer, Volcano, 2008

Theresa Himmer, Volcano, 2008

I know it’s a bit specious, but I might as well do something while I am here.

Mount Vesuvius emitting a column of smoke after its eruption on 8 August 1779. Coloured etching by Pietro Fabris, 1779.

Mount Vesuvius emitting a column of smoke after its eruption on 8 August 1779. Coloured etching by Pietro Fabris, 1779.

The art of the volcano has been around since at least the late 1700s when Sir William Hamilton studied the eruptions of Vesuvius and other volcanoes, commissioning many views such as this colored etching by Pietro Fabris from 1779, Mount Vesuvius emitting a column of smoke after its eruption on 8 August 1779. via Wellcome Library, London.

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Straight talks – some plane “reading” on art in public places
Author
mediachef
Post
04.17.2010
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Art and Architecture in the Public Sphere of Cities. Joshua Decter, director of the Master of Public Art Studies Program at USC, organized and moderated this event exploring art and architecture in the public sphere, and unorthodox ways of engaging the public. The panel featured Anne Pasternak, president and artistic director of Creative Time, New York; Los Angeles based installation artist Doug Aitken; and Peter Zellner, Los Angeles-based architect and founding principal of ZELLNERPLUS. The event was presented as part of Visions and Voices, and was held on February 2, 2009, at the Davidson Conference Center.

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Wishes for the sky
Author
mediachef
Post
04.15.2010
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Wishes for the Sky, 2008

Wishes for the Sky, 2008

Make a wish from your heart, have fun flying a kite, honor Earth Day, and celebrate the arrival of spring. Wishes for the Sky is a free public art event that celebrates inner harmony and community peace. Be a part of this annual day of collective wishing!

11 am to 5 pm, Sunday, April 25, Harriet Island, St. Paul. Directions.

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Public Art Initiative
Author
mediachef
Post
03.25.2010
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“The place and role of artworks and artistic practice in public spaces has long been a topic of interest, concern and debate within and outside the university, involving artists, institutions of government, and members of the public. At the same time, many artists and scholars have questioned and challenged both conventional definitions of the artwork per se, and the nature, possibilities, and limits of conceptions of “the public,” in cultural, historical and political terms.”

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Marina Abramovic – at MOMA but not on Facebook
Author
mediachef
Post
03.17.2010
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Facebook won't let me post a link to Marina Abromovic's info on the MOMA site!!!!!! www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/965 Add your comment

Facebook won't let me post a link to Marina Abromovic's info on the MOMA site!!!!!! www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/965 Add your comment

I was going to write a longer response about seeing Marina Abramovic’s retrospective The Artist Is Present here on Public Address, but when I tried to do the short version – Amazing! See it! – on Facebook, it wouldn’t let me post the link to the MOMA site.

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Sabrina Raaf, A Light Green Light
Author
mediachef
Post
03.9.2010
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Sabrina Raaf, Translator II Grower

Sabrina Raaf, Translator II Grower

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.

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Rethinking Curating
Author
mediachef
Post
03.5.2010
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Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook, Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media

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.”

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