Save the date

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

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, 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

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 models the new museum

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

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.

Media arts residency Edith Russ Site

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

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)

Cultures of complaint

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Former Texas senator Phil Gramm famously complained that “we have sort of become a nation of whiners,” but 2008 Bush Fellow Matthew Bakkom, whose tabloid-size booklet “The New York City Museum of Complaint” was published in 2006, has argued

“The point of complaining is not necessarily that it’s going to change things. . . . It’s more kind of an existential act that is essential to democracy.” via NYT

At the 2006 01SJ Biennial, Tad Hirsch’s Tripwire hid custom-built noise sensors in coconuts hung in a public park near the San Jose airport. Detection of excessive noise levels triggered automated telephone calls to the airport’s complaint line on behalf of the city’s residents and wildlife.

Tad Hirsch, Tripwire, 2006 01SJ Biennial

Public art as public amenity

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Caley J. Coney, "Bad Day," Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk. via Public Art Saint Paul

Caley J. Coney, "Bad Day," Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk. via Public Art Saint Paul

via Public Art Saint Paul

Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk is a project created by Saint Paul’s Public Artist in Residence Marcus Young and friends, Saint Paul Public Works, and Public Art Saint Paul with contributions from Saint Paul poets, which began in 2008. Every year residents can submit poems to be selected for imprinting in the new and newly repaired sidewalks of the city. The deadline for submissions is March 28, 2010. Guidelines here.

As “just” participatory, civic art Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk is an exemplary project, both whimsical and impactful. As Young writes in his brief introduction,

“Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk is inspired by the universal, childish desire to draw a finger through tempting wet cement. The project also has higher-minded aspiration. Our public realm, crowded with commercial and regulatory text, could use more poetry. On our modest sidewalks, we hope to create delightful moments of open-air reading, and make public and common the beauty in our hearts as expressed by our poets. Beautiful poetry can be as present and plain as sidewalk, as grass and sky.”

What is particularly interesting – even revolutionary – about Everyday Poems, I think, is the way the program is integrated into the everyday business of the city of Saint Paul. Young is in an almost unique situation in the United States. He is not just an outsider artist-in-residence, he is a “city artist,” and as such he often sits alongside the engineers, public safety, marketing and other public works staff in evaluating new projects.  Like the renowned Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who has been artist in residence (unsalaried) at the New York City Department of Sanitation since 1977, Young is part of a team and Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk is as much a public amenity as the sidewalks themselves.

Add your voice to your city.

Ryan Ross, "Steal It," Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk.

Ryan Ross, "Steal It," Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk.

Engaging public art

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Crown Fountain, Jaume Plensa, Millennium Park. via Chicago Now

Crown Fountain, Jaume Plensa, Millennium Park. via Chicago Now

“[P]ublic art that truly engages and creates a real relationship with the public and creates a social common ground is rarer. Plensa’s fountain does that and effectively blurs completely the line between art and public. This is urban planning in the service of both art and the city’s populace.” – Dawoud Bey

via Chicago Now

Photographer Dawoud Bey writes a perceptive and thoughtful article about Chicago’s Millennium Park and implicitly – and respectfully – challenges the Burnham Pavilion projects by architects Zaha Hadid and Ben van Berkel‘s UNStudio to live up to the success of James Plesna‘s Crown Fountain. This is not just a question of numbers but how public art might create a public for itself, so to speak, without simply replicating its commonest preferences – or deigning to engage them. As Bey writes about the Crown Fountain:

“From bathing suit and Pamper clad small children splashing and laying in the shallow reflecting pool, to groups of teenagers lounging nonchalantly and parents sitting on the side or splashing with their children, Jaume Plensa’s fountain is a fantastical high tech urban concoction. It appears to be an urban black granite clad beach plopped right smack in the middle of downtown.”

One thing I particularly like about Bey’s writing is the way he approaches the public art experience. It isn’t just his pleasurable familiarity with a favorite venue – “As I so often do when the weather gets warm I took a stroll over to the Crown Fountain while I was downtown on other business.” It is also his sense of the art as an activation, not merely a destination.

“The periodic spouting of water from the mouths of the subjects brings everyone rushing to the spout in a mass of soaking wet multifarious humanity, reminding us that there are indeed moments, even in “the most segregated large city in America,” when we are more alike than different in our common citizenship.”

Not surprisingly, the notion of art that  “creates a real relationship with the public and creates a social common ground”; that “literally reflects the very public [it is] meant to engage, thereby allowing everyone to see themselves in it”; that reflects “that there are indeed moments . . . when we are more alike than different in our common citizenship” is equally applicable to Bey’s own remarkable photographic work over the past 35 years.

Dawoud Bey, "Brian and Paul," 1993, Polaroid. via Walker Art Center. Copyright the artist.

Dawoud Bey, "Brian and Paul," 1993, Polaroid. via Walker Art Center. Copyright the artist.

via Walker Art Center

Strange Fruit

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Labor Camp Orchestra album: Songs From The Labor Camp. via NPR

Labor Camp Orchestra album: Songs From The Labor Camp. via NPR

It’s “old news” at this point, but still worth pointing out – and listening to.

Piotr Szyhalski’s Labor Camp Orchestra is an ongoing work that has been the site for much of his public artwork over the past several years, including two installations in at LABoral in Gijon, Spain for the exhibition FEEDFORWARD – Angel of History, which I co-curated with Christiane Paul.

As the website states, Labor Camp Orchestra is

“the Aural Branch of the Labor Camp. Since it’s gradual inception between 1998-1999 Labor Camp Orchestra remains committed to construction of auditory experiences, which follow no singular philosophy, process or idea.”

Back in June, the Labor Camp Orchestra was featured in an NPR story by Lara Pellegrinelli, “Evolution of a Song: Strange Fruit.” The words of the song were originally penned in 1936 under the name Lewis Allan by Bronx schoolteacher Abel Meeropol in reaction to a photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana.

Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, August 7, 1930. via Wikipedia

Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, August 7, 1930. via Wikipedia

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to Billie Holiday’s memorable rendition of Strange Fruit the same again after viewing this photograph, which is part of the point of Szyhalski’s “cover” of it via Labor Camp Orchestra – to make visceral the Iraq war. To take us beyond the blaring headlines, patriotic jingoism, and national security fervor to a place that is literally unforgettable. According to Pellegrinelli,

“The group’s version of “Strange Fruit” passes for perky, tidy electronica on first listen. In reality, it emerged from a conceptual thread on events in Iraq and specifically addresses the execution of Saddam Hussein. Based solely on Meeropol’s poem, it juxtaposes his words with a woman reciting the names of fruits in Arabic. An archival recording from the Hussein execution and Koranic recitation plays in the background.”

Listen here.

01SJ Biennial open calls

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For the 2010 01SJ Biennial ZER01 is collaborating with SF Shorts: San Francisco International Festival of Short Films to issue an open call for 5-minute shorts interpreting the theme Build Your Own World that were shot using a cell phone, flip video camcorder, or other mobile media device. You can interpret this theme literally or figuratively, seriously or humorously to envision how mobile technology can contribute to positive social change. Selected films will be featured at both SF Shorts and the 2010 01SJ Biennial and cash prize is available for top selection.

Proposals for the workshops and micro-grants are starting to roll in. The workshop call ends on February 15th, and the micro-grants on March 8th, so you still have time to send in proposals. New calls will be posted soon. See here for more information on  the current 01SJ Biennial open calls.

Forecast is on LibraryThing!

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If you’ve never been to Forecast’s office in St. Paul, you probably don’t know that we house a public art resource library of around 1,500 books, catalogs, magazines, and DVDs!  Our library is growing so fast that soon it will outgrow its current digs and I guess will have to spill out into the street.  Although we definitely need more physical space for the library, virtual space is not lacking thanks to LibraryThing and Forecast interns Jaclyn + Pati!

Check out our library online and be in touch if you’d like to see some of these fabulous titles in person!

And stay tuned for more info on exciting new books (and a look back on older classics as well).

Is it art or advertising? (Part II)

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The game continues (See earlier post Is it art or advertising Part I).

The rise of artists engaging in corporate endeavors continues to give me pause as I read about Jeff Koons designing the next BMW Art Car.

And the fact that Bono piped in to state that this partnership would help the world “fall in love with automobiles again”????

Hmmmmm.

Now available!

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Rethinking Curating - Art After New Media.

Rethinking Curating

Art after New Media
Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook
Foreword by Steve Dietz

“Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media . . .clearly articulates an often obfuscating set of issues, including the internecine debates that too easily divide what Lev Manovich refers to as Turing- land (so- called new media art) and Duchampland (so- called contemporary art). Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook rigorously differentiate and compellingly reintegrate the competing claims of these two camps so that we can focus on what really matters: the art.”

From the Foreword, available for download here.

See also The Art Formerly Known As New Media, which Sarah and I co-curated at the Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff.

Mercado Negro

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“LA-based cross-media visual designer Ramón Coronado has built a swing, lounge chair, table and a lamp out of shopping carts: Mercado Negro meaning Black Market in Spanish is a 12 week project that deals with reclaiming an ordinary, everyday object and transforming it into a whole new object. At the same time hinting at the lack of parks and recreational functions in Los Angeles.”

via Archinect

Notes from the Artist – Gail Katz James on Fulton Favorites

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Sometimes in the dead of winter in MN we tend to forget that summer ever existed, or that we have neighbors! This project by Gail Katz James is a friendly reminder of warmth (from sun and spirit)!

Fulton Favorites was funded by a grant from the Fulton Neighborhood Art Committee. (Fulton is my neighborhood in Minneapolis.) The purpose of the project was to build community by bringing neighbors of all ages together to make unique lawn signs that express their favorite aspects of our neighborhood. I held about 10 workshops this summer to teach residents how to make the signs. During the workshops, I guided the artists through the process of sketching, making a final design and translating their designs into a colorful image, simplified enough to make a good lawn sign. The settings ranged from childcare programs to block parties and park festivals. Some adults made theirs at home after picking up a packet of materials from me.

Photo by Sue Hartley
Photo by Sue Hartley
Photo by Sue Hartley
Photo by Sue Hartley
Photo by Sue Hartley
Photo by Sue Hartley
Photo by Sue Hartley
Photo by Sue Hartley

Residents made140 unique lawn signs. The materials were very user-friendly and weatherproof: 10 colors of self-adhesive vinyl on a vinyl board. The signs were installed at the park to be enjoyed as a group at the annual Fulton Fall Festival.

The best part of the event was watching people come browse through all the signs or look for their own and proudly take it home! Lastly, participants took home their signs to display on their own lawns, store over the winter and reuse year after year. (Some people are STILL exhibiting their lawn signs in the snow!)

Finally, pedestrians, bicyclists and observant drivers who see these signs on certain blocks may realize that they are passing through Fulton Neighborhood, or near it. (In the spirit of inclusivity, we did allow other neighborhood residents to participate, since many Linden Hills folks and other neighborhood residents come to our schools, parks and festivals).

Gail Katz James

Support “the largest concentration of technology-based public artwork in the country”

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San Jose Airport Art Program – Consulting Art Technician “ (aka ArtGeek)”

“The ArtGeek oversees the largest concentration of technology-based public artwork in the country. Located in the San Jose International Airport’s brand new terminal, the collection includes a giant propeller-driven robotic sculpture, streaming networked cameras, a massive cloud of flickering glass, liquid-cooled projectors, twitter feeds, and a school of live fish with underwater surveillance cameras. Working from an underground Art+Tech workshop with electronics bench and state-of-the-art sound system, the ArtGeek keeps it all humming.” More info.

via City of San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs

Support “the largest concentration of technology-based public artwork in the country”

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San Jose Airport Art Program – Consulting Art Technician “ (aka ArtGeek)”

“The ArtGeek oversees the largest concentration of technology-based public artwork in the country. Located in the San Jose International Airport’s brand new terminal, the collection includes a giant propeller-driven robotic sculpture, streaming networked cameras, a massive cloud of flickering glass, liquid-cooled projectors, twitter feeds, and a school of live fish with underwater surveillance cameras. Working from an underground Art+Tech workshop with electronics bench and state-of-the-art sound system, the ArtGeek keeps it all humming.” More info.

via City of San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs