Much talk – some of it real, a lot of it fake – has been in the air over the last decade about empathy for the “other,” for people different from us. But no one has dwelled on the essential otherness of a work of art. There is, after all, that hackneyed but profound notion of a willing suspension of disbelief. Genuine art makes you stake your credulity on the patently counterfeit. It takes you by surprise. And for art to take you by surprise, you have to put yourself in the power of another world – the work of art – and in the power of another person – the artist. Yet everything in our society, so saturated with economic imperatives, tells us not to surrender our interests even for a moment, tells us that the only forms of cultural expression we can trust are those that give us instant gratification, useful information, or a reflected image of ourselves. So we are flooded with the kind of art that deprecates attentiveness, tells us about the issues of the day, and corresponds to our own personalities. – Lee Siegel, Eyes Wide Shut, Harper’s Magazine, October 1999

22 July 2019 - hyperlink, web - Comments Off on Much talk – some of it real, a lot of it fake – has been in the air over the last decade about empathy for the “other,” for people different from us. But no one has dwelled on the essential otherness of a work of art. There is, after all, that hackneyed but profound notion of a willing suspension of disbelief. Genuine art makes you stake your credulity on the patently counterfeit. It takes you by surprise. And for art to take you by surprise, you have to put yourself in the power of another world – the work of art – and in the power of another person – the artist. Yet everything in our society, so saturated with economic imperatives, tells us not to surrender our interests even for a moment, tells us that the only forms of cultural expression we can trust are those that give us instant gratification, useful information, or a reflected image of ourselves. So we are flooded with the kind of art that deprecates attentiveness, tells us about the issues of the day, and corresponds to our own personalities. – Lee Siegel, Eyes Wide Shut, Harper’s Magazine, October 1999

The stuff of conceptualism (the weather reports, the statements of fact, the list of shops in a shopping mall) can be easily understood by anyone. (For purposes of this conversation, ”anyone” is a certain kind of Westernized citizen.) Also easily misunderstood, which is a different form of understanding. I know what to do with a urinal. I know less what to do with a urinal on a pedestal. I may or may not turn to theory for a kind of understanding or at least interpretation; either way, I may just use it for a piss. – Vanessa Place, Notes on Conceptualism, February 22, 2012, Jacket 2

30 April 2019 - hyperlink, text, web - Comments Off on The stuff of conceptualism (the weather reports, the statements of fact, the list of shops in a shopping mall) can be easily understood by anyone. (For purposes of this conversation, ”anyone” is a certain kind of Westernized citizen.) Also easily misunderstood, which is a different form of understanding. I know what to do with a urinal. I know less what to do with a urinal on a pedestal. I may or may not turn to theory for a kind of understanding or at least interpretation; either way, I may just use it for a piss. – Vanessa Place, Notes on Conceptualism, February 22, 2012, Jacket 2

Akemi Takeya, Sweet heart / Granular Synthesis (1997, 7:30)

30 March 2019 - hyperlink, video, web - Comments Off on Akemi Takeya, Sweet heart / Granular Synthesis (1997, 7:30)

Seth Price, There Is No Society (2018)

18 March 2019 - hyperlink, music - Comments Off on Seth Price, There Is No Society (2018)

Notes on ‘Camp’, Susan Sontag, 1964

13 March 2019 - hyperlink, publication, web - Comments Off on Notes on ‘Camp’, Susan Sontag, 1964

To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which, for better or for worse, constitutes self-respect, is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weak- nesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gift for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course we will play Francesca to Paolo, Brett Ashley to Jake, Helen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan: no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we can not but hold in contempt, we play rôles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the necessity of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us. – Joan Didion, On Self-Respect, Vogue Magazine, 1961

8 March 2019 - hyperlink, text, web - Comments Off on To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which, for better or for worse, constitutes self-respect, is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weak- nesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gift for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course we will play Francesca to Paolo, Brett Ashley to Jake, Helen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan: no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we can not but hold in contempt, we play rôles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the necessity of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us. – Joan Didion, On Self-Respect, Vogue Magazine, 1961

The Exhausted (1995), Gilles Deleuze

17 February 2019 - hyperlink, publication - Comments Off on The Exhausted (1995), Gilles Deleuze

LANDSCAPE MODERN OIL PAINTING CANVAS PAINTING ABSTRACT OIL PAINTING WALL HANGING, group show by Jir Sandel

12 February 2019 - exhibition, hyperlink, publication, web - Comments Off on LANDSCAPE MODERN OIL PAINTING CANVAS PAINTING ABSTRACT OIL PAINTING WALL HANGING, group show by Jir Sandel

Well, my first reaction was a very predictable leftist reaction which more and more I am questioning and finding very static and self-defeating. At this point I do not want to be outside the structure of power, I do not want to be the opposition, the alternative. Alternative to what: To power? No. I want to have power. It’s effective in terms of change. I want to be like a virus that belongs to the institution. All the ideological apparatuses are, in other words, replicating themselves; because that’s the way the culture works. So if I function as a virus, an imposter, an infiltrator, I will always replicate myself together with those institutions. And I think that maybe I’m embracing those institutions which before I would have rejected. Money and capitalism are powers that are here to stay, at least for the moment. It’s within those structures that change can and will take place. My embrace is a strategy related to my initial rejection. – Felix Gonzales-Torres in conversation with Joseph Kosuth, October 10, 1993

1 January 2019 - hyperlink - Comments Off on Well, my first reaction was a very predictable leftist reaction which more and more I am questioning and finding very static and self-defeating. At this point I do not want to be outside the structure of power, I do not want to be the opposition, the alternative. Alternative to what: To power? No. I want to have power. It’s effective in terms of change. I want to be like a virus that belongs to the institution. All the ideological apparatuses are, in other words, replicating themselves; because that’s the way the culture works. So if I function as a virus, an imposter, an infiltrator, I will always replicate myself together with those institutions. And I think that maybe I’m embracing those institutions which before I would have rejected. Money and capitalism are powers that are here to stay, at least for the moment. It’s within those structures that change can and will take place. My embrace is a strategy related to my initial rejection. – Felix Gonzales-Torres in conversation with Joseph Kosuth, October 10, 1993

Five digital projectors have been programmed to light the canvases so that the original colors reappear. At four o’clock every day, the projectors are turned off one by one, and the colors revert to (mostly) muddy blacks and grays. You can still see the bones of the murals, the formal architecture—Rothko’s floating blocks, made to resemble portals in these pieces—but the glow is gone. As one observer put it, when the lights go off, comedy turns into tragedy. – Louis Menand, Watching them turn off the Rothkos, The New Yorker, April 1, 2015

5 December 2018 - hyperlink - Comments Off on Five digital projectors have been programmed to light the canvases so that the original colors reappear. At four o’clock every day, the projectors are turned off one by one, and the colors revert to (mostly) muddy blacks and grays. You can still see the bones of the murals, the formal architecture—Rothko’s floating blocks, made to resemble portals in these pieces—but the glow is gone. As one observer put it, when the lights go off, comedy turns into tragedy. – Louis Menand, Watching them turn off the Rothkos, The New Yorker, April 1, 2015

Soundtracks For Painters (2018), Seth Price

27 November 2018 - hyperlink - Comments Off on Soundtracks For Painters (2018), Seth Price

Towards a Metalanguage of Evil, Cady Noland, Balcon No. 4, 1989

19 November 2018 - art, hyperlink, publication, web - Comments Off on Towards a Metalanguage of Evil, Cady Noland, Balcon No. 4, 1989

Curating in the Post-Internet Age, Boris Groys, e-flux #94 – October 2018

31 October 2018 - hyperlink, text, web - Comments Off on Curating in the Post-Internet Age, Boris Groys, e-flux #94 – October 2018

It is important to note that Natascha Süder Happelmann is not a pseudonym – such as Lutz Bacher, for example – but an adaption. While pseudonyms are used to avoid revealing one’s real identity, Süder Happelmann wants her name to be traced back to her real one. For this purpose, the artist evaluated collected misspellings and autocorrects of her name with which she had been addressed over the past 30 years and selected Natascha Süder Happelman to be ‘the proper name for this important task’ as her spokeswoman Duldung explained. In order to represent Germany at one of the most important exhibitions in the world, the artist considered it necessary to ‘integrate’ by using a more German-sounding with umlauts and ‘-mann’ suffix to her surname. – ‘Natascha Süder Happelmann’ will represent Germany at the 2019 Venice Biennale, Carina Bukuts, Frieze Magazine, October 26, 2018

28 October 2018 - hyperlink, web - Comments Off on It is important to note that Natascha Süder Happelmann is not a pseudonym – such as Lutz Bacher, for example – but an adaption. While pseudonyms are used to avoid revealing one’s real identity, Süder Happelmann wants her name to be traced back to her real one. For this purpose, the artist evaluated collected misspellings and autocorrects of her name with which she had been addressed over the past 30 years and selected Natascha Süder Happelman to be ‘the proper name for this important task’ as her spokeswoman Duldung explained. In order to represent Germany at one of the most important exhibitions in the world, the artist considered it necessary to ‘integrate’ by using a more German-sounding with umlauts and ‘-mann’ suffix to her surname. – ‘Natascha Süder Happelmann’ will represent Germany at the 2019 Venice Biennale, Carina Bukuts, Frieze Magazine, October 26, 2018

The Jean Freeman Gallery Does Not Exist, Christopher Howard, MIT Press, October 2018

5 October 2018 - hyperlink, web - Comments Off on The Jean Freeman Gallery Does Not Exist, Christopher Howard, MIT Press, October 2018

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