We Find Wildness

Pyongyang Elegance: Notes on Communism by Amalia Ulman for Affidavit.art, February 12, 2018

21 February 2018 - hyperlink, text - Comments Off on Pyongyang Elegance: Notes on Communism by Amalia Ulman for Affidavit.art, February 12, 2018

The Task (2017), directed by Leigh Ledare, on view at True/False Film Festival, Columbia, Missouri, on March 2-4, 2018

12 February 2018 - agenda, hyperlink - Comments Off on The Task (2017), directed by Leigh Ledare, on view at True/False Film Festival, Columbia, Missouri, on March 2-4, 2018

Kunsthalle for Music, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, 26 January 2018 – 3 March 2018

9 February 2018 - exhibition, hyperlink - Comments Off on Kunsthalle for Music, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, 26 January 2018 – 3 March 2018

I love the idea of context, and also how you make people look at things, of, you know, things that they take for granted. And I remember, when I was a kid, there was a tree on the street that had blown down; it was, like, enormous. I remember being shocked by its size except when it was upright. Every day you walk past it, you never even see it. You know, with the Pharmacy installation, I wanted to get a pharmacy and put it into an art gallery, but one where you actually think you are in a…you know, in a pharmacy. Then, you know, just to… not even confuse you, but it just makes you question everything, but, also at that time, I was thinking about the…I wanted, like, you to believe in art. I wanted, you know, quite desperately for people to believe in art in a way that I believed in it, and I remember being aware that they totally believed in pharmacies, but, you know, walked into art galleries, and went, you know, “All that kind of modern art is rubbish.” I remember thinking that, you know, an art gallery and a pharmacy, you know, there’s no difference, really. It’s just a white room, and you know, they just function differently. One of them is trying to sell you art, the other one is trying to sell you drugs. – Damien Hirst, transcription from Channel 4: Damien Hirst 360 Private View, April 2012

9 February 2018 - hyperlink - Comments Off on I love the idea of context, and also how you make people look at things, of, you know, things that they take for granted. And I remember, when I was a kid, there was a tree on the street that had blown down; it was, like, enormous. I remember being shocked by its size except when it was upright. Every day you walk past it, you never even see it. You know, with the Pharmacy installation, I wanted to get a pharmacy and put it into an art gallery, but one where you actually think you are in a…you know, in a pharmacy. Then, you know, just to… not even confuse you, but it just makes you question everything, but, also at that time, I was thinking about the…I wanted, like, you to believe in art. I wanted, you know, quite desperately for people to believe in art in a way that I believed in it, and I remember being aware that they totally believed in pharmacies, but, you know, walked into art galleries, and went, you know, “All that kind of modern art is rubbish.” I remember thinking that, you know, an art gallery and a pharmacy, you know, there’s no difference, really. It’s just a white room, and you know, they just function differently. One of them is trying to sell you art, the other one is trying to sell you drugs. – Damien Hirst, transcription from Channel 4: Damien Hirst 360 Private View, April 2012

Michael E. Smith at 500 Capp Street Foundation, San Francisco, November 18, 2017 – February 3, 2018 via contemporary art daily

1 February 2018 - exhibition, hyperlink, web - Comments Off on Michael E. Smith at 500 Capp Street Foundation, San Francisco, November 18, 2017 – February 3, 2018 via contemporary art daily

Candice Lin. A Hard White Body

31 January 2018 - exhibition, hyperlink, text, web - Comments Off on Candice Lin. A Hard White Body

General Intellects with McKenzie Wark, E1: Chantal Mouffe via dis.art

17 January 2018 - hyperlink, web - Comments Off on General Intellects with McKenzie Wark, E1: Chantal Mouffe via dis.art

I guess the very existence of the artworld as we know it is hoisted and buttressed by a suspended set of values that must also collapse with the fiction of liberal democracy. And it’s complicated because without the whole circus, none of our work means a thing. The objects become totemic, faith trophies or whatever – at best, that is. At worst, it’s all just a bunch of worthless junk full of stolen tropes and cynical jokes. Most of the problems we spend our time discussing in the artworld are not real problems; they’re philosophical or theological conceits, really, and nothing will change through the value-production-industrial complex of endless panel discussions. The world as we know it may very well be ending, not in the Alt-Right, accelerationist sense but in the Wildersonian afropessimist sense; this would mean the end of the artworld too, of course. We would all have to find some other way to make a living if making a living was still something one did. And/or we would give ourselves wholly to the business of life. There are artistries in everything. But I think again of faith, somehow necessary where art is not. In Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower the main character Lauren Olamina is what I would call an artist, and this helps her survive apocalyptic conditions where others cannot. – Jesse Darling on Faith, Crisis, and Refusal via http://momus.ca/

15 January 2018 - hyperlink, text, web - Comments Off on I guess the very existence of the artworld as we know it is hoisted and buttressed by a suspended set of values that must also collapse with the fiction of liberal democracy. And it’s complicated because without the whole circus, none of our work means a thing. The objects become totemic, faith trophies or whatever – at best, that is. At worst, it’s all just a bunch of worthless junk full of stolen tropes and cynical jokes. Most of the problems we spend our time discussing in the artworld are not real problems; they’re philosophical or theological conceits, really, and nothing will change through the value-production-industrial complex of endless panel discussions. The world as we know it may very well be ending, not in the Alt-Right, accelerationist sense but in the Wildersonian afropessimist sense; this would mean the end of the artworld too, of course. We would all have to find some other way to make a living if making a living was still something one did. And/or we would give ourselves wholly to the business of life. There are artistries in everything. But I think again of faith, somehow necessary where art is not. In Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower the main character Lauren Olamina is what I would call an artist, and this helps her survive apocalyptic conditions where others cannot. – Jesse Darling on Faith, Crisis, and Refusal via http://momus.ca/

What only a loving, disinterested eye would notice – Sinziana Ravini on Matias Faldbakken, Effects of Good Government in the Pit, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo

12 January 2018 - art, hyperlink, web - Comments Off on What only a loving, disinterested eye would notice – Sinziana Ravini on Matias Faldbakken, Effects of Good Government in the Pit, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo

Download typefaces by Bea Schlingelhof dedicated to Women against Hitler – https://schloss.no/women-against-hitler

2 January 2018 - exhibition, hyperlink, web - Comments Off on Download typefaces by Bea Schlingelhof dedicated to Women against Hitler – https://schloss.no/women-against-hitler

Lucy Skaer at KW, Berlin, October 13, 2017 – January 7, 2018 via Contemporary Art Daily

31 December 2017 - exhibition, hyperlink, web - Comments Off on Lucy Skaer at KW, Berlin, October 13, 2017 – January 7, 2018 via Contemporary Art Daily

Paintings that picture the female gaze looking onto “herself” becoming a man who in turn embodies the rhetorical gaze of the viewer who is, meanwhile, consuming both. Multiple women and one man; a seemingly classic power structure. How many women have been the object of painting? How many “girls” sell the work (back to the delicious Picabia)? And who is this effete, corporate-suited “Graham,” seeing himself as a girl in a skirt or panties actively posing à la théorie de la jeune-fille ? This is fantasy. This is the controlled choreography of Capitalism. This is not desire. This is Carpenter presenting farce feeding itself to us, presenting Carpenter as the artist. If the girl is the subject in the act of looking at herself for others, she has been hijacked by this Tony Blair-looking businessman in the bathroom mirror; who does not dominate necessarily, but does manage to undermine the subject of our looking. We are complicit. – The Man In The Mirror, Sarah Morris on Merlin Carpenter at Galerie Neu, Berlin, Texte Zur Kunst n°107

17 December 2017 - hyperlink, text - Comments Off on Paintings that picture the female gaze looking onto “herself” becoming a man who in turn embodies the rhetorical gaze of the viewer who is, meanwhile, consuming both. Multiple women and one man; a seemingly classic power structure. How many women have been the object of painting? How many “girls” sell the work (back to the delicious Picabia)? And who is this effete, corporate-suited “Graham,” seeing himself as a girl in a skirt or panties actively posing à la théorie de la jeune-fille ? This is fantasy. This is the controlled choreography of Capitalism. This is not desire. This is Carpenter presenting farce feeding itself to us, presenting Carpenter as the artist. If the girl is the subject in the act of looking at herself for others, she has been hijacked by this Tony Blair-looking businessman in the bathroom mirror; who does not dominate necessarily, but does manage to undermine the subject of our looking. We are complicit. – The Man In The Mirror, Sarah Morris on Merlin Carpenter at Galerie Neu, Berlin, Texte Zur Kunst n°107