We Find Wildness

John Giorno. Suicide Sutra (1973)

3 July 2018 - web - Comments Off on John Giorno. Suicide Sutra (1973)

I don’t want my work to feel all sweat-soaked and tortured. I’d like to be like a crooner, effortless seeming, smooth. That doesn’t mean it actually is easy. And it doesn’t mean you don’t have backbone, or even aggression. Like Frank Sinatra. Or Miles Davis, maybe. It’s like magic. I want my things to just appear. Not be painted. Just appear. – from “What I Would Say If I Were Christopher Wool” by Richard Hell, Whitewall, Nr. 3 (Autumn 2006)

22 June 2018 - text, web - Comments Off on I don’t want my work to feel all sweat-soaked and tortured. I’d like to be like a crooner, effortless seeming, smooth. That doesn’t mean it actually is easy. And it doesn’t mean you don’t have backbone, or even aggression. Like Frank Sinatra. Or Miles Davis, maybe. It’s like magic. I want my things to just appear. Not be painted. Just appear. – from “What I Would Say If I Were Christopher Wool” by Richard Hell, Whitewall, Nr. 3 (Autumn 2006)

One day, a gallerist met a man named Russell who had an ambitious idea. He thought the history of painting should be divided in two. The paintings that have a painting of themselves depicted, and the rest. The paintings that contain themselves, and the rest. Later in time, the gallerist decided to make an exhibition of all the Russell paintings. […] And at some point he called a painter friend, and asked him to make a painting of the exhibition, to immortalize it! […] The gallerist inspected it, and hung it in the only available space there was, as it was the last Russell painting in the world to have been made. But the painter drew his attention to the fact that the scene he had painted had now been modified. His painting didn’t contain all the Russell paintings anymore. He now had to fix his painting. He had to add his own painting to the All the Russell paintings. […] The gallerist then asked the painter to erase the image of itself. […] But now the painting couldn’t be titled All the Russell paintings, so he painted the painting in it again. What a problem! They erased it and painted it, they erased it and painted it again, forever… – excerpt from Not To Belong to Themselves (2018) by Mario Garcia Torres

8 June 2018 - text, web - Comments Off on One day, a gallerist met a man named Russell who had an ambitious idea. He thought the history of painting should be divided in two. The paintings that have a painting of themselves depicted, and the rest. The paintings that contain themselves, and the rest. Later in time, the gallerist decided to make an exhibition of all the Russell paintings. […] And at some point he called a painter friend, and asked him to make a painting of the exhibition, to immortalize it! […] The gallerist inspected it, and hung it in the only available space there was, as it was the last Russell painting in the world to have been made. But the painter drew his attention to the fact that the scene he had painted had now been modified. His painting didn’t contain all the Russell paintings anymore. He now had to fix his painting. He had to add his own painting to the All the Russell paintings. […] The gallerist then asked the painter to erase the image of itself. […] But now the painting couldn’t be titled All the Russell paintings, so he painted the painting in it again. What a problem! They erased it and painted it, they erased it and painted it again, forever… – excerpt from Not To Belong to Themselves (2018) by Mario Garcia Torres

Fernando Pessoa. The Anarchist Banker (1922)

19 May 2018 - text, web - Comments Off on Fernando Pessoa. The Anarchist Banker (1922)

June 1999. When artist Adam Chodzko was invited to make a piece of work as part of this off-site programme, he questioned the notion of an identifiable ‘public’ and the possibility of producing an ‘accessible’ work. His intervention, Better Scenery (2000) consisted of two signs, one located in the Arizona Desert and the other in the car park of a new shopping centre, the O2 Centre, in Camden. The plain yellow lettering on the black face of each sign gives clear directions of how to get to the other sign. Both sets of directions end with the phrase: ‘Situated here, in this place, is a sign which describes the location of this sign you have just finished reading. – Jane Rendell about Adam Chodzko, Better Scenery (1999)

23 April 2018 - hyperlink, web - Comments Off on June 1999. When artist Adam Chodzko was invited to make a piece of work as part of this off-site programme, he questioned the notion of an identifiable ‘public’ and the possibility of producing an ‘accessible’ work. His intervention, Better Scenery (2000) consisted of two signs, one located in the Arizona Desert and the other in the car park of a new shopping centre, the O2 Centre, in Camden. The plain yellow lettering on the black face of each sign gives clear directions of how to get to the other sign. Both sets of directions end with the phrase: ‘Situated here, in this place, is a sign which describes the location of this sign you have just finished reading. – Jane Rendell about Adam Chodzko, Better Scenery (1999)

Laure Prouvost. Lisson Presents…ON AIR

10 April 2018 - exhibition, music, web - Comments Off on Laure Prouvost. Lisson Presents…ON AIR

Money is a festering excuse, often used to block transformation. But in a way, I believe that capitalism (which is still in its infancy) helps keep institutions from getting too comfortable. Like democracy, capitalism needs constant engagement, and I prefer the growing pains that come with this process to any alternative. Humor is one option to sweeten the pill. – Rita McBride in conversation with Mitch Speed, Mousse 62, February – March 2018

5 March 2018 - hyperlink, interview, web - Comments Off on Money is a festering excuse, often used to block transformation. But in a way, I believe that capitalism (which is still in its infancy) helps keep institutions from getting too comfortable. Like democracy, capitalism needs constant engagement, and I prefer the growing pains that come with this process to any alternative. Humor is one option to sweeten the pill. – Rita McBride in conversation with Mitch Speed, Mousse 62, February – March 2018

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